Planet 235 Upgrade - The Requiem Reef

[skyrne_isk]

Here it is!

Under daylight from the top:



Through the glass under blues:



And as you can see the idea is to try and get the milii to host in a new anemone. The had readily hosted in the mertensii that killed everything at the start of this thread. On the principle alone I had to get rid of that anemone so I did. It was always a bit of a malcontent, would be perfectly fine for weeks and then reposition itself. I have no idea why this was - couldn’t be light as there was a wall hammer and maxima literally as happy as a clam right beside it. My guess is flow but not for certain. Either way I am happy to be rid of it.

As far as hosting, the milii are a bit of an enigma. There’s not a lot of research out there on them, and what is out there is somewhat of guesswork. Some wild photos suggest the ubiquitous BTA which for a variety of reasons I’d rather not keep. Some other postings I found on the few wild photos were guessing other Heteractis species like malu or crispa which I believe are both sand dwelling. I didn’t see any mention of supposed hosting of H. aurora and am not even sure where to source one if they did. I have never kept any of these before and would rather not do a container of sand in the sump that would be needed for most/all of them.

I tried putting my gigantea in the sump with them for a couple days and they had zero interest. Like other clarkii family clowns, I am guessing they would also host a haddoni, but again with the sand issue. So that leads me back to the only other Heteractis anemone on the list - the mag. So far they haven’t dropped straight into it but they aren’t actively avoiding it like they did with the gig. You’ll have to ignore the cloudy water - had just done some maintenance in the sump.



So not hosting in it so far, but fingers crossed they will come along.

 

[skyrne_isk]

And no matter how many times it happens, always makes me happy to see the clownfish with a nest of eggs. Looks like we are back to our regular 10-14 days between clutches.

Happy Father’s day indeed!

 

[skyrne_isk]

Here’s the next update:

I took the opportunity over my vacation to do some work on the aquascape. That extra piece of fiji rock just wasn’t working out. The original design was to have two separate structures and the addition of that rock made it pretty close to one connected piece - especially once the acros start to grow in. Most of the pieces were heavily encrusted but they actually came off decently. Here is the result:


I will get an update aquascape shot later today, am pretty happy with how it’s coming along.

Also, on the vacation front my wife had a fantastic suggestion. We had some wifi nanny cams from when we had newborns around that weren’t being used, why not let me obsess about my tank even when I’m not at home, right???


They are pretty cool. They shoot black and white in low light conditions and let you change the direction of the lens with the app. The only thing they don’t do is zoom in, but that’s not that big of a deal.

Between this and the Apex, it was a huge relief to have set up while away.

 

[skyrne_isk]

Here’s the wildest part of my vacation:

So we’re on the way back and I check in on the tank with the camera and notice there are no lights on. Weird, because it’s almost 11AM. I check in on the Apex and it says all lights but the halide are on but they aren’t. Obviously, the house has power because the camera is working. I look in on the dashboard at the EB8 that the lights are all connected to and it says it’s pulling 80A!! And then randomly it will say it’s not pulling any power. Here’s the last couple days log:




I have no idea what the truth is but tell myself no worries I’ll be home in a few hours.

Once we get home I start checking outlets and I find the culprit:



It’s an old switched outlet multi strip that I’ve had forever. There aren’t really any switched outlets I use anymore, but I did have the EB8 running to it since it had an inline 15A fuse that I reasoned gave me some protection before any power surges could get to the EB8 directly.

Oddly enough, the fuse was still fine:


A little scary if you ask me. Not sure if the outlet corroded due to salt in the air (it was an old unit) or if the house was hit by lightning or what. Mostly, I’m just fortunate nothing was damaged and the house didn’t burn down (I was watching the camera for smoke on the way home )

Not sure exactly what had been going on for the several days prior, but I did see my pink lemonade colony was RTN’ng from the middle when I got home. A single 1” frag is alive, here’s the rest of the damage report, about an 8” x 6” colony gone:

So a bummer for sure, just glad it wasn’t worse (and why I hate going on vacations )

 

[skyrne_isk]

A mini dump of pics from today. Colors aren’t all the way back and there’s still a bunch of frags cluttering the sandbed, but it’s getting there. Enjoy.

 

[skyrne_isk]

Today’s updates are pretty exciting! This is becoming a recurring theme, but the clowns spawned again today and this time I caught them in the act. I don’t see a ton of videos of egg laying and fertilizing happening so thought I’d capture and post.


Here’s the other big thing: The two tangs are out of QT. It’s been 30 days of copper and then metro, so now they are in an egg crate box to get used to the crew.

 

[dstockwell]

Sweet !

 

[skyrne_isk]

In other happy news, here is a nighttime shot of the milii clowns in the sump courtesy of the nanny cam. Maybe you can tell what’s going on….

 

[skyrne_isk]

So finally some success on the milii clowns! I picked up a haddoni and little gig from an online vendor. It wasn’t an immediate interest from the clowns, but after a day or so I caught them sleeping on the night cam almost in the haddoni. They certainly have more interest in the haddoni than the gig, but since adding the haddoni I have absolutely seen them hosting in the gig periodically. What’s even more frustrating is that some weeks ago I moved the blue gig from the display down to the milii clowns and they had zero interest.

So it would seem they naturally host in haddoni and mertens as they readily accepted these as hosts. And that the presence of a natural host helped to induce hosting in a non preferred anemone. My guess is that they can be coaxed into just accepting a gig, I’ll have to keep an eye on how much they host in one now that both are in the tank. Only downside is that both carpet anemones are a little small - and the gig a little more so than the haddoni - and that might explain a little bit of the preference as well. I popped down there this morning as lights were just coming on and caught this of them and the haddoni:

On another random note, it’s been tricky figuring out the hosting situation for these milii clowns as they are certainly a “fringe” species and there’s not a lot out there on them. They are definitely a clarkii complex clown - of which there is ALSO very little forum posting on hosting behavior. I suspect it’s because clarkii are a bigger clown complex and are a bit pugnacious but nobody seems to keep clarkii family clowns these days . Which I think is a shame. These milii clowns follow that pattern where they aren’t closely “bonded” to their anemone. Unlike say, percula complex, which almost never leave their anemone for more than a few seconds. These guys are a little more casual in hosting. But in any event it feels rewarding to have a clownfish pair hosting in any anemone in a system.

 

[skyrne_isk]

On the display front, the Whitetail and Maculiceps have settled in and are now part of the squad. I let them out of the box a couple days ago and there was some of the usual pecking order figuring out that happened. After this, it is apparent that the Gem tang is at the top of the hierarchy of all the fish in the tank - and this is a good thing. The striatus that I got rid of was just an evil fish - even slashing at the Gem tank who was probably twice his size. No way could I have him “in charge”. With him gone, there was some fin flaring out of the Gem for a couple days, but very mild. Now that’s all over and everyone is good.




I’ve never kept a C. flavicauda before and they are a stunning fish. The red and purple stripes are like those of an adult chevron tang - which are beautiful in their own right but the colors are more “drab”. You can’t really see the stripes in this photo, but one day I’ll get a decent camera that will pick it up. Bristletooth are among my favorite tangs - they put in a lot of work keeping things clean. This one is quite skittish, but I’ll take that over an aggressive bully.

The last Maculiceps would eat out of my hand, will have to work on getting this one too as well. Usually most of my large angels and tangs end up hand fed - so long as they are collected small enough. Time will tell.

And I think that does it for my tang gang, but still some work on rounding out the angels in the tank. Should have something to post on that next week - now that I have an empty QT tank

 

[skyrne_isk]

A couple updates on the tank:

On the SPS front, nothing but problems. Since the Pink Lemonade STNd, two of my biggest colonies followed suit. One was a wild Aussie yellow piece that I have several frags of which doesn’t hurt quite so bad. The other is a red planet that I loved the tabling growth pattern on. While red planet is easy and cheap to
come by, hoping the growth form is easy to replicate.

Here is the red planet, which took several days to STN



My current theory on what happened is this:

I started a half dose of Acropower before all this started…. which I am given to understand is amino acids. My understanding is that any of these not taken up by the corals quickly turned into nitrate. I am guessing this because as the second well established colony (like 2-3 years) started to STN I checked my parameters and found everything exactly as I would expect: alk @ 8.5, NO3 @ 0 but PO4 was also 0.00 when it usually runs 0.03-0.07 ppm on hanna. The only time I have seen PO4 literally at 0 is when I have dosed NO3 in the past. My tank always runs 0 NO3 almost no matter how much I dose. And when I do dose the only real visual difference I see things browning out a bit and more algae growth. So I don’t.

So my working assumption is twofold: PO4 bottomed out after the Acropower and then a bacterial infection sat in - either being fed from dead acro tissue or free NO3. It’s the classic STN pattern: a white band of dead tissue spreading from the base of the larger colonies that probably don’t get enough flow.

The weirdest part is that the polyp extension on the colonies was absurdly good up until the moment the dead tissue caught up to it. Infuriating.

After reading this article: https://reefbuilders.com/2023/04/10/managing-tissue-necrosis/

I took the aggressive step of trying to save the red planet by fragging and dipping it in Cipro while I treated the tank at 500mg/250G which is somewhere in the middle of the suggested range by Paletta in the RB article. Even after dips, you can see the polyps are still intact while the dead tissue expands ever outward. This was just after a dip, so the polyps are a bit in.



But the dying tissue didn’t peel, it was a giant white stringy mess - so am concluding a bacterial issue. The Cipro hasn’t seemed to dent it, so the plan now is just to treat the tank and wait to see this thing run its course unfortunately. So probably no new SPS for a bit.
On the upside, those pieces were getting large and restrictive to flow, so maybe not a terrible thing to lose them. At a minimum they were going to need a major cutdown - but always a bit of a bummer to see 2-3 years of growth wiped out in a week.
On the fish front, here’s what’s cooking in QT. I’ve always wanted to get one of these - so a bucket list fish for me!

 

[skyrne_isk]

Some updates on the tank:

On the SPS front, losses have stopped due to STN. While I think it was caused by phenomena of the pink lemonade colony inducing the other mature colonies to RTN there was definitely some bacteria involvement. The red planet colony I blasted with Cipro dips while also treating the main tank and I don’t think it slowed it at all. I also find it unlikely that any pathogenic bacteria would be resistant to Cipro - which is pretty broad spectrum - especially for the kinds of bad bacteria that live in our reefs. Also interesting is that some small frags of the colonies that died that were themselves months old ALSO STNd - it just took an extra couple weeks. Growth and PE and everything on all the other SPS is great. So a real head scratcher but on we go.


On the fish front I had some issues with the angel. As you can see in the videos I’ve posted of him the lighting isn’t all that great on the QT but I noticed he looked a little “dusty” one day. My initial thought was velvet as an had only been treating copper at 2.0ppm. So I bumped it to 2.5ppm in conjunction 30 min peroxide dips per humblefish’s directions here: https://humble.fish/community/index.php?threads/hydrogen-peroxide-bath.21/

It was a mild improvement but the next day I noticed heavy breathing and some swimming into the MP10. The H2O2 baths should have cleared the gills of any parasites and if it were ich/velvet the copper levels should have kept any new dinospores from infecting so I started to suspect brook. Humblefish notes that copper can suppress symptoms of brook which is why it wasn’t a rapid onset of symptoms from when I got him a few weeks back. But since brook kills quickly I immediately drained the QT and added new tank water to a sterile QT tank dosed with 250mg of metronidazole / 10g. Between transferring I went aggressive with a formalin bath. All I had on hand was Ich-X which is only 5% formalin and Humble calls for 37% so nervously I went with 5x the dosing on the Ich-X bottle for the bath. Good news is that the angel never stopped eating and now appears symptom free. I think metro only treatment would have been effective in clearing the brook but the baths go a long way to clearing the gills and keeping the fish respiring going. And switching to a new sterile QT (where I just bleached the pumps during and started with a new sponge normally kept in the display sump) was great at knocking any free parasites to zero. So this is the second time I’ve beaten brook (the milii clowns had it too) and it feels good. I also was this close to pulling the angel out of QT after 3 weeks because he was doing so well but then talked myself out of it. So the moral of the story -anytime you feel like taking a risk on QT - don’t. I was one bad decision away from putting brook in my display!






Also exciting updates on one of my anemones: my mag split again but this time into three! Due to the STN and Cipro treatment my alk consumption dropped and I turned off the CaRx. I took my weekly measurement yesterday and alk was only 6.2 (I usually run about 9). I am not sure if the alk drop caused the split or if it’s just a coincidence. I see many reefers mention that they think their anemones have an alk preference so it was interesting to note. I don’t really buy into these observations but you can make your own mind up