The ‘Most of you will completely disagree with everything I did’ 180g Mixed Reef

[Gregg @ ADP]

I love your method of reefing. No rules, just why nots! Sometimes I think reefers get hung up on pristine tanks and stress more than observe and enjoy.

It’s true. Nature is not pristine, perfect, or constantly stable. I’m fortunate that I’ve been in the game for a long time, and know what I can get away with.

Like one of my friends who worked at Shedd Aquarium for a long time always said ‘Man, if people saw how we really do things…’

 

[Katrina71]

It’s true. Nature is not pristine, perfect, or constantly stable. I’m fortunate that I’ve been in the game for a long time, and know what I can get away with.

Like one of my friends who worked at Shedd Aquarium for a long time always said ‘Man, if people saw how we really do things…’

I'm fortunate to have been taught by old school reefers that taught me not to freak out.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Update:

General appearance of the system:

1) From the ‘Things that never seem to happen’ file…most of the dinos are either gone or on their way out without me doing much of anything.

When I got back from winter break, there was fairy substantial dino growth. Without any attempt at mitigation, it’s down about 80%, and the remaining strands and patches are starting to look thin and light.

2) Despite having heaters in the system, I suspect that the room got cold over break. Coral looked pretty good before I left, but some of it looks a little bleached out now. The forgspawns actually look kinda like crap. Not bleached, but retracted (w/1 polyp bail). I’ve moved them and they’re starting to show a little rebound. These are the babies of a colony that was started 15 years ago, so I’m confident they’ll pull through.

Macro-algae system and mangroves:
1) Received a shipment from Alyssa’s Seahorse Savvy https://seahorsesavvy.com . I don’t know much about them, but they had C. prolifera in stock and nobody else did. Ordered that, some red gracilaria, and some rooted Halimeda. Stuff looks pretty good:

Half of this is going to another system, so I’ll divvy it up and sort it out later today. Want to have less so that I can just start dumping food in the system and let it grow out.

One of the things I’m happiest about are the mangroves. I’ve done some mangroves before, but these are cruising. They were all propagules a couple of months ago, but are all leafed out and some are about to have the 3rd layer of leaves pop. This is the fastest growth I’ve gotten from mangroves before:

Class is starting. I’ll have more shortly with the coral score I had, as well as some fish stuff.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

New coral:

I don’t feel like typic all of this out, but here is the invoice for what I am adding this round:

Here they are. SPS in sunlight makes me so happy. I have some ideas for how to deliver more sunlight to the system…more on that later.

I’m not sure what I want to do to acclimate these. I’m a little nervous that the coral that was in the tank over break tweaked. Part of me is worried that the lights being older are a problem, and I’m not anxious to bleach out 15 beautiful corals.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

OK, I know I said I wouldn’t test the water, but my curiosity about the corals getting a bleached look despite lighting not changing got the best of me.

NO3 = <2ppm (Salifert test)
PO4 = <0.03ppm (Salifert test)

Yikes. That could explain a lot. Time to pump up the junk in the tank.

What is interesting about those #s is that this is a tank that has been up with fish in it for 4 months. Not a brand new tank. I guess it also explains why the Caulerpa I added before crapped out right away.

 

[GARRIGA]

OK, I know I said I wouldn’t test the water, but my curiosity about the corals getting a bleached look despite lighting not changing got the best of me.

NO3 = <2ppm (Salifert test)
PO4 = <0.03ppm (Salifert test)

Yikes. That could explain a lot. Time to pump up the junk in the tank.

What is interesting about those #s is that this is a tank that has been up with fish in it for 4 months. Not a brand new tank. I guess it also explains why the Caulerpa I added before crapped out right away.

Consider adding iron to assist your caulerpa. I'm adding ChaetoGro twice a week and my Pom Pom is flourishing and growing. One cap to 16g. I should test it but I'm more it looks good leave it alone before I test and go change something. For example, zero nitrates don't scare me. I just overfeed and if it remains at that than assumption being my filtration is resolving it yet life getting it's ammonium which is now the latest fad of dosing directly.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Consider adding iron to assist your caulerpa. I'm adding ChaetoGro twice a week and my Pom Pom is flourishing and growing. One cap to 16g. I should test it but I'm more it looks good leave it alone before I test and go change something. For example, zero nitrates don't scare me. I just overfeed and if it remains at that than assumption being my filtration is resolving it yet life getting it's ammonium which is now the latest fad of dosing directly.

I would imagine the iron level is pretty good. I set the tank up with tap water out of a the 3rd floor of a 110 year old school building.

The first two buckets I added were orange

 

[GARRIGA]

I would imagine the iron level is pretty good. I set the tank up with tap water out of a the 3rd floor of a 110 year old school building.

The first two buckets I added were orange

The RODI Police just dropped their coffee

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

The RODI Police just dropped their coffee

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Last quick update for the week:

I got the macro-algae tank sorted out. Removed a lot of what I got in, super glued some of the Gracilaria and Caulerpa to rock, and then sorta planted the rest of the Caulerpa in the sand.

If you notice on the bottom, there are a couple of dead chromis. I had about 25 chromis come in this last shipment, and a couple clearly weren’t going to make it. With the PO4 and NO3 bottomed out, I figured I would just throw them in there for the nutrients. Apologies in advance to @Jay Hemdal …I did not quarantine these fish before adding them.

I also remembered that I had this lying around for my students to use in their IB Internal Assessments, but I’m not deperate enough to use them yet. Hopefully all the food I added, as well as the dead fish and the scraps of macro that won’t live bring those #s up.

And given the super low PO4 and NO3, I cut the light intensity way back…close to 50%. We’ll see if that helps.

Everything else is looking decent. Dinos are almost gone. Next week I’m going to cut the macro-algae tank out, slide it forward, and then put that other 20H in-line with it.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Quick update:

All of the corals I added look pretty good. One acro RTN’d right away, but I suspected it would. Everything else acclimating well so far.

I did feel like if I was going to do this, I probably should be somewhat serious about some things. So I decided to get to indulge and get fancy with a dosing system.
















Just kidding…I drilled very small holes into each of these sterile water bottles, and I manage when and how much I’m dosing by slightly loosening the caps on the bottles and letting it drip into the overflows:

 

[reewik]

Following along, this is really cool

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Update:

Evidence for competition eliminating dinos?

As of today, the dinos seem to be about 90% eliminated from the system. There are still some straggler strands holding on, but over the course of the week, they have been fading away rapidly.

Here is a quick shot from today. You can see a thin band of dinos along the back, and a light dusting over the rest of the sand, but overall, not much.

For me, the question was always going to be, can the macro-algae survive the onslaught of dinos until it gets a foothold and reach the tipping point that would allow it to outcompete the dinos. The dinos tried like hell, but the macros seem settled in. Dinos will try to smother any competition, and I spent a fair amount of time blowing them off the macros over the last couple weeks. But today, I noticed far fewer dinos and new macro growth:

To eliminate the dinos, I essentially just added a bunch of food…sometimes even my own. I’m not shy about throwing my lunch scraps into the sump. Haven’t done a water change on the system, so I’m encouraged that an intervention hasn’t been required.

Next week, I’m redoing the macro tank so
It’s connected to the other 20H and the main system.

Finally, my new dosing system must be working. New growth already on some of the acros:

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

I have to admit…I’m having a lot of fun with this tank.

I haven’t kept an aquarium in over 20 years, and I’m really enjoying seeing all the day-to-day stuff. Still a few things to fix and change, but it’s fun just the way it is. And of course the students love it.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Update:

Finally did Phase 1 of reorganize and rebuild.

Moved the macro-algae tank to be flush with 180, tied the other 20H into the system, and T’d the return line off to feed both 20s:

Also painted the back of the 20s blue:

The other 20 is going to be an octopus tank. I am super-gluing Velcro around the rim so that I can have a fiberglass screen over the top to keep the octopus in. Going to have to do something about the drain and return lines as well.

One change I might make is to put the 20s on a piece of 1/2” plywood so that I can get a slight pitch on the drain line going into the overflow. This would let me run a lot more flow from the return pump into those tanks and I can ditch the power heads. As it is, if I put a lot more flow through, the drains will gurgle a bit.

The last big job on the list is rebuilding that collapsed lagoon end. However, the plot has thickened some as I noticed today that the pistol shrimp has dug all the way to the front, so I will try to preserve that. I don’t really know what I’m going to about the shrimp and the goby, given that I am going to have to drain the tank down for an hour or so.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Update:

I can say with certainty that with the exception of a few stragglers that might be hiding out in some unseen crevice, this tank is now dino-free.

General appearance under mostly white:

Recent additions still acclimating on my frag-rack (aka the bottom of the tank):

Also added a couple of cleaner shrimp and a bi-color blenny.

Another interesting development:

See how terrible this BTA looks? Well, it looks 1000x better than it did 2 weeks ago. It essentially bleached, shrunk to half its normal size, and looked like it was going to melt away. But, it never let go of that rock, even with the skunk clowns incessantly hammering it. Now, it’s filling back up and getting some faint green and pink coloration back. I think it picked that spot b/c it doesn’t really like the LED, but that left side of the rock gets a couple hours of sunlight on days when it’s sunny. It’s in the lowest LED PAR….but the highest sunlight PAR…area of the tank. Make of that what you will.

The acros I’ve had in the tank really line the sun as well.

Finally, the macro tank is coming around. The caulerpa growth is way outpacing the gracilaria, as one would expect. Some Chaeto growth as well. I’ve been dumping pods from various tanks in there, and will probably get some pipe fish in the next week or two:

The weekend after this upcoming weekend, I am tackling the redo on that disintegrated mortar on the lagoon edge. Once that is finished, I will start taking this tank a little more seriously.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Also, I want to give credit where much credit is due…

The alk, calcium, and magnesium supplements in my sophisticated and elaborate dosing system are the trusted DIY recipes of our very own @Randy Holmes-Farley . I trust no other brands.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

I also wanted to show off my new carbon dosing system:

(penne and sauce that I dropped on the floor)

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

50% Aqua Illumination vs 8am sun

 

[Katrina71]

This is exactly why I'm putting our new tank by the window.