Zoey's Reef is Growing Up . . .
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NY_Caveman
likes words, fish and arbitrary statistics
Awesome, Bruce! It took me a second to realize that insane looking critter in the water was a veggie clip. LOL, I was totally distracted by the living colors.
fabutahoun
Angels and Acros
Its about time !! Bruce we kinda missed you.
Tank looking great!
Tank looking great!
OP
OP
The MarsAqua do everything I need 'em to, Pyru - and possibly a tad too well. For a while, it seemed as though the corals receiving the most light were doing poorly - I've turned them down a tad from previous settings.
Thank you all for the kind comments!
@NY_Caveman, I like hanging the veggie clip, as it affords more room for the interested parties to cluster around - and I also often clip a littleneck clam in there. (On those days, virtually _all_ parties are interested!)
~Bruce
Thank you all for the kind comments!
@NY_Caveman, I like hanging the veggie clip, as it affords more room for the interested parties to cluster around - and I also often clip a littleneck clam in there. (On those days, virtually _all_ parties are interested!)
~Bruce
OP
OP
Well, I promised at the beginning that this would be "warts & all" . . .
Things have not been going well on Kingston & Zoey's reef. Fish are doing well enough, though with a few notable losses, led off by the Quoy's parrotfish. He just ... stopped. Eating, grazing, following the algae scraper, not even doing much more than drifting around the reef - and within a week and a half or so, he was gone. Shortly afterward, I noticed that my kole tang was losing condition. She would eat, but grew thinner and thinner, and didn't show up for breakfast one day last week. I had seen white stringy poop from another fish, so internal parasites may have been involved - but have also been feeding medicine-laced foods for the last two weeks, as I've had several fish in QT. New additions went into the display on Friday night, and include a yellow and powderblue tang, orange-back and solor fairy-wrasse and a cleaner wrasse (kind of an impulse buy - he was eating voraciously in the LFS, I recently lost my sharknose goby after a long decline, and I've got 11 tall-bodied fish for the cleanerfish to groom), a Genicanthus bellus angelfish, and a copperband butterfly who, like so many others, refuses prepared foods. Ugh. He's finding something in the rocks, and I've been offering clams on the shell, as well - but that may not be enough.
Panoramic frontal view:
Side-view, with a mirror at the far end to defuse tang aggression:
Whimsical look at fish finishing off a steamer clam:
Corals, on the other hand . . .
For the first three-quarter year or so after I got this tank up and running, it seemed able to grow any kind of coral except M. lordhowensis, but no longer. SPS that grew from frags to mini-colonies have all slowly died, save one frag of "Cliff's Acro", which is just about holding on. A green Leptoseris that had covered its frag plug has faded to a few small patches. An elegance which thrived for over a year has bailed out of its skeleton, as have several polyps of a trumpet coral that was one of the first corals I placed into the 65 gallon. Blue Sympodium fell apart. A chalice that was growing well has dried up and gone away. Even some zoanthids have receded or vanished. Mushrooms seem to be holding their own, as are Euphyllias - but they're hardly going gangbusters.
The only coelenterates that seem to be thriving are Aiptasia, Mojanos and one colony of zoas - oh, and a colony of Pavona that's encrusted a decent amount of real estate. Wish it would send up some of its fans, though . . .
Also doing better than I'd like: turf algae and cyanobacteria. (In the case of the cyano, _way_ better than I'd like!)
None of which was helped by having to replace my primary vehicle . . .
Plans for recovery include cleaning the skimmer & tuning it a little wetter (done) and stepping up the rate of change for filter socks. Also, got my hair cut short, so I can't just grab a bunch and pull it out.
It's one of those seasons where I feel as though I just shouldn't be advising anyone on reefkeeping.
~Bruce
Things have not been going well on Kingston & Zoey's reef. Fish are doing well enough, though with a few notable losses, led off by the Quoy's parrotfish. He just ... stopped. Eating, grazing, following the algae scraper, not even doing much more than drifting around the reef - and within a week and a half or so, he was gone. Shortly afterward, I noticed that my kole tang was losing condition. She would eat, but grew thinner and thinner, and didn't show up for breakfast one day last week. I had seen white stringy poop from another fish, so internal parasites may have been involved - but have also been feeding medicine-laced foods for the last two weeks, as I've had several fish in QT. New additions went into the display on Friday night, and include a yellow and powderblue tang, orange-back and solor fairy-wrasse and a cleaner wrasse (kind of an impulse buy - he was eating voraciously in the LFS, I recently lost my sharknose goby after a long decline, and I've got 11 tall-bodied fish for the cleanerfish to groom), a Genicanthus bellus angelfish, and a copperband butterfly who, like so many others, refuses prepared foods. Ugh. He's finding something in the rocks, and I've been offering clams on the shell, as well - but that may not be enough.
Panoramic frontal view:
Side-view, with a mirror at the far end to defuse tang aggression:
Whimsical look at fish finishing off a steamer clam:
Corals, on the other hand . . .
For the first three-quarter year or so after I got this tank up and running, it seemed able to grow any kind of coral except M. lordhowensis, but no longer. SPS that grew from frags to mini-colonies have all slowly died, save one frag of "Cliff's Acro", which is just about holding on. A green Leptoseris that had covered its frag plug has faded to a few small patches. An elegance which thrived for over a year has bailed out of its skeleton, as have several polyps of a trumpet coral that was one of the first corals I placed into the 65 gallon. Blue Sympodium fell apart. A chalice that was growing well has dried up and gone away. Even some zoanthids have receded or vanished. Mushrooms seem to be holding their own, as are Euphyllias - but they're hardly going gangbusters.
The only coelenterates that seem to be thriving are Aiptasia, Mojanos and one colony of zoas - oh, and a colony of Pavona that's encrusted a decent amount of real estate. Wish it would send up some of its fans, though . . .
Also doing better than I'd like: turf algae and cyanobacteria. (In the case of the cyano, _way_ better than I'd like!)
None of which was helped by having to replace my primary vehicle . . .
Plans for recovery include cleaning the skimmer & tuning it a little wetter (done) and stepping up the rate of change for filter socks. Also, got my hair cut short, so I can't just grab a bunch and pull it out.
It's one of those seasons where I feel as though I just shouldn't be advising anyone on reefkeeping.
~Bruce
Last edited:
SkiCatTX
Sustainable Reefkeeping
Sorry about your losses. I recently lost a favorite fish I had for 5 years, no obvious cause found but perhaps old age. Still sucks.
Looks like you have some new guys to take care of though...
Looks like you have some new guys to take care of though...
OP
OP
Thank you, SkiCatTX and mmw64...
I did indeed add new fish. For the most part, they're doing well, although the copperband didn't eat, and didn't make it. (I think I saw her find one acceptable item among the rocks...) Surprisingly, the purple tang seems to get along well with the new yellow, but has yet to fully accept the powderblue. (I looked at the powderblue under morning's blue lights a few days in, and my heart leapt to my throat ... what are those _welts_ all over her?! - Turns out it's the purple tang . . . Not constant or savage, but periodic reminders of who rules the reef.)
The trio of flame angelfish spawn every night. I can only see the courtship, but the wrasses can see the eggs, and I can see the wrasses darting to snatch them, so I know that spawning is happening.
Disappointing - yes, but I intend to keep plugging. More coral troubles though ... At least three species of LPS (frogspawn, elegance, and trumpet) have had some polyps detach from their skeletons. In every case, these were corals which had been thriving for well over a year - and the trumpet is (half of the polyps remain) one of the first corals I ever purchased. The polyps seem to have settled between the rocks in quiet eddies, but I don't expect them to last very long.
Got a chance to blast away at the rock and sand today, blew off a bunch of cyano ... and immediately changed all three socks. Made a massive difference in the tank's appearance:
~Bruce
I did indeed add new fish. For the most part, they're doing well, although the copperband didn't eat, and didn't make it. (I think I saw her find one acceptable item among the rocks...) Surprisingly, the purple tang seems to get along well with the new yellow, but has yet to fully accept the powderblue. (I looked at the powderblue under morning's blue lights a few days in, and my heart leapt to my throat ... what are those _welts_ all over her?! - Turns out it's the purple tang . . . Not constant or savage, but periodic reminders of who rules the reef.)
The trio of flame angelfish spawn every night. I can only see the courtship, but the wrasses can see the eggs, and I can see the wrasses darting to snatch them, so I know that spawning is happening.
Disappointing - yes, but I intend to keep plugging. More coral troubles though ... At least three species of LPS (frogspawn, elegance, and trumpet) have had some polyps detach from their skeletons. In every case, these were corals which had been thriving for well over a year - and the trumpet is (half of the polyps remain) one of the first corals I ever purchased. The polyps seem to have settled between the rocks in quiet eddies, but I don't expect them to last very long.
Got a chance to blast away at the rock and sand today, blew off a bunch of cyano ... and immediately changed all three socks. Made a massive difference in the tank's appearance:
~Bruce
Last edited:
OP
OP
Okay, so ...
Update, over a year later.
The catastrophe among the corals seems to have stabilized, but the only corals remaining are the mushrooms. Discosoma, Ricordeas (florida and yuma), and Rhodactis are all surviving - and slowly multiplying - but all other corals have gone the way of the dodo. Even most of the zoanthids, though there is one remaining colony of nuclear green palys that are still hangin' in, though the colony is neither as large nor as vigorous as it once was.
There was also a slow-moving calamity among the fish, which cost me most of the anthias (two P. marcia remain, healthy and strong), some of the tangs, all wrasses except the blue-star leopard, and the foxface. Population has remained stable for at least six months though, so added some new fish recently. Picked them up at a LFS whose prices are well below most of the big online places, and they seem to be doing well so far. Had to add a divider (eggcrate) to the tank, as my established Indian Ocean squaretail tang is being amazingly aggressive toward the new kole tang - I thought that Ctenochaetus were supposed to be mellow, but I had far less trouble adding a yellow tang to the established purple!
On the agenda for this afternoon is to run some water quality tests - API master kit and Red Sea Foundation and Algae Control kits - and see whether I can bring parameters in line to resurrect this as a reef, rather than a glorified FOWLR. Seriously ... the only non-mushroom cnidarian that's doing well are majanos! (Of course, I had the ugliest possible, brown icky majanos, so, in desperation, actually purchased one of the green ones with the pink tips. _Something_ to put some color on the rocks!)
On the positive / interesting side, back in January of 2020 I did see something ... reddish, with white tentacles ... growing from the back of one of the rocks. Took me a while, watching it grow, to figure out what it was - a white-tentacled flame scallop. The location it had lucked into allowed it to bathe in finely chopped blends of frozen food at every feeding. A couple of months after I first noticed it, it detached and swam to a new location. Stayed there for a day or three . . . and vanished, never to be seen again. Maybe. Has me wondering if the flame scallops we see in the aquarium shops are nearing the end of their life cycle?
Here're a couple of videos of the scallop - one in its original location behind the rock, and the second being the grand reveal:
Anyway, for those of you still listening, and who like to watch pretty fishies, below are two and a half minutes on Kingston & Zoey's Reef:
~Bruce
Update, over a year later.
The catastrophe among the corals seems to have stabilized, but the only corals remaining are the mushrooms. Discosoma, Ricordeas (florida and yuma), and Rhodactis are all surviving - and slowly multiplying - but all other corals have gone the way of the dodo. Even most of the zoanthids, though there is one remaining colony of nuclear green palys that are still hangin' in, though the colony is neither as large nor as vigorous as it once was.
There was also a slow-moving calamity among the fish, which cost me most of the anthias (two P. marcia remain, healthy and strong), some of the tangs, all wrasses except the blue-star leopard, and the foxface. Population has remained stable for at least six months though, so added some new fish recently. Picked them up at a LFS whose prices are well below most of the big online places, and they seem to be doing well so far. Had to add a divider (eggcrate) to the tank, as my established Indian Ocean squaretail tang is being amazingly aggressive toward the new kole tang - I thought that Ctenochaetus were supposed to be mellow, but I had far less trouble adding a yellow tang to the established purple!
On the agenda for this afternoon is to run some water quality tests - API master kit and Red Sea Foundation and Algae Control kits - and see whether I can bring parameters in line to resurrect this as a reef, rather than a glorified FOWLR. Seriously ... the only non-mushroom cnidarian that's doing well are majanos! (Of course, I had the ugliest possible, brown icky majanos, so, in desperation, actually purchased one of the green ones with the pink tips. _Something_ to put some color on the rocks!)
On the positive / interesting side, back in January of 2020 I did see something ... reddish, with white tentacles ... growing from the back of one of the rocks. Took me a while, watching it grow, to figure out what it was - a white-tentacled flame scallop. The location it had lucked into allowed it to bathe in finely chopped blends of frozen food at every feeding. A couple of months after I first noticed it, it detached and swam to a new location. Stayed there for a day or three . . . and vanished, never to be seen again. Maybe. Has me wondering if the flame scallops we see in the aquarium shops are nearing the end of their life cycle?
Here're a couple of videos of the scallop - one in its original location behind the rock, and the second being the grand reveal:
Anyway, for those of you still listening, and who like to watch pretty fishies, below are two and a half minutes on Kingston & Zoey's Reef:
~Bruce
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Glad to hear from you bro!
OP
OP
Thank you, Rev!
The tang situation resolved itself after a day or so on opposite sides of the divider, Red Sea numbers are as follows:
Magnesium: 1600
Alk: 3.0/8.4
Calcium: 450
Phosphate: 1.36
Nitrates: Off the charts, using the "high-range" test.
I think I might have a nutrient problem . . .
~Bruce
The tang situation resolved itself after a day or so on opposite sides of the divider, Red Sea numbers are as follows:
Magnesium: 1600
Alk: 3.0/8.4
Calcium: 450
Phosphate: 1.36
Nitrates: Off the charts, using the "high-range" test.
I think I might have a nutrient problem . . .
~Bruce
jsker
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The tank is coming back nicely Bruce. I have had just about the same battle as you have been having. Not to worry, my nutrient have not settled back in either
Hope you are doing well.
OP
OP
Thanks, Jsker!
I'm hangin' in ... hope you're doing well too!
~B.
I'm hangin' in ... hope you're doing well too!
~B.
jsker
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Yes I am Bruce. Thank you for asking.
Bleigh
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Awesome tank! I know that you are use to seeing it a certain way, but someone as new as me, what you have is still really impressive and something to aspire too! Hope to get to see what you do with it!
OP
OP
Thank you, Bleigh!
I've acquired a few corals - duncan, zoas, mushrooms - and I'm working on the water ... nitrates are still off the charts, and the tank is drinking more vodka than I do. (I mean, okay ... I'm more of a Captain Morgan guy, but . . . ) Other than a favia, they don't seem to be _dying_.
Skimmer's skimming, socks are filling up with ... stuff, flow is flowing and lights are beaming photons. We'll see how she goes, shall we?
~Bruce
I've acquired a few corals - duncan, zoas, mushrooms - and I'm working on the water ... nitrates are still off the charts, and the tank is drinking more vodka than I do. (I mean, okay ... I'm more of a Captain Morgan guy, but . . . ) Other than a favia, they don't seem to be _dying_.
Skimmer's skimming, socks are filling up with ... stuff, flow is flowing and lights are beaming photons. We'll see how she goes, shall we?
~Bruce
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Glad to see you back, bro!!
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