New Nano Reef Diary, the sequel

I'm here too.
Too bad about the lawnmower and hubby. I'd highly recommend the blenny. Not much in color, but very amusing, hopping from rock to rock and an algae vacuum too. He changes color depending on what he's on. On the substrate he turns whitish, on the rock he's dark purply. He's people friendly too, I can put my hand right next to him and he doesn't seem the least bit bothered. (In fact all my fish are no longer afraid of my hand, I suppose I should not put it in there so often lol.)
His topfin is reddish from eating the good coralline, but its ok. He can't eat all. His lips are always green and grass stained so I know he's eating.

I'm thnking perhaps one nemo. I like the clarkii and read that it may host in either the frogspawn or toadstool that I already have. I'm just waiting for them to size up. The toadstool is growing really fast so it won't be long.

I've got anthelia attatched to a shell for you if you want an early Christmas present let me know lol, I thnk it ships well and is really sturdy. I attatched a piece to the back wall and its putting out tiny babies.
 
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:D Nice to see you guys are still interested after all these posts!

SF, I think we ought to work out some kind of trade - I'm going shopping later this week, I'll see what I can find. The place I plan to go to has mainly small frags, so you might have to wait for something to grow in, but I'd be happy to swap :)

Update...
Last night I needed to move one thing in the tank, and realized too late it was holding another rock in place. That rock came loose, and when I moved it to re-adjust, it moved! All of a sudden nothing was where it should be, and I found myself re-scaping the tank to get everything stable again. The nice thing is I managed to get a C shape, the unfortunate thing is that once everything was stable I stepped back and saw that it was nearly perfectly symmetrical! Not really visually appealing. Hopefully if I grab one more interesting piece of LR and place it off centre near the top it will look better.

I've taken out the purple mushrooms, they're in the 2g ATM - they drove me so crazy I couldn't take it any more. The rock they're on is such an awkward shape (hard to place, never quite stable) and it's the only spot in the tank that grows hair algae - no one in my cleaning crew will touch it (even snails placed on the rock leave quickly), and I've been scrubbing it with a toothbrush, which gets old pretty quickly. I owe the LFS where I work some Xenia for the LR so hopefully they'll take the shrooms along with it. I tried removing one mushroom so I could keep it, it's in a glass in the 2g with some cc beneath - if it attaches, it will be easy to place in the 30g. I hope it does, I'd like to keep at least one since they're quite pretty; it's the rock I can't stand, not the mushrooms.

The LPS continues to improve in baby steps, seems to grow just a little each day but has NO colour yet. I'm doing my best to feed it; I notice the mouths opening up frequently now during the day, I hope it's catching little microscopic goodies.

The four baby zoanthids that hitchhiked in are growing, they're still not much larger than pinheads so it's hard to tell what colour they'll be. Looks like maybe grey or greenish surrounded by red or brown. The red/brown palythoa is also growing, now about 1/3" across and opening fully. A random orange-mouthed zoa popped up in the middle of my group of greens w/ red skirts, very odd!

I'll post more pics later this week, hopefully I'll have something new and exciting to look at by then :)
 
Did a little tweaking today... I removed the thick, black hinge from my glass top. It's just thin plastic, didn't seem to lend any strength to the top or anything, and it was blocking the LED moonlight. I have to remove the cover to work in the tank, so it doesn't really inconvenience me to not have the two pieces hinged together. Tonight, I watched the tank by moonlight! :D

I saw one odd thing - the porcelain crab was out in the open, on the sand, rapidly sifting particles. Since the upgrade there has been a little diatom bloom as things resettle, and I assumed it was the turbos cleaning the bits on the sand overnight. Wrong! The porcelain was right on top of the small patch I noticed earlier, and the sand is getting cleaner by the minute. My only worry is that he's doing this because he's REALLY hungry, I've run out of phyto and rotifers and any time I try to spot feed him with something larger the goby steals it. Now I know he's not just a pretty face, he's resourceful too!

Something else fun, today I watched my cleaner shrimp at work for the first time. He marched straight up to the o-s goby and started cleaning. At first the fish moved away, then seemed to think about it for a second and returned for more. It's amazing to me how all these animals work together.
 
More pics :)

I didn't visit the marine-only LFS for corals today, I decided to stop into work and grab a piece of LR instead. I came home with a fish too - a baby maroon clown. I know these guys can get large, and can be agressive; they'll take the fish back if s/he poses a problem later on. I've been talking to this fish (yep, I talk to the fish ;)) at work for two weeks, he (I'm assuming at this size and as calm as he is, he's not a fm yet) looks healthy, happy and is eating really well. I couldn't leave without him.
After a 30 min. drip (during which he played around in the bucket and looked completely content) I introduced him to the tank. The wrasse and clown goby came over to have a look, and the skunk cleaner tried to clean him - too much attention for the little guy, and he took off into the rocks. A few seconds later he re-emerged and spent some time exploring. His colour looks good, and he seems like a happy little guy so far :D

Without further ado, here are some pics - a FTS and a closer one of just the rockwork/fish. Enjoy :)

FTSOct20.jpg


c_uOct20.jpg
 
I'll take that as a compliment :D
Honestly, in 15 years of keeping fish I've never had so much fun with a tank - it's worth the cash for the joy we get out of it.

Today I picked up a couple of books: 'Natural Reef Aquariums' by John Tullock, and 'Aquarium Corals' by Eric Borneman. I see this coral book recommended on RC all the time and now I know why, it's amazing! I'm about thirty pages in and have already learned more about coral from one book than I have from months of surfing.

The sickly LPS is hanging on, such a trooper! Tonight I'm sure I polluted the tank a bit, but I had to ensure that it got a decent meal. I'm planning to do a water change tomorrow or Sunday, so hopefully a bit extra tonight won't hurt.
I mixed up a concoction of mini 'Marine-Gro' pellets (our little hitchhiker coral seems to REALLY like this food), Cyclop-eeze, Zooplex, a few drops of MicroVert and some mysis. I used the pipette to squeeze a little of this mixture onto both the candycane, which went NUTS for the chunks of mysis, and the hitchhiker. The little polyps opened their mouths, and at least three took food that I saw. They look connected to me, which hopefully means they're sharing nutrition.

Last night I spotted what I'm sure was a tiny swimming snail (there is such a thing) flapping around in the tank, it was hilarious to watch! I can't believe all the creepy crawlies I've seen by flashlight!

The two gallon frag tank is crawling with pods - if I can get enough going, I'll start transferring them to the AC fuge and the large tank. I used water from the 30g to start this tank, so I guess there's more than enough food in the water to support a pod population; the wrasse and goby must be eating them all.

One more super-duper fun thing - I noticed this morning that one candycane polyp has two mouths; it must be growing, maybe getting ready to split! It's the first LPS I've tried, so I'm really happy it seems to be doing well.
 
skimmer8pc.jpg



Here's the skimmer this morning after cleaning out yesterday and water change. I guess I can add some more stock now too. :)

Nice clown there Blinky. I discovered something too. My wrasse is in fact a male, Halichoeres Argus, not halichoeres melanrus which I had thought before.
Inhabits shallow reefs and lagoons, Indo-Pacific. (eats crustaceon i.e: crab!)
So Melanie needs a new name lol. :) Yes, saltwater is a different world.
 
LOL SF I tried to rename Gwynnie, it never took. I know he's a male, but he's just so darn pretty! I'd just call Melanie 'Mel'. I still call mine Gwynnie, I'm glad he doesn't know the difference ;)

Freddie - thanks :) it's a leather coral. It turns the most brilliant emerald green when it shrinks up at night, but by day it's plain old boring pinky-brown *sigh*

I found a baby stomatella in the tank tonight, maybe it'll breed with the one I found ages ago - I'd love a tankfull, these guys are little workhorses!

Levels tonight are not great, but I did just add a 3lb piece of LR and have been overfeeding to ensure the little coral is getting enough to eat - NO3 5ppm, PO4 0, Ca 540ppm, 6.2dKH (110ppm), NO2 is detectable but below 0.1ppm. I'm dripping in some buffer as I type, I can't believe how high the Ca is; things are out of whack for sure. Glad it's water change day tomorrow, hopefully a 15% water change will help to re-balance things. Everything looks fine, except for the candycane - it's a bit po'ed that the clown goby has decided it makes a lovely chair. I've noticed he likes to sit on it and also nips at it occasionally - I'm going to have to keep my eye on the little guy.
 
Its funny your kh is so low, what's up with that? Mine is 11. ca. 420.
I think I have the start of a phosphate problem though, some green algae today.
I've been overfeeding due to now having the new skimmer...ut-O!

http://www.kademani.com/reefchem.htm


This is a good link to help balance things out.
 
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