New nano reef diary

The trochus are sooooo slllllllowwwww. It takes them a half hour to move 6 inches lol. Look like little chinese folk in pointy hats lol. They are hang together on a piece of rock this morning and were all over last night.
Interesting about the acro, the one I have is staghorn which is easiest to grow. We'll see.
There is a meeting of MASO Marine Aq. Society of Ottawa next week and I've been invitied. Soooo, I might head out therenext Sunday and meet other geeks lol. Someone has offered to take my coral banded shrimp too. So maybe I'll get another frag or 2 as well. Cool. :)
 
You're not keeping the CBS? Did she start munching things she wasn't supposed to?
My Trochus was incredibly slow when I got her... now she's a speed freak! I'm guessing in a month you'll be amazed at how fast they go - seems they take a while to warm up, but once they get going, zoom zoom!

Update, of sorts... I spoke to the customer who bought Hercules, my pink mithrax (EC) from way back. He's in a big FOWLR tank where he can't do any damage, and hasn't bothered anyone. I'm so glad to hear he's happy and doing well :)

I spot fed my porcelain crab and pistol shrimp tonight, and tried to give a crab pellet to my little EC - looks like she's a keeper! She ignored the pellet and kept on clawing her way through little bits of algae on the rocks! Could just be she's getting ready to moult and has lost her appetite, but then again, maybe she's vegan ;)

Everything looks happy and healthy, but I'm really itching for a bigger tank. I need to win the lottary! :D
 
I'm crazy. I sat here this morning and thought, now if I throw out that old sofa, I can put a 90g there, and move everything from my 25g into that, and use the 25b for a sump. Oh noooooooo. :)

Naw, I want some experience with the 25 and fill it with corals and when there's no room I'll consider and upgrade. At this rate it will be many bucks from now.

My cbs is doing fie, not really a problem at all, I wasn't sure about her so I offered her up in classified and got a couple responses from interested parties, but what a chore it will be to catch her...

I calculated my watt per sq. foot and came up with 76.8, so I decided to try an acorapora, here is the suggestion from an article (address at bottom) I agree with it but not the anenome, I wouldn't try it.


A very rough guideline:

watts per square foot:
100+ High light SPS tank
50 Mixed reef including an anemone or some not-so-colorful SPS at the top of the tank.
30 Low light stony corals, most leathers.
10 Low light leathers and mushrooms

http://www.c-sea.org/members/brad/articles/light/#colortemp
 
I'm very interested to see how they do, heck it's worth a try, right? Maybe MH isn't the be all and end all! With 60W per square foot it looks like I've got enough light for everything I want to keep. Looks like a more accurate method than the tired ol WPG 'rule'.

I'm sad to report that both the baby sarcs bit the dust. I have a feeling they were on the way out anyway, and the shock of going from two NO bulbs over a 50g tank to 80W of PC may have just done them in - it's still not loads of light, but probably enough to make them stress a bit, not to mention being moved.

Everything else is well. The clown goby is taking pellets now, and I'm feeding him with a pipette - every time I pass the tank now, he gets a pellet. I'll get him fat yet! He's still very thin, hopefully more frequent meals will do the trick and using the pipette he doesn't have to compete with the pig, I mean wrasse, taking all his goodies :)

Turns out Gwynneth the wrasse is actually a male (confirmed by the experts over at reefs.org), he's been christened Fabio as he's blonde and totally full of himself :) I'm still getting used to not calling him my 'pretty girl'. I did have the species right at least, he's definitely Cirrhilabrus lubbocki.

The Xenia is totally taking over, I can't believe how fast this stuff grows! Either this weekend or next I'll start taking pieces into work and trading them, and I may take in the big rock full of pink/purple/brown zoanthids too - they're taking over, and I'm not sure they're pretty enough to have a tankfull.
 
I lost my poor trochus this morning and although everything else is ok, it might be a Sign to go more slowly. I got a sickly bunch of green polyps that I thought I could nurse back to health in my 'better' tank. But, they may also be too far gone. Some tiny ones are ok, but the bigger polyps are closed like fists and only open partly at times. They look a bit bleached. I guess the shock of better conditions can kill too... I'm giving those polyps another week, and if they don't perk up, they're out. I figure the tank is too small to waste space on things that are so-so.
I'll pick up some pom pom xenia this Sunday at the Maso meeting and maybe some other softies. Frags are going cheap, so we'll see.
 
Hey that is looking fantastic, I hope my 12 gallon nano cube looks as good.
But in mine, I am hoping to get a Royal Gramma for it. It is by far one of my favorite fish. If i am lucky, I will also try the goby and pistol shrimp combo.
jim
 
SF, sorry you lost them. Snails are sometimes delicate, I doubt there's much you could have done. I have to agree with you that bringing sickly corals from lousy conditions into good may shock them to death - I just lost two tiny Sarcs that came from low lighting/high nutrients and weren't doing well; they seemed to try for a while, but then their stalks disintigrated :( good luck with the frag hunting!

TP, thanks :) I'd love to see pics when you've got the cube up and running!
 
Another update...
Yesterday I removed the insanely fast-growing pink/purple/brown zoas, took them to work and traded them for a gorgeous green finger leather... it's turned pinkish in my tank overnight, not sure why. It was sloughing off skin, I blew it off with a turkey baster this morning. No polyps have emerged yet, I hope it's okay.

Something is gorging on calcium, I have no idea what (snails? Corraline?) but it's depleting the Ca faster than I can replace it. I've set up a low-tech (okay, let's be honest here, it's really ghetto) kalk drip - each night I fill a 500ml bottle with kalkwasser (the solution is two tsp/gallon) and drip it into the tank via knotted airline, threaded through a hole in the lid, into the AC filter (area of high current). I've noticed that it seems to stop the skimmer from working.
Two nights of kalk, the KH is fine but still lowish, ~8dKH, but the Ca is still way too low at ~280-300ppm. Everything seems fine, but I can't seem to keep the numbers up! This afternoon I made up a solution of 1 tsp CaCl in 100ml distilled and dripped it in, I'll test the Ca again tomorrow.

I also gave up on the refugium - there was a little rubble that was FULL of detritus, and no matter how I try I can't seem to get any chaeto - someone tried to ship me some, it got lost. I keep asking hobbyists here, and figure I'll get lucky one of these days, but it's scarce up here! Because I've been having tiny NO2 spikes I figure there's not enough bio filtration for the heavy load, so I got an AC70 at work and set it up as a filter, rather than the modded one I've been using. If I have problems with NO3 I'll go back to the fuge - providing I can get my hands on some chaeto.
ATM I'm running carbon in the filter to ensure there are no nasty chemicals in the water from the zoas (some tore open when I moved their rock, they were attached to a neighboring rock and I didn't realize) or the new leather.

Numbers this afternoon:
NO2 0
NO3 0
PO4 0.25 (added some adsorbing resin to the filter)
pH 8.3
KH 8dKH
Ca 280-300ppm
SG 1.024

I've ordered AquaGloves and a refractometer, they should arrive tomorrow or Wednesday - can't wait to see how off my hydrometer is!

The skimmer isn't working - not sure if it's all the changes in water chemistry with the kalk/Ca additions (though adding distilled for topup or CaCl/buffer hasn't caused a problem before). I cleaned out the spray injector, made sure the PH isn't clogged, now I'm just going to hope it kicks in overnight - the tank is FULL of bubbles, it's not a pretty sight!

Here are some pics from tonight -

FTS:
Sep19s.jpg


The new leather:
new_leather.jpg
 
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Hey Blinky,

Just thought I'd say hi. The leather looks fine. They get pouty when disturbed, but are very hardy. Kind of scary how wretched they can look when they're mad, but unless you see tissue falling apart, it will be happy. Next thing you know, you'll be fragging that beast just to keep it under control :D

Last time I was having trouble with calcium, it turned out my magnesium was low. CaCO3 precipitates at lower concentrations when Mg is too low. Have you tested Mg lately?
 
Hey Dave! Thanks for the advice. As for testing Mg lately... nope... I need to get myself a Mg test kit! I had read about low Mg affecting Ca before and considered it; the salt I'm using seems a tad unbalanced - KH goes through the floor after water changes.

While you're in the advice giving state of mind... any idea why my Remora has stopped skimming? It seemed to stop when I started dripping Kalk and added the carbon. The levels are fabulous (N and P are all zeros today), the tank looks great (no more green film on the glass after 48h either), but I know there's still garbage in there for the skimmer to skim - there's always something, even in the cleanest tank (and mine is far from that!).

The leather is much larger (and pinker, argh) today, and the surface is bumpier, so hopefully soon it will open up :D
 
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