New nano reef diary

The skimmer isn't really doing much, I'm hoping with time and patience it will start doing its job. Right now, the flow regulator is turned 3/4 of the way down - if I turn it up, the cup fills with beige water in <1h (that'd be fun to come home to after an 8hr shift, good thing I've got a week's vacation time to adjust it!). The problem is that turned down like this, nothing's being skimmed off at all, as no bubbles are reaching the top of the neck. Better that than a flood I guess...

Got a flashlight with a red lens, so I could search for pods. Tonight, I went into the room at 9:00pm, just as the lights went off. I watched my wrasse find a hole in the rocks, lie down on her side and go to sleep. An hour later, I looked in with the red light - her gills aren't moving, she looks dead! I knew wrasses curled up in the rocks to sleep, but it sure is strange to see her like that.

Had a sudden algae bloom, seems like each part of the tank has something different growing on it: dusty green/brown on the glass, diatoms on the sand and rocks, and some wavy green algae on parts of the rocks. The wrasse was picking away at it, not sure if she's after the algae or pods living in/on it.

Today's test results:
NH3/NO2/NO3 0
PO4 <0.25, not quite 0
pH 8.2
Ca 480ppm
SG 1.024 (now it's where I'd like to keep it)
KH 7.6
 
Tank looks great blinky! I was wondering how often do you top off the evaporative loss in the tank? Once a day or several times a day? I was just wondering wondering because my 20 nano looses anywhere from a quart to a half gallon a day. SG swings about from 1.024 to almost 1.025 and I'm topping off once a day.
 
Lots to say tonight!

Wildshot83, I don't seem to lose that much water; until I got the skimmer the tank was really tightly covered. Now the cover doesn't fit as well (need to get a new piece of plastic and cut to fit) and there's more evaporation, but still not much - around 1-2c per day (hard to tell; when the skimmer acts up it removes a lot of water, so I'm adding more sea water [/I]and[/I] making up for evap, keeping the SG steady is challenging). I top off once daily, s l o w l y pouring distilled water into an area of high current. I'm starting to understand why people hook up auto-topoff doohickeys...

I visited a marine-only LFS today with the intention of buying one or two snails. That's it. Thought I'd look around a little... started talking to the guy working there (holy cow, the amount of knowledge he had blew my mind), and an hour later my poor husband was bored and wilting in the heat, and I was on my way home with two gorgeous frags, a bag of phytoplankton, a bag of rotifers (to feed the phytoplankton - microscopic food for the microscopic food, how bizarre) and yes, two snails - Trophus, which will hopefully eat some of the algae.

Last night there was an explosion of life in the tank - I thought they were pods, free-swimming little creatures shaped like exclamation points with divided tails that curled and straightened like inchworms to prople themselves. Dave (mogurnda), who knows leagues more than I do, said they might have been shrimp larvae - the shrimp would have to be hitchikers though, as the only one I've got is the pistol. Whatever they were, they're gone and my wrasse is fat and happy! There are pods all over the glass as well, and I saw an... arthropod?...creeping around in the zoos. Since the wrasse had a nice meal and has pods, and the emerald moulted last night and wasn't interested in eating, I skipped feeding the tank today to avoid fouling the water.

I took a look at the emerald's moult, looks like we've got a boy. I thought he must be a girl because his arms are small in comparison to some pictures of males I've seen, but then again he's still just a little guy, and I could be wrong in my ID.

When I got my frags home, I realized I'd forgotten to buy epoxy, so I tried to place the frags in places where they would stay secure until tomorrow, when I can get to Big Al's and grab some (along with the plastic for the back of my glass top). I'm spending my entire week's vacation running from one LFS to another, how fun! :D

I added a quarter cup of both phytoplankton and rotifers to the tank tonight, I don't know how much is needed but I figure a little extra at the start can't hurt. I didn't know this stuff would feed my pods, I'm happy about that since the wrasse seems to love them so much.

The frags I got are zoanthids, purple bases with orange/green skirts and orange mouths, and - eek, don't shoot me, I didn't know - Alveopora. I couldn't remember its name, came home, did research, and found out that next to the dreaded 'flower pot', this is one of the lousiest choices I could have made. And to think, I nearly took a hammer instead, but opted for this instead. To his credit, the guy I talked with wouldn't let me take a Gonoporia home, saying if I liked it, this one (the Alveopora) was similar and much easier to care for. I hope I do right by the little guy, I'm sure going to try my best.
 
SF, so far everything's been really exciting, sounds like you're having a good time too :) Watch away, I'll keep you (and anyone else who has been following along) posted on all the exciting and not so exciting details you can handle ;)

I placed a foam block cut to size in the last chamber of the protein skimmer yesterday, hoping it would 'baffle' the bubbles, it doesn't seem to make much of a difference so far, but I wonder if once the sponge becomes coated in bacteria etc. it will help more? There are a lot of bubbles in the tank, besides being ugly I hope it doesn't upset the corals/fish.

The Alveopora has made an appearance this morning, and I noticed that about four or five spots show some type of damage - poor little guy must have gotten hurt somewhere along the way. It's also very light in colour (pale pink with green tips), and I'm not sure if this is a case of being 'bleached' or just different from some of the others in the store that were browner in colour. I actually chose this one because of the colour, and the guy who sold it to me indicated that it was a different colour from the others, not unhealthy - the store is very reputable, I certainly hope they would have told me if it was sick and given me a healthy one. I can't believe how much of a noob I am, there's SO much to learn about corals.

I've been reading lots on Gonos and Alveopora, seems I'm in for a heck of a challenge. I'll try spot feeding it, as well as adding the phytoplankton/rotifers to the tank, and I've placed it in an area 1/3 of the way from the bottom of the tank, under medium flow. It was under MH in a very shallow tank in the store, but most of what I read says they prefer lower light. Apparantly when it comes to current they need enough to keep them free of debris, but not so much that they're being pushed around a lot. It's waving about gently right now, and I assume if it was really unhappy with the conditions it wouldn't have ventured out this morning, so I'm going to leave it where it is for now.

[Edit]The bubbles coming out of the skimmer were turning into a snowstorm, I'd tried 50 micron floss, the media chamber both empty and full of carbon, the coarse sponge, all did pretty much nothing. In a last-ditch effort I thought I'd try plain old filter floss, wedged in above the sponge at the top of the last chamber. WOW, most of the bubbles are gone! Floss rules! :D [/edit]
 
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Tonight I got some more shells for the hermits, they went NUTS! Everyone came down from the rocks and tried on a new shell, it was hilarious watching them :)
The tank looks nice and clear, and I think the skimmer has started to do its job - bubbles are slowly reaching the top of the column and popping.
 
Blinky, I am really enjoying this journal. Keep up the good work. It has all been so very interesting. I especially enjoyed the description of your Wrasse's sleep habits (sleeps on her side...how cool) and the hermit crabs reaction to new shells (trying them on... what a hoot!). Time for new pics, I reckon. I also enjoy reading the technical issues and how you are addressing them. Thanks for sharing.

Karen
 
I've learned some amazing things from following other people's tank journeys, I'm glad this diary is useful to others as well as helping me organize myself :)

Last night I read so many horror stories about Caulerpa 'going sexual' (trying to reproduce sexually and releasing nasty toxic substances into the tank in the process) that I took mine out of the refugium. It was quite a pain, growing into a huge tangled mass that was hard to prune. I'm going to try and find another type of macro without the risks associated with Caulerpa, meanwhile having it out of there is allowing me to sleep at night without worrying. In the process of taking the algae out and cleaning out the refugium, I ended up replacing about 1g of water (~8% of the water volume).

When I picked up the corals I also got two Trochus snails (they were the reason I went to the store in the first place), and they're doing a great, if slow, job of algae removal. They really don't move around much, but holy cow once they've cleaned a spot it's CLEAN.

The Zoos seem happy, fully open during the day. One tiny (1" rock, about 6 little 1/4" brown polyps with fluorescent green mouths) frag fell off the rocks tonight, so I'll have to epoxy it to a safe place tomorrow. I'm a bit scared to use the epoxy - I know it's safe, the LFS said it's what they use for corals and it says on the packet it's been tested with fish, but it still makes me nervous.

The Alveopora was out today, but only about half extended. The spots that looked damaged yesterday are fine, which is good, but it just doesn't look very happy to me. I added phytoplankton and rotifers to the tank, and used a pipette (read: teeny turkey baster) to gently cover the corals in the phyto/rotifer liquid and there were also teeny bits of frozen food left from the wrasse's breakfast floating around. I left the PH on with the skimmer and HOB turned off for about an hour to give them a chance to eat if they wanted to (LFS advised this). Not sure how I'll accomplish this every day when I go back to work, but I'll figure it out.

The crabs seem jealous of each other - they keep trying to steal each other's shells, and if one 'tries on' another shell, he'd better like it; if not, chances are by the time he changes his mind his old shell will have a new occupant! Good thing they're funny, they don't seem to do much cleaning :D
 
Topped off the tank with distilled water tonight.
Test results:
(After topoff) salinity: 1.0245
NO3 <5 (looks like nearly zero, need a more sensitive test kit)
PO4 0

Other than a crazy algae bloom the tank looks great - all the inhabitants seem happy other than the Alveopora, which is still not fully extended (but doesn't look worse). I figure if it's going to make it, it will probably take time to acclimate. Meanwhile, I'll keep the water quality as high as possible, continue to add rotifers and phytoplankton and cross my fingers.

I bought a new plastic runner for the back of the glass top, and cut it so it fits fairly neatly around all the equipment. I'm hoping this will cut down on evaporation, as well as preventing the fish/critters from jumping out if they're ever startled.

I keep meaning to take another picture, then by the time I get around to it the lights are off for the evening. I'll try to take one tomorrow after work. The aquascaping is different (had to rearrange rockwork to accomodate the skimmer) and I haven't posted a pic since adding the corals - finally everyone will have something to look at other than rocks ;).
 
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