FIVE MONTHS

It has been a long one month and many things have changed in the tanks. I am still highly dissatisfied with the layout and scaping and am trying to be more selective in the addition of any new members into the tanks. I said trying because it is hard to resist the temptation of buying the corals when I go coral shopping and there is a fair share of regrets when it comes to new introductions.

Anyway, the updates on the 2 aquariums are as follows:

Tank 1 (1 ft cube - 27 litres)
In the last monthly post, I mentioned that I was irked by the thick protruding inlet tube of the Atman hang-on-filter. So I got it replaced with the Easy Aqua Ex500 External Filter.

The list of livestock etc is as follows:

• Fishes
• 1 Clown Fish (Candy)
• 1 Hector's Goby (Hector)
• 1 Six Line Wrasse (Wendy)
• 1 Blue Neon Goby (Bernard)
• Invertebrates
• 1 red and white Pistol Shrimp (Paul)
• 3 Pom Pom Crabs (Penelope, Phoebe and Phyllis - 1 of them was no where to be seen though and could possibly be dead)
• 4 Turbo Snails
• 2 Nassarius Snails
• 1 small Yellow Cucumber
• 1 Coco-worm (Coco)
• 2 small (yellow and red) Feather Duster Worms
• Corals
• LPS
• 1 red Acan Brain Coral
• 1 pink Sun Coral
• 1 Bubble Coral (Badly shrunk from tank 2)
• 1 brown Elegance Coral
• Mushrooms
• 2 plates of red Actinodiscus mushrooms (1 is bleaching)
• 1 plate of blue Actinodiscus mushrooms
• 1 plate of Ricordea mushrooms
• 2 orange Ricordea yuma mushrooms
• Soft Corals
• 1 Rose Tip Bubble Anemone
• 1 Chili Coral
• Polyps
• 1 piece of Green Star Polyps and 1 mat of GSP
• 2 frags of green Palm Tree Coral
• 1 frag of orange Palm Tree Coral
• 1 fluorescent Goniopora with pink eye (It has not opened for weeks now although it is not dead)
• 1 brown Goniopora (It expands so big all the time that Candy prefers to be hosted here than at the RBTA)
• 1 rock of brown Daisy (Clove) Polyp (It shrunk so much that only a few remaining polyps are seen)
• 1 green Palythoa
• 1 frag of green Zoanthus (cannot find 1 frag)
• Macroalgae
• 1 rock of red bamboo macroalgae
• 1 plate of red wavy macroalgae (Ulva) 
• 2 clumps of red branched macroalgae

The casualties are:

• 1 Red Spotted Goby (Ralph)
• 1 Cleaner Skunk Shrimp (Chris - I woke up one morning and saw a Nassarius snail eating the body of the shrimp. It was disgusting.)
• 1 Pom Pom Crab (I don't see it anymore)
• 3 big Feather Duster Worms
• 1 piece of GSP (Polyps were all withdrawn)

The technical information is as follows:

• 1 Ocean Free Hang-on-Back filter 2
• 1 Easy Aqua Ex500 External Filter
• 1 Green Element 3W LED light (4 white, 2 blue)
• 1 Tunze Osmolator Nano
• 1 Dymax Cooling Fan

Tank 2 (1.5 feet cube - 56 litres)

I am still battling some phosphate problems and transferred my Two Little Fishes Phosban Reactor home to run the NP biopellets and am also dosing the Brightwell Aquatics Reef BioFuel daily. It looks like I have to set up one more reactor to run phosphate removers.

The updated list of livestock etc is:

• Fishes
• 2 Clown Fish (Cindy and Cynthia)
• 1 Yellow Wrasse (Yogi)
• 1 Six Line Wrasse (Selena)
• 1 Hector's Goby (Henry)
• Invertebrates
• 1 Fire Shrimp (Felicia)
• 1 Cleaner Skunk Shrimp (Calisto)
• 7 Turbo snails
• 2 Nassarius snails
• 3 Bumble Bee snails
• 1 electric blue and 1 red Hermit Crabs
• 2 Coco-worms
• 1 big and 1 small (yellow) Feather Duster Worm
• 1 blue Clam
• Corals
• SPS
• 1 pink digitata sps
• 1 brown Millipora
• 3 frags of white sps
• LPS
• 
  
• 1 orange Sun Coral
• 1 rock of fluorescent green and blue Goniopora
• 1 rock of shrinking fluorescent Goniopora
• 1 cream Elegance Coral
• 1 pink Hammer Coral
• 1 green Frogspawn Coral
• 1 branched Candy Cane (bleached and transferred to office tank)
• Mushrooms
• 1 rock of orange Ricordea yuma mushrooms
• 2 green Ricordea mushrooms
• 1 branch of Rhodactis mushrooms
• 1 plate of purple Actinodiscus mushrooms
• Soft Corals
• 2 rocks of Xenia
• 1 rock of Finger Mushroom Coral
• 1 Leather Coral (from office tank)
• 1 pink Cauliflower Tree Coral
• 1 Chili Coral
• Polyps
• 1 rock of Clove Polyps
• 2 frags of orange Palm Tree Corals
• 1 brown Palythoa
• 1 rock, 2 plates and 6 plugs of Zoanthus
• 1 mat of Green Star Polyps
• 1 rock of Green Star Polyps (polyps disappeared and growing Halimeda macroalgae)
• 1 branched GSP (from tank 1)
• 1 Organ Pipe Coral
• Macroalgae
• 1 red Bamboo (transferred to office tank)
• 1 big and 1 small red Bubble macroalgae
• 1 red branched macroalgae
• Halimeda

The casualties are:

• 1 Tigertail Seahorse
• 2 Banded Pipefish
• 2 purple Clams
• 1 blue Millipora

The technical details are:

• Eheim 2213 external canister filter
• Tunze 9004 skimmer
• Green Element LED (12 white 12000k and 8 blue 460 nm) with 2 mini fans
• 1 Two Little Fishes Phosban Reactor running NP biopellets
• 1 Sunon fan
• 1 wavemaker

DAYS 134-136, 139, 142 AND 144

The monthly update is due tomorrow. Meanwhile, I am posting photos of the 2 aquariums taken over a course of eleven days. Once again, I shifted some of the stuff here and there.

By the way, I bought a few sps and unfortunately, one of them showed rapid tissue necrosis (rtn) which saw the external layer peeled off from the white calcareous skeleton beneath. I threw it away the next day.

The Chilli Coral was consistently sending out its white tentacles to feed and the contrast between the red body and white stars are just amazing.

In addition, my Bubble Coral in the other tank shrunk so much from the skeleton leaving behind only a small area with beautiful luminous green bubbles. I wish it can recover over time although I am not very hopeful about it.