Wednesday, October 30, 2013

TEN MONTHS

This is a month of little change. In fact, I shifted a lot of the corals around the two aquariums and moved some to my office tank. These days, capturing the photos is a problem for me because somehow my iphone and Nikon cameras are unable to record the true colours of the fishes and corals.

For tank 1, I still find that the assortment of Zoas provides a richer palette of colours. 

For tank 2, there was a significant reduction in corals. For October, there were only additions of 3 rocks of Yuma and Actinodiscus mushrooms and shifting of some of the rocks and Zoas. Unfortunately, this tank suffered a nudibranch attack, presumably from some corals that I last bought. Things are still not under control and sadly, the Zoas are not opening up optimally. Things are also not looking too good in this tank because I have problems maintaining the kH of the water. I am left with only a few pieces of SPS and the green and red digitatas have almost lost all its colours. I guessed it was due to bleaching under the 80-100% of the white intensity of the AquaBeauty LED lights but I have since reduced it to 10% daily but there is still no improvement. I suspected the phosphates were high since I started seeing the appearance of algae and had since replaced the phosphate removers. Ruling out the high light intensity and phosphates as the causes of the poor appearances of the SPS corals, I can only suspect the water quality as well as the delicate balance of kH, Mg and Ca as the principal causes.

Another astonishing thing for me was also the discovery of one big crab in each of the two tanks. The one in tank 1 has a rougher exoskeleton while the one in tank 2 looks like a solid black. They looked menacing to me and I wonder if they were accountable for the disappearance of some fishes.

As for the LED lights, whilst I did receive the Maxspect Razor 120W early this month, mounting it proved to be an issue. Hence, I replaced back the AquaBeauty.

All the information on the two tanks are listed below:

Tank 1 (1 ft cube - 27 litres)

The list of livestock is as follows: 

  • Fishes 
    • 3 Clown Fish
    • Flameback Angel
  • Invertebrates 
    • Cleaner Skunk Shrimp 
    • 3 Pom Pom Crabs 
    • big red Hermit Crab & 3 small red Hermit Crabs 
    • 2 Turbo Snails 
    • Nassarius Snail 
    • red Coco-worm 
    • big (brown) Feather Duster Worms 
  • Corals 
    • SPS
      • brown Monti Cap
      • grey Monti Cap
    • LPS 
      • grey red Acan
      • pink Acan
  • Mushrooms 
    • plate of blue Actinodiscus mushrooms 
    • orange Ricordea yuma mushroom 
  • Soft Corals 
    • Chili Coral
  • Polyps 
    • purple Goniopora
    • frag of green Palm Tree Coral 
    • rock of brown Daisy (Clove) Polyps 
    • green Palythoa
    • red Palythoa 
    • mixture of Zoas
  • Macroalgae 
    • clumps of green Caulerpa
    • purple algae
The technical information is as follows:
  • Easy Aqua Ex500 External Filter with wave deflector
  • PS 2012 protein skimmer
  • Maxspect Razor Nano 60W (10,000 K)
  • Tunze Osmolator Nano 
  • Dymax Vortex W-8 Cooling Fan (10.5 CFM) 

Tank 2 (1.5 feet cube - 56 litres)
The updated list of livestock is:
  • Fishes
    • Flame Angel
    • Hector Goby
    • Royal Gramma
  • Invertebrates
    • Fire Shrimp
    • Cleaner Skunk Shrimp
    • Turbo snails
    • Nassarius snails
    • 2 Bumble Bee snails
    • electric blue Hermit Crab
    • red and yellow Coco-worms
    • brown and grey Feather Duster Worms
    • blue Clam
  • Corals
    • SPS
      • green digitata
      • red digitata
      • Acropora secale
      • unknown white
      • green Horn Coral
    • LPS
      • orange green Acan
    • Mushrooms
      • 2 rocks and 5 orange Ricordea yuma mushrooms
      • 12 Ricordea florida mushrooms
      • 4 red Actinodiscus mushrooms
    • Soft Corals
      • rock of Finger Mushroom Coral
    • Polyps
      • Pink Clove Polyps
      • plate of green skirt orange center Zoas, plate of mixed green and green skirt orange center Zoas
      • plugs of Zoanthus (Incredible/KO 9, Fruit Loops 5, Eagle Eye 10, Sunflower >20, Red Eagle Eye 17, Nuclear Death 6, Purple Death 7, Rasta 14 and Sunflower 2) 
      • 2 mats of Green Star Polyps, frag of GSP
  • Macroalgae
    • Halimeda
    • Caulerpa
The technical details are:
  • Eheim 2213 external canister filter
  • Dolphin H-200 hang-on-back filter
  • Bubble Magus Q3 skimmer
  • AquaBeauty 70W LED lights
  • Two Little Fishes Phosban Reactors running Phosban
  • Dymax Windy W-7 cooling fan (42 CFM)
  • 2 Hydor Nano wavemakers
  • Tunze Nano Osmolator
  • Dosing container