my reef GARden frenzY: July 2014

It is quite an exciting month, considering I am starting to rebuild the corals colony gradually with LPS and SPS and started trying out some firsts, such as the Trachyphyllia Brain Coral, Favites Brain Coral, some Birdnest, purple digitata etc.

Here are the livestock and technical updates and photos:

Aquarium 1 (1 ft cube - 27 litres)
After a few rounds of clearing the basal sand, the layer is barely 1 cm thick now. I won't go for a a bare bottom aquarium because I don't think the fishes such as gobies like a bare reflective base. However, I do notice the basal sand do get dirty easily.

I recently bought a number of Angel Fishes out of impulse and tried to introduce a 1" Potter Angel into this aquarium. However, the slightly smaller Flameback Angel was fiercely territorial and would have none of it. It immediately went in pursuit of the Potter Angel and I had no choice but to net the latter out and put it into the main display aquarium 3.

It is still very, very bare and I am considering to let the marine macroalgae grow out and cover the base instead.

The list of livestock is as follows:

Fishes

Flameback Angel
Yellow Shrimp Goby
2 true Percula ocellaris clowns
Hector Goby

Invertebrates

2 Cleaner Skunk Shrimps
big red Hermit Crab & 3 small red Hermit Crabs
3 Turbo Snails
Nassarius Snail
medium Clam

Corals

4 bleached Acans
mega Blasto

Soft Corals

Rose Bud Tip Anemone

Polyps

unknown green coral
Green Star Polyps

Mushrooms

a few blue Actinodiscus mushrooms
a few green Rhodactis mushrooms
bleached Elephant Ear mushrooms

Macroalgae

green Caulerpa
red algae
purple algae

The technical information is as follows:

Dolphin H-200 hang-on-back filter

Shiruba XB-303 External Filter

Maxspect Razor Nano 60W (10,000 K)

Tunze Osmolator Nano

Aqua Cool Fan

the very uninspiring aquarium 1

the pair of 1" true Percula Clowns

Hector Goby

Flameback Angel

fishes and two shrimps

Aquarium 3 (3 x 1.5 x 1.5 feet and sump - 250 litres)
I think there is a slight progress in this aquarium from the previous month.

With the numerous LPS and angels additions, it is getting a bit more colourful although I must say I would have to give up some of the fishes e.g. Regal Angel, when they grow bigger. I feel suddenly intrigued by the angels colouration and started buying them even though I was really concerned about their compatibility with the reef aquarium and their territorial behaviour. So far, the smaller Regal Angel and Potter Angel are getting along just fine with the other fishes. Having said that, I don't think I want to take anymore chances to buy more angels because of my small 3 feet tank.

The most aggressive fishes in my aquarium right now has to be my normal False Percula Clown which has been with me since last year and the blue-yellow damsel. Recently the small False Percula clown that was raised together with the former was found dead on my floor and I suspect it was chased by this fish or other fishes and surfed out of the aquarium to escape their bullying. This remaining orange 2" clown and my two other black clowns have also been hosting on my once gorgeous Torch Coral which is now bleached, almost always retracted and never seemed to open up.

I tried re-introducing some SPS and so far, the two orange Montipora digitata frags appear to be doing well. The Monti cap looks fine and the big yellow Birdnest wasn't showing polyps extension and I am still watching the pink Millepora, Horn Coral and the Acropora valida, which was blue when I bought it but looks purple now because of inadequate lighting at the corner. I have 2 Stylophora which initially looked good but now seem to be bleached and losing its polyps extension. The ATI Power Module 4 x 39W T5 lights finally arrived and I put it up and dared not turn it on for more than a few hours straight for fear of raising the water temperature too high and inducing bleaching. I seriously wonder if the non-ideal temperature would have anything to do with polyps extension or is it purely due to the unstable water parameters. I had a green Millepora that exhibited rtn until its white skeleton was shown within a few days and I had it removed. I would rather have browned-out SPS than bleached or dead ones anytime. I was also excited with trying out 7 SPS frag plugs - purple digitata, green digitata, Birdnest, pink Birdnest, red Monti cap, pink Pocci and blue deep sea Acro. I bought some dosing stuff and was pleasantly surprised to find polyps extension after trying out Pohl's Xtra, Korallen-Zucht Bio-Mate and Korallen-Zucht Bio-Mate although I am unsure which is the product that brought on this amazing polyps extension.

Separately, I am feeling somewhat disturbed by the population explosion of miniature fan worms all over the aquarium, including the sand. I don't know what eats them but I do think if I don't control them, it would overtake the aquarium someday.

The updated list of livestock is: