I must say this month of September has been a fruitful one. Acquisition of corals, particularly LPS and SPS, were initially slow but picked up pace towards the end of the month.
Then something struck me when I read a post in the Singapore Reef Club. A member posted about how he got his bleached corals to recover over a period of about 6 months by putting them in the dark and feeding them regularly. What he said made sense to me. When a coral is bleached, there are hardly any zooxanthellae in its structure, hence exposing it to light would only cause it to expel its remaining zooxanthellae. Without the zooxanthellae, the corals cannot photosynthesize and needs to rely on an external source of nutrition, that is feeding.
Hence, I changed my lighting regime and tuned down the white light and focused more on the blue spectrum. I removed the ATI Sun Module 4 x 39W T5 lights because I suspected that it caused further bleaching of some of my corals recently, including a Birdnest, a digitata SPS etc. Let's see how the corals react to the change although one of my Acans regained back some of its red colour. Without a chiller, my conclusion is I need the fan to bring down the water temperature slightly to reduce the incidence of bleaching.
Aquarium 1 (1 ft cube - 27 litres)
This aquarium still looks dirty and I haven't quite stocked anything here. I just added a small Yellow Tang to help combat the algae issue. My attention is still very much on Aquarium 3.
The list of livestock is as follows:
- Fishes
- Flameback Angel
- Yellow Shrimp Goby
- 2 true Percula ocellaris clowns
- Hector Goby
- Yellow Tang
- Invertebrates
- 3 Turbo Snails
- Nassarius Snail
- Corals
- LPS
- Acan
- mega Blasto
- bleached Hammer Coral
- Soft Corals
- Rose Bud Tip Anemone and Bud Tip Anemone
- Polyps
- unknown green coral
- Green Star Polyps
- Glove Polyps
- Mushrooms
- a few blue Actinodiscus mushrooms
- a few green Rhodactis 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
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| a mega Blasto |
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| a recovering Acan |
Aquarium 3 (3 x 1.5 x 1.5 feet and sump - 250 litres)
This aquarium saw some exciting times because of the amount of SPS I introduced and the amount of re-positioning of the SPS frags. I threw some bleached SPS e.g. Birdnest, orange digitata sps, into the sump tank to see if they can recover. In conclusion, it is immensely rewarding to see the SPS growing gradually.
The updated list of livestock is:
- Fishes
- false Percula Clown Fish
- 2 black Clowns
- Purple Tang
- Blue-yellow Damsel
- Six Line Wrasse
- Yellow Tang
- Flame Angel
- Hector Goby
- Invertebrates
- Turbo, Nassarius and Bumble Bee snails
- electric blue Hermit Crab
- 2 red Linckia starfishes
- big grey Feather Duster worm
- Tuxedo Urchin
- 4 small Hermit Crabs
- Cleaner Skunk Shrimp
- Fire Shrimp
- Clam
- Corals
- SPS
- Monti cap
- Stylophora (with stn)
- Horn Coral
- 2 frags of green digitata
- frag of pink Pocci
- frag of Birdnest
- frag of pink Birdnest
- frag of red Monti cap
- frag of deep sea Acro
- frag of purple digitata
- 2 frags of radioactive Birdnests
- grey Monti cap with purple polyps
- frag of salmon digitata
- 2 frags of Optic Fibre Pocci
- frag of unknown Birdnest
- green monti cap
- frag of red digitata
- dark maroon sps
- Millepora
- frag of green Monti with orange polyps
- frag of unknown green stag
- LPS
- 2 Acans
- 2 Hammer Corals
- 2 Bubble Corals
- Sun Coral
- Supersun Coral
- Torch Coral
- red Brain Coral (bleached)
- red green Favites Brain Coral
- 4 Blastos
- Mushrooms
- orange Ricordea yuma mushrooms
- rock of blue Actinodiscus mushrooms
- brown hairy mushrooms
- Soft Corals
- 2 Chili Corals
- red Flower Rock Anemone (bleached)
- 2 pink Rose Bud Tip Anemones
- green tipped Leather Coral
- Elegance Coral
- Polyps
- mixture of Zoas and purple Zoas
- yellow Parazoanthus
- pink Goniopora
- green Palythoa
- Glove Polyps
- 2 green Star Polyps
- Macroalgae
- Caulerpa
- Chaetomorpha
- red Bamboo
The technical details are:
- Jebao Marine Aqua DC-6000 return pump
- Maxspect R420R 16,000k 120W
- Reef Octopus BH1000 skimmer
- 2 Two Little Fishes Phosban Reactor running Phosban
- Dymax cooling fan (42 CFM)
- Fluval 3 external filter
- MP25 and RW-8 wavemaker
- Tunze Nano Osmolator
- Marine Magic Triplet Dosing
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| black clown sleeping on Brain Coral |
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| right side after rescaping |
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| new orange Blasto |
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| red green Blasto |
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| red Acan with Fire Shrimp |
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| red purple Blasto |
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| bleached red Acan |
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| green Monti cap with orange polyps |
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| there was some slight stn at the base so I snipped it off and relocated it |
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| I relocated this deep sea Acro too |
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| new green Acro frag |
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| I suspected this Birdnest fella bleached so I moved it lower |
