my reef GARden frenzY: October 2014

Time passes by so quickly and we are approaching the end of the year soon. I can't believe that I have almost been reefing for close to 2 years since I restarted in Jan 2013.

Interestingly, I have 2 marine aquariums in the office and 2 at home. It's addictive and each aquarium allows me to keep different lps stuff. The following cube aquarium in my office is a high nutrient aquarium because I do not run a skimmer or do not have any very effective filtration. So I get frequent algal blooms like what is seen below. However, this allows me to keep the Anthelia (Waving Hands) which is spreading like a carpet now across the sandy bottom. I am also trying to grow the Caulerpa macroalgae here.

Anyway, the poor blue-yellow damsel which was originally from this aquarium was bullied by the blue devil damsel in the other office aquarium after I tried to introduce it into the aquarium and had its tail bitten off. It is recovering from the attack and is still lacking a tail but otherwise it is fine. Fishes can really be vicious, I must say.

this carpet is really beautiful!

the golden maroon clown and damsel

the leather coral at the right corner is also growing very big

it's a dumping ground for my bleached lps too

the green algae and cyanobacteria is disconcerting

Aquarium 1 (1 ft cube - 27 litres)

I discovered the carcass of the dead Flameback Angel at the back of the aquarium on one of the mornings when I found it missing. It has been with me for months now and I don't even know why it died suddenly.

Anyway, I just added a Royal Gramma a few days ago but somehow it has not reappeared and I am afraid it might be gone too. What a shame!

The list of livestock is as follows:

Fishes

Yellow Shrimp Goby
2 true Percula ocellaris clowns
Hector Goby
Royal Gramma

Invertebrates

3 Turbo Snails
Nassarius Snail

Corals

bleached Monti Cap

2 Acans
mega Blasto
Bubble Coral
Torch Coral

Soft Corals

Rose Bud Tip Anemone and Bud Tip Anemone
bleached green tipped Leather Coral

Polyps

unknown green coral
Anthelia frag
pink Goniopora
Zoas

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

somehow this Monti cap seems to regain some colour

this Zoas from aquarium 3 wasn't growing well so I transferred it here

even some of the Acans are plumper here

this Acan has also regained some flesh

I tried to seed the same Anthelia here but it's not taking off

the Hector Goby is getting plump too

hopefully the Zoas will spread quickly

this mega Blasto is also doing well here

the stinging tentacles are always out

the patches on the Monti cap are taking on a yellow colour

Aquarium 3 (3 x 1.5 x 1.5 feet and sump - 250 litres)
I did a rescape with 4 new pieces of live rocks from SeaLife this month and a number of frags were added gradually. Somehow I find the bigger colonies that I buy from GO has a higher incidence of stn when compared to the smaller frags. I have lost a purple and a green SPS to stn and rtn. I am not sure if it's because I moved them multiple times over a couple of days due to the rescaping.

By the way, I like the look of the raised bridges towards the back that gave me lots of room to add the SPS frags. There is still some room for some SPS but once it is filled, I would probably have to be contented with watching them grow over the upcoming months.

I have a tube worm problem which I mentioned previously and I added a Copperband Butterfly to help control the population but somehow I don't see it feed on the tube worms or pellet food although I am not complaining about its beauty. It is the biggest fish in this aquarium now.

The updated list of livestock is:

Fishes