my reef GARden frenzY: July 2016

This month was a busy month for me because of the Singapore Garden Festival 2016, so there wasn't much to update in terms of new purchases. But I did manage to get some photos from the web on some designs of aquariums as partitions across the rooms as an inspiration for my future full height aquarium in 2018 or 2019. However, I may have to reduce the length to just 2 feet.

a full height aquarium

Aquarium 1 (1 ft cube - 27 litres)
I introduced 2 small Flame Angels to this aquarium but they both ended up dead. I guess they are not suitable for a tank of this pico size given that they feed a lot.

The livestock are:

Fishes

3 common Clown Fishes

Invertebrates

Turbo Snails
Cleaner Skunk Shrimp
Camel Shrimp

Corals

Supersun Coral
Fox Coral

Soft Corals

2 pink Rose Bud Tip Anemones
cyan Tree Coral
pulsing Xenia

Polyps

green Palythoa
Zoas
green Star Polyps

Macroalgae

green Algae
Chaetomorpha algae

The technical information is as follows:

Atman HF-0600 HOB Filter

Maxspect Razor Nano 60W (10,000K)

Tunze Nano Osmolator

AOL 60 litres chiller

none of the Clownfishes touched the anemones!

Aquarium 3 (3 x 1.5 x 1.5 feet and sump - 250 litres)
A number of the sps have really coloured up more vibrantly and I am seeing a lot of green in some of the sps that I bought previously. Even some colonies that browned out previously coloured up under the AI and Sanrise lights. A purple Acropora is also developing a green base, which I never thought it had.

Sadly, I have 4 large colonies of sps - 3 Milleporas and 1 Acropora, showing stn and I have already lost 2 of them despite making multiple frags of them. 1 is left with a small remaining frag and the most recent one is a blue/green Acropora which really coloured up so much. I just made lots of big frags of the latter today and hope that at least a frag of it would survive in here. Sometimes this hobby can be really frustrating and hurts the pocket a lot. Just when I thought I mastered something, another thing goes wrong just to prove that I am a total idiot. I am not entirely sure if it was because I disturbed this aquarium too much recently removing lots of the basal sand and live rocks and adding 2 Aquaroche rocks as replacement.

My gsp was having chemical warfare with my Duncan coral and the latter lost the battle. There is at least a dead head with several shrunken ones beside the ever-spreading gsp, which I so loved. It is so ironic. I also stopped introducing any new Yellow Tang to this aquarium since the last few I added seemed to starve to death.

I bought the new Jebao Cross Flow CP-25 in early July and after using it for a few days, the red warning lights came on repeatedly. So I had no choice but to disconnect it and sent it for replacement at AquaMarin. Ah Heng replaced it with a set that he is using in the store and I had no problems with it since. I was told mine was the first set sent for replacement. Sigh, why am I always so lucky with marine equipment?

The monthly updated list of livestock is as follows:

Fishes