18 MONTHS

FTS of aquarium 3

This is quite a sad month especially after I came back from a 5 day trip to Tasmania. All my SPS perished and I had to clear up the mess. There wasn't much restocking for these few weeks. Even the photos I took now look terrible. I guess I just isn't in the right mood to do anything much at the moment since I will be away again.

Strangely and sadly, my beautiful Flame Angel which had been so healthy looking suddenly disappeared completely about a week ago and I never saw it ever since. I presumed it to be dead amongst the rocks and decided not to overturn anything to find its carcass. I also lost a clam just like that for no apparent reason. It had been growing so well for so long and yesterday I noticed it shrunk into its shell. I had no choice but to clear it before it pollutes the water further.

For this month, I am posting it earlier than usual because I am going off tonight to New Zealand and would only be back around 5 Jul 14.

Here are the livestock and technical updates and photos:

Aquarium 1 (1 ft cube - 27 litres)
I removed another batch of basal sand which I discarded. It is also still looking pretty bare and I haven't added anything much. 

The list of livestock is as follows: 

• Fishes 
• Flameback Angel
• Yellow Shrimp Goby
• 2 true Ocellaris clowns
• Hector Goby
• Invertebrates 
• Cleaner Skunk Shrimp
• big red Hermit Crab & 3 small red Hermit Crabs 
• 3 Turbo Snails 
• Nassarius Snail 
• medium Clam
• Corals
• LPS
• green brain coral
• bleached Hammer coral
• neon Candy Cane
• Brain corak
• Soft Corals
• Zoas
• Rose Bud Tip Anemone
• Polyps
• unknown Anthelia
• Green Star 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 

I forgot to adjust the colours before taking the photo

a boring display that looks pretty bare

Hector and a shy Flameback

Aquarium 3 (3 x 1.5 x 1.5 feet and sump - 250 litres)
I was quite sad with the SPS loss and decided not to add any more for the time being but added some LPS instead. I also finally accepted that some SPS and corals became bleached because of the higher than normal water temperatures and am struggling with whether I should get a chiller. I also stopped all dosing because it seemed to bring on more harm than good when I didn't calibrate everything properly.

There are still quite a bit of diatoms on the sand but I will just let it be for the time being.

The updated list of livestock is:

• Fishes
• 2 black Clowns
• 2 false Clown Fish
• Yellow Tang
• Purple Tang
• Blue-yellow Damsel
• Royal Gramma
• Six Line Wrasse
• Yellow Wrasse
• Fathead Sunburst Anthias
• Yellow Shrimp Goby
• Hector Goby
• Golden Stripe Maroon Clown
• Invertebrates
• Turbo, Nassarius and Bumble Bee snails
• electric blue Hermit Crab
• small Clam
• red Linckia starfish
• small yellow, big brown and yellow-brown Feather Duster worms
• Cowry
• 2 black pistol shrimps
• black crab in sump refugium
• Tuxedo Urchin
• Corals
• LPS
• 6 Acans
• 2 Hammer Corals
• 2 Blasto (bleached)
• mega Blasto
• Sun Coral
• Supersun Coral
• Green Chalice (bleached)
• Brain Coral (bleached)
• Unknown
• Neon Candy Cane
• 2 Bubble Corals
• Mushrooms
• Ricordea yuma mushrooms
• rock of blue Actinodiscus mushrooms
• Soft Corals
• 2 Chili Corals
• green Carpet Anemone
• red Flower Rock Anemone (bleached)
• Polyps 
• 2 frags of pink-green Palm Tree (Clove) Coral
• mixture of Zoas
• 3 Green Star Polyps
• 1 green Goniopora
• Macroalgae
• Caulerpa
• Chaetomorpha
• red Bamboo

The technical details are:

• Jebao Marine Aqua DC-6000 return pump
• Maxspect R420R 16,000k 120W
• Tunze 9004 Nano Skimmer
• 2 Two Little Fishes Phosban Reactor running Phosban
• Dymax cooling fan (42 CFM)
• Fluval 3 external filter
• MP25 and Boyu wavemaker
• Tunze Nano Osmolator
• Marine Magic Triplet Dosing

green Yuma

unknown LPS

green mushrooms

two Bubble corals

Hammer

bleached Blasto

diatoms on sand bed

Fathead Sunburst Anthias

I have been neglecting these

these too!

my only clam now

red Acan

bleached red Flower Rock Anemone

17 MONTHS

enhanced photo of Aquarium 2

Looking at this photo of the former Aquarium 2, I must say I really miss this setup, especially the inhabitants that were with me for a long time and which perished in the transfer to the new aquarium.

I always found that the photos I took were not representative of what I saw because of the colour misrepresentation. But one thing I did recently was to turn up the lights to increase the illumination to capture better lit photos.

So, anyway the following are the livestock and technical updates and the photos:

Aquarium 1 (1 ft cube - 27 litres)
I have recently removed another batch of basal sand with a lot of accumulated debris from this aquarium. It is still a far cry to how it used to look like because my attention was mostly spent on Aquarium 3. My Acans also deteriorated for a while since the damages by the Yuma mushrooms and recently it was worse because the Hector Goby loved to spit sand onto the Acan, causing some death of the heads. Anyway, I moved them to Aquarium 1 for some recuperation.

The list of livestock is as follows: 

• Fishes 
• Flameback Angel
• Yellow Shrimp Goby
• 2 black Ocellaris clowns
• Hector Goby
• Invertebrates 
• Cleaner Skunk Shrimp
• big red Hermit Crab & 3 small red Hermit Crabs 
• 3 Turbo Snails 
• Nassarius Snail 
• small yellow Feather Duster Worm
• medium Clam
• Corals
• Soft Corals
• unknown Anthelia (with a lot of dieback recently)
• Zoas
• Xenia
• Rose Bud Tip Anemone
• Mushrooms 
• a few loose blue Actinodiscus mushrooms
• Macroalgae
• green Caulerpa
• red 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 

sand can be seen on the dead heads

close-up of the dead heads

none of the Acans was spared

pair of black Ocellaris Clowns

rose bud tip anemone I added for the clowns

Hector the Goby

Aquarium 3 (3 x 1.5 x 1.5 feet and sump - 250 litres)
There is still quite a bit of frustration that I felt with regards to this aquarium. A lot of the sps now started to show rapid tissue necrosis (rtn) or slow tissue necrosis (stn) and I lost a number of them already.

The updated list of livestock is:

• Fishes
• 2 Clown Fish
• Yellow Tang
• Purple Tang
• Blue-yellow Damsel
• Flame Angel
• Royal Gramma
• Six Line Wrasse
• Yellow Wrasse
• Fathead Sunburst Anthias
• Two Spot Goby
• Yellow Shrimp Goby
• Hi Fin Red Banded Goby
• 2 true Percula Clowns
• Invertebrates
• 2 Cleaner Skunk Shrimps
• Fire Shrimp
• Turbo, Nassarius and Bumble Bee snails
• electric blue Hermit Crab
• 1 big and 2 small Clams
• red Linckia starfish
• small yellow, big brown and yellow-brown Feather Duster worms
• Cowry
• 2 black pistol shrimps
• black crab in sump refugium
• Corals
• SPS
• 5 Acropora (bleached)
• 2 unknown branching sps
• 2 red digitata
• Green Millepora
• Red Millepora
• 3 Monti Caps
• LPS
• 7 Acans (nursing back the ones from Aquarium 1)
• Hammer Coral
• 2 Blasto
• mega Blasto
• Elegance Coral
• Sun Coral
• Supersun Coral
• Green Chalice
• red Plate
• Brain Coral
• Bubble Coral
• Mushrooms
• 7 Ricordea yuma mushrooms
• rock of blue Actinodiscus mushrooms
• Soft Corals
• 2 Chili Corals
• green Carpet Anemone
• red Flower Rock Anemone
• Polyps 
• frag of pink-green Palm Tree (Clove) Coral
• mixture of Zoas
• mixture of Palythoa
• 2 yellow Parazoanthus
• 3 Green Star Polyps
• 1 green and 1 purple Goniopora
• Macroalgae
• Caulerpa
• Chaetomorpha
• purple algae
• red Bamboo

The technical details are:

• Jebao Marine Aqua DC-6000 return pump
• Maxspect R420R 16,000k 120W
• Tunze 9004 Nano Skimmer
• 2 Two Little Fishes Phosban Reactor running Phosban
• Dymax cooling fan (42 CFM)
• Fluval 3 external filter
• MP25 and Boyu wavemaker
• Tunze Nano Osmolator
• Marine Magic Triplet Dosing

enhanced photo of right side of Aquarium before rescaping

it's hard to capture photos of the Two Spot Goby

left side of aquarium

panoramic view of fts

unknown red plate, green Blasto, branched sps and green Monti Cap

slightly bleached digitata spa and a brown Monti Cap

a new Bubble Anemone

another branching sps and red Millepora

a red Millepora with stn which I clipped off some parts

close-up of more stn

new rainbow brain

amazingly beautiful green Chalice

3 Acans and red green Blasto

pair of true Percula clowns, Sun Coral, Supersun Coral with Acans

16 MONTHS 27 DAYS

I know it is just a few more days before the end of the May but I thought I should just provide an early update first since there are a lot of photos taken weeks ago and I didn't want to clog up the month end update with too much things.

This month of May 2014 is both exhilarating yet full of tribulations. It is exhilarating because there are so many opportunities with a 3 feet aquarium when it comes to stocking of fishes, corals and so on but it is also a month when I lost some previously beautiful corals when I shifted them to the new tank and after I came back from a 4 days trip to Malaysia a few days ago.

I shall also start to refer to tanks 1 and 3 as aquariums 1 and 3 respectively instead because a tank somehow refers to an empty container whereas an aquarium does contain inhabitants such as plants and animals. So technically, an aquarium seems more appropriate than a tank in the naming.

Aquarium 1 (1 ft cube - 27 litres)
I vacuumed out two bucket loads of base sand after I shifted most of the corals etc to the new aquarium and it was full of detritus. It would probably need another one or two more water change sessions to clear all the accumulated debris. It was really nasty and I decided not to have a deep sand bed for this small aquarium because the water change should suffice.

pair of Black Clowns and a Flameback Angel

the Zoas are not recovering well

the non-pulsing Xenia

the recovering Acans

Aquarium 3 (3 x 1.5 x 1.5 feet and sump - 250 litres)
In the first few days, there was the appearance of some brown diatoms but it disappeared.

I decided to throw away a number of the bleached corals which had no colour or anymore polyps extension. Some of the remaining corals such as Monti Caps on the sand bed became a bit washed out before they were bleached. Nevertheless, I have switched the lighting intensity down and will gradually bring it up over the weeks to come and reduced the lighting hours to around 12 and to keep the remaining as just moonlight to give these corals some rest time.

Strangely, I have 9 fishes in the aquarium but somehow it looks overcrowded to me. I really have to be more selective now although I am still contemplating whether to transfer the 2 black Clowns from aquarium 1 to here.

The MP25 wavemaker also kicked up a big sandstorm with the fine aragonite sand that I used and buried a number of my corals. I am quite sad that my Sympodium polyps that grew so well in aquarium 2 previously was a victim of this and have mostly melted in this aquarium. I guess I have to buy new ones to try again.

this was the Sympodium before it perished

this shrimp and 2 other Skunk Shrimps perished after introduction

the brown Montipora digitata

clown was hosting on feather duster worm

these two Skunk Shrimps were alright for about 10 days before they died

this unknown sps suffered slow tissue necrosis (stn)

brown Monti Cap

another supposedly green Monti Cap

the melting Sympodium

the twin False Percula Clowns

the stn that eventually killed this fella