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

DAY 222

It has been more than half a year since tank 1 was first set up and these are photos which I took yesterday. From a mixed reef when I first started to one with more lps, now I have stocked it with mostly common Zoas. I am certain this is not the final look but I am definitely happy with it for the time being. I must admit that the camera does little justice to the small piece of underwater paradise that looks better in person. I love the colour of the reef under the blue lights but I am not able to capture it on camera.

Interestingly, the Clown Fish are hosting everything, including the Elegance Coral, Goniopora, Zoas and even the Coco-Worm except for the Rose Bubble Tip Anemone that I bought specifically for them. On a separate note, it is amazing that the feather Caulerpa are growing very well in this and my office tanks. When I first attempted to keep them and the bubble Caulerpa in both tanks, it was not successful. I even tried to keep the lights on almost 247. However, they gradually turned asexual and wasted away. Then it appeared slowly as a weed on one of the rocks in the office tank and subsequent attempts to take pieces of them and growing them in this tank proved to be effortless. Now they are appearing everywhere at every nook and cranny and I suspect one day they would be a problem for me to weed out. Right now, I am just testing how effective it is at nutrients export to solve the algae problem.

Anyway, last Sunday I was changing a third of the water in tank 2 when I suddenly spotted the Hector Goby looking back at me. So there it was, in a healthy condition not unlike before, before it disappeared again from sight. I thought it was dead because I had not seen for quite a while. The tummy did not look dented so it must be feeding fine. Strangely, when will I see it again?

If my sps are generally turning brown, then it is likely that my lights do not possess the right wavelength. I'm still pondering if I need to upgrade the lights.

SIX MONTHS

I know I say this every month but seriously there were a lot of changes that I sometimes couldn't keep track of it. Frankly, I couldn't anticipate what to write about until the very last day. 

For instance, I purchased a new set of Maxspect Razor Nano LED lights for tank 2 and swopped the Green Element 60W LED lights from tank 2 to tank 1 about 2 weeks back. 

Since then, I had been getting massive cyanobacteria and some black algae bloom in tank 1. I suspect this was due to the increased light intensity from the new lights and accumulated nutrients from my lack of water changes. Despite my efforts of putting in a new pack of ROWAphos and scrubbing the cyanobacteria and strange black algae covering the corals daily, they kept coming back day after day because the nutrients were not exported out. I have nothing against Golden Octopus but I swear that the black algae all appeared from the coral frags that I bought from them previously. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and changed at least 90% of the water this morning. Hopefully, the algae will not grow back with such ferocity that almost made me decide to decommission this tank. With the Green Element lights for tank 1, the only good thing that came out of it was a green tipped Acropora sps that browned out under the older lights started to look more green and the tips started to grow. Another sad thing that I observed was that with any new fishes that I add, I seemed to lose some others. It didn't occur to me that my Hector's Goby and Six Line Wrasse were missing for days until recently. In fact, I had a beautiful Black Foot Maldive Clown for a couple of days before it disappeared into thin air. None of their bodies were ever found, which made me wonder if my recovering Bubble Coral swallowed all of them. Of course I am happy that it seemed to recover gradually but I had no proof to confirm that it ate up the missing fishes. Now there are only 3 Clown Fish and 1 Strawberry Dottyback and I will just let it stay that way for now.

For tank 2, the phosphate problems finally went away after I did the following: transferred my Two Little Fishes Phosban Reactor that I run NP biopellets back home, dosed the Brightwell Aquatics Reef BioFuel daily and added a new TLF Phosban Reactor with PhosBan. The main livestock changes that occurred in this tank were I added quite a number of fishes, sps, Zoas and some invertebrates. The Zoas are doing well, except for one of my favourites Blue Ensign that toppled into the Elegance Coral and sort of melted away. The pink digitata was originally doing very well but it deteriorated gradually with the base turning white. I suspected it was due to the close proximity with the Elegance Coral and I transferred the latter to tank 1 since I do not want to jeopardize any more sps and Zoas. The two Sea Fans that I added are beautiful and I hope they stay that way. As for the new lights, I am kind of disappointed to note that I did not see any significant changes to the growth or colour of all the sps and other corals in the tank ever since the Maxspect was added. I am planning to replace the internal Tunze skimmer with an external one to make more space for the existing corals. All the new fishes are doing well except for the disappearance of a small Royal Gramma Basslet that was only seen hiding amongst the rockworks and never ventured out into the open waters.

Anyway, the updates on the 2 aquariums are as follows although my camera failed to capture the photographic quality that would do justice to the actual thing:

Tank 1 (1 ft cube - 27 litres)
The list of livestock is as follows:

• Fishes
• 3 Clown Fish (Candy, Cindy and Cynthia)
• 1 Six Line Wrasse (Wendy)
• 1 Purple Dottyback (Pauline)
• Invertebrates
• 3 Pom Pom Crabs (Penelope, Phoebe and Phyllis)
• 1 red Hermit Crab (from tank 2)
• 4 Turbo Snails
• 1 Nassarius Snail
• 1 red Coco-worm (Coco)
• 1 small (yellow) and 1 big (brown) Feather Duster Worms
• Corals
• SPS
• 1 green tipped Acropora
• LPS
• 1 pink Sun Coral - dying since the algae bloom
• 1 Bubble Coral - recovering
• 1 brown Elegance Coral (transferred to office)
• 1 cream Elegance Coral (from tank 2)
• 1 pink Hammer Coral (from tank 2)
• 1 green Frogspawn Coral (from tank 2)
• Mushrooms
• 1 plate of blue Actinodiscus mushrooms
• 1 plate of Ricordea mushrooms
• 1 orange Ricordea yuma mushroom
• Soft Corals
• 1 Rose Tip Bubble Anemone
• 1 Chili Coral
• 1 Leather Coral
• Polyps
• 1 piece of Green Star Polyps and 1 mat of GSP
• 2 frags of green Palm Tree Coral
• 1 fluorescent Goniopora with pink eye (It still has not opened)
• 1 brown Goniopora (transferred to office tank)
• 1 rock of brown Daisy (Clove) Polyps
• 1 green Palythoa
• 1 frag of green Zoas
• 1 Rasta (6) & Sunflower (1) Zoas
• Macroalgae
• 1 rock of red bamboo macroalgae
• 1 plate of red wavy macroalgae (Ulva) 
• 2 clumps of red branched macroalgae
• a strand of green Caulerpa from office tank

The casualties are:

• 1 Hector's Goby (Hector) - It went missing for days now and I fear it's dead.
• 1 Six Line Wrasse (Wendy) - As above.
• 1 Blue Neon Goby (Bernard) - As above. It disappeared at the same time and their bodies were never found.
• 1 black foot Maldives Clown Fish - It suddenly disappeared after doing well for some time.
• 1 red and white Cleaner Shrimp - I found it dead on the morning of 23 Jun 13 and had no idea why it died.
• 1 red and white Pistol Shrimp (Paul) - It didn't make an appearance for some time now.
• 1 red Acan - I threw it away because it didn't seem to recover for so long now.
• 1 plate of red Actinodiscus mushroom - I threw it away because it was badly bleached.
• 1 Nassarius snail
• 1 small yellow Cucumber - I threw it away by accident together with the mushroom.
• 1 frag of orange Palm Tree Coral - I threw it away because it melted.

The technical information is as follows:

• 1 Ocean Free Hang-on-Back filter 2
• 1 Easy Aqua Ex500 External Filter with wave deflector
• 1 Green Element LED 60W (12 white 12000k and 8 blue 460 nm) with 2 mini fans
• 1 Tunze Osmolator Nano
• 1 Dymax Cooling Fan

Tank 2 (1.5 feet cube - 56 litres)

The updated list of livestock is:

• Fishes
• 1 Yellow Tang (Tammy)
• 1 Flame Angel (Fann)
• 1 Yellow Wrasse (Yogi) - One died and I got another one.
• 1 Six Line Wrasse (Selena)
• 1 Hector's Goby (Henry)
• 1 Filament Fin Fairy Wrasse (Fred)
• Invertebrates
• 1 Fire Shrimp (Felicia)
• 1 Cleaner Skunk Shrimp (Calisto)
• 7 Turbo snails
• 2 Nassarius snails
• 2 Bumble Bee snails
• 1 electric blue Hermit Crab
• 2 Coco-worms (1 red and 1 yellow)
• 2 brown and 1 grey big and 1 yellow small Feather Duster Worms
• 1 blue Clam
• Corals
• SPS
• 1 horn coral
• 1 pink Acropora digitata sps, 1 brown Acropora millipora and 1 brown (blue tips) Acropora
• 1 frag of pink birdnest, 1 brown birdnest and 1 frag of green birdnest
• 1 pink Stylophora
• 1 frag of green Pocci, 1 fiber optic Pocci, 1 green Pocci and 1 pink Pocci
• 1 encrusting blue-green Monti
• 1 brown Monti cap, 4 frags of Monti caps (pink, brown, royal purple, mixed)
• LPS
• 1 rock of fluorescent green and blue Goniopora
• 1 cream Elegance Coral
• 1 fluorescent Octo Coral
• Mushrooms
• 2 orange and 1 pink Ricordea yuma mushrooms
• 1 blue and 1 green Ricordea florida mushroom
• 2 green Ricordea mushrooms (hidden by rocks)
• 1 branch of Rhodactis mushrooms (hidden by rocks)
• 1 plate of purple Actinodiscus mushrooms
• Soft Corals
• 1 rock of Xenia
• 1 rock of Finger Mushroom Coral
• 1 pink Cauliflower Tree Coral (hidden by rocks)
• 1 Chili Coral
• Polyps
• 1 rock of Clove Polyps (hidden by rocks)
• 2 frags of orange Palm Tree Corals (hidden by rocks)
• 1 brown Palythoa
• 2 plates of Zoanthus
• plugs of Zoanthus (Incredible/KO 7, Emerald on Fire 5, Fruit Loops 6, Pink Panther 1, Eagle Eye 4, Sunflower 5 + Golden Clove 1, Red Eagle Eye 4, Fire and Ice 2, Nuclear Green 2, Nuclear Death 3, Purple Death 4, Pink unknown 5) 
• 2 mats of Green Star Polyps, 1 frag of GSP
• 1 Organ Pipe Coral
• Sea Fan
• 1 Blueberry
• 1 Purple
• Macroalgae
• 1 big red Bubble macroalgae (transferred to office tank)
• 1 red branched macroalgae
• Halimeda

The casualties are:

• 1 Purple Clam
• 1 Bumble Bee snail
• 1 frag of Xenia
• Blue Ensign Zoas 8

The technical details are:

• Eheim 2213 external canister filter
• Atman hang-on-back filter
• Tunze 9004 skimmer
• Maxspect Razor Nano 60W (10,000k)
• 2 Two Little Fishes Phosban Reactors running NP biopellets and Rowaphos
• 1 Sunon fan
• 2 Hydor Nano wavemakers
• 1 Tunze Nano Osmolator