my reef GARden frenzY

Another month has gone by so quickly. This is the first time in many months that I am putting up the monthly post this early in the day instead of at night because I will be catching a flight this afternoon to Taiwan with my mum and sister's family. So I will be gone for a week and the aquarium is up for another frightening week again. Hopefully all is fine when I am back.

This is also a significant month because from the day I re-started reefing 29 months ago, I started with Aquarium 1. I had lots of memories of it, good bad, and last week I finally decommissioned it and combined the stuff from Aquarium 4 which I brought back from the office. It is with sadness that I finally cleared everything and put it aside for good.

As for Aquarium 3, it is now predominantly LPS and soft corals dominated. I will try out more SPS after I manage to get the Zeolith reactor.

The updates are presented below.

Aquarium 1 (1 ft cube - 27 litres)

This aquarium is finally decommissioned after 29 months!

Aquarium 3 (3 x 1.5 x 1.5 feet and sump - 250 litres)
I couldn't help it but added a beautiful pocci which was on sale at Ah Beng's at $30. Well, I almost planted the base of the aquarium with LPS and there isn't much space left for others. But I think this aquarium is overcrowded with fishes at the moment with the big 5s taking the lead.

I am looking out to buy a zeolith reactor but there wasn't any that I fancy and is affordable.

So anyway, here is the monthly updated list of livestock:

Fishes

Purple Tang
2 Blue-yellow Damsels
Yellow Tang
Flame Angel
Regal Blue Tang
Majestic Angel
Yellow Wrasse
Orange Striped Prawn Goby
2 True Percula Clowns
Golden Maroon Clown
Royal Gramma
Yellow Clown Goby

Invertebrates

Turbo and Nassarius snails
2 red Linckia starfishes
purple Linckia starfish
2 Tuxedo Urchins
2 Cleaner Skunk Shrimps
Fire Shrimp

Corals

Horn Coral
Poccillopora
Cyphastrea

Acan
3 Hammer Corals (peach and 2 purple green)
4 Supersun Coral frags
2 yellow Bubble Corals
2 branched Octo Corals (purple and half green and half peach)
4 Goniopora Corals (green tentacles and purple center, 2 purple tentacles green center and brown)
2 Elegance Corals (pink tips green body and blue tip yellow body)
green Candy Cane
Duncan Coral
Blasto Coral
Fox Coral

Mushrooms

orange Ricordea yuma mushrooms
green Ricordea yuma mushrooms

Soft Corals

Chilli Coral
red Flower Rock Anemone
2 pink Rose Bud Tip Anemones
Toadstool Leather Mushroom
branched Finger Coral
9 Gorgonians (purple branch with brown polyps, 2 yellow branch and polyps, 2 red branch with yellow polyps, 2 white branch with red polyps, red branch with pink polyps, half yellow and brown branch)

Polyps

purple Zoas
Fiery Red Zoas
5 assorted Zoas
green Palythoa
5 green Star Polyps
5 Clove Polyps (2 gold, 1 green and 2 common)
3 Daisy Polyps (brown and 2 green eyes)
grey pulsing Xenia
17 frag plugs of Zoas

Macroalgae (in sump)

Chaetomorpha
red Bamboo
green Bubble algae

The technical details are:

Jebao Marine Aqua DC-6000 return pump
Maxspect R420R 16,000K 160W
Solite 2 x 24W T5 lights
Hailea HS-28A chiller
Reef Octopus BH1000 skimmer
Two Little Fishes Phosban Reactor running Phosban
MP25 and RW-8 wavemakers
Tunze Nano Osmolator
Marine Magic Triplet Dosing

Pocci under blue and white lights

close-up of Pocci

new Zoas rock

Zoas under blue and white lights

top view under blue and white lights

top view

Clove Polyps

under white lights

under blue lights only

back to higher white lower blue lights

Orange Striped Prawn Goby

one of two remaining Fire Gobies

FTS under blue and white lights

FTS under higher white lights

new GSP

Zoa frags

under only white lights

Golden Maroon Clownfish

Aquarium 4 with IOS

These are the new photos of this aquarium and a few new inhabitants were added yesterday.

Anyway, the livestock in this aquarium are:

Fishes

False Percula Clownfish
black Clownfish
Pomacanthus alleni damselfish
Possum Wrasse
Hector Goby
Golden Angel

Invertebrates

3 Turbo Snails
Nassarius Snail
Tuxedo Sea Urchin
Cleaner Skunk Shrimp
yellow Banded Coral Shrimp

Corals

Bubble Corals
Acan

Soft Coral

branched Finger Coral
Anthelia
green Anemone
Rose Bud Tip Anemone and Bud Tip Anemone
White Tree Coral
Orange Tree Coral
a few blue Actinodiscus mushrooms

Polyps

Zoas
Macroalgae

Bubble Algae
green Algae
red algae

The technical information is as follows:

Sanrise LED Pro lights (without wifi)

Tunze Osmolator Nano

Boyu Cooling Fan

FTS under white lights

under combination lights

the Goniopora budded off this frag

This is a post in the mid month, so that the post at the end of the month before my trip can be concise.

I bought quite a number of fishes this month, and now I have the big 5s - Yellow Tang, Purple Tang, Flame Angel, Regal Blue Tang and Majestic Angel now. When the juvenile-adult Majestic Angel was first added, there was quite a bit of aggression from the Purple Tang. However, I managed to take out the Yellow Tang instead and transferred it to Aquarium 1. When the aggression between the Purple Tang and the Majestic Angel died down, I put the Yellow Tang back and all was fine. I also bought 4 Fire Gobies but as of the day before, I only saw 2 left. I added an acrylic cover for the aquarium to prevent some of these fishes from carpet surfing.

I also bought a number of Zoas frag from Steven of LCK201 and they are all doing fine in the aquarium.

Separately, I want to decommission the office Aquarium 4, so I thought of combining this with the Aquarium 1 inhabitants. I plan to do it soon in a few days time, so right now I am consolidating everything from the office aquarium to the home one. Sadly, I lost 3 out of 4 Damsels in the process. In addition, I moved the pair of true Percula Clowns to Aquarium 3 and had to transfer the 2 black Onyx Clowns from this aquarium to Aquarium 1 with the big False Percula Clown from the office. Confusing? Now one of the black Clowns is dying, and I cross my fingers that it will recover instead. Aquarium 1 is packed to the brim now and hopefully all will go well. I also hope the Golden Boxing Shrimp and Anthelias from Aquarium 1 will make it through.

In terms of the equipment, I just purchased the Sanrise Aqua Pro LED today and hopefully, it would serve me well although if the LED lights burn out, I probably wouldn't be able to get a replacement.