• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

Journal One Zero Three

Harem was less of a mouthful, than a gender neutral school, with intersex properties, stressed into gender selection submission by a small male and a larger female. So circus definitely rolls of the tounge 🤣

Glad to see it laid out bare like this quite frankly. Beyond the posts so far, feeling a huge amount of responsibility to get this right for their sake. Literally any change to this setup causes a ruckus amongst the circus. Even introducing the refugium for nitrate and phosphate export affected their behaviour temporarily. It’s a change in the sump, not even the display and simple parameter changes seem to have the potential of leading to a battle royale if not thought out.

Have at least got feeding sussed out. Broadcast feeding of foods with just the gyre pump on ensures the whole tank is prime real estate at chow time. No need to get precious over any particular spot. Excess gets taken in to the overflow readily once the return pump goes back on as the flow pattern grabs across the whole tank. Fascinating group behaviour for sure and this setup certainly has you on your toes.

Coral introduction will probably need to be en masse to let the circus find its balance quickly then settle. Thinking very carefully about it. All of this against the backdrop of reliably testing parameters and keeping the water stable with new demands moving the targets….

It’s a good thing there’s planted tanks in the house. Sometimes just need something to look at that calms you down after worrying about the reef setup 😂
 
Coral placement will be fun for you, it's now their territory and you might well see blood drawn, as they will happily take you on, unfortunately it's hard to escape their patch in the average sized tank, on a reef you only need to swim a little to the side and your fine and the nips stop, as they don't like to leave their spot.
 
Hmm. What’s behind the colour rendition? I want to love reefs I truly do but the blurple just don’t register as “natural” in my mind 🤔😅
 
unfortunately it's hard to escape their patch in the average sized tank, on a reef you only need to swim a little to the side and your fine and the nips stop, as they don't like to leave their spot.

One foot of proximity for defensive behaviour is the current understanding. Aided by breaks in line of sight through scape design and intelligent coral selection. Also understand that a smaller number of clowns than what is in this setup increases risk of their group dynamic falling apart and ending up with only a dominant pair. Individual fish will display the same patterns before getting aggressive so if you’re watching closely enough, you can catch it. It is walking a very fine line and a small minority have made it work. But the majority fail from the conversations about a project like this. In the interest of welfare there is an immediate plan to break the group should it look kiboshed.

Despite all this it is a high stakes project though and not suggesting in anyway that anyone else takes this on as a good idea. It has been hard finding reliable practices and that’s what we’re here to try and execute.

Coral placement will be fun for you, it's now their territory and you might well see blood drawn, as they will happily take you on

1633813260623.jpeg


1633813277817.jpeg


1633813294803.jpeg


1633813320324.jpeg


Got a permanent reminder of cost 😉
 
I've never had anything to do with marine tanks but after reading this thread I can definitely see the appeal. Its an alien world in a glass box. Beautiful and fascinating.
 
Broadcast feeding of foods with just the gyre pump on ensures the whole tank is prime real estate at chow time.

That’s what I do “Meat Cloud”, except I turn the pumps off on the EVO, in this tank the substrate is chock full of spaghetti worms so nothing goes to waste! On the bigger tanks I leave a power head on to keep the food suspended in the water column, also gives the fish something to chase so the enrichment isn’t just Nutritional, I usually also give every tank a bag of Copepods, it increases the chance finicky fish will also eat frozen, my Blue Stripe Pipefish is fully weaned onto frozen using this technique.

This is what’s in my freezers Ice Shelf -

09B94941-0CA3-459D-8000-E3D213630309.jpeg

7CC40CC7-4708-4387-BFBC-439DD6A04975.jpeg


The small cubes are made using novelty 1cm Ice Cube trays.

14ED1733-FA05-4930-AB0C-61ECD49AF24D.jpeg


I use a mix of every type of Marine frozen species I can get my hands on, something of everything from the freezer drawer, thawed and rinsed in a super fine mesh (smaller than Rotifera) and rinsed with RO, made up in bulk and refrozen.

36D393EC-AB6F-405B-A8E9-E03F1EFE195F.jpeg


Let’s not forget the fridge Salad Drawer -

F2933AB8-DA1B-4601-BE03-2201BA1C8A3A.jpeg


Fat Fish, Happy Fish!

What’s behind the colour rendition? I want to love reefs I truly do but the blurple just don’t register as “natural” in my mind 🤔😅

You need to use an Orange filter in front of a camera lens to null the blue, same goes for your eyes, you want a pair of Orange lensed Coral Viewing glasses. You can get clip on filters for you phone also.

F0345FB2-CE28-4C89-8D6F-92C5B3344FF2.jpeg


F74EFF11-E182-49A4-98F9-A1367B5EA0D4.jpeg


:)
 
Last edited:
You need to use an Orange filter in front of a camera lens to null the blue, same goes for your eyes, you want a pair of Orange lensed Coral Viewing glasses. You can get clip on filters for you phone also.

OMG was literally yelling ‘why has no one developed a damn filter’ the other day 😂

Guess that one was worth googling. Nice, thanks for the heads up 👍🏽

This is what’s in my freezers Ice Shelf -

09B94941-0CA3-459D-8000-E3D213630309.jpeg

7CC40CC7-4708-4387-BFBC-439DD6A04975.jpeg


The small cubes are made using novelty 1cm Ice Cube trays.

14ED1733-FA05-4930-AB0C-61ECD49AF24D.jpeg


I use a mix of every type of Marine frozen species I can get my hands on, something of everything from the freezer drawer, thawed and rinsed in a super fine mesh (smaller than Rotifera) and rinsed with RO, made up in bulk and refrozen.

36D393EC-AB6F-405B-A8E9-E03F1EFE195F.jpeg


Let’s not forget the fridge Salad Drawer -

F2933AB8-DA1B-4601-BE03-2201BA1C8A3A.jpeg


Fat Fish, Happy Fish!

Thank you @X3NiTH , showed this to the other half and it immediately cured the complaints about the single freezer draw used in this house 😂 In complete agreement that stock need to be fed to the best of your ability.

In other news… Diatoms:

1634134876818.jpeg


The Rowaphos will be picking up silicates along with weekly 25% water changes. Letting it run its course.

Still hunting for some coralline algae to seed the tank and cover the rocks. Would be helpful to have some competition for surface area but not had any luck finding any so far.

Water parameters are consistent as there’s nothing making withdrawals except for N and P by the refugium and media:

NO3 = 0-2ppm
PO4 = 0.03ppm
Mg = 1500ppm +
Ca = 470ppm
dKH = 12.5
pH = 7.9
Salinity = 35ppt
Temp = 26.1C
 
In other news… Diatoms:

Correction. Misdiagnosis, it’s dinoflagellates. Tank is ‘too clean’ which can be interpreted as still young and not diverse.

Disappear at night and reappear in the day. Lights on this morning:

1634200094116.jpeg


We need copepods! Damned in knowing which species of dinoflagellates, but whatever species it is copepods will give it a run for it’s money.
 
Hi all,
Still hunting for some coralline algae to seed the tank and cover the rocks.
If we had a member who lives near any rocky coast they could pick you up some <"Lithothamnion spp. coated pebbles"> from a rock pool etc. They are very tolerant of high temperatures.

You would still need to buy some more colourful ones, but it would get you started.

cheers Darrel
 
Hi all,

If we had a member who lives near any rocky coast they could pick you up some <"Lithothamnion spp. coated pebbles"> from a rock pool etc. They are very tolerant of high temperatures.

You would still need to buy some more colourful ones, but it would get you started.

cheers Darrel

Thanks Darrel.

May be up near Ravenglass soon so can take the eldest rock pool viewing too.
 
Like it never happened:

1634295998406.jpeg


Churned the sand five minutes before lights off to put into suspension last night, then replaced the floss an hour before lights on today. Floss was a solid brown. Clear display today three hours into the photoperiod.

Tuned the lights for more blue in the spectrum and less white, to reduce red and green. There’s also the frag with coralline on that went in as was, shopping in whatever it has on it into the system. There’s the copepods and rotifers that went in. There’s also what might have happened regardless of these implementations, so will never know why it cleared so fast. Guess we wait for the next higher order organism to rear it’s head. On to the next one.
 
Tricolour:

1634500738604.jpeg


Really lives up to the name when it draws itself in like this. Seems to consistently do this on the tenth hour of the photoperiod. Figure the extra two hours of the twelve in total aren’t much use to it. Well… for the Zooxanthellae at least.
 
Beautiful nem.
Used to be a full blown sps keeper before selling up when moved house.
Just the planted tank now so enjoying reading your marine thread!
 
So the freebie dead coral, with the coralline algae on, that went in to seed the tank:

1634847149109.jpeg


Not so dead anymore:

1634847192402.jpeg


If anyone is able to ID this, it would be most appreciated 🙏🏽

Guessing it is a Montipora.
 
Back
Top