Journal The Mermaid’s Rockpool Garden

[shangman]

This is a journal for my somewhat-experimental Mermaid’s Rockpool Garden, hopefully something quite magical inspired by my childhood love of rock pools in Devon and Cornwall. The highlight of my holidays was lifting rocks, peering under and harassing sea creatures, and as an adult I’d like to continue that in the comfort of my own home. There’ll be lots of macroalgae, a few soft corals, some funny little inverts and small-with-big-personality fish. Lots of hypnotic movement, a few fabulous things, and a few grotesque things too probably. After lots of research into the marine side of the hobby, this is what I think is the bit that most feels natural, and makes sense with what I know about freshwater. A relatively easy, cheap way to build a great tank (hopefully lol).

By trade I’m a fashion and textile designer. I love colour, texture, material, embroidery, feathers, beading, knit, tapestry, print, trimmings. All in movement, when worn on the body. To be honest with you though, the love of fashion kinda just died during the pandemic, and I didn't really think about it at the time but I guess aquariums is my new creative obsession. Since realising this, I want to throw myself into it and really try to be creative with it, of course still respecting the creatures. I totally see a connection between fashion, textiles and aquariums psychically, and I want to use this journal like a sketchbook recording how I do it, and if I can get that vibe in the tanks. Or maybe I will make textiles inspired by the tanks idk, just wanna do lots of fun things

Maybe I can work out a way to get a bit of my fashion design vibes into the tank? Idk​

So obviously I’m now completely obsessed with marine aquariums, and especially macroalgae tanks - they are truly living embroidered tapestries. The waving flower-like faces, knobbly beads of algae and coral in every colour, wafting feathers, sculptural shells... All the glamour I love about couture… in a tank!

That's why I couldn’t pass up the chance to buy this 20-year-old Fiji liverock from a local retiring mid-80s couple last Sunday I saw on ebay. It's is covered in daisy polyps, turquoise mushrooms, yellow sponges, small Kenya tree, coralline algae and tiny crustaceans. I think there are even some living clams on there. £100? Bargain! This is the base of the tank, the true filter and foundation of the ecosystem. Luckily I bought a 100cm, 40cm, 30cm second hand opti tank 2 years ago for £60 on eBay which has been living in the shed, which fit the rock perfectly. My family finally relented when they saw how pretty the rock is, they understand a good thing when they see it luckily.

eBay pics​

On the down side, the liverock was in a very tall tank for the past 20 years so it was hard to maintain. It has a fair amount of red cyano, red turf algae and aiptasia (an anemone which stings other life and spreads very quickly). I showed my marine friend the pics first and he told me about the pests,but I decided to go for it anyway. It also has bubble algae and colonial hydroids, but I’m thinking those aren’t really problems in macro algae tanks. It’s quite interesting how most things you read online about marine tanks are for reef ecosystems, rather than macro algae tanks which are quite a different system which so far I’ve found pretty easy - it’s very much like a freshwater planted tank, and I don’t need too much equipment. I've been on a few different reef forums, but none I really enjoy like UKAPS, so you guys get the journal lols! Either way, gotta get rid of the cyano and aiptasia, they are universally not great. Finally there is some old pink reef putty on there that's hard to get off, I think that I will disguise the edges of it a bit later as I don't mind the colour!

So, for the first few weeks I’m treating the cyano and aiptasia. With the liverock came a big bottle of aiptasia-x and syringes, so I’ve been steadily squirting any I see daily. The first day I killed at least 20, today 3 which were mostly very small. I’ll also be buying 2 peppermint shrimp which hopefully will get any small ones I miss. I simply used a brush to dislodge the red cyano and siphoned it out, along with a lot of crud, and added a bit of macroalgae to start sucking up any other nutrients to compete with the cyano. I do this every 2 days, it is definitely getting less and less. I can’t chemically treat the cyano as that will kill the sponges, and though the sponges look like evil pus-filled boils, I adore them! For all my treatments I'm turning the rocks often to catch everything on every side, fingers crossed all these methods together work well.

I'm using a secondhand Oase thermofilter 600 filter on it with just the prefilter sponges atm, along with 2 1000lph wave makers for added flow (I added after taking the below pics). I've also currently got my big tank's Twinstar 900 on it while I work out the lighting situation. I'm thinking of trying a Chihiros 90cm, I'm not interested in any non-soft corals with a higher difficulty so I'm not going to get a big reef light.

Here is the liverock before I started to treat it. I’ll photograph it again soon in its cleaner state, it does look quite different already!

​

 

[shangman]

Ok big update time!! I probably should've been recording everything that went on with this tank, but it was enough effort on its own that I just couldn't be bothered to take pics on top of everything else! Especially when the kittens like to come and harass me and splash water when I'm doing maintenance. The marine tank for set up has been a BIG time sink to get it going, but I think long term it shouldn't be too much trouble at all, just a few more technical bits to do.

So, onto the pests...
1. Cyano - I treated this by using a paint brush and a turkey baster to dislodge all the cyano on the rocks and glass. Then I siphoned it out into a bucket with a sieve at the top with filter floss in that, so I could put the water back in. I did this twice a week for 2 weeks. Then I added the sand, and for a week it was good, so I added the contents of the bowl which included about 3 snails and 3 hermits. This didn't really do anything and the cyano spread further, so I did another big siphon, and bought £50 of snails including a conch, turbo snails, nassarius snails, money cowrie and cerith snails. I also got a blood red shrimp in the order who is GORGEOUS. Anyway, all those snails have done a great job turning the sand bed and there is now only cyano in the front right corner, every day it receeds. I also bought £10 of copepods on ebay as they apparently eat cyano and geenrally help with complexity of the ecosystem. Along with the siphoning and snails, I think that the macroalgae has played a big role in outcompeteing the cyano. I ignored the idea that nitrate, phosphate and ferts cause cyano and dosed them to help the macroalgae, and it didn't make the cyano worse, it made it better. It seems that cyano essentially takes over when there is an imbalance, and by focusing on cultivating a healthy ecosystem with lots of plants, bacteria and microrganisms it does go away.

2. Aiptasia - I treated this in two ways - the first was by squirting aiptasia-X into their "faces" with a small syringe, which is meant to kill them. At first I had mixed results, but within a week I got the knack of it and have quite successfully killed off a lot, honestly it was quite fun. Over two weeks every 2 days I rotated the rocks and killed the ones I saw, as new ones did appear and sometimes I'd miss small ones. Once I was happy I'd got pretty much all of them, I added the sand, and I decided to add a peppermint shrimp who would act as my aiptasia janitor. The first peppermint shrimp I bought, got home and realised it was a "false" peppermint shrimp, not the true-aiptasia eating one. Luckily it is a pretty shrimp regardless, and the next week I bought true "true" peppermint shrimp who do seem to be keeping the aiptasia at bay. Occasionally I still get out the aiptasia-X if I see one that's easy to kill, better to encourage the peppermints to eat the ones I can't see.

Something I really like about marine is that the inverts are beautiful, cheap (compared to the fish and corals) and they really do a job and contribute to the maintenance of the tank. if you like the ecosystem-focused way of keeping a tank, then macro-algae focused marine is GREAT. I am really enjoying it, and so far the only annoying/different thing to freshwater is having to put the water in a bucket and mix it/heat it overnight. All the concepts are the same and have worked well for me so far.

This tank isn't 100% macro algae, I have been adding a mix of cheap easy soft corals too which should like my parameters. The liverock came with some turquoise mushrooms, kenya tree and some tiny invasive type of clove polyp (the little brown flowers all voer the rocks lols), so I thought I'd add to it. I've added pulsing Xenia, Yellow Polyps, a selection of Zoas, Clove polyps, "Waving Hand" polyps, Organ Pipe Coral, and a Hairy Mushroom which has already split into two (which looked gross). The max one of these cost was £20, and most of them were £10, some zoas were £5 from fellow hobbyists. They are all easy, enjoy the same parameters as macroalgae, and many are considered invasive and boring to many marine keepers, but I really like them all and the movement they add. None of them will sting the livestock!

About 2 weeks ago the macroalgae went from growing slowly and politely to growing very quickly and strongly, which is great. I dose ChaetoGro and Tropica Specialised Nutrition once a week, and this seems to work really well! The green caulerpa algae has grown particularly well, but now the lovely red grape has finally strated to thrive so I've just ordered a few more red algaes to try again. Red ogo melted in the first week in this tank, so it'll be interesting to see if it's happier this time round.

Over the next 2 weeks I'm going to get a proper lid sorted (been using clingfilm lols), so I can finally start to add some lovely fish. I'm also going to move my UV from the freshwater tank over to this one to help prevent marine diseases which look even more ghastly than freshwater. It also needs a background of some sort, either just black or maybe a DIY lightscreen thing. This tank currently has my freshwater twinstar light 90cm on it, but I want to swap that with 2 AI Prime fresh (I have one already) and an AI Prime marine second hand so I can have a bit of blue to bring out some of the colours of the corals more. I don't like the super blue look, but I think just a bit could be added, and I like that these spotlights will bring the shimmer. I also need my twinstar back so I can get back into tropical freshwater again very soon...

Note in the pics that I've been doing maintenance on the tank today, so some of the corals are slightly upset with me and not as out as the usually are!

Finally, a very blurry photo of the only fish in my 100cm tank, a 1-inch barnacle blenny who insists in living right in the back in a perfect blenny-sized hole, so this pic is from the top.​

 

[seedoubleyou]

Lovely littler ecosystem, you really can’t beat a marine setup for diversity.
A little emerald crab should help with that bubble algae !!
What fish are you of thinking for this, and is the freshwater light managing to grow the soft corals? As that could be a big factor for me deciding to do a 90cm setup (buying a marine light again is something I want to avoid £££).

 

[Hufsa]

I love the blenny so much, what a perfectly sized hole 😍
Does he have a name?
If not I humbly suggest
Lenny the Blenny of Rocksworth Estate.
(Lenny is short for Lennart of course)

 

[X3NiTH]

Panamic Barnacle Blenny, mine was called Barney, fast as lightning!

I love Marine fish with Orange Googly eyes. 👀

 

[shangman]

Lovely littler ecosystem, you really can’t beat a marine setup for diversity.
A little emerald crab should help with that bubble algae !!
What fish are you of thinking for this, and is the freshwater light managing to grow the soft corals? As that could be a big factor for me deciding to do a 90cm setup (buying a marine light again is something I want to avoid £££).

Thanks !

I kinda like the bubble algae it reminds me of glass beads 😅, and apparently in a macro-algae focused tanks it's kept in control. We'll see though, maybe I will need a lil crabby. I have 4 tiny orange leg hermits and hope to get more, hence the many tiny shells littering the bottom after an unfortunate snail-eating incident.

For fish, I'm thinking ALL SORTS!! All are quite small and peaceful with funny faces and behaviours cos that's my favourite. A midas blenny, yasha goby + pistol shrimp, a pair of striped pipefish or a pair of red dragonet, a possum wrasse, hi-fin chequered perchlet plus a selection of tiny gobies. Of course also a bigger group of the barnacle blennies cos they're so funny. Plus pompom crabs, porcelain crabs, squat lobster (if can find), and some other shrimpies. Also definitely need more snails, I want dove snails as they're meant to be great for macroalgae but another thing considered a pest so hard to find! Plus some feather and coco worms. All added very very slowwwwwwlyyyyy cos they're so expensive omg.

So far the freshwater light seems to be growing everything well, none of the corals are dying and all seem like they're growing. I don't get the crazy colours, but I don't mind too much, the movement is great and the fabulous colour will come from the fishes and macro algae.

I love the blenny so much, what a perfectly sized hole 😍
Does he have a name?
If not I humbly suggest
Lenny the Blenny of Rocksworth Estate.
(Lenny is short for Lennart of course)
View attachment 195816

Just for you here is a (extremely lowres) gif of Lenny searching for his next morsal. Truly obsessed with these sea fish and their wonderful independant eyes and funny little faces.

 

[shangman]

Panamic Barnacle Blenny, mine was called Barney, fast as lightning!

View attachment 195821

I love Marine fish with Orange Googly eyes. 👀

What a handsome chap!! Their fastness is soooooo funny, do nothing all day and them WHAM grab the food faster than anything.

I have no idea how you got such a massive good photo, they're sooooo hard to capture! I need a friend with a macro lens asap!!

 

[X3NiTH]

I have no idea how you got such a massive good photo, they're sooooo hard to capture!

That’s an iPhone pic possibly with a Macro adapter (D-D Coral Colour Lens Gen2). He was also hanging at the front of the tank making for an easy capture!

 

[seedoubleyou]

Love the movement on the red dragonet, Midas blenny get to a decent size (for a small fish) and spend most of their time in the open water.
Pistol shrimp are always interesting to watch and yasha goby’s are just beautiful fish anyway.
If you find a pom-pom crab who still has its anemones, then go for it, who doesn’t want to have their own little cheer leader.
I’ve never owned a possum wrasse. I had a mckoskers flasher wrasse, but every tank needs a wrasse of some sort as they’re a great species of fish
Pygmy waspfish are great if you fancied some small and dangerous!! They can be kept in groups too.

 

[Witcher]

this is simply beautiful, I'm always smashed by out of this world look of non-fish kind of life in marine tanks.

 

[shangman]

That’s an iPhone pic possibly with a Macro adapter (D-D Coral Colour Lens Gen2). He was also hanging at the front of the tank making for an easy capture!

Ooh I'll look into this macro adaptor thing! I wish mine would live in the front ffs, it's commited to living at the back very rudely. Maybe with a few more nano fish it'll get a bit more confident, in the nano it was always front and center. Of course then, it was difficult to see because of the glass curvature! I'm thwarted constantly

Love the movement on the red dragonet, Midas blenny get to a decent size (for a small fish) and spend most of their time in the open water.
Pistol shrimp are always interesting to watch and yasha goby’s are just beautiful fish anyway.
If you find a pom-pom crab who still has its anemones, then go for it, who doesn’t want to have their own little cheer leader.
I’ve never owned a possum wrasse. I had a mckoskers flasher wrasse, but every tank needs a wrasse of some sort as they’re a great species of fish
Pygmy waspfish are great if you fancied some small and dangerous!! They can be kept in groups too.

Those dragonets are just wonderful, it's so hard to decide between those and a blue mandarin. And a pair of pipefish. I worry all these fish will outcompete eachother on pods, so trying to hold on as long as possible to get the pods thriving. This evening I noticed the sand was MUCH more active and full of little creatures so it's definitely on its way.
Yeah I thought maybe the midas blenny could be my biggest fish, though I suppose could go for a bicolour? Just want the funniest blenny possible. Also love the algae blennies but I think they might be too big.
The wrasse are so fascinating, if it's not the possom wrasse I thought maybe a pink streaked wrasse. That flasher wrasse is stunning!! For all these wrasses it's the eyes that fascinate me, the way they hunt and search is just brilliant.
Pygmy waspfish are soooo CUTE! If I wasn't so attached to the inverts I'd go for them. Something to keep in the future I thin, am also slightly tempted by a tank just for a mantis shrimp, completely fascinating animals. The sea is just so magical and alien, fantastic stuff.

this is simply beautiful, I'm always smashed by out of this world look of non-fish kind of life in marine tanks.

Thank you that's so kind <3 Still early days! The maintenence to get rid of the pests has been a bit annoying, but overall it's been quite simple, the only difference is more salt, more flow, less filter media. Really nice to get the opportunity to keep all these brilliant weird creatures, they really are quite alien and fascinating. I definitely recommend it

 

[seedoubleyou]

mantis shrimp

This would be incredible and I’ve thought about it myself in the past.
As fire sticking multiple fish that east copepod, with luck you might get them eating frozen and would t have any issue then.
Midas add some lovely colour, alternative would be a canary blenny (not sure how big they get)
Pink steak wrasse are lovely but incredibly cryptic, six line are also lovely but can have serious aggression issues.
I think all the stocking choice are great. But fear they may not all work out together as they all enjoy scouring the rockwork for food.
A balanced tank (for me personally) would have fish that inhabit different areas of my tank.
Ie something open water and slow moving like a Bangaii cardinal
Some sort of blenny
A goby and shrimp for under the rock
Then a pair of pipefish or dragonet that will hunt for food amongst the rockwork.

I think Coral fish Zoa on Instagram has a good stocking for his aquarium, just as an example.

 

[shangman]

This would be incredible and I’ve thought about it myself in the past.
As fire sticking multiple fish that east copepod, with luck you might get them eating frozen and would t have any issue then.
Midas add some lovely colour, alternative would be a canary blenny (not sure how big they get)
Pink steak wrasse are lovely but incredibly cryptic, six line are also lovely but can have serious aggression issues.
I think all the stocking choice are great. But fear they may not all work out together as they all enjoy scouring the rockwork for food.
A balanced tank (for me personally) would have fish that inhabit different areas of my tank.
Ie something open water and slow moving like a Bangaii cardinal
Some sort of blenny
A goby and shrimp for under the rock
Then a pair of pipefish or dragonet that will hunt for food amongst the rockwork.

I think Coral fish Zoa on Instagram has a good stocking for his aquarium, just as an example.

I think your stocking lines around along mine (I threw out loads of ideas but I won't get them all!!), the only thing I’m not into is the cardinals or similar fishy-looking fish. I feel like I can get better versions of them freshwater with apistos, but there are so many marine fish that have no freshwater version. Are there any other midwater fish that are a bit more different? This is partly why I liked the idea of the midas blenny who would swim around a bit. I was quite tempted by an aiptasia-eating filefish, but I read they often eat zoas so got the peppermint shrimps instead.

Shame that the pink streak is so cryptic, and that the sixline is a meanie, I think that means that the possom wrasse is the one to go for. They are very cute.

With the mandarin/dragonet/pipes I would definitely only buy ones that I saw eating frozen already, even if I have a good population of pods I want to make sure it’s sustainable long term with my stocking. These are the kind of fish that I will add after the rest of the tank is stocked, and only one of the types after seeing where I could do with more movement and watching them in the shops more to see which has the most interesting behaviour.

Everything is so expensive in marine it's much easier to stock slowly over time !!

 

[seedoubleyou]

@shangman how about a firefish? Same shape as the blenny, hang around mid level, have far more colour than a Midas blenny.

You can get red, purple or Helfrichi

Lovey fish !!

 

[shangman]

Happy New Year!

This is the tank today. I'm so happy with it already

​

Apparently it's been months since I updated the journal, whoops! Life has got busier with work picking up again, so I've focused on getting this tank through those initial dodgy months … plus been getting hooked and staring at it for ages every day, it's very hypnotic. Loads has happened in the tank, trials and tribulations and a whole host of gorgeous little creatures have joined the family. I hope you enjoy this wall of text and piccies!

Let's start with the trials...

In early november I started to notice that some of my zoas (the pretty colourful flowery blobs below) and my green star polyps were looking dodgy - the polyps were closed and not opening, if they did they were small and sad looking. I decided to try upgrading my lights. I went from a 900 twinstar to 3 AI Primes, 2 reef ones on each end, and a freshwater one in the middle. It may seem weird but I really like the colour balance (you'll notice it in the first shot above, though it's less stark during the day - I took these pics at around 6pm when it begins to get more extreme), and it means I can have more natural light during the day, and some of that wacky marine blue light in the evening. At the same time, I started dosing TropicMarin All For Reef, which is a fert with iodine, an essential element which I hadn't been dosing, plus it includes a whole rant of other useful elements for reef stability. Together, both the light and ferts seem to have really improved the tank's health, and my remaining zoas and gsp survived. New zoas do fabulously now and grow well

The tiny white starfish is an asterina, which is often considered a pest. So far they haven't done anything bad in my tank so I'm not worried, and haven't eaten any zoas​

While you can definitely use a freshwater light to grow macroalgae and some tougher corals like mushrooms, I noticed a big improvement in all my soft corals in their form, size, fluffiness, colour and growth since changing lights, so if you want to try some corals easily then a marine light is the way to go. Soft corals and macroalgae go together really well, and are now thriving together in my tank.

One of the few particularities with macroalgae marine tanks is that you need a good amount of ferts in the water at all times, and I massively underestimated how much nitrate and phosphate my ever-growing mass of macroalgae would need, plus I was being lazy and didn't monitor it much. Thus, DINOS, which looks like ugly brown snot covered in air bubbles all over everything. I read about these guys online and apparently the're the scourge of tanks and take months and months to fix, so I set about changing all sorts in a semi-panic. I lowered the light duration and strength, installed UV (actually needed this anyway for my fish), massively upped my ferts so nitrate is between 20ppm and 40ppm, dosed a bottle of Dr Tim's marine bacteria, and dosed extra phytoplankton and copepods. Dinos thrive in a highlight (they're photosynthetic) low-nutrient environment, where they outcompete other microorganisms and disturb the balance of the tank, often killing off beneficial bacteria and other microorganisms as their population booms, which is why I dosed a whole range of microorganisms. The type of dinos I had disintegrate their larger snotty structures at night and then reform in the morning growing over the day, so I used the UV to kill them when they were free floating at night. I began to dose a lot of ferts and feed heavily (in marine feeding heavily is encouraged), so that everything else could compete and get the dinos back in place. Dinos are an essential part of the marine ecosystem, but you have to keep them in line. Finally, I syphoned out the dinos through a sieve of filter floss before the lights went off every other evening for 2 weeks when they were at their height, which seemed to really help kick them back after a few days. In marine aquariums there are loads of pests and problems, but so far with 3 weeks of harassment they seem to go away, and that's what happened here too. Dinos can kill creatures, but I luckily got away with it and nothing died from dinos in my tank.

Macroalgae tanks seem to have different needs, benefits and problems from 99% of other marine tanks which are coral-focused (particularly small polyp stony or SPS corals), so it can be hard to get good advice on how to deal with any problems that come up. So far though, my tank has shown loads of resilience and has been much easier than I thought because of my freshwater aquarium knowledge (mostly learnt here on UKAPS!). If you're interested I really recommend trying, the freshwater knowledge you already have will serve you very well with a macroalgae-based tank. Something which has surprised me is that I don't need to do water changes weekly, and quite easily get away with about 30% every 3-4 weeks (I guess the stability of saltwater, thick macroalgae, and big cleanup crew helps), which makes it balance out with freshwater for ease. Yes, the saltwater needs to be mixed up or bought, but since it's not a large amount every week it's not too bad at all. The beauty of the creatures is so enormous that I am very happy to do it!

So... creatures!!! CREATURES. Oh my, the creatures. The creatures of the sea are simply wonderful. They possess a magic, complexity and amusing intelligence which has bewitched me and totally lured me away from freshwater. I have to admit, I have fully indulged and been buying fabulous small creatures left right and centre, but I did have a very stressful Autumn so it was totally necessary! You know how it is... life gives you lemons, so you go and buy a creature or two to make yourself feel better about it before making some lemonade.

I actually didn't buy any fish until late November, because I needed a lid (still do, but it's been ordered now!). So I started by adding inverts starting with some more shrimps.. a second blood shrimp, and a pair of cleaner shrimp. These shrimp are FABULOUS. Many times larger cherry shrimps, super colourful and peaceful with a sculptural beauty. Each acts differently, with the cleaner shrimp fluttering about the tank hanging upside down off things like little fairies, the chunkier blood shrimp hanging out of large caves, darting out like furious wasps when I feed, and the peppermint shrimp very much like amanos constantly coming in and stealing from the rest. They all like to nibble from my hand, and are surprisingly tame. You could easily have a shrimp-only tank in marine and be very satisfied.

This peppermint shrimp I had already, but here's a nice pic of it anyway.​

As I want this tank to have a rockpool vibe, I really needed some more crabs. Disappointingly, it turns out that most crabs are d*cks, so if you want to keep small fish and other inverts, you can only keep tiny funny little crabs. I have 10 tiny red/orange leg hermit crabs which generally get along, half of which have changed into shells I've added into the tank, each time I feel honoured that they've picked something I left them, and I now keep a constant eye on etsy for appropriate small shells. They don't get bigger than 2cm each so great for small tanks too. They have killed one or two small snails, but luckily my snails are breeding so it's all good, and now I've added extra shells it seems to have stopped.

Tonight the hermit crabs didn't want to come out so I couldn't photograph any, I'll share some pics of them next time with their variety of shells.

I've also added a pom pom crab, which holds tiny anemones in its claws for feeding and defence, and it can cultivate them if they lose one or if another pom pom crab needs one. It waves its pom poms about hypnotically, it’s really a delight even if I only see it for about a minute a day. It doesn't get bigger than an inch, it’s astonishing how beautiful such a tiny creature can be.

The last "crab" I bought is my first casualty in the tank so far, a crinoid squat lobster. It seemed to moult on the first day, and I haven't seen it since. Part of me wonders if the moult was the actual crab, but it looked hollow and only a few hours after adding. There is a possibility that it's just hiding and I'll find it one day breaking down the tank, but I somehow doubt it. A big shame, it was very hairy and threatened me with its pincers in a charming crabby way.

I also now have a selection of feather duster worms. I feed the tank 2x a week with phytoplankton and 1x a week with reef roids ( a kind of fine coral and filter feeder food) to feed them. They're extremely beautiful and weird, and I hope to keep more of them. As an ex fashion designer their feathers remind me so much of ostrich feather trim that I find them completely irresistible. I would love to have over 20 in a proper group one day, but for now I'm waiting to see how this first lot do and if I can keep them going long term. The one on the right dropped it's feathers, but now is regrowing them, so my hope is to get the feathers really big again which means they’re well fed.

Finally... this is a good one... I have a lettuce sea slug. This sea slug is the only sort of slug we can really keep in a tank, because it isn't poisonous like other sea slugs and nudibranchs (this isn't a nudibranch but they do look similar and it's often mistaken as one). Saying that, when they went in the tank they did exude a large amount of slime which was quite a surprise, apparently it tastes really bad too (I didn't try it). The lettuce sea slugs eat macro and microalgae including caulerpa, they suck out the chloroplasts and then use them to photosynthesis. They're also very frilly and pretty. I got two for £10, with one only lasting a week before disappearing, but the second is going strong. They only live about 6 months and I bought quite large ones so I didn’t expect them to last that long, but they have been known to breed in aquariums which is what I would love, they are hermaphrodites so it's very possible that the remaining one has eggs.

WAIT! I forgot my recent Christmas invert purchase. So finally.... this is a good one.... I got a red starfish. Starfish are notoriously hard to keep in aquariums, so it is a bit of a gamble. My LFS is really good for marine though, and the owner of the shop told me he had been keeping this particular type (I think a type of echinaster) for a few years in his own tanks, and seeing mine and the mature rock in it he thought it would do well. The difficulty with starfish is that it's not entirely known what they eat, but this type apparently eats detritus, microalgae and.... sponges. And luckily, I have sponges! I have yellow ball sponges all over the tank, as well as white sponge underneath all the rocks. The starfish has already enjoyed dissolving and eating some of the yellow ball sponges in the front (Patrick eats Spongebob pictured below), and I've got a connection where I can get more photosynthetic sponges locally too in case it manages to eat everything in the tank, so fingers crossed this starfish does well long term. It's such a strange alien creature, I love it.

Ok ok I think that's all the inverts for now. It's time for .... fish. Beautiful, beautiful fish. As I didn't have a lid, I limited myself to fish which probably wouldn't jump (and covered all the corners, then added a full plastic and tape cover so I could get more fish). I've got a lid coming in January, custom made, looking forward to getting rid of the plastic sheet and tape. I photographed the fish while feeding them some frozen copepods, they don’t have a spotty disease!

The first fish I got for the tank was a possum wrasse, an extremely charming pale pink fish which seems to hover about rather than swim. The wrasse's eyes each move independently like a chameleon, it has a real intelligence to it. It's quite shy fish, but as time goes on I see it more and more., and actually while feeding tonight it was out loads! This fish loves to hunt for copepods, but it also eats frozen food. It doesn't seem to have a particular territory, and spends most of its time in and around the rocks.

Possum wrasse and yellow polyps​

The second fish I got was a funny little thing ... a tiny green clown goby for £10, about the size of a pygmy cory. I didn't really expect to see it much, but now after a few weeks I see it every day, zipping about for approx 3 seconds. It camouflages amazingly well with the Caulerpa racemosa blobby algae. I really like keeping marine fish which camouflage with different parts of the tank, sometimes they're invisible and sometimes they really stand out. To me it makes them look like they belong in this little ecosystem I've built.

This guy is REALLY hard to photograph, it can disappear into the algae in a split second. Hopefully becomes less shy when less smol​

The third - sixth fish I bought are very special. I'd seen these dragonface pipefish in the shop before in a cute pile together and @Courtneybst tried to convince me to buy them, but they apparently weren't eating frozen food then and I worried about having enough copepods for them. After that, I looked them up, and discovered that they're one of the easiest pipefish to keep. 2 weeks later I was back in the LFS, not intending to get them, but they showed me that the pipefish were all now eating frozen. So I got all 4 with a good deal. There aren't that many small marine fish which like to live in groups in harmony, and these fish are really special. For the first week they didn't move or eat that much, but after that they began to hunt and climb all over the tank for food and sucking up loads of frozen food, it was a really heartening transformation. They can swim, but not that well so they slither around like magically little sea snakes. These are my favourite fish so far, they are so unusual and peaceful, and I sort of hope they might breed one day. Like chameleons they can change colour and pattern to match, so they are white on the sand, but mottled with orange dots on the rocks. I feed them (and everything else) a mix of frozen copepods, lobster eggs and rotifers 2-4x a day.

​

Just before Christmas (a dangerous time for my wallet at the LFS), I decided I really wanted a tailspot blenny, which the LFS had in stock. I made a temporary lid as I think blennies are more likely to jump than any of my other fish, and then went to the LFS, where the owner showed me a fabulous sailfin blenny I'd never seen before, which only gets to 5cm. He said that blennies can live together in a medium-large tank, but only if they're all added together. I do have a barnacle blenny already, but it's very small so apparently not an issue. So along with the tailspot, I also bought the sailfin blenny and a midas blenny (I just couldn't resist its comically cute face). The blennies have added a lot of attitude and personality, and often bicker with each other (they don't hurt each other though) and show off. Really comical little creatures, and it's funny to see that the barnacle blenny I thought would be too small also fiercely and successfully defends his space from the midas and tailspot which are 6x the size. They all look quite different and have different niches (sailfin on the sand, tailspot on the rocks in the middle amongst corals, midas in a cave + swims midwater, barnacle in his hole high up on a rock) so fingers crossed it works long term.

Don't worry about the white on the fins, it's just fish food
​

With this I'm quite close to fully stocked in inverts and fish. Stocking this tank I've been paying attention to territories and which parts of the tank are most in use, and a lot of space is taken up now. I also pay attention to what the fish eat, and have tried to avoid keeping too many fish which hunt for copepods ( these are my favourite type of marine fish and I wish I could keep more), I'm going to try some outdoor copepod cultures this spring. I am thinking of trying to find a school of Pseudomugil cyanodorsalis, which is a small rainbowfish that can live happily in the sea. We'll see, there are so many gorgeous creatures, but the tank is very luscious and fabulous now and I want to keep that balance right.

OK I think we're up to date! Some other time I'll show you guys more of my corals and other strange creatures which have popped up in the tank

 

[Courtneybst]

It's looking great so far!

 

[mort]

Beautiful. The Stigmatura blennies are one of my favourites.

Just a slight word of warning, from experience, the sailfin blennies have really big gobs and can be quite naughty with small fish. I remember one killing one of my alleni damsels (admittedly by mistake I think, went for a piece of food and got a damsel by mistake) and they definitely predate on cleaner gobies and the like (not surprising since they come from the same place). I don't think you will find it document anywhere but it's definitely a thing as I have seen it and know others who had the same experience. So I wouldn't add cleaner gobies or any of the other small evoita, trimma, etc ones.

Pom pom crabs are pretty easy to breed (for marines) if you ever want a project. They won't have the pom poms but they are funny and make substitutes. I once had some use aiptasia, some green star polyps and a rather annoyed zoa eating nudibranch.

 

[mort]

Ps, those red starfish always used to be a linckia sp (I dont think the nomenclature has changed for them like it has for so many other marine creatures lately). Linckia are the easier ones to keep and can live many years assuming they have been cared for along the chain.

 

[shangman]

It's looking great so far!

Thanks for providing the impetus to do it - your tank is so nice I had to have one for myself.

Beautiful. The Stigmatura blennies are one of my favourites.

Just a slight word of warning, from experience, the sailfin blennies have really big gobs and can be quite naughty with small fish. I remember one killing one of my alleni damsels (admittedly by mistake I think, went for a piece of food and got a damsel by mistake) and they definitely predate on cleaner gobies and the like (not surprising since they come from the same place). I don't think you will find it document anywhere but it's definitely a thing as I have seen it and know others who had the same experience. So I wouldn't add cleaner gobies or any of the other small evoita, trimma, etc ones.

Pom pom crabs are pretty easy to breed (for marines) if you ever want a project. They won't have the pom poms but they are funny and make substitutes. I once had some use aiptasia, some green star polyps and a rather annoyed zoa eating nudibranch.

Thanks! I had to keep a tailspot blenny, it's such a funny and beautiful fish, such a good face and excellent entertainment. The blennies have all brought more fun to the tank, they have so much personality, and my wrasse comes out much more now they're around too.

Wow I didn't know that about the sailfins, thanks for the heads up. Just googled it and found someone else say one ate their cleaner goby! I was sort of planning on getting some trimma gobies - was hoping to go to TMC at some point with a friend so I could get a group for a good price, but maybe that's best to miss. Luckily there are plenty of other lovely fish. The sailfin is definitely the rudest of the blennies and gets a bit upset that the shrimps refuse to be bullied or move out of the way for him, at the moment he's as small as the barnacle blenny so it's no problem but if he got really big I can imagine him doing some damage cos your right, his gob is v big for his size! Hopefully the tiny green clown goby gets bigger at the same rate so he isn't a delicious snack, although I think I heard they taste very bad.

That's very cool about pompoms...when I got my first one it had eggs, I'll look it up as I planned to get one or two more anyway. I do like a little breeding project, I was sort of hpoing the seahorses might breed one day. The pompom crabs very very pretty, and I love their pompoms and that they can use alternatives, so cool to see creatures using tools and doing other fascinating complex behaviour in the tank.

Ps, those red starfish always used to be a linckia sp (I dont think the nomenclature has changed for them like it has for so many other marine creatures lately). Linckia are the easier ones to keep and can live many years assuming they have been cared for along the chain.

Ah perfect, thank you for the ID. It's interesting and slightly worrying online how mixed all the experience is with starfish, I think there must be many species which look similar and only a few are appropriate. Luckily with mine eating the sponges in the tank I'm thinking it is a good one and can be looked after, my only worry is that it might eat them all before they can regrow. Luckily I've already been given some other sponge from the LFS that grows randomly in their tanks and they'll be happy to give me some more, and have now befriended my local museum who chuck loads of photosynthetic sponge off the back of their marine tanks regularly so I'm hoping the starfish likes these sponges too! It's a fascinating creature, it moves surprisingly quickly.

 

[Tim Harrison]

An amazing journal @shangman. Great images and a great read too. I know you've mentioned filtration, wavemakers, and lighting in a few places, but can you sum up all the equipment used, along with any additional equipment you think might make life easier for anyone (me for instance) thinking of following in your footsteps. Thanks