Adaptation - Learning to reef with 60L in a 2ft tank

[rasputin]

Hi all,
This thread is to say thanks to those whose threads I have lurked.
Also to humble myself through some constructive criticism, if you would care to oblige.

I have had this tank running for 6 weeks or so now.



System Objectives: Mixed reef, to experiment with reefing and expand my aquarium experience from freshwater.
A way for me to learn about the lights, flow, chemistry and inhabitants!
System Type: Mixed Reef mostly SPS but with some diversity. Low fish stocking levels intended. i.e watchman goby and firefish.
Strike up Date: September 2013
Display Tank: 24" x 12" x 16", approx 80L total volume, 55-60L actual water volume accounting for LR, sandbed. Glass lid (may switch to flyscreen)
Display Lighting: 2x55w Power Compacts (currently 10k/6k, 10k/actinic), wishing to run 2x24 t5ho actinics and use the PCs for white light only.
1x Moonlight (follows phases of moon, always on)
1x Night viewing blue light (steady level, switch on only when desired)
Stand: Custom, old bed frame. Tank is built into a two-tier stand put together by a handy mate of mine. Enclosed canopy with hinge and open back.


Support systems:
System Water: LFS RO with Red Sea Coral Pro Salt, change 5-10% every week, monitoring levels and changing as needed throughout week at the moment.
Substrate: Seachem Tidal 1.5-2 bags. Approx 8KG base rock, 6KG live rock in first month.
Water circulation: Aquaclear AC50 Powerhead (10w), Resun waver 2000 (3w), powerhead to be replaced with Jebao WP-25 on order.
Once a chiller is installed (haliea 1/15hp most likely) it will utilise an eheim compact 300 pump, possibly doing away with the resun waver.
Evaporation Top Up: Manual top-up at the moment, if I install the DOC 9004 skimmer I will hook up an osmolator nano.

Chemical Support:
Redsea Coralline Gro
Seachem Amino Acid/Vitamin supplement

Stock List: (mostly lucky dip LR hitchikers for now)
Coral:
1x Acro. Millepora (Peach/Pink, great polyp extension, white base when bought, will watch for changes)
1x Pachyseris sp. possibly speciosa.

1x Montipora (or turbinari?) hitch-hiker (currently pale tan/pink)
1x Acro/Porite/? hitch-hiker (currently sloughing off old whitish layer under flow, quite brown underneath atm)
1x Mushroom hitch-hiker (small, purple with lighter reddish dots)
1x Small Zooanthid colony hitch-hikers (Red/Purple with lurid green middle)
Various isolated hitch-hikers incl. octocorals, polyps, macroalgae etc.

Invertebrate:
1x Nassarius (or stromb?) snail hitchiker (yellow/orange pigment on foot, proboscis and carapace, green antennae and mouth)
1x Mystery invertebrate (likely pistol shrimp)
?x Baby snail hitchikers, hatchlings

The story/camera phone pictures:

The 60lx30wx40h plain glass tank had eggcrate covering the bottom, with approx 8Kg base rock glued into place in a configuration that worked, in my mind, to balance aesthetics, practicality and flow. I added 2 inches of sand or so and added water.

Then I got weird with it all.
This scape was partially buried in another 1.5 inches of sand, to give the impression of a previously fallen reef while building stability, biological habitat and interesting burrow opportunities for inhabitants. The result was also some live rock being buried and the sand has been quickly colonised with abundant life, the shifting of sand around the tank no issue as certain forms emerge and disappear over time/shrimp-related activities/waterchanges




I added some fantastic uncured live rock near the beginning of the cycle (Thanks Crystal Palace!), to really kick things into gear. Once the initial large lot of live rock died back and the water chemistry balanced out, I added a smaller amount of LR and tested, noticing no dramatic spikes and a huge hitchiker survival rate.
I kept adding small rubble pieces over time whenever I went back to the LFS for RO water.





During these first 6 weeks I tried to spent my time on freshwater tanks to keep my itchy, idle hands out of the tank as much as possible to let things settle, but kept a keen eye on the smaller life and overall functioning of my tank. Fascinating to watch the various tiny, easily unnoticed tank populations do their thing, and beneficial to be tracking their development along with the various interesting aspects of life on the live rock.















Of course, I couldn't REALLY help myself, I used this time to continue to rearrange the new live rock/scape to my liking as can be seen throughout the pictures.


The scape may look dense but circulation and flow throughout is good and there are plenty of little tunnels, nooks and crannies, while providing a range of height/flow options for coral placement.



I have a happy little snail, Slurms McKenzie, who started off yellow and is getting paler with more patterning. Came in with the second lot of uncured LR.






Somewhere up the back seems to live a very shy invertebrate friend. It is trigger happy (popping/clicking away in ones or twos), especially when Slurms is hoovering around the back of the tank.
If it turned out to be a mantis shrimp I would love and nurture it, but would likely not add any other inhabitants. I expect that it is a pistol shrimp who may appreciate a goby companion, luckily that animal pair is something I hoped to get anyway... and for whom I gave my hardscape lots of hidey holes.
Later, a firefish would be great, but I think other than that I will allow the tank to focus on SPS corals and encouraging the micro life.





Currently there is a peach/pink acro millepora in the tank, for whom it may be an early addition, but after watching the life on my LR thriving (including hitch-hiking corals making big comebacks), I felt confident enough to add. I monitor (Enjoy!) my tank very often and closely, and am maintaining small water changes often with red sea salts. The tank is 'feeding' off biofilm, and one or two marine pellets a day.

There is a skimmer waiting to be used if and when I determine the appropriateness for it, and a 1/15hp chiller will be bought before long, but currently the temperature is stable within 1.5degrees a day.





More to follow, come back later if you want to see what the LFS calls a 'grooved monti', and seems to be a Pachyseris (speciosa?) with a curious appetite.
Thanks for visiting

[rasputin]

Pachyseris added. Was mesmerised, still am.




also here are some bubbles pearling off the algae.


I will endeavour to clear up the night shots, and appreciate feedback on the tank and what you'd like to see/know.

[rasputin]

Things are coming along nicely.
Temps have been great thanks to the weather, still waiting on funds for the chiller.
Waiting for delivery of wp-25 powerhead

Added three acros (one a millepora, one with an awesome little white/blue acro crab), I also couldn't resist another rescue, chalice from the live rock tank at the LFS, but that is in the 20litre pico tank I just set up

Continuing with no skimmer, 10% water changes at a time. Transitioning to red sea coral pro from standard red sea salt.
Feeding frozen rotifer, spirulina brine shrimp, pellets in rotation.

Looking to add 2x24w t5 actinic bulbs, and change the power compact lights to 1x 55w 10k/plant bulb all day, 1x 55w 17,000k midday sun. (this will have to wait until I can a) modify the stand to allow me to slide the light out or b) wrangle the light out the top after moving the freshwater tank.

See you in the pico comp as well, hope to see some interesting methods

[kodez]

Why no skimmer?
Tank coming along well mate, good work

[rasputin]

Yay a reply! Thanks Kodez, I'll update pictures today

To allow the development of pods etc, save space and keep things simple. It may also help me learn why skimmers are used.

I have one ready to go, but using the water change methodology in the meantime.

[rasputin]

Belated pictures:

My snail is excessively house-proud, stopping at nothing to singlehandedly clear up the tank. Perhaps less 'Slurms' and more Wall-E. He takes little time off to party.

Although stopping to groom himself is always an option.




I picked up three lovely corals from my usual LFS, one has a crab companion so I've placed it right up where I can enjoy his activities.






Also yesterday, after deciding to visit the sister shop of my usual LFS, I walked away with a bag of rescue missions and an hours worth of time spent soaking up information and looking at pretty corals. Not to mention a lot of researching to do. Pics to come!

[snue]

Hey there I found your TJ from your signature, the wp-25 shouldnt take too long to arrive mine took about a week and theyre awesome btw. Oh and my acropora has 2 crabs living in it, i spotted them while staring at the acroporas for about 10minutes lmao theyre amazing! love them, Im glad I never coral dipped them because they wouldve died. They dont like being looked at though and will try hide unless im very still. what chiller were you eying up ? i just pulled the trigger on a hailea 150a (a bit oversized) my tank is about 60-80litres also. It seems you have quite a lot of live rock in there, I found with my old tank which had a similar aquascape was that detritus would build up underneath the liverock and in the sand. And some areas of the sandbed were very hard to get to with that type of layout especially once corals become established,. In the end my tank succumb to algae lol. Im no expert though but this time around Im trying to keep liverock minimal and all areas of the tank accessible for thorough cleaning and im hoping this will help control no3 and po4. How much do they charge you for the RO water. definately recommend you get your own unit theyre so handy, especially in emergencies, and definately go with one that has all the bells and whistles because youll end up slowly adding them anyway and in the end could cost you nearly double if you brought all the accessories seperately.. TDS, Pressure Guage, See Through Canisters, Pressure pump, etc.

[rasputin]

Hey there I found your TJ from your signature, the wp-25 shouldnt take too long to arrive mine took about a week and theyre awesome btw. Oh and my acropora has 2 crabs living in it, i spotted them while staring at the acroporas for about 10minutes lmao theyre amazing! love them, Im glad I never coral dipped them because they wouldve died. They dont like being looked at though and will try hide unless im very still. what chiller were you eying up ? i just pulled the trigger on a hailea 150a (a bit oversized) my tank is about 60-80litres also.

Thanks for your interest

I was looking at Hailea chillers but got talked around towards a teco tr-5...but while saving for it, I got a deal on a used second hand HC-100a so that will do Hooking it up after the meet tomorrow. That will be a great help for stability, and make my tank almost ready for fish

Just waiting on the wp-25 still so that I can shuffle powerheads etc around and set up the pico tank properly.

So many tiny shrimps in the tank (variety of coloured macropods), acro crab just shed a layer and seems to be going well.

I am rigging up a Tunze nano osmolator in a HOB 4L refugium for automated top up / analogue dosing.

Still some algae going on but it isn't spreading much, even with the regular feedings. Macro algae getting nicely established.

It seems you have quite a lot of live rock in there, I found with my old tank which had a similar aquascape was that detritus would build up underneath the liverock and in the sand. And some areas of the sandbed were very hard to get to with that type of layout especially once corals become established,. In the end my tank succumb to algae lol. Im no expert though but this time around Im trying to keep liverock minimal and all areas of the tank accessible for thorough cleaning and im hoping this will help control no3 and po4.

Yeah I recognise that I won't be able to reach into those areas, I will attempt to use a powerhead to clear out low lying areas periodically. It will be interesting to see how quickly the tank builds up levels of detritus etc. Hopefully it will be maintained to some degree by the critters within.

How much do they charge you for the RO water. definately recommend you get your own unit theyre so handy, especially in emergencies, and definately go with one that has all the bells and whistles because youll end up slowly adding them anyway and in the end could cost you nearly double if you brought all the accessories seperately.. TDS, Pressure Guage, See Through Canisters, Pressure pump, etc.

$12 for 35 litres, so yeah depending on the frequency of changes it could pay for itself quickly enough.

[rasputin]

So I picked up a hc-100a chiller (to be connected soon) from wiggly1 (sorry to hear about your tank troubles!) at the MASS meet.
At the meeting I also obtained a whole bunch of new frags, which has proven to be a double edged sword.
The sheer biomass added thanks to the generosity of MASS members has rocked my young, low-tech tank pretty hard.

I'm experiencing a thick bacterial bloom, with visibility reduced to 9inches or so. Have plugged in a small uv filter, trying to lower the temperature (was up to 29 from usual 27.5) and have taken the lid off to increase oxygenation. Running lights on medium.
The wavemaker is two weeks late arriving...I'm using extra powerheads now but it's absence has certainly not helped.

Two frags and one pre-existing acro lost, all others seem ok for now. Still lots of happy invertebrate and scavenging life moving about.
The sun corals, montipora and pachyseris seem unaffected. My guess is that a lot of bacteria and dead tissue was added in too short a time and led to a low oxygen, high dissolved organics situation in the tank; the short-lived, fast reproducting acro infecting bacteria flooding the water column

My quarantine tank was stocked to capacity rather quickly and the main tank took all the overflow. No issues with that Q tank. Given the nature of the fragging and its long journey back to my house in the car, I should have been more careful and planned ahead...but only expected to bring back 3 frags not 14 or so!

Regardless, I hope to come out of this having learnt a direct lesson about rtn, frags, and volatility of tanks in the early stages.
The ideal result will be to hook the chiller up and take a nice stable easy approach from here on in. And when ready add my fish!

[rasputin]

Changed 33% of water three times over the last two days.
The chiller is now hooked up and running well, temp gets pulled back down from 27 to 26 in 8 minutes or so. At all other times it is silent. Will fit an enductor onto the outlet hose end.

Much clearer, full polyp extension on the duncan and sun coral frags, monti and xenia frags ok, seems to just have been the acropora sp. that were wiped out. Which is sad but to be expected. No word on whether the hitchhiker shrimp and acro crab survived but likely not A shame that I got carried away and crashed the tank. I should not have moved forward with so many un-quarantined new frags without the temperature controlled and flow sorted out throughout the tank. Still, lessons learnt and to be remembered.

A good result is that much of the algae on the live rock has died back.