Custom AIO 40 Breeder

kchristensen8064

kchristensen8064

Sting ray
M.A.S.C Club Member
#41
#41
I used to have a blue spot! I loved that fish. Do you have a good lid for your tank? I had a hell of a time keeping mine in. He jumped more times than I can count. I would find him in the overflow and down in the sump all the time too. That's ultimately what got him. He jumped out of the sump and I found him dried up down there. I've heard a lot about how they prefer cooler temps, like lower 70's, and in a warmer reef tank that might be the reason for the jumping, trying to get away from a tank that's too warm.
 
N

NDaquarist

Cleaner Shrimp
#43
#43
kchristensen8064 said:
I used to have a blue spot! I loved that fish. Do you have a good lid for your tank? I had a hell of a time keeping mine in. He jumped more times than I can count. I would find him in the overflow and down in the sump all the time too. That's ultimately what got him. He jumped out of the sump and I found him dried up down there. I've heard a lot about how they prefer cooler temps, like lower 70's, and in a warmer reef tank that might be the reason for the jumping, trying to get away from a tank that's too warm.
Click to expand...
They are awesome! I do, it's an acrylic lid that's angled for water run off, the front opening is covered in window screen to prevent any jumping.

That's interesting, I've never looked I to their native range, I know they're found around Mexico but I never looked at water temperatures. So far it seems to be doing great, started eating 6hrs out of the bag and has continued to chow down to this day. Luckily with the AIO system and lids it won't be able to go through the overflow or hop chambers. I'll keep an eye on the health though, thanks for the info!
 
N

NDaquarist

Cleaner Shrimp
#45
#45
Things continue to do well im the aquarium. My jawfish managed to either induce a bacterial bloom or put so much particulate in the water column I couldn't tell the difference. I ended up adding a UV serializer for a day and have filter floss running to clear things up. It's finally getting back to normal!

Before
View attachment 16908

After
View attachment 16907

I also got to add a few new corals thanks to a friend! They really make the tank pop in my opinion.

Green trumpet (Caulastrea furcata)
View attachment 16902

Strawberry shortcake (Acropora sp.)
View attachment 16901

Red chalice (Echinophyllia sp.)
View attachment 16910

I've also seen quite a bit of growth and coloration changes in some of the corals I've had for a while.

(Bottom left and right side have fully grown onto the LR)
View attachment 16904

Dragon soul continues to change colors
View attachment 16903

A few good green banded goby shots. These guys have really started to settle in and become active all over the aquarium. I have a trio, and I highly recommend them to anyone who enjoys some smaller fish in the aquarium.

View attachment 16906

View attachment 16905

Finally, the seagrass bed is looking phenomenal. I'm seeing growth daily on leaves. But more importantly the sandbed continues to mature. The below pictures show how quickly sand bed colonization occurs when adding mature sand (in this case IPSF wondermud).

Aprill 11 (left) May 7 (right)
View attachment 16909
 
N

NDaquarist

Cleaner Shrimp
#46
#46
As more corals have been added over the past few months I have decided to resurrect an old feeding technique that I used to use on the 180 gallon I had about 10 years ago.

What I did then was use a 5 gallon bucket to hatch brine shrimp nauplii, after hatching I gut loaded them with phytoplankton and selcon to increase their nutritional value and fed them after 36-40hrs. This worked extremely well and I saw increased growth and better coloration from all the corals I had at the time (Acropora sp., Montipora capricornia, sarcophyton, Pseudopterogorgia sp., Etc.).

This time however my aquarium is much smaller so I needed a different way to hatch artemia. After checking the brine shrimp direct website (I've ordered from them in the past) I found a new feeder (new to me) that looked extremely easy to use, and claimed to almost eliminated having to deal with eggs! It sounded like a great investment to me so went ahead and got it. It also came with artemia eggs as well (https://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/hatchery-dish).

Here are a few shots of the dish. Having the ability to simply scoop nauplii up and transfer them to a different container for gut loading is absolutely amazing!




Inner circle has a small scoop with an attached sieve at the bottom.



Extremely easy to pick up and move to the gut loading container!






I've been able to get napulii for about 2 days. After gut loading each batch I fed them to the aquarium at dusk or after lights out. Coral polyp extension was great, and the firefish/green barred gobies loved the little snack when I fed at dusk. I would highly recommend this feeding for anyone who keeps corals! The benefits far outweigh the small input of time/effort to hatch and gut load the artemia nauplii. Plus this can help supplement normal feedinga for any finicky or shy eaters.

I used about 1/2 of a scoop for the two days of feeding. This can be altered by tank size and coral density, I'll continue to monitor how much I add as coral density/growth increases.
 
N

NDaquarist

Cleaner Shrimp
#47
#47
I've been slacking on updates for a while so I figure I would go ahead and add a pretty big update.
I've had a few ups and downs. Unfortunately I lost my clam and the blue spotted jawfish . The clam was my fault, the jawfish had buried it one day and I went to move it not realizing it had attached a small portion of it's foot onto a rock. I damaged the base and it parishes a few weeks later. The blue spotted jawfish was a trooper I think it ended up with a bacterial infection but I wasn't able to get it cured.

Sorry if there are too many pictures :p

Things are continuing to grow, the most recent chalice that I got is completely recovered from the fragging it went through.

Left to right
May 5th -> May 19th -> July 5th
View attachment 17189

This red and blue favia from wwc is growing at an insanely fast pace. Sorry for the Rainford's goby in the last picture, he just wouldn't let me take a picture, but you can see how much of the rock it has covered!

Left to right
May 14th -> June 14th -> July 5th
View attachment 17188

Bizzaro cyphastrea
Left to right
June 17th -> July 5th
View attachment 17190



It's also interesting to watch the different phases of the tank. I started with the fleshy algae phase like most people, then moved to the coraline phase, and now i'm starting to have a pineapple sponge explosion! I noticed last week how many were hanging around and now this week it seem like they've almost doubled (I'm guessing they haven't truly doubled in population, I've just been paying more attention).







Gold rush Pectinia sp. (named by someone who has it locally).



Acropora echinata (ORA Hawkins echinata). Just after getting this one so I photo acclimation it on the sandbed, I didn't want any sediment to rest on it so I propped it up on frag plugs.



Placed in its final spot





Mango montipora
 
N

NDaquarist

Cleaner Shrimp
#48
#48
This firefish would not stop photo bombing my coral pictures...I thought I'd make it happy and post this picture


This little guy was pretty beat up at the fish store. I couldn't help myself and decided I'd bring it home and see if I could nurse it back to health.


This guy is such a chunk, I'm not sure what else he found to eat in the tank but he is almost always this big.




The seagrass bed is starting to take off too, you can see the leaves are so long they're curling at the top of the water!
 
N

NDaquarist

Cleaner Shrimp
#49
#49
Well I had some fun taking pictures today. The tank is doing wonderfully and I'm more and more excited to watch it grow out.

I've been able to add a few new corals too!

Turbinaria sp.




Goniopora sp.











































Sooo many new heads, each original head has at least 6 new heads coming off of it!







Tye Dye Acanthastrea sp.









And finally a FTS!


 
kchristensen8064

kchristensen8064

Sting ray
M.A.S.C Club Member
#50
#50
I have a package of brine eggs if you are interested. I tried doing the brine feedings and it's just way more of a time investment than I'm able to make right now.
 
MuralReef

MuralReef

Administrator
Staff member
M.A.S.C Club Member
M.A.S.C. B.O.D.
MASC Vice-President
#53
#53
Looks really good!


Sent from my iPhone using MASC - Marine Aquarium Society of Colorado
 
flagg37

flagg37

Anthias
M.A.S.C Club Member
#54
#54
Are the sponges a problem for you? I’ve heard they use silica to build their bodies. Have you had an ICP test done lately?
 
N

NDaquarist

Cleaner Shrimp
#55
#55
SkyShark said:
Great updates. I’m going to check out that brine shrimp hatching disc.
Click to expand...
I highly recommend it, it's absolutely worth the money!

flagg37 said:
Are the sponges a problem for you? I’ve heard they use silica to build their bodies. Have you had an ICP test done lately?
Click to expand...
Nope, they haven't been problematic at all. I'm not sure what they use to build their spicules to be honest, I'm sure silica is part of that. I alsohalso not done an ICP test.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top