Waldo Nell's Voice

I have not posted any pictures of my reef aquarium in a long time, so here goes:

I have removed some mushrooms, the leather coral and some zoanthids from this tank, and placed them in the 480g. They were originally purchased with the big tank in mind. I had some bad chemical warfare with all those softies and stonies mixed - never again. I'd rather have a bit barren looking tank (like above) but no warfare between the different species, than an overcrowded war zone.

Now to get rid of that damn Bryopsis...

Seems I like consolidating things... I have just merged my reef blog with my main blog - I just hate all these billions of small sites floating around.

I'd much rather have one place where I can blog about everything and people can filter based on the categories they are interested in.

Hope this works better for everyone.

I have two brilliant little books on Marine Invertebrates and Marine Fish - one by Shimek, the other by Scott W. Michael. Now usually advise is something you take with a grain of salt since in the reef hobby, the only two certainties are

"The faster you go the worse things will get"

and

"Nothing else is certain"

However, those two books have never been wrong. So many times I thought I needed my cup of salt, but today I realised I need to start listen to what is written in there.

For starters, my beautiful sun coral was healthy for many months in direct lighting - something the book suggested is not good not due to intolerance, but due to competition with algae. I ignored this.

As you can see on the right, the coral was very healthy when I just acquired it. However that proved to be naive since after about 3 months the macro algae started getting a hold on it.

A recent picture shows the result of neglect... I had the coral directly under bright lighting the whole time, and even though I have barely detectable Phosphate and Nitrate levels, once the macro algae gets a hold it does not let go.

For now I have attached it sideways to a piece of LR so hopefully there will be less direct light, hence hoping to starve the algae.

There are many other similar incidents. Below follows a couple:

1. Purple Tangs are extremely aggressive and it is NOT a good idea to keep similarly shaped tangs in a smallish (< 300g) tank.
2. Green Brittle Stars are the most ferocious invert predators out there. But they are also incredibly cool.
3. Ribbon eels are incredibly difficult to get to feed.
4. Blue Linka Starfish are also difficult to keep.

I have been playing a bit with my microscope and under 4x, 10x and 40x objectives I managed to capture these pictures of various macro algae. Try to identify them... (PS Go to my reef gallery for the answers)

Algae A

Algae B

Algae C

Algae D

Algae E

Algae F

Algae G

My new bamboo shark died yesterday night. So too did my hawk fish that I sucked up when I siphoned my tank for the hypo treatment. This is very depressing. The whole reason I ordered the bigger tank was for the shark. To help keep the nitrates down. I guess we learn the hard way. Just because your aquarium is 6 months+ old does not mean you can add fish more quickly.

Check out my new Reef Aquarium Galleries. I will be regularly updating these galleries so be sure to visit regularly. Comment here if you have any opinions/suggestions. To access the galleries, you can always use the link at the top right of this blog.

For the first time since I got my Ribbon Eel about 2 months ago, he ate a big piece of prawn... It took a couple of minutes of persuasion, but I knew he was hungry in the way he poked the lance fish I tried to feed him with initially.

I just hope he continues to eat...

As was mentioned in the previous post, I recently upgraded my lighting. I currently have 8 x 54W T5 lights. To illustrate the difference it would make, I took a couple of photos.

First some background. The tank has glass top covers to prevent splashing of water, reduce evaporation and help keep the fish in the water. Obviously with time these glass covers get lots of salt residue on them. This reduces the amount of light reaching the water column. I never cleaned mine since I never thought about its effect on the lighting.

The 4 x 54W T5 I originally had in there consisted of 2 fittings of 2 T5’s with individual reflectors. Due to space restrictions I had to add a 4 x 54W T5 fitting - with one common reflector.

Here is a picture before I did anything:

Then I cleaned out the top glass panes:

Then I moved the two fittings to the front and back to make room for the quad:

Then I added the quad fitting, but turned off the original two fittings - so only the quad is on:

Then all 8 tubes on:

It is obvious the lighting has been increased dramatically. Oh by the way - the camera was on manual exposure so as to measure the relative effect of the lighting increase.

It is 1 month now since the move and a couple of things had happened. Firstly, I lost a couple of live stock during the immediate days following the move, as well as a couple of weeks later (I doubt it was due to the move).

I lost my Frogfish, my Leaffish and one Chromis. The Leaffish was in bad shape before the move - I think it got some kind of bacterial infection since it looked like it was molting but looking like that for 3 weeks - and refusing to eat the whole time.

The Frogfish - yeah well, I think the stress was maybe a bit too much.

And the Chromis just disappeared without a trace...

A couple of weeks later I had my Ocellaris Clownfish disappear, followed by my Purple Firefish. I think something must have either caught them or scared them to death, since they were in perfect health the day before. I caught my Purple Tang becoming belligerent towards all my other fish, so I decided it was time to move the aggressor to it’s own clan - the Aggressive FOWLR tank.

To help combat the flatworm outbreak I encountered in my FOWLR tank, I added a couple of wrasses - a Yellow Wrasse, a Coris and a Dragon Wrasse. It seems like they are keeping the population down but they do not eat the brown flatworms - only the yellow ones.

I also got a snowflake eel for the aggressive tank. I added lots of macro algae (seaweed) to that tank to make it look more colourful.

I tried my hand at a Pulsing Xenia - it looked fine for two days then melted away overnight. I have no idea why it would have died but I know I will not try another one soon.

Since I am battling high nitrates in the FOWLR tank (probably due to the lack of LR - I only have 15kg in a 400l tank), I took a ball of cheato from my main tank and placed it in the sump of the FOWLR tank, and added 2 x 24W T5 lights. Hopefully this will also help seed the pod population.

The CO2 bottle I used to have got deprecated in favour of a new Tunze CO2 system with solenoid. At least now I am automated again.

I have fixed all the wiring in the fish room so everything is easily accessible. It took some time but it is done. Oh yeah - I also upgraded my lighting in my main tank - I added a 4 x 54W Quad T5 fitting, so I now have 8 x 54W T5 lights in there. This is to help the clams out as well as the Acropora I purchased.

Moving a 120l QT, 400l FOWLR and 550l Reef tank is no easy job. Especially if the new place is upstairs... And not just up the stairs, the stairs is in an L-shape. Which means the tank is too long to fit around the corner. Try lifting a 10mm braced glass tank over a 1.3m high railing...

Then to move 1100+ litres of water.... 80kg of live rock. And all of this whilst trying to keep the fish and corals alive.

Well, it is done. I will post pics soon.

My Pearl Goby just died ☹

Here is a picture of him:

I think he died due to malnutrition. When I bought him he was very thin - almost like here. But it was my fault that he died. See I had him since 10 September and thus I could have kept him longer in QT until he was nice and fat again. But instead I thought he would have more food in the main tank thus get better faster. I guess I was wrong ☹

My Feather Star lost the center piece of it’s body - I assume this is where the mouth is located. This means it will die shortly since it cannot feed anymore. Lesson learnt - if the literature says an animal is IMPOSSIBLE to keep alive, trust them. You are not more special than the guy next door. Stop buying these animals then hopefully they will be left on the reefs where they belong.

A picture from when I just got him

At the end of September I started a new tank - a predator fish only tank. The idea originally was to use the QT tank for this purpose once I had a fully stocked main reef aquarium, but then a couple of things happened that made this unpractical.

Firstly, the QT tank is too small for the fish I actually wanted - the Volitans Lionfish. That fish can grow up to 38cm, and need a turning area of the same width. The QT tank is only about 32cm wide...

Secondly, if I convert the QT tank and one of my fish become ill? And what will happen to the new members of the FOWLR tank since they cannot be quarantined?

Thirdly, and this one I only realised after I purchased the new tank - once you start adding nice predator fish to the tank you want to add MORE ☺

So I got a 400l tank, started it with a deep crushed coral substrate (I want to add some Garden Eels later), and took some of my equipment from the QT tank (such as my Tunze 9015 skimmer). Therefore the tank’s costs itself was limited to the cost of the tank, substrate, salt mix water and new lights. Oh yeah I also added another fluidised sand bed filter for biological filtration.

This was the tank whilst setting up:

The tank to the left is the QT tank.

However as all things aquarium related goes, soon this was not enough. The water temperature fluctuated between 25C (my heater’s set temperature) to 30C in the late afternoon. This was mostly contributed by the 4 x 54W T5 tubes I have in the canopy. So I had to get another chiller (sigh). At least now the tank is nice and stable.

The only thing I would consider adding rather soon is another topup unit. This really makes life MUCH simpler.

In order to stock the tank, I took a bit of a different route. I used a smallish phosBan reactor from the QT tank that had some special ammonia and nitrite reducing media in and placed that in the predator tank. The idea was to move as much of the biological filtration from established tanks as possible. I also added 10kg of LR from my main display tank’s sump. So I now had 10kg of LR and a small fluidised filter for biofiltration. The large fluidised sand bed filter had also been installed and is running, however since it is new it would not immediately add to the biological filtration.

I made 450l of RO/DI water (took 2 days) at SG of 1.022. I mixed the salt in containers for a couple of hours before pouring in to the tank. Once all the water was in the tank I let it run for 72 hours as is.

After this time I purchased my first Volitans Lionfish and Zebra eel. The idea was that since the tank was empty, there was no need to quarantine the fish. If they did show an outbreak of some kind of disease, I could just as well treat in that tank or move them to QT.

I carefully measured Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrates during the first two weeks. Free Ammonia never went higher than 0.03mg/L NH3 - 10 times lower than the level considered dangerous. Nitrite went up to 0.16mg/L then down to 0 again. Nitrates peaked at 0.443mg/L then went down to 0 again. So the filtration seems to be adequate.

In the mean time I purchased a Leaf Scorpionfish and two frogfish, which went in to the sump of the QT tank. The Leaf Scorpionfish I have since moved to the main predator tank, and the frogfish yesterday. Unfortunately one of the frogfish died this morning. It was the one I purchased with a belly the size of a large marble. I thought it ate something big at the LFS, since it also refused to east whilst in QT.

I thought maybe once in the big tank it would eat better - since it was not diseased or anything. I was wrong. 20 hours after moving to the main tank he (she) died.

The other frogfish seems to be doing just fine.

I also added some 10 Turbo snails to help with the algae that is always inevitable.

3 days ago the tank looked like this:

Here is the Volitans Lionfish:

The Leaf Scorpionfish:

Zebra Eel (sorry for the bad picture quality):

Frogfish (the one still alive)

Great. Today my solenoid decided to break. So my Ca reactor had been running for more than 10 hours with no CO2 supply... This caused the whole tank to be cloudy.

I am wondering whether this is the cause for the sudden cyno outbreak on the LR?

Check out the cool gallery that I will regularly update.

I took the easy way out - I have decided publishing my MacJournal diary entries to a new blog site would be the best to keep it neatly organised by topic.

Check it out!

I have switched over to ReefCon Pro since the last entry, and have been using it ever since. However since I started using the new Beta version because of the new tank log feature, I have stopped writing in here. So 1 October I ran into a small dilemma. The software expired. Even though I purchased a license, the BETA expired and there is no indication the publisher is going to release a new version anytime soon.

The dilemma now is whether I should fall back to using ReefCon 1.6 (and loose out on all my tank log entries), start using Maquarium (for Mac OS X), stop using a software package alltogether or carry on writing in here.

Using a software tool allows me to draw graphs of my water parameters. But then, in the past 4 months I only ever looked at the graphs once... It is also more structured so it is easy to gain an overview of your tank’s status. But then, it does not really tell you more than that. I am wondering whether it might not make sense to carry on using this diary. At least then I can explain some things and motivate others whereas I could not in the other software.

Obviously I have lots of info in there that is missing from here. So this entry will double as catch-up.

An oldish pic (30 July 2006):

I have changed the aquascaping a while ago to support better reef structures when adding new coral.
After aquascaping (26 August 2006):

A bit more recently (9 September 2006):

I recently (about 3 months ago) started a reef aquarium. Back in the days I lived with my parents my dad used to own a large tropical aquarium, and I remember I was fascinated by it. But that was a lifetime ago...

I have been adding all the nitty gritty details to the ReefCon Pro software instead of using this. Guess I need to figure out what I am going to do...

The QT tank is up and running. I added the Percula I think on the 26th and it was doing fine. I added the Purple Tang on the 27th but it got badly stressed within 6 hours - when the nitrites went up to 0.1. So I took both fish out and back in the main aquarium.

Yesterday I bought 10kg of Malaysian LR and added that to the tank. I also added some Vodka and Ammovec biostarter. Hopefully I’ll get the cycling process sped up.

Today I got my small anemone from Exotic - finally! It moved about 5cm downwards so I hope it will find a place it likes.

I also replaced the powerhead in the QT tank with a 1200l/h Eheim pump to silence the noise at night. The pump will be 10 times per hour, but is more quiet and has a nice sponge filter built in to eliminate debris to break the propellor.

I have been feeding the Sun Coral, Yellow Polyps and Anemone at night using Mysid and Brine shrimp, as well as Krill.

I installed the QT tank today. The new RO/saltwater mix was not enough for both a water change on the main tank and filling up the QT, so the QT is about 90% full of main tank water and I am preparing some new RO/saltwater to add to the QT tank to get the sump full.

It took me 4 hours to catch the Yellow Tang. I decided I am going to give it back to Exotic since they were stressed beyond belief. Eventually after tearing down part of my reef I managed to catch him.

I have started feeding the fish a frozen vegetable diet and new SeaVeggies strips.

Got my QT tank yesterday and between today and tomorrow will be setting it up.

Ok I finally got my Calcium Reactor set up and running (the baking soda did not work). It was quite a mission to find a CO2 gas bottle. It is running at one bubble CO2 per second, and about 2-4 drops of output water per second. Will closely monitor water parameters.

I made a huge mistake initially since I never rinsed the media before use - so I flooded my tank with a cloudy powder. Through experience is the way I’ll learn it seems... Grrr...

Since I want to target pH 8.2-8.3, 8.5dKH and 420-440 mg/l Calcium, and currently my values are pH 8.4, 7.5dKH, 420mg/l Calcium, I need to tred carefully not to have too high pH values. Since I had been adding dKH buffer the past week to raise the KH and stopped adding kalkwasser to lower Calcium (which is working by the way), I have been getting closer to these values. I am however now at a point where I cannot move forward as I used to, since it will push the pH above 8.4. The reason is this:

It is clear that with a pH of 8.4 and Alkalinity of 7.5 (2.6meq/l) I seem to have a lower CO2 value in my tank that I should have. So to fix this (without adding a CO2 reactor) I am going to stop adding dKH buffer and instead use Baking Soda for the next two-four days (and closely monitoring pH, Alkalinity and Calcium). Theoretically baking soda will not increase pH dramatically but will increase alkalinity. Once I have reached my target values, I’ll start adding kalkwasser with white vinegar (4ml / litre of kalkwasser). This should raise alkalinity without impacting too much on pH.

Today I replaced 10% of the water with new RO water mixed with Tropic Marine Salt. The new water’s parameters were:

Alkalinity: 9.5dKH
Calcium: 372mg/l
Temperature: 26C
pH: 8.2
SG: 1.025

I used the return pump inside with a pipe to have some flow. I used the wooden air stone to aerate the water. I also added a heater to maintain the temperature whilst it was in the black bin. I had it running for 24 hours before using it.

I also cleaned out the brown algae by siphoning from the bottom. I left the algae (diatoms?) on the rocks. The powerheads and skimmer were also cleaned.

Finally I got hold of three T5 54W’s - two Aquablue and one 11k white tube. Installed them too.

It seems as if P. hepatus is now happy and feels safe. For the first time she is swimming around with the other fish. Cool!

I have been running the RO unit since two days ago trying to make enough RO water for a 60l water change. This is taking forever!

I bought some Nori from Woolies and attached it with the SeaVeggies clamp. After about 10 minutes the Purple Tang started nipping at it - and now every now and again it eats some. The Yellow Tang does not look as much interested, however it did eat a couple of pieces that came off.

I woke up only to discover my one small percula is gone... No body, no trace... I guess the boxer shrimp got hungry ☹

I went to Sterlig Aquarium in Ontdekkers Road in Roodepoort and purchased:

• Purple Tang
• Yellow Tang
• Purple Firefish

The Purple Tang seem to have about 14 small white spots - seems pretty much like Ich! It immediately started feeding on the algae once added to the tank. When I added the Yellow Tang, they immediately attacked each other. So my Yellow Tang has some fin damage.

I called the LFS and they said I need to give the fish about an hour to sort themselves out. After a stressful hour they seem to be more tolerant of each other. Phew...

I tried to give the fish Sprung’s SeaVeggies - but none of the fish eats it...

When I added Brine Shrimp everyone in the tank went nuts and even P. hepatus came out for the first time. She started feeding for the first time since I added her.

With all these fish I added and the drip acclimation I lost a bit of water. Every time I just added RO water... Thus the salinity is now 1.025.

Since I have currently only been running on a single 54W T5 Actinic tube and a common white tube, I bought two additional Actinics and added that to the other ballast. It does not provide much additional lighting, but I guess it is better than not having enough light. I found that the Leather Coral started bending toward the front of the tank where the white light was. I need to get my 3 x T5 54W Aquablues VERY SOON.

It seems the alkalinity is slowly rising. It is now at 6.0 and the calcium is dropping - at 515.

Went to Exotic, and what did I do? I purchased some fish... Since the Ammonia/Nitrite levels were doing fine I assumed it would be fine to add some small fish. So I bought:

• 2 x small Percula Clownfish
• 1 x small Paracanthurus hepatus (Pacific Blue Tang)
• 1 x Pink Leather Coral
• 4 x Turbo Snails
• 4 x Red Legged Hermit Crabs
• 2 x Peppermint Shrimps
• 1 x Brown Brittle Star

When I got back home I saw an explosion of brown algae on the front side of the tank - on the live rock and on the substrate. I guess the white light, daylight, high phosphate levels and dKH buffer additions fueled them.

Oh yeah - the LFS tested my phosphates and they were *very* high.

The P. hepatus was very stressed when I bought it - it swam into a crack in the display rock in the LFS. When I added it to my main tank it immediately went into the live rocks on the LHS of the tank never to be seen again.

The two percula’s seem to be doing fine.

Since Alkalinity, Calcium and pH all need to be balanced, I bought a Calcium test kit. The Calcium seems to be at 545mg/l! That is very high. Since my Alkalinity is only 7.0 dKH, I decided to make use of Kent Marine’s Pro Buffer dKH. I started adding 35ml to the water daily. I also stopped adding kalkwasser. The idea is that since kalkwasser is a balanced supplement, I first need to get the proportion of Calcium and Alkalinity right then I’ll resume adding kalkwasser. I think the different salt I used as well as the RO water to fix SG messed up the balance.

Did the first accurate measurement of Ammonia myself and found that Ammonia is < 0.01mg/l, Nitrite is 0.20mg/l and Nitrate is 10mg/l. Since the Alkalinity dropped severely to 5.0 dKH, I decided to open up the tank so that evaporation is increased. In one hour the topup pump came on about 6 times. Since this was quite severe I closed down the lids of the aquarium.

The RO water mixed with Kalkwasser is BAD since it reacts quickly with air to precipitate the calcium out of the solution, and pumping in the precipitate is A Bad Thing.

So I put a Tunze Calcium Dispenser in the RO bucket. Basically the RO water is pumped through the dispenser to the sump. Inside the closed dispenser is the kalkwasser mix.

Added 10ml Combisan and will try to add this on a weekly basis.

The shrimp and crabs and snails are doing fine. The Colt Coral is unhappy since all its polyps are retracted. I moved him with underwater epoxy to be on top of a rock in the water stream, and closer to the light.

Steven tested the water and it seems to have almost no Ammonia/Nitrites. So he said it should be fine for me to add some invertebrates. Thus I purchased the following:

• Colt Coral
• Green Mushroom Coral
• LPS Brain Coral (came on the same rock than Green Mushroom Coral)
• Boxer Shrimp
• 4 Turbo Snails
• 4 Blue Legged Hermit Crabs

Back home I decided the aquascaping needed some work. So I changed it to look like this:

I replaced about 30l of saltwater with fresh RO water to fix the SG. It is now 1.025 which seem much better. The alkalinity is taking a dip though - down from 7.5 to 6. Started adding kalkwasser again by adding 4 flat teaspoons to 13l of RO topup water. This implies I have just installed a Tunze Osmolator kit that handles auto topoff.

I purchased 80kg of cured live rock from Exotic Aquarium. After a 4 hour transport I rinsed them one by one in saltwater from the tank. Since I am clueless about aquascaping I merely placed them all in a brick wall in the tank.

Damn JC did not level the tank as I asked. So between Karin and myself we managed to drain about 85% of the water into both bath tubs and the buckets I had standing around. The rest was discarded. With much pain and suffering we leveled the tank and refilled it with the water that was now in the bath tubs...

Since I lost about 15% of the water, I had to make up some new water. I did not really have the RO unit connected, so in went some more tap water with Tropic Marine salt (non Pro-Reef). I guess the calculation on the side of the bucket was not that accurate since the Specific Gravity went up dramatically to 1.028.

Got a guy by the name of JC in to set up the tank. He did the plumbing for the skimmer as well as connected up everything else. He washed the aragonite once to get rid of the dirt and some calcium I guess. The salt (20kg Tropic Marin Pro Reef) was thrown in on top of the sand and we used tap water to fill the tank. The salt dissolved through the night.

The skimmer was turned off since it immediately boiled over with foam once started. There was some leaks in the plumbing and the hole where the outlet of the skimmer was passing through.

The sump is a bit small...

I placed 4 teaspoons full of kalkwasser on the filter mat. I also added about 200g of ROWAphos in a nylon hose in the sump.

Done some initial measurements and this is what the tank is at:

pH:                 8.00
Temp:         24C
Alk:                7.5dKH
SG:                1.025

The tank was just delivered to our home. Sadly I am in Stellenbosch and cannot do anything until I get back.