Vacation Stress

I’m just returning from one week hiking around Utah with the family and we put some neighbors in charge of watching over the tank.   You can’t imagine my relief to return and find that the tank was just fine without me for a week and maybe slightly better off since no one was moving the corals around on a daily basis!

Moving of the corals…

I moved a bunch of corals around this past weekend…   As soon as I can get a few minutes of downtime (work has been busy, busy, busy lately), I’ll look to post a few photos and give a water quality update.   In general things are good… water is healthy although our Nitrates were a bit higher than normal (which is no detectable nitrates!).

Aclamating the snails and sea cucumbers…

Adding the snails and sea cucumbers…, originally uploaded by tyrsdomain.

Here’s a fun shot of my son and myself adding the Reef Tank Tuneup to our tank.

Full Tank

Full Tank, originally uploaded by tyrsdomain.

Here is a full-view shot of our aquarium after we added the Reef Tank Tuneup. You’ll have to forgive the reflection of our patio!

Overall, everything seems pretty smooth two days after adding the coral, snails and two pink cucumbers…

Yoyo Coral

Yoyo Coral, originally uploaded by tyrsdomain.

While the Yoyo is one of the largest specimens in the aquarium, I haven’t done much research on him… The reality is that he is HUGE and seems to grow bigger by the day. He dominates the left side of the tank.

For better or worse, my research to date has been focused on the animals in distress, but that is not a good reason to neglect this very cool coral..

Emerald Crab

Emerald Crab, originally uploaded by tyrsdomain.

This is the best photo I’ve been able to take of our Emerald Crab so far…

Right-side of the tank

Wide Open Fiji Coral, originally uploaded by tyrsdomain.

Nothing new in this photo, but I really like it…

Both the Toadstool and the Leather Coral are wide open… Plus the photo has one of our snails and a clownfish!

A Candy Cane Coral?

Our Reef Tank Tuneup arrived today around 11am (I wonder why the company emphasized it was a PM shipment? I must have misunderstood what the “PM” stood for…)

It was both a little more and a little less than expected.

First the “less”. They didn’t ship any crabs and we were suppose to get 12 microhermits. We definitely have a problem with the hair algae starting to take over in some areas and I was looking forward to the crabs helping out with this problem…   We also didn’t get the Hawaiian Turbo Grazer.   It is definitely a disappointment that the Indo-Pacific Sea Farms (IPSF) didn’t ship everything they said they would…

The little bit “more” is that they added a Candy Cane Coral (Caulastrea sp.) to the package. This required a bit more research than I had anticipated because I wanted to get him into our tank quickly. For the time being, I found a relatively empty place in our tank and glued him down. However, I’m a little concerned that it might be a little bit too much light for him. I’ll do some more research with the hope that I won’t have to move him again any time soon…

So far the snails they sent have been uninspiring in their adventurousness (i.e. most of them have not moved more than an inch seven hours after being put in the tank!). However, I’ll give them a full day to recover as some of them are likely night-eaters before I pass judgment on their health.

Overall, I’m a little disappointed, but that could change if the Caulastrea opens up and is able to light up a part of our tank…

Photos to come soon…

Dueling Groups

It appears that there are two active fish groups in the LA area:

• MASLAC (Yahoo Group)
• LAFishFanatics (Yahoo Group)

The S. Cal Marine Aquarium Society (out of Orange Co.) also looks interesting and just had a “frag swap”… Very cool.

Reef Tank Tuneup to Clean Up the Hair Algae?

We went ahead and ordered the reef tank tuneup from Indo-Pacific Sea Farms…

So, as of Friday evening, we should have:

• 3 Hawaiian Trocus Grazers (Trochus intextus)
• 1 Hawaiian Turbo Grazer (Turbo sandwicensis)
• 12 Nerite Grazers (Nerita sp.)
• 12 MicroHermits (Calcinus sp.)
• 12 Strombus Grazers (Strombus maculatus)
• 2 Pinky Cuke (Holothuria sp.)
• 6 Hawaiian Littorinid Grazers (Littoraria sp.)

We’re definitely look forward to this arrival as we don’t have too many grazers at the moment and I think this group will enjoy our influx of hair algae… Time will tell.

Striped Mushroom… Anenome?

In browsing the Natural Reef Aquarium, I noticed that they have a photo of a similar mushroom to mine (Actinodiscus), except their capture considers this to be an anemone (page 283). The name they give as Striped Mushroom Anemone.

A quick search turns up this interesting article about Actinodiscus on Aquafind. The overall conclusions from the article are that this species does really well in aquariums and should propogate quite easily. They also list some recommended water quality parameters for Actinodiscus:

• pH: 8.2 to 8.4
• s.g.: 1.023 to 1.025
• Temp.: 77 to 79 degrees F.
• Calcium: of no concern but if you have stony corals the level should be around 450 ppm
• Nitrates: below 10 ppm, total nitrate
• Phosphates: below 0.04 ppm
• Silicates: below 0.5 ppm
• Dissolved oxygen: 7 or higher
• Do not use mechanical filtration
• Use a really complete additive
• Add iodine to your tank daily

About one month ago I “discovered” these guys growing under our YoYo coral…  While they appeared to be doing well, they spent almost all day hidden, so I decided to bring them out to a more open place.   Their first stop (for only a few days) was when I took their rock and placed it on the sand.  They definitely seemed happy their and the two main mushrooms grew quite large each and every day.

However, due to the huge increase in size from our Octopus coral, they occupied a strategically valuable location, so I moved them again…  This time to a ledge probably a bit too high (I’ve since learned they don’t like direct sunlight).  However, the rock that holds the mushrooms quickly attached itself to the rock ledge and the two main mushrooms seem quite happy to grow up the side of the ledge where they spend most of the day out of direct light.

International Marine Aquarium Conference

Fascinating… Maybe by next year, I’ll be ready for this event!

Moving of the Rose Open Brain Coral

The Trachyphyllia geoffroyi was at his very smallest when I got home from work today and it definitely concerned me. Since I have learned he is a lagoon dweller normally found on sand or muddy bottoms and we have him on a rock (same as previous owner), I’ve been meaning to do some more research on him. One of the first sites I found seems well-informed and starts with the advice that T. geoffroyi should never be put on rocks:

We begin first with a bit of history and general information on Trachyphyllia for improved care in reef aquariology. T. geoffroyi is a free-living animal at maturity and can be found in lagoons and protected margins of the reef buried in sand or muddy substrates. They should always be maintained as such in display. The conical skeleton of this species has evolved to serve this very orientation specifically. Placement of these animals upon rocky substrates can sometimes lead to abraded tissue from daily polyp cycles (expansion and contraction) or displacement when an inflated animal becomes imbalanced.

Based on this information, I made some space in a sandy portion of the bottom of our tank and I moved him there… I’ll try to follow up with photos soon.

Clean Up Crew…

Looking around at some of the options I have for clean up crews on the tank, I’m really liking the captive bred options available from Indo-Pacific Sea Farms and their Reef Tank Tuneup in particular.  I may even go with an extra Pink Cuke because I really like the idea of at least a few cucumbers in the tank to stir up the sand…

When big is not big enough…

This guy needs a blog!

A guy going by the handle Goodwin has been posting his adventures in building out a 600 gallon reef tank on the Vivid Aquarium forum. Fascinating.

Water Quality Update

Sasha and I did another test of the water today. Here are the results:

• pH: 8.4 (target: 8.3)
• Nitrate: < 5ppm (target: <10ppm)
• Calcium: 360 ppm (target: >400 ppm).
• Temp: 79 degrees (target 75 degrees)
• Nitrite: <0.25 ppm
• Ammonia: < 0.25 ppm
• Specific Gravity (SG): 1.022 (target: 1.024)

Overall, I think we’re looking much better. We added a lot of calcium this week (two extra doses), which definitely helped raise the calcium level. However, I think it also upped the pH level, but I’ll have to check on my chemistry to confirm that.

Venture Capitalists Want to Put Some Algae in Your Tank

Venture Capitalists Want to Put Some Algae in Your Tank – New York Times

But Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones and her husband, David Jones, are betting their careers and personal fortunes that they can grow masses of the slimy organism and use its natural photosynthesis process to produce a plentiful supply of biofuel.

Does the future hold a time when we can grow are gas in our living room?

Flickr Photo

There are so many different Flickr groups related to reef fishes and aquariums it is hard to know where to start on that site.  Nonetheless, I joined a group simply called aquarium and posted my first photo! 

FishBase

FishBase appears to be a huge database of scientific names for fishes!  I wonder if it includes corals…

Center View with Dottyback

Center View with Dottyback, originally uploaded by tyrsdomain.

This photo is one of the cleanest I have of the center of the tank. I decided to publish this because I wanted to have a place to start talking about the Sunrise Dottyback (Pseudochromis flavivertex) and he’s such a fast little guy, that this is the only good photo I have so far!

Octopus Frogspawn Coral (Genus: Euphyllia)

Octopus Frogspawn Coral (Genus: Euphyllia), originally uploaded by tyrsdomain.

This is one guy I haven’t exactly figured out yet…  While similar to the already identified, this one was called an “octopus” coral by the previous owner. However, it appears that a lot of different species under the genus Euphyllia divisia are called Octopus Coral, so that hasn’t helped my research much.

Once I can identify them all, I’ll be in a much better place to solidify their eating habits.  The good news is that this Euphyllia has been growing quite a bit and often extends his tentacles by over an inch, so I’m pretty sure he’s happy for the time being.

Also of note is that he is definitely poisonous to other coral as he seriously wounded our disk coral one day when he inched a little bit too close (they’ve since been moved far apart and the disk coral is doing much better!).

Neon Green Mushroom (Ricordea florida)

Neon Green Mushroom (?), originally uploaded by tyrsdomain.

This is a photo of the Ricordea florida identified in the previous post!

Neon Green Mushroom

The previous owner of the fishtank mentioned that we have a Neon Green Mushroom.

Our unidentified species looks quite close (although inconclusively similar) to the photo on this page: Ricordea Mushroom – Super Neon Green, so, I’m going to call our guy a Neon Green Mushroom (Ricordea florida) until I learn otherwise…

Week One Health Log

(I thought I’d start with last weeks results and move on from here…)

Date: 2/28/07

• Ph: 8.1 (target: 8.3)
• Nitrate: < 5ppm
• Calcium: 285 ppm (target: >400 ppm).
• Temp: 80 degrees (target 75 degrees)
• Nitrite: <0.25 ppm
• Ammonia: < 0.25 ppm
• Specific Gravity (SG): 1.022 (target: 1.024)

I’m taking the “targets” from the book, The Natural Reef Aquarium. I’m really liking this book and it has been an inspiration for more than one recent change to our reef-keeping habits. The book also recommends testing for Alkalinity (ALK) and Phosphate (PO4). However, I don’t have a test kit for those yet.

The two things of concern are:

1. Calcium level is really low… We’re adding extra calcium this week and hope to bring up our levels to above 400 ppm within two weeks.
2. I’m going to guess that our phosphate levels may be high as we’re seeing a lot of hair algae growth and I read that high phosphate levels can cause this. AT this point the hair algae growth has definitely stablized, so I’m not too worried, but it is something I’ll look into soon.

Leather Coral, Sun Coral and Orange Zoas

Leather Coral, Star Coral and Orange Zoas, originally uploaded by tyrsdomain.

All three of these species are doing really well…

The Sarcophyton elegans (Yellow Fiji Leather Coral) is a huge specimen that grows to reach from one side of the tank to the other.

I put the Tubastraea sp (Sun Coral) under the S. elegans because his previous location gave him too much light. After moving him here, he has seemed much happier and regularly opens up completely when feeding shrimp in the tank.

I’m actually a little surprised the Zoanthus sp (Orange Zoas) in this location are doing as well as they are. I moved a huge rock full of them to a much higher location in the tank and I didn’t expect much out of the remnants at this location. However, they elongated tremendously in order to get light (the S. elegans blocks almost all light in this area!) and seem to be thriving. These polyps are quick strong and I expect them to continue propagating all over the tank!