New fish: Rainfordi Goby

Click to enlarge:

We just got a Rainfordi Goby, an herbivorous little guy that should help keep the algae balanced. Right now there is a significant amount of algae in the tank, small pieces here and there, which this Goby will gradually mow down over time. We hope...

We also got a hammer coral but shortlY after being implanted on a rock one of our peppermint shrimp attacked it... and continued doing so frequetly in the next 4 hours... now it is almost gone... I am quite upset with this...

One Zoa IDed: Orange Delight

Some of the names given to zoanthid coralsare really wierd.... today I found a site where you can ID your zoa colony... it is crazy, you find hundreds of pictues and are expected to match the picture to what you see in your tank.  Coralpedia is the name of the site: http://www.coralpedia.com/index.php?module=Gallery2&g2_itemId=15

Apparently we have an "Orange Delight" colony in our tank at home.... haven't IDed the other one yet.

Shrimp molted/Large aiptasia's gone

Today morning my wife found this "transparent shrimp" motionless hanging off the central column.... after the initial shock we realized it was the outer shell of one of the shrimp, who apparently molted at night.

(click to enlarge)

Also, it seems like this new shrimp pair means business about aiptasia eating. The large aiptasias are already gone, the shrimp probably ate them, I still see some minuscle ones here and there but I'm confident they'll be kept under control by this shrimp pair. Hope they survive a loooong time in the tank :-) .

New shrimp

Got two new shrimp. Apparently the reason for the first shrimp's demise was improper/fast adaptation to tank water. So my LFS asked me to do very slow adaptation with this pair...

Wife named them Jean Paul and Maurice. It's going to be rather difficult to distinghuish them, as they are very very similar.... names are just for fun anyway, so....

Here they are adapting to the tank water:

And here is Jean Paul already in the tank:

And his friend Maurice:

They are both larger than Pierre was, about 1 cm larger. I hope that means they're stronger and enjoy eating aiptasia more than Pierre did ;-) . Those aiptasias are growing, and we need to get rid of them....

Yellow blob is a Spaghetti worm

After some help from the ReefCentral "new to the hobby" forum folk, the yellow blob has been identified as a Spaghetti Worm.  Harmless so it seems.... good.

Update: shrimp gone, algae increase

Pierre the shrimp didn't live long.  One week after arrival he seemed pretty slow, very dirty (like if the filamentous algae in the tank were covering his antennae) and he disappeared that night, never to be seen again.  A water test one week later gave Amonia one point above zero, so I guess he was/is decomposing somewhere....  he never ate any of the aiptasias while he was in the tank.

Somewhat disappointing....

In the meantime algae, filamentous, green sponge-like, green and purple film-like, bubble and hair like have appeared in large quantities.  Decided to add some cleaning crew, for many of the original crew perished in tank fights.  Added 4 hermit crabs and 2 snails.

Have some valonia bubble algae that are starting to worry me.... since almost nothing eats them and they are a plague... seems like only Yellow tangs eat valonia, so I am seriously considering getting one.

Also started using GAC (granulated active carbon) shortly after Pierre disappeared.  Water has been slightly clearer after that, but not super different.

Have new some strange stuff in the tank like this "yellow blog with tentacles" pictured below:

(click to enlarge)

I should post sometime about the multiple "fail-safe and backup" mechanisms of this tank (I work as a country CIO so I'm somewhat paranoid with backups and high-availability mechanisms).  One of them, having two return pumps of which one is fed by a UPS (no-break) worked great when we had a major power outage in Brazil last week.  Kept the tank running for more than 4 hours, and still had battery to keep it running for more.  The UPS is 1400 VA and the pump is ~30W, so....

Our zoanthus colonies seem to be OK, they are opening more now, but they haven't grown and some polyps died, probably during the adaptation phase.  Might be because of too much nutrients in the water (which is why I believe we have so much algae).  I'm considering Vodka dosing, but an trying to resist doing it in these initial tank months.

Pierre the shrimp has arrived

That's right, we now have a shrimp.... it is a Peppermint shrimp, bought in the hope he will eat all those aiptasias. I named him Pierre because for some unknown reason shrimp reminds me of French. Must be something from my childhood....

(click for a very large picture)

Pierre arrived on Saturday, when I also executed a partial water change of 40L, with the help of my friend Marco.  Water tests of water before the change and after curiously showed extremely low nitrates... 10 ppm before the change and 5 ppm after.  Must say I'm intrigued.... Maybe it is the deep crushed coral substrate that is super dimensioned for the current bioload of the tank... who knows.  Will follow this parameter closely in the following weeks.

Also, two Scypha sponges appeared out of nowhere recently.  They must have come as spores with the corals, found a place after a while and grown.  No pictures of them yet, will post once I get a good shot.  They are hard to shoot, one is in a difficult to see location and the other is still too small.

Better pictures of the corals

Took the time to take some slightly better pictures of the coral colonies (click on them to enlarge, they are 1024 pixels across in the enlarged version).

The zoanthus red+green colony, seen without flash, colors in the picture are a little pale, but you get an idea of size and color:

Then the same with flash, colors closer to what you see with your naked eye.  There is no shade, and colors are a little too saturated with flash, but more realistic than without flash:

Then the green+white+brown zoanthus colony, which is quite hard to photograph because of it's position in the tank.  The angle you need to be at to take the picture always results in an unsharp picture, I guess because of the refraction effect of glass+water.  Or maybe it's just my bad photography skills.... anyway, the picture gives an idea of what this colony's color mix looks like:

Then the grass-looking white spot star polyp colony, seen from the side.  It would be great to take a picture from above, but the angle normally results in a blurred and ugly picture.  It is quite hard to take a shot of this coral because its polyps keep moving in the current, like long grass in the wind.  Quite amusing and peaceful to watch:

Finally the giant button polyp colony, in a sharper picture than before.  Probably because camera line of shooting was almost perpendicular to the glass.... you'll notice on the upper right hand side of the picture that this colony came with a hitchhiking macro algae (the green thing that looks like a young leafless tree).  This picture looks almost identical to the real thing seen with your naked eye.

Hope this gives a better idea of what the coral inhabitants of the tank look like.

New inhabitants added on Saturday

Finally the tank has received its first inhabitants (after the cleaning crew and the pods, of course). Added them on Saturday the 10th, so I'm a little late posting news, sorry for that, but here are their pictures:

First, the two clownfish (A. Ocellaris), initially getting introduced to the tank's water...

(click inside image to enlarge)

....and then swimming in their new home.  Their names are Juju and Jiji (given by wife and son), and Juju is the larger one with a larger black dot on his upper right hand side:

These two are quite funny.... they are either swimming together, side by side, or in completely opposite sides of the tank.... as if they had fought, broke up or something.  According to the LFS they are still young and both female, but in a few months one of them will become male and they will be a couple, eventually even mating in the tank if they are healthy enough.  But the fry never survive predation from other tank inhabitants so there is no chance of tank overpopulation due to reproduction.


After them came four coral colonies:

1. A quite good looking red+green zoanthus colony, here seen right after being implanted and with almost all polyps closed....

... and then after one day in the tank, with most polyps open.  Notice that in the lower left hand side of the rock they came on there is a hitchhiker.  My LFS told me it is a polychaeta (after inspecting this picture) but to me it looks more like an anemone or another "tentacled animal":

2. A green+white+brown zoanthus colony, which was shier than the previous one.  It took a lot more to open up its polyps and is more frequently closed than its red+green brother.  This picture is after one day in the tank, still semi open:

3. Also added a white spot star polyp colony, first all closed and looking like bare rock right after being added to the tank....

... and then after a day in the tank, with polyps extended.  Looks like grass, quite beautiful and nice to watch.  The real thing looks much nicer than this picture:

4. And finally a very beautiful (the pictures are far uglier than the real thing seen live, I will have to take and post better pictures than these....) mettalic green giant button polyp colony.  These polyps are roughly twice the diameter of the zoanthus polyps.  Here getting used to the tank's water....

.... then right after being implanted,  all polyps closed....

... finally opening up after a few hours in the tank.  These guys aren't shy, they open up rather quickly in the presence of light.  Seems like they don't fear predators as much as the other corals, probably they have some type of strong fish poison inside.  The picture is far uglier than they look in person, partly because it is shaky and with bad depth of field and focus:

Following my LFS's advice I'm feeding the corals only with light (11hs of 160w of Coralife 50/50) plus 5 drops of Sera Coraliquid per day in the water, and feeding the two clownfish with 6 large flakes (or the equivalent in broken flakes) of TetraMarine Saltwater flakes (has a horrible smell, by the way).

Some of the corals brought hitchhikers with them, like the "tentacled thing" on the zoanthus colony.  In this ReefCentral thread I show a picture of the bristleworm that came with the white spot star polyp colony: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1721906

When I get the time to take better pictures of the zoanthus I'll post something better here.

Aiptasia #2....

Just found a second aiptasia in the tank, one I had never seen before, but is much larger than the first one.


(click inside picture to see a larger version)

The first one has no tentacles, seems very shy. This one is quite bold in the picture, but it shrunk after the light was reduced. So I guess it "hides" at night.... as I've read, aiptasia is a prague...I guess soo I will have a tank full of them.

Got to get those shrimp that eat aiptasia....

Saw the bristleworm again!

Today, it appeared for a brief moment, while I was showing the tank to my friend Walter.  Grabbed a camera, got some handheld shots, all terrible, of which the less worse was this one:

The worm is the orange thing in the middle of the picture.  Shortly after, it disappeared into the rock crevices again....

You can see the colors the live rock has acquired in this picture, two dark red spots appear in the right hand side of the picture.  Coraline algae, I presume....

Here are pictures of the aiptasia that reappeared...

It is now about 5mm long, no sweeping tentacles yet:

Another view:

Copepods! And aiptasia update.

Today I spotted copepods in the substrate, very tiny ones.  Or let me rephrase that, I discovered tiny creatures in the crushed coral substrate that I guessed must be copepods, guessed because they were mobile and tiny, so I couldn't see what they were.  But then late at night (1 hour ago), after a party we held today at home, using a flashlight I saw larger ones swimming in the open water.  I could see these larger ones have a body just like this picture from Melev's reef.   These are night creatures it seems, as I hadn't seen them in the daylight.

This is a good sign, it seems like the base ecosystem is establishing itself in the tank.  Copepods will be a source of food to other animals, and will eat the detritus others produce too.  It seems like the crushed coral substrate is a place where they are reproducing well.

Other good signs were that:
1. I saw bubbles in the substrate, probably a sign that the bacteria that transform Nitrate to other stuff plus Nitrogen are well at work in the oxygen depleted area of the substrate.
2. The rocks are getting many greenish, purple and red spots/areas.  Red (dark red) are few, and I'm not sure what they are, probably coraline algaue.  Purple and green are here and there in larger quantities. I understand purple is coraline algal, and greed is normal algae.... let's see.

Regarding the strange thing that appeared in my tank Sept 16th, looked like aiptasia or a zoanthid.... well, the ReefCentral folk believe it is aiptasia.  During the last week it gradually receded then disappeared yesterday.... therefore I was concluding it wasn't aiptasia, as those pest are super resistant to everything.  But.... today I saw it again, extending its body.  Couldn't get a good picture, as it is quite small, but it really seems like I'll need the shrimp that eat aiptasia....

As soon as I get better pictures I'll post them over here.

What is this?

We just discovered this anemone-looking thing in the tank... yesterday... what is it?

First a large picture, it is the small tentacled thing in the middle left of the frame:

A closeup in that picture:

It is maybe 2 or 3 mm across, very small.

I hope it is not aiptasia.... we didn't add anything to the tank yet, so this must have come in the rock when the tank was assembled.

The only 'change' was the water change more than a week ago. So it is somewhat of a surprise to find this creature in there. Could it be a zoanthid?  I hope so....

Bristleworm! (but no pics... :-( )

Found a bristleworm in the tank today! What a surprise... it must have come with the live rock, since the tank was setup, but I had never seen it. Might have more, who knows.

Unfortunately, by the time I got my camera to shoot it, it was gone.... :-( . Looked for it several times afterwards, even with a flashlight at night, but couldn't see anything.

Here is a link to a similar looking one from Melev's site: http://www.melevsreef.com/id/bristleworm.html

First signs of green algae

Yesterday my wife noticed the first greenish spots in our aquarium. It seems like the green algae cycle/bloom is starting. No pictures to show yet, they are too small and probably wouldn't be visible in the pictures.

Tested water yesterday, all normal, looks like a brand new cycled aquarium. pH 8.0, Amonia 0, Nitrire 0.05 ppm and Nitrate 20 ppm.

Hermit eating dead Turbo Snail at night, caught on camera

There was one turbo snail that looked dead.

It had been upside down for two days, I turned him right side up on a rock covered with brown algae, it didn't move for a few hours, I took it out of the water to smell it, but it didn't seem dead, so I put it back on the rock.

Didn't move for hours, and now as I arrive home from a wedding party I found one of my large Hermit Crabs eating it. Caught him on camera.... ugly shot because it was a night shot with a video camera, but you can see what was going on....

Here is another view of it:

Second dead critter

Today I found the second dead animal in my tank.  The first was a hermit crab I found dead on 18-Aug. Today I found another one dead. Smallone, outside of his shell, dead lying on the floor.  Maybe another smaller hermit killed him to take over his shell.  Will never know....

Here is the first one, being eaten:

Water measurements

The tank started on 12-Aug, and from then to now these are my water testing results. The water came straight from a large tank at SolarReefs, so no long cycle was expected.

Date  ,  pH,  Alk, NH3(ppm), NO2(ppm), NO3(ppm)

14-Aug, 8.0, ~2.0,        0,  no test, no test

20-Aug, 8.0,  1.7,        0,     0.05,      20

25-Aug, 8.0, ~1.8,     0.05,        0,      20

This is my tank

This is my tank, a 180 liter square tank, visible from all sides, with a central column for sump communication.

The sand bed is crushed coral, about 10 cm deep, the rocks are artificially made from crushed coral and will become live rocks as time pass by. They were in contact with salt water for 3 months before coming to my tank, so bacterially they were already live. No critters though.

Inside the cabinet is a 42 liter sump inside which there's an Escuma 800 protein skimmer, a bubble trap , a thermostat heater hooked on a digital thermometer control (just in case) and two 1800 liter per hour return pumps. (two, just in case). Sump also has an auto-top off with two level sensor linked serially, just in case (if one fails, or locks up the other stops the ATO pump flow). One of the return pumps will be connected to a UPS (no-break), just in case.

Lighting is 8x 20W 50/50 mini-compacts from Coralife.  Six of them turn on from 10:00 to 22:00 and the 2 remaining from 11:00 to 23:00.  I start it up right with the 6 because a lot of ambient light is present in the room it sits from 7:00 onwards.

Temperature cooling is done with two fans in the hood, which will turn on blowing wind on the water surface if the temperature reaches 27.5 C.

Bought it from SolarReefs, a LFS in São Paulo.

Right now, there are only about 15 turbo snails and 15 hermit crabs, the cleaning crew.  Hopefully soon we'll put the first coral in there....