My 30 Gallon HOBby

[Virtualbasil]

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=15+43+392&pcatid=392

they really need a good 4 feet of horizontal swim room

 

[Ectogamut]

Ok, that's for a full-grown, 8" adult tang. I got mine as a juvenile baby, just over an inch long. Now he's about 3"; I'm moving out west in about a year, and I'll have to sell all my stock. He'll be a little bit bigger by then, but he'll also be in a new home so I'm not worried about it. So if an 8" tang needs 4 feet, I suppose a 4" tang should do fine with 2 and a half feet?

 

[Chris-tico]

Nice corals dude!! the zoas are looking really good!
cn you tell us what are you dosing? i have a 30g tank too. but mine looks like terrible next to yours. haha

i dont want to start a discussion, but try to give that tang more room to swim im saying it on a good way.!

 

[Ectogamut]

Thanks for the praise! I'm pretty excited about how fast those zoas are spreading. Currently I dose 2ml of NOPOX in the morning. At 10a.m. My first doser kicks on and puts 40ml of brs 2 part alkalinity into the tank. At 11 the second doser kicks on to add 40ml of calcium. After the lights turn off, I dose 2.5ml of hydrogen peroxide so that it can do it's work while the dinos are in the water column. I'm also maintaining a high pH using a kalkwasser slurry. 1 cup of RODI water with half a teaspoon of kalk powder. I typically do this at lights on and lights out. Once I've killed off the last of the dinos I'll probably stop the hydrogen peroxide and kalk dosing though. I want to keep things as simple as possible for sure!

 

[Chris-tico]

Woow thanks men, do you dose NOPOX daily?

 

[Ectogamut]

Yeah, it's a daily dose right now until I get my nutrients dialed in where I want them and establish a maintenance dose. If you are considering carbon dosing make sure you start slow and that you have a big skimmer that's rated for at least double your water volume and you skin very wet. The carbon supports a high bacteria population and you need to be able to skim them out when they die. Just lemme know if you have questions, especially with NOPOX since I've done most of my research with that.

 

[Ectogamut]

Even though I only acquired this a few weeks ago, this Rommel's Rainbow Mille is quickly becoming my favorite in the tank! Those sea green polyps against that pale skin looks simply amazing and it's been growing like crazy. I got a good shot under actinics tonight so I thought I'd share it; enjoy!

 

[Ectogamut]

I feel like October has been a good month for the tank. After trying just about everything I could, barring nuking the tank, I gave up my battle with the dinos and decided to just get the tank back into balance. My nutrients were out of control and with the kalkwasser slurries my alk and calcium were equally out of whack. The last thing I decided to do before working on balancing the tank was to install a small UV sterilizer. For some people, this solved their dino issues. For me, it seems to keep them at bay in the water column, but they now only seem to congregate on the sponges wrapping my MP10s as well as the outflow sponge on my skimmer. This works for me for now since now I can keep them under control simply by removing the sponges and giving them a good washing every couple days. It's certainly not ideal, but I suppose it's better than dinos covering my corals!

I knew that this time around with carbon dosing that I wanted to make sure that the NO3 and PO4 reached 0 at the same time or else it could cause problems. With the help of some Seachem Phosguard I was able to do just that. For the first time ever, my nutrients are both measuring at 0. I'm also getting very good coloration in the coral and excellent polyp extension. I'm also VERY happy to report that the SOTR Millie frag I acquired did not completely die on me after the dinos and is now starting to recover! I'm sure it'll be months before it even reaches the point to where I bought it, but I'm really excited to see it grow again. My anemone was also nearly wiped out from the dinos, but with some extra special care I've been able to nurse it back to health. She's really starting to bubble up again and doesn't seem to be bothered at all by the few dino cells floating around in the water column. I've also dialed in my alkalinity and calcium. Before, my goal was to keep the alk at 12.6 in line with the Red Sea recommendation, but for now I think that I'm going to keep it below 10, just to make sure my monti cap stays colored up. Right now, I'm daily dosing about 40ml of BRS 2-part to keep it balanced, so the tank is using quite a bit!

Finally, the latest addition to the tank is a JF Jack-O-Lantern Lepto and what a beautiful piece of coral!!! The spot I designated for it seems to be a perfect fit and I'm hopeful that it'll encrust the plug in the coming months! Without further ado, here are pics from this month:

Full tank shot:



My Red Planet - really starting to get that green, red, pink coloration going as well as some great growth this month



My monti cap and bubble gum monster in the background; love how that thing looks under the blues!



My pink lemonade has really started to take off! It continues to encrust, but now it's branching out everywhere! Excited about future growth.



Another crazy grower this month, my monti digitata! This thing has just packed it on this month and I'll likely have to think about fragging it soon.



Here's the shot of my JF JOL - what an unbelievable orange! Perfect addition to the reef!



My PC Rainbow acro. This thing is really starting to look amazing despite it's slow growth so far. The pic isn't perfect, but the very base is blue, followed by green then yellow. All with red polyps...super cool!



Finally, my UC SSC and JF Kung Fu Fighters Paly; if you compare the SSC with last month's pic you can see that it's encrusting quite nicely and even developing the pink tips.



Ok, that's enough for now. Be back next month with another update!

 

[Ectogamut]

Reef has come a long way since last update. Had dinos for nearly a year, and right after my October update I had an STN event caused by mis-dosing NO3-PO4-X. I eliminated the dinos in March by using the nano-bubble method advocated by Elegant Corals and then switched to a full zeovit setup.

 

[Ectogamut]

No big changes this week in the tank, even after stopping the dosage of B-Balance. The burnt tips on the Pearlberry haven't gotten worse or better at this point. I measured PO4 at 0.05 today, so it's possible that this is too high for the PB, especially since it's a small frag.

Growth and Color still look good in everything except for the Pearlberry. I've just ordered some KZ Bio Mate to bring the PO4 down and dislodge some of the sludge in my substrate.

On a side note, my Carberryi Anthias has stopped eating, not taking anything between frozen, pellet, flake, and live copepods. I see her belly shrinking, but all the other fish are healthy and eating, so all I can do is wait at this point.

Lowered lighting from 75% intensity down to 70%. I have a feeling that it may be too intense looking at some of my coral. There's a spot on my UC SSC that looks paler than the rest of the colony, some of the tips on my green slimer look like the flesh is thinner than the surrounding tissue, and of course there's the issue with the Pearlberry. I'm going from 79W to 73W according to Ecotech Live during my peak.

WC should help bring down PO4 a little bit. I've also skipped dosing my copepods this week. Not because I'm concerned with the PO4 all those little crustaceans could be adding, but because I cleaned out my culture last week. I completely replaced the tank water, then re-added the copepods back into the tank. I'm also doing this to allow more time for my phyto culture to develop. I think that I may have been splitting it too often. The result was a lot of phyto sediment at the bottom of my culture and a Mountain Dew coloration to the rest of the culture. My target coloration is a green/black color. I went ahead and left the culture where it is at one week development today, but added another 2ml of Miracle Gro liquid fertilizer to each bottle. I did this last night and the culture wasn't crashed this morning, so that's good news. In fact, it looked as though there was a noticeable uptick in the density of the culture. Typically, I can see the hard line tubing in the middle of the bottle in the morning before I shake the bottles, but couldn't see it this morning.

Copepods are developing nicely and I can see that they've rebounded after doing a 100% WC on the tank. It had gotten pretty nasty prior to that with a thick layer of sediment on the bottom. I may have lost a good bit of naupli doing the WC. My filter is 55 micron and I'm not sure how small those naupli are. However, I'm sure I picked up plenty of pregnant mamas, so the culture remains strong!