Rêverie Reef - Video thread

Ardeus · Nov 16, 2020

Today I noticed something new with the Banggais. A young couple seems to have claimed a territory on the right side of the tank and is able to stand their ground against their mother.

It's a huge change in the dynamics of the group and I am curious to see how things will develop from here.

The father released the last batch of fry a week ago and everything is still peaceful.

chizerbunoi · Nov 16, 2020

Nice growth on that purple acro.

Ardeus · Nov 16, 2020

It's a red dragon, it's supposed to grow like a weed and then one day suddenly die, just because you looked at it sideways the day before.

chizerbunoi · Nov 16, 2020

Mine used to RTN if I disturbed the parameters too much. I didn’t run a refugium but was carbon dosing back then. Flow, Alkalinity and temperature is the other hot spots.

Ardeus · Nov 16, 2020

I have it on the sand and it gets gentle fl flow and probably around 200 par. I have had oscillations of 1.5 dkh and it didn't blink.

It's one of those corals I shouldn't get too attached though.

Ardeus · Nov 19, 2020

Ardeus · Nov 25, 2020

I decided to make big changes to the way I manage the nutrients in this tank.

This tank has a tendency to slowly drop nitrates and not so slowly rise phosphates.

I manage these 2 trends by dosing Sodium nitrate very occasionally to keep it between 2 and 5 and by growing chaeto in the refugium.

The chaeto is not enough, so whenever the phosphates get close to 0.3 I use lanthanum to cut it in half.

It's not something I feel comfortable doing regularly. I found that the trick to avoid having lanthanum show up in ICP is to dose it into a 5 micron filter sock very very slowly., over the course of 6+ hours.

Just the same I felt I needed to make some changes, there's too much ciano and diatoms on the sand.

Friday morning I had 0.28 phosphates and I hit them with lanthanum and it dropped to 0.16.

In the afternoon I received a D-D reactor, ATI GFO and I plugged it in. I went with half the dose recommended, around 200gr.

Sunday (36 hours later) the phosphates had dropped to 0.11. I began dosing 100ml of phytoplankton every night into the refugium.

Today phosphates had stabilized at 0.10 and nitrates were also stable at 2.5. It seems I may have balanced things on my 1st try.

Ardeus · Nov 27, 2020

Tank today.

Ardeus · Nov 27, 2020

Lemonade...

Ardeus · Dec 2, 2020

Ardeus · Dec 2, 2020

Ardeus · Mar 7, 2021

I've been using vibrant to to try to get rid of bubble algae. It's a slow process and not without some losses.

I noticed that vibrant causes the alk consumption to halt and the result was a few alk spikes.

But as before, alk spikes of 1 dkh wouldn't hurt anything, now they kill some corals, especially the platting montis.

I think vibrant stresses the corals and they are less capable of dealing with the alk fluctuations caused by vibrant.

I was going to put the dead montis in the calcium reactor, but I decided to glue them back to 1 piece.

I shall name this art piece "Vibrant"

chizerbunoi · Mar 9, 2021

Sorry to hear about the monti. How is the magnifica doing after split and vacation?

Ardeus · Mar 9, 2021

She recovered and today it's exactly 3 years since I got her. I'm going to prepare a special meal for her.

Ardeus · Mar 10, 2021

I have been toying with the idea of having an extension to this tank in the form of a sunlit reef pond.

This photo was taken around 3:30 PM. The pond would receive direct sunlight during most part of the day because this arch is facing south.

This area is right outside my bedroom and I would have to put glass panes on those 2 arches to shelter the area from extreme weather. It can get below freezing point or above 115 degrees F.

The pond would be on a stand 16" above the floor so that you could see the tank as a normal aquarium when sitting down on a low chair or seen as a pond when standing.

This pond would be connected to my current sump with a 500 gallon/hour return pump. I would only need to get this return pump, circulation pumps and 2 more heaters.

As I said in the beginning, it's just an idea at the moment, an old dream of building something closer to a natural reef, a small lagoon surrounded by rock from all sides except the front. But dreams are dangerous things.

Ardeus · Mar 11, 2021

squidarcher · Mar 11, 2021

Ardeus said:
I have been toying with the idea of having an extension to this tank in the form of a sunlit reef pond.

This photo was taken around 3:30 PM. The pond would receive direct sunlight during most part of the day because this arch is facing south.

This area is right outside my bedroom and I would have to put glass panes on those 2 arches to shelter the area from extreme weather. It can get below freezing point or above 115 degrees F.

The pond would be on a stand 16" above the floor so that you could see the tank as a normal aquarium when sitting down on a low chair or seen as a pond when standing.

This pond would be connected to my current sump with a 500 gallon/hour return pump. I would only need to get this return pump, circulation pumps and 2 more heaters.

As I said in the beginning, it's just an idea at the moment, an old dream of building something closer to a natural reef, a small lagoon surrounded by rock from all sides except the front. But dreams are dangerous things.

That would be so cool

Ardeus · Mar 15, 2021

I'm dangerously thinking more and more about the pond.

It wouldn't be a very expensive project as it is. It would require:

- Close those 2 arches with glass (2000 eur);
- The tank with stand (2000 euro);
- 3 gyre circulation pumps (500);
- 2 heaters (100);
- Piping to connect the pond to the sump of my tank(300);
- Dead rock(300);
- Sand(100);
- Fish (1500) (I would only use corals from my tank).

Total: 6800 eur.

Alternatively, I could move all the content of my tank to the pond.

No, it's a nope project.

Ardeus · Mar 16, 2021

Today I was contacted by someone from a store asking if I had anemones to sell. To my surprise, after thinking about it for a few seconds, I had to answer "No".

I have a huge area of anemones at the back and as they multiply, catching rogue anemones was part of my rotine. That stopped a few months ago and I didn't even notice.

I can't remember the last time I caught a wandering anemone and put it in the refugium.

There were also a few scattered through the tank that I couldn't remove. They disappeared.

There's an explanation: the 3 filefish.

I have seen them rip tentacles off the anemones. My guess is that the anemones the venture out of the colony are completely eaten and the ones that stay in the colony survive because they only have a few tentacles ripped off every now and then.

I hope that the filefish don't exterminate them.