Hanging in there

For the past nine months, my tank has slipped into survival mode as I've been really busy.  I wound up buying two more Turbo Snails that died in a week.  I bought a new protein skimmer that stopped working after a few months.  The chaetomorpha in my refugium was getting covered up by green hair and slime algae, which had also started taking over my display tank.  The algae outbreak happened as I provided more light in trying to bring some color back to my bleached anemone, which eventually perished with the algae outbreak.  At that point, things were anything but auspicious.

Yesterday, I finally got an afternoon to clean up the tank, do a much needed water change, and get things back on track.  I fixed the problem with the skimmer -- salt creep had simply blocked the air intake tube.  I bought another Turbo Snail that I properly acclimated this time -- it's eaten quite a bit already.  The chaetomorpha has actually turned back the slime algae in the refugium and has grown quite a bit.  And through it all, my four fish have miraculously been hanging in there, doing fine.  Things are starting to look a little better already.

Turbo Snail on its Back

After four months in my tank, my Turbo Snail finally fell on its back, as I had read can happen.  It's not exactly clear how he fell, but I did notice that he was grabbing on to something gooey with sand and algae stuck to it.  I wonder if that was waste from the anemone.

I just picked him up and flipped him back over and he seems fine.

Bleached Anemone?

I was looking at old pictures of my anemone and noticed how much color they had when I first got them.  Articles like this one and this one suggest that they my anemones could be bleached.

The anemone seem to be doing relatively well in that they've found places to settle and haven't moved in months -- and there are plenty of places they could move to for more or less light, and more or less flow.  Their bubbles are also quite prominent, even more so than when I first got them.  On the downside, while the tips still have a pinkish color, the rest of the anemone is fairly colorless, whereas before they had both red and green coloration.  Also, they've shrunk a little bit, though not that much.  I've been feeding them some krill once a week, and they eat it.

However, I'm beginning to suspect that my light might be too weak.  I've had my AI Sol's set at 20% intensity for white, blue, and royal blue colors.  Looks like folks on Reef Central set the intensity in the 50% range.  So for the past couple of days I dialed up the intensity of all three colors to 30%.  We'll see how it goes.

Adding 20 lbs More Live Rock

I've been thinking about getting some Mandarin fish and coral, which need more live rock.  So I bought about 20 lbs more live rock and another piece of bowl rock (~3 lbs) for the aquarium.  Previously, I had added 15 lbs of Fiji live rock and 15 lbs of bowl rock and 12 lbs of Totoku to the tank.  So I'm now up to roughly 47 lbs of live rock and 18 lbs of bowl rock, or 65 lbs of rock in total.

I found a fascinating article about aquascaping. This really got me thinking about trying to create something that looked natural, but was also functional.  I wound up with a design that is part bridge, mound, curved wall, and terrace.  The flat terrace rocks are hard to come by naturally, so I found a couple pieces of bowl rock that I used to give the tank a multilevel appearance.  I also wanted to leave some open space for the active swimmers, so the right side of the tank has less rock.  I wanted to cover up a bit the overflow in the back left corner, so I wrapped the mound around it.  Also, I wanted to have plenty of places to put coral at different elevations (and light intensities) and with various flow options in the tank.  Finally, I wanted to provide the fish with more tunnels and hiding places.  The new arrangement allows the fish to swim in a straight line almost the entire length of the tank either in the back, middle, or front of the tank.

So far, the Yellow Tang and Coral Beauty seem to love the new arrangement the most, exploring just about every nook and cranny already.  The fire shrimp has found a new home that, thankfully, is much easier to see.  But the Clownfish still spend a lot of time swimming near the return and top of the tank, pretty much ignoring the rearrangement.

Tunze Turbelle 6105 Powerhead

Anemone and coral need water flow to help wash away waste and detritous, so I spent some time earlier this summer thinking about what type of flow I wanted to add to the aquarium.  Ultimately I decided to buy a Tunze Turbelle stream 6105, as pictured below.

I was quite intrigued by the Vortech MP40's.  The LFS did a good job of selling me on it.  I liked the minimum footprint it takes inside the tank and how the power cord is not visible inside the tank.  I also really liked the controller and the various programs to easily choose from.  However, I decided against the MP40's for two main reasons:  the noticeable whirring noise level and the power cord on the outside of the tank.  On the power cord, while I like how clean the inside of the tank looks without the power cord, I was worried that having the cord on the outside of the tank was not ideal with young kids running around.  On the noise level, I've already made some strides to reduce the noise level of my tank as it currently stands, so the last thing I wanted to do was to add more ambient noise.  Some YouTube videos gave me a good idea of how much sound to expect.

In leaning towards a Tunze, I considered both the Tunze 6105 and the newer 6095.  I actually used the Vortech flow calculator to determine how much flow I would need.  A single MP40 outputs 1000-3200 GPH.  For my tank dimensions, the site recommends 2380 GPH for SPS and 1428 GPH for LPS.  A 6095 produces 528-2510 GPH, while a 6105 can generate 792-3434 GPH. So eventually I should be able to get by with a single 6105 or two 6095.  I decided if I could get by with a single power head, that would be better then two.  Plus, I could mount it on my overflow chamber on one side of the tank, and it would not be as noticeable because both the power head and overflow chamber are black.  You can see what this looks like below.

When I got the 6105 power head, I set the jumper on the minimum setting and I was still getting more than enough flow for the anemone.  I've been really happy with how quiet it's been.  However, if I had to do it over again, I would probably have gone with a single 6095 to begin with because it's much smaller than the 6105.  Then, add another 6095 in the future.  For now, I'm not too worried though, and it's possible my 6105 may ultimately prove to be the right choice long term as I add more coral.  We'll see.

You may also notice some algae on the sand bed.  The chaeto morpha in my sump has really overgrown and I need to prune it.  Hopefully that will help.

Coral Beauty: Most Dramatic Introduction Yet

After two weeks of quarantining, the coral beauty started eating pellet foods and even started responding to some training:  I tap the tank gently ten times with the cap if the food container right before feeding.  Also, I noticed a white spot on its fin during the second week, and did a freshwater dip to clear that away.  Overall, my first attempt at quarantining was useful.

When I added the coral beauty to the display tank, the drama began.  First, it some how got caught in the net.  I thought it was its gills at first and fins, but after gently loosening the net around the fish, it appeared the fish was actually biting the net and not letting go.  So it took about five minutes of some careful shaking, and eventually it released the net, but only after it was nearly unconscious.  It sank immediately to the bottom if the tank.  It lay there for a little while, but finally came around and started swimming slowly.

The yellow tang immediately swam up to it and began brushing up against it.  I realized that it was wielding its blade, which was quite worrisome.  I read that the coral beauty should be one of the first species to introduce and the yellow tang the last because it is more territorial, but I didn't plan well enough in advance.  I'm hoping the coral beauty is hardy enough to avoid the tang.  I may ads some more live rock to the tank as well.

On the second day, I was happy to see the coral beauty chase down some pellets during feeding time.  And after hiding much of the first day, it has been exploring the tank much more, nibbling at the live rock.  The tang still takes swipes at it every now and then, but the coral beauty, which is currently the same size of the tang, seems capable of avoiding it.  There seems to be a slight discoloration/faded color in the scales of the coral beauty on the left side near its tail, which might be from the yellow tang's blade.  The coral beauty is swimming around fine, though, so hopefully it's not serious.

Coral Beauty One Week in Quarantine

At first, the coral beauty was not eating anything in my quarantine tank.  I fed some flake food and pellets, but no luck.  The next day, I tried the nori that my yellow tang likes so much.  But after a day the coral beauty mostly left it alone.

I called the LFS and he said they were feeding it mysis shrimp, but he thought it was also eating the algae in tank.  Since I didn't have any mysis, I decided to wait until the weekend to try that.

Later in the week, I noticed that the pellets were disappearing and eventually, the coral beauty started tracking down the pellets as soon as I dropped them into the tank.  Now, after a week, the coral beauty seems to be doing well.  It looks healthy and is eating.  If all goes well, I'll add it to the display tank at the end of this week.