New .5 Pico Reef adding hydno, acan, tubipora, favites

[brandon4291]

Hey thanks Neil, glad to have you on board. We trade all kinds of ideas and improve on them constantly around here, can't wait to see your final product. Welcome!

Brandon M>

added in this pic are blastomussa m. and trach. open brain. Two sexy shrimp roughly 1/2" in length were added, decided to forego the idea of no mobile inverts and these seemed like marginal effects on bioload. I decided this because I am shooting for consumption of system protein from the shrimp with minimal addition to it, if I don't have to feed them especially they should work into the ecosystem effectively.

I located a piece of acropora in the LFS and purchased it for the two acropora crabs on board, wanted to transfer them over to my established colonies to increase the speciation in the tank..Of the two crabs, the white one with the black band across (arrow points to it) the face seems to cause no harm to the acropora. The green fuzzy one, as the references say, strips SPS flesh and I was luckily able to impale and remove him with a sewing needle to prevent any further damage. He roughed up the bases of a few of my smaller, newly-developed SPS frags but they'll be fine in a month.

Notice the plating of the acropora with several week's growth if you can see through the dark pics, the coenenchyme has reached in some places over an inch away from the original base. When the front light is moved into place, all the darkened recesses seen in the pic are illuminated, allowing for growth in between the crevices which in time will simulate an established reef wall. To photograph the tank with the front light creates a large flash wash out in the pic.

 

[invert]

great tank sent you a pm brandon been away for ages soz i didnt pick up your message.

 

[brandon4291]

some of last month's additions were: fox coral, more caulastrea yellow var., pipe organ, hydnophora and more SPS frags in between the available spaces. I clipped most of these additions from heavily-discounted damaged specimens, they have recovered in a few weeks. I will get a better scan pic of the left side, capturing a 3x3 specimen of a green favites brain recovery. What happened with this specimen was it was a 3+ year LFS fixture that, at one point, had receeded 60% of its tissue from one stress or another. I noticed upon bartering for cost adjustment that coralline and other calcification deposits had worked their way right up to the tissue borders, indicating a cessation of tissue regression that made this candidate a good bet for nano/pico reef recovery. I used a dremel to cut all the surrounding rock from the tissue (shaping it down to 1/4 the original size) so it would fit into my aquascape scheme.

Recall in this thread all picture dates are off due to a camera software malfunction.
The hydnophora I realize is an aggressive coral, growth will be dealt with by pruning and moving as needed, that's part of the fun of pico reef maintenance. I am seeking eventually a steady-state in which life and death (stinging/overgrowth etc) doesn't have to be re-arranged but rather it is allowed to progress. I did this in my last .5 reef, and GSP won. It took over the whole tank before it was disassembled at 1.5 years of age. I won't use that specimen anymore except on isolated rock rubbles (no chance of overgrowing the main back wall)

This is the submicro aquarium that houses an isolated acropora crab. It concentrates food for him so feeding is extremely efficient, there are slats in the side for waste outflow. It prevents him from picking at the acro plugs, this one is a damaging type.

 

[adrinal]

I missed what light, Pump you are using.
How often are you doing your 90% water changes?

Love the tank!

-NorthernCF

 

[brandon4291]

Thanks for stopping in adrinal. I am using the minijet 14 I think, just a speed-selectable powerhead with the smallest size I could find. I have been adjusting my water-change habits to meet the demands of the system's stocking density, now enhanced with these long-term sexy-shrimp residents. In the original plan I wasn't going to use shrimp but I became bored w/o something mobile in the system. Currently I am employing a feeding method where I spot-feed a mixture of cyclopeeze, DT's reef eggs and phytoplankton very heavily onto each coral early in the morning before a water change. I turn the flow off for about 30 mins and let the corals bathe in the mixture, feeding polyps extended, then I do a full change with matched seawater from the LFS's pre-mixed vat. I just keep a 5 gallon bucket on hand, lasts about a month in between refills. By feeding with this method, I avoid keeping residual bioload flowing in the system (with daily feedings) and when the corals eat, they eat. So I do the feeding, water change method weekly... I am about to post a new pic soon, I have added more blastomussa frags, a small heliofungiid and some electric green zoanthids which has really completed the look. Nice to see you on our board,
b429

 

[invert]

nice as always mines comming along. i have some nice frags just cant seem to find a small tank anywhere in the uk :S. might have to get some glass cut and do it diy.

more pics pls and how is sps growth?

 

[invert]

ALSO do you think a small mushroom leather coral cutting would cause the sps harm? and where do you buy your coral shrinking ray :x

 

[brandon4291]

Hey invert nice to hear from ya again. Concerning the shrink ray, I'd say it's my wallet! I can't say how many times I've bought a zoanthid colony or hammer coral (for example) that had small buds on the side (the size I need) only to go home, frag off the intended portion, then take the rest back to the shop for 40% return credit...even though I gripe constantly about the prices of these frags (how I got into the $500's for this 1/2 g tank) I do have to pay for the availability of what will fit into my tank... And, I have a small armada of high schoolers on the tip at LFS who call me or hold for me especially small frags of coral rarities (considering my Texas isolated location) which helps a lot. Then when I show up no one minds charging me $20 for a 1/2 inch frag of whatever...

I try to do water changes after cutting leathers and mushrooms just to avoid any stress. Soon, very very soon this week, I ought to be able to have updated pics of the system in place (because I'm getting a new camera!) to show new coral additions and changes to the system. I built a subrefugium in the refugium in the back to house a green acropora crab. I caught him chewing flesh one morning so I took him out and built a subrefugium in the back for him so he can't escape out into my reef. I like him, but he's been relegated to the pico reef brig for a life sentence, he's neat to observe just as long as it's not while he's ripping at my corals. I built it out of the polycarbonate plastic cover you get when you buy a 9 volt battery! I took all the glue off the edges, siliconed a flat plastic plate onto the rear, cut in slits for circulation/food injection and installed some sand and LR chips, along with two mushroom frags of 1/16" buds. Hey, I need to be able to at least claim it's a 1x1x1.5 inch reef that lives on the water params of the .5 gallon tank

B

 

[brandon4291]

And, I've had a small bout with RTN on some of my lower-level acroporas..that's very sad. Of all the speculation/observation about SPS RTN all I'm trying to do is step up the water changes, keep things clean, and hope this will stop the event. I think, to some degree, the RTN in my case is facilitated by shading of lower branches (and whatever causative agent they've attributed to RTN...vibrio bacteria etc.) and slower circulation on that side of the tank due to various factors. Lower lighting doesn't help the vigor/recovery of the offended speciment at all... I'm getting strong growth on top from the higher (and brighter illuminated) frags. In my opinion this is just more steady-state happenings in the reef, and if I lose any acro I'll just glue blasto right on top of the new white substrate.

 

[brandon4291]

Added in this aquascape is yellow montipora cap, extra xenia up top left, all midline aquascape brownish/blue-on-the-ends acropora are cuttings from first plugs glued to the back wall. propagation in 5 mos (albeit brown propagation ) blasto w. $90 colony deep red (at least that's what my LFS charged) and interspersed heads of blastomussa merleti (green) in between other frags to keep filling in more space, aiming for that packed look I want. and a few more heads of caulastrea repositioned and replaced. Finally caught and removed the large gravid female sexy shrimp, she didn't help much with my RTN issue. As soon as the physical/microbial stressors went to work, the shrimps were always there to help tear things off in sheets. This one shrimp caused the lion's share of actual tissue removal in my SPS, but the corals will be fine. Will grow back in two mos.

 

[brandon4291]

the SPS coral just below the yellow m. capricornis is a leptoseris I think, could be wrong. At the LFS we thought it was a juvenile polyp-drooped fungiid but it turned out to have equal polyp expansion on both sides of the disk which was strange I thought. It's mounted it sideways by sacrificing one corner of it as a tissue-free glue point, and all frags are glued with superglue gel from a supermarket.

Don't think the favites on the left has receeded! It's positioned more upward now that it gets fed heavily. The forward facing let cyclopeeze fall off and this helps it feed efficiently.

As this pico matures, I became a little bored of the ultra-clean zero bioload approach. It's true you can remove maintenance hassle, pushing water changes out to two weeks if that's a desire, but the growth in the system isn't quite as diverse and pronounced in the tiny niches of the system. I didn't get to see as much change in appearance of the system when it was protein-restricted. The corals hold their in such a clean system and will grow slowly, so if you pack them in it still looks good, but now each week I see new benthic filter-feeders emerge and the copepod populations have doubled so there is always observable motion. I like this better, but I have to be careful with the balances. My feeding regimen would pollute the tank if left in the system for longer than~4 hours. At this temperature, I suspect bacterial colonies would flourish rapidly and consume systemic oxygen. As I mix up the suspension of cyclopeeze, reef eggs and phyto, I only let the pump stay off for about 20-30 mins max. The full water change isn't hard to do, and the 100% turnover removes upwards of 95% of the food matter, leaving small bits interspersed among the corals and rocks for a tiny holdover until feeding again in 4 or so days.

 

[invert]

all i can say is wow

 

[brandon4291]

Hey invert thanks for stopping in. I still have that text and plans you were working on, love to see how they are progressing. Check these macros out, as I figure out how Patrick's camera works I am able to reveal fine details of the 1/2 gallon reef. Small patches of RTN still show, only in one place did I lose an entire frag. Caulastra was moved over the white surface, taking it out of sight. Those are the innerworkings of a reef this small, clips here and there and new glue points guide the calcification to suit the shape and form. As the 1/2" sps frags plate and reach for current, they begin to branch. The small branch forms you are seeing are no bigger than a pencil point, can't wait to see what they do in another 6 mos. The SPS live in close proximity and downstream from several thriving zoanthids, under the SPS are the lps acanthastrea (frontal view only) blastomussa and caulastra with respect to lighting preference.

 

[brandon4291]

In the shot of the hydnophora there is another hidden SPS frag I can't identify on the very left, the orange/yellow disk the size of a dime. Super ultra-smooth surface with orange tint, tiny ridges leading to no apparent mouths or divisions...couldn't even guess. A LFS employee chipped it off a larger colony for me, paid nicely for that one at $25 but once again size availability and cultivation set the cost-- $25 was what it took to convince them to shear off a tiny thumbnail from a nice show colony

The tiny crab takes cyclopeeze off the end of a pipecleaner.

 

[Anonymous]

Damn



That new camera makes that tank look soooo awesome!

Even more awesome than I thought it was!

I can't get over it, its just amazing that all those different species are in such a small space...

 

[invert]

omg brandon thats stunning! atm im still stuck trying to get a small tank lol

 

[^Nano^Reefer^]

WoW !! ... Well it gives me hopes for my ten, having NEVER seen anyone run a nano here I'm wondering if I can get them to catch on ... I like the smaller tanks more I'm not sure why But I think those pics hooked me

 

[Anonymous]

WoW !! ... Well it gives me hopes for my ten, having NEVER seen anyone run a nano here I'm wondering if I can get them to catch on ... I like the smaller tanks more I'm not sure why But I think those pics hooked me

Hey, welcome to the forum.

Where are you located?

Brandon's tanks are awesome, look around a bit for the ones he had in a vase or something. It was something else!

 

[brandon4291]

Thanks guys for stopping in! I have to heartily thank my friend Patrick for donating the digital camera to the cheap pico reef guy that was mighty cool of him! As you can see I'm still trying to figure out what's best for pic quality...flash/no flash, angles, how to get the bottom part of the tank to appear as bright as the top, all that good stuff. Thanks for taking notice

As the tank matures I'm seeing some changes that are interesting. The SPS which started out as markedly green and blue have once again gone pico-reef brown after several months but I can still hold on to some of the early brighter shades where they get the most light. I'm happy to settle for anything that is new growth, and they are at least doing that, so the search for pico-SPS that hold color is still going. In several places small patches of zoanthids directly touch the SPS with no harm, wouldn't have predicted that (they usually irritate each other). And, when the candy coral touches SPS it's usually the SPS that recede, but in the case of the lower middle portion of the reef you can see a dying candy coral head because acropora tissue is creeping up behind it, pushing it off the skeleton. The SPS is killing the caulastrea in this case, but each time I packed the caulastrea among the SPS heads the caulastrea won 100% of the time. Strange alternations for sure...these little systems are a pain in the _______as they evaporate each day, so if you ever run into those kinds of problems NanoReefer you can run a search on our board for auto-topoff devices that may help stabilize your 10 gallon. As knuckle said, welcome!

Knuckle thanks for stopping in Sir! I guess the test of the next six months will tell how much of that speciation will continue to thrive vs. how much will kill each other off. Invert I'm still waiting for your design to come to life, your zonal nano reef idea appeared very well thought out and worth the endeavor.

You guys have a great night, good luck to your reefs!
B429

 

[^Nano^Reefer^]

Thanks for the tip but ummmm ... it's sealed Not the prettyest job but it works ... No salt creap Anywhere. I seen salt creep comming from our setups at work ( 400 gallons of water almost 10,000 gallons of movement ) ... And I thought sealing it would my best bet before I had even read into Nano Reefing .. YAY !!! I came out one up for once.