An Overdue Update

It's been a while since I posted anything; that is because for a while there wasn't much to write about- not as much as in the first few months. I have a few projects in the works and I am done with the planning phase on a pump retrofit, but have held back on expenditures for the time being. The pump modification will probably happen in the next few weeks, and a DIY LED lighting upgrade is on the horizon. I also have a few ideas for some topical posts in the near future so stay tuned.

By now my livestock list has grown pretty big for a 29 gallon, so here's a recap. The corals are listed roughly in the order that they were added to the tank. Refreshing this list is something I needed to do anyway, so here goes... if anyone knows the species of one of these that I'm missing, let me know.

Coral:

• Clavularia sp. (Purple "Snowflake" Cloves)
• Zoanthus sp. (Zoas, several species)
• Pachyclavularia violacea (Green Star Polyps)
• Dendrophyllia fistula (Dendros)
• Ricordea florida (Pink/Purple Ricordea)
• Euphyllia divisia (Frogspawn)
• Lobophyllia sp. (Lobed Brain)
• Sarcophyton sp. (Neon Green Toadstool)
• Duncanopsammia axifuga (Duncans)
• Seriatopora hystrix (Hyacinth Bird's Nest)
• Cyphastrea ocellina (Meteor Shower)
• Seriatopora guttatus (Neon Green Bird's Nest)
• Montipora capricornis (Orange/Red Monti)
• Acanthastrea sp. (Acan)
• Euphyllia glabrescens (Torch)
• Xenia umbellata (Pulsing Xenia)
• Favia sp. (Christmas Favia)
• Montipora digitata (Red Digi) new
• Ricordea yuma (Yuma) new
• Palythoa sp. (Brown w/ Green, Striped) new

Fish:

• 2x Amphiprion ocellaris (Ocellaris Clownfish, "False Percula", Black, Male/Female Pair)

Invertebrates:

• 4x Thor amboinensis (Sexy/Anemone Shrimp)
• 1x Lysmata amboinensis (Skunk Cleaner Shrimp)
• 2x Pusiostoma mendicaria (Bumblebee Snail)
• 3x Turbo fluctuosa (Mexican turbo snails)
• 6x Cerithium altratum (Cerith snails)
• 4x Nassarius distortus (Nassarius snails, "Super Tongan") new
• 4x Trochus sp. (Trochus snails) new

Phew, that's a lot of different animals. Admittedly I am at the upper limit for my tank, especially with the corals. As they grow they will definitely begin to encroach on each other. Some of these species would eventually completely outgrow the tank, even if they were the only animal in it (the Euphyllia species and the Montipora capricornis come to mind. All this really means is that fragging will be a necessity, and I'll trade in or sell parts of these creatures to my local fish store or fellow enthusiasts.

I haven't written about or photographed a couple of these new additions as of a few weeks ago. The Ricordea yuma is a about dime-sized specimen and is a brilliant, translucent neon-orange. It does eat and has grown a bit since I got it, so I try to feed it often. Feeding is difficult because of the marauding band of Nassarius snails, shrimp, and crabs, which have the audacity to clamber all over any coral and steal food right out of the mouths. The yuma is related to the Ricordea florida, and large specimens can fetch a pretty penny.

The Montipora digitata is related to the capricornis but instead of forming plates of skeleton, it forms knobby "fingers", hence its name. The fingers are not as delicate and thin as bird's nest coral, and are covered in tiny reddish orange polyps that collectively disappear within the calcareous skeleton from time to time. It does encrust a bit as you can see in the picture. A bit of bad news- I had this piece wedged into the main rockwork of the tank, where it had been stable for some time. A few nights ago, one of my beastly turbo snails rammed the Monti off of the rock... I found it the next morning. It had landed upside down, right on the Lobophyllia brain coral. Below are pics of the aftermath.

This is a prime example of why corals should generally never come into contact with one another in your aquarium. I like to think of these conflicts as historic naval battles. Two vessels bristling with cannons pull up and broadside each other with stinging cells. Unfortunately for the digitata, the brain coral had it both out-armored and out-gunned. The result was the carnage evident above... I'm hoping for a full recovery but it will take time. The Lobophyllia was unaffected.

The brown and green Palythoa was a bit of an impulse buy. I knew their requirements but I didn't go to the store to buy it specifically- I just happened upon it and thought it had a striking color and pattern. It's related to the Zoas, and the rock that it came on had a couple of cool critters including another micro brittle star.

Four Trochus snails were a great find. My LFS finally had them in stock. These snails are one of the better algae eaters that you can find. They're larger than the Cerith snails and thus consume more (and faster) and if they fall on their backs they can right themselves without issue. Their shells are unique and attractive, and the shape makes it difficult for hermit crabs to kill them. I picked up four of these and they've been busy cleaning my glass and rock ever since. These snails are somewhere in between the Cerith and Turbos in terms of size and capacity for eating algae.

Nassarius snails are sand-burrowing detritivores that I originally bought for janitor duty, but quickly found that they took upon themselves the role of food bandits. They lay buried in the sand all day with their siphons poking out and at the faintest smell of food, they come bursting from the substrate like something out of a scifi movie:

I bought four of these but found that I did not want or need that many. Even though they 'stir' the sand and keep it somewhat aerated as they burrow and surface, they aren't worth the headache when it is feeding time and I have to babysit corals to make sure that these snails don't climb up on top of the coral and steal the food. They're so aggressive with food that they'll even drive away hermit crabs. I ended up trading two of these in. I don't have a good picture of these snails for some reason; I'll try and get one soon.

My two clowns got sick again. I'm not sure what the cause was this time. The larger of the two, apparently the female, began to show signs of finrot on the front of her dorsal fin. Finrot usually occurs because of stress or injury from some other source. It's a bacteria infection that quickly eats away at the fin material, right down to the base of the fin, and eventually causes death. I managed to get them into the hospital tank and treated the finrot with Maracyn Two, an effective gram-negative antibacterial/antibiotic medication. After the five day treatment, the finrot subsided and it is already growing back.

My water tested fine and it's hard to identify the root cause of this disease. The bacteria are always present in the water, but only become a problem in a fish that is somehow weakened. It might be from trying to host in the Torch coral, which has a potent sting and sharp internal skeleton. I'm hoping not to have to catch these little fish again, as this is their second time in the hospital tank for treatment. It is hard to describe how difficult it is to remove them from the tank without total live rock and coral upheaval, and they aren't even in the running for most difficult aquarium fish to catch... many an aquarist has cursed a damselfish or wrasse that simply refused to be caught without being literally the only thing remaining in the tank aside from water. I wonder if sport fisherman would get the same "rush" out of trying to catch a damsel with a net that they get fighting a marlin with a sea rod. I'd say the damselfish is probably a bigger challenge.

More bad news, this time on the Acanthastrea front. Something caused some tissue damage and the whole colony began to progressively deteriorate. One of the polyps is almost gone and has receded away to reveal the skeleton underneath. I'm really hoping for a recovery as this was not only a somewhat expensive coral, but was attractive and a lot of fun to feed. I have yet to lose a coral and this would be my first... a failure in my eyes, especially since it had been thriving up until the last week. All clues pointed towards the sexy shrimp as culprits. I had noticed them sitting on the Acan from time to time, and assumed that they were only lightly picking at it as they do on the Lobophyllia, or eating mucus that the corals sometimes secrete... one day, however, I saw a shrimp violently tearing tissue from the outer ring of flesh, so it was at least contributing to the coral's problems.

This incident prompt me to build a makeshift prison in the tank. I poked several holes in one of the little plastic containers that you use for salsa at a Mexican restaurant, and in one evening caught two shrimp in the act. Since they've been incarcerated in my makeshift underwater prison, I have yet to see a sexy shrimp on the Acan. Perhaps it was only those two shrimp who had a taste for coral, or maybe the other two have learned by example. The two guilty parties were locked up for a few days and the coral immediately appeared to be doing a little better. They were converted into store credit on my next LFS visit.

That's all for now. I didn't mention the coolest news because I'm saving that for its own post in a few days. With one sick coral, two recovering fish, and a Montipora colony that is a barren skeleton on one side it seems like a lot of trouble but really... it isn't that bad. These types of problems are all par for the course in this hobby.

Magnetism

As I alluded to in a previous post, I found a great way to open up some space in the tank. In this hobby there seems to be no shortage of small to medium-sized operations wherein a hobbyist comes up with something marketable and starts selling it. A good example of this is inTank LLC, and Aqua-Mags. I've not yet had the pleasure of using any of inTank's products but many people have with some success. I haven't ruled it out for the future.

Aqua-Mags sells the "Frag-Mag" (and similar "Rock-Mag"), a unique and useful product. It's simple and effective, and really opens up a lot of potential for smaller tanks. Essentially a Frag-Mag is just a couple of strong rare-earth magnets encased in plastic which are attracted to each other on either side of a surface of the aquarium... be it the glass sides or back, plastic false wall, overflow, what-have-you. One of the magnets, on the "aquarium side", is covered in rough gravel to which you can glue or epoxy a frag of coral. In this way the otherwise barren back wall of the aquarium can be occupied  by corals... or whatever else you can imagine.

 

 

I decided to mount my Torch Coral somewhere that would open up some space in the tank as well as provide the torch ample room to expand. Using some D-D ROWA Aquascape Epoxy, I mounted the torch to one side of the Frag-Mag and left it in its usual spot on my rock to cure for 24+ hours. When it was done, I experimented with it in several positions on the back and side walls. I've tentatively chosen the right upper glass for the Torch to stay semi-permanently because it seems to really like the mix of lighting and flow in that spot. It's always fully inflated and healthy-looking. The moderate water flow gives it a constant sweeping movement that catches the eye from across the room. The only downside here is that if someone knocks or removes the outside magnet, the Torch could conceivably fall down against a rock and become damaged and/or sting other corals that it lands on. This was a great opportunity to work with both the epoxy and the Frag-Mag and learn a bit about how quickly it sets, how to shape it, the strength of the magnets, etc.

Here are a few shots when the Torch was mounted on the back wall.

 

 

I feel like having it on the glass lets you see both sides of this animal, and to be able to look at it from underneath isn't a common sight in the hobby.

That left me with two unused Frag-Mags. For a week or so I contemplated what to do with them, finally deciding to act on an idea I had thrown around since the tank was first set up. One of my rocks had always seemed out of place and awkward, and I had a lot of barren space on the back wall of the tank... Why not elevate the rock and mount it up on the wall using Frag-Mags?

First the tank had to be prepared for all of this activity to minimize on potential accidents. I migrated all of the corals to the right side of the tank as closely as possible without touching (don't want to start any wars) and effectively cleared the area I'd be working in. I moved the small rock with the purple clove polyps that was one of my first coral purchases. It had been sitting on the rock that was to be moved, and the coralline growth had stopped at its edges... moving it revealed a white "tan line" on the rock in its place. For the several weeks since introduced, these little polyps had begun to flourish and had finally spread onto the rock itself (one of my original goals).

 All corals relocated away from the construction zone, and a Cerith snail clearly ready for its close-up.

The cyphastrea meteor shower was glued to the rock and could not be removed. Like the few clavularia polyps that had begun to spread to the rock, the meteor shower would have to survive a few minutes of exposure to air while I worked on the epoxy outside the aquarium. A couple quick google searches assured me that it would probably be ok. I suddenly realized something was missing from my plan.....

 

Iverson Merlot from gold country in Northern California set the mood. 

Later on I broke out the Ardbeg 10 year for the victory lap.

I can't emphasize enough how important it is to know your plan ahead of time when doing something like this. Aquascape Epoxy is very unforgiving once it cures. If you screw up, you've ruined your rock and wasted your magnets. I spent several minutes holding the rock against the wall in different positions taking mental notes, determining whether the dividing wall between chamber 2 and 3 would affect the placement of magnets, whether the pump return line would get in the way, etc. It was also important to note exactly where on the rock the magnets would be affixed. Finally and most important, both magnets could be adjusted and moved independently while being attached to the rock, but in their final position they would have to be flush with each other and as coplanar as possible to have the best grip on the flat wall. Here are a couple of pictures that I took while planning the location of the rock and its general orientation on the wall. It was pretty awkward taking these with one free hand.

 

The timing during this process was critical as the epoxy only minutes of pliability before it begins to set. I cut off a generous amount and stuck it in the microwave for a couple of seconds it to make it easier to hand-mix. Then I formed it into two even clumps and carefully pressed it onto the gravel face of the Frag-Mags. I started in the very center and used firm thumb pressure to ensure that the epoxy, which has a clay-like consistency before curing, formed a strong bond to the gravel. There was a lot of rushing but I managed to get it all done with a few minutes to spare- now came the more nerve-wracking part. I took the piece of rock out of the tank and gently patted dry the portion where the epoxy would bond. The two magnets were pressed onto the porous dead-coral surface and I spread the epoxy as far as possible in all directions, especially into crevices and around corners so that it would have a strong hold once cured. After both magnets were attached, I put the rock magnet-side down on the flat table surface and dropped my eye-level, adjusting the magnets' positions individually until they rested flush with each other against the tabletop. Each adjustment of the magnets meant more pressing and forming of the epoxy. At one point I re-dipped the side of the rock to keep it and the coral wet. The whole process took a few minutes and the epoxy had clearly begun to set by the time I finished.

 

Gathered proper supplies, set my working area up.

 

Guesstimated the proper amount of epoxy for this project. I usually cut this size into smaller pieces and microwave them for a few seconds, to make mixing easier.

 

Here's a shot before I started to even out the magnet surfaces and make them flush.

 

It was a harrowing experience trying to get this right while minimizing the coral and rock's exposure to air. Excuse the poor photo quality here, but I was essentially using the tabletop to get the magnet surfaces flush. After pressing them in, I would smooth out the epoxy a bit more on the coral, and then repeat the process.

 

In the above two photos you can see the rock returned to the tank with magnets attached. I used the drip tray to ensure that they stayed flush. Might have been unnecessary, but it certainly didn't hurt anything.

I returned the rock to the tank in a corner away from all of the corals. The unused grate from the bottom of chamber two served as a temporary spacer and a somewhat rigid, flat surface to make sure that the magnets stayed flush while the epoxy cured... which took two days. After a long wait, during which my tank appeared to be in total upheaval, it was time to see how my handiwork had turned out... success!

 

 

This method worked so well that I am already thinking about a sequel. When and if I find a suitable rock, I am going to mount it across the back wall from the far right to the middle (from under the Koralia and behind the Frogspawn). On that rock I will and grow some Green Star Polyps or a clavularia species. There are some really nice ones.  I think it would provide some more depth and motion to the tank.

On a sad note, the tragedy I mentioned in the last post was the death of my Randall's Goby only a week before it was reintroduced to the aquarium. I don't know the cause of death- the hospital tank water tested fine and it was eating (ravenously) up to the day of its death. No signs of disease or injury. Could it have simply not gotten enough food? It didn't seem thin. That goby was pretty entertaining and I was planning on matching it with a pistol shrimp eventually, so I was bummed out by the loss. I despise failure, and especially failure without explanation. While it was an expensive and disheartening loss, the bright side is now I have the opportunity to choose another fish to replace him. This weekend at the the store I saw what I can only assume was a fully-grown Randall's Goby and it was HUGE! Seeing their full size has convinced me to go with a much smaller shrimp goby, something like a Stonogobiops Yasha which only reaches two inches, or maybe a bit more. That's far less bioload than the monstrous Randall's that I saw over the weekend, and it affords me more flexibility in choosing additional bioload while still providing a colorful addition and the interesting shrimp-goby relationship that I'll get into at some other time.

Stomatella Love

Wow. I've read about this but didn't think I would be lucky enough to see it in action anytime soon. Stomatella Snails are some of the more common hitchhikers that are introduced to tanks via live rock and coral purchases, and they are one of the few snails that seem to readily and successfully reproduce in an aquarium. Many other snail species will attempt to spawn but have extended planktonic larval stages which cannot survive in such a closed environment.

Stomatellas breed via broadcast- in an organized fashion brought on by some sort of chemical signal, all of the snails in the tank will simultaneously clime up to a high point on the rock and release their eggs and sperm into the water column, and the rest is up to nature. Given that only a few months ago I had two of these snails and now there are twenty or thirty of them in my tank, this must have been going on for some time.

Anyway a few minutes ago I was lucky enough to be sitting in front of the tank and looking at the curious puffs of smoke rising from my rock. I soon realized what was going on... not a minute later the female stomatellas began releasing hundreds of eggs through their breathing siphons. I was too fascinated to pick up the camera, but next time I will definitely try to capture this in images.

Many of these eggs become food for other animals in the tank but judging by the present population there are plenty that make it to adulthood.

I also found my first starfish tonight. Not exactly sure which species it is but it appears to be of the genus Asterina, and is about 5-8mm wide. There are some scattered accounts of these animals eating the base of Acropora hard corals but the general consensus is that they're welcome additions unless they reach plague proportions.

Skimming the Surface

Since back when I was working on the initial planning for this reef system, the use of protein skimming was something of an expensive option in the realm of filtration and water quality. Initially the feeling was that I could get by without using a protein skimmer. Not only are they usually quite expensive but finding one that will fit in the back of my Oceanic Biocube29 limits the selection to only a few models which are designed specifically for nano reefs.

Protein skimmers are designed to remove dissolved organic compounds (DOCs) from water before they decompose by means of a principle called Foam Fractionation. These compounds are hydrophobic or hydrophilic, or both- that is, they repel or are attracted to water, respectively. In a water molecule, the two Hydrogen atoms lend a slightly positive charge while the Oxygen atom slightly negative. The nonlinear arrangement of the water molecule gives it a slight electric dipole moment; we can also say water molecules are dipolar (non-polar molecules tend to be hydrophobic). The dipolar property of water is actually the basis for some of its most important and unique features, but I digress... the point is, many of the undesirable compounds in the tank, due to their hydrophobic character, readily "stick" to a surface between water and air.

Foam Fractionation involves the creation of many tiny bubbles to create a vast amount of surface area between water and air. These bubbles are created by various means (venturi pressure, spinning needle-wheel, airstone, etc) and confined within the body of the skimmer. Tank water passes through the base of the skimmer, and when a hydrophobic or partially hydrophobic molecule (as well as some types of particulate matter) meets this interface between the air and water (a bubble), it gets stuck, becoming bound to the bubble surface. The only way up and out for these bubbles is through the columnar opening of a collection cup which sits on top of the skimmer. As the bubbles collect an increasing amount of material, they become more frothy and disgusting... eventually reaching the top of the column and spilling over into the collection cup. This overflowing gunk is called the "skimmate"; that which was skimmed, I suppose. One may choose to "skim wet" or "skim dry", the difference being the amount of water removed with the skimmate. This is a direct result of the amount of bubble production and water surface height within the column. Skimming dry produces a nasty, stinky sludge in the collection cup but does not remove as much as skimming wet, which produces a steady amount of tea-colored liquid. The latter typically removes more DOCs but at the cost of also removing salt water, complicating top-offs because the water level fluctuation is no longer due to evaporation alone. Maintaining a strictly constant salinity is a little more difficult with aggressive skimming in a small tank like mine.

Two things determine the quality of a skimmer: (1) greater surface area between water and bubbles, and (2) contact time between the water and air. This is why larger, taller skimmers that produce a greater amount of smaller bubbles do the best.

Long story short, I had decided to buy and use a skimmer. Reading the countless reviews, testimonials, and personal experiences out there convinced me that the best one on the market for a Biocube29 is a Tunze Nano 9002 DOC Protein Skimmer. I asked my friend about his experience with them... as it turned out, he had one that was unused and was willing to lend it to me before I made my decision on whether to invest. This was great news... that very night I went home and disassembled, cleaned, studied, and reassembled it. It's actually quite a simple design but is very effective. It uses a venturi pump to produce bubbles; the aperture can be controlled using the small blue screw at the top of the chamber.

 

 

As most other Biocube owners have experienced, there is only really one option for placement of this skimmer: chamber 2. This entire chamber formerly served as my refugium, lit on a reverse-day cycle to grow chaetomorpha. I also used the drip tray to support a piece of filter floss which catches particulate in the overflow from chamber 1. Pictures of this are visible a couple of posts prior to this. Placing the Tunze in this chamber seemed problematic with a bunch of loose macroalgae tumbling around in the water. I didn't want the pump intake clogged with loose algae and the skimmer takes up more than half of the chamber, so I temporarily removed all of the algae until coming up with a suitable solution. My chaetomorpha happily lived in a separate bowl of tank water for a few days. The couple of unfortunate amphipods that migrated into the bowl with it were eventually fed to my fish who are still in the hospital tank.

The stock collection cup on the Tunze 9002 is, in my opinion, unnecessarily large for the profile of the skimmer itself. Its diameter exceeds the width of the back opening of my hood and the width of the back chamber. Some modifications to the tank and to the hood were needed so that I could easily remove the cup for periodic emptying. Out came the utility knife, heavy-duty scissors, and wire cutters. There are some alternatives and custom 3rd party accessories for the biocube which are meant to work in conjunction with the Tunze 9002, but I decided to just mod the tank for now. None of my proposed changes affected the outside aesthetic of the tank hood.

 

Slots cut out of the hood so that the cup can be removed with ease. They aren't apparent when the lid is closed.

 

The cord is extremely short. I had to add another power strip in the top shelf and cut a space make a shorter path from the skimmer to the plug.

I needed a way to get my chaetomorpha back inside chamber 2, protected and confined to a single area where it could be illuminated at night for growth but without risk of being sucked up into the skimmer. Even though the skimmer removes many of the nutrients that would otherwise decompose and be used by the chaetomorpha, it doesn't hurt to have additional means of removing phosphates and nitrates as they inevitably build up (the main method being regular water changes). The chaetomorpha is also handy for providing an environment where pods and other animals can thrive and reproduce. One of my concerns with a skimmer is that using it would suck up many of the pods that had been living and reproducing in chamber two, but judging by the frighteningly overwhelming population in the main tank I don't think they need much help reproducing. I thought about this at length and tried to come up with a home-made solution that would provide the same functionality as some of the pre-built 3rd party modifications.

For $3.99 I bought a clear, cylindrical plastic spray bottle at the supermarket that looked like it would fit next to the skimmer in chamber 2. Using the utility knife, I carefully started three rings of holes around the base of the bottle and progressively opened them until I could punch a small nail through each. I followed up with a much larger nail to open the holes to the desired final diameter, and tested the flow through these holes in my kitchen sink. Even with the water blasting into the opening of the bottle, the water level did not reach a couple inches higher than the top ring of holes- water flowed very quickly through the bottle. This is what I wanted. The mass of chaetomorpha could sit at the bottom of the bottle, lit up from behind the tank by my JBJ Nano Glo, with water flowing down from the top of the bottle to keep the spaghetti-like clump from dispersing and to provide necessary nutrients to the macroalgae. I opened up the top of the bottle so that water could easily pour in. Instead of cutting the top off completely, I carefully snipped a circular hole along the top to retain much of the strength of the thick plastic that the manufacturers used. It turned out really well, at least as an interim solution until I get a custom-fit media basket.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

Bottle in place.

A view through the window on the back of the tank with the Nano-Glo on. I've since adjusted the height of the light and the bottle so it hits the algae more directly.

With the skimmer in place, the drip tray that had previously taken up all of the top of chamber two had to be cut down to size. I tried several versions of this reduced form and finally settled on cutting the thing entirely in half, also removing the raised plastic in the middle so that the filter floss would sit lower in the flow of water from chamber 1. As you can see in the pictures below, the glass side of chamber 2 (the back) did not have a support so I used one of the extra sucker pads from my Maxijet 1200 (the pump I use for water changes) to support it.

 

 

 

 

This set of modifications effectively provides the same mechanical filtration as I had before, keeps my chaetomorpha in one place, more effectively utilizes the light from the nano-glo, and makes room for the skimmer- which is an extremely useful means of removing tank pollutants and waste products before they even begin to decompose. I think a skimmer is probably the single best investment you can make with regards to water quality in a reef tank. Within a few hours it was already producing results:

 

All said and done, the corals and other livestock will be happier with the improvement in water quality, even though Zoanthids and some other LPS prefer to have some dissolved nutrients in the water; that shouldn't be a problem. The water is a already much clearer after only a few days of skimming and a healthy amount of frothing, bubbling spillover fills the collection cup with a tea colored cup of gunk every few days... gunk that would otherwise be floating around in the tank and yellowing my water.

I mounted two LED-based lights within the tank stand. It's much easier to work in there now, especially on any electrical wiring.

 

That's all until for now. My fish will be reintroduced to the tank next Friday after a long fallow period to clear the tank of any possible marine ich. Couple of new corals in the next update, a novel placement of my torch, and a tragedy to report.