p3rmafrost

Absolutely, if that's the best place for it. All of the threads on this topic are named "documenting growth over time" there are currently 3 "parts". I'm glad you got a chuckle out of it. I was pretty frustrated with the situation, but my wife always says "go ahead and laugh, it helps the healing". Your advice is solid, thank you. I'll look at rearranging the power heads. I may have to do a little shopping for an adjustable flow one. The Sicce Nano is a constant speed (thus the Wave Rider). They're not exactly what I would describe as aggressive with the flow, but it isn't gentle either. As for the lights, that's also good to know. I made the assumption that 4 T5s and 3 LED would be higher PAR, but we know what they say about assumptions. Thank you for the feedback!

Hello WAMAS! Another 30 days have gone by and I'm back with updates, notes, and some pictures. This month was interesting. I got some good data, had some setbacks, and made some major changes to the tank. Let's get into it: Recap of Changes - Lighting height lowered from 9 inches above tank to 6 inches above tank. Increased trace element dosing by 50%. Changed flow pattern. Seeking community feedback. Aquascape reworked. Seeking community feedback. Verified Data - I was able to rent the club PAR meter and get some data on my tank. I am running a Giesemann Aurora V4. The light consists of 4 T5 bulbs, 2 in blue plus and 2 in coral plus, and 3 LED banks. The tank is 26 inches wide, but the light is 48 inches, so there is light spillage. The LED light situated at the end of the housing are roughly half outside of the tank, as are 6 inches of T5 on each side. I feel confident (but can't verify) that if the tank were 48 inches long, or longer, the PAR readings would be higher. I was anticipating readings in the 4-500 range at the top area of the tank and I speculated 1-150 on the sand bed. This was demonstrated to be an inaccurate assumption. PAR meter readings showed that at 9 inches above the tank measurements were between 285 and 61. The highest recorded reading was directly under an LED array in the center of the tank. The lowest reading was in the back left corner, approximately 2 inches off the sand bed. Curiously 2 inches to the left, and on the sand bed read 84. I lowered the light by 3 inches and remeasured. New measurements showed 300 at the upper area of the tank and 120 on the sand bed. In general, lowering the light by 3 inches increased PAR by readings by 50. There were a few outliers, but overall this held accurate. After lowering the light I felt confident that all of the corals had been arranged in a fashion that was best suited to meet their requirements based on what I could find online. Unfortunately this is the only scientific data I was able to collect this month. Subjective Data (bullets here detailed descriptions below the bullets) - Corals appear to be responding favorably to the increase in trace elements. There is noticeable, but not easily measurable growth on certain corals. There has been a notable increase of flesh on stalk based LPS (like candy canes) Clownfish are now hyper aggressive towards any intrusions into the tank. Clownfish may have been gravid. Subjective Data Details Trace elements were increased by 50% due to community feedback regarding ICP testing. ICP tests showed that trace elements were below, or depleted despite daily dosing. Speculation is that the corals are absorbing them as soon as they are introduced to the system and the rapid uptake is preventing them from being reflected in testing data. Dosage was increased and the corals were monitored to check for any ill effects. They appeared to show slightly more color and general good health. I have not observed any negative responses. I will continue to dose at the current level and adjust (if necessary) after the next ICP test. Plating corals in particular have shown notable growth. The chalice corals and montipora have grown "feet" and attached to the rocks that they are situated upon. Euphylia, candy canes, and hammers have all begun to grow a "skin" down their stalks. At first I thought maybe a sponge had attached to them, but after a closer inspection it appears that they are extending their growth to cover the skeleton stalk. I was unaware they did that. The female clownfish, although adorable, is a menace. Whenever I need to reach into the tank to service anything she immediately and aggressively attacks. She likes to swim to the back side of my hand, bite, then do this shake thing that makes you feel vaguely like you're being electrocuted. It doesn't particularly hurt, but it is often surprising when you're focused on something else. Nitrile kitchen gloves mitigate her, but you do lose dexterity, which can have consequences (see below). Female clownfish appeared to be gravid prior to me leaving town for a few days around Christmas. She was noticeably wider and was much larger than her partner. Due to being away from the tank for a few days I did not have the opportunity to see if she laid eggs. If she did, I suspect the cleanup crew and other fish would have removed them prior to my return. Setbacks, Aquascaping, and Flow Patterns - Setbacks - The most significant changes this month were prompted by my Condy anemone. It has grown quite large over the past few months. It was situated in the back corner of the tank on a large rock and was occupying some prime real estate. I had placed corals out of its range and things were going well, until they weren't. The Condy decided it was time to go for a walk. One night it detached from the rock (where it had been for over a year) and wandered directly into the center of the tank. It inflated when the lights came on and wrapped itself around many of my corals. It did some serious damage to a bird's nest, a digitata, an anacropora, and a few acropora frags. The Sebae anemone on the other side of the tank also shifted its foot and began drifting into several corals that were previously out of its grasp. I decided immediately that those two needed to go to "nem jail" and tried to figure out how I was going to get them out of the tank. Before I could remove them I needed to try and get the corals to safety. I started breaking loose the corals that were glued down, which severely damaged the bird's nest. Most of the others I was able to break loose without too much damage. I moved them to the sand bed and started working on getting the Condy out. I tried using ice cubes on the foot, but the clownfish attacked me the entire time and made the process extremely challenging. I tried using a credit card to slip under it, but the rock is not a smooth shape and it didn't work. Ultimately I had to remove the rock from the tank. I had to work quickly because there were still corals attached to the rock, as well as tube worms and other tank dwellers that I didn't want to kill by exposing them to air for too long. I mixed up a few gallons of saltwater to use as a holding station until I could figure out what was going back in the display and what would be discarded. I used a chisel and hammer to split the rock and basically break off the piece the Condy was attached to. In the process several large chunks of the rock shattered or busted off. It was nowhere near as surgical as I wanted it to be. I got the biggest piece of rock back in the display, and was promptly bitten by the clowns. I was wearing gloves, (remember what I said earlier about lack of dexterity?) but I didn't account for her swimming into the cuff of the glove. I jerked, dropped the rock, and managed to smash a bunch of previously unscathed corals. Now I was frustrated, and my tank was an absolute mess.I sifted through the rubble and preserved what I could. I placed the rock chunk with the Condy on it into the holding bucket and worked on getting the Sebae out. The Sebae was much easier, but still not a simple task. If you haven't handled an anemone before, imagine a latex glove half filled with water and covered in KY jelly that has two friends with tiny teeth that defend it like their lives depend on it. I used a turkey baster to push the tentacles away from me and a credit card to slip under the foot. It took some time but it eventually worked. I made a temporary house for them out of a clear plastic cube that I drilled holes into. I dropped them in and clipped it to the side of the tank. This didn't last long. They both immediately decided to go rambling and wandered out of their temporary home. I collected them and moved them to a rock piece in the sump. That didn't last long either, they immediately wandered into the skimmer. I crafted a box out of egg crate material, dropped them in and zip tied it shut. I put them back in the display and they planned their escape. The deflated until their foot was small enough to fit through one of the roughly 1/4 inch gaps in the crate. Once the foot was through they reinflated and the foot formed something akin to a parachute which had enough mass to pull them through the box. Once they made their escape I recollected them, reinforced the box, and moved them back to the sump. They were covered on 3 sides by glass, air on the top, and rock on the remaining sides. This morning I found out that they had once again made their escape. One dry docked itself on the foam filter media prior to the return pump and the other went straight into the skimmer. Unfortunately neither survived. It isn't the outcome I was hoping for, I really wanted them to be rehomed into an anemone tank, or maybe a FOWLR system, but sadly, they lack the nervous system required to make good decisions. Too Long, Didn't Read (TL/DR) - Condy nem went for a walk, killed a bunch of my corals, caused havoc in the tank, then decided it was an air breather. Aquascape Rework - Now that the Sebae and Condy were in jail, my tank was in shambles, and I was sitting on a pile of busted corals I made the call it was time to clean up and rework the rocks. I removed a bunch of small pieces of live rock that had no corals living on them, changed the orientation of some of the larger pieces, and did some general clean up. I have posted pictures of the new rock work below. Personally, I like it more than the previous design. I'm interested in hearing the community's thoughts. To me this is much cleaner and there is a lot more room around the perimeter for the mag float to get into and water flow. Flow Pattern Changes - I had dead spots in the back corners, and along the leading edge of the tank. After reworking the rocks there was more space for the water to circulate properly and hopefully lead to less silt accumulation. I moved the two Sicce Nano powerheads that are mounted on the back wall to the corner and faced them toward the front of the tank. I have them operating on a Wave Surfer that alternates between them for roughly one minute each. That creates a pulsing pattern that seems to be doing better with keeping the sand clean. New Inhabitants - The Thing Anacropora from @ReefAddict Red Porites Pink Diamond Zoa Sunset Monti Jack O Lantern Lepto Unknown pink/green Monti, all of the above is from @Supreme Reefs Bill Murray Acro Tiffany Blue Acro Short Tentable Gonipora Carolina Reaper (RIP) - died overnight, no idea what happened Yellow Zoa, all of the above are from @thakki Questions for the Community - #1- I have 4 powerheads in this tank and I can't seem to nail the flow pattern. It always seems like I have dead spots, or silt buildup on the sand bed. I'm looking for feedback on improvements or suggested changes. Right now I have: 2 Sicce Nano pumps mounted on the back wall, facing forward. They alternate on and off in one minute intervals. 1 Icecap 1K Gyre pump mounted on the left side of the tank just below the surface. The gyre operates in a push pull cycle that starts at 10% and ramps up to 100%, then reverses. 1 Vortech MP10 in Reef Crest mode. It is mounted on the front lower right side of the tank, essentially opposite of the gyre pump. Does anyone see any glaring issues here? Are the Sicce Nano pumps simply too small? Am I using something incorrectly? #2 - What PAR levels are you seeing from your lights? Do the numbers outlined above fall within a respectable range? I really don't like having the light that close to the water surface, but I also want to make sure I have adequate light for the inhabitants. I'm not really in the position to pick up a new light either. I got it at a bargain bin price from @epleeds then spent a couple hundred tracking down parts to rebuild it. I doubt I would recover my investment if I sold it, and I'm also not sure what I would switch to if I did. I had Radeon XR15 Pro G3s on the tank before and they drove me nuts. The software was abysmal. I upgraded to Mobius, it bricked one of the lights, and Ecotech told me that it needed new drivers which they were not capable of installing, so it got recycled. I get it, it's older, but the manufacturer can't update the drivers? C'mon, that's a lot of money to toss in the trash. As always, thank you for reading and your feedback. These posts are long, hopefully they're beneficial to someone and they prevent someone from making my mistakes over again. Full gallery of pictures here.

Well, you've inspired me. I'll work on putting something together.

Thank you! The tank has been up for a bit. You think people would still want to see a build thread?

Honestly, with my dragonet, I add pods about every 3 months. It really isn't much of hassle, I generally grab a bottle whenever I pick up more frozen food. They aren't anywhere near as bad as some posts make them out to be. I figured the little guy was going to be tough to keep happy, but he's been painless. I totally understand not wanting to have another thing to worry about. It has certainly steered me away from things (like sun corals).

I stopped in @Supreme Reefs about a week ago because I happened to be in the area. I chatted with Ben and Kirby about a few corals I was trying to track down. To my surprise, they had nearly all of them. They have a massive (and diverse) selection of corals, fish, and supplies. They took care of me and sent me home with a nice pack of additions for my tank. I'm planning on doing another "Growth Over Time" update next weekend, I'll work on getting some shots of the stuff I grabbed. If you haven't been there before, or you're looking for something unique, I highly recommend checking them out.

I have a Royal Gramma. They're common, but they are colorful, and mine has quite a personality. It was shy for a few weeks, then gradually made his/her way out more often. Now it spends most of the day cruising the tank. The purple and yellow colors are a nice contrast to the orange clowns. Funny thing about mine - it used to sleep under a montipora shelf, but for some reason it comes out a lot at night now. If I check on the tank before bed it usually pops out and swims around. Cool fish. Another one to look at might be a dragonet. I have a male mandarin dragonet, he has been super easy for me. I loaded the tank with pods and he eats like a champ. He also goes for some of the frozen mysis shrimp when I feed the other fish in the morning. He's colorful, peaceful, non destructive, and pretty easy to find. I got mine over at Centreville aquarium for around $40. With your minimal rock work you should be able to see it most of the time. Mine doesn't hide much. It actually sleeps in the open under a little cliff on the sand bed.

Hermits are a mix of red and blue, however, now that they've aged I can see that there are several zebra hermits in the mix. They seem fine, they're not contributing to the highlander situation...so far. I'll have to wait until big guy comes out and check to see if he's a red or blue. I'm pretty sure he's a red leg.

Great, thank you. I was hoping someone found them helpful. I'll plan on another next month, somewhere around Jan 11.

Excellent! Glad it helped. Holler if you have questions. Next month I'll update my documentation on tracking progress and we'll all see how the updated dosing goes.

Hi Salty - I have a couple of lengthy threads documenting the changes over time in my tank that have resulted from dosing and changing out a few things. Long story short, yes, there were significant changes to the corals and overall quality of the aquarium. Take a look at those 2 threads, I believe they're called "Documenting changes over time" and "documenting changes over time part 2". If you still have questions I would be happy to answer them. I chose to submit an ICP initially to verify that my home test results were true and accurate. I also wanted to see if there were any potential "hidden problems" like heavy metals in the water that were not covered by traditional at home test kits. Once I got the results back I made a few tweaks, sent in another sample and was overall happy with the water conditions, except for the trace elements. I'm not one to chase numbers, especially when the tank is doing well, but the results indicated to me that the corals are either starving for trace elements, or something is off in the tank, so I've been working on getting that nailed down. Hopefully that's helpful!

Thanks for the advice on the RODI. That's good to hear. I took your approach to the trace elements. I upped the dosing by 50% this morning. I'm going to keep an eye on things over the next couple weeks then test again. We'll see if the numbers go up a little bit. I think that you're correct, the corals are using the elements almost as soon as they're introduced to the system.

Hi Jules- as luck would have it, I'll be in Germantown on Saturday. Hit me up if you'll be around and want to sell me a few frags.

Hey there! I'm at an event tonight, but I will answer all of this tomorrow morning.

Couple of questions for the community - Who do you use for ICP testing, and why? What do your RODI results show? When you get your results how do your trace elements look? I recently sent in two samples for analysis to ICP-Analysis.com, one from my display and one RODI. I have tested several times in the past and I am consistently low in trace elements. I switched from IO salt over to Aquaforest Pro-Biotic salt, and began dosing the Aquaforest 1+,2+,3+ system, which according to Aquaforest contains the trace elements necessary for the tank. I sent in a sample after changing over and was surprised to find that I was still low on trace elements. I then added Korallen Zucht trace elements to my dosing schedule.RODI edit.pdf I dose the recommended amount every morning around 0800. After dosing trace elements I sent in another sample and discovered that my trace elements were nearly unchanged from the previous test. Is that normal? Are the corals absorbing the trace elements so quickly that they're depleted in 24 hours? Should I increase my dosing, change products, or do nothing different? My RODI test shows tiny amounts of calcium, magnesium and potassium, as well as a few other random things. Is that normal, or is my filter failing me? I have attached copies of my most recent tank and RODI results to this post for reference. Thank you for any feedback, y'all are an incredible resource. TestAPMS32528_edit.pdf RODI edit.pdf

Hi Jules, Funny enough, I saw your post and didn't reply because I figured you're stuff was way out of my price range. You have a beautiful setup. If you're willing to bundle something up I think we can work something out.

What is that light?? It's awesome!

Is that the beast that was in the garage when I picked up the light? It was still boxed up when I saw it. I might take you up on that if I'm back out your way. It's kind of a hike, but I do swing by capitol aquarium every once in a while. They usually have some good deals on larger colonies. I'll let you know when I'm headed that way.

I agree. From a logical view point, what's a foot? I would speculate that as long as they had room to swim around rock they could do laps around the tank all day long and get plenty of exercise. That said, I am not stuck on getting a tang of any kind. Part of the planning process for me is making a tank that is large enough to accommodate most things. I like the idea of lots of small fish, to me it makes the tank feel vibrant. The tangs are beautiful, and I would enjoy having a few, but given the choice I would probably take 20 little guys over 3 or 4 big fellas. More than likely I will plan out a livestock list before I pick a tank and make sure that everything lines up.

Sure, that makes sense...you want to go gigantic but don't have the room, and you won't go under 4. I'm tracking My original thought was to look at 4 footers, but I may change course and look at 5. I was kind of stuck on capacity over size, but from what I gather, gallons make less of a difference than linear footage does.

Ah, good call! That's a great point. I had considered that I would likely need a step ladder to work on a cube tank. The one I looked at was about 2.5 feet tall on a 36 inch tall stand, so we're talking 5.5 feet to the rim. I'm over 6 feet, but I would still need a boost to arrange anything on the sand bed unless I got a significantly shorter stand.

That's interesting. I've never looked into keeping seahorses, and I don't think I will. I have enough to keep up with on the coral and fish front. I know you like big tanks, is a 5 footer ideal for you?

Hello Everyone! I posted recently on the logistics of upgrading from a Reefer 250 to a larger tank, and I received a ton of valuable feedback. Once I started looking at tank dimensions I realized there are a lot more options than I had originally considered. I was originally thinking about increasing the length of the tank from 3 feet to 4, but I have seen quite a few taller cube style tanks that are beautiful. So, my question is, what are the lines of demarcation when it comes to new livestock? For example, it seems like fish like tangs need a 5 foot wide tank, but 4 feet will do for certain smaller species. Who benefits from a taller tank? Part of my philosophy on the upgrade is that I want to be able to rework the aquascaping and add livestock that wouldn't be compatible with a 3 foot wide tank. When do you start seeing diminishing returns on size? Is there a happy spot for most fish? How big does it need to be so that territorial fish won't assault the whole tank? That was a lot of questions...hopefully someone will get the conversation started by sharing their experience. I'm excited to hear your thoughts.

I have a Tiger Pistol. I picked up a Goby buddy for him and the Goby headed straight to the cave where the pistol shrimp lives. I never saw that Goby again. The pistol spent a ton of time excavating the rock work and moving sand. He was also notorious for picking up frags and pulling them into his domain, or blocking the "door" with them. I lost a few mushrooms and zoas to him. He also had a 24K gold lepto that he adored. No matter where in the tank I put it I would find it dug up and back in his cave. Anyway - fast forward a few months and I decided to try again. The pistol was "shooting" a lot, and I thought that maybe a fish friend would help him out. They could forage together and keep each other safe. Maybe his random gunfire would subside a bit and he would be more comfortable. I tracked down a Yasha Goby at a local shop. I dropped about $80 bucks on the little dude and took them home. I got them acclimated and introduced it to the tank. It zipped around the rocks for a bit, hung out for about a day, then found the pistol cave. It ducked in there and I haven't seen it since. Nor have I seen the pistol. My thoughts on it - I think the Yasha is still alive. The pistol is snapping much less often. It seems like it isn't as agitated as it was previously, it used to snap pretty frequently. There are also new burrows and tunnels in the sand. There is an exit near the back of his cave that was not there prior to introducing the Yasha. The sand is excavated all the way down to the glass, which to me (and I am certainly no expert) looks like it takes more precision than the pistol is capable of. I suspect that they have teamed up and together they are even more reclusive than when they are apart. The Yasha might be dead, and the other Goby might have been shot by the pistol, but I have no evidence to prove it. Singing in my best Bob Marley voice..."No body no crime".

Have you ever done an ICP test? Maybe there is a trace element in high amounts that the chaeto is responding to? I can't grow chaeto either, but I think mine is related to very low nutrient levels. Mine doesn't break apart or dissolve, it simply doesn't grow.