Jon and Maureen's reef thread...finally

[Jon Lazar]

There's been a few changes to our fish lineup lately, so I thought I'd provide an update. The copperband butterfly is MUCH happier since I moved the powder blue tang to the frag tank, and he's not being constantly attached. The CBB is eating PE mysis as well as constantly picking at the rocks, and I hope to see him nibbling at the aiptasia soon. I resisted adding CBBs for a long time because of their poor record in captivity, but with the aiptasia getting out of control I had to give it a try. Joe's Juice just wasn't doing the trick. We also added a royal gramma. Granted, it's not the most uncommon fish, but I do love the colors and the way they stop on a dime while moving through the water.

 

 

 

We also lost our male lyretail anthia this week. He appears to have jumped out of the tank, fell between the wall and the tank, and landed in the stand. Too bad he didn't land in the sump. So now we're down to a single lyretail until I find some more.

 

 

The oscellaris clowns have been laying steadily for a couple of months, but I don't have any plans to start raising the fry yet. What I really need are some ideas on a convenient larvae snagger that I can build to make the process easier. Have to add that to the DIY project list ...

 

[Coral Hind]

Very nice pics Jon. I really like the last one!

[El Camaron]

wow those last two pcitures are incredible, look at all those little eyes.

[Jon Lazar]

wow those last two pcitures are incredible, look at all those little eyes.

 

Thanks guys; the clowns just laid new eggs again. Looks like the bubble coral smells food nearby:

 

Edited January 27, 2010 by Jon Lazar

[TonyInVa]

Amazing tank, and nice pics.

[Jon Lazar]

No big changes to report, but I was playing with the camera again tonight and thought I'd post a few pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ctenophore]

Nice pics. Is the second-to-last Tubastrea micrantha?

[Jon Lazar]

Nice pics. Is the second-to-last Tubastrea micrantha?

 

Thanks ctenophore. I knew the genus is tubastrea but I'll admit I had to look the species name up, and I think you're right. I picked that coral up last March at Fins and Feathers and it's surviving but not really thriving, although I target feed it regularly. I'd love to start a separate, non-photosynthetic tank someday that I could feed the heck out of.

[epleeds]

liking the meteor shower pic...how big is it?

[Jon Lazar]

liking the meteor shower pic...how big is it?

 

It's about 4" in diameter. Started off as a little frag, and has encrusted nicely all over the surrounding rock.

[dtfleming]

Try putting a tile where they lay the eggs. If you look on marinebreeder.org. they made an egg snagger out of a plastic straw.

[zoozilla]

FTS, please.

[JMsAquarium]

Very nice Jon,

 

Your tank is simply georgeous. Great job, TOTM material!!!

[Jon Lazar]

Thanks for the kind words. As far as raising clownfish goes, I'd rather not have to look at the tile in the tank and I don't even know if I have the time to raise clowns right now. If I had plans for a good larval snagger that I put together with acrylic and would be easy to use, maybe.

 

Here's the FTS, as requested. Overall I'm seeing slow acroporoid growth and occasional bleaching of my superman and sunset montiporas, and I suspect it's due to nitrates hovering around 20 ppm and a relatively low pH due to the CaRx. Alk, Ca, and Mg are all excellent. Other hard corals are doing fine, especially the pocilloporas, seriatoporas, and monti caps. Clam growth is good too. The 55g chaeto tank is up and running on a reverse photocycle, and I hope that will help with both problems.

 

 

We picked out several fish a couple of weeks ago, and they've mostly adjusted. One unexpected surprise was when we added a male and two female lyretail anthias to the single existing female anthia. We thought that the female would fall in as another member of the harem...wrong! The female began chasing the male around the tank and within several days changed colors almost completely. Now the old female/new male completely dominates all the anthias, and the second male spends all his time hiding in the rock. I'll have to trap him and put him in the refugium :(

 

Clearly the new boss of the tank.

 

In the doghouse

 

This McCosker's wrasse hid in the corner above a Tunze, has become more bold about roaming the tank.

 

 

[Jon Lazar]

I decided to switch from the Korallin 1502 calcium reactor I've been using for years, in favor of dosing RHF's DIY 3-part with a bubble magus BM-T01 doser. The calcium reactor has worked great for years keeping alkalinity and calcium elevated, but I've had problems with low pH for a long while. Despite building a second media chamber, a 55g reverse photocycle refugium, and repeatedly calibrating two probes to ensure accurate readings, my tank's low pH has been around 7.6 for a long while. Growth of pocilloporas and seriatoporas has been incredible, and I've had multiple spawnings from my pocilloporas. But acropora and montipora growth has been slow with a few exceptions, and acans struggle to put down new polyps.

 

I've been using the 3-part for about a month now, and so far the response has been good. The pH is usually no lower than 7.9 at night, and I haven't done anything else to try to raise it; I've just been letting it climb on it's own and through water changes. Alk, calcium, and magnesium are all stable and it's easier to tweak the doser to adjust levels if I want.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't remember what species of acropora this is, but it sure is pretty with bright yellow rings at the base of each polyp. It was overgrown by a porites and had died back to a tiny nub when I removed it to the frag tank for recovery.

 

 

Copps' green bottlebrush, growing out from a tiny 0.5" frag that survived when the full bottlebrush frag fell into another coral.

 

 

A. Equisitor from a 2" frag from Rik Leishman. This coral has remarkable lateral growth. You can see the original vertical frag a few inches in from the left side of the coral...everything else is lateral growth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love the red sponge growing at the base of this mushroom rock.

 

 

The original aurora borealis/red tide chalice from the Fins and Feathers naming contest. It's been a very slow grower in our tank, but well see if the higher pH helps.

 

 

 

 

 

[DCFishGuy99]

Love all the picutres. I really like your rock work on the FTS.

 

 

[jason the filter freak]

the coral photos are out of this world

[ChrisTran]

i love the micro shots. nice work!

[ctenophore]

Looking great as usual, Jon! I love your mix of corals.

[lhcorals]

Tank looks great. I just went through the whole thread. Really nice work. And for the pics, what can i say except just amazing. I would like to try to get you out my way to get you to take some pics of the 265. I can't get a good FTS, or actinics shots at all. Very nice work guys, keep it up.

 

Lynn

[zygote2k]

nice looking tank!

[Jon Lazar]

About a month ago I added a harlequin shrimp to help reduce the number of asterina stars in the DT. Whatever species I have seem to like certain zoanthids, and the asterinas just mow those zoas down. I know harlequin shrimp are secretive and tend to avoid bright lights, so I looked at night and early in the morning but I never found the harlequin since the first day I added him. I thought the harlequin had been eaten or just died, but today I was walking by the tank and saw him peeking out from a crevice in the rock, so I grabbed the camera and started shooting. (You can see him munching a asterina in one of the pics.) I also added a neon goby and a couple gorgonians recently, so I uploaded them too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Coral Hind]

Very cool pictures! My fish never pose for me like that. How about a new FTS?

[Jon Lazar]

Very cool pictures! My fish never pose for me like that. How about a new FTS?

 

 

[Jon Lazar]

Back in December I started running a TLF reactor with BRS biopellets to work on bringing own my nitrates. It's been almost three months now and I haven't seen striking results, so I'll continue to run them and monitor.

 

I also learned a costly lesson with the three part dosing. Back in January I noticed a couple of my sps colonies STNing, so I starting to look at what could be wrong. Turns out I had mixed up the alkalinity part wrong, and made it double strength. So the tank alk was up to 18 and the the pH 8.6. I turned off the 3 part to let it settle back down gradually, but by then the damage was done. I lost nearly all my sps colonies, my favorite blue and red stylophora, and parts of my birdnests. I also lost my Tyree green polyp leather coral, a large hollywood stunner chalice, and about half my frogspawn heads. The worst part is that most of the colonies were two or three years old, and had been grown out from little 1" frags.

 

So, now it's time to rebuild. There's still many of my favorites left, and the birdsnests are recovering, and this have given me a chance to move some things into better real estate. I've also picked up a few new additions that I've always wanted but haven't really had space for. New corals include the pipe organ, the lemon tree stereonepthya, and the red goniopora.

 

Pipe Organ

 

Stereonepthya

 

Goniopora

 

Goniopora

 

 

And I shot some more pics of some of the old favorites:

Harlequin Shrimp. Red eye reduction does not work well on shrimp eyes.

 

 

Brain coral

 

 

 

Gorgonian

 

 

Aurora Borealis

 

 

Yellow leather

 

 

War coral. I'm surprised that the coral is growing quite well on the underside of the rock, in complete shadow.