Looking crappy

My nano reef is taking a rather bad turn.

Noticed this in the past few days. Ugly detritus is collecting over the rocks and along the sand. Some hair algae threads and a web-like substance too. I blow water over the areas with the turkey baster, but this is only a temporary solution. Also, the colt coral has not fully extended in weeks. Looks terrible, and these thread-like filaments are growing on it too. Powerhead was out for an hour or so a few days back, and the thread stuff was everywhere.

Did a 15 percent water change and stirred up the sand a lot. A nasty mat of cyano or something equally disgusting is growing behind the GSP colony, as well as under the powerhead intake. I broke it up with a skewer; don't know if that will do any good, but it looks better anyway.

Tomorrow I'm going to get 2-3 red legged hermits and 2-3 nassarius snails to try to control the crap in the sand. Also not going to feed the tank for at least 4 days.

There are several factors and cofactors at work here. One is the heat, another is possible overfeeding, and maybe weak water current from the powerhead. Cleaned it out and turned it so it's hitting the central part of the tank instead of the side wall.

Scroll algae is coming back with a vengence. I'm hoping it will absorb a lot of the nutrients the bad algae needs and will simply outcompete the bryopsis and hair algae.

The tank just looks nasty. I'm glad I caught it early, though. Once cyano gets a foothold, it burrows in the for the long run, and the best way to deal with it is to increase your circulation, which means another powerhead.

- Josh
http://joshday.com

Astrea snail

I added an astrea snail from my main nano tank. Diatom algae has begun to cover the live rock. The snail is bulldozing away the algae and leaving behind a trail of clean rock. Really neat to watch.

Polyps have all come out and are looking good. Crab changed shells.

And in other news, the emerald crab died mysteriously. It wasn't eating the bryopsis algae so it probably wasn't getting enough food. Now that it's gone, it will be interesting to see if the zoanthid colony begins to expand off its rock, which is compeltely covered.

- J
http://joshday.com

Announcing the 5 gallon pico Live Rock vase

Yesterday I launched my newest project/experiment, a saltwater gallon vase. It is 1/10th the size of my nano tank, and the term for these "micro" nanos in the hobby is pico.

Once the 1 and 3/4 pounds of tonga branch live rock was introduced, as well as the Micro-Jet powerhead, the vase held one gallon of water, the lip being two and a half inches above the waterline, which I've marked with a Sharpie marker.

Lighting: I'm using a desk lamp with a 20 watt 50/50 power compact fluorescent bulb. Unfortunately, the bulb is designed to give off light horizontally as opposed to vertically, which it is set in my lamp ballast. Also the bulb is several inches too long for the lamp hood.

I ghetto'ed up some aluminum foil and velcroed it to the lamp, extending the hood some and also allowing for an open system. This cools it somewhat, which is mega important for tiny bodies of water like this.

The furry green rock is a fragged piece of green starburst polyps. It had a patch or two of hair algae when I won it at a reef raffle, but it just took over in the two weeks I've had it in my ten gallon. I've placed it in the vase in the hope the powerful current will blow most of it off. More on the current in a minute, but the polyps are all extended, and they are looking much better in the pico tank, not so choked by the algae as they were in the nano.

Only other livestock is a dwarf hermit to eat the expended algae and detritus, as well as a mini brittle star that came from the polyps frag.

Ok, the current. The Micro-Jet powerhead can be adjusted to three flows, highest being 117 gph and the lowest 49 gph. I had ordered the smaller model, with the smallest current clocked at 32, but I received the more powerful model instead. Right now it's tuned to the lowest setting, 49 gph. That's about 40x turnover an hour. It's really strong, but the increased movement will eliminate any detritus or bacteria build-up.


Now for heating. Obviously, the problem now is keeping it cool. The tiny body of water heats up rapidly, and during hotter days, the water is going to get hotter too. The light doesn't help keep things cool, either. The powerhead also heats the water, and this is what should keep it stable during the winter months. I keep the room temp at 69 degrees through the winter, and with the powerhead adding a couple more degrees of temp., I think it should be A-ok.

My plans for this vase are to right now just see what happens with the starburst polyps. I'll order a batch of mixed pods from a florida outlet and try to culture them properly. I also may put a shrimp in, don't know yet.

Josh
http://joshday.com

99% starve to death

90 percent of mandarins will die unless they're in 200 gallon systems with 200 plus pounds of live rock... I've even read one claim that says "99.99999%" will starve.

Bunk. Absolute bunk.

Those percentages are as outrageous as me claiming that 50% of mandarins will eat prepared food, which has been my own personal experience, as I lost one and my second is well-rounded and thriving.

My point is that these numbers are pulled out of thin air. All based on anecdotal evidence, and worse yet, perpetuating parrot-talk by forum gurus, who often never even had a mandarin in the first place.

Claiming that 99% of green mandarins will not make it in your tank is like saying your stomach will explode if you chase some popping crystal candy with pepsi.

Though I haven't experimented on 100 mandarins, I don't have to prove that statement is rubbish. Either I am absurdly, unrealistically lucky and I have one of the 1% eaters, or else the percentage of mandarins that will accept food other than pods is nowhere near 99 or 90 percent. Also, there's just as much anecdotal evidence out there supporting mandarins eating prepared foods as there is starving mandarins. It's almost funny to hear the parrots spew out their party line when several people have reported success in mandarin keeping for years in the very forum thread being thrashed by the fish gestapo.

One of the saddest things is hearing the 99% number coming from such "respected" fish authorites like wetwebmedia. Almost makes you want to take their advice with a grain or two of Instant Ocean...

Don't get me wrong--wetwebmedia has some tremondous info you can't find anywhere else, but they are not the final authority.

Especially when they write stuff like this.

Maybe that's just some dinosaur thinking that's unfortunately too rampant in the saltwater hobby. Maybe it's latent elitism, maybe it's an unwillingness to accept the evolution of the hobby. Whatever it is, I totally disagree with the scope of the article. The whole thing is just a blanket statement, loaded with opinion veiled as fact. I know if I started with a large tank like the article suggested I'd hate saltwater. Protien skimmers, sumps, all the plumbing and pumps... too much can go disastrously wrong... not to mention the price of a setup like that!

In this case, I couldn't agree more with the military motto of keep it simple, stupid.

In his own words, Bob Fenner, author of The Conscientious Marine Aquarist, states:

I can't for the life of me, understand, or at least agree with authors who have encouraged the general hobbyist/public to attempt small aquaria for marines. Maybe like adults who have forgotten how it was to first tie their shoes or ride a bike, they can't recall how hard it was to learn what now seem like simple tasks; or the frustration, sense of helplessness in losing livestock. Maybe they're trying to impress someone or make a sale? The same writers who advocate small marine systems as a "bargain" likewise list halide lighting, wet-dry filters, Redox testing... for them, costing hundreds of dollars, as well.

I place blame for such simple-mindedness, "Anyone can keep marines in a drum bowl", in part for the pathetic level of participation in marine aquarium keeping and it's[sic] sophistication in the West. By prompting aquarists to participate in an enterprise so fraught with loss, hobbyist attrition is promoted.

Small, (less than forty gallons, really) systems are a bad gamble for all but the advanced aquarist, who will put the effort into testing and adjusting for water quality and organism interaction, and has the facilities to move, rescue these systems as they crash.

If you are going to still try your hand at a small marine set-up as your first, or only (and probably last) saltwater aquarium, I remind you to be on guard for temperature fluctuation and over-feeding ill-effects. No matter what any and everyone else might write, bigger is better [my emphasis] in marine aquarium size. (Source link)

Hmmmm... sounds to me like someone is overcompensating.

I just don't understand why monitoring water quality, doing frequent water changes, and appreciating the relationships between the life in your nano is reserved only for advanced aquariums. More bunk, I say! I'd recommend a ten gallon marine nano tank to the intelligent beginner any day. The non-intellgient beginner, however, well, I'd recommend a ten gallon guppy and white cloud minnow tank.

I bet you're wondering where I'm going with all this.

I'll tell you.

The snipped bit of the article above is a perfect preamble to announce my new project, a marine 2 gallon vase, very much similar to this freshwater one. I've ordered a micro-jet powerhead, a 50/50 20 watt power compact screw-in bulb, and a thermometer from the Canadian outfit Big Al's.

Going to get some live coral rubble for a thin substrate, put in a couple scrubber pads for pod growth, 2 pounds of live rock, and the powerhead will be tuned to about 32 gph, just a little over the usual 10 times gph you need for marine systems.

Put in one of my hermit crabs and maybe a shrimp.

I already do maintenance on my freshwater vases every day, so this saltwater one should not be much more difficult.

Look out for more updates on this new project.

In the meantime, remember that bigger is not always better, though it's definitely no worse or any better than smaller--in fact, I think it's just about equal if you're running a clean and maintained system. Yeah, the added water volume gives you more leeway for mistakes, but hell, that's only an excuse to be lax and really let things go. I've seen pristine nanos and horrendous 72 gallon tanks... the difference is all in the attitude and care.

- Josh
http://joshday.com

P.S. Please don't misinterpret my message and go out and buy a mandarin and plop him into a 5 gallon tank. Do your homework, and if your heart is set on a mandarin, contact an LFS and see if they will let you experiment with different foods like roe, cyclo-pese, etc. And also be cautious of mandarins eating only brine... some have learned to accept mysis, others haven't. Brine will not sustain a fish long-term.