Fluval Sea EVO 5 Gallon AQUAFOREST Desktop Reef

[juanrmattos]

Day Twenty second

The ammonia spike is back to zero after a couple days, still have some diatoms on the rock and sand (Nothing to go crazy about) and the CCU is keeping up with it... No green yet.

I do see some coralline deposits inside the Turbelle chamber that has been in off position for a couple days.


Not dosed anything other than nitrifying bacteria and medium in the past two days.

Going to my LFS to retest water and may be getting some pods.

Ready for the ugly season but positive as everything has been as expected.

Cycling along...

 

[juanrmattos]

Green is the new Orange

I have to say here that I’m extremely happy with the @Aquaforest products, this cycle has been one of the cleanest I’ve ever experienced in my years of reef keeping... Knowing that a 16 liter aquarium is borderline unstable and that this particular tank has no mechanical filtration is proof that the chemistry in these products is spot on effective.

Patiently seeing this tiny reef mature and enjoying every second of it... Maybe I’m just Psyched but I can see small coralline dots starting to show up as well.

Thanks for reading along...

 

[Grape_City_Reefer]

This is an absolute joy to follow along, have you decided if you are doing any sps?

 

[juanrmattos]

Thanks @Grape_City_Reefer truly appreciated ;Happy

Honestly, I bought this setup inspired by a reef tank that is fairly popular in social media (@eat-sleep-reef) and basically because of my fascination with Acans and Polyps... I do however LOVE SPS as well and considering the vast success provided by Aquaforest worldwide, I would probably give them a shot, the only thing is, when the time comes, I would have to pick between one or the others as my 6.5” of rock height wont allow me to provide a balanced PAR for both species. Not to mention I would certainly need additional equipment (Bound to be external).

My inspiration:

Thanks for reading...

 

[WiscoFishNut]

Good grief, that eat-sleep-reef setup is pretty amazing! Nice source of inspiration

 

[juanrmattos]

;Dummy ;Dummy ;Dummy

Just a little candy

 

[Grape_City_Reefer]

;Dummy ;Dummy ;Dummy

Just a little candy

Do you or anyone else know what this Candy Cane is called, I have one of these and LFS just said its a Candy Cane. I know there are Nuclear Candy Canes and Dual Color Canes. Just curious?

 

[juanrmattos]

Caulastrea furcata, Caulastrea Curvata and Culastrea Echinulata @Grape_City_Reefer (Candy Cane, Trumpet Coral).

Excellent beginner coral and relatively fast grower.

 

[Grape_City_Reefer]

Caulastrea furcata, Caulastrea Curvata and Culastrea Echinulata @Grape_City_Reefer (Candy Cane, Trumpet Coral).

Excellent beginner coral and relatively fast grower.

Awesome answer so the common name appears to be green trumpet or green candy cane from doing a 1 min. search of the latin name Culastrea Echinulata.

 

[juanrmattos]

Day 29th Update

Is Fluorescent Green, and I mean “Toxic Dragon Eye” Fluorescent Green!, the kind that does not rub off with a brush!!!

The true precursor of Coralline Algae

Getting ready for day 30th water change, not much to update otherwise.

Happy fish, happy coral, happy reef.

Algae-ing along... Thanks for reading

 

[juanrmattos]

Oh Look... Palytoxins

They are a bit mad from my attempts of figuring out their favorite flow (Either that, or they are just too sensitive ).

Moving along, thank you for reading

 

[Hogdaddy]

Great job, great read!
I love my 5 gallon desk tank

 

[juanrmattos]

I’m just going to write these few sentences here in hopes some day they can be found...

THIS IS A CALL to all farmers, growers, distributors, reef hobbyists, fraggers of all walks of life around the globe!!!

I TRULY appreciate your effort, your dedication and everything involved to provide us with beautiful coral specimens for which we strive to keep and raise, seriously!... At the same time, I can’t avoid to bounce against the walls thinking in all the effort, the expense and the daily motivation required from us to keep a piece of the ocean close to us; you see, we spend hours and hours trying to recreate a reef, we go out there to purchase pounds of rock and try to arrange them in ten thousand different ways so that they also look natural, we seed coralline so that they resemble as close as possible the true natural environment found on earth (Or sea for that matter)... YET, we are basically bound by force to go out there and purchase an idy-bidy-tiny piece of our favorite coral (Because is nearly impossible and basically unaffordable, to obtain a baseball sized example of it); BUT in all open wide honesty, what makes things worse, at least for me, is having to buy it glued into a plug or tile!!!... SERIOUSLY!!!; I understand it facilitates things for you, but let’s be franc here, there is nothing natural or aesthetically correct about this, the fact that I have to ask for it or have it re-cut myself to be reset on a piece of rubble just makes things harder for us. You guys have no idea of how many times I have passed beautiful specimens just because the base looks round or square (They nearly look like a Trophy or a Table adornment rather than the colony it was meant to be).

Would it be too obnoxious to ask for plugs and tiles to be banned from the phase of the earth?, would it be excruciatingly hard to provide us with something that could go further in our attempt to replicate real life?... How is it supposed to be beautiful having a young reef that looks like a shelf stocked with round concrete (Or whatever) coin shaped pieces glued to our beautiful rock?

Someone, for the love of our hobby, please explain this to me!!!.

With today’s technology we should have some sort of polymer/silicone/or similar to attach our corals and make them look like they are supposed to look like (Not to mention this kind of surface will expedite growth for them).

SOMEONE OUT THERE, DO SOMETHING!!!

The no update rant post... Sorry!

Bouncing of the walls along...

 

[btmedic04]

I feel the same way. What I end up doing is removing the coral from the frag plug and if I cannot do that, I take a pair of tin snips to the plug and cut off the stem and break up the symmetry of the round disc then glue it in place.

Heres an example from my nuvo 10

Before

After

Current

 

[juanrmattos]

Same page @btmedic04 , but why should we???, I mean $ 50 per polyp is not enough for a reef ready frag?.... A FRAG!!!.

Last reef I had was filled with fist sized colonies, now every time you get to see one in a local fish store is either going into their display or left in the back to be chopped down into micro-frags.

As expensive as this hobby is, just does not seem fair under any round or square shape or form (Pun intended).

And I will just leave it at that.

Thank you for reading

 

[AquaRaider44]

Same page @btmedic04 , but why should we???, I mean $ 50 per polyp is not enough for a reef ready frag?.... A FRAG!!!.

Last reef I had was filled with fist sized colonies, now every time you get to see one in a local fish store is either going into their display or left in the back to be chopped down into micro-frags.

As expensive as this hobby is, just does not seem fair under any round or square shape or form (Pun intended).

And I will just leave it at that.

Thank you for reading

As an avid reefer I have never had an issue with frag plugs because about any coral completely covers them and they are unseen after 1-6 months depending on growth rate. Typicaly in my tank in just 3 weeks I have sponges and algae and Coraline forming over what's left of the plug making it blend in.

 

[juanrmattos]

Apologies @AquaRaider44 , and let’s please agree to disagree.

With that said, I’d like to carry on with the original topic

Thank you

 

[juanrmattos]

And so, here we go... Day 33rd and the reef is for the first time acting very weird:

Made a 10% (1.6 liter) water change on day 31st, tested parameters and found PH a little low, mainly because the ALK was low, so I dosed AF ALK+ (7ml, in the form of 120 drops dripped at 1 drop every 30 seconds for a total of 6 hours); I'm still getting ammonia readings, but it is supposed to be a false positive result as I used Red Sea Coral Pro salt on my water change and they say is normal (hmmm).

Today the water was cloudy, not like "bloom cloudy" but "dirty cloudy"; corals looked healthy but semi closed up; the glass was covered in very tiny white micro organisms (Too small to figure out what they are); the snails are all alive but most of them are upside down or laying sideways on their shells and the water smells like heavy seawater. I resisted making another water change as I don't want to send the cycle back to restart but at the same time I'm very concerned as I have no logical explanation for what is happening other than maybe a bad batch of water (Unless I have a Nasarius snail dead under the sand, everyone is accounted for)... I used Hanna Checker, the Aquaforest test kit and also went to the store where they did an additional test using API, all of them the same result.

I will wait it out, but to be quite honest I'm freaking out.

Stuck at work on my 9:00pm to 7:00am and wishing everything has gotten back to normal at my return.

Thanks for reading

 

[KiloReefer]

I just read your whole build thread, it looks great and I love your EDM artist inspired fish names! One day I would love to tackle a small desktop reef too.

 

[juanrmattos]

Stuck at work, but already made up my mind:

Tomorrow will be FLUSH day.

Will get a couple hours of sleep and head out to the store to buy a box of Aquaforest Reef Salt to do a double 50% water change (I call it double as I will take off as much water as possible without exposing the rock, sand or corals to the air twice in a row with a good hour or two of heavy floss filtration in between); will replenish AF Bio S, AF Bio F bacteria and introduce AF Carbon for the very first time.

I'm planning to drop a piece of shrimp for a few minutes just to make sure all three Nassarius snails are alive (As I'm positive they will come out of the sand as soon as it goes in - "Truly hope" this doesn't send me into a corpse chase); also wish to add a few more snails as I'm positive the big water change oxygen will explode in a green algae bloom (Which was bound to happen any day now anyway).

Martin, Garrix and Armin are holding up just fine, the Candy Cane and the Polyps are a bit shriveled up but remain healthy, so I'm truly hoping this step would fix the imbalance once and for all.

I'm picking up a small colony of Zoas from a local Club friend in the next couple days (As it sits on a frag tile and we will be transferring it to a piece of rubble) and I'm also hoping to get a small/medium Electric Blue Hermit Crab (It has always been one of my favorites).

5 hours more to go... Tic-Toc, Tic-Toc along.

Thank you for reading