IM 14g Peninsula - first aquarium at 9 months

[splunty]

Here is my unimpressive Innovative Marine 14 gallon peninsula. This is my first (and still only) aquarium, which I started cycling 9 months ago with the intention of being a bare-bottom FOWLR.

I wondered if anyone would like to offer suggestions on where to go from here:

* New frag? Or should I get the GHA completely out first?
* Another critter? I think I have bioload room for a goby or shrimp.
* Are shrimp just clown food?
* Any other thoughts?
* Is there still too much rock? I like rock.

Here's the tank. Yes, that's a xenia frag, sorry. There's still a variety of algae in there, including some purple and pink Coraline (I'm a fan) which seems to be growing on the frag mostly, and weirdly the dark side of the rocks (none on the glass or plastic). There's also some bright green encrusting algae that I really like on the rocks, and the darker areas of the rocks are turning a merlot type of of purple. It looks better in real life than in the picture.

Gear/Stuff:
* Innovative Marine 14g Peninsula
* Innovative Marine aluminum stand (it's cool, really!)
* inTank media basket (first chamber)
* Filters, bio balls, rock frags (media chambers)
* Dual 50w heaters (second chamber, 78f)
* MightyJet Mini 266gph return (third chamber)
* Hygger 30w reef light (50%, 8", 50-110PAR in middle of tank)
* Icecap Gravity ATO
* Dual 9w mini power heads
* 12lb "Reef Saver" rock
* 10lb Fiji Pink sand (added July '24)
* 10% water changes weekly

Livestock:
* Clown pair (they have strange black noses, cross-bred?)
* A suspicious number and variety of snails
* Xenia frag
* Several billion micro brittle stars
* Various sponges & pods (gifts from God?)

History:
* November '23 - started the tank cycle with Microbacter7 + DrTim's ammonia
* December '23 - (4 weeks) ammonia drops to zero quickly, nitrites rise
* December '23 - (6 weeks) nitrates still zero, dosed Fritz TurboStart (that did the trick!)
* January '24 - Added Clown pair, removed about 1/3 of the rock (it's still dense)
* February '24 - Massive phosphate spike from trace to > 1.0 in one week (started GFO)
* March '24 - First signs of algae, added nerites
* June '24 - Added xenia frag
* July '24 - Algae & bacteria explosion (bubble, green hair, black/red cyano, green slime, etc.)
* July '24 - Added Fuji Pink (no more bare-bottom!)
* July '24 - Added array of snails (thanks ReefCleaners!)
* August '24 - Alkalinity plummeted from 7.7 to 5.5 in one week

After dosing baking soda and finding Alk continued to plummet, I bought a new Salifert kit and -- lo and behold - Alkalinity read 8.0 with the new kit.

And that's where we are today. I'm still battling GHA which has started growing on the xenia (which I'm sure most of the reef2reefers would think is good!) and red cyano still appears enough on the glass to require scraping off every week.

Some Lessons Learned:

* Don't trust refractometer if it suddenly says your salinity has changed dramatically (mine got super flaky)
* Don't trust test kits if they suddenly have dramatically different readings
* Do trust reef2reefers when they tell you what you've done wrong
* Clowns are jerks (they particularly hate the trochus snails, pick them up and swim face-first into the glass)
* Clowns are jerks (those jerks bite!)
* Phosphates at zero for weeks is a bad idea
* Lexan lid is cool and essentially stops all evaporation, but salt creep and lighting inconsistency is bad m'kay
* Mesh lid is cool, but now the ATO empties every day (about 13% of the net volume evaporates weekly)
* Don't panic, the answer is somewhere on reef2reef
* That UPS my friends made fun of saved my tank when the power went out when it was -28f outside
* Just remove the "high tide" plastic thing from the IM AIO overflow or the water level is too high
* It's more expensive than you think

I doubt anyone read all of that, but I enjoyed thinking about the last few months and typing up memories.

 

[WalkerLovesTheOcean]

Nice tank!

Yes you can get a new frag of coral. I also don't see any GHA in the picture. Can you take pics of it?

Yes you could add a goby and shrimp. Do you mean a goby/pistol shrimp relationship (really cool), or a pistol and a shrimp like a cleaner shrimp? (Either would work)

Are shrimp just clown food?

What do you mean by this?

No, you don't have too much rock.

 

[splunty]

Nice tank!

Yes you can get a new frag of coral. I also don't see any GHA in the picture. Can you take pics of it?

Yes you could add a goby and shrimp. Do you mean a goby/pistol shrimp relationship (really cool), or a pistol and a shrimp like a cleaner shrimp? (Either would work)


What do you mean by this?

No, you don't have too much rock.

Thanks for replying!

I was wondering if the clowns would simply attack and eat a shrimp. They established first for a few months and attack the snails, especially at night.

Here's some pictures of some what's left of the hair algae. I cleaned it out as well as I could earlier today so it's only in crevices I can't reach. There's also an arrow pointing at the bright green encrusting algae ... it really looks neon on the camera.

Even the ugly algae is more interesting than the bright white rock it all started as.

 

[WalkerLovesTheOcean]

Thanks for replying!

I was wondering if the clowns would simply attack and eat a shrimp. They established first for a few months and attack the snails, especially at night.

Here's some pictures of some what's left of the hair algae. I cleaned it out as well as I could earlier today so it's only in crevices I can't reach. There's also an arrow pointing at the bright green encrusting algae ... it really looks neon on the camera.

Even the ugly algae is more interesting than the bright white rock it all started as.

Hmm... don't know what that bright green algae is.

I guess if the clowns are really territorial they could kill a shrimp. Along with any other fish addition.

 

[Linlox]

Your tank looks good! really like those clowns, but I may be biased!

Xenia is great if you want something that grows fast and looks cool. Going to be adding it to mine along with green star polyps, love softies.

 

[Aldrinlights]

I would get that pulsing xenia out of there! I learned really fast that there are certain corals which grow like weeds and then outcompete space especially in a very small system. Once they cover its impossible to remove them. Instead of those "easy" types bide your time and get some good corals that wont take over everything. Here is a short list of things I learned to avoid.

Xenia
Greeen star polyp
All mushrooms
all zoanthids

Instead get something like this
Bubble coral
hammers / frogspawn
fungia
toadstool
Acan
Chalice
Flower Pot
favia

You'll notice mushrooms taking over the rock on the right side and zoas taking over the rock on the left.

 

[splunty]

I would get that pulsing xenia out of there! I learned really fast that there are certain corals which grow like weeds and then outcompete space especially in a very small system. Once they cover its impossible to remove them. Instead of those "easy" types bide your time and get some good corals that wont take over everything. Here is a short list of things I learned to avoid.

Xenia
Greeen star polyp
All mushrooms
all zoanthids

Instead get something like this
Bubble coral
hammers / frogspawn
fungia
toadstool
Acan
Chalice
Flower Pot
favia

You'll notice mushrooms taking over the rock on the right side and zoas taking over the rock on the left.

Hi there, and thank you!

The thing is -- and you'll just shake your head for sure -- my favorite corals are GSP, clove polyp, xoas, Xenia and Kenya tree, all of which experienced reefers consider invasive weeds.

With that said, frogspawn and favia are extremely cool, too. I just started this nano with the intention of being that idiot that grows weeds.

I had to Google flower pot coral, and I really like it as well. It looks like Xenia for the sophisticated!

Thanks again for the reply. Plenty to think about here.

 

[Flameback Pair]

@splunty subscribed.

- Mitchell.

 

[splunty]

 

[splunty]

RIP shrimp. The clowns have proven themselves to be evil.

EDIT: Alive! I was fooled by a molt. Carry on my cave dwelling friend.

 

[splunty]

Last Friday, when doing a water change, I noticed what I thought was GHA growing in a crevice in the rocks. I used a bottle cleaner to scrub at it as much as I could, thinking nothing of it.

Just a couple of days later, I saw it had started growing in a couple more places. By Tuesday (three days) a dozen or more patches were growing up, already starting to irritate corals. A post here confirmed this was bryopsis not GHA.

LESSON LEARNED: Identify nuisance algae before attacking it. Don't try to scrub bryopsis.

Nutrients were exactly where I want them (nitrate 9, phosphate .08). Overnight-ed fluconazole and dosed the next day.

Absolutely unbelievable how fast this stuff spread after I did, well, exactly the wrong thing.

 

[splunty]

Two days later, the Bryopsis is starting to turn white on the tips and is bending more in the flow. One of the clownfish is strangely curious of one of the patches now. Just documenting this hopefully short chapter in my reefing journey.

The green leather coral looks happier probably because I cranked up the light a bit to help with the fluconazole treatment. This raised the LED power from 33% to 55%.

 

[splunty]

It's been three days since dosing fluconazole. Bryopsis has mostly turned white and no new growth is noticeable. Fish, inverts and corals are all looking good.

The instructions (and pretty much all guidelines) state to not perform any water changes during the treatment. That seems silly to me. Nitrates and Phosphates are rising slightly faster than normal, and I'm expecting a spike as the algae dies off. Instead of my normal 10% change, I did a 20% change today and re-dosed another 20% dose of fluconazole to keep the medication level steady in the water column. That should give some nutrient headroom without impacting the fluconazole effects.

 

[splunty]

Day 5: Bryopsis all appears visually dead. It's bright white (lighting is blue so it appears blue in the photo). There's a little batch of GHA in the tank as well, which is unfortunately trying to strangle my Xenia. The GHA looks unhappy but is still green.

So far super impressed with fluconazole treatment for bryposis. No adverse effects seen yet.

 

[splunty]

Late September 2024 Update for Posterity!

While cleaning this morning I started thinking about how basically everything in this tank has changed. I thought I'd update the current state along with how the tank started:

Substrate: 10lb Fiji Pink sand -- WAS: Bare Bottom

Being my first tank, I thought I would find bare bottom both a cleaner look and easier to keep clean. In retrospect, I found it made my rockscape unstable and after upgrading the lighting, looked pretty darn unsightly.

Rock: 8lb Marco Rock -- WAS: 14 pounds!

Of all the things I did wrong with my first tank, the rockscape was probably the worst. I tried to follow guidelines for one pound of rock per gallon of water. In retrospect, this was way, way too much. Honestly, I should have started over, but have made do.

Return Pump: MightyJet Mini -- WAS: CCG

CCG stands for Cheap Chinese Garbage. I started with what I knew would be a quality tank, but then tried to cut corners on everything else to save money. Unlike the rockscape, fixing that mistake has been easier, although costlier. I should have just started off with quality components across the board.

Return Nozzle: Single Wide -- WAS: IM Adjustable Dual Flow

This is a bit silly to list, but it's meaningful. While I do see the value in multi-flow nozzles, they take up a lot of room and the value is minimized once power heads are placed in the tank.

Power Head: IM WaveLink AIO -- WAS: 2x ZKSJ mini USB

I actually started with no power head, relying on return pump with dual flow nozzles. Power heads improved things substantially, but I eventually found the CCG products had exposed aluminum in them and wound up upgrading to something of quality.

Media Basket: InTank -- WAS: IM Stock

The stock IM frustrated me due to the amount of flow that bypassed the basket completely. The InTank aftermarket basket fits much better and actually has more room inside.

Basket contents have changed a lot, too. I started off with IM floss balls on top, bio balls in the middle, and kept activated carbon in the bottom. These days, I have pieces of live rock in the bottom two shelves just to provide dark surface area for sponge growth, while the top has a single piece of Aquatic Experts filter floss that I change daily. When I run activated carbon, I just put it in an organza bag and drop it on top of the floss.

Heater: IM Helio 100w -- WAS: 2x HiTuaing CCG

The Helio lives in the middle AIO chamber. When I first started, this chamber housed a protein skimmer which I no longer use at all. The tank had a Fluval heater in the display which I hated. I eventually removed the skimmer and placed redundant HiTuaing heaters in there instead. But those heaters worried me being CCG, and also filled up with sponges.

Top: IM Stock Mesh -- WAS: Lexan Lid (Homemade)

Evaporation here in Colorado has been an issue. Without a lid, I was evaporating about 15% of the tank every week so I had some Lexan sheets cut to lay over the top. Every week I would just swap the lid out and wash the dirty one in the dish washer. In the end, the salt creep and precipitation was too annoying and affected lighting too much so I went back to the mesh lid and added a gravity ATO.

Lighting: Hygger 30w Reef -- WAS: Hygger Blade

After going back to a mesh, the salt creep made its way to the blade lighting so I changed out to the Hygger 30w Reef light. This is definitely a budget light, and has no ramp-up features. But it is surprisingly good for the price and provides 50-150 PAR around the whole tank at 55% power.

Many other small things have changed: I stuck a black background on the back of the tank, made a custom lid for the AIO chambers to keep algae from growing in there, graduated from ATI test kits to Salifert kits to Hanna meters, upgraded battery backups, bought a squeegee for the glass (lol!), and got at least a dozen brushes, none of which are what I need.

It's been a fun journey so far!

Corals (Left to Right)

Green cyphastrea with brown corallites. The corallites retract completely with flow, so I hid it in the back in the lowest flow area.

Red montipora with tiny, bright blue corallites. I hope it does well. Most of the surface turbulence is between it and the light so the PAR is also very turbulent.

Neon green cabbage leather. Seems to enjoy its spot in the very middle of the tank. It sometimes looks brown, but then turns green again after the light has been on it a while.

Pulsing Xenia. My favorite coral, even though most people seem to hate it. Unfortunately (for me) it has never taken off and grown. For three months, it looked quite ill and never pulsed. After an ICP test, I dosed Iodine and within an hour it started pulsing and has started to look much better. Again unfortunately, there's no optimal place in the tank for it. The PAR is a bit high where it is, and the flow pretty high. It's not glued down so if it keeps thriving I have considered putting it on the back wall?

Candy Cane (Red & Blue). I think this will do really well and I kind of hope the clowns will host it rather than constantly sweeping the sand in the corner where they live now.

Meteor shower cyphastrea. One of the snails knocked this guy off so I took the opportunity to relocate him to face a bit away from the light as an experiment. No more than an hour after doing this, his corallites have opened wide and are now flowing beautifully so I hope this turns into a happy accident.

Thinking about an acopora to sit behind the montipora and something else for the clowns to host in the big open area in front, but won't be too tall. Frogspawn? Not sure what would be good there. PAR is around 100.