ADA 120-P + Elos Mini dual NPS tank journal

[slapshot]

Say goodbye to carrying buckets up and down the stairs! Finally finished plumbing my continuous water changing system. I'm running over 300 ft. of poly tubing, at 10 ft. vertical distance and 150 ft. horizontal distance each way. I'm using a 150g tub as the SW reservoir and will be setting the litermeter to change 4g/day. This should come out to about 100% of my water volume per month. About $10/week in salt. Hopefully as the seagrass tank matures this will decrease. I'll take pics of the setup soon!

That will make the hobby so much more fun. Mine is not totally automated, just have to turn two valves, but by far the best thing i ever did. Congrates!!:celeb1:

 

[Aquabacs]

If you guys haven't checked out the latest issue of CORAL magazine yet, go get yourself a copy. The focus is on coral feeding, and there is a decent amount of discussion pertaining to azoox corals. There's also an interesting article on a theory about sponges providing food for corals, and it actually makes a lot of sense but I'm no expert.

Picked up mine today locally Sept/ Oct issue is preety awesome; Got a little excited when I saw the articles Tim wrote on Crinoid Squat lobsters, Feed your Corals, Daniel's article on Coral Feeding, and Murry Camp's Probiotics Demistified :bounce2: Now I just got to read my aquarium p*rn instead of just looking at the pictures

Mike

 

[flying_dutchman]

If you guys haven't checked out the latest issue of CORAL magazine yet, go get yourself a copy. The focus is on coral feeding, and there is a decent amount of discussion pertaining to azoox corals. There's also an interesting article on a theory about sponges providing food for corals, and it actually makes a lot of sense but I'm no expert.

Anyone got any pictures of the azoox tank Murray W. Camp is referring too in the Carbon dosing article?

 

[murraycamp]

Anyone got any pictures of the azoox tank Murray W. Camp is referring too in the Carbon dosing article?

I'll try to post one this week.

 

[Tony Romano]

Jumping on.

Hi Murry!

 

[uhuru]

newest addition for the ADA 120P has arrived

I'm on the wish list for a male from aquatouch

 

[flying_dutchman]

Awesome!

 

[uhuru]

Thanks! She's already eating cyclopeeze and ova. I saw her picking at some rock too. Oh she's gonna get fat in my tank with the continuous feeding

 

[uhuru]

So I know these fish are planktivores and eat from the water column but do you think she would benefit from some seaweed on a clip?

 

[uhuru]

My elos mini has sure gone through a rough summer. I've lost some valuable livestock (to me) but it looks like things are starting to get back into shape again.

One, or should I say 2 things that have proven to be exceptionally hardy though are some of my gorgonians, which seemed to do fine whether the tank was at 75 deg or 85 deg! During my tank move they were exposed to air for over 20 minutes! Now I'm not condoning that anyone let this happen to their tank! But... I'm pretty impressed with the growth on my Diodogorgia nodulifera despite harsh conditions:

Taken in april -

Taken today, 5 months later -

And here's a pic I just took of my Guaiagorgia sp. Unfortunately I don't have an older pic but all the new branches sprouting from the base were not there when I first got it, and the main stalk used to be about as thin as those new branches -

 

[Aquabacs]

Mike the gorgs are looking well spite the conditions they went through, good job. By the way, how are the pair of Serranocirrhitus latus you picked up from Live Aquaria doing?












Mike

 

[uhuru]

Thanks! Though I am guilty of going through most of the summer without a chiller hooked up and without any refrigerated feeding due to poor planning. I must say I'm starting to enjoy keeping azoox corals a lot more with this new system up and running. The way I was doing things before was sure to lead to early burn out.

The S. latus are going great! I need to take some pics, but they are still quite shy even though the lights are almost always off. I love the G. bellus, and really want to get a male to complete my fish list for this tank. The bellus is already the boss of the tank, and she is only about 2.5". Would have loved a bandit but thats out of my price range.

I'm going to start dosing live phyto to this tank in addition to the SD. Not easy to find phyto feast live though. I want to start getting more picoplankton into the feeding regimen.

 

[uhuru]

Picked up some phyto feast last night. Couldn't get the live so the preserved version will have to do for now.

The reason I want to start using this product is because it includes some picoplankton not in SD, called Synechococcus, which may be one of the main types of plankton consumed by Dendronephthya.

I would really like to find a source of Prochlorococcus, which is even smaller and more abundant in the ocean.

*Both Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus are not really algae but cyanobacteria.*

FM Ultra Clam obviously contains some form of phytoplankton but what species?

 

[flying_dutchman]

Didn't Chuck Stottlemire just use shelfish diet and had great success?

 

[uhuru]

For phyto? According to the article yes but its definitely more complex than that or his results would be easily replicable. I bet the microfauna that came from such heavy SD dosing was a huge part of it. His whole system was much larger and more established than the azoox tank which was connected to it.

 

[uhuru]

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if you keep watching you can see my Bellus Angel swimming around a bit

 

[uhuru]

I have been experimenting with using both Shellfish Diet and Phyto-Feast. Really putting the system to the test in how much dead phyto it can handle, with the intention of producing tons of live zooplankton and bacterioplankton within the tank. I currently use the following schedule:

60 ml daily Shellfish Diet (3 ml/hr x 20 hr)
30 ml daily Phyto Feast (1.5 ml/hr x 20 hr)
10 ml daily Oyster Feast (5 ml twice daily)
1200 ml daily of frozen/powder food mix (100 ml/hr x 12 hr).
In the mixer, I use:
- 2" cube frozen cyclops
- 2" cube frozen rotifers
- 1" cube frozen ova
- 1200 ml ro/di water
- 2 teaspoons mix of FM Ultra Clam, Ultra SeaFan, Ultra Min F, Ultra Life, Spectrum Reef Micro, and 20 drops of Ultra Min D.

 

[uhuru]

I got this seafan & lace coral combo from DD tonight! It'll be arriving on Friday.

 

[Aquabacs]

Saw it Mike, nice pick up!


Mike

 

[uhuru]

Photo update time! This time with a real camera: