One year update
One year update
I have now had my TBS reef tank for almost exactly a year. In fact it will have been exactly one year on the 22nd of October. When I first decided to start a coral reef tank a couple of years ago I ran into pictures of TBS rock and i knew I could only have TBS rock for my tank. Many people gave me lots of negatives, such as bad hitchhikers and that most of the life wouldnââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t survive.
It has been quite a journey. The initial cycle was nearly non-existent and all the life survived the initial cycle. I got a mantis shrimp and a number of other bad hitchhikers but they were and are relatively easy to remove with a little patience. One year later much of the life is still alive. All of the clams except one are still surviving, a great amount of the sponges are still hanging in there and I have dozens of porcelain crabs and other invertebrate life that is going strong. I am still amazed that I still find new things in the tank after a year. I have a pistol shrimp somewhere I have never seen but that I hear from time to time.
I lost a really nice velvety blood red encrusting sponge that was my favorite because one of my Condy anemones parked near it and destroyed it. I liked the anemone more than the sponge though so I left it.
I had a long and expensive battle with either brown algae or dinoflagelletes. It started when my tank temperature shot to over 90 degrees for a while as the school district cut the A/C in my room while I was away to Florida. I came back to a tank so choked with algae you couldnââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t tell the lights were on. I beat it, about 2 months later. Through a combination of frequent partial water changes, new lights, a phos-ban reactor, a treatment of Chemi-clean and killing the lights for almost two weeks. The stuff hasnââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t made a return. I am also now dripping kalk.
The tank now looks AWESOME; probably better than it ever has. I have added very little coral, only a branching hammer, a devils hand coral, a Kenya tree coral and a green brain. They are all doing well and the Kenya tree coral has now become more of a weed than a coral. It drops branches on a daily basis. I know one day I bet I will be posting "HOW THE HELL DO I GET RID OF THIS CRAP!!" LOL. The coral that came on the rock is doing really well, the small brain is really inflated all the time and most of the cup corals are alive and looking well. I had to let a couple groups of them die as I just couldnââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t reach them all the time to feed them.
The algae problem really took its toll on the life in the tank though. A large amount of my coralline bleached and it managed to kill off a few sponges. However, the tank rebounded really well, coralline is starting to grow again, and I have tunicates I have not seen in forever pop back up.
I have 6 fish, four small Azure Damsles that are awesome! I love them; they have so much personality and color. I also have one Perc clown and a lawnmower blenny. I was really worried about the blenny for a while as he wasnââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t eating. He was trying to actually scrape film algae off the side of the tank! He now eats from the seaweed clip. I plan on only one more small fish, a royal gramma.
I have not had any really mysterious fish deaths over the year either. I had a coral beauty angel and a royal gramma get eaten by my largest Condy anemone. Other than that I cannot think of any other fish deaths.
I am going to setup a 110-gallon long in my classroom next year. I debated on whether I was going to go with TBS rock or not, I am. The 100 will be a TBS reef tank. I can probably get the tank in Jan and will slowly buy the equipment needed and order the rock around Sept of next year. I am going to stock it with a whole slew of Azure damsels, a couple percs, a flame angel, a mandarin, and a yellow tang.
I will post pics when I can, they have us so busy at work I have to schedule time to breathe in my calendar!
