Macroalgae dominated tank

[Trigeek]

Thought I'd share what I've been up to. My 90g "used to be reef" has been changed to a tank housing mainly macraoalgea and various smaller algae that cover and encrust my rocks. I get my algae from the sea; stuff I find floating around the local reef I free-dive on. I like the diversity of bacteria, pods etc. that comes in on this stuff. My dragonets do too!

Here is a close up of a rock. As you can see. it's covered with various types of algae along with the corraline. The algae changes, with different types and colors dominating for a while, giving way to different types of algae eventually. Sometimes reds pop up, sometimes green.

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[Trigeek]

Here are some more pics

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[Trigeek]

In the first pic above you can see the Midas Blenny, the Yellow Watchman Goby, and the female Ruby Red Dragonet.

Here is the male and the female. The male is the larger of the two. He raises his topfin to show off for his girlfriend. They constantly hunt and are usually together. There is a large pod population in the tank that they feed on. I sometimes see the midas blenny picking pods out of some of the larger areas of algae.

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[Trigeek]

The only coral I have in here are a few areas of GSP. I got these for the Sexy Shrimp as I've read they take to hosting colonies of these. You can see him on the GSP in the pic below. You can also see the YWG and the female Dragonet in the background. The YWG has a roommate; a pistol shrimp that constantly works the areas under those rocks in the center. It seems like they change location of the entrance every week or so. It's totally DIY, so at least they save on the expense that way.

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Side shot of tank with Midas Blenny saying "Hi."

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[Trigeek]

Pic from this morning before my snorkel

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[Devaji108]

very nice! I like it. look like everyone is happy and healthy. nice that you can got out and collect your macros. BONUS

feel free to post a FTS in the macro tanks thread we would love to have it there.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2555192&highlight=macro+tank+fts

cheers and happy macro growing!

 

[Michael Hoaster]

"90 gallon, used to be reef" - I love it!

I took a similar path, switching to fresh water planted, before coming back to salt water planted.

So jealous of your collecting options! I look forward to following along!

 

[conjuay]

I'm quite interested in what you might have to say about the sargassum in your tank- was it anchored originally or did you glue it down? I've put some recently in my fuge, but it isn't doing very well. Very high flow, strong lighting yet it seems to be dwindling. Dosing iron as well.
Any thoughts?
thnx

 

[BlueCat1949]

What kind of lighting are you using to keep the high light sargassum? Is it your reef lighting and did you change the spectrum for macros?