Weeds

[Scrubber_steve]

Hi Michael; nows a good time to have a hobby like ours, being stuck inside much more than usual.

Heading into winter down under, unfortunately. Getting too cool for the beach now.

Tanks looking good.

Cheers.

 

[Michael Hoaster]

Hey Steve! I agree. I was just thinking how nice it would be to be able to work on my tank everyday. Spring is my least favorite season here in Colorado. Not enough snow to ski, too muddy to ride my bike. So I'm eating lots of baked goods and getting fat.

The tanks doing well, thanks! Cheers!

 

[Chasmodes]

Sorry that I haven't been around in a while. I have a lot of catching up to do. Work has kept me really busy. I hope you are well, Michael, and everyone else that frequents your thread. I just wanted to pop in and say hey. Once I go back and read the posts since the last time I was here, then I will chime in again.

 

[Michael Hoaster]

Hey Kevin! Busy time of year for you. I get it. Lucky you, with the recession-proof career! Chime in when you can, and stay safe.

 

[Michael Hoaster]

I have to admit, I've really slacked on tank upkeep, during this pandemic situation. I'm obsessively following the news, like I might figure out some miraculous solution to it!

Today I did a pretty good export, mostly dictoya. It's not that bad of a plant but it's not green, and I'm trying to limit the back wall to (mostly) green plants. So I remove the plants I don't want, and favor the ones I do. I'm getting pretty decent coverage of the petticoat (verticillata) caulerpa. There's still the feather and fern caulerpas too. Unfortunately, they seem to prefer the sand to the wall. So I'll be going after them next. The job of getting the sand bed cleared is going to take several sessions of hard work. I'd really like to work on the tank for several consecutive days, if I can. We shall see…

 

[vlangel]

It's weird but I am not working on my tank as much as I would expect to either considering that I have more down time than usual. I think being in the house makes me feel more stir crazy so I have been doing more yard work. Our yard never looked so nice in April! And it has even been unusually cold here for this time of year. Tomorrow morning is suppose to be 27°. Uhhg, I am not a fan, especially since I need to mow the 12 acres at our church since its the only day without all day rain forecasted. I will be layered up for sure.

 

[vlangel]

Are you folks in Colorado in a stay at home order?

 

[Michael Hoaster]

Yes, Colorado has stay at home orders. I work from home anyway, so its not too big of an adjustment for me.

 

[vlangel]

Yes, Colorado has stay at home orders. I work from home anyway, so its not too big of an adjustment for me.

I also do not work and so am home but the 'stay at home order' just makes me feel more confined, especially since we are having such a cold rainy April.

I do some shopping for some older folks (older is relative so they are older than me, ha ha!) but not getting out much beyond that. I am grateful for a suburban home with 2 acres that allows me to stretch my legs a bit.

 

[Chasmodes]

OK, I've had 5 pages of reading to catch up, and a lot has happened with your tank, all good for the most part. Your last pics are pretty stunning. I agree with Dawn that a video would really be great, but I don't want to pressure you into it. Maybe some day...

I love the new tufted joint algae. It's really cool looking. And moving the turtle grass rock to the wall sounds like a great idea. Last I read, I think, is that it was doing well. Has it continued to grow? Is it spreading on the wall?

One last thought that I had as I read through your exchanges with Steve and ThePurple12 is that perhaps you wouldn't have to dose ammonia and such for plants if you had a large fish bioload. Is that your goal someday?

BTW, I think the Herald's angel would be a great addition. I know that I've said it before, but, I don't think it would decimate your macros. It may eat some, but I'm pretty sure it would just as readily go for added fish food.

Also, I found the mating ritual of your blennies interesting. Have you noticed any fry (fish larvae) at the water's surface?

Have you replaced the blue light bulb? Are the red macros coming back, if not?

One last thing...what do the bases of the mangroves look like? Are the roots sticking out like the larger plants do in the wild yet? I guess that takes a lot of time. But, I'm curious about that.

Again, your tank looks fantastic. Sorry that I've been away so long. I really enjoyed catching up though. Sorry for all of the questions LOL.

 

[Chasmodes]

Steve, have you tried putting your scrubber screen into your tank to see if the fish eat it? If that works, you could have a couple or a few screens and swap them out. Free food is always a plus in this expensive hobby!

 

[Michael Hoaster]

Thanks for reading, Kevin! I appreciate all the questions!

I will do a video at some point. I know I've been saying that for a while now. Sorry for the delay. I was waiting to get a few more fish, and the main circulation pump running, but that's still aways off, so I might as well. I'm in the middle of a big catch-up cleanup/export. After that, I'll have no excuses.

The tufted joint algae is cool, but it is getting overrun by other algae. I had the same experience previously with this plant. This is where an herbivorous fish (like a Herald's Angel) could come in handy. Though I'd like to avoid the situation I had in the Caribbean Biotope tank, with the Caribbean Blue Tang, which ate pretty much all of my macros. I need a fish that eats the nuisance algae and leaves the ones I want to keep alone. Its a bit of a conundrum.

The turtle weed on the rock is still hanging in there, but gets overrun as well. In general, I'd say its declining, and not spreading around the wall, unfortunately. I have found this plant challenging. Another bummer is that the rock its on brought in a couple of nuisance algae that have spread around. Again, I think an angelfish might help. At least the pods like it"¦

A heavy fish load would definitely lessen the need for dosing. But I'm not really a big fish load kind of guy. Maybe if I was richer"¦ For now, dosing is easy, and pretty infrequent. Between the dirty sand bed and CO2 injection, I'm pretty well covered, but an occasional Nitrogen input helps. Dosing Nitrate is less risky, but I feel that there is a baseline level of Nitrate already, so I give the plants a treat of their favorite form of Nitrogen on occasion. I wouldn't recommend dosing ammonia to anyone, unless they have a large, heavily-planted tank, like mine. The only other person I know of dosing ammonia is Subsea, who grows a lot of macros as well. I haven't seen any posts from him in a while. Patrick, you still out there?

I've not seen any fry or eggs for the blennies. That would awesome! I'm just happy the two I have left haven't done the death spiral.

I did replace the blue bulb with another one with a lower wattage, so it's effect is less visible. My red macros are still not as red as I'd like. They may still be getting too much light from the metal halide.

The mangroves have yet to put out any the aerial roots that this tree is known for. There are a few roots visible, but only just. It would be cool to see how extensive the root system is. It seems like maybe they are putting their energy into reaching the water surface. Another possibility is that with the fertile substrate and high nutrient water column, that provides plenty of uptake for this phase of their lives. Once they reach the surface, maybe they will kick into overdrive and need to put out more roots. For now, I'm happy they're still growing. They're definitely on a different time scale than anything else in the tank. I'm really enjoying them!

All caught up? Thanks for the great questions!

 

[Chasmodes]

Yep, all caught up. Thanks for answering my questions. I promise that I'll be patient and not bug you about producing videos LOL. I don't mean to sound pushy. Better yet, how about a live feed streaming weedcam!:lolspin:

 

[Michael Hoaster]

Weedcam! That sounds awesome. I did use a cheap webcam, years ago, when my tank was a reef tank. I had a remote sump in my crawlspace/basement that was difficult to get close enough to monitor. So I put a webcam on it, so I could check that all was well from my computer. That's probably as high tech as I'll ever be!

 

[Michael Hoaster]

The process of clearing the sand bed continues. I've been working on it every other day. It's tedious, and it's what I get for slacking. Anyway, I should be close to pulling shoal grass soon. It will be nice to tidy up the grasses!

About a month ago I added some kalkwasser, to boost Calcium. Over the last couple weeks, coralline algae has popped up on the front glass. Also, on the seagrasses, what I thought at first was coralline, I think maybe a calcium precipitate. It's an off-white, golden color, which hides the lovely green blade. I may have to prune a lot, unfortunately. Or I could let Nature take it's course. I've had coralline grow on grasses before. It was a nice, pink color.

 

[Chasmodes]

I started peeling the black stringy algae off of the Vallisneria in my stream tank, and have been doing it for about a half hour to an hour each night for the last three days. As I was pulling the algae out, I thought of all of the work that you do on your tank, and the amount of effort that you must put into it with pruning your favorite macros and the removal of the undesirable ones. It sounds like a daunting task.

 

[Michael Hoaster]

It can be a lot of work, especially when I neglect my weekly maintenance, then try to catch back up! That's the situation I'm in at the moment. Plus I'm doing some extra clearing I wouldn't normally do, so it's more work.

With the tank getting pretty mature at a year and a half, I'm doing less ecosystem building and more good old gardening. Nature doesn't seem to care whether it looks good or not. So, I garden to get it there. Hopefully, I'll get some help in the form of an herbivorous fish, one of these days.

 

[vlangel]

It can be a lot of work, especially when I neglect my weekly maintenance, then try to catch back up! That's the situation I'm in at the moment. Plus I'm doing some extra clearing I wouldn't normally do, so it's more work.

With the tank getting pretty mature at a year and a half, I'm doing less ecosystem building and more good old gardening. Nature doesn't seem to care whether it looks good or not. So, I garden to get it there. Hopefully, I'll get some help in the form of an herbivorous fish, one of these days.

Ha ha, just like in outdoor gardening the maintenance is fun until you get behind and then it can be daunting and overwhelming which is not as fun!

 

[Michael Hoaster]

That's pretty much it. I got lazy at a time when I was planning to do more than the usual amount of pruning. So now I'm playing catch-up. Almost there!

 

[Scrubber_steve]

Steve, have you tried putting your scrubber screen into your tank to see if the fish eat it? If that works, you could have a couple or a few screens and swap them out. Free food is always a plus in this expensive hobby!

Theoretically you could have two screens, one would be in the display for fish feeding for a week while the other screen does the filtering.

Feeding isn't expensive. Nori is pretty cheap & in a form very practical for feeding. I also feed blended seafood bought fresh from the market.