Harlequinmania

Growth of some of the corals Photo taken a month ago Present

Another gem pcs from previous LCK shipment. Month before Present

This is my favourite Gem pcs in my tank now. Maybe someone can ID for the exact name of this Tennis ? Before Now

This should be the purple valida if i am not wrong ? Used to be almost all brown when a friend pass to me. After few months

Some update of photos of the tank . It has been amazing to witness the changes in color for some of the SPS in my tank watching it turning from a ugly ducking to a beauty which i believe is what the ultimate aim of all SPS keeper is aiming for. 3 month ago photo Present

Click through to see the images. Back in March, I wrote about Chad Vossen feeding a platinum clownfish that was to be culled to juvenile Dwarf Cuttlefish, Sepia bandnesis, and talked about how clownfish destined to be culled might be a great source of marine feeders for predatory marine animals. As a follow up I present to you the below video: Dr. Seuss eats Nemo. In the video I feed my pair of Dr. Seuss Fish, Belonoperca pylei, some captive bred designer clownfish that were raised in quarantine conditions, and were destined for the culling block. These clownfish were provided to me by Bay Area Reefers President, Steinhart Aquarium Volunteer (Thanks David!) and clownfish breeder extraordinaire, David Sheh. Feeding marine predatory animals can be difficult because finding appropriate live foods can come with all kinds of problems. Availability can be challenging, as finding the right size prey items, in the quantity you need them, when you need them can be problematic. Disease and parasites from wild caught prey items can infect your predatory fish, and quarantine of such animals is and added expense, as well as taking up time and resources. Worse, the ethical issues surrounding wild caught feeder animals are significant; using animals flown halfway around the world as feeders seems exceedingly wasteful. Furthermore, with some aquarium fish potentially to be listed as threatened or endangered in the endangered species act, the practice of feeding out wild caught animals can become even more inflammatory. Cultured freshwater prey items don't offer a great alternative as they can have a different nutritional profile from saltwater prey items, and can present sub optimal results - for example, in my experience Dwarf Cuttles fed solely freshwater ghost shrimp tend to lay much fewer eggs, and fewer viable eggs than cuttles fed saltwater shrimp. If only there were a whole bunch of captive bred, saltwater animals that nobody wanted, weren't sellable, and were often culled as a matter of course. Oh wait. There are. Designer clownfish broods often contain fish with undesirable traits, oddly shaped fins (Nemo!), congenital defects, or simply don't have the traits the breeder is looking for. Reject fish are often culled (killed, slaughtered, destroyed, put down, put to sleep, Wandering the Elysian Fields, snuffed, terminated, paid the ferryman sent to the great ocean in the sky – euphemisms are great) because of these undesirable traits. Why not use them to feed marine predators? Ignoring the inconsistent and emotionally knee jerk, save-the-pretty-animals-don’t-kill-Nemo reactions, there are practical issues about getting these feeder fish to market and cost. However, the major objection I hear from breeders is that they are worried about this inferior stock being re-sold as cheap pets rather than as the intended feeder fish, which could effectively ruin the market for quality captive bred Clownfish. I don't know what to do about this problem, as there well always be unscrupulous people around doing nefarious things, but I leave it to clownfish breeders to come up with solutions...after all, trying to list fish that are so plentiful as to be used to feed other fish on the Endangered Species Act has a delicious type of irony that will be hard to miss. Of course, there are a couple potential problems with feeding clownfish to predators, but these potential problems are small and mostly easily overcome. First, clownfish seem not to be the terrible swimmers that many think they are, and if given a chance they can be difficult for predators to catch. And if they get way and then hide for enough time, the predator animal can stop seeing them as prey. Case in point, my Nega Dr Seuss Fish, Belonoperca chabanaudi, currently shares its tank with 5 clownfish that got away during previous feedings - though new clownfish are readily consumed. Second, no matter how careful the sourcing, introducing disease can always be a problem…unless of course the clownfish spawns have been raised in quarantine conditions, and they often are. As you can see in the video, clownfish feeders can be kept in large groups in small tanks where they can be quarantined and treated as necessary - as well as gut loaded with great food that will be passed along to the predator. As I have written previously, clownfish culls seem like the perfect live feeders for marine predators - there are lots of them, they are nutritionally appropriate, and they are going to be killed anyway. We just need a way to make it happen. So, hivemind of the reef keeping world, figure it out and the appreciation of the rest of your community will be yours forever. View the full article

It depend, I started with 3 hour and increase to 4 .

Ramp time mean the amount of time you want the light to blast your coral at full force

Click through to see the images. Inspired by James Fatherree's wonderful mixed reef aquarium we published earlier this week, we decided to look for other examples of great reef aquariums housing a mixture of soft and stony corals. While pure stony (mostly SPS) coral aquariums have become the most popular type of reef these days amongst seasoned reefkeepers, there's still nothing quite like a healthy captive reef where soft and stony corals live in harmony. Movement and structure ... you can have your cake and eat it too. Here is "Istedgade Reef" under serious blue lighting. We presume this aquarium is another Danish beauty although we haven't been able to find any details. For those who want to see "Istedgade Reef" under full spectrum lighting, your wish is our command. Kicking back and taking in a gorgeous reef tank is a terrific way to end a long work/school week. View the full article

Are you using Vega, hydra or the 52 ? If you are using 52, do be careful of the white as too much can bleach the coral in my own experience. It is advisable to increase slowly by 5% every month to let the coral acclimate the setting . But again, it depend on each tank condition , height ect.. Best is observe the coral reaction and slowly adjust upward

Chromis is my choice over anthanis as it is so much easier to keep without the need for constant feeding.

With a help of a friend from oversea hand carrying it over to me. you can try tlf coral dip as well as I heard it is as effective.

Ok I will try to do it over this weekend. The weather function is not 100% necessary just fun to have .

Click through to see the images. From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Coral organisms use minuscule appendages to control their environment, stirring up water eddies to bring nutrients " height="383" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="680"> "> "> Conventional wisdom has long held that corals — whose calcium-carbonate skeletons form the foundation of coral reefs — are passive organisms that rely entirely on ocean currents to deliver dissolved substances, such as nutrients and oxygen. But now scientists at MIT and the Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS) in Israel have found that they are far from passive, engineering their environment to sweep water into turbulent patterns that greatly enhance their ability to exchange nutrients and dissolved gases with their environment. "These microenvironmental processes are not only important, but also unexpected," says Roman Stocker, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. When the team set up their experiment with living coral in tanks in the lab, "I was expecting that this would be a smooth microworld, there would be not much action except the external flow," Stocker says. Instead, what the researchers found, by zooming in on the coral surface with powerful microscopes and high-speed video cameras, was the opposite: Within the millimeter closest to the coral surface, "it's very violent," he says. It's long been known that corals have cilia, small threadlike appendages that can push water along the coral surface. However, these currents were previously assumed to move parallel to the coral surface, in a conveyor-belt fashion. Such smooth motion may help corals remove sediments, but would have little effect on the exchange of dissolved nutrients. Now Stocker and his colleagues show that the cilia on the coral's surface are arranged in such a way as to produce strong swirls of water that draw nutrients toward the coral, while driving away potentially toxic waste products, such as excess oxygen. Scanning electron micrograph at 5,000x magnification of the surface of a P. damicornis branch, showing a dense carpet of cilia. Not just passive "The general thinking has been that corals are completely dependent upon ambient flow, from tides and turbulence, to enable them to overcome diffusion limitation and facilitate the efficient supply of nutrients and the disposal of dissolved waste products," says Orr Shapiro, a postdoc from WIS and co-first author on the paper, who spent a year in Stocker's lab making these observations. Under such a scenario, colonies in sheltered parts of a reef or at slack tide would see little water movement and might experience severe nutrient limitation or a buildup of toxic waste, to the point of jeopardizing their survival. "Even the shape of the coral can be problematic" under that passive scenario, says Vicente Fernandez, an MIT postdoc and co-first author of the paper. Coral structures are often "treelike, with a deeply branched structure that blocks a lot of the external flow, so the amount of new water going through to the center is very low." The team's approach of looking at corals with video microscopy and advanced image analysis changed this paradigm. They showed that corals use their cilia to actively enhance the exchange of dissolved molecules, which allows them to maintain increased rates of photosynthesis and respiration even under near-zero ambient flow. The researchers tested six different species of reef corals, demonstrating that all share the ability to induce complex turbulent flows around them. "While that doesn't yet prove that all reef corals do the same," Shapiro says, "it appears that most if not all have the cilia that create these flows. The retention of cilia through 400 million years of evolution suggests that reef corals derive a substantial evolutionary advantage" from these flows. Vortical ciliary flows enhance the exchange of oxygen and nutrients between corals and their environment. The paths of tracer particles are color-coded by fluid velocity, demonstrating that the coral surface is driving the flow. Corals need to stir it up The reported findings transform the way we perceive the surface of reef corals; the existing view of a stagnant boundary layer has been replaced by one of a dynamic, actively stirred environment. This will be important not only to questions of mass transport, but also to the interactions of marine microorganisms with coral colonies, a subject that attracts much attention due to a global increase in coral disease and reef degradation over the past decades. Besides illuminating how coral reefs function, which could help better predict their health in the face of climate change, this research could have implications in other fields, Stocker suggests: Cilia are ubiquitous in more complex organisms — such as inside human airways, where they help to sweep away contaminants. But such processes are difficult to study because cilia are internal. "It's rare that you have a situation in which you see cilia on the outside of an animal," Stocker says — so corals could provide a general model for understanding ciliary processes related to mass transport and disease. View the full article

I simply love your zoas garden LOL...

So you are using LED mix with T5 tube now as well ?

It is due to your white balance setting . This always happen when you took photos with LEDs lighting, try change the white balance setting of your camera.

from the state..

Yes i got two pcs of the blue velvet slugs from last ML shipment as well but one of it DOA on the second day when it got suck into my wavemaker i suspect that Blue velvet slug do not eat all types of flat worm as i try placing one flatworm in front of it during acclimatizing and it simply just ignore it

you need to enrich the frozen food with Selcon, vitamin ect to feed your seahorse. Try Feeding PE mysys which is better enriched frozen food and cleaner than the normal mysis shrimp , frozen food is a better alternative than live foods i feel.

A new nano wavemaker for my QT tank . Price is of a china Jabeo wp40

My new 3 part dipping process for all newly purchase corals . Pail 1 - Coral RX ( This is effective in removal of nudi, worm but not AEFW that i experience ) Pail 2- Bayer compete ( whatever the first dip doesnt kill, this should work ) Pail 3 ( White ) - Clean tank water to clean the coral before adding into the main tank and those pest that die off from the first two dip should begin to fall off at this stage. With a help of Daiso $2.00 turkey blaster to "Blast " those pest off !! Some of the pest that come dropping off die after the dip. The pro of using this method, i would say it should remove 80% or 100% of the pest including hairy crab but the cons of it, it also remove the " Good Acro carb" that came along with the SPS.

Recently i found out that one of my wild SPS begin to STN from below and in order to try saving it, i have to frag the colony up . But strangely it doesn't help, and the few balance frags keeping turning white, and that it when upon close examination i discover various biting mark on the SPS itself. Suspected AEFW infection although i cant see with physical eye inspection of any, so i dip the frags with a few drop of Iodine lugol solution , and that is when pink flat pcs of worm being to appear .. The SPS frag with various bite mark . Small tiny flat worm left on the tray after the iodine dip. The Iodine solution that i use The villain behind this !

Yap, it is a damm powerful wavemaker , i only run like 50% of the max flow. The main reason why i decide to have two vortech is in order to have the master and slave function like the below video.

Click through to see the images. While water flow is great, there are few pumps, and they aren't eyesores. Really, you can only see one when looking at the aquarium and it's not particularly noticeable, which I like very much. I'm not using any "regular" actinic 420nm bulbs, and I don't use a bunch of additives, either. In fact, the only additive that goes in is kalkwasser. There is no skimmer. Well, actually there is one in the sump, but I haven't used it in years. Still, I've had no algae problems, and there's almost none in the aquarium at this time. Sponge growth is like nothing I've had before, with much of the surface on the under/back sides of rocks being nearly covered. And, for the first time, I have copious amounts of zooplankton thriving in an aquarium. Lastly, with the exception of a single red open brain coral, every cnidarian in the aquarium originated from frags/cuttings taken from other specimens. I've easily produced over a hundred frags/cuttings for my own livestock, too. So, read on and see what my somewhat different recipe for success has been. Livestock Over the last couple of years a lot of things have been placed in and taken out of the aquarium, seeing what works and what doesn't. I've had problems with some things, and great success with others. So, what I have now is the result of quite a bit of trial and error. I'll discuss some of the stocking problems I've had later, but here's the list of what's in the aquarium now. Fishes One yellow tang, Zebrasoma flavescens. One scopas tang, Zebrasoma scopas. One two spot tang, Ctenochaetus binotatus. One tomini tang, Ctenochaetus tominiensis. One unidentified tang, Ctenochaetus sp. One foxface rabbitfish, Siganus vulpinus. One yellow coris wrasse, Halichoeres chrysus. One Randall's shrimp goby, Amblyeleotris randalli. In addition to these permanent residents, I have a pair of ocellaris clownfishes ( Amphiprion ocellaris ) in an aquarium system at school that sometimes comes home with me for the summer. They're rather easy to catch, so I'll bring them home for a while and take them back to school when classes start. I also had a wonderful cherub angel ( Centropyge argi ) for a couple of years, but it disappeared recently despite being very healthy. I have no idea what happened to it... Also, before getting the Randall's shrimp goby, I had a pair of pink bar/aurora gobies ( Amblyeleotris aurora ) living with a Randall's pistol shrimp, but both gobies ended up jumping out of the aquarium. Invertebrates One Randall's pistol shrimp, Alpheus randalli , that lives with the goby. One skunk cleaner shrimp, Lysmata amboinensis . One peppermint shrimp, Lysmata sp. One bumble bee shrimp, Gnathophyllum americanum . Approximately twenty blue leg hermit crabs, Clibanarius tricolor . One scarlet hermit crab, Paguristes cadenati . One halloween hermit crab, Ciliopagurus strigatus . One zebra hermit crab, Calcinus laevimanus . Two porcelain crabs, Petrolisthes sp. One sand stirrer star, Archaster typicus . Dozens of asterina stars, Asterina sp. Hundreds of small unidentified brittle stars. One derasa clam, Tridacna derasa. Six astrea snails, Astraea tecta . Three zebra turbo snails, Turbo sp. Approximately twenty unidentified vermetid snails. Approximately six species of unidentified sponges. Dozens of small unidentified feather duster worms. Dozens of tentacled tube worms, Phyllochaetopterus sp. Hundreds of small unidentified bristle worms. Hundreds (thousands?) of unidentified zooplankters. Cnidarians Three colonies of green slimer acropora, Acropora. yongei . Two colonies of blue/green tort acropora, Acropora tortuosa . Two colonies of green milli acropora, Acropora sp. Two colonies of ORA Bellina acropora, Acropora sp. One colony of deepwater acropora, Acropora suharsonoi . One colony of bushy acropora, Acropora sp. One red open brain, Trachyphyllia geoffroyi . Three varieties of toadstool coral, Sarcophyton sp. One yellow toadstool coral, Sarcophyton elegans . One devil's hand coral, Lobophytum pauciflorum . Two finger leather corals, Sinularia sp. Two green finger leather corals, Sinularia sp. Two clusters of 2 species of tree leather coral, Nepthea sp. and Capnella sp. One cluster of clove polyps, Clavularia sp. Several clusters of 2 species of pulsing xenia, Xenia sp. Several clusters of 2 species of non-pulsing xenia, Xenia sp. Several clusters of blue xenia, Cespitularia erecta . Several clusters of 3 varieties of mushroom anemone, Discosoma sp. One cluster of fuzzy mushrooms, Discosoma sp. One cluster of hairy mushrooms, Rhodactis indosinensis . Two clusters of ricordea mushrooms, Ricordea yuma . Several patches of 4 varieties of star polyp, Pachyclavularia sp. Several patches of 4 varieties of zooanthid, Zoanthus sp. Three patches of yellow polyps, Parazoanthus gracilis . Hundreds of jasmine polyps, Knopia sp. Hundreds of 24 visually distinct varieties of button polyps, Protopalythoa sp. Tank and Equipment I've had numerous aquariums over the years, big and small, but I've found a six-foot 125 gallon to be my favorite size. It's plenty big for housing lots of livestock, but not so large as to take up too much space in my current house, or require more than a standard 32 gallon trashcan of R.O. water for water changes. Of course, I also prefer reef-ready/drilled tanks with a sump so that the water level in the main tank stays the same regardless of how often I add top-off water to replace what evaporates. So, several years ago I purchased an All-Glass 125 gallon reef-ready tank (72"L x 18"W x 22"H). This tank originally had an overflow box in each corner, but I removed the box at the right end of the tank with a razor blade and closed off the plumbing holes in the bottom pane of glass. It just wasn't necessary, and removing it freed up a significant amount of space. Anyway, here's the list of all the other equipment I'm currently using: An All-Glass 55 gallon tank (48"L x 13"W x 21"H) is used as a sump under the main tank for the collection of detritus and holding of chemical filter media. Again, I also ran a skimmer in the sump in the past, but no longer do so. I just haven't bothered to remove it, and figure it might be needed one day if some unforeseen water quality problem arises. The 55 gallon sump tank under the main tank. An Aquactinics Constellation T-5 fixture is used for lighting. This low-profile fixture holds 14 three-foot 39w T-5 HO bulbs (7 over each half of the six-foot tank) with an individual reflector for each bulb, and has three power switches. However, for the last couple of years I've been using only 10 bulbs, with 3 Wave Point Super Blue Wave Actinic 460nm bulbs and 2 Wave Point Sun Wave 12,000K Super Daylight bulbs over each half of the tank. All 6 Super Blue Wave bulbs are on one timer and are turned on for 12 hours per day. The 4 Sun Wave bulbs are on another timer and are turned on for 10 hours a day, switching on one hour after the Super Blue Wave bulbs come on, and switching off one hour before the Super Blue Wave bulbs turn off. Again, no "regular" actinic 420nm bulbs are used. This lighting produces an overall color that I really like, which makes the colors of corals and such look good, and the 460nm bulbs are significantly brighter than the 420nm bulbs I've used, too. While this fixture can run 14 bulbs, I've pulled the bulbs from the front and back, done some rearranging, and only use 10 now. A Taam Rio+ 2100 37w submersible pump serves as the return pump from the sump, with the twin-outlet return being near the top-left front corner of the tank (at position #1 in the photo below). The numbered arrows indicate where the pumps/returns are placed. Note the open flow path across the back of the tank, behind the stony corals. A Hagen Fluval AquaClear 70 20w powerhead is located at the top-left-rear corner of the tank (at #2, behind the corals), next to the remaining overflow box, and pointed straight across the back of the tank towards the top-right-rear corner of the tank. I positioned the rock and corals so that there's a gap of several inches behind them near the top of the tank, leaving an unobstructed path for water flow across the back of the tank. A Reef Octopus Diablo 50w DC external pump is used as a closed-loop circulation pump, with the screened intake being next to the AquaClear 70 powerhead at the top-left-rear of the tank. The return is at the top-right-rear of the tank (at #3) and is pointed straight across the back of the tank towards the AquaClear 70 powerhead. It's randomly (manually) turned on for a few hours a week at most (sometimes not at all), and when on, it's almost always run at only half power (approximately 25w). Again, the return is pointed towards the always-running AquaClear 70 powerhead at the opposite end of the tank, and when both are on and "fighting" against each other, a great amount of turbulent, swirling flow is generated in the open area in the middle of the tank, which then affects almost all parts of the aquarium. This stirs up detritus that accumulates in some areas of normally lower flow, and really gets the soft corals, etc. moving around a lot. Last, is a Hagen Fluval AquaClear 50 12w powerhead, located at the top-right-rear corner of the tank (at #4), and pointed towards the front-middle of the tank. Note that the devices above are the only power-consuming items in use. Not only is there no skimmer running, there's no chemical media reactor, no electronic controller, no chiller, etc. In other words, less electricity is used, there's less equipment to clean/maintain, and there are fewer things that can potentially malfunction. Power Consumption, Past and Present A few years ago I was using a lighting fixture housing three 175w metal halide bulbs and two 165w T-12 VHO bulbs. I also used the same 37w pump for the sump return, two 20w powerheads, a 90w closed-loop external pump, and a 20w submersible pump running an in-sump skimmer. Total power consumption with everything on was approximately 1,042w, with 855w being used by the lighting and 187w being used by the pumps. Now when everything is on, total power consumption is approximately 484w, with 390w being used by the lighting and the remaining 94w being used by the pumps. At night with the lighting and Diablo pump turned off, total power consumption is only 69w. That's a 54% reduction in total power consumption when everything is on, and a 63% reduction at night. Maintenance When it comes to maintenance, I've made an effort to keep things as simple as possible. I want a beautiful aquarium that I can enjoy, rather than a headache that I have to work on all the time. So, here's the routine: I feed the fishes a mix of Ocean Nutrition Prime Reef and Spirulina flake foods, typically two or three times a day. However, there are times when it's only once a day, and every once in a while it's no times per day (when I'm away from home). A couple of times a week I also toss in a pinch of Ocean Nutrition Formula One sinking pellets and/or New Life Spectrum Marine Fish Formula sinking pellets. The fishes eat most of them, but the peppermint shrimp and skunk cleaner shrimp oftentimes grab a few, too. About once a week I also use a long piece of rigid airline tubing to target feed the Randall's pistol shrimp, with the Randall's shrimp goby taking some of them, as well. All of the fishes are very healthy and nice and thick, and the shrimps are fine and apparently find plenty of other stuff to eat, as I really don't see them eat much of the food I provide. On occasion, I also feed the corals and such. I put some tank water in a small glass, set it on top of the lighting fixture and then drop in a few Sally's San Francisco Bay frozen cyclops cubes, brine shrimp cubes, and omega brine shrimp cubes. Once they've completely thawed, I stir up everything, turn off all the pumps, move the fixture, and use a turkey baster to target feed the things that I know will take it (button polyps do, but zoanthids don't, etc.). I used to do this about once a week when I was still adding things to the aquarium and trying to get good coverage over all of the rocks. However, I only do this once a month or so now that almost all of the visible rock has been grown over, typically a day or two before I do a water change. In case you're wondering, nutrient levels don't seem to be a problem, regardless of how much food I put in the aquarium. While it wasn't the case early on, now there are hundreds of tiny mouths covering the rocks, and any bits of food that aren't eaten by the fishes, or caught by the corals when I target feed them, are most likely caught and eaten by something, somewhere in the aquarium anyway. Same goes for any dissolved nutrients, which are absorbed by many such things. The corals themselves are a nutrient control mechanism. Anyway, usually every week to ten days I use E.S.V. or Two Little Fishies calcium hydroxide/kalkwasser to keep calcium levels up. I add it as a slurry by putting a heaping tablespoon of power into a plastic container and then adding a gallon of R.O. water, which is then fed to the aquarium by a length of airline tubing with a flow controller taken from an I.V. line. I attached this to the container by drilling a hole in the bottom corner and then screwing in a brass hose nipple for the tubing. Flow of the slurry is reduced to a slow drip so that it takes at least a couple of hours for the container to drain, with it dripping into the area over the sump return. So, it gets mixed into the aquarium's water quickly and thoroughly. The simple kalkwasser slurry delivery system. As was the case with feeding the corals, I used to do this more often when I was trying to get the stony corals to grow as fast as possible. Now they're growing out of the water and spreading laterally too, so I've cut back. I haven't actually tested calcium levels (or anything else) in a couple of years, but just keep an eye on things. As long as everything looks good, I see some coral growth, and new shell material is being added by my derasa clam, I don't feel the need to do water tests or make any changes to the routine. For many years I also used Kent Tech I, and would see an apparent positive effect in the form of greater expansion and more rapid growth/reproduction of soft corals and such. However, I started adding it less and less frequently and completely stopped using it some time ago. Again, I no longer want greater expansion or more rapid growth/reproduction of anything in the aquarium. I don't use any other additives, either. Nothing goes in except food, kalkwasser, and water, which is next. With an occasional exception when life gets in the way, I do monthly water changes using R.O. water and Instant Ocean Reef Crystals. I put approximately 16 cups of salt mix in a covered 32 gallon trashcan on the back deck and then fill it with R.O. water. I also put a powerhead in the trashcan to stir things up. I usually let it mix overnight, and the salinity is usually right in the range of 1.023-1.025 when measured as density using a swing-arm hydrometer. Note that 32 gallons is just right for a 25% water change when adding the volumes of water in the aquarium and sump, minus a few gallons for the rock and corals. I use a 40 foot length of vinyl tubing with a Taam Rio+ 2100 submersible pump on one end and a U-tube directional return on the other to do the changes. Once the new water is ready, I turn off all the pumps and lights, place a second 32 gallon trashcan next to the aquarium, and use the hose/pump to quickly drain enough water from the aquarium to fill the empty can. The hose is then used to pump the new water from the trashcan outside into the aquarium. By using two trashcans, I never have volume issues during the process. Then, once the aquarium is refilled, I turn everything back on, turn the Diablo pump on full blast for a while, and use the hose/pump to drain the old water from the trashcan next to the aquarium into the bathtub. Yes, I have to move the hose and trashcans around, but the whole process is really pretty easy and takes no more than a half-hour. This makes water changes much easier! After each water change is completed, I put approximately two to three cups of E.S.V. or Two Little Fishies HydroCarbon2 granular activated carbon and one cup of Two Little Fishies Phosban into a mesh bag. This is rinsed very well in the kitchen sink and then put in the sump in an open-top plastic box placed directly under the drain/down-pipe from the aquarium. Water thus flows around/through the mesh bag at all times, and this is apparently working well enough to forgo the use of a skimmer and any sort of reactor chamber. I also change the bulbs about once a year, sometimes a bit longer. And, about once a year I use the hose/pump combo to suck up much of the detritus in the sump instead of taking all the water from the aquarium when doing a water change. There are so many worms and so much zooplankton in the sump that I don't want to actually suck it dry, so I just slowly move the pump intake around the bottom of the sump and get most, but not all, of the detritus. This always leaves some critters behind. Other than that, the only other chore is keeping the corals and such in check. All of the branching stony corals and larger soft corals have to be trimmed regularly. In fact, I've had to pull out whole soft corals at times, as they just got too big/numerous. I also pull out a good bit of xenia from time to time as it reproduces quickly and springs up all over the place. I've been able to trade frags/cuttings for supplies at a couple of local shops, and don't think I've paid for any supplies (other than a few bulbs) for a long time. I know that last summer I went snipper crazy one day and made 54 frags, some of which were pretty big, from the stony corals alone. So, I think a conservative estimate would be over one hundred frags/cuttings produced over the last couple of years, and the aquarium still looks "full". Here's one batch of frags, about to go to a LFS. Oh, and I clean the microalgae off the glass every few days using a magnetic cleaner, of course. Problems Okay, it isn't all perfect, and I've had some problems/issues. So, here they are, in no particular order: When I decided to pretty much completely re-do this aquarium as a mixed-reef and first got it going, I didn't need the Diablo closed-loop circulation pump. However, as things grew and there were more and more branches sticking up into the water column, water movement was reduced by the drag all of these created. So I added the Diablo pump for some extra flow from time to time. While everything is generally fine without it, detritus accumulates visibly in the bottom left corner of the aquarium unless I turn on the Diablo for a while. From time to time, I also use the magnetic glass cleaner to stir up everything in the same corner while the pump is on, which really gets the sand cleaned up. Occasionally, and with no apparent connection to anything I'm doing, a translucent film develops on the water's surface. I don't know what it is or where it comes from, but at least it's easy to get rid of. As the return from the Diablo is pointed across the back of the tank towards the AquaClear 70 powerhead and overflow box at the opposite end, I can turn the powerhead off and turn the Diablo up to full blast for a few hours. This literally blasts the film into the grate of the overflow box, and into the sump it goes. I don't know what happens to it then, but it typically doesn't comes back for weeks at a time. When I was adding calcium more often, there was a lot more coralline algae growing in the aquarium. However, much of it has slowly disappeared over the last year or so. Fortunately, most of the lighted rock is covered by other things, while unlit surfaces have been largely overgrown by sponges. And, I don't have to scrape coralline algae off the glass any more, either. So, in some ways this isn't a problem after all. Several of the stony corals have grown up to the water's surface and have produced little tables at the ends of their exposed branches. This doesn't seem to be any problem for the corals, except that the tables are increasing in size by growing laterally, and are increasingly shading things underneath them. I guess at some point, probably soon, I'll have to carefully trim these down with some snips. Still, I imagine there are some folks that would like to give me a kick in the rear for bringing up too much coral growth as a problem. This is what happens when stony corals reach the surface.. Anyway, I recently noticed that two of the largest stony coral colonies, one of the green slimers and one of the torts, were losing tissue at their bases. They've grown to a large enough size that their bases are heavily shaded at this point, and I assume the tissue recession is the result. I watched them very carefully for a couple of weeks, but it finally stopped and hasn't progressed any further in a few weeks. I imagine the areas of naked skeleton will soon enough be covered by button polyps and such, but these two corals seem to be very resistant to having their living tissue succumb to overgrowth by other things. We'll see what happens over the coming months... The base of this colony is heavily shaded and has lost some tissue. It's only lit up in the picture because I used a flash. Lastly, I've had some compatibility issues, which shouldn't be a surprise. For example, at one point I was about to tear out everything on the right end of the aquarium just to get rid of the fast-growing anthelia I had added. Don't add it unless it's all you want! I've also had and still have a few corals that refuse to grow at all, no matter where I put them in the aquarium. A couple of the fishes have started to have relationship problems, too. However, overall I think things have gone relatively smoothly considering the diversity of life in the aquarium. Regardless, I'll be doing a second article on this aquarium, which will focus specifically on compatibilities, what can/can't touch what, what grows fast and what doesn't, etc. So, keep an eye out for that one if you want a lot of information about mixing various fishes and corals your aquarium. Final Comment To finish up I have to say, no, I haven't accepted any sort of favors, payments, or free samples of the products I mentioned by name. The pumps may or may not be the best for your situation, the foods may or may not be the most nutritious for your livestock, etc., and I'm certainly not suggesting you go out and buy something just because I use it (or stop using something because I don't use it). I simply use what has worked for me over the long-term and is readily available at the local fish stores I do most all of my business with. Again, I often trade frags/cuttings for supplies, and take whatever they've got on hand as long as I know the product and have used it with success. You may be able to find something better (and/or cheaper) than what I use, but in my opinion, you really can't go wrong with these products, either. View the full article