Acropolis

[Harlequinmania]

Sorry to hear about your losses but Looking forward to your new update!

Sent from Singapore Reef Club mobile app

[JiaEn]

Acropolis 2.0

Having tried different ideas with the old Acropolis, I'm taking the chance to make some changes to the setup. 

 

Diversity

Diversity in the aquarium ecosystem has many benefits: it provide food at different levels. It also provide some innate robustness against pathogenic and nuisance organisms.

Therefore I would focus on the diversity of bacterial and algal populations first. And hopefully, this will lead to more substantial benthic and planktonic microfauna. 

 

Simplification 

This time, I will endeavor to run the aquarium with as little equipment as possible. For every piece of equipment used, often there are draw backs as well. I elect to stop using the fleece roller to allow better resident time of coral food. I also decided to stop using the UV to try and improve planktonic flora. Will these help in establish a balanced aquarium? Only time will tell. 

 

Optimization 

When an aquarium is running, it is difficult to make big changes. One aspect is the flow. 

The diagram above is my old set up. The return (orange) and wave maker (green) provided reasonable flow. However, there is always a layer of surface scum trapped on the right side of the aquarium. This necessitate installing an additional wavemaker (blue) to disrupt and disperse the biofilm. The additional wavemaker obstruct the view from the side. Taking away the peninsula kind of charm. 

With the new setup. A small tweak solve the problem.

The outlet of the return pump is turned downwards. This results in a "reverse" gyre, the surface layer is pushed into the overflow, results in perfect surface skimming. 

 

[Zixuan]

Lets go Acropolis 2.0! Looking forward 

[Ian Fun]

jiayou!! cant wait!

[JiaEn]

To Fill the Void

Starting an aquarium from scratch is a very interesting problem. Namely: how do we fill up an almost sterile aquarium, while avoiding nuisance organisms from taking hold. Fishes may perish if the nitrogen cycle is not established; corals may suffer when there is insufficent nutrients in the system. However, if there is a lack of desirable organism occupying the free real estate, then it's very likely that nuisance species will take over. 

So what shall I fill my aquarium with, for a start? I elect to do it in a very unconventional way. Let me explain

 

Friend or Foe

Diatoms.

In my opinion, diatoms are the single most underrated organisms in our reef aquarium. Ugly as it may be, diatoms serve the reef aquarium in many ways. It fixes nitrate and phosphate from the water column; it provides food, directly to the corals, and support a pod population. Most importantly, it takes up precious real estate, and denies them to likes of cyano and dino.

I kick start my aquarium cycle by adding live diatom.

 

Bacteria.

No, I'm not talking about nitrifying bacteria, I'm referring to the variety of hetero- and autotrophic bacteria: photosynthetic bacteria (PSB), bacillius, acidophilus and other families of bacteria. By having a diverse and thriving non-pathogenic bacteria population, I hope it will be more difficult for the pathogenic bacteria to take hold. 

I added freeze-dried mix of different bacteria as part of my start up cycle. 

 

Corals 

Some corals are added in after a few days (first residents are the left over torch since the previous build) 

Diatoms are food, bacterioplanktons are food. all that's left to do is to feed all these things. I started to feed freeze dried plankton once the corals are in. I also added some ammonium chloride daily to feed the diatoms. 

 

Not many people starts a cycle by using diatoms. I shall report on how this experimental technique turns out. 

 

 

Meanwhile, a bacteria bloomed (which is harmless and in fact beneficial now) photo of the aquarium and its first few residents. 

 

[JiaEn]

Diatom Cycled

It's been 2 weeks since diatoms and bacteria blend is added into the aquarium. They rapidly colonise all surfaces, as well as then entire water column. It's bloomy and brown, but I know the brown stuff are good. Why? Because my newly added tronchus polishes them right off, and does not die of toxin exposure.  While I don't expect trochus to keep my aquarium spotless, this gives me a good indication that the bethnic Flora are of the harmless type. 

I used my old bio media. Whatever organisms in them, and in the pipes  probably died during the process of restart. When I tested the water, it registered 0.25ppm of phosphates. Well, just nice to feed my diatoms. 

Fast forward, corals in, more corals in. Throughout the process, it's evident that bacteria, diatom and other microalgae are having the fierces war over the exposed surface. Walls turn brown, then patches white, then green, then brown again. The water column still blooms with bacteria. What a nice plankton soup for NPS! In goes some dendrophyllia, and they loved it. 

 

 

To maintain the energy of the set up (without input, everything eventually dies, right?) I started my routine of coral food feeding. While continue to dose ammonium into the aquarium. 

 

Detractors

One of the delivery of coral came with three mistakenly packed blue eye anthias. They goes in to the reef. Since I have some anthias, why not get a few more? In goes another 6 evansi anthias. 

Now anthias normally would not be my first choice for first fishes. They are carnivorous, so they won't help a bit with controlling algae. They require more frequent feeding, especially since they can't just forage the algae. They would be generally more suitable for a more matured setup. However, I know my system can, at this stage, handle these bioload with ease, so I go ahead with it. They are fed with crushed fauna marine pellets, which they devour greedily. 

 

Evolving Landscape 

I have tested the phosphate again, it has dropped to undetectable using salifert kit. Some tiny tufts of hair algae startd to sprout from the bottom. I have introduced a white tail tang to graze. The coral polyps extends well so far. The outcome lf this cycle looks promising. 

 

 

The plan is to continue to load up on corals. Starting from lower positions of lps, monti and nps. Then move my way up to the top of the aquascape. This is because I don't want corals getting in the way when gluing things down near the bottom. 

 

[Harlequinmania]

On 7/14/2023 at 10:05 PM, JiaEn said:

Diatom Cycled

It's been 2 weeks since diatoms and bacteria blend is added into the aquarium. They rapidly colonise all surfaces, as well as then entire water column. It's bloomy and brown, but I know the brown stuff are good. Why? Because my newly added tronchus polishes them right off, and does not die of toxin exposure.  While I don't expect trochus to keep my aquarium spotless, this gives me a good indication that the bethnic Flora are of the harmless type. 

I used my old bio media. Whatever organisms in them, and in the pipes  probably died during the process of restart. When I tested the water, it registered 0.25ppm of phosphates. Well, just nice to feed my diatoms. 

Fast forward, corals in, more corals in. Throughout the process, it's evident that bacteria, diatom and other microalgae are having the fierces war over the exposed surface. Walls turn brown, then patches white, then green, then brown again. The water column still blooms with bacteria. What a nice plankton soup for NPS! In goes some dendrophyllia, and they loved it. 

 

 

To maintain the energy of the set up (without input, everything eventually dies, right?) I started my routine of coral food feeding. While continue to dose ammonium into the aquarium. 

 

Detractors

One of the delivery of coral came with three mistakenly packed blue eye anthias. They goes in to the reef. Since I have some anthias, why not get a few more? In goes another 6 evansi anthias. 

Now anthias normally would not be my first choice for first fishes. They are carnivorous, so they won't help a bit with controlling algae. They require more frequent feeding, especially since they can't just forage the algae. They would be generally more suitable for a more matured setup. However, I know my system can, at this stage, handle these bioload with ease, so I go ahead with it. They are fed with crushed fauna marine pellets, which they devour greedily. 

 

Evolving Landscape 

I have tested the phosphate again, it has dropped to undetectable using salifert kit. Some tiny tufts of hair algae startd to sprout from the bottom. I have introduced a white tail tang to graze. The coral polyps extends well so far. The outcome lf this cycle looks promising. 

 

 

The plan is to continue to load up on corals. Starting from lower positions of lps, monti and nps. Then move my way up to the top of the aquascape. This is because I don't want corals getting in the way when gluing things down near the bottom. 

 

what does dosing of ammonium do ?

[JiaEn]

10 hours ago, he said:

what does dosing of ammonium do ?

It provide a source of nitrogen to corals, algae and bacteria. It's very useful when the system consumes more nitrogen than whatever fish and coral food bring in. 

[Harlequinmania]

On 7/24/2023 at 10:08 PM, JiaEn said:

It provide a source of nitrogen to corals, algae and bacteria. It's very useful when the system consumes more nitrogen than whatever fish and coral food bring in. 

so it serve as food sources for corals as well ?

[JiaEn]

On 7/26/2023 at 12:37 PM, he said:

so it serve as food sources for corals as well ?

Yes definitely. 

Sorry for the late reply. 

[JiaEn]

The Unseen Warfare

It's easy to notice when a torch coral send out stinging tentacles to attack their neighbors. It's much harder to see how some other corals fight each other. 

As I brought back some of my old corals before reset, one such silent fighter showed itself. When the aquarium just  restarted, I have a black sun coral which opens happily every night. 

However, when I transferred my corals back, the black sun coral stopped opening, at all times. It was very puzzling. Nothing changes in terms of food, flow, light and water chemistry. Eventually, I realised the problem is with gorgonians upstream from it, releasing allelopathic chemicals. I remove the gorgonian, within 10 minutes, the black sun coral opened fully again. 

 

An Illusion of Control 

The desire of wanting to control every aspect of the system leads to many opportunities to make mistakes. I have made a big blunder during this experimental diatom cycling process. In the previous post, I concluded the ecosystem is somewhat established. However, I forgot that diatoms needs silicate supplement to thrive. Without dosing silicates, the diatom population stalled. Guess what fills the void? Dino. To be more specific, prorocentrum. Over night the surfaces are covered with stringy mat, entangling everything. 

Lesson learnt, small missteps lead to huge problems. 

Out comes remediation kit: blowing dino off corals, use fleece to trap and remove as much as possible, continue to feed the tank to avail some nutrients to corals, adding silicate to bring back the diatom, turn on the UV to knock down the free floating dino.

In one week, the dino bloom stopped as fast as it started.

For now, back on track, until the next accident.