Project New Reef by Achilles Tang

[Stenopus Hispidus]

Stunning tank! Too bad I didn't see it in person. You must have got your muscles all in the right places by now setting that one up. I am interested in the survivability of the blue sponge through phytoplankton feeding. Hope to be able to check with you on the progress of the sponge a couple of months later. I have ever kept that before (without feeding) and they lasted about 5 months before disintegrating slowly for another month. Due to my lack of success with this sponge, I have stopped buying it altogether. You might have more success with it or make it lasts considerably longer which I am really interested to know.

Your tank have quite some depth there. With your clams on the sand bed, do you find it a chore to reposition them when they go rolly polly every now and then or are they already attached to a rock at its base and anchored into your sandbed.

Nice anthias and tangs too.

I see you have 3 tangs (PT, YT, PB). Tang Police recommends 1 per 500 gal as in the wild they do not turn much and every pasture that they graze on is a new pasture. Hence, you need to have high volumes for their upkeep otherwise it will be considered cruelty to animals.

You are hereby guilty of breaching tang law

#1 - tank is less than 500 gal

#2 - you have too many tangs. Ideally you should have none!

A court injunction will be issued to you to surrender all your tangs to Underwater world who have a much bigger tank with grazing patches and where they can swim straight or along curve glass without seemingly having to make a 180 degree turn.

Furthermore, you scuba dive. Regret to say that it supplies the necessary mens rea to convict you for the crime of cruelty. You will be sentenced to serve 2 yrs CWO at SPCA with monitored probation to come home every night to feed the remaining fishes before reporting back to SPCA at 2359 sharp.

jus j/k:P

[Achilles Tang]

Steno, if you are declaring yourself as the SRC Tang police... you'll be making yourself very unpopular here... heh!

I can just read tomorrow's headlines: "A man naming himself after a Coral Banded Shrimp had just emerged from a LFS when he was killed mercilessly execution-styled. His murderers were seen running away, leaving behind evidence of blood-stained live rocks (the murder weapons), salt particles (later id'ed as Coral Death) and a dead tang (which they use to slash his face as he lay dying on the pavement).

They even took away his purchases from the shop which were reportedly some LuoHan fish.

Witnesses are requested to report to the police if they can provide more information. On a side note, the deceased was reputed to belong to a secret underground gestapo-styled organization called the Tang Police, originally from the US. He was known to be the first local rep and was thought to be a reasonable hobbyist until he aligned himself with this extremist group.

Members of the Singapore Reef Club declined comment when interviewed about the incident.

JOKING!!!!!

To answer you:

I am also monitoring the growth of my sponges... they are entrusting fast. Some of the blue sponges that broke off due to handling, I stuff into cracks and crevices, and they have attached themselves and are growing fast.

Yes, some of my clams are unattached to rocks... I am trying to find flat rocks for them... or even mussel shells for them to attach.

About my tangs... THEY ARE HAPPY AND FINE!!!!! I intend to overstock my tank with 1000 tangs, whatcha gonna do about it, punk?

[Stenopus Hispidus]

Hahaha...golly be, you are so creative.

I am not a tang police lah. As a matter of fact, I do find their practices ridiculous and laughable comparing nature with captive breeding is completely off level ground. Geez...500 gal per tank? That literally rules everyone out.

BTW, whats that dark piece on the left hand side of your fox? Is it a encrusting sponge of some kind?

[Achilles Tang]

Nope... that's a green porite rock with big x'mas tree worms. You can see some of the pix in the previous page in this thread.

If you want to come down and take a look this weekend... let me know!

Yeah... I agree with you totally about the lop-sided opinions of some of the RC TP...ridiculous... they should be giving up keeping aquariums if they want to carry their theology to the extreme. Same if they have pet birds or dogs.

I mean I love tangs and all, but to protect them to such extremes... geez!

I still remember one joker's statement... "I have seen tangs swim for hundreds of meters or miles without even turning".... ie. there is no tank in the world that can accomodate a tang!

Oh well... the TP has some merit points about putting in tangs in a small tank but again... their definition of a 'large' tank is somewhat 'small' already...

[Stenopus Hispidus]

Yeah, another thing that made my mouth gape was that the TP expect tangs to be fed till their belly bulge bec in nature they relentlessly graze. If that is the case, my ammonia/nitrite/nitrate level will rock & algae will bloom out of control. Its always in nature this, in nature that...someone forgot to remind them that they are in a hobby concerning miniature reef keeping. They are simply in the wrong site.

I like to come down and have a look at your tank sometime in January cos I am quite tied up in work for the year end the same reason I could not make it for the gathering as much as I liked to. Anyhow, I will let you know 1 week in advance before I come. Would that be OK? Hope its not too much of an inconvenience.

I notice some acro in your tank. How long have you had them? Fabulous! Acros are my next move at SPS but can't seem to find them around.

[Achilles Tang]

Enough about the TP already! Makes my blood boil when I remember my encounter with them in RC.

Anyway.... yeah sure... just advance notify me, you're welcome to visit anytime!

My acros are brown when I bought them... I doubt if they will colour up much soon... we shall see. I do intend to upgrade to a 250 or 400 watt MH over my acro corner soon... maybe results will show.

There is already fast growth in my acros... I need to take regular pix to monitor the progress!

[Stenopus Hispidus]

Thanks, will let you know of my visit via PM.

There is already fast growth in my acros

[yazid]

hon,

remember tt time u ask me download tt video??? got a power head in a acrylic box? ya,...tts reeftec pump

I think I have seen something similar to the Reeftec pump at Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok.

I'll probably visit Chatuchak this weekend again before I fly back to Singapore.

AT, how much does yours cost.

I want to make sure I don't pay for something that cost more than the US price.

[Achilles Tang]

OOh... I love the chatuchak market in BKK! So many fish shops there!!!

Anyway... the pricelist is at the www.reeftec.com site.

[nannochloropsis]

AT,

Where can I buy a plankton culture Kit or is it DIY? And how to culture them? Any article on this?

Hi,

I'm new here. Been reading your discussion here for the past couple of days, so I have decided to join in. I'm still a newbie but the discussion in the forum is excellent and I have picked up quite a fair bit of new knowledge.

Enough about me... share some experience on plankton culture. I've tried this before, well sometime during the World Cup period, since I was on leave most of the time and in between the games, I tried experimenting with it.

B4 culturing live plankton, you need to culture their food - micro algae. I cultivated this using coke bottles - need at least 4 to 5 bottles for constant feeding for one bottle of live plankton or rotifer. Rotifer are enormous eater, can consume these pretty quickly. I kick start the micro algae culture by using my existing aquarium water, bubble it gently and hang this by the side of my aquarium.

While it did work, the water turned green with algae after a week , I read somewhere that it was not that nutritious using existing water. Need to have a micro algae cell to jump start. Manage to get one from my lobang in US office, post a petri dish of this cell to me, and indeed there was a big difference compared to my earlier attempt using existing aquarium water.

After about 2 weeks, if not mistaken, where I have about 5 coke bottles of micro algae ready, time to cultivate rotifer. Spoke with Raymond of Aquamart on this since he ever discussed this before and he managed to get a small cup of live rotifer to kick start. Feeding is of paramount importance for live rotifer, you have to start slowly and slowly increase the quantity and frequency. I use a small magnifier about 8x maginification, to view my live stock. Small tiny specks, looks like a very tiny flea, swam vigorously and increase in volume and size rapidly in a few days. Need to have strong air bubbles to oxyginate the rotifer. It was fun to cultivate this, my sun coral open up after feeding this - never happened b4. Big difference in my corals compared to feeding synthetic plankton. And as pointed by AT, I fully agree that synthetic plankton is of little value to the corals. But then there is also a down side to this..

Maintenance was a big hassle, at least for me. For one, I have to travel frequently, so when I was away, no one feed the rotifer (my wife would not dare to touch this ), so my rotifer culture died when I was in KL for a few days. Could not find another set of live rotifer to jump start. Raymond too busy doing his other business. So, totally abandon this project, sadly.

Here's one place where you can find more info:

http://www.florida-aqua-farms.com

My US lobang got the micro algae cell from this place. BTW, nannochloropsis, is one good micro algae species to cultivate!

Florida Aqua Farms sold the culture kit as well but pretty expensive to bring this here. Good explanation on how to cultivate the culture.

Well, if I need to travel to US, will definitely try this again. But, recently, Raymond (different from Aquamart) from Seletar farm sold live plankton. While he claimed that it was live plankton, I felt that it was more of a baby artemia rather than rotifer. Never seen such large plankton before. Anyway, you may want to check this out since he sold this every Saturday and Sunday.

Sorry for the long msg. Got carried away.

[Achilles Tang]

Thanks for sharing your experiences with us...

And WELCOME TO THE SINGAPORE REEF CLUB!!!!

[Chris]

Nanno, thanks for the info but it sounds like a little difficult to culture rotifers. Any good substitutes to remommend?

[nannochloropsis]

Hi Chris,

Unfortunately, there is no better subsitute than live rotifer. I've tried those Sera slow release tablets, Marine Snow (but must refrigerate after opening) and also Aqualine Plancto but so far I think it is so so. And for the price you are paying, not a good return on investment (can't help using this term cos, if you are in IT line, you see this ROI stuff in almost every single literature). I'm using Plancto for the time being given that I bought these very cheap in HK, compared to Aquamart pricing. It's better than no food for the corals.

Live baby artemia (as from Raymond in Seletar) is pretty good though, so long that it is really small for the corals.

My two-cents.

[nannochloropsis]

Thanks for sharing your experiences with us...

And WELCOME TO THE SINGAPORE REEF CLUB!!!!

Hi AT,

Thanks for welcoming me. Your setup is fantastic, wish I have the space and $$$ to have your setup.

The pictures you posted are very sharp. I have been trying to take pictures of my tank using my Canon Ixus (about 2mega pixels) but can never be that sharp even with tripod. Is it something else I need to do or my camera not good enough?

Sorry, the topic might be off.

[Achilles Tang]

You may need to sharpen your pix using a graphic program, especially when you resize them.

Raising rotifers is very easy.... with live phtyoplankton. You can feed them with yeast based liquids like Roti-rich... from FAF too.

[nannochloropsis]

You may need to sharpen your pix using a graphic program, especially when you resize them.

Raising rotifers is very easy.... with live phtyoplankton. You can feed them with yeast based liquids like Roti-rich... from FAF too.

Thanks. I suppose you are using Photoshop, right?

Agree - It is easy to raise rotifer provided you feed them daily - sometimes twice daily. Read about Roti-rich but as the rotifer grows, you need combination of both Roti-rich and microalgae for better nutrition.

Heard that you can even get the rotifer eggs from FAF. BTW, are you getting these stuff cos I am keen to start culturing them again.

Thanks

[Achilles Tang]

PS is one of the programs I can use.

I dun use roti-rich actually... I use live phyto to feed my rotifers.

You can get some from me to start your own culture.

AT

[nannochloropsis]

PS is one of the programs I can use.

I dun use roti-rich actually... I use live phyto to feed my rotifers.

You can get some from me to start your own culture.

AT

Great! thanks. How to get in touch with you? Do you culture you phyto or get it from some LFS? Heard that you can buy this. Getting lazy to culture phyto!

[Achilles Tang]

Hi everyone... I just realised I did not attach a photograph showing my entire tank yet, just the left, right and centre views.

I didn't have time then to do a proper tripod assisted shot... so.... ahem... here it is..

[Tanzy]

Looking good! I'll prefer to see the real thing.

[Achilles Tang]

My tank is finally going thru a hair algae and mild cyano bloom now, so dun look too closely!

[onghm]

Me and my wife are drooling over the pic of your tank.

Would be good to have a bigger one to save as wallpaper, cause that's as close as I will ever get

Very inspiring !!!

Ever thought of conducting a course on aqua-scaping ?

Very nice AT, very nice.....

[Achilles Tang]

Thanks Onghm for the compliments...

I would say that my reef tank will continue to evolve... I haven't reached the stage where I can say I am happy with my landscaping yet... and besides... I still have space for a lot more corals... eventually, I want my tank to be SPS and acro-dominated.

I am looking into providing very clean water and upgrading to stronger lighting in preparation for that day.

It's hard to do a course of aqua-scaping, you just have to get your inspiration looking at nature.

Pick up dive magazines or just look at landscapes.. mountains, valleys, ridges, peaks, bommies, pinnacles, plains...

I left the rockwall aqua-scaping scene long ago... which is so common these days... although it would mean giving up space to free up more space (haha), it gives a more open feel and a hint that beyond my reef structure... there is the great wide ocean.

It will be a struggle because we all want to put as much as corals as possibly can into our tank... plus the fact that corals will grow, expand and clash with one another... it will be a constant challenge to balance everything!

[virus530]

Hi AT,

So how much did you invest in that tank?

[Tanzy]

virus530,

That's an unknown. He stopped counting.