Roidan's Reef (I)

[roidan]

[roidan]

[roidan]

[Achilles Tang]

Guys, before you go out and buy a whole big school of anthias, pls read up about them first.

The purple queens especially are extremely hard to care for and they require lots of frequent feedings of zooplankton-like food like frozen cyclop-eze THROUGHOUT the day.

Caring for anthias means you have to make change to your water quality maintenance.

Be prepared to invest in more frequent water changes and upgrading to a bigger more effective skimmer.

You don't want to lose the whole school and certanly not the whole tank. Don't grow cyano and hair algae!

[roidan]

yeah man..talk about feeding..i hope i did not set off an anthias schooling craze unintentionally by the photos....

i feed alot..like AT said...many many many times a day...i can finish almost a WHOLE tray of hikari frozen food /MBF planktonic food/ lots of cyclopeeze within a day if i want.....which is why i went to get the H&S skimmer to work with my AquaC......

and algae is growing madly in my refugium...the main tank is very clean coz of the tangs in there and my scraping of the tank walls...

but....if you are not free to feed the anthias almost every hour or every few hours....then you may have problems keeping them in the long run.....

even when i am outside...i call my maid regularly from outside to ask her to feed the anthias for me....

i guess this is the important part as AT mentioned

and like AT said...a few months for the anthias is not success....maybe pass more than a year timeframe is a good gauge if it is a success

[roidan]

in fact, i think i may be setting up a peristaltic pump system to deliver prepared liquid food from a container with all the hikari stuff, cyclopeeze and watever small food and set the pump to supply food to tank at a few ml per hour..

this will ensure consistent flow of food to the anthias and not in bursts like when me or my maid feed them....

this...will be one of my new projects to the tank

[Achilles Tang]

A WHOLE TRAY A DAY???? WOW!!! You gotta be kidding!!

You would be using up a litre of Rowaphos a month just to keep your phosphates low enough so your corals won't get affected!

AT

[DeepBlue]

bro...when you do that, teach me how to do it as well

[Achilles Tang]

Interesting... but how do you prevent your food from spoiling?

[Achilles Tang]

I've only 4 red anthias from CF. No schooling observed lol.

After seeing all those photos from rodian, I've to go anthias hunting already. Especially those sunburst.

Sorry to disappoint you but you'll be wasting your money if you want to see them school because Sunburst anthias don't.

They are hiders. Reefers are lucky if they see them in the open for more than half an hour a time!

[DeepBlue]

Sorry to disappoint you but you'll be wasting your money if you want to see them school because Sunburst anthias don't.

They are hiders. Reefers are lucky if they see them in the open for more than half an hour a time!

Agree! Sunburst are 'cave' creatures....they like to hang there. Mine comes out in the open to swim for a while every now and then, but they still prefer the dark corners. Just like a brazilian gramma, doesnt appear in the open too often....and too long...it is the natural instinct...they will be food if they hang outside too long

[roidan]

A WHOLE TRAY A DAY???? WOW!!! You gotta be kidding!!

You would be using up a litre of Rowaphos a month just to keep your phosphates low enough so your corals won't get affected! 

AT

yeah..i figured...really...

u see ah..the cubes i push out of those trays of hikari mysis shrimps, daphnia, brine shrimps... with the bigger size cubes of MBF food and cyclopeeze....

it is about a whole tray of the hikari frozen food pack or even more liao...and i buy those hikari frozen packs in their styrofoam boxes....not single trays...because they get used up fast...hehe

and my family is already complaining the fish food is taking more space in the freezer than our human food liao...

sigh..must get a dedicated bar freezer for fish food soon..haha

er....i used 6 packets of contraphos since the start of my 6ft tank....

er....6 packets quite alot right? hehehe

haven't change yet...but will go get another 6 packets of contraphos soon ....or biophos..hehe

but yes...i have hair algae growing in my sump...but due to the way my sump flows..the hair algae did not really migrate to the main tank system in clumps....i use the eheim 1262 return pumps with the sponge also lor...so everytime i go pull the hair algae out before they reach the return pump...

last time i keep pulling them out...but then its a lot of hard work..and then it dawned on me that since they are in the sump and not really a nuisance there....i dun mind keeping them there lor....hehe

my phosphate levels....not totally 0 lor..hehe

pic from the last time i took the pic...

[roidan]

Interesting... but how do you prevent your food from spoiling?

not a few days supply lor...

just for the daylight cycle lor...maybe start off with a small amount first...and then adjust accordingly

means i prepare food for the 10-12 hours of light in the tank .......

every day prepare lor...at least wun spoil like u say lor....

unless within 10 hours..really deteriorate very bad then maybe i put the peristaltic pump on a timer and time accordingly and feed within a shorter time with less food lor...hehe

lots of factors involved here....so can slowly think about it..hehe

[roidan]

bro...when you do that, teach me how to do it as well

yeah..but peristaltic pumps not cheap....unless bros here got lobang..let me know..

those adjustable rate peristaltic pumps costs about 300plus to 400plus i think....or even more

[roidan]

You don't want to lose the whole school and certanly not the whole tank.  Don't grow cyano and hair algae!

Yeah....

Now for the ugly part, I admit, I confess, I am guilty....of growing hair algae in the sump with my other macroalgaes...

i used to prune them painstakingly and throw them away coz i like a neat looking refugium with nice macroalgae....but i realise these hair algae really grow damn fast and probably good nutrient absorbers as well....provided they dun take over the main tank....hehehe

so....i am happy to say that i am one of the few reefers that consider hair algae not so pesky liao...hehe

[roidan]

this is the kind of peristaltic pump that i intend to use to feed my anthias for a more regular basis rather than throwing cubes of food into the water at intervals lor..hehe

[terryansimon]

peristaltic pumps? I swear I thought they were only for hospital use.

[roidan]

or this kind

[roidan]

peristaltic pumps? I swear I thought they were only for hospital use.

yeah lor..which is why they are expensive you see....

they draw medication from a container and adminster to the patient in fixed dosage you see...very reliable generally..

what i do is put small food like cyclopeeze in a container of water and use it to feed into the tank at a dosage i want lor..hehehe

in aquarium...we call it generally as dosing pumps

but they are actually peristaltic pumps

[terryansimon]

they work on the same concept as peristalsis in the human body?

[roidan]

they work on the same concept as peristalsis in the human body?

not too sure leh...

i only know their name and their function and how they work...

they work by using rollers to press along the tubing and thus do not have direct contact with the delivered fluid...thus no contamination which is important in health care use .....

and they use generally 4 to 5 w for the basic models...but can deliver up to 10ft head pressure because of the roller-concept lor..hehe

[terryansimon]

same as the human body. peristaltic movement of the gut muscles when you swallow your food.

if only I had thought of it and came up with the idea. I'd be rich.

[roidan]

same as the human body. peristaltic movement of the gut muscles when you swallow your food.

oh yeah..just like you can be upside down like a bat with your head on the floor and legs up and yet your food can slowly move along your digestive system coz of the contractions along the way...

hehe

[Achilles Tang]

Roidan. ALERT!! ALERT!!!

If you have hair algae ANYWHERE in your system... you WILL get hair algae in your main tank! It's only a matter of time before the spores get there and TRUST ME... they will take the opportunity to overtake your tank!

When my sandbed was maturing... and I was still using the H&S skimmer, there was hair algae on the macroalgae that I bought for my refugium then.

IT SPREAD to my main tank and I was battling it for MONTHS but not before I lost a few gorgonians and hard corals to them.

It was checked when I upgraded to my big beckett skimmer and took drastic steps to combat it.

I bought every thing that was supposed to eat hair algae but it was useless because it didn't work at all or worked too slowly to see even any encouraging result!

Firstly, I disconnected my refugium for months and let it die.

I had to do a lot of water changes, bought a lot of phosphate removers, had three days of blackout. Took out every piece of rock that had hair alge on it to dry it. Threw away a few corals that had hair algae on them.

If I could launch a tactical nuke on my tank... I would.

Now I'm paranoid. Anything that resembles hair algae and I break out in shivers.

It's a far worst enemy than bryopsis, cyano, diamtoms or dinoflagalettes.

You can't trim them or harvest them... they are too fine and silky and every strand that floats will entangle corals and inverts... it was a real nightmare.

[terryansimon]

uh-oh.