Wait, what?
I just realised it's been over 3 months since i updated this journal! A decent amount has changed since then... and a lot of photos have been taken. 😅
This is the difference since the early trials of this tank up to now, a difference of 9 months. I remember looking at that first state and thinking 'well this went well...not'! But turns out the key is patience, just like anything else. You'd never know the tank ever looked like that.
Win some, Lose A Lot
I've tried a few different corals in this tank and after losing a few and the money to go with it, if it's not p*** easy I'm not interested. I'll stick with macroalgae. 😅 My yellow fiji leather... disintegrated. Colt Coral... disintegrated.
One good thing did come of all this though. In the search to figure out why those corals reacted the way they did, I discovered that I my alkalinity was rock bottom! At one point it measured 5.4. Considering my salt mix naturally hangs around 9-10, that's quite a drop. I started to increase my water change frequency from
never to once a week and then tapering off to once every two weeks, whilst also dosing Tropic Marin All for Reef to help. The alkalinity is now back in range, but I'm not actually sure how much impact it was having on this system because nothing appears to have changed.
I went to Chicago in October and Scotland in December and during this time the feeding of phytoplankton was a bit haphazard. By the beginning of December I had stopped dosing it altogether. Turns out it's important 🙃 I'm pretty sure it's one of reasons my yellow feather duster up and left. It initially dropped it's crown and regrew this small one, but now the whole thing vanished. I lost the big beautiful white one due to it being smothered by macroalgae. So now I'm on the lookout for decent sized healthy feathers. 👀
I battled a short lived aiptasia infestation too. Initially I would smother the ones that popped up or remove them, but then they started appearing in places I couldn't. I didn't want to use chemicals as I prefer to use natural methods where possible and I'd heard mixed results with products for killing aiptasia.
I noticed Advanced Aquarium Consultancy got in a shipment of 'true aiptasia eating peppermint shrimp', so I thought I'd give it a go. My expectation was that this shrimp would graze on the aiptasia and over time they'd slowly disappear. Within the first day of adding the peppermint, it ate 99% of my aiptasia. I was shocked! Happily shocked. I've now not seen any since the shrimp went in some months ago.
My most recent battle was with flatworms aka Red Planaria. Normally I would just let it be, but I have plans to distribute this macroalgae to other hobbyists and institutions and so I wanted to make sure it was clean.
It appeared that the au naturale method wasn't going to cut it this time. From the countless things I read and videos I watched, the best way seems to be just nuking them to high hell! The problem is they release toxins when they die so it was a bit more involved.
To nuke them, it seems you have to overdose the treatment slightly. I had to siphon out as many flatworms as I could myself to reduce the impact of the toxins, remove the fish and inverts and keep them in a bucket overnight, add the Flatworm Exit and wait an hour, add carbon to the filter and then do a large water change before adding everything back in. So far everything's survived the treatment and it's like nothing ever happened, just minus the flatworms. I will need to stay vigilant for eggs and juveniles as I've heard they aren't as affected by it.
Nudis and Newbies!
In this time my friend Hiep over in Texas also set up his FIRST saltwater aquarium, and it's beautiful! I hope he doesn't mind me posting it, but this is the idea I was going for when I set mine up. Not just random rocks here and there but an actual defined scape, and he's pulled it off so well. Go check him out on Instagram; @ultum_hiep.
(Photo Credit: Hiep Hong)
I've also been hit by the seemingly Pokémon-worthy diversity that is Nudibranch. They're such fascinating creatures and the fact that they all look so unique and crazy and eat such specific diets gives them a super hero like quality in my opinion. I enjoy coming across new ones and hopefully I'll be able to keep some at some point.
(Not my picture)
The picture below is of Babakina anadoni which has been spotted off the coast of Cornwall this summer - a first time sighting for this species in British waters. The fact that anything like that lives around us is incredible to me. I hope we discover more!
(Not my picture)