This is a journal for my somewhat-experimental Mermaid’s Rockpool Garden, hopefully something quite magical inspired by my childhood love of rock pools in Devon and Cornwall. The highlight of my holidays was lifting rocks, peering under and harassing sea creatures, and as an adult I’d like to continue that in the comfort of my own home. There’ll be lots of macroalgae, a few soft corals, some funny little inverts and small-with-big-personality fish. Lots of hypnotic movement, a few fabulous things, and a few grotesque things too probably. After lots of research into the marine side of the hobby, this is what I think is the bit that most feels natural, and makes sense with what I know about freshwater. A relatively easy, cheap way to build a great tank (hopefully lol).
By trade I’m a fashion and textile designer. I love colour, texture, material, embroidery, feathers, beading, knit, tapestry, print, trimmings. All in movement, when worn on the body. To be honest with you though, the love of fashion kinda just died during the pandemic, and I didn't really think about it at the time but I guess aquariums is my new creative obsession. Since realising this, I want to throw myself into it and really try to be creative with it, of course still respecting the creatures. I totally see a connection between fashion, textiles and aquariums psychically, and I want to use this journal like a sketchbook recording how I do it, and if I can get that vibe in the tanks. Or maybe I will make textiles inspired by the tanks idk, just wanna do lots of fun things
Maybe I can work out a way to get a bit of my fashion design vibes into the tank? Idk
So obviously I’m now completely obsessed with marine aquariums, and especially macroalgae tanks - they are truly living embroidered tapestries. The waving flower-like faces, knobbly beads of algae and coral in every colour, wafting feathers, sculptural shells... All the glamour I love about couture… in a tank!
That's why I couldn’t pass up the chance to buy this 20-year-old Fiji liverock from a local retiring mid-80s couple last Sunday I saw on ebay. It's is covered in daisy polyps, turquoise mushrooms, yellow sponges, small Kenya tree, coralline algae and tiny crustaceans. I think there are even some living clams on there. £100? Bargain! This is the base of the tank, the true filter and foundation of the ecosystem. Luckily I bought a 100cm, 40cm, 30cm second hand opti tank 2 years ago for £60 on eBay which has been living in the shed, which fit the rock perfectly. My family finally relented when they saw how pretty the rock is, they understand a good thing when they see it luckily.
eBay pics
On the down side, the liverock was in a very tall tank for the past 20 years so it was hard to maintain. It has a fair amount of red cyano, red turf algae and aiptasia (an anemone which stings other life and spreads very quickly). I showed my marine friend the pics first and he told me about the pests,but I decided to go for it anyway. It also has bubble algae and colonial hydroids, but I’m thinking those aren’t really problems in macro algae tanks. It’s quite interesting how most things you read online about marine tanks are for reef ecosystems, rather than macro algae tanks which are quite a different system which so far I’ve found pretty easy - it’s very much like a freshwater planted tank, and I don’t need too much equipment. I've been on a few different reef forums, but none I really enjoy like UKAPS, so you guys get the journal lols! Either way, gotta get rid of the cyano and aiptasia, they are universally not great. Finally there is some old pink reef putty on there that's hard to get off, I think that I will disguise the edges of it a bit later as I don't mind the colour!
So, for the first few weeks I’m treating the cyano and aiptasia. With the liverock came a big bottle of aiptasia-x and syringes, so I’ve been steadily squirting any I see daily. The first day I killed at least 20, today 3 which were mostly very small. I’ll also be buying 2 peppermint shrimp which hopefully will get any small ones I miss. I simply used a brush to dislodge the red cyano and siphoned it out, along with a lot of crud, and added a bit of macroalgae to start sucking up any other nutrients to compete with the cyano. I do this every 2 days, it is definitely getting less and less. I can’t chemically treat the cyano as that will kill the sponges, and though the sponges look like evil pus-filled boils, I adore them! For all my treatments I'm turning the rocks often to catch everything on every side, fingers crossed all these methods together work well.
I'm using a secondhand Oase thermofilter 600 filter on it with just the prefilter sponges atm, along with 2 1000lph wave makers for added flow (I added after taking the below pics). I've also currently got my big tank's Twinstar 900 on it while I work out the lighting situation. I'm thinking of trying a Chihiros 90cm, I'm not interested in any non-soft corals with a higher difficulty so I'm not going to get a big reef light.
Here is the liverock before I started to treat it. I’ll photograph it again soon in its cleaner state, it does look quite different already!
By trade I’m a fashion and textile designer. I love colour, texture, material, embroidery, feathers, beading, knit, tapestry, print, trimmings. All in movement, when worn on the body. To be honest with you though, the love of fashion kinda just died during the pandemic, and I didn't really think about it at the time but I guess aquariums is my new creative obsession. Since realising this, I want to throw myself into it and really try to be creative with it, of course still respecting the creatures. I totally see a connection between fashion, textiles and aquariums psychically, and I want to use this journal like a sketchbook recording how I do it, and if I can get that vibe in the tanks. Or maybe I will make textiles inspired by the tanks idk, just wanna do lots of fun things
Maybe I can work out a way to get a bit of my fashion design vibes into the tank? Idk
So obviously I’m now completely obsessed with marine aquariums, and especially macroalgae tanks - they are truly living embroidered tapestries. The waving flower-like faces, knobbly beads of algae and coral in every colour, wafting feathers, sculptural shells... All the glamour I love about couture… in a tank!
That's why I couldn’t pass up the chance to buy this 20-year-old Fiji liverock from a local retiring mid-80s couple last Sunday I saw on ebay. It's is covered in daisy polyps, turquoise mushrooms, yellow sponges, small Kenya tree, coralline algae and tiny crustaceans. I think there are even some living clams on there. £100? Bargain! This is the base of the tank, the true filter and foundation of the ecosystem. Luckily I bought a 100cm, 40cm, 30cm second hand opti tank 2 years ago for £60 on eBay which has been living in the shed, which fit the rock perfectly. My family finally relented when they saw how pretty the rock is, they understand a good thing when they see it luckily.
eBay pics
On the down side, the liverock was in a very tall tank for the past 20 years so it was hard to maintain. It has a fair amount of red cyano, red turf algae and aiptasia (an anemone which stings other life and spreads very quickly). I showed my marine friend the pics first and he told me about the pests,but I decided to go for it anyway. It also has bubble algae and colonial hydroids, but I’m thinking those aren’t really problems in macro algae tanks. It’s quite interesting how most things you read online about marine tanks are for reef ecosystems, rather than macro algae tanks which are quite a different system which so far I’ve found pretty easy - it’s very much like a freshwater planted tank, and I don’t need too much equipment. I've been on a few different reef forums, but none I really enjoy like UKAPS, so you guys get the journal lols! Either way, gotta get rid of the cyano and aiptasia, they are universally not great. Finally there is some old pink reef putty on there that's hard to get off, I think that I will disguise the edges of it a bit later as I don't mind the colour!
So, for the first few weeks I’m treating the cyano and aiptasia. With the liverock came a big bottle of aiptasia-x and syringes, so I’ve been steadily squirting any I see daily. The first day I killed at least 20, today 3 which were mostly very small. I’ll also be buying 2 peppermint shrimp which hopefully will get any small ones I miss. I simply used a brush to dislodge the red cyano and siphoned it out, along with a lot of crud, and added a bit of macroalgae to start sucking up any other nutrients to compete with the cyano. I do this every 2 days, it is definitely getting less and less. I can’t chemically treat the cyano as that will kill the sponges, and though the sponges look like evil pus-filled boils, I adore them! For all my treatments I'm turning the rocks often to catch everything on every side, fingers crossed all these methods together work well.
I'm using a secondhand Oase thermofilter 600 filter on it with just the prefilter sponges atm, along with 2 1000lph wave makers for added flow (I added after taking the below pics). I've also currently got my big tank's Twinstar 900 on it while I work out the lighting situation. I'm thinking of trying a Chihiros 90cm, I'm not interested in any non-soft corals with a higher difficulty so I'm not going to get a big reef light.
Here is the liverock before I started to treat it. I’ll photograph it again soon in its cleaner state, it does look quite different already!
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