Good News: I got all of my buddies left over coral!

Red Acans

Just a couple pictures showing the size of the mangroves since the last post where we looked at growth rates from December 3rd 2009 to February 17th 2010. These are the most recent pictures taken on 3/23/2010.

In the time since the last post, the grape culpera strand has grown more than 5x its original size. If any of you have ordered from reefcleaners.org, they offer a strand of grape culpera for $.01 to add on to any order – that is the size my piece started as (probably 2-3 inches long with just a straight stalk and no “leaves” forming). The chaeto has just about doubled in size as well.

without further delay…click images to expand

Mangroves in refugium

mangroves in refugium

mangroves chaeto and grape culpera in refugium

As you can see, the mangroves have grown up to the bottom of my stand, and it is now time to trim them. I am under the impression that to trim a mangrove, you must cut it right above the first set of leaves on the stalk. I will test this on a few of my taller ones and see if the plant is able to recover and as always, I will post the results here.

Biological filtration uses natural processes to reduce unwanted chemicals such as nitrate and phosphates. Certain types of macro algae’s, such as mangroves, chaeto, culpera, etc use these nutrients as food to grow. As the algae’s grow, they take up the nutrients and leave our water quality good as new. Of course the effectiveness of your bio filter relies on the size compared to the total water volume of your aquarium. From my own research, a refugium 1/10th the size of your total water volume is sufficient, but results vary and there are many methods to chose from when making your bio filter.

On my aquarium, I built a refugium/sump combination out of an old 15 gallon aquarium. I sectioned the tank off with glass baffles and some aquarium safe silicone from home depot. Here are some pictures of my setup and design.

Refugium sump design

Refugium sump build top view

The refugium portion (the larger part of the sump) came about to be just about 5 gallons. When installed, it will hold macro algae and a deep sand bed. The smaller side will house my protein skimmer and the overflow from the tank. It will flow through the bubble trap (3 glass panes close together) and into the center section, which holds the pump for my return to the main aquarium as well as a pump for my phosban reactor.

here are a few more pictures of what the sump looks like after I installed it in my stand. Click the images to expand them.

refugium sump with a small sandbed

Refugium sump with Chaeto

refugium sump with mangroves and equipment

Since installation, I have definitely seen a drop in nitrate and phosphate in my reef aquarium. Currently in the refugium are about 20 mangroves, a nice size ball of chaeto, and a small strand of some grape culpera. All of the algae are doing well and seem to be growing very nicely. I have also placed my yellow watchman goby inside the fuge because he was looking a little sick, as well as a few crabs that were messing with snails and coral.

I will try to post some diagrams of the actual build into the stand and show how the flow through the refugium/sump works. Also, if you are planning to take on a build like this yourself, please make sure that the silicone/glue you use is reef safe. Look for things that say 100% silicone and FDA approved. If your silicone says anything about mold inhibitors, stay away, it is not reef safe, even if it says 100% silicone. If you are still unsure, look at the types of silicone your local hardware store sells and look them up online to see if they are safe. Also, Prepare to get a little messy if it is your first time working with silicone.

Common brands of reef safe silicone are:

• Silicone that you find at your local fish store
• DAP 100% silicone
• GE silicone 1 – window and door ONLY. There are many debates of whether or not this aquarium silicone is indeed reef safe, but this is the kind that I have used, and it doesnt seem to be causing any problems.

Finally, if you are going to attempt building your refugium sump out of glass, please be careful. You don’t want this to happen to you.

Stats:

• 55-65 LBS of live rock – mix of Figi and Haitian rock
• 10-15 LBS of Base rock
• 40 LBS of live sand
• Current USA SunPod Metal Halide Fixture, 250 Watt HQI, 20 inch with 20k ushio bulb
• Two little fishes Phosban reactor with Maxi-jet 400 – I use ROWAphos and Phosban phospate sponge
• AquaC Remora protein skimmer with Maxi-jet 900
• 15 gallon sump/refugium combo homemade with 6 gallon section fuge, 40LBS of live sand, chaeto, mangroves, Rio 1700 return, and a 33 watt floodlight 4-5000 k rating.
• 2 x Koralia 2 powerheads
• Aquacontroller JR with DC8, temp and pH probe. Koralia 2 powerheads are oscilated by the wavemaker function on the controller for random flows in the aquarium.
• 150 watt Heater

Livestock

• 2 True percula clownfish mated pair
• 1 Midas Blenny
• 1 Lawnmower Blenny
• 1 Yellow Watchman Goby
• 1 Purple Firefish
• 1 Purple Reef Lobster
• 2 Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
• 1 Tiger Pistol Shrimp paired with YWG
• 1 Coral Banded Shrimp
• 1 Green Bubble Tip Anemone

Corals

• Red Montipora Cap
• Green Frogspawn
• Yellow Finger Gorgonian
• Various colored Zoanthids – Greens, pinks, yellows, oranges, etc
• Purple mushroom
• Green Star polyps
• Ricordia Anemones – Green and purple
• Green Toadstool Leather

Lawnmower Blenny

More pictures can be found here. I will be updating this section with new pictures tomorrow. I have a lot of great stuff to show

My last update was also to show that I had finally upgraded from a bio-ball sump, to a refugium. Unfortunately, due to reasons I have not been able to pin point, the refugium has not slowed the spread of algae. When I first installed the add on tank, I filled it with 10 lbs of live sand, as well as 2 large hand fulls of culpera and another type of macro algae (the name escapes me). It only took about 3 days for the green hair algae to grow onto my refugium pump and then spread into the refugium, which suffocated and killed the other macro algae I placed into the refugium. So far, it has been a failure.

Without further ado, here are the newest pictures.

As you can see, the green hair algae in my aquarium is still a major problem. My next water change I plan to take a tooth brush to all the rock and then sypon all the lose algae out.

enjoy!

It came with the pump and tubing and all I needed to get was a light. So, I had a $25 gift cert for pet supermarket and went to check and see if they might have what I was looking for. They didnt have single lights for sale, so I bought a small 1 gallon tank kit that came with a light, tank, and cheap pump. This actually worked out perfect because I needed a QT (quarantine) tank for sick/new/injured/mis-behaving fish or inverts.

The pictures I have are kind of hard to see because there is not much room behind the tank, but you can get the gist of it. I’m really happy with how it all turned out.

Also, I have been avoiding posting pictures of the tank recently because it looks really bad and overun by algae. However, I have been taking the necessary steps to try to track down the problem. In the past month I have bought numerous animals to test and see if they will impact the levels of green hair algae to no avail. The first animal I bought was a lawnmower blenny. This fish has done a great job of eating algae off my glass, but has not touched the rocks as of yet. This is a problem because I already had snails doing a pretty good job keeping the glass clean, so he was pretty much a waste so far. He does look cool though, I just wish he would perform.

Recently, I bought 3 large mexican turbo snails. Since they were acclimated, only 1 has moved around on the glass and has not touched the rocks. I strategicly placed one on a rock that wasnt near the glass to see if he might mow down some algae on the way to the glass, but instead he has only moved about 2 inches on the rock signifying to me that he may be confused or doesnt think he can make it anywhere else. He has been on the rock for a week already. The 3rd one I bought moved around on the glass a lot, but I havnt seen him in 3 days. All 3 of them are quite large, I dont know how I cant find it.

My most recent purchse is a long spined urchin (just got him 2 days ago). He hasnt moved much since I put him in, but thats to be expected with a newly acclimated animal. Im excited to see if he will make an impact on the algae.

I also bought a simple HOB refugium on ebay that should be here by friday. Cant wait to get rid of my bio balls and get this bad boy installed.

without further delay, here are some new pictures of my “swamp”