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AfroPenguin's 40 Gallon Anemone Tank

Hi guys! I'm a pretty recent supporting member but have been lurking on these forums for the last 3 years. I thought it would be good to remake my tank journal here since it seems like the community here is a lot more local than the one on nano-reef.
This is my second saltwater tank. I started 3.5 years ago with a 5 gallon nano tank that had 2 clowns and some misc anemone that I was able to buy from the store. I kept my fish in that tank for about a year before I moved to California. Once I moved, I had the great idea to get a bigger tank with more clownfish and more anemones. That is when I got this 40 gallon tank that I bought from California Reef Co.

The 40 gallon tank has been up for the last 2 years and have gone though waves of pretty much every kind of algae possible. I fought them all and have made it to today where I have little to no algae growth and everything has stabilized.
The anemones in my tank grow to some pretty huge sizes and they don't really ever move or split. My most recent split is the anemone in the front right side with the clown fish in it.

For equipment I have 1 AI nero 5 and 2 Ai Prime 16s running this schedule:
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For filtration I have a sump with some ceramic media, one bag of chemipure elite and a Reef Octopus Classic 110 Space Saver Skimmer.

For tank maintenance I do 1 5 gallon water change per 3 months and I don't test for any parameters other than salinity. I have an ATO that I use in a 5 gallon container.

Full tank shot from the front
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Tank shot from the side

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My current battles on this tank involve all of the aptasia that is on the left side of my tank. I bought some Berghia from @JVU which looks like is working and I should have either 5 or 7 peppermint shrimp in my tank. So far it looks like both of them are putting in work to get rid of a lot of the aptasia that is in the sandbed. The peppermint shrimp haven't eaten the berghia yet which is nice.
 
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The purpose for the 15 gallon tank tank is to house the clownfish babies whenever I can actually get them out of my main tank.

In the meantime I'm using this tank as an experiment that I have always wanted to do. With this tank I will have 0 fish and will be experimenting with different types of corals in a low flow / regular light environment.
Tank setup day 1:
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Eventually I added some corals that were from the PIF forum and will see how these guys do :D I moved all the DBTC corals that I have to my main tank except the hairy mushroom.
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It was great to meet you the other day, and also to hear more about your tank here. Looking forward to seeing your progress and I am especially rooting for you against the Aiptasia. I also hope the other frags I gave you work out well in your tank, looking forward to seeing your progress :)
 
It’s always cool to see a tank with multiple nems and how different they can look bubbly vs long tentacles
Yeah! Even after having the nems for so long I have no clue what makes some of them bubble and some of them not.

Ive had them in high / low light and that made no difference but I do know that a sudden change in lighting in the tank will cause them to split. One of my lights fell into the tank and I had the tank lit with one AI prime for about 2 weeks. All of the nems started moving around and 2 of them split.

It was great to meet you the other day, and also to hear more about your tank here. Looking forward to seeing your progress and I am especially rooting for you against the Aiptasia. I also hope the other frags I gave you work out well in your tank, looking forward to seeing your progress :)

The aptasia is slowly going away! I can still see the berghia going at a few of the really small one in the rock every once in a while and I caught my peppermint shrimp ripping aptasia out of the sand bed earlier today! It'll probably take a few months but It looks like they are workin on it.
 
Im not sure what happened over the last few days, but my aptasia has suddenly been mostly cleared.

I caught a few of these guys putting in work early morning and it seems like they decided its time to clean house last night.
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The side of my tank looks almost clear of aptasia:
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Old pic for reference, you can see the brown carpet of aptasia anemones: The first post also has pictures from Jan 21where you can see the aptasia on the left side.

This pic was taken Jan 10
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I added all of the Rock flower anemones that i bought from the CFM and it looks like one of them may be spawning?


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Gonna try and take some nice pictures of all of the corals today :D
 
Tested my tank today with a new Hanna salinity checker and my tank really is at 29 PPT, gonna work on raising it up to see if that has an impact on the growth of my anemones.
 
Go gradual with the salinity increase. Rapid Changes in salinity have never been good in my experience.

I usually manually top off with salt water for my small tank until I see it back in range. And I try to not change more than 1ppt/day
 
Go gradual with the salinity increase. Rapid Changes in salinity have never been good in my experience.

I usually manually top off with salt water for my small tank until I see it back in range. And I try to not change more than 1ppt/day

 
Aptasia has been killed, and slowly increasing my salinity though water changes. Currently at 30.5 PPT after the 5 gallon water change.

Picked up some free corals from @Srt4eric and they are lookin pretty hot. Trying to move my nepthia to the other side of the rock but currently I'm letting my Kenya tree coral act as a wall to prevent my anemone that i got from @The_Lazy_Reefer from walking over to this side of the tank.

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Added some rock in the back to give my shrimp more dark hiding spots during the day. Also it looks like adding new rocks is giving space for algae to grow so all the new rocks are starting to turn green. Ill let it do its thing, it will go away eventually.

Full Tank shot as of today

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Now that the Aptasia is gone, im not sure if I need this many peppermint shrimps. I might try to sell off a few or see if anyone wants to trade somethin.
 
In my 15 gallon experiment tank, I bought some maxi mini carpet anemones and cut each one of them in half. Hopefully they live. The detritus in the tank is because I used my sump water when I initially filled the tank. I have not fed the tank since setting it up.

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In my main tank, the toadstool was getting touched by the anemones around it so I moved it to the other side.

Removed some rock and picked up a neon green candy cane. Not sure If I can actually keep it in my tank, but if an anemone starts looking at it, ill cut it up into pieces and start a DBTC with them.


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Tank shots with white light:
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My clownfish do not like the SPS corals that are in the tank. They like to bump into it and pieces are breaking off. I bought a wrasse so that I can watch a fish swim around in my tank.

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