Chromis’s 90g Acropora tank

[Blaise006]

So after not skimmer for a month or more, I ran the skimmer for about an hour and got a few mms of green water. I dumped that out and ran it another 8 hours overnight, and got some very green water. Wondering if my tank has its own phytoplankton culture that took off without skimming, I checked it out under the microscope. Could this be some kind of phytoplankton - if it’s regular surface algae not sure how I could skim so much of it overnight? I diluted it about 100x in tank water and set it up in jars to observe to see if it ends up growing on the surface or blooms in the water like phyto.

This is super interesting! You improvement in PH could theoretically be linked to live phytoplankton. Phyto would consume CO2 and release oxygen. I wonder if this could mean that over skimming might be a net negative. I would really like to dig deeper into that!

Great looking tank by the way!

You have me thinking that maybe running my skimmer less and increasing my phyto dosing might be worth trying. I consistently have issues with ph dropping to 7.9 now that I have removed the co2 scrubber.

My only issue is dealing with the extra salt water when the skimmer is off and fluctuating salinity.

 

[Chromis]

Last weekend I cleaned up some corals that were growing into each other. This Indo acro from Neptune’s had impinged on the my homewrecker’s pillar and started encrusting there. The whole idea of my new aquascape was each acro had its own pillar so the bases couldn’t sting each other but an acro can jump pillars by encrusting from where a branch touches it. I couldn’t easily clip a few branches away to make space to scrape the encrustment off the pillar so I clipped the whole clump, I’ll put some frags in my garage tank and some up for sale under the name Hot Flash. It’s really turned into a cool acro, maybe some kind of microclados but not quite a regular shortcake since the tips are bluish. The corallites and polyps are hot pink and the base is iridescent green.

Also cleared space for my RR Dragonite to get light and flow again, and separated some chalices that were starting to get crowded, and made a lot of frags in the meantime.

 

[MolaMola]

Last weekend I cleaned up some corals that were growing into each other. This Indo acro from Neptune’s had impinged on the my homewrecker’s pillar and started encrusting there. The whole idea of my new aquascape was each acro had its own pillar so the bases couldn’t sting each other but an acro can jump pillars by encrusting from where a branch touches it. I couldn’t easily clip a few branches away to make space to scrape the encrustment off the pillar so I clipped the whole clump, I’ll put some frags in my garage tank and some up for sale under the name Hot Flash. It’s really turned into a cool acro, maybe some kind of microclados but not quite a regular shortcake since the tips are bluish. The corallites and polyps are hot pink and the base is iridescent green.
View attachment 30069
Also cleared space for my RR Dragonite to get light and flow again, and separated some chalices that were starting to get crowded, and made a lot of frags in the meantime.

BEAUTIFUL!!! For those of you like me who need to catch up on @Chromis 's tank and growth, early photos I could see started on p.8. I was checking out the part about acros being mounted on their own pillars. You do interesting stuff @Chromis !

 

[NanoCrazed]

Last weekend I cleaned up some corals that were growing into each other. This Indo acro from Neptune’s had impinged on the my homewrecker’s pillar and started encrusting there. The whole idea of my new aquascape was each acro had its own pillar so the bases couldn’t sting each other but an acro can jump pillars by encrusting from where a branch touches it. I couldn’t easily clip a few branches away to make space to scrape the encrustment off the pillar so I clipped the whole clump, I’ll put some frags in my garage tank and some up for sale under the name Hot Flash. It’s really turned into a cool acro, maybe some kind of microclados but not quite a regular shortcake since the tips are bluish. The corallites and polyps are hot pink and the base is iridescent green.
View attachment 30069
Also cleared space for my RR Dragonite to get light and flow again, and separated some chalices that were starting to get crowded, and made a lot of frags in the meantime.

Oddly, i have a strawberry shortcake colony that i am sitting for someone... after almost 6+ months, it started growing thin blue tips as well...

 

[Alexx]

Hi @Chromis I got a few questions when you have some time. Maybe you can somehow add these things at the front post it can be easy to get an overview of what you have now over there. I think it would be cool if all the tank journals will have an update with these things on the first post.
1. What are your water specs?
2. What do you feed and how often?
3. What do you dose and how much?
4. What salt do you use?
5. How much water and how often do you change your water?
6. Do you run any GFO and Carbon?
Thank you for your time!

 

[Chromis]

Hi @Chromis I got a few questions when you have some time. Maybe you can somehow add these things at the front post it can be easy to get an overview of what you have now over there. I think it would be cool if all the tank journals will have an update with these things on the first post.
1. What are your water specs?
2. What do you feed and how often?
3. What do you dose and how much?
4. What salt do you use?
5. How much water and how often do you change your water?
6. Do you run any GFO and Carbon?
Thank you for your time!

I think I added everything to the first page now

 

[rygh]

... The whole idea of my new aquascape was each acro had its own pillar ...

Yeah, I tried that pillar approach also. Works great for a while, but then corals get big...
Still, a good problem to have.

 

[Chromis]

Purple and gold micro hammer.

 

[Chromis]

I think this RR Carolina Reaper is an aculeus. Sooo different from RR’s site image but still an interesting specimen (even in normal tank lighting).

Three stumps where I snipped a confetti acro to let more light on the RR Dragonite. I’m still trying to guess what species it is but probably echinata-like? Bubblebath unicorn still encrusting, it’s going to get snipped soon to stimulate some branching.

 

[musclebenz]

Awesome tank.

 

[Zumareef]

Awesome tank, would live to see a FTS!

 

[Chromis]

FTS. I finally added a $5 USB fan from CVS. So far seems it’s enough to keep the temp range within 1F instead of 2F where they’ve been most of this summer. In the spring I bought a couple PC fans and a Neptune 24v DC cable but haven’t had time to wire everything together, so finally gave in and hooked up this fan instead.

 

[Zumareef]

looking good!

 

[Chromis]

I thought my BC Bubblebath was finally starting to grow branches but seems it is just encrusting over some vermatids.

 

[Coral reefer]

Hate that!

 

[Chromis]

Stressful day for fish, I ordered a divers den fathead anthia which Fedex delivered late at around 7pm tonight. I tried putting it into my display but my largest chromis, who funny enough I had named Sharky because he looks like a shark when he swims, bit a hole in his side (or hopefully just removed a scale). I was unable to trap these last 4 chromis so decided to see if it would work out to keep them all together (it was stupid to go against my instincts about the situation but it’s a lot of work to tear down rockwork to extract the chromis). At that point the anthia was swimming near the top corner of the tank (the official fish surrender zone) and thankfully I was able to grab him with a net. I don’t actually have any tanks without chromis (yet!) so I put him in another tank with three smaller and more docile green chromis. The curious and friendly smaller chromis came over to school with him and what do you know, the anthia attacked them and drove the small chromis away. I guess he’s had it with chromises for now.

My plan is to keep an eye on the anthia’s injury especially because there is probably uronema in the tank, and put him in QT if needed with some metroplex if he doesn’t look good. Then, I need to figure out how I’m going to remove the last 4 chromis from my display… if I have to remove all the rocks I’m going to be really tempted to get a new tank too.

 

[Chromis]

This anthia is awesome, I’ve finally been bitten by the fish bug. The spot where he was bitten last night is still visible, so I’ll take photos and monitor whether it’s healing or getting worse. If it gets worse it’s going to Qt with some metroplex. He’s been swimming out in the open this whole time, so looks like I didn’t get a totally benthic specimen.

 

[Flagg37]

I really like anthias.

 

[Chromis]

The new fathead looks about the same today, the wound inflicted by the display tank chromis is still a small red dot and hasn’t gotten worse or better. She’s eating well and starting to behave more normally so that’s positive. I’m more convinced these are the perfect fish for my display because they seem better suited to the aquascape, also they are so bright and colorful, but mellow. I have two more on order with BayBridge (following QT) and will introduce these next ones the right way, by removing the chromis from my display first.

 

[Coral reefer]

View attachment 32087The new fathead looks about the same today, the wound inflicted by the display tank chromis is still a small red dot and hasn’t gotten worse or better. She’s eating well and starting to behave more normally so that’s positive. I’m more convinced these are the perfect fish for my display because they seem better suited to the aquascape, also they are so bright and colorful, but mellow. I have two more on order with BayBridge (following QT) and will introduce these next ones the right way, by removing the chromis from my display first.
View attachment 32087

Is 3 total the plan?