IOWL's 20g IM Nuvo Fusion 20
- Thread starter IOnceWasLegend
- Start date
Unhappy landmark: lost my first piece of livestock, a goniopora that we bought about 2 months ago.
Tried repositioning, feeding more, etc. but no luck. Godspeed, little frag.
Tried repositioning, feeding more, etc. but no luck. Godspeed, little frag.
Coral reefer
Past President
Bummer. Gonis are not usually the easiest to keep. Don’t Be too hard on yourself.
Yeah, this wasn't surprising, unfortunately. It's my wife and I's own fault for not doing our research before buying it, then seeing how difficult it was to keep. Not a mistake we'll make again.
Coral reefer
Past President
Live and learn. I highly recommend (for most corals) to find a captively propagated specimen if you can. Much better chance of success in my opinion.
Naive question, but is that something you ask the LFS? Or is it just more trustworthy/reliable to buy from fellow reefers?
max_nano
Supporting Member
If you want to try a Goni again down the line I’d recommend the red Ora one @Coral reefer sells. It flourished in my tank and I’m a beginner.
And along the lines of more prior research, I am going to try to get better about planning a spot for the coral and putting it there, then not moving it. I believe the coral I’ve lost may have been better off if I didnt try to “save” them by moving them.
Good to know, and thanks for that.
I've had some success moving my torch, but I agree that a more "hands-off" approach is probably better in the long run. I feel like I've finally gotten a "gut feeling" for flow and lighting in my tank now and it (mostly) seems to be paying off.
Coral reefer
Past President
You can always ask Lfs where they got things and how long they’ve had them. Worst case they don’t know, but maybe they do. I like getting things from fellow reefers I know and trust mostly when I can personally.
6/1/20 update: the GHA is dead! Gotta love the turbo snails (thanks again, @tankguy !)...though I'll miss one of them, since the tank is definitely not capable of supporting both of them long term.
The GHA being gone has been good, but in its place the cyano has picked up the slack; likely aided, in part, by my neglect to vacuum the sandbed. Reginald (the fighting conch) has been making a heroic effort sucking up some patches, and I'm trying to aid him by doing daily sand vacuum/wash/rinses.
On the funner side of things: I opted against an SPS on the 'shelf' in my tank after realizing it was the perfect PAR/flow for an anemone. So, I added my first-ever anemone (an RBTA; thanks, @hyacinth !) and it's been doing very well. It's typically about twice the size than in this picture; the skunk shrimp just decided to tap-dance on it to check for food right before the picture was taken.
Pictures:
From the left:
From the right:
Next steps:
The GHA being gone has been good, but in its place the cyano has picked up the slack; likely aided, in part, by my neglect to vacuum the sandbed. Reginald (the fighting conch) has been making a heroic effort sucking up some patches, and I'm trying to aid him by doing daily sand vacuum/wash/rinses.
On the funner side of things: I opted against an SPS on the 'shelf' in my tank after realizing it was the perfect PAR/flow for an anemone. So, I added my first-ever anemone (an RBTA; thanks, @hyacinth !) and it's been doing very well. It's typically about twice the size than in this picture; the skunk shrimp just decided to tap-dance on it to check for food right before the picture was taken.
Pictures:
From the left:
From the right:
Next steps:
- A clownfish (after my wife and I figure out whether we want a morph or a regular ocellaris) for our final fish
- Some bright red and/or blue zoas or acans
- Then we're going to try and sit back, let everything fill in, and focus all the time/energy/equipment purchases on stability, with an eye for items that will carry over to our next, larger tank
Coral reefer
Past President
Looks good. Hope it stays put!
6/10/20 update:
Starting off with an FTS because I love 'sunrise' in the tank.
I've been testing daily for the past week and a half, and have confirmed that my tank is consuming ~0.5 dkh/day while calcium has remained stable (after an initial, weird result that was likely due to inaccurate testing on my part while getting used to the API kit/comparative inaccuracy of it).
I've opted to dose 0.5 dkh of alkalinity (Red Sea Foundation B) daily to maintain 9 dkh while leaving calcium alone. My rationale is that, since consuming 2.8 dkh of alkalinity consumes only 20 ppm of calcium, calcium will be maintained with weekly water changes (and dosing alk daily will help prevent larger swings when I do water changes). I've been monitoring pH/salinity/etc like a hawk to ensure this doesn't have any untoward effects.
Additionally, my wife and I decided to spend our day off cleaning the apartment. As a reward, we went and picked out a cute ocellaris clownfish. Meet Bartholomew:
I know this is not news to anyone but me, but man - clownfish are weird. He spent the first two days swimming so hard that I was concerned he was going to drop dead from exhaustion. He's finally calmed down a bit and is mostly hanging out in the front right and back left corner of the tank, but hasn't given the anemone (or anything else) a second glance.
Sadly, we're back to having only two fish in the tank. The clownfish has been remarkably peaceful, but it's made the bar goby spend a lot more time out of its burrow. This led to (I'm assuming) redirected aggression towards the firefish. A couple days ago I came home to the firefish flopping weakly on top of the tank lid (it had jumped through a crack less than 1/4" wide and somehow landed on top of the mesh). I added it back to the tank, but it didn't do well (and wasn't helped by the bar goby grabbing it by its gills and dragging it away from the burrow). Poor thing passed away shortly afterwards...and my first indication was that the cleaner shrimp was eating it.
I retrieved the body from the cleaner shrimp after chasing it around the tank for five half-infuriating, half hilarious minutes. Footage of the shrimp during this chase provided below:
Starting off with an FTS because I love 'sunrise' in the tank.
I've been testing daily for the past week and a half, and have confirmed that my tank is consuming ~0.5 dkh/day while calcium has remained stable (after an initial, weird result that was likely due to inaccurate testing on my part while getting used to the API kit/comparative inaccuracy of it).
I've opted to dose 0.5 dkh of alkalinity (Red Sea Foundation B) daily to maintain 9 dkh while leaving calcium alone. My rationale is that, since consuming 2.8 dkh of alkalinity consumes only 20 ppm of calcium, calcium will be maintained with weekly water changes (and dosing alk daily will help prevent larger swings when I do water changes). I've been monitoring pH/salinity/etc like a hawk to ensure this doesn't have any untoward effects.
Additionally, my wife and I decided to spend our day off cleaning the apartment. As a reward, we went and picked out a cute ocellaris clownfish. Meet Bartholomew:
I know this is not news to anyone but me, but man - clownfish are weird. He spent the first two days swimming so hard that I was concerned he was going to drop dead from exhaustion. He's finally calmed down a bit and is mostly hanging out in the front right and back left corner of the tank, but hasn't given the anemone (or anything else) a second glance.
Sadly, we're back to having only two fish in the tank. The clownfish has been remarkably peaceful, but it's made the bar goby spend a lot more time out of its burrow. This led to (I'm assuming) redirected aggression towards the firefish. A couple days ago I came home to the firefish flopping weakly on top of the tank lid (it had jumped through a crack less than 1/4" wide and somehow landed on top of the mesh). I added it back to the tank, but it didn't do well (and wasn't helped by the bar goby grabbing it by its gills and dragging it away from the burrow). Poor thing passed away shortly afterwards...and my first indication was that the cleaner shrimp was eating it.
I retrieved the body from the cleaner shrimp after chasing it around the tank for five half-infuriating, half hilarious minutes. Footage of the shrimp during this chase provided below:
MarAquatic
Guest
What coral is on the sand? How about a frag if that favia??
Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
The coral on the sand are just Ricordea florida mushrooms. I'm happy with how the favia looks at the moment, actually, but - when it grows out a bit - I'm planning on fragging it at one of the BAR workshops and starting a DBTC with it to propagate one of Bob's corals through the club.
MarAquatic
Guest
Those are orange or yellow?
Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
They look more yellow than orange, but I'm bad with colors.
Coral reefer
Past President
I’m going to start a dbtc for the wwc ultron favia soonish as well
I've also got his candy corn favia, so - if you don't mind me tagging along after all this is over and it grows out to see how to frag a favia - I'll be happy to put that one in as well.
Coral reefer
Past President
Easy to do with a bandsaw. Can help if you want.