Cali Kid Corals

My Small Drop of the Ocean - RSR350

Well I think it is about time I started a tank journal. I’ll admit I don’t really know what to say in this but what the heck? Disclaimer now: Sorry about poor picture qualities, I use my phone and am still learning how to get good pictures although they have improved.

I grew up hearing stories of my Dad’s old 55 gallon he used to have and the various life in it, including lion fish. This guy is a total green-thumb with pretty much anything he tries. I would do my research, try and plant a couple flowers or vegetables and they just die or never take off. Meanwhile, he comes over and throws some dirt in a pot and though may not even know exactly what he’s looking at, but the plants inevitably thrive. Same thing with his aquarium. He finally set up another tank in his office after I went away to college and I was pretty jealous because I barely ever got to see it. His BTAs split often, clownfish lay eggs, coral thrives and as much as he knows exactly what he’s doing, he doesn’t get into the weeds on anything. “Hey Dad, what is that coral?” “No idea, I just liked the way it looked.” So that’s the basic story of how I got interested. I learned from him the fish are cool, but he gravitated towards coral. That was before I heard the saying about fish get you interested in the hobby, but the coral keeps you.

I am active duty Air Force and moved to the Bay Area and immediately set out to get an aquarium setup because I know I need patience and my time was limited. Because I was starting out from scratch and had basically no background with any of this gear, I was very detailed in my research and taking pictures of every step along the way. I’m not kidding when I say everystep. I mean to the extent of building the skimmer I would take a picture when everything was laid out, picture when step one was complete, step 2, etc etc. I found that many of the YouTube videos I watched did not answer the questions I needed as someone brand new, so I decided that I would make a channel for true beginners so that way we could all learn together from a new perspective. Alas, my ambition was higher than my practicality like so many other aspects, but at least I still have all those pictures.

I went with a RedSea Reefer 350. I was used to hang-on style equipment from my Dad’s setup but came to really like the sump idea and everything with that. I used the Black Friday deals to buy practically all of my gear and saved lots of money by doing so. I remember struggling with putting the overflow pipes in correctly as silly as that sounds. I found the diagrams in the instruction to be a little unclear (this is one of those reasons why I wanted to start that YouTube channel) and ended up putting the pipes in the wrong slots. This eventually led to never really being able to make the tank as quiet as it should have been and needed to drain the overflow later down the road. During this time, I didn’t have a wet/dry shop vac yet, so I may or may not have totally ruined a regular vacuum trying to get all the water out of the sump when doing my initial freshwater leak test and when I had to drain the overflow to fix the pipes. It’s okay, I hated that vacuum and it was the perfect excuse to toss it.

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December of 2019 is when I started to fill the tank with rock, sand, saltwater and got the cycle started. I used the Dr. Tim’s product to try and get through the cycle faster. When I felt comfortable, I added my first three corals; a toadstool leather, finger leather and a red/blue acan. The acan was touch for me to turn down since I’m a big Buffalo Bills fan and planned to have a dedicated red/blue portion of the aquarium. While it still has the colors, that piece has really faded from its original vibrance and it sounds like a lot of people have those same struggles. A couple weeks later I added a small zoa frag. I don’t know what type they are, but it had two different types on the frag.

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In February, I went to some training where I was gone for roughly 4 weeks. During a portion where I had zero phone/internet access, my tank experienced a major malfunction. When I had access to these amenities again, I saw that my Apex had disconnected a couple days prior. Well, I don’t have anybody to watch my tank because I don’t trust anybody yet plus it’s only three pieces of coral so it shouldn’t need much babysitting. I called up someone from work and he came over another two days later and we discovered the power brick for my Apex had shorted out: everything belonging to the tank was plugged into that one source. We worked through facetime and managed to get it working because I happened to have a backup brick that wasn’t plugged in. I sent the brick in to Neptune and it was repaired. Since then, I have divided the load between these two and haven’t had further problems. I also keep the same guy from work on retainer because even though he didn’t know anything about aquariums, he saved my system and has been incredibly helpful when I’m on the road. I did lose the finger leather from that trip, but it was small and better than losing more all things considered.

About a week after I returned from that training, is when the COVID shelter in place began. I had picked up a Kenya tree to replace the finger leather and also some green hairy mushroom to add a little bit more color. My LFS had a TON of bubble tip anemones and it was super tempting to get one but I’ve heard everything about needing an established tank so I was able to exercise some self-control. For a couple weeks. I introduced a small BTA on April 2. It hung out where I placed it in the tank and I observed it the rest of the afternoon and evening. It didn’t move until I went to bed. Woke up in the morning and immediately check in and it was gone. I was devasted. I found a small piece of tentacle and came to the conclusion it offed itself in a powerhead. I had guards ordered, but they weren’t shipped yet. I felt so bad that I allowed this to happen to a living thing through my own negligence. It didn’t even make 24 hours. Heck, it didn’t even survive 18 hours. I thought it was weird because I didn’t see a large rise in levels or even the milkiness that I’ve heard happens in those situations but I did find a piece of tentacle so I chocked that up to it being a small ‘nem. Fast forward five days and I discovered the anemone had been hiding in the very back and basically under the rock. Since then, it has been doing well, although I think I should call it “Forrest” because it seems to run around its half of the tank every few days. It is entertaining to see though.

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April 28: Added two clownfish. Holy cow, I didn’t know they could be so small! As much as I prefer getting anything from an LFS, we’re in the middle of quarantine and mine didn’t have any the last time I was there so I got these from Liveaquaria, which is where I’ve made all my online livestock purchases. Quarantined those guys while I was doing my own quarantine and eventually added them to the display. They were so frustrating. They’d swim all over their 20 gallon quarantine, observe what I’m doing in the kitchen, understand when it’s feeding time etc, but when added to their large new home, the hang in a corner all day long that could fit inside my fist. At night, they’d swim to the other side of the tank and cuddle up just above the sand until the next day, when the same process would repeat. Seriously, all this new space and you don’t even bother exploring? As they gotten older, the one has turned almost completely black and just has fringes of orange, while the other is orange with fringes of black.

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Time for another mission. I expect to be on the road five days and come back two weeks later. Gotta love the military. Came back to all kinds of algae, so I went to my LFS and grabbed three turbo snails. Now he’s known that I wanted a tuxedo urchin for a while, and a small foxface rabbitfish for a couple months, but they haven’t come in so I needed a stop gap. Grabbed those (along with a small candycane coral, single head. I can now see two "mouths" though so I'm sure it's about to become two heads) and a day later someone brings in a beautiful majestic foxface (along with some other things) because they were moving and had to decommission the tank. After some time letting the foxface de-stress and ensure it was doing well, I picked it up and added it to my aquarium. It’s been doing great and the combination of that plus the snails have totally changed the algae game. Another benefit, adding this new swimmer changed the behavior of my clowns. Nobody bullies each other and they’re perfectly happy hanging around together, but the clowns have started swimming around different areas of the tank.

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I do love my little punk rocker.

By this point, I’ve gotten fed up waiting for my LFS to get back to me about the urchin so I decided to order one online. Along with that, grabbed a three pack of rock flower anemone and a war & peace favia. Once again, I never expected the urchin to be so tiny! I added those Sept 29 and think I’ve seen the urchin twice since then. I’d like to see that some more because I always wanted one and never cared about the snails but so long as nobody is being out competed, they’ll do for now.

What have I learned in these first 10 months of my first reef tank?

  • I hate the rockscape.
I thought at first it’d be cool, a nice looking archway and a good sized cave for fish to hide in. I’ve found that it did not lend itself well to placing corals. The foxface utilized the cave occasionally but I really just see it as wasted space. I glued all the rockwork together because I was concerned about anything being dislodged in the future so I can’t change it. However, I know this isn’t a permanent tank so it’s an invaluable learning point for the next one.

  • Vermetid snails suck!
These were introduced pretty early unfortunately. I saw them on whatever piece of coral when I dipped it, I think it was the zoas. Apparently I didn’t remove it completely with the dip or trying to scratch away it’s home. Since then, these have exploded everywhere and I don’t see any feasible way to remove them at this point. There’s just so many to include being in impossible to reach places and it doesn’t seem like there are any predators I could introduce.

  • I don’t know how I feel about acans
It was so vibrant at the store and I’ve tried moving it around based on what I read online, but generally don’t like to move things beyond initial placement unless I have to. From what I’ve read, this is not an uncommon thing for a lot of reefers to experience in their keeping of acans.

  • I have a ton to learn! And will always be learning.
But that’s what made me so interested in the hobby in the first place.



Current struggles

  • Getting algae back under control
This didn’t use to be a problem so I was surprised to see my tank “green” after coming back from a mission. The snails and foxface (and I assume the urchin) have made a significant difference, but I also want to get to the root cause and not just deal with mitigation after-effects. I’d also like to get something such as a conch snail to get a little more turnover for the sandbed, although I don’t know if it is deep enough. I presume I could get a goby, but I’ve heard they’re not as effective and they don’t really “do it” for me anyways.

  • Kenya tree extension
When I first got this coral, it would shrink up at night but during the day it would grow significantly and extend its polyps. Nowadays, the polyps still extend each day, but its overall size seems to be shrunken constantly as if it were night time. Haven’t figured out the reason for this. Fish don’t seem to nip at it at all.

  • I’d like the BTA to be a little more “bulbous”
It was never very bulbous the way a lot of other BTAs are, but I’d like if it were. Sometimes it seems more stringy than others but not much rhyme or reason. I know there doesn’t seem to be conclusive evidence on what causes this, so I’ll just continue trying to spot feed and keep everything in balance.
 
This is a long overdue post, I guess. I didn’t realize it has been almost a year since the last one and the things that have changed in that time. I think one of the biggest surprises for me in that time is that I started getting into SPS. The idea concerned me at the start because of hearing how tricky they but I figured why not, as much as I don’t take lightly the thought of killing something. I’ve done enough aquarium killing with my failed refugium attempts and couple of leathers. Apparently I have the hardest time with the easiest of things. So what is new from the last update? Let’s dive in.

The kenya tree I referenced in the last post ended up not making it, so that was frustrating. Not exactly sure what I did wrong but that is 2/2, so I think I’ll be taking a break from them.

Corals: I have gotten a bunch of new pieces, like a hammer, some monti’s, birdsnest and favias. I placed two monti in a similar place and one took off while the other didn’t do much, so I moved the second and it has started to grow more but not explosively like the first. I was very surprised by that one. I also attended the fragging workshop a few months ago and took home a couple things from there, despite only bringing a chalice with me which I don’t think ever got passed around. I constantly look at the tank thinking it feels bare, but it’s hard to find good places for corals because of the rockscape. Again, learning for the next one. One of my favorite additions though, are some zoas I got out of my dad’s tank. I had a mission going close enough to home where I could drive back so while I was there, I took my new skills from the fragging shop and got myself some corals. Can’t really fly commercially with coral like that, so it was a great opportunity and I’m really happy now to have something from his tank in mine. If only I could have gotten a BTA, he has 16 now from his initial 1. Mine still travels around a lot but as of the last few days has finally started to look more bulbous and less stringy. It looked like it was about to split but never did.
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Plastic bag holding my cups of corals getting the VIP treatment in the cockpit

Fish: My one clownfish has turned completely black as it continues to grow. They still just hang out in a back corner for pretty much the entire day and night until it’s feeding time, and then they go to where the feeder is set up for a minute before going back to their corner and waiting for the food to find its way over there. The foxface, which I have taken to calling Jimi, has tons of personality and I’m a big fan.
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I bought a firefish a while back and kept it in quarantine. After it graduated to the display, I went out on the road almost immediately for a mission. When it was added, the clownfish were very curious and came over to check it out, even though it wasn’t in their back corner. Nothing aggressive, just seeing their new neighbor. Jimi meanwhile, was terrified of this tiny fish. He hid behind some of the rocks in the back of the tank where there was still visibility to make sure nothing happened, but far enough away that he wasn’t near the action. Mohawk up, of course. All the fish got along though and started to get comfortable with each other. While I was on the road, the firefish stopped being found after about the first half of the mission. When I came back, I found it had jumped out and dried up under a cabinet. Poor fish had spent more time in quarantine than in the display. And I had other people take care of it longer than I did, because I was on a mission even during its quarantine.

One of the reasons I wanted a majestic foxface, was so that I could get a yellow tang and they’d both be different colors. I finally committed to getting a tang but had to wait probably three months before I found captive bred on sale. Eventually I found a sale and ordered the fish and arranged for a delivery. Naturally, work wants me to go out on the road for a one-day mission, the day of the delivery and when I said I had a fish being delivered the scheduler looked at me with the deer in the headlights look. It was coming from the east coast so by this time of our conversations, they were closed up and wouldn’t answer an e-mail I sent asking if the delivery could be a day earlier. The next day, I received an e-mail that they would make the change and I told our scheduler. “Oh, well you’re going on a mission for a week leaving the day after, so it won’t be a conflict with your fish.” So yup, tang went right into the tank sans quarantine and I left for a week a few hours later. Didn’t sit well with me. Especially since Jimi didn’t like this addition, rather than being scared of the firefish. I was concerned about this. Small baby tang getting picked on by a big foxface who would charge or even occasionally try to nip. So what does the tang do? Hide in Clownfish Corner. The black one didn’t take too kindly to their new neighbor either, but with time they would eventually get along.

This kind of caused my tang to think it was a clownfish. It stopped being picked on by everyone, but it didn’t stop hanging with the clowns. All day. Ignored nori clips when I put them in. Doesn’t graze for algae. Just content being a weirdly shaped and colored clownfish. Only recently has it started to follow Jimi around to graze and eat nori. I was really happy the other day to see them swimming together eating from the same nori clip. The tang even got a piece off and was eating it when Jimi tried to take it, but tang wouldn’t allow. And there was no retribution. Finally, my tang has learned how to tang.
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Inverts: I have a ton of bristleworms. I know they’re more-or-less beneficial (although I may have seen a fireworm in the mix, not 100% sure) but I’d like to have less. So after some research, I got a coral banded shrimp to try and maintain some biological control. I know bio control isn’t always a sure thing, but it was a good excuse to get new life. I haven’t seen much of a difference in the worm levels but I do have one less turbo snail. And no more urchins. I can’t say definitively, but I think the shrimp got them because there was no “meat” inside any of the shells/skeletons. So yea, if anybody wants a CBS, I’ll gladly give it up.

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What are my learning points in the last 10 or 11 months?

  • The generosity of the club is great.

People offer help/advice, every interaction I’ve had in-person has been positive, and everyone seems to want to “give” and grow the hobby.

  • Fragging isn’t scary

Part of why I hadn’t fragged before is I was so concerned about killing the coral. The workshop really helped as a confidence boost.



Current Struggles

  • Pests

Bristleworms (whether your personal opinion is pest of not, there are a lot), vermetid snails and aiptasia. These are not new things for any reefer though. The last time I went on an aiptasia hunt, to the soundtrack of Creeping Death naturally, it seemed like they sensed the danger and tried to replicate rather than just die off. So there was an explosion. I’d like to try some nudibranchs but won’t do that until the CBS is gone.

  • Coral growth

This isn’t really a struggle, but a desire. I have a few pieces that have had really good growth and that’s exciting, but I’d like to see more. I’ll have zoa or a monti grow well, but not much growth from things like GSP, which has been in longer, which I would expect to have grown a ton. I really want to be able to start putting back into the club the way others do.
 
I forgot to mention one of my bigger “mishaps” that happened back at the end of May because it wasn’t directly tank related.

I have a 55 gallon Brute with a wheeled base for my saltwater storage. I had a friend coming into town so I was cleaning the house up and getting it ready for company. That involved getting everything out of my guest room that was being used for storage and putting it into my weight room, which would be the new storage room. Also, it involved getting all of my music gear put away in the same room. Finally, I would wheel in my saltwater storage from by the aquarium into this same room. You can probably see where things are going from here.

Everything was fine the first couple of days. Finally, the last night he was here, we went out to dinner. Coming back I thought it was weird that there was water in the hallway. Not a big deal, I probably dropped some when I went through there earlier. But what a tick, that’s a lot more water than just a few drops. My sat water storage bin had tipped over, spilling about 35 gallons of saltwater all over the carpeted room. I didn’t care about too much other than the amps (far enough away) and the guitars, literally next to the bucket. Said guitars is actually what stopped the entire bucket from falling and not just tipping over.

Fortunately I keep my guitars in their cases, but I brought each of them out and immediately opened them up to see if any water got in. Almost all of them (7) had some dampness on the fabric in the case near the seams, a couple where the body felt like it was damp. The bass is the only one not in a hard case and just a soft one, so that definitely had dampness and felt it on the body.

The next day, I bought a industrial type fan at Home Depot and ran it in the room for a week straight. Totally forgot about my shop vac the entire time, that would have been helpful.

A couple weeks ago I was restringing a guitar and noticed the nut was chipped so the string kept slipping. I brought it in the get fixed and the guy gave it a full inspection. He took the input jack out because there was a lot of buzzing and he said he noticed rust so the guitar probably hasn’t been played in a while. I haven’t played as much as I’d like to lately, but I make a pretty good rotation through most of them, and that is one of my main ones. It just hit me the other day that the saltwater probably got into more than I was able to clean out, so now I’m wondering if all the instruments have internal damage.

So yea, saltwater and guitars are not friends.
 
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