20-gallon Low Tech Reef

Geez, dirty minds at work. It's fish give the guy a break. Sorry can't help, still a beginner myself.

Another pic. This is a polyp group I think is dead. It has no visible relief, but hasn't bleached out in the center. Further up the branch there is a similar colony with two orange polyps apparently extended. It's obviously a hard coral of some sort. The question is what?

LOL its a penis rock! I would cut it off and stick it somewheres else. Maybe break it into pieces so you can use it for frags.

eschaton said:

Another pic. This is a polyp group I think is dead. It has no visible relief, but hasn't bleached out in the center. Further up the branch there is a similar colony with two orange polyps apparently extended. It's obviously a hard coral of some sort. The question is what?

Click to expand...

If its polyps are really small it could be micromussa, or perhaps a breed of favia?

There are two critters without an ID in the shot. The little white snail - I have tons of those. They only come out at night, and move fast, so I'm guessing they're Cerith, but they're smaller and a different color than the Cerith I've seen before. It's a big and variable genus though, so it's possible.

The green things. I'm pretty sure they're either sponges or tunicates, though I can't get a good view (it's the side of the tank) so I'm unable to tell.

My ammonia has been steady at .25 for the past two days. Waiting for the ammonia to either peak or go away entirely.

SkiFletch said:

If its polyps are really small it could be micromussa, or perhaps a breed of favia?

Click to expand...

Yeah, the polyps are approximately 2 to 3 mm across I would say. The polyps actually look more regular than any micromussa or favia I've seen a picture of. As you can see, looks like a honeycomb or something. It actually reminds me in shape most of tiny zoanthids, though of course it's not because it deposited a skeleton.

Oooh, could be a dead Goniopora too

Well, it's time for an episode of the good, the bad, and the ugly. No pics...the batteries ran down already.

The good: More and more life is showing now. Turns out the Tonga Branch (the "penis rock") wasn't a waste of time, as a whole slew of spaghetti worms have started feeding. I see a lot more dwarf featherdusters than yesterday too. Best of all, the mystery polyps (not the dead patch, but one higher up) are extending further with help from the sunlight. At least three of them are alive, but goddamn they are tiny.

The bad: The flatworms are clearly enjoying the tank as well. Yesterday, I saw two, maybe three. Now I see one every couple of inches in the tank. Methinks I'm going to have to nuke it with some chemical if this keeps up, though it would put the brittle-stars at risk due to a toxin the flatworms put off when they die, so I loathe to do that.

The ugly:Total diatom bloom on my live rock (but not my sand bed yet). I was perplexed since the tank was only running for four days now, but I did use fully-cured live rock that had been sitting in the LFS tank for months, and it was only out of the water around an hour and a half, so the die-off, and waste spike, was apparently rather small. Did complete test readings and Ammonia is now 0 (was .25 for the past three days), Nitrite is 0, and Nitrate is 0. I'm tentatively declaring the tank cycled, and going to the LFS to pick up some cleanup crew dudes (I'm not going to pick up the whole crew at once).

Picked up the following as starting clean-up-crew members (all snails)

2 Cerith
2 Nassarius
1 Money Cowrie
1 shield limpet
1 fleshy limpet

the fleshy limpet isn't long for this world though. The ####ing teenager who pried it off a rock wasn't very delicate, and the shell is cracked in several places. What's worse, it landed right next to a brittle star that's currently trying to have it for dinner. It's clinging to the rock strongly enough I can't do much without hurting it more, so I'll just leave it to get munched on by the brittle star. It's a shame, as it's cool and pretty rare to find except as a hitchhiker

Teenager at the store also closed the container lid on one of the Nassarius. I didn't realize why he wasn't going into the water until halfway through the ride home. It was just the front corner of his mantle though...this one is fine. He also tried to convince me I needed an arrow crab for my flatworm problem (which he kept on calling bristleworms even though he was pointing right at them. *sigh*

Edit: For some reason I thought a fleshy limpet was called a shield limpet. Corrected now.

If you really want to get rid of the flatworms... Get a wrasse, or pseudochromis

SkiFletch said:

If you really want to get rid of the flatworms... Get a wrasse, or pseudochromis

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In a 20-gallon? Heh.

You could "rent" a flasher wrasse... Most flashers are small to start with and will do ok in a 20 long when young. When the flatworms are gone, trade him in.

Hrrm...as to Pseudochromis, I'm interested. I want to stick to tank-bred fish - I was going to pick up a couple of gobies, and I'm not much into clownfish, so Psuedocromis seem like the other major option. I know they're small enough for a tank of that size, but aren't they terrors in reef tanks?

Pseudochromis Springeri stay pretty small and are really only terrors towards other fish with similar body styles... And even then the aggression only lasts a day or so. I have a springeri pseudo and he bullied my purple firefish that I added (similar body style) for a day. Next day he left the firefish alone. Other than that he's been a model citizen

My tank is coming along nicely. I've now added the full initial clean up crew, which includes:

2 Trochus: They look suspiciously like they might be Astraea to me. When I bought them I tried to determine by looking at the Operculum, but I couldn't see any at all. For the first few days they barely moved, now they're doing a fairly good job.

2 Cerith These guys are awesome at algae-cleanup.

4 Hermits ( wanted to buy two as a test, but extra hermits came in the "spare shells", along with some mystery snail which seems to be a small cerith. They were sold as blue-legs, but only one looks like a blue-leg hermit, the other three have greenish legs with one long stripe. One has been on top of the penis rock for days, and I'm starting to think he can't figure out how to get down.

4 Nerites: It amazes me how much more beautiful they are than regular nerites. Seem to do a good job too. That said, I can only find one at the moment. I had to go lidless (see below), and I'm hoping they didn't just crawl out of the tank and slip off somewhere.

1 Peppermint Shrimp: Shows no interest in the Aiptasia whatsoever so far.

1 Money Cowrie: All he does is do laps around the top two inches or so of the sides and the back of the tank. I guess he's getting enough food that way, but I'm sort of shocked he doesn't go down to the big gobs of algae.

2 Nassarius: Not much for them to scavange at the moment. I drop in a broken up sinking catfish pellet every few days to make sure they don't starve. They seem to love it, as to the bristle-worms.

Both the limpets are MIA and likely killed and eaten.

Driving around last weekend, I found the most knowledgable place was actually the fish store (actually a franchise of a chain) I bought my live rock at. The manager is a bit of a dick, but definately knows his stuff. He told me with my wattage I could likely grow both mushrooms and some leather corals, provided I did away with the glass lid. He also explained to me that their live rock was more than just "cured." Unlike other stores, they let it sit in tanks in the back for three months before putting it on display, meaning there is essentially no die-off when transferred to a new tank (ergo, why my tank cycled so fast), though he said I'll still be getting successive algae populations for the next three months. He did say the tank was likely cycled enough to try my first fish inhabitant as a test, so I picked up one tank-bred blue neon goby, along with a pair of sexy shrimp (so sexy!).

Anyway, I'm a tiny bit more limited due to the lack of a lid now and the sexy shrimp, but I've decided upon the following tank-bred fish as my eventual fish stock

Either:

Greenbanded Goby
Citron Clown Goby (or Yellow if I can't find the Citron tank-bred)
Blue Assessor

Or:

Greenbanded Goby
Redheaded Goby
Yellow Assessor

My mobile invert stocking will include a porcelain crab and at least one more sexy, but I'm otherwise done provided my CUC does a good job. I'm still working on my coral ideas.

Not too much else to report. I was gone for two days, and I think my girlfriend overfed the tank, as there is a some crud at the top of the tank I'll need to remove. Everything that hitchhiked in seems to be doing fine, though it seems like there are less brittle-stars. And the "dead SPS" is in fact alive and has started to extend its polyps. I've been attemping to target feed, but it's so small it's difficult, and I'm not sure it's realistic to expect it to expand in this tank.