Raied's Punyaquarium Build

[mrhasan]

Originally Posted by Zoaelite

Looking good, loving the clownfish pair!

Thanks Levi

[mrhasan]

Well it has been five days and did my first testing today. Nitrate seems to be around 0.2ppm and phosphate is undetectable. One of the clowns took some brine shrimps today but the other one is still on hunger strike; this is the 1st time I am experiencing clownfish rejecting food. They are running around the tank and doing things that clowns do; just need to push some food through their mouth soon. Will be getting raw garlic tomorrow and mix it with their food.

I also got a nice rainbow open brain coral and have put it on the bottom.

2016-02-11 19.04.04 by M Raied Hasan, on Flickr

Currently, nyos seems to be the test kit with the most hype so decided to start with their phosphate kit. It definitely has that "German factor" and it was a satisfying purchase

2016-02-11 18.34.42 by M Raied Hasan, on Flickr

2016-02-11 18.34.59 by M Raied Hasan, on Flickr

2016-02-11 18.35.18 by M Raied Hasan, on Flickr

2016-02-11 18.35.29 by M Raied Hasan, on Flickr

2016-02-11 18.35.44 by M Raied Hasan, on Flickr

2016-02-11 18.35.54 by M Raied Hasan, on Flickr

The test was easy to do.

On the other hand, I have decided to start prodibio to keep nutrients in check before things go south. Being proactive instead of reactive

[Craigdillman]

test kit looks cool but... i think the hanna P04 tester was the single best testing thing I've bought for my tank id never go back worth its weight in gold and i think my wife alone was getting annoyed at me going ...hey Honey what off shade of light blue is this ?

[mrhasan]

Originally Posted by Craigdillman

test kit looks cool but... i think the hanna P04 tester was the single best testing thing I've bought for my tank id never go back worth its weight in gold and i think my wife alone was getting annoyed at me going ...hey Honey what off shade of light blue is this ?

Definitely! Nothing comes close to Hanna for hobby grade testing. I didn't want to spend that amount of money on a PO4 test kit right now since I won't be keeping SPS any time soon (well that's what I think). Will buy down the road though.

[mrhasan]

Well I did the first noobist mistake today.

The clowns have been very reluctant to eat since I got them. I tried pellets, NO. I tried brine, NO. I tried plankton, a little but still NO. They would just go up to the food and look at it and carry on without eating. So I decided to try garlic today. Mixed garlic paste (bottled paste from grocery since I couldn't find garlic extract at LFS) with a whole cube of brine and dropped it into the tank. I have no idea what I was thinking but the whole tank got filled with a whole cube of brine and garlic. Not really sure whether they ate anything but didn't seem like it. Oh well, I decided to do a water change (was planning on doing it anyways) but then I took out too much water than I had made. So, to replace that, I had to pour in some waste water back into the tank.

Anyways, tank has started to clear up but there are pieces of brines attached all over the rocks. RODI water is being made right now and I plan on doing a 10 gallon water change tomorrow after blasting the rocks with a turkey baster. Too much brine shrimp for such small tank.

But I am hitting my head for the clowns not eating. I haven't seen such finicky clowns before. I am going to find garlic extract tomorrow and get some mysis and cylopeeze to see whether they feel like eating; if not, I will not feed them anything over the weekend and let them come to me for food!

In case anyone is reading, what is your longest waiting time for clownfish to start eating? Mine has been 0 days until now.

[mrhasan]

Time for an update

So it has been 1 month of the tank running with little to no hiccup.

Few problems that I encountered until now:

1. Overfeeding: since the clowns weren't eating initially and I am not a very patient guy, I tried to put as many types of food as I can, leading to over feeding syndrome. Thankfully, small tank = small water change = big impact so I could address this very quickly.

2. Brown hair algae: instead of the green variant, I somehow go the brown hair algae bloom. 5 gallon WC every few days + 3 maxican turbos (will need to get ride of two shortly; these buggers are poop machine and instead of coraline, my rocks are covered in snail poops) took care of it. There are still some here and there but will run its course.

Maintenance:

I think I have pretty much nailed down the maintenance for now. 3 gallon water change every Saturday (takes about 30 minutes starting from mixing to putting the water in the tank). Aquaforest salt mix is ready within 15 minutes and that alone is very convenient. No need to "plan" for water change.

I removed filter floss for a day or two to see how that impacts the tank but all the floating stuffs were eye sore so I started using it again. Will change every 2 - 3 days. This is going to be an LPS tank anyways so some nitrate/phosphate is welcome.

I am doing prodibio program for the fun of it and have completed 2 cycles of dose. Not expecting any result until for another month or two. Phosphate is below 0.1 so not concerned about that. Nitrate is below 1 so overall, the nutrients seem to be in check.

Inhabitants

The clowns are clowning around and the lawnmower blenny is mowing down the algae and pooping like a beast. Seriously, the poops are half the size in left of the fish itself. DAMN!

I have added a royal gramma but it is still timid and stays inside a cave. Only comes out when the lights are out. Will have to wait few more days before I can take a decent picture.

The brain coral seems to be getting fleshier day by day which is a good thing. I will probably have to start looking into snake oils to see which ones promise more vibrate coloration. The brain is quite colorful by itself but I would the color to be more bright.

Now to the show stopper: the flame anemone. Been waiting for over a month to get my hand on this bad boy but had hard time finding it anywhere in Calgary. Finally, Dave at Concept Aquarium put in a special order for me and here I am, a proud owner of the flame anemone. It bubbled up nicely, moved few inches and stayed there over the weekend and the mama clown has already started hosting it. A wonderful sight Few pics:

About an hour in:



After few hours:


And on Sunday (has been at the same spot since Friday):



New gadgets:

1. Another RW04 in the tank: wasn't happy with the amount of flow I was getting for an RW04 in the tank and being a cube, it wasn't helping much. Instead of getting a bigger pump, i decided to get another RW04. Each of them run for an hour during the photo period. This resulted in the tank having more floating objects in the water. Although this bugs me, I think this will all be trapped in the filter floss within few days. Will get ride of the pooping snails which should help a lot too.

2. Aquatronica controller: thanks to Eric from ocean enterprise, I got a sweet deal on an aquatronica ACQ115 kit that includes temp, pH, salinity, ethernet, float switch and pc interface, 8 bars and the non-touch controller. Didn't have the budget to get the touch and ACQ115 has more than what I need for the tank. Did some basic setup and calibrated the probes to get the controller going. Need to get a ethernet switch (I use powerline) for the ethernet module and waiting to receive some more stuffs that Eric shipped out. This is my first "real" controller (my last one was a reef keeper light which was basically a glorious power bar).







Some pictures of how things looks right now under the cabinet:





Not the prettiest cable management but not a snake of wires either.



And lastly, some tank shots:









Sorry for the crappy pictures. My brother took away the DSLR and my good camera phone is in for repair so all I have is a crappy loaner phone right now.

[kien]

Wow that's one tricked out punyquarium!

[mrhasan]

Originally Posted by kien

Wow that's one tricked out punyquarium!

thanks. Can't put that many corals in there so why not snazzle it up

[mrhasan]

Got some corals into the tank this week

[mrhasan]

Borrowed my friend's DSLR for some snapshots.