Mangrove / Macro / Softie lagoon - 20 long

[dansyr]

Macros are dual-purpose for me. Currently, I’m loving those Dragon Breadths (don’t know the scientific name) - the whole colony doubled every week/two, no joke. I feed this stuff to my angels/tangs, weaning off nori sheets. So yes, I do want fast growing macros that can be used to feed the fish!

For my macro tank, I want something colorful but doesn’t grow that fast. Right now, it has some (semi-highend) zoas, dragon’s breadth, atomic broccoli, and a toadstool. Here is the latest with 2 recently-planted mangroves.

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looks awesome! Maybe some RFAs around at the rock/sand interface too? The two red macros you have look great, you probably don't need another red so maybe one of the weirder blue macros like blue octhodes? All the greens I can think of of would be super fast growing.

oooh you know, if you want a challenge, you could try a stargrass? I think Halophila is in the trade sometimes. They aren't easy, but feasible, and that would look really cool.

 

[Tangwich]

I agree with Dan on the blue ochtodes or maybe blue hypnea...i think sponges would look really cool in there also.

 

[bakbay]

Thank you. Will look them up — I definitely need some gorgonians though.

I already have some orange sponges — that big flat rock in the middle is covered with it!

 

[bakbay]

I agree with Dan on the blue ochtodes or maybe blue hypnea...i think sponges would look really cool in there also.

Ok — where can I get these?

 

[Tangwich]

Our mutual buddy Will has blue hypnea. As for sponges, I have seen some at Ellis Aquatics. Ajd next weekend I'm gonna frag my super bushy corky finger gorg colony if you're interested.

 

[bakbay]

Our mutual buddy Will has blue hypnea. As for sponges, I have seen some at Ellis Aquatics. Ajd next weekend I'm gonna frag my super bushy corky finger gorg colony if you're interested.

I’m good with sponges. Will has a few goodies (scientific term) for me but he’s been MIA - Guess I should catch my Chicago SB nem to lure him? lol

 

[bakbay]

Got some blue hypnea and codium from @weelo111

I’ve also moved the blue Haddoni from the frag tank over. If he’s happy here with sand, I’ll move the other Haddoni as well. It might be cramped in here but they’ll be happier since my frag tank is BB

@dansyr — this is so easy without fish! lol

 

[dansyr]

Got some blue hypnea and codium from @weelo111

I’ve also moved the blue Haddoni from the frag tank over. If he’s happy here with sand, I’ll move the other Haddoni as well. It might be cramped in here but they’ll be happier since my frag tank is BB

@dansyr — this is so easy without fish! lol

Looks awesome! The haddoni from the photo on the other thread looks so happy. Haddoni in a sand and rubble flat offshore some mangroves is a peak haddoni habitat, the look is stunning.

Let me know how the blue hypnea does for you. That's one I want to try again, tried it too early over in my other tank and it never took off.

and yeah, working with no/low fish loads is so nice from nutrients, oxygen, aggression. Just make sure nutrients don't bottom out too fast when the macroalgae takes off, that happened to me by accident on this tank. It was always fine (2.5 fish in a 20 with no skimmer or export besides macros) so i stopped testing but got overgrown and after like 8 mo some weird algae showed up. Turns out I had been on 0/0, oops.

 

[bakbay]

Looks awesome! The haddoni from the photo on the other thread looks so happy. Haddoni in a sand and rubble flat offshore some mangroves is a peak haddoni habitat, the look is stunning.

Let me know how the blue hypnea does for you. That's one I want to try again, tried it too early over in my other tank and it never took off.

and yeah, working with no/low fish loads is so nice from nutrients, oxygen, aggression. Just make sure nutrients don't bottom out too fast when the macroalgae takes off, that happened to me by accident on this tank. It was always fine (2.5 fish in a 20 with no skimmer or export besides macros) so i stopped testing but got overgrown and after like 8 mo some weird algae showed up. Turns out I had been on 0/0, oops.

Agreed. The blue Haddonis looked great on my 175gal actually. I lost the red Haddoni when I moved him to the frag tank with no sand. He just moved around and slowly shrunk and melted away — so glad that it didn’t nuke the tank! Hopefully these 2 blue’s will do well here. I have some Chicago & Colorado (yes, I have a nem problem) that I’m tempted to move over but getting too crowded already.

Will do on the hypnea — Will have me a decent size so will see how this goes. Yes, you’re spot on the nutrient levels. I do have ammonium chloride and planning to dose Reef Rhoids anyway (raise PO4). I can already see that the DB is getting bigger so that’s cool.

Since the IM25ext has an external overflow box, I’ve plumbed it to a 40gal sump next to the tank. With an half/filled sump, my tank suddenly became a 45gal tank! Now that the return is pushing water (I got a big return pump running at 10%) I no longer need the Nero3 and no longer worry about nems getting killed! lol

 

[dansyr]

Agreed. The blue Haddonis looked great on my 175gal actually. I lost the red Haddoni when I moved him to the frag tank with no sand. He just moved around and slowly shrunk and melted away — so glad that it didn’t nuke the tank! Hopefully these 2 blue’s will do well here. I have some Chicago & Colorado (yes, I have a nem problem) that I’m tempted to move over but getting too crowded already.

Will do on the hypnea — Will have me a decent size so will see how this goes. Yes, you’re spot on the nutrient levels. I do have ammonium chloride and planning to dose Reef Rhoids anyway (raise PO4). I can already see that the DB is getting bigger so that’s cool.

Since the IM25ext has an external overflow box, I’ve plumbed it to a 40gal sump next to the tank. With an half/filled sump, my tank suddenly became a 45gal tank! Now that the return is pushing water (I got a big return pump running at 10%) I no longer need the Nero3 and no longer worry about nems getting killed! lol

Oh that's great, so you have no internal powerheads in the tank? That's a great setup.

If you're adding nems, maybe an H. aurora? Like a real one, not a heavily-banded malu. malu are nice too, but a nice H aurora would really fit in there. and they stay pretty small? I had meant to get an H aurora for this tank, long story how it didn't work out and ended up with this LTA (which I love).

 

[bakbay]

Oh that's great, so you have no internal powerheads in the tank? That's a great setup.

If you're adding nems, maybe an H. aurora? Like a real one, not a heavily-banded malu. malu are nice too, but a nice H aurora would really fit in there. and they stay pretty small? I had meant to get an H aurora for this tank, long story how it didn't work out and ended up with this LTA (which I love).

Thanks - will look into them. I actually have 2 bleached Mertensii from a friend’s tank. One of them is recovering though so I might move him. However, these guys can grow HUGE!

Yes - love the setup with no internal wavemakers. However, I will need to get a battery backup solution for this tank. Right now, it’s a bubbler, automatically kicked in if no power detected. I might install my old Ecotech S2 and put a battery there. This simple tank is becoming…not so simple? Knowing me, I might have a full Apex setup soon enough if I got 1000s worth of livestock? Btw: this is my 4th tank! The other 3 got Apex + Trident! lol. Need to do this quietly and not tell the Boss…shhhhh

How is yours coming along?

 

[dansyr]

Thanks - will look into them. I actually have 2 bleached Mertensii from a friend’s tank. One of them is recovering though so I might move him. However, these guys can grow HUGE!

Yes - love the setup with no internal wavemakers. However, I will need to get a battery backup solution for this tank. Right now, it’s a bubbler, automatically kicked in if no power detected. I might install my old Ecotech S2 and put a battery there. This simple tank is becoming…not so simple? Knowing me, I might have a full Apex setup soon enough if I got 1000s worth of livestock? Btw: this is my 4th tank! The other 3 got Apex + Trident! lol. Need to do this quietly and not tell the Boss…shhhhh

How is yours coming along?

Your profile pic of the red haddoni kinda communicates your anemone interests I think Mertensii are cool but yeah a challenge for all but the biggest tank. Are you keeping them in your 450?

This tank has pretty minimal automation because it's not really meant to, I have a tendency to build gadgets and this one is supposed to be minimal additions one. Tunze ATO and heaters are on an inkbird (fan on inkbird too when summer starts), that's it. Alk is usually around 5-6 because the halimeda drop it that low then slow down. Softies don't seem to mind too bad and zero stony corals (except for one hitchhiker) so I don't really care. I've manually dose some DIY 2 part but trying to avoid actually setting up a doser and reservoirs (more from a clutter perspective than a life support perspective). By hand trace metals once or twice a week, DIY manganese every 2-3 days.

Now my other 20g (the mixed reef / clam tank) is more automated - DIY doser for 2-part, DIY pH meter & temperature keeping tabs on that, inkbird. Nitrate and phosphate into my ATO. No battery backups, but I do have things set up so it's easy to transfer one USB wavemaker onto an external portable Jackery-type thing that can run for quite a while. I'm working on upping my 2-part dosing to also dose Mg and kalk. The pico 5g is supposed to be SPS-only so as that grows in I'm planning on it being more high-tech (still DIY) and actually dosing kalk based on pH, emailing me reminders to fill up dosers and recalibrate probes, etc.

I've never gotten into the Apex/Trident setup because I like the fun of building my own monitoring, and I hate tinkering when I have constraints by a system. They seem like great products, but I like having the dosing mechanisms be SUUUUPER dummy proof, in that if I can build it and code it, it goes, and zero chance of it doing unanticipated things, or failing in a way that I don't know.

 

[bakbay]

Love it - my goal is minimal/zero maintenance with this small tank (already 45gal). Currently I have no tech on this tank - temp is controlled by a 150w Hygger heater with internal controller (I don’t trust this thing though). Now that I have a sump, I can move the heater and set up the inkbird on it. I’m a huge fan of inkbird+titanium BRS heater.

Dosing: why not dose AFR? At this size, it should be simple & cost effective right? Manually dose once/month might do the trick since softies don’t consume alk much. ATO + kalk seems like a great idea since you gotta do ATO anyway…

 

[dansyr]

Love it - my goal is minimal/zero maintenance with this small tank (already 45gal). Currently I have no tech on this tank - temp is controlled by a 150w Hygger heater with internal controller (I don’t trust this thing though). Now that I have a sump, I can move the heater and set up the inkbird on it. I’m a huge fan of inkbird+titanium BRS heater.

Dosing: why not dose AFR? At this size, it should be simple & cost effective right? Manually dose once/month might do the trick since softies don’t consume alk much. ATO + kalk seems like a great idea since you gotta do ATO anyway…

I need to switch over to titanium heaters. I have been on combinations of 50 and 75w heaters. I like the small size some of them come in, and it's hard for one to go crazy and overheat being that small (my main concern with the internal controllers). Inkbird on top of that for the peace of mind.

AFR has been very tempting at a couple points. Calcium demand is decent though, my alk drops about as much in this tank from the halimeda as the clam tank believe it or not. Some tanks are nitrogen limited, some are carbon limited, this tank is alkalinity limited lol. Like 2 dkh a day last I estimated, the couple times I've tested manually dosing it takes about 30ml/day of Randy's 2-part to mostly offset and it still goes down. That's 2 dkh/day in a 20 gallon so admittedly wouldn't be burning through as much powder as 2dkh in a 200g tank but still, it's a heavier demand. I sometimes do kalk for my ATO, but I like keeping it around 50-70% saturated kalk to minimize precipitation, and my evaporation rate isn't high enough even if I was running fully saturated kalk. I don't need it for the pH with all these macros, either.

The one I am actually planning on AFR eventually is the 5g pico that I hope to make crowded with SPS. Trying to troubleshoot traces in a heavy SPS 5g has to be insane, water changes are great but I want it to be in my office eventually and so want to minimize water changes and AFR seems perfect for that. Or maybe i'll build a super tiny calcium reactor for it You are a reactor guy right?

 

[bakbay]

Funny you mentioned it - all my tanks (450,150,90) have calcium reactors! I have another CaRx with a brand new 5lbs CO2 & CarbonDoser.com regulator, sitting doing nothing. I was contemplating hooking it up a hour ago but figured why? My alk consumption should be next to nothing so I put it away! lol

I don’t have halimeda macro so I should be good? I didn’t know that macros can uptake more alk/ca than SPS. My 150gal SPS tank consumes only 1.5dKh/day so this is crazy!$$&. For such a small 5gal SPS tank, I think that AFR is more than enough. Perhaps a CaRx might be overkill and rather bulky dealing with reactor, CO2 can, regulators, etc? People might think you’re on life support with that thing!

 

[dansyr]

Funny you mentioned it - all my tanks (450,150,90) have calcium reactors! I have another CaRx with a brand new 5lbs CO2 & CarbonDoser.com regulator, sitting doing nothing. I was contemplating hooking it up a hour ago but figured why? My alk consumption should be next to nothing so I put it away! lol

I don’t have halimeda macro so I should be good? I didn’t know that macros can uptake more alk/ca than SPS. My 150gal SPS tank consumes only 1.5dKh/day so this is crazy!$$&. For such a small 5gal SPS tank, I think that AFR is more than enough. Perhaps a CaRx might be overkill and rather bulky dealing with reactor, CO2 can, regulators, etc? People might think you’re on life support with that thing!

You should be good, pretty much just halimeda, because it's one of the heavily calficied algae and it grows super fast. Mermaid's brush/shaving brush and a couple others are also calcified but from what I know they don't grow as fast. Honestly some halimeda don't grow this fast, it's just a couple species. Being small tanks I just have proportionally too much volume occupied by halimeda (or clam & sps in the other one) instead of water. The simplest solution is to tie it into a sump or fowlr or something. But when is simple fun

 

[dansyr]

I've been enjoying the dove snails I got from drexel, they have been reproducing great and i've been trying to track their developmental stages a bit. Caught one that hatched last night, this should be about 1 day out of the bubble, about 1mm. Copepod next to it for scale in the zoomed in photo

Some egg clutches getting close to fully developed:

about a week old:

 

[bakbay]

Cool - what do they do again? Can you frag them and make millions later?

 

[dansyr]

Cool - what do they do again? Can you frag them and make millions later?

they eat algae and are cool? i'm not sure the best way to brand them but probably something with ultra and rainbow in there if you'd find them online

 

[bakbay]

they eat algae and are cool? i'm not sure the best way to brand them but probably something with ultra and rainbow in there if you'd find them online

Nice - congrats! So, what do you have now - OG Dove? I’m actually looking for HG, Gold, or 24k Dove. Rainbow Dove is for hardcore collectors so I’ll stick with just the regular Gold Dove for now.