- It's been a while since I've done an update
on what's happening in my tank,
so that means it's time for another video
all about the tank you usually see behind me,
usually just out of focus thanks to a 1.8
or 2.8 f-stop depending on whatever lens using that day.
Hi, guys and girls, I'm ReefMan,
and this video is the November 2019
update on my reef aquarium.
So an overview of the basics.
My tank is seven-feet long, three-feet wide front to back,
and two-feet tall, which works out
to around 300 gallons, plus whatever's
gonna be in the sump and the plumbing.
I have a bunch of acropora, a handful of different LPS,
and well, just small soft corals as well.
And for fish, I've got a pair of potter's angelfish,
a blue spotted angelfish, a yellow eyed kole tang,
an Achilles tang, a starcki damsel fish,
and a pair of clownfish.
And all of those fish are really model citizens
except for the blue spotted angelfish,
which does like to nibble away
at some acropora every so often.
So far, it hasn't resulted in any lasting damage,
so I'm not that worried about it overall.
As part of my acropora breeding project that I'm working on,
I'm working on getting moonlights set up for the tank.
I'm using the Neptune's Lunar Simulator module
and I'm working on actually resoldering it,
so that it doesn't have bright blue LEDs
and has something a little bit more realistic.
I couldn't find five-millimeter LEDs at 4,100 kelvin,
so I went with the closest that I could find,
which was a five-millimeter sorta medium-warm LED,
which I purchased from Newark Electronics,
but there'll be more on moonlights.
There'll be a whole video just about it
and the customization that I'm gonna do,
so don't forget to subscribe and you won't miss it.
My overall philosophy on keeping reef aquariums
is really that you should keep your hands
off of things as much as possible.
Get your water parameters where you like them
and at a good level,
and then, just stop messing around with stuff.
Let your fish
and coral adapt to the water that you're providing.
As long as it's high quality
and you're keeping your parameters stable,
they'll work it out
and they'll reward you with good growth and coloration.
The World Wide Coral Club subscription thing
was discontinued earlier this year
and I haven't really added all that much
to the tank after that.
I got a lot from that.
I did get a few things at Reef-A-Palooza this year;
a little rock flower anemone, a little frag of Jason Fox
beach bum montipora, and some ricordea as well.
These are actually the first ricordea
that I've had in my tank that have grown
and done well, so I'm really excited about that.
I haven't had any for years
and years because they always
just kinda melted away over time
and didn't do well, so that these haven't melted away
and I've had them for a few months now,
it really is making me happy.
I bought all my acropora,
except for a few things early on, as little frags.
I really wanted to concentrate on coral that was striking
and interesting in some way to me,
so that I would like it when it got bigger.
And frags do grow.
It does take some time
and some things grow faster than others.
But over the past few years, even the smallest
little acropora things that I've had
have grown into really sizeable colonies.
This green one is about the size of a basketball now.
And it's interesting to watch the frags sort of branch off
and grow into naturally-shaped colonies based
on whatever different growth form
that they're gonna grow into.
And it's always exciting to see exactly
how they grow because you can't always tell by their name.
Another of my early coral additions
is this tabling acropora.
I think that this is the Ultimate Table from Battle Corals
and it has really taken off.
It's pretty much crowding out everything around it,
so I think I'm gonna have to start thinking about
how to frag it or get it to grow in a different direction
without destroying the whole colony
'cause it's really pretty.
And so far, I've just been letting
my corals grow as much as they want
and when they meet each other, they fight it out.
The winner takes all.
Nothing has really done too much damage
to anything else so far, so I'm content with that for now.
Most of my coral is from World Wide Corals or Battle Corals
and I would really recommend both of the shops
if you're looking for some nice acropora.
They both send really colorful, healthy frags
that are actually pretty much the same color
when you get them as they are in the photos on the website.
The rest of my coral comes from local vendors
around Southern California.
We're really lucky to have a lot in the area.
One thing that I do like about Battle Corals in particular
is that you can actually choose
what lighting you want your frags from.
The provide metal halide, T5, or LED lighting.
And I think this gives you a leg up in adapting
the coral at home, because it's already used to growing
under the same type of light at Battle Corals
as you're gonna use at home.
I feed my fish once or twice a day,
either pellets or frozen food.
I give my tangs nori most days as well, but not every day,
and I've been trying to feed my corals more often, too.
I do think that they're responding to the increase in food
and maybe having some better growth
and coloration over the past couple of months
that I've been doing that.
However, I am walking a very fine line
with that increase in nutrients
and you can see in the videos,
a little bit of a cyanobacteria outbreak going on right now.
It hasn't gotten that bad
and is not in plague proportions,
but I'm gonna back off the feeding
just a bit until the tank can adjust.
I've been really happy with my DaStaCo calcium reactor
and it's output really hasn't impacted
my tank's pH very much, like some people report it does.
I do have it running through a chaeto reactor though,
so that's gonna soak up some CO2
and raise the overall pH of the effluent.
On my upgrade list for the tank is maybe replacing
the Kessils that I have nestled amongst my Radion lights.
They're really early original model Kessils
and to be honest, they don't work that well anymore.
I really should just probably take them down,
but they do a decent job at filling in between Radions,
even if you can't adjust the color anymore,
but the A360X would be a huge upgrade
and hopefully, I'll be able to that one day.
I've also been looking into the ReefPI project,
which is an open source controller.
It's kinda like a Neptune Apex, it runs on a Raspberry Pi,
and it's open source, so you can customize
just anything about it, control whatever you want with it.
I'm not really ready to fully take the plunge just yet,
but if my Apex died tomorrow,
this would be my new controller, I think, for sure.
(mellow rock music)
So that about does it for this tank update in November.
Pretty much everything is doing pretty well.
I don't have much to complain about.
I think I could get maybe a little better color
out of some of my acropora,
which is why I'm feeding them more,
so I'm interested to see if that feeding does adjust
the color and makes things look better all on its own.
And I'm also interested to see
if the moonlights make any difference.
Obviously, they will at end of potential spawning,
and did it help, I'm not so sure.
So thanks for watching.
Take a moment to subscribe if you haven't already.
And I hope you have a fantastic day.
Bye.