today i'm going to go over a little more on the 10 gallon
reef but it's an experiment at this stage we're going to talk about sand bed a little deeper
i have some stuff to show you in the 20 gallon my star polyp is making a comeback
i'm going to show you a little bit of the xenia in the 5 gallon check this out
this was a gift from my son paul let me tell you the story about why i feel comfortable wearing
this when i first saw the t-shirt it was cool because i didn't see it as me oh look what he made
because of me it was about my son getting it for me which was cool i saw it as tom reefer
from outside myself without getting too deep and it was kind of cool it's a nice design
and it's the channel you know it's not about me and all humility it's
not about me it was about my son getting it for me which was cool so
that's the story behind the t-shirt and my feelings about it and my daughter noel
got me this tea it's my mug i already used it today once
so let's get into the video so guys i have to say my green star polyp is making a comeback
it's not as long and as a lush as it was but i'm noticing a large improvement
what happened here in my 20 gallon is i had a lush
green star pollock colony growing throughout about six months ago it started to really flourish
and then about a month ago it started to retract and i was not sure at all what was causing it
so more recently i did a phosphate check my phosphate was pushing 0.5 so i did some
lanthanum and a water change and i vacuumed the sand bed and i brought it down to 0.1 about four
or five days ago i think what i should do to film the rest here let's see if i come down low enough
looks a little crooked all right so i know what we can do hold on hold on
pull this back just for the just for the video here we go yeah so over in the 5 gallon
i was just cleaning the glass and i noticed how the xenia was starting to creep up the
rock a little bit and i thought that might be cool to show you guys i also wanted to show you
how the xenia is doing here i got a view of this while i was cleaning the glass a few minutes ago
this is the way it grows what it does is about halfway up the stalk
it kind of connects to the live rock and then it pulls away so this piece here
has actually come from this piece here and it's now pulling away
very cool right and that's how it grows this probably will grow
up this live rock and maybe keep growing it's going to be interesting to see where it goes
the flower rocks are looking nice and colorful i almost forgot this the algae growth on the glass
is far different from what i've ever seen before so let's take a look at what's happening with the
algae in the 10 gallon i wanted to show you guys the update on this algae on the back glass in all
my years i've never seen it grow this long off the back glass it's not hair it's a branching type a
filamentatious branching type that's growing right off the glass and there's several kinds
you can see it there it's a different type of algae but it's growing really long off the glass
all right in this segment i'm going to talk a little bit about sand bed i've been avoiding to
do the proverbial sand bed versus bare bottom it's not about that it's about preference what you like
but if you're going to use a sand bed you have to take along what comes with it and you can't
just let it sit there forever alright let's take a look at the sand bed see what's going on and
i'll give you a little bit of an educated opinion not completely opinion because in my experience
i found certain things to be true with the sand bed so let's take a look at it alright so this
is my take guys on the sand bed this is opinion now uh first i wanted to mention that look at how
this if you want to call it crater is formed and that's from the mini wave over time it's slightly
moving the sand around but it's hasn't grown too much over the last couple days but it's
kind of cool like that so i don't mind that at all but my point is this years ago
deeper sand beds of two inches or more were thought to be denitrifiers but in my opinion
that's not working because what happens is they collect old food fish excrement and they become
nutrient and nitrate sinks you know they collect and it takes a lot of time so it's not going to
happen even in the first three to six months sometimes longer but over a year if you start
to see your phosphate increase chances are it's going to be because of your sand bed
i can't really see what the back is like it's a little dark i think i don't know
there it is the back all right all right guys if i use this sand bed or any sand bed
i will vacuum initially maybe only once a month uh but if i see phosphate rising then i would
do it as i did water changes almost weekly maybe a portion of it the idea of losing your bacteria
culture by vacuuming your sand bed does not work you have enough bacteria culture in your live rock
and other things those sides of your aquarium by vacuuming your sand bed you're
not going to kill your bacteria culture i wouldn't do it right at the beginning
and i wouldn't do it if your sand is bought sand that they say is live sand because that culture in
there is not as heavy as what you see here this is six year old sand from an established system
i almost forgot this one the potassium guys we got one there
we got one there another one up there and in the back we have a couple more there and back there
so what we're gonna do is let these grow up and then i'm gonna put some kind of natural
eradicator in there like a peppermint shrimp and have him devour all these because he eats them
in my 20 gallon no problem this is also why i want to recommend going slow with your tanks guys
you know you put all these nice corals in the your first week or so with live rock and then suddenly
a passion burst onto the scene and start stinging your nice corals the best success is to go slow
eradicate them and then start adding coral
i think i covered everything guys so have a great day it's gonna be sunday have a great day
i'll see you on wednesday hopefully it's the day before new year's eve so water
change wednesday we'll come up with something all right take care now guys have a great day
all right guys that does it for this one i know i agree looks good but i think it's kind of cool
and remember because of my son all right so you can see the t-shirt from the back take care guys