Acropora Challenge

This is a study sponsored by the Breeder's Registry. I have four fragments as part of this study.

Acropora microphthalma

This fragment is 18cm from the surface, 30cm to a 175W MH bulb, 25cm to a powerhead on wavemaker switched at 1 minute intervals. Near some halimeda algae, ~15cm to elegance coral.

11/17/94

Total length: 7.8cm, Radial length: 5.5cm. Some new growth, polyps extend about 30% during the day, fully at night.

12/17/94

Total length: 8.4cm, Radial length: 5.6cm. Much new growth, maybe 2mm of encrusting growth around base, new axial polyps, longer branches.

1/21/95

Total length: 8.5cm, Radial length: 6.3cm. Some new growth, but slower than last month.

Acropora elseyi

This fragment is 25cm from the surface, 45cm to the 175W MH bulb, 36cm to a powerhead on wavemaker switched on 1 minute intervals. Nearest neighbor is a gorgonian 20cm away.

11/17/94

Total length: 4.6cm, Radial length: 3.9cm. The base has receeded about 20% since the piece was epoxied down. The polyps seldom extend. It is a little lighter in color, with slightly less of a green sheen than it was originally.

12/17/94

Total length: 4.6cm, Radial length: 3.9cm. Recession has stopped, maybe even grown back a little. No visible growth, polyps rarely open.

1/21/95

Total length: 4.6cm, Radial length: 3.9cm. No visible growth, polyps rarely open.

Pavona Cactus

This fragment is 25cm from the surface, 45cm to a 175W MH bulb, with slight current from a powerhead across the tank. It's about 20cm to some yellow polyps and the A. elseyi fragment.

11/17/94

Total length: 6.1cm, Radial length: 5.7cm. The color is a little paler than it was originally. There are a few chips in the growing edge due to falling over. A .5 x 1cm spot damaged in handling healed over.

12/17/94

Total length: 5.8cm, Radial length: 5.1cm. Something attacked it, breaking off numerous chips along the growing edge, hence the decrease in size. It has actually healed somewhat in smoothing out some of the jagged edges. It shows 0.5mm of new encrusting growth near the base.

1/21/95

Total length: 5.8cm, Radial length: 5.1cm. No visible growth, color is very pale.

Montipora Digitata

This fragment is 25cm from the surface, 42 cm to a 175W MH bulb, 45cm from a powerhead on wavemaker switched on 1 minute intervals. Nearest neighbors are yellow polyps and a Tridacna clam, both ~8cm away.

11/17/94

Total length: 5.6cm, Radial length: 3.7cm. There has been some growth; bumps are appearing that look to be new branches. The polyps are always open, part-way during the day and entirely at night.

12/17/94

Total length: 5.7cm, Radial length: 3.9cm. While the main bulk hasn't grown much longer, the numberous small fingers are definately growing. It also shows about 2mm of new encrusting growth around the base.

1/21/95

Total length: 6.0cm, Radial length: 4.0cm. The fingers continue to grow noticibly, as well as the encrusting growth around the base.

Aquarium Log

This is a chronological log of all measurements, changes, and observations relating to this tank. Also check out the coral growth log for the Acropora Challenge.

1993 log entries

1994 log entries

1/8/95

Added a green chromis, and 4 turbo snails.

1/21/95

Replaced R/O filter media. Measured coral frags: M. digitata: 6cm x 4 cm; P. cactus 5.8cm x 5.1cm; A. elseyi: 4.6cm x 3.9cm; A. microthalmpta: 8.5cm x 6.3cm.

I've been horribly neglecting this tank...

5/25/95

The sailfin tang died, cause unknown. It became skittish for a couple of days, then was found caught against the overflow.

5/27/95

Water measurments: Specific Gravity 1.025, Temp 78.4, pH 8.2, nitrate 0, hardness 8.1 dKH. Unable to get a clear calcium reading.

6/4/95

Added three juvenile hippo tangs and a rather large male mandarin fish

7/3/95

The smaller female mandarin harassed the new mandarin fish to death. It's time to get rid of her, or give up on getting a mated pair.

Water Quality

I test the tank infrequently (I should probably test more often). Test values mentioned here are from 10/19/94.

Salinity

Most recent test was a specific gravity of 1.026. This is a little high, since I target 1.025, but nothing to worry about. I will gradually correct it over the next couple of weeks.

Ammonia

I haven't tested this since the tank was about one month old. I'm sure that there is no measurable ammonia in the tank. I would test again if corals and/or fish started looking unhappy and I couldn't explain it.

Nitrite

Same as ammonia.

Nitrate

I test this every few months, using the LaMotte test kit. There has been no measurable nitrate (less then 0.25 ppm) since the tank was one month old.

pH

It currently tests between 8.3 and 8.4. I only have the Tetra test kit, so it is difficult to get an accurate measurment. However, this is also the target range, so I don't worry about it.

Alkalinity

Most recent test was about 9 dKH. This is a little higher than I usually keep it (I target 7.5 to 8 dKH), but well within recommended ranges. I use the Hanna titration test. Theil actually recommends a very high alkalinity, while many others recommend lower values.

Calcium

Most recently tested at 500ppm. This is high, and is because I used to use calcium chloride to keep the calcium level up, and let it get away from me. I'm using Kalkwasser now, and letting the level slowly drop down to around 450ppm. I use the LaMotte calcium hardness test for this.

Phosphate

I don't have a test kit for this. Since I'm using R/O filtered water, I'm not too concerned.

Food and Additives

I add several different kinds of food on different schedules:

Frozen brine shrimp, Formula I, other prepared foods

I add these mainly for the fish, usually every other day. I add only one type of food at a time, but alternate among the various foods. When I'm feeding brine shrimp, I try to squirt some of them at the corals that will eat it.

Chopped shrimp or squid

About once a month, the larger corals are given 1/4 inch chunks of seafood. I cut up the seafood while it is fresh, and then freeze it in a ziplock bag. At feeding time I defrost the needed amount, and place it on the corals with long tweezers.

Finely ground fry food

Every couple of weeks, I will dissolve some of this in tank water, and then squirt that among the smaller corals and other filter feeders. This is just to make sure that they are getting enough food since I don't feed the fish very much.

I also add a number of different additives:

Kalkwasser

I mix this up regularly, about a teaspoon of Ca(OH)2 to a gallon of water. A couple times a day, I add about a cup of this to the tank, pouring some into the sump, and some across the top of the tank. It is important not to add it too fast to avoid a "snowstorm" where all of the calcium percipitates out of solution. Some day I will build an automatic kalkwasser reactor.

Buffer

When I was dosing calcium with CaCl2, I added about 2 teaspoons a week. Now that I'm using Kalkwasser, I expect to need it much less often. I've been using the Kent Marine seabuffer.

Combisan

While I prefer to use simple additives where I know everything that is in them, I won a couple bottles of Combisan in a raffle, so I'm trying this for a while as an experiment. I've quit adding Strontium or Iodine separately, and am now dosing 1/2 teaspoon of Combisan every other day.

Strontium and Moybdenum

I generally use the Kent Marine preparation for this, adding a couple teaspoons a week.

Iodine

I mix my own iodine additive from Lugol's solution obtained at a pharmacy. I put 1 ml of Lugol's into a liter of R/O water, then does a couple teaspoons of this solution into the tank each week.

I rarely do water changes. When I do, it's about 10 gallons, and it happens every couple of months. I usually gage when to do this by how the corals look. If the corals go a couple of days without opening fully or looking completely happy, then it's time for a water change.

Initial Aquarium Setup

After assembling all of the equipment, I first filled the tank with tap water using a garden hose. This was to test that all of the fittings really were water tight. I left it this way overnight, and found that there was a slow drip from one or two of the plumbing connections. I drained the tank by syphoning the water through a garden host into the backyard, and then applied aquarium sealant to the leaky connections.

I then filled the tank with reverse osmosis filtered water, which took several days (my R/O filter generates about a gallon an hour). Once the tank was full, I added salt. I use Tropic Marin salt, and know that it takes a rounded half-cup per gallon of water. A 70 gallon tank takes about half of a 150 gallon bag of salt; that's a lot of salt. This was cloudy when first mixed, but cleared quickly. I left the tank a little low, to allow room for adding the rock.

Meanwhile, I ordered live rock from Florida. I recieved rock from two different suppliers, one case of high quality "deep water reef" rock and two cases of cheaper "plant" rock. I picked up the rock from the airport, and rinsed each piece of rock in a 5 gallon bucket of salt water before putting it into the tank. I had ordered several dozen astrea snails with the rock, but it turns out that they didn't have many available the day my rock was shipped, so I only received one dozen snails.

The rock was in pretty good shape, and there was very little die-off. Within a week there was no measurable ammonia or nitrite (yes, a tank setup this way takes almost no time to cycle). During this time, I left all lights off, to discourage algae growth. After two weeks, I started putting the lights on for an hour a day. For the next couple of months, each week I encreased the lighting by an hour until I reached 9 hours of full metal halide lighting a day. The actinic lights come on 2 hours before and go off two hours after the MH lights, for a total of 13 hours a day.

After about one month, I added my first algae eating fish, a sailfin tang, Zebrasoma desjardinii. A couple months later, I added a second algae eating fish, an algae blennie, Salarias fasciatus. After the tank had been up two months, I added my first corals, and considered the tank fully operational.

Aquarium Equipment

This tank is run according to the "Berlin method," meaning basically that all biological filtration takes place in the live rocks, and other than a protein skimmer, no other filtration is used.

The tank is a 70 gallon all glass tank, with a drilled bottom. It's 48" long, 18" high, and 18" deep. It sits on a wrought iron stand. I put a shelf of marine-grade plywood in the stand below the tank for the filtration.

The hole in the left side of the bottom of the tank is connected to a 2" PVC standpipe in the tank. The height of this controls the water level in the tank. The top of the standpipe has a plastic mesh on it to keep snails from going down the pipe and getting stuck in the plumbing (yes, it's happened). Below the tank there's a 1" PVC ball valve, and then 1" flexible plastic tubing down to the sump. The sump is a 10 gallon plastic storage container which normally has about 5 gallons of water in it. The water enters the sump into a basket of plastic "eggcrate", lined with course polyester fiber. This is the only mechanical filtration in the system.

The return from the sump is through a hole drilled in the side. This goes through 1" PVC pipe to a Rainbow Lifeguard QuietOne pump. The output of the pump goes through a check-valve, then 1" flexible tubing, a 1" PVC ball valve, and through the other hole in the bottom of the tank. Inside the tank this goes into a spray bar across the back bottom of the tank which sprays towards the front under the eggcrate.

Sitting in the sump is the protein skimmer. I'm currently using an Oceanic #4 skimmer, which is a venturi skimmer. Also sitting in the sump is an AquaClear 801 power head, connected to 1/2" flexible tubing which goes in the chiller. I've got a UMI 1/4 horse power chiller, with heater control thermostat. The output of the chiller goes back into the sump. Also in the sump, are two Ebo Jager 150 watt heaters, connected to the thermostat output of the chiller.

Also in the sump is a float valve. This is connected to the output line from my reverse osmosis filter. This makeup water for evaporation is automatically added to the tank as it is needed. While this is somewhat dangerous, since the R/O filter only generates about a gallon an hour, it can't put too much water on the floor if something goes wrong, can it?

Inside the tank, suction cupped to the back glass, are three powerheads to create more current. These are hooked up to a wavemaker that randomly turns them on and off once a minute. The top of the water is always in motion, and there are few if any still places in the tank.

The lighting is a CoraLife one-piece unit which contains two 175 watt metal halide fixtures and two 40 watt 48" florescent fixtures. The metal halide bulbs are Venture 5500K bulbs. The florescents are Phillips actinic/03. The fixture sits directly on the top edge of the tank, so that the florescents are about 6 inches above the water, and the MHs are about 4 inches above the water.

Painted Glass Fish

Avoid Painted Glass Fish!

These fish are not natural. They are regular glass catfish, with colored dyes injected into their bodies. It is a cruel thing to do to the fish, and makes them very prone to disease. They seldom survive more than a few months in an aquarium.

The glass catfish, Kryptopterus bicirrhis, is an elegant fish in its natural state and should be kept that way. Their muscle tissue and skin is transparent, so that you can clearly see their bones and organs. These fish come from Thailand, Malaysia and the Greater Sunda Islands, and are active fish which should not be kept in too small a tank. They like to lurk among plants with feathery leaves, and should always be kept in a small group as single specimens usually die. The water should be soft to medium-hard and the temperature about 75F (24C).