Tank Entry

I've been wanting to blog for a while now, but boy... is being a father of 3 like a hurricane, or what? Kids are great but they sure do drain a lot of energy from me & mrs.

I took these FTS pictures on May 15th to show how the reef looked as it approaches 5 years of age, with little changes in the overall setup. Little did I know that shortly after it I would have a "vodka party" in the tank, with a few casualties:

Right side:

...

Today I noticed a different form in the substrate, one I'd never seen before. The tank is 4 years old, so that was quite a surprise. I must have imported himwith the rocks and creatures I added on 9/Oct .

I recalled seeing something similar in shape in "What Invertebrates?: A Buyer's Guide for Marine Aquariums", which is a simple book but good enough for basic aquarists like me. The thing that looks like the picture is a Chiton, which the book says is safe. Looks like ...

Yesterday I visited a famous Brazilian veteran aquarist, Mr Joao Basso, he's been in the hobby for some 40 years now (much like Paul B), and in his recent years has experimented a lot with new tank formats and other DIY projects.

One of his recent inventions, about 2 to 3 years ago, is a tank system that has no visible overflow nor return, no visible pumps, uses a small return pump (aquarium volume turnover once per hour), looks super hyper clean and has incredible flow using a closed ...

A few days after my last post, when the new inhabitants had been about 10 or 12 days in the tank and I was happy that everyone was nicely extended, I noticed the Leather coral started to extend less its tentacles and the anemone also wasn't extending it's tentacles...

Strange...

I though of several possibilities, water quality, chemical attack from another coral, under attack from crab?

Water quality seemed OK. My PH, KH and Ca tests were normal (Mg not so ...

Now that water is at acceptable levels, after implementing Balling, I was thinking maybe it was time to try adding some corals again.

Then, guess what, I heard about a guy selling his 86L nano with all inside, thought the price looked good, and bought it.

Got some beautiful looking natural live rocks, two small peppermint shrimp, a nice small leather coral, a few Trumpets, some Zoanthus and Palithoa, a medium Galaxea, a small Xenia and some scattered greenish Mushroom ...