Nano Reef Aquarium

I have today finally made it to one of my local fish shops. I managed to get hold of a peppermint shrimp, although i wanted two. These seem very difficult to get hold of at the moment. My other purchase was a mythrax crab, to munch away on the overwhelming amount of bubble algae. I have just checked my water parameters that now have been resolved. Alkalinity is back to 9.0 and the corals are starting to look better for it too. Whilst on my trip to local fish shop i stumbled upon some great 25ml syringes, these are fantastic for adding my balling lite supplements and feeding prepared foods. Fingers crossed. My next post will be good news with reduced bubble algae and aiptasia.

I have just returned from probably the best holiday i have ever had in Rhodes, Greece in a place called Kiotari. All inclusive. Only to return to even more algae, I cant believe my luck with this hobby. Time to refresh the rowaphos in my reactor although not due.  You May have noticed that i have not wrote many posts recently, this is because of a long ongoing project in the en suite. This has taken about a month and a half to complete. I don't even like to think how much this has cost. This in turn has had an effect on the time and effort placed in my reef aquarium. Some of my parameters or out of range. Salinity is a little high and Alkalinity is low, 6.4. So i have just removed a few litres of water and replaced with fresh RO water. And Alkalinity is being rectified slowly over next few days. Hopefully this should start to improve in the next few days. I have had a check at my supplement's and a few test kits are running low and my salt supply is almost used so i am goin...

Aiptasia and green bubble algae are about to defeat me. I am becoming unable to control aiptasia and green bubble algae. The only solution other than pulling all my hair out from using aiptasia x and removing bubble algae one by one, only to find it seems to double every time i do this. Is to use natural cures. Namely  a Mythrax crab to eat the bubble algae and a Peppermint shrimp to consume all the plagued aiptasia. If there are any UK readers in the midlands area have any of these please contact me as these seem to be hard to come by. Some good news though, the reactor i bought in July has certainly done the trick. Green algae has all gone and remains that way. So if you have bad hair algae you must get yourself a phosphate reactor.

I have a lighting dilemma and don't no what to do. I am considering two options. I will be keeping my Led lighting, but i am thinking of building a new hood. This could incorporate either T5 lighting with that i already have. These will be stripped out of it's frame and placed in new hood. The other option is creating a new hood that could incorporate a 150watt metal halide unit. Both these options include my current led lighting of three reef white and one blue aqua beam. With these options in mind i am only wanting to use this additional lighting for about four hours per day to keep utility bill costs down. My most favourable option is T5s but unsure if this will be sufficient for SPS corals. I also think running costs between the two will be very little. Please express your opinions and thoughts to aid my decision.

I have been getting ready for some new corals recently. So decided to place an advert on Ultimate Reef to get rid of some of my soft corals to make way for more LPS and SPS corals. The very next day i had a reefer collect a mushroom, zoa and toadstool coral. This allowed me to purchase a Favia coral which i put first dibs on a few weeks ago. With a couple of SPS frags thrown in. here's my latest additions. Favia SPS frag. Top left and Right I am jost waiting and hoping on the sale of a large toadstool coral and two zoas corals on live rock to free up more cash for more SPS frags.

Well 2010 hasn't been the best year for my reef aquarium. But i am hoping 2011 is going to be much better. I have better aquarium control with a reactor for phosphate control, replaced transformers for my LED Lighting, and some proper flow courtesy of the Vortech MP10. With balling light in use i can report things or finally looking good. 2011 should see me sell all my soft corals to prevent some chemical warfare with hard corals. This in turn will allow me to purchase some more LPS and SPS corals as well as a triple doser to aid "balling light" and maybe some additional lighting for the light demanding corals. This will be my last post before 2011 with that in mind i hope that all your aquariums flourish with growth and colour in 2011.