Joseph's 37gal FOWLR Tank Journal

[jgranata13]

Hi everyone, this is my first thread on ReefCentral! I've been in the hobby for almost six years now, but I only started in saltwater five months ago with this tank. I've been a member on some other forums, but I've found that AC and AA are more focused on freshwater, so here I am.

I started planning this tank three years ago, and the plans went through a billion iterations before I finally set it up. In the end, it's nowhere near what I planned for, but I'm really happy with how it's turned out. I can honestly say that I haven't yet had a single thing go wrong, and I credit that to all the research and planning I did. I won't go through the history of the tank, so we'll just start at the present and go forward.

Here's a video (ignore the biomedia majestically perched on the rock lol - I'm seeding it for a friend):
https://vimeo.com/118504550

Here's the details:

It's a 37gal high and I have two ocellaris clownfish, named Julio and Prisclilla, Queen of the Desert, and a royal gramma basslet, named Donatella. I don't have a cleanup crew yet, which is why there's all that brown hair algae on the back. I wanted to wait and see what kind of things would grow in my tank before going out any buying animals that might end up not having any food. Now that it's been five months and I have a pretty good idea of what's growing, I'm getting my cleanup crew this weekend.

My filtration is basically live rock, and I have an AC50 on there with poly filter, Matrix Carbon, and PhosGuard. I also have two Koralia 425s to help with flow since the tank is really narrow and my rockwork is basically a wall by necessity.

I look forward to my time on ReefCentral!

[jgranata13]

I just got an iPhone 6 Plus and the camera on this thing is incredible! Here's a high def closeup of the fishy friends :)

https://vimeo.com/118776765

[jgranata13]

I just got an iPhone 6 Plus and the camera on this thing is incredible! Here's a high def video of the fishy friends :)

https://vimeo.com/118867782

[jgranata13]

So it turns out that a whole bunch of what I thought was coralline is actually cyano. I have quite a bit of actual coralline on the rock that I got to seed my tank that I just assumed the cyano was new coralline, since it did look really crusty and opaque. I was wrong.

I just started a tank blackout and I changed my matrix Carbon and PhosGuard to maximize their efficiency. I'm going out tomorrow to get an RO/DI unit and I'll be doing a water change as well as physical removal once I've got that set up.

This is still early stages, and I'm far from an outbreak/takeover, but I'm doing such an aggressive treatment to nip it in the bud. Any advice?

[jgranata13]

The blackout was successful! Most of the cyano was gone, except for some of the more established patches. I did a big water change and scraped off whatever else was left manually.

I bought a Vertex Puratek 100gpd RO/DI unit. Toronto tap water's pretty clean, and I've only kept fish up until this point, but I've started adding inverts and I plan to add corals in the future, so I decided to start transitioning to RO/DI now so that the water chemistry can adapt and stabilize. I broke one of the elbows while setting it up, but my grandfather' really handy and he had enough plumbing parts that we were able to replace it ourselves.

I also started putting together my cleanup crew yesterday. I got a blood red fire shrimp, a sand sifting starfish, and three ceriths. I wanted to get a couple nassarius snails for the sand bed, but my LFS doesn't stock them because he doesn't use them.

As for the algae on the back glass, the only things he stocks that would eat that are astraea snails. Since I hate shoving my arm into the tank, going in up to shoulder every day to right the toppled astraeas doesn't sound very appealing lol. I'll start looking for turbo snails or something at other fish stores; otherwise, I'll just leave it. I'm contemplating getting a small coral beauty or flame angel, so having a big algae patch for it to graze on would be nice.

And now for pictures:

My sand sifting star fish, not on the sand:
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My fire shrimp:
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[jgranata13]

I caved in on Wednesday and decided to get some astraea snails. I have some cyano coming back, and I want to try and figure out where it's coming from, but I can't accurately determine what kind of nutrients are in my water with all that algae binding it up. The astraeas are already clearing it up, and in the meantime I've decided to leave my lights off to make it harder for the cyano to grow.

While I was at the LFS, I also picked up a little something extra that I wasn't planning for lol. He had just done a custom order, and there were three beautiful juvenile flame angels that weren't spoken for, and I just couldn't resist. I mean, I was already planning on getting one...

So I came home and did 12 hours of setting up my quarantine tank, doing water changes, mixing new water. My LFS keeps the tanks at 1.018 SG, so I decided to bring it up by 0.002/day so I would be at 1.025 by today. All his livestock is the healthiest in the city, and apparently most of these fish came directly from liveaquaria, and he had already treated with copper and PraziPro, so my "quarantine" was really only to observe for a few days and bring up the salinity slowly. I added Fiammetta - Italian for "little flame" :) - to my main tank this morning. Donatella, my royal gramma, was flashing up a storm, but Fiammetta didn't care at all - even seemed to be taunting her at times; they've settled down now and seem to be friends :). It's not letting me post a video now but I'll try and get one up later.

Also, two of my ceriths have disappeared from their shells. I didn't realize until this morning that it's probably my fire shrimp! I never see him so I that never crossed my mind. Gotta do something about getting him some more food...

[jbvdhp]

Congrats. Have fun!

[jgranata13]

https://vimeo.com/121062358

https://vimeo.com/121062431

[jgranata13]

Moved a rock tonight; I like my scape a lot better now.

Before:
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After:
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The one that I moved was the rock that I bought to see my tank (all the rest was dry) and I've always hated it because my rockwork was "done" once I positioned all the dry rock and then I couldn't find a place for the new one so I just threw it on top. It's leaning on the glass a little right now, but I'll epoxy it onto the other rocks in a few weeks if I like where it is. I still need to shimmy it around a little and maybe take a chisel to some sections to open up some more caves.

[jgranata13]

Today I made my own version of a Julian's Thing using an old bubble wand, some airline tubing, a couple plastic tees, and a syringe. I want to be able to get some more food right to the front of my fire shrimp's cave.
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[jgranata13]

I also changed most of my chemical media yesterday. I had ChemiPure Elite and Seachem SeaGel in there before, but I decided it was time to take out the ChemiPure since I have some cyano growth that started basically around the six month mark on the ChemiPure. Also, I noticed what could be the beginnings of HLLE on my flame angel, and since ChemiPure contains very finely ground carbon, I decided it had to go.

I still have the SeaGel in there, and I've also added an entire bag of just PhosGuard and a pack of Purigen. Once I finish the SeaGel I still have, I'll be buying PhosGuard and Matrix Carbon separately so that I can maximize the life of the carbon.

I also ordered a small pack of HyperSorb from my LFS since I have some extra room in my filter. After doing a bunch of reading, I found out that Purigen targets mostly organics and HyperSorb mostly inorganics.

[jgranata13]

I've mentioned before that my pH is always pretty low (around 7.9 or less), so today I did a test to see if carbon dioxide in my house was the cause. I know that a stable 7.9 isn't really a concern, especially for fish only, but I wanted to try and figure it out just out of curiosity.

I put a cup of tank water outside with an air stone in it. The air pump (left over from my freshwater tank) is probably strong enough to inflate a hot air ballon in five minutes lol. Anyways, I left it for an hour and then tested it. I tried to keep it at a constant temperature since I know that affects the saturation point of oxygen. The pH after the hour had gone up to about 8.5, so a small increase.

Does anyone get 8.2-8.4 straight out of their salt mix, or is that only attainable when you start dosing other things?

[jgranata13]

I have quite a few updates since my last post, so here we go.

Sadly, my flame angel, Fiammetta, died last night. Shortly after I noticed the HLLE - about three months ago - I moved her into my QT with completely new water (to remove all traces of carbon). I also wanted to monitor her more closely and start her on various vitamin supplements. I would've rather done this all in the main tank, but she had just recently started fighting with my royal gramma, Donatella, to the point where Donatella wasn't coming out of her cave at all and the blue trim on Fiammetta's fins had been nipped away. I was hoping that eventually Donatella would start coming out again and then I could redo the rock work to break up the sight lines better and put Fiammetta back in. Donatella still doesn't come out, but she sticks her head out a little farther each day.

After being away for a week (my tank's at my dad's and he's been taking care of them whenever I'm not there for more than five years, so I know it wasn't neglect that catalyzed it), I came back two days ago to find that Fiammetta's head was almost completely white. I was going to move her into the main tank in a clear container with holes drilled in it since I had just done a huge water change and I wanted to get her in as-clean-as-possible water right away, but I got side tracked with something else that was urgent and I forgot to do it. Last night, she lost her strength to swim, and started hanging vertically in the water, nose up, letting the current just carry her around. My dad called me and I rushed home and moved her into the main tank as quickly as possible. I know it was probably more than a little stressful on her, but I didn't think I had the luxury of acclimating (salinity and temperature were at the same level, at least) and I was certain she would just die if I left her in the QT. Once in the main tank, I tried feeding vitamin enriched mysis directly in front of her mouth with a turkey baster, but she wasn't taking it. After about six hours, she died.

I'm not exactly sure why she got so much worse all of a sudden, since her water was very clean (no ammonia or nitrite, nitrate around 0.5ppm) - and had been throughout the whole process - and she had been stable for two months until that point.

I'm sad to see her go. :( She was a very vibrant presence in my tank and I shed more than a couple tears when I had to take her out of the water for the last time. Such is the circle of life, I guess.

Other than that, I'm happy to say that the rest of my endeavours have been successful as of late. I did an enormous operation to manually remove as much cyanobacteria in my tank as possible, followed by two treatments with ChemiClean to ensure that it's all gone.

I also found the cause of why my snails were disappearing from their shells - I had a polyclad flatworm, since removed.

My sand sifting starfish died a few months ago as well. For that, I do accept the responsibility of not having done enough research prior to purchasing it. In hindsight, that was a lot worse than Fiammetta's death, because that could've easily been prevented. My LFS owner told me all about the miracles of sand sifting stars when I was putting together my cleanup crew, and I just decided I had to have one. His tank 600gal - a lot more than my 37.

My original plan (before the starfish) was to get nassarius snails. When I went into my LFS and he didn't have them (meaning that I would have to drive an hour to get them at the only other store in Toronto who I trust with livestock), that's when changed my plan to the star fish. I now have three nassarius snails. I bought five a week ago, but two were eaten by the flatworm before I discovered it. Next week I'm going to pick up another 7 or so - they're doing a marvellous job so far!

I also picked up five trochus snails - which have cleaned off basically all algae from every single surface in the tank, and seven scarlet-legged hermit crabs - which have picked all the detritus out of my rocks. Overall, the tank is looking wonderful! I'm hoping that, since I no longer have the flatworm preying on my snails, even if there are any traces of cyano left, they'll clean it up before it starts to grow out of hand again.

I've had my hands in and out of the tank quite a lot in these last two weeks. Pics of the tank will come as soon as I clean all the salt stains on off the glass from dropping water lol. I think that's all for now.

[Duke4life]

Kinda crazy how we get attached to these little guys.....

[jgranata13]

Just an updated tank shot now that my cleanup crew has everything in tiptop shape. Look at all the coralline encrusting on the back wall!

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[jgranata13]

I found another flatworm! I tried to siphon it out but the snail that it was eating and it got away into a small hole in the rock. I banked on the hole not having another exit and plugged it up with some epoxy. Just in case, I'll make a trap and see if any other ones come out of the woodwork. Here's a video of tonight's removal:

https://vimeo.com/133094594

[Umbra]

If you find anymore please pass them on to me!

[jgranata13]

I think it's time for an update, since yesterday was the one-year-and-one-month anniversary of setting up the tank! I wanted to do one in August on the one-year but I was on vacation and I completely forgot.

Unfortunately I lost my royal gramma as well since the last update. Even after my flame angle died, she never really started coming out again. During the week before my trip, my dad called me over a few times (I don't know if I've said this before but the tank is at his house and I alternate weeks between there and my mom's) because she started coming out and hanging around weird spots that she never really used to hang around before. I checked up on her both times, but I didn't really see any obvious signs of illness, and since that species always swims in weird places/positions that only made it harder to tell. So I gave him some basic instructions about what to look out for/what to do to try and keep her healthy and I told him to call if anything went wrong for more specific treatment instructions. The day after I got to Greece, he called me and told me that he couldn't find her anywhere. Long story short, I found her under the stand when I got back :( - I have one of those stock hoods with the gaps in the back for equipment so she must've jumped out through there.

So we're back where we started - my two ocellaris clowns that were the first two animals to go in after cycling, and a couple of inverts as well. I still have my fire shrimp (which I learned yesterday is an L. splendida rather than an L. debelius because I noticed white spots on the abdomen), which is doing well, my handful of hermit crabs, and some nassarius snails and a trochus snail.

It seems that there was only one flatworm in the tank, because after I plugged up that hole where it retreated into last time I tried to extract it (which was now six weeks ago), I haven't lost any more snails.

Losing two of my fish in such a short time made me rethink my approach. I knew it wasn't optimal to be away from my tank for a whole week out of every two, especially since my dad only knows the basics that I've taught him to care for it while I'm not there, but I've come to realize that I don't think it's just "not optimal" - I don't really think it's an option at all. All the things that have gone wrong sprung up when I wasn't here. Of course, there have been things that popped up while I was here, but I've been able to do something about it fast enough that it never became anything more.

Going foreword, I'm not planning on adding any more fish, because I can't justify it as responsible anymore. Once I'm living on my own and I can be with my tank all the time, I'll soup it up like an episode of Pimp My Ride :p - until then, I'll just have to be patient. My clowns have dug out a nice little cave for themselves (the intake on my AquaClear is right there so any sand they kick up gets sucked up and settles somewhere else), and there's an overhang right above it, so they spend most of their time hanging around back there. The thing that sucks is that I can hardly see them because it's pretty much enclosed by rock. My shrimp also hangs out with the now, and she keeps one feeler on each one at all times lol. I can't really think of anything that would be stressing them out and causing them to hide like that, and they're totally healthy and they do come out to eat all the time, so I just chalked it up to their specific personalities and I'll leave it at that until I have reason to suspect otherwise.

I am planning on getting some more snails though, now that they won't be eaten.

Now for a shot of the tank! My dad calls it the rock tack since it looks like there's nothing in it lol.
329656

[jgranata13]

We have some developments! My suspicion was that the clowns took up residence behind the rocks in the back because they were "making a nest," so to speak, and yesterday I found a patch of eggs on a rock right where they always hand out. I don't have the time or resources to raise the fry, so I'm just going to let nature take it's course once they hatch.

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Also, I got more snails and they've all been eaten, so I assume I still have more flatworms. Since Christmas break is coming up, and I'll have a good chunk of time to do a bunch of tinkering, I'm going to make a trap with clams and set it every night until they stop coming.

[jgranata13]

Here's what's gone on the last two months:

First of all, THE FLATWORM IS FINALLY GONE FOR REAL THIS TIME! Sorry Umbra, I caught it at 4:30 on Christmas morning and Italian family Christmas is too crazy to coordinate keeping it and facilitating a pickup. Anyways, I haven't mysteriously lost any snails since it came out of the tank.

As it turns out, I traded one snail predator in for another! Priscilla, my female clown, is crazy about killing my nassarius snails. She body slams them, fans sand onto them with her tail, flips them over and bites them, and even picks them up in her mouth and carries them halfway across the tank before dropping them! I think it has to do with protecting her eggs.

https://vimeo.com/155323296

I've been having a secret struggle with test kits (meaning I've never posted on the forum the 12-page rant that went through my head every time I had to use one) since I set up my freshwater tank seven years ago. I recently purchased the Red Sea Phosphate and Nitrate Pro test kits and I literally could not be happier. Every issue that I've ever had with all the other brands I've tried just aren't there. Of course, I can't be certain that the results are accurate (though the lab grade equipment and packaging really does point in that direction), but at least there aren't all those other things getting in the way of a precise reading. My one complaint is that the nozzles on all three bottles of liquid reagents in my kits are cracked, and I got burned by sulphuric acid a couple times as a result - not fun! I haven't sent them an email yet about the issue but I will soon.

Before I started pining after Red Sea, I used to think my Seachem test kits were the be all and end all, but now I suspect that they'd been giving incorrect nitrate readings for a while (to their credit, they *were* giving the correct value against the included calibration solution). Among my results with Red Sea, Seachem, and API, the Red Sea and API were similarly around 30ppm and Seachem was just around 1 or 2ppm. Of course, before I had Red Sea, I trusted Seachem over API, but now I think 30ppm is probably the right number, so I've taken measures to remedy that. I've done a bunch of water changes to bring it down to 4ppm, which means I can test to a precision of 0.125ppm with my Red Sea kit by diluting the sample. This way, I'll be able to pretty accurately determine the rate of nitrate production in my tank and implement a proper water change schedule (up until now I've been doing them very infrequently since I only have my two clowns and I was under the impression that everything was in check).

That's about it! Coralline has really taken off - my entire back wall is almost encrusted and I'm starting to see patches popping up on all the other rocks. I also have a million fan worms popping up everywhere, which I'm not too keen on, but I'll wait and see for now because I have a feeling that the population will limit itself and then start to decline. Here's a couple of tank shots:

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[jgranata13]

I had to nuke one of the rocks - can you tell which one?? Lol

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[jgranata13]

My first tank-related injury! I bought a royal gramma a month ago and have been quarantining/treating for some strange disease that I still haven't been able to identify. Unfortunately, she died yesterday, and water splashed in my face while taking down the QT. Now I have an eye infection!


Joseph Granata

[jgranata13]

Some updates as we approach the two-year anniversary of this tank!

First, the most exciting news: I have since started living more or less full-time in one place (my previous living arrangement was mentioned in some earlier posts in this thread) and I just moved my tank a couple days ago; now that I'll have it with me all the time, I can really start doing some things that I've been looking forward to for a while.

I was really down before the move because nothing had been going my way livestock-wise for about a year and a half; my flame angel died of HLLE, my royal gramma jumped out of the tank, a firefish I bought died the first day of quarantine (which I expect was due to cyanide poisoning), another royal gramma that I bought died of some unidentifiable illness (that's the one from the last post that gave me the eye infection), and all my snails kept disappearing because of that damn flatworm (these are all covered in more detail in previous posts except for the firefish). I was basically at the point where if my next livestock purchase didn't survive and thrive I was going to give up altogether.

I think my unlucky streak is finally over, though! Six weeks ago I purchased my second firefish and a green chromis - my all-time favourite fish because of the way their colour changes depending on how the light strikes them - with the goal of moving the tank by the time quarantine was over. They seem to be very healthy and are eating well, so I added them to my main tank yesterday. They already look incredibly comfortable and are getting along perfectly with my clowns! I named the chromis Isosceles and the firefish Carmen, and my mom gave them the dual set of names Godzilla and Vanilla, respectively.

I also had the chance to clean my tank really well during the move: I took out almost all the sand and gave it a really deep clean and took out all the rocks and scraped all the coralline off those hard-to-get spots on the viewing panes. Moving was fun and I enlisted my friend to stand by the tank with a spray bottle at all times and mist the coralline with saltwater so it wouldn't dry out and die :p.

For now, my only plan is to add a sun coral to the tank. I need to do some more reading, but I think it's pretty much the only NPS (I don't have any special lighting so even the really low-light corals are out) that doesn't need pristine water conditions (I don't have a sump either so intense filtration isn't possible on this setup). Regardless, I'm happy because I think they look great; and now that I have the tank with me, I of course can keep up with the feeding schedule that they require.

Enter the 65gal column "Experience" tank. I call it an "experience" because this is the setup that I mentioned in my first post in this thread, which has now been in the planning stages for four years. I'm finally putting that together, and when it's up-and-running I'll be transferring everything from my current tank over to that one; then I can start with more demanding animals because I'll have the capability to customize the setup to suit their needs.

Pics to come tomorrow.

[jgranata13]

I haven't gotten any satisfactory pics yet but here's one for posterity:

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160819/8f0431009b9d72fbee4904c507c60d38.jpg

Today I finally finished tying up all the loose ends from the move. I installed some shelves in my stand, cleaned my sand and put it back in the tank, and made some "jump blockers" to close the small but irregular holes at the back of the canopy so my firefish can't jump out. When I was moving her from the QT, she jumped more than two feet out of the bucket!

Also, I was looking in the tank tonight to see how much micro fauna survived, and I guess my clowns' most recent clutch of eggs hatched because I saw the fry! It was very cool and I definitely want to try raising a couple batches at some point when I have the time.


Joseph Granata

[jgranata13]

I think I lost most of my pod population during the move, which kind of sucks considering I added a $40 bottle of Canada Copepods just a few weeks earlier. Since the sand was so dirty, though, I had no option but to take it out and clean it once it got stirred up. Obviously I didn't lose everything since my rock stayed wet and some sand was left in the corners of the tank, so I'll just have to wait for the populations to replenish again.

One thing, however, is that I only put about a third of the sand into the tank that I had previously. I did that because so much of the bottom of the rocks were covered before and keeping it lower left some excellent caves exposed for my firefish to hide in. I'm wondering if this change will have an impact on the maximum population sizes for the pods, but I guess only time will tell. I'm also curious to see how my nassarius snails react. They still have enough sand to completely bury themselves, but the change is like downgrading from a mansion to a bungalow.

Finally, in hopes of creating some semblance of a refugium for my copepods with no sump/external refugium, I'm going to set up a rubble zone underneath that powerhead in the bottom left corner. I figure that they can reproduce in there safely since nothing can get in, and then those that swim out to to the top will be carried away into by the flow and enter the water column for the firefish and Chromis to snack on.

I also decided to stop using PhosGuard for a while just to see what my phosphate does on it's own because I could never really figure out if/how the media was actually working just by testing the phosphate level over time. It always seemed to start climbing immediately after changing the media, but I have no problem algae whatsoever, so it would be great if I can get away without it (since I only have a FOWLR system right now) and save some money.


Joseph Granata

[jgranata13]

A video for the tank's two-year anniversary!
https://youtu.be/WfVhorDZJ5g


Joseph Granata

[jgranata13]

It's been 12 weeks since the move and I finally did a water change. The water pressure at my mom's (where the tank currently is) wasn't high enough for my RO/DI unit to work properly, so I had to order a booster pump. Would you believe it took three months just to get one? My LFS has terrible customer service when it comes to special orders, and I wasn't even willing to try Big Al's. So I tried a Canadian water systems supplier a few hours outside of my city, and I was supposed to have the pump within a week; four weeks later, they still didn't even have it in their warehouse. I was so furious that I decided to cancel and order from BRS, regardless of all the extra charges, because I knew that it would arrive quickly, and I could also throw in some other items that are also hard to find in Toronto. I'm kicking myself for not just ordering from them at the beginning because I *knew* this would happen. (I didn't want to use tap water because my house is very old and I'm not sure what the pipes are made of, and making the water at my Dad's (where the tank used to be) and transporting it proved to be a disastrous endeavour last time, so my only option really was to wait for this pump.)

A little on the state of the tank as of now: right before the water change, nitrate was sitting somewhere between 16ppm and 32ppm, which is actually a lot lower than I would have expected it to climb. Considering it's a FOWLR, I'm not really worried about any negative effects going forward. In the last week, though, I did start to notice my hermit crabs becoming very inactive, and I'm wondering if the water became "too dirty" for them, since inverts are so much more sensitive. I also lost a few snails and a hermit at some point in the past month (can't really pinpoint when because school has been VERY busy and it's all been a blur), which was probably also due to the water. I changed 50% today and I plan to do a few more changes over the next week to try and bring everything back to normal. Surprisingly, brown and green algae really only started to show up in the last two weeks.

The thing that I'm most sad about - and I don't know whether this has to do with the water quality or not - is that it seems like my pod population still hasn't rebounded from the hit of the move; at least I know they aren't completely gone, because I still see a few every time I clean the filter. Like I said, I'm still not sure whether this is just a normal time-frame for the population to blossom again or if there's some other factor that's keeping them at bay.

Anyways, that's all for now. Pics to come once the water clears up!

[jgranata13]

Well, it turns out that my pod population *is* ok, after all. I went away for four days, and I don't have anyone who can come to the house and feed the fish on a daily basis, I decided to just black out the tank so that the fish would basically sleep and conserve as much energy as possible. When I got back home and turned on the lights, there were pods *everywhere* on the glass! My chromis was so excited and immediately started eating them all up! I thought it was pretty cool, so I took a video, but Tapatalk isn't giving me the option to upload videos for some reason :(




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jgranata13]

A video: https://youtu.be/eXOctiKGMaI


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jgranata13]

Just shy of the tank's three year anniversary, the tank has been decommissioned to upgrade the entire system! Here's a link to the new thread: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=25179989#post25179989