Elder Reef

I got tired of inhaling a lungfull or two of Kalk dust every time I refreshed my top-off water, so I built a kalk reactor:

Assembly went pretty well, I had the 6″ diam. cast tube left over from my skimmer build; the rest of the acrylic came from TAP Plastics — love the fact that they have pre-cut circles as open-stock. I was lucky to find the thick top piece (3/4″ cast acrylic!), haven’t seen one of those before.

The 6″ o-ring was a bit tough to find locally. I ended up talking to one of the guys at Grover Plumbing in Vancouver, and he found one for me. Routing a groove for the o-ring kind’a sucked. At 6″ diameter, the groove was too small a radius for my main router. I used a Dremel tool with their router/circle-cutter attachment; worked okay, but the dremel was a bit wimpy for the task so the groove ended up rougher than I wanted. What’s important is that the o-ring fits and seals.

Water will be pushed through the reactor by an Aqualifter (controlled by a float-valve off my ACjr). Fresh water enters the top of the reactor and descends down an acrylic tube (can’t see in the picture due to milky kalkwasser) to the halfway point. Saturated kalkwasser exits from the top of the reactor and will drip into the tank through the filter sock in the sump. There’s a John Guest valve on the top, which I’ll use to bleed air out of the system.

Since the Aqualifter is designed to connect to 1/8″ ID airline hose, I had to come up with some kind of 1/8″ to 1/4″ poly converter. Once again, TAP Plastic made life easier. I bought a 1″ acrylic cube, then drilled and 1/4″ tapped it (for the John Guest fittings); then, I drilled 3/16″ holes intersecting each of the 1/4″ tapped sections. Each of the 3/16″ holes got a short bit of rigid (styrene) airline glued in with Weld-On #16. I also decided to put a check valve into the line to prevent kalk from backflowing into the ATO reservoir. They aren’t perfect, but a little bit more security can’t hurt.

Here’s the finished item (please ignore the vintage 1970s carpeting):

I tried to set it all up yesterday morning. I couldn’t get it into the space in my stand… gonna have to remove the skimmer first, then put in the reactor, then replace the skimmer. A PITA, but I guess the skimmer needs cleaning anyways…

Three aiptasia have returned from the ‘dead’. We are not amused.

“There’s gonna be a gumfight!”
High noon on the reef. My orange and my purple Montipora sps. are heading for a showdown.

It’s been a week since I fed the aiptasia Red Sea’s Aiptasia-X. There’s no sign of any of the aiptasia I targeted, though I have spotted one that slipped by; it’ll get it’s just desserts soon (get it? Cake? Poison! Just desserts! mua-ha-ha-ha-hahahahaha!) <ahem> Sorry. Damn, I hate aiptasia.

I’ll wait another week before offering up a final opinion, but right now it looks like the stuff is working as advertised.

I received my Aiptasia-X order from Marine Depot on Friday. JOY!

In the past, I’ve used Joe’s Juice to deal with aiptasia but it hasn’t worked well at all. Joe’s Juice is certainly good at pissing off aiptasia, causing them to spread, but it isn’t much use when you want to actually destroy the little buggers. If the information in the Aiptasia-X documentation is to be believed this is because products like Joe’s Juice panic the aiptasia, causing it to puke forth great gouts of planula then go into a biological version of lockdown.

Judging by the pretty pinkish-purple color of Aiptasia-X, the Evil Geniuses ™ at Red Sea have solved this problem by mixing the toxic/corrosive active ingredient with birthday cake. In addition to imparting a lovely lavender color, the cake makes the goop irresistibly yummy-smelling to aiptasia. To seal the deal, they added one additional secret ingredient: glue.

Here’s how it’s supposed to play out:

1. The noble aquarist moves the Aiptasia-X loaded syringe (which comes with long tips, much nicer than the ones Joe’s Juice charges you extra for) within range of the target aiptasia, and releases a small amount of payload.
2. The target aiptasia smells the cake, and though initially suspicious (”Hey, it’s not my birthday but… CAKE!”) can’t help but reach out hungrily for some of the delicious treat.
3. The aquarist moves the tip of the syringe to the oral disk of the aiptasia and releases more of the goop.
4. “Cake!” NOM NOM NOM
5. The aquarist gently covers the aiptasia’s entire oral disk with “delicious” cake.
6. Here’s where things start to get really twisted — the aiptasia, suffering the unpleasant effects of having eaten a bunch of corrosive goop, realizes that the cake is a lie.
7. Melting from the inside out, the aiptasia tries to expel the goop and release it’s larva but quickly realizes it can’t because SOME SICK S.O.B. has gone ahead and mixed GLUE in with the obviously-not-cake — glue that has sealed up the little bugger’s sole bodily orifice.
8. Aiptasia and planula melt away like Frosty the Snowman in an oddly-placed hothouse.
9. The Aquarist celebrates the elimination of the pest anemone.

I can vouch for steps #1 through roughly #7; whether Aiptasia-X can deliver on steps #8 and #9 remains to be seen. I’ll let you know in a week or so. Here’s hoping.

Oh, and even if it doesn’t work — kudos to the Evil Geniuses ™ at Red Sea. The product concept alone is pure gold.

I’ve added Chris Jury’s Renaming Our Corals article to the “Must Read” section of the site’s blogroll. It’s an interesting, though quite long article that covers a lot of ground.

I replaced the two Singlecontrollers on the Tunze Nanostreams with an AquaSurf module for the ACjr. So far, I’m impressed — it gives a lot more control over the timing of the pumps, allowing synchronization and fraction-of-a-second switching. By following the timing suggestions in the manual to alternate the flow back and forth (.8 sec, setting up an interference pattern in the 4′ tank), I’ve got a decent wave motion in the tank (1/2″ crest at the surface of the water). Supposedly, using this method a #6200 Stream can do a 2″ wave all by itself..

Now, I just need to win the lottery so I can afford to replace the Koralias with more Tunzes.

Poor #3 made an appearance this morning… stiff as a board, sucked tight against the intake on the back of one of the Nanostream 6055s The fish was iffy when I first saw it in the store but I really wanted at least 3 Lyretails, and that was all Patrick had sooooo…. $12 wasted.

There’s no excuse… I should know better by now, it’s not like this kind’a thing hasn’t happened to me before. I don’t think I’ve ever had a dicey-in-the-store fish make it beyond a week or so. No more anything-but-perfect fish for me.

Like many fish, Lyretail Anthias can change gender. If there is no male within a group, the most dominant female will take one for the team and transform into a male. I recently bought 3 female Lyretail Anthias and added them to the tank. Now, a couple of weeks later, the most dominant female has begun to change gender.

The coloration of the male Lyretail Anthias is strikingly different from that of the female; the golden yellow and pink is replaced by ruby red and purple. In addition to the coloration differences, the dorsal fin of the male sports a distinctive high-pointed “banner.”

In the pictures above, you can see the first stages of the change in coloration. The gold is taking on a reddish hue, and the pectoral fins have taken on a noticeable purple cast. I can’t see any changes to the structure of the dorsal fin yet, but I’m sure that’ll be coming.

I’ll try to put up semi-regular updates as the change progresses. Y’think Oprah would be interested?

I’m having problems with aiptasia in the nano. When I nuke them with Joe’s Juice they shrivel up, only to rise from the ashes a week later. My son lies awake at night, terrified by the subliminal chorus of the aiptasia… whispering their eldritch secrets of the deep… they whisper and they spread, watching and waiting for when the stars are right…

Fortunately, it seems that Marine Depot may have a viable solution. It’s not often that an internet retailer tries to save the world from madness and annihilation. Thankfully, it does happen.