Our 37 Gallon Display with 10 Gallon Fuge.
- Thread starter Uslanja
- Start date
From what I understand the Worms are purely filter feeders, they have no light requirements either way. Make sure the coral is happy with the light, and dust the worms every so often with the phyto, or similar. I have mine on the sand but in a very open area (no shadow) and so far it's doing well. I've only had it for a few weeks.
Yours is very nice, I like the color variety. Mine is mostly blue and gray, with a couple of white. I'm keeping my eye out for one with some orange and red, and put them next to each other.
Yours is very nice, I like the color variety. Mine is mostly blue and gray, with a couple of white. I'm keeping my eye out for one with some orange and red, and put them next to each other.
Uslanja
Active Member
Hi Steve! Thanks for confirming our thoughts on lighting!
Hi Wingflier! Very nice looking Christmas Tree Worm Rock!! We`re actually enjoying looking around your tank in that photo a bit, you need to post more photos of it!!
We are getting the urge to change our rock formation around a wee bit. It never did WOW us as we had hoped and it has been such a challenge to place things in a favourable location. Currently it is an Atoll but things are growing and crowding the glass on the front and sides. We have a few things on the back of the Atoll, but they are difficult to see and impossible to photograph......... so we have been thinking of moving everything back and stacking it all up against the back glass. That would certainly open up a few inches of area in front of the reef on the substrate and hopefully make cleaning easier, we think! But that presents the challenge of cleaning the side and back glass where the rock touches. Or maybe we just let things take their own course and hopefully it will corraline up and look OK. And we are not sure what to expect when we start disturbing the rock and substrate. Any advice, suggestions, horror stories and/or opinions willingly looked forward too and accepted! (We must be nuts!! It would be so easy to just do a water change and then watch a David Attenborough documentary..... what are we thinking??!!)
Hi Wingflier! Very nice looking Christmas Tree Worm Rock!! We`re actually enjoying looking around your tank in that photo a bit, you need to post more photos of it!!
We are getting the urge to change our rock formation around a wee bit. It never did WOW us as we had hoped and it has been such a challenge to place things in a favourable location. Currently it is an Atoll but things are growing and crowding the glass on the front and sides. We have a few things on the back of the Atoll, but they are difficult to see and impossible to photograph......... so we have been thinking of moving everything back and stacking it all up against the back glass. That would certainly open up a few inches of area in front of the reef on the substrate and hopefully make cleaning easier, we think! But that presents the challenge of cleaning the side and back glass where the rock touches. Or maybe we just let things take their own course and hopefully it will corraline up and look OK. And we are not sure what to expect when we start disturbing the rock and substrate. Any advice, suggestions, horror stories and/or opinions willingly looked forward too and accepted! (We must be nuts!! It would be so easy to just do a water change and then watch a David Attenborough documentary..... what are we thinking??!!)
Uslanja
Active Member
A while back we had read a post from someone here on RS about changing out their bulbs. That jogged my memory and made me realize that the Corallife 50/50 PC bulbs that we run in the plastic canopy on the fuge needed changing. And..... that would explain the increase in algae growth as well as the beginning of a cyano outbreak on the top of our cheato. We have discovered that these PC bulbs colour shift very early and require changing out around the 4 - 5 month mark. I can't remember the last time I changed them (Ooops!! I have been remiss on my duties!!) We started to clean the fuge by isolating it from the main display and removing all of the live rock and fuge critters.
Live rock and critters are placed in buckets of siphoned off tank water.
Once we disturbed the substrate by removing the rock the water became real brown.... I wish we had thought of pictures before we started the cleaning!
The fuge was emptied and taken outside for a good scrubbing. This thing was disgusting!!
All of the live sand was scooped out and many small critters were discovered in there. We saved as many as we could find! We found four peanut worms and relocated those to THE 23 along with a bi-coloured bristle worm of some type. We think they are peanut worms? They tunneled into THE 23 substrate right away. Tracy was the brave one and she was doing the rescue work while I stayed a safe distance away acting the ninny that I am, (someone has to take the pictures!!) My girl is so brave!!
Once all of the critters were rescued the substrate was agitated and the debris was rinsed away in another bucket of siphoned tank water.
The bucket rinse water became brown very quickly!
The return pump had a good amount of "YUK" growing on it!!
The fuge was cleaned and returned to the stand.
The substrate was returned and filling it with clean change water began.
The cheato that showed signs of cyano growth was removed and separated from the good stuff.
The live rock and the clean (I hope!!) cheato was placed back in the fuge along with one hitchhiker crab and two hitchhiker urchins.
We had prepared to run an HOB filter on the fuge to polish the water from any residue that might have been in the substrate but everything appeared clean and clear. So we started the return pump and things stayed clear looking.
We kept everything in salt water and nothing had a chance to begin drying...... so we're hoping that we don't experience any type of mini-cycle. All in all it has been over a year since we installed the fuge and this was the first big cleaning that it has received.
Live rock and critters are placed in buckets of siphoned off tank water.
Once we disturbed the substrate by removing the rock the water became real brown.... I wish we had thought of pictures before we started the cleaning!
The fuge was emptied and taken outside for a good scrubbing. This thing was disgusting!!
All of the live sand was scooped out and many small critters were discovered in there. We saved as many as we could find! We found four peanut worms and relocated those to THE 23 along with a bi-coloured bristle worm of some type. We think they are peanut worms? They tunneled into THE 23 substrate right away. Tracy was the brave one and she was doing the rescue work while I stayed a safe distance away acting the ninny that I am, (someone has to take the pictures!!) My girl is so brave!!
Once all of the critters were rescued the substrate was agitated and the debris was rinsed away in another bucket of siphoned tank water.
The bucket rinse water became brown very quickly!
The return pump had a good amount of "YUK" growing on it!!
The fuge was cleaned and returned to the stand.
The substrate was returned and filling it with clean change water began.
The cheato that showed signs of cyano growth was removed and separated from the good stuff.
The live rock and the clean (I hope!!) cheato was placed back in the fuge along with one hitchhiker crab and two hitchhiker urchins.
We had prepared to run an HOB filter on the fuge to polish the water from any residue that might have been in the substrate but everything appeared clean and clear. So we started the return pump and things stayed clear looking.
We kept everything in salt water and nothing had a chance to begin drying...... so we're hoping that we don't experience any type of mini-cycle. All in all it has been over a year since we installed the fuge and this was the first big cleaning that it has received.
Uslanja
Active Member
Hi PSU4ME! We are a little worried about causing a cycle.... but we kept everything submerged in salt water so we don't think that anything had a chance to start dying off.... but we did disturb the substrate.... so...???? We're not sure, but we should find out over the next week or so. We had talked about not putting the live rock and live sand back in and just going with a power head for strong flow and cheato only...... but we do enjoy our fuge as much as the display, so in the end we put it all back together again. We're hoping we didn't make a mistake!
Uslanja
Active Member
It was feeding time tonight (we usually feed about 20 minutes before the daylights go off) and so we grabbed a few shots.
The Blastos quickly began to cup and extend their tentacles to catch some food
The Paly's didn't waste any time eating. It is always fun to watch them catch a morsel and then wrap themselves around it.
We have been having a very difficult time getting a good shot of the Christmas Tree Worms. We zeroed in on one of the orange ones tonight and it's not as blurry as the other shots we've tried. There appears to be some good polyp extension on the porite host coral as well.
The metal halide is so bright that we have a difficult time with over exposure.
The Blastos quickly began to cup and extend their tentacles to catch some food
The Paly's didn't waste any time eating. It is always fun to watch them catch a morsel and then wrap themselves around it.
We have been having a very difficult time getting a good shot of the Christmas Tree Worms. We zeroed in on one of the orange ones tonight and it's not as blurry as the other shots we've tried. There appears to be some good polyp extension on the porite host coral as well.
The metal halide is so bright that we have a difficult time with over exposure.
Uslanja
Active Member
The refugium on our 37 was recently given a thorough cleaning and we had hoped that a mini cycle would not occur. There was what we think is a mini cycle that had occurred about 10 days after the cleaning. We quickly cleaned the alga from the fuge but a small amount of cyno is growing on the cheato. We probably should just dispose of the cheato but there are so many amphipods and isopods thriving in it that we are hesitant to do that. So we installed a spare Hydor Pico Evo-Mag circulation pump that we had in the fuge to increase flow and hopefully eradicate the cyano.
Cyno growing on the cheato
The Hydor Pico Evo-Mag pump (this has proven to be a great little pump for tight spaces and we recommend it highly)
A shot of the pump and cheato in the fuge. This is a home made fuge using a 10 gallon tank and there is only about 6 gallons of total water here, so the pump has noticeably increased the flow. Now we're waiting to see if the cyno begins to recede.
Cyno growing on the cheato
The Hydor Pico Evo-Mag pump (this has proven to be a great little pump for tight spaces and we recommend it highly)
A shot of the pump and cheato in the fuge. This is a home made fuge using a 10 gallon tank and there is only about 6 gallons of total water here, so the pump has noticeably increased the flow. Now we're waiting to see if the cyno begins to recede.