2(+) Year Retrospective of a 12g Nano

[zy112]

Great thread and happy two year! Love the zoas

 

[flricordia]

Awesome. Love the zoanthids. Tank looks beautiful. That is a long time to go in a nano. Must be doing a great job on it and it shows.

 

[goldenmean]

Thanks Zach & Mike.
I appreciate your comments.

This tank has been a labor of love . . . and really not all that laborious.
Now it has required a lot of attention but that is easy especially with this tank being in the bedroom.

There have also been some losses too which I will be chronicling soon.

 

[goldenmean]

Back to April `06.
I added a rock with a colony of blue mushrooms.
Zo brought me another addition that belongs on top of the tank.
You can see it in this FTS @ 4 months

 

[goldenmean]

In May we we going to Barcelona for a weeks so I added an ATO unit that I bought at my LFS. It has been one of the best buys. I hated manually adding water twice a day.
After we got back I start to notice some HH.
First there was this jet black nudibranch/slug. He just tooled around on the rocks and caused no problems. After a month or so he disappeared.
Then there was a patch of black and gray tunicates which disapppeared as fast as it showed up.
Then there were the bristle worms.

Early that summer the torch coral was doing well. Several of the heads had split. Then some of the heads started to not expand during the day. The coral went down hill from there. The flesh start to deteriorate. Some of the heads clearly died and the remaining ones were bad off. All other corals were doing well. By the end of July I had to remove the coral.
I'm not sure what happened but I put it down to them just not being a coral that that tank with those lights could sustain.

Love my hermits - Scarlet, blue legs, and electric blue.
The FTS is from at 7 months.
The trumpet coral is gone but check out those orange zoas.
The Open Brain is the pride of the tank!

 

[Dentoid]

Very nice timeline Jeff. Just got caught up on this one!

 

[hma]

Very, very nice Nano Jeff, congrats ... well done !

 

[kathywithbirds]

Awesome! I love hitchhiking corals too

 

[goldenmean]

Thanks Scott, Kathy, & Heinz for checking out my nano's lil thread and for the very kind words!


I had not added any corals for a couple of months so i made up for some lost time. I added 3 zoanthid colonies.
btw I had learned to do a fresh water dip of new zoanthids to rid them of possible nudibranches and other pests. The FW did does not stop the sundial snai.l A couple of weeks after the new zoas were added some polyps of one of the colonies was not opening. I removed the colony and did a close visual search. There was a sundial snail. Only one. They are such a pretty snail it is a shame they eat zoanthids. I was very glad I only had one.

 

[goldenmean]

At the 8 month mark I decide to get a fish.
My LFS had a new group of Amphiprion ocellaris but the guy that works there that I trust was not ready to sell them until they start eating so I had to go back 3 days later to get them. I bring them home and acclimate them and add them to the tank and one of them dies in a matter of hours. It really was upsetting. I call my guy at the LFS and he apologizes and the next day I get a replacement and he gets in the tank just fine. They are pretty small - juvenile - and one is just a bit larger than the other.
The larger one was pretty aggressive towards the smaller one and would chase him around and the little one would shimmer around.
I named the little one Omen and the bigger one Enom (yes - anagrams of nemo - eNom is the 2nd largest registrar of domain names and number 1 with spammers)

FTS @ 8 months

 

[goldenmean]

couple more pics from when clowns were added

 

[goldenmean]

A month after I added the 2 Ocerallis I wanted to add another fish.
Now I know this is only a 12g tank but I do have a very good skimmer and I am very diligent with weekly water changes. I was able to get a small fish that has a pretty small bio-load. A Barnacle Blenny that I named Bimbo.
Bimbo is the name of a character from the old Betty Boop cartoons. Bimbo played the character named Barnacle Bill.
In these pics Bimbo is hiding in some zoas but He did find a nice tighthole in the rocks that he peers out of all the time. Then at feeding time He darts out faster than lightening to grab some food and back to his hole. He does tour the tank but only in the pitch black of night. Then if I catch him with a flash light he just freezes. In the morning he is back in his hole, watching and watching.

The last pic is a recent one from last month showing Bimbo watching me from his home.

btw I have had all 3 fish in this tank for 15 months now with no ammonia or nitrite problems at all.

 

[framerguy]

What a cool looking fish...looks a little CRAZY with those eyes buggin' out!

 

[goldenmean]

He is a cool lil fish.
Rather ugly/creepy with a look that only a parent could love.
I really loce him a lot.

 

[tbittner]

That is a very cool fish! Yet another fish that I've never seen before.

Your tank is awesome!

 

[goldenmean]

Thanks Terry.

For the next additions I drove out to the grand opening weekend of the store front for Sharkysreef.com. I came home with a pagoda cup, a small xenia colony, and some ricordia florida.

 

[goldenmean]

This brings my humble lil nano to its 1 year birthday! :bday1:

The xenia never did real well in my tank. It split in two right after i got it. One part attached to the back wall while the other part dissolved. The part on the back wall would look great for a while then pout a lot then look good again. It slowly moved up to higher on the back wall. It survived for a few months then it to dissolved. I have read that xenia can be like that.

A close up of the pagoda cup with the polyps open

 

[goldenmean]

One of my LFS always has a Super Bowl Sunday Sale.
My next selections were some ricordia and a colony of Green Zoanthids.
Tragedy is about to strike.

I am quoting myself from other threads to tell this story.
From october-coral-month-zoanthids-palythoa.html

I always do a fresh water dip on a new zoa colony before it is added to my tank which will kill any nudibranch ( if not the eggs). BTW zoa munching nudibranches will become the color of the zoas they are eating so they can be hard to see..
IN Feb. of 2007 I added a new colony on zoas. All was fine for 2 weeks then I notice the new colony was not opening and polyps were disapearing. I mean they were just wasting away. It rapidly spread to the my other zoas.
I did a lot of research - read the threads that Techno-Vicki just posted a link to above. Long story made short. I lost the new colony, all of the orange colony and all of the teal ones too. I probably lost about half of the polyps of the other 3 colonies but I was able to save them. and they are doing much better and slowly growing again. They still do not look as good as they do in that pic above tho. It was really heartbreaking.

The teal colony started as an original HH on my LR when it was first added to the tank. About two months of the LR being in the tank One little teal polyp suddenly showed up. A few months later there were 5 polyps and a few months later they really started to grow. There were over 125 polyps in that colony when they caught the wasting disease. I could not pull that rock out of the tank to do a FW dip as it was the main stuctural piece of LR in the tank. It was very painfull (still is) I have not talked about this wasting disease very much but this seemed to be the place to do it to possibly help other zoa keepers.

From zoos-die

I am going through a similar problem with my zoanthids. I have lost 2 colonies and 2 other colonies have been affected but I am hoping they may survive. I found some great information on unexplained zoanthid wasting disease on RC's Zoanthid forum. It started with a new colony that I had added about two weeks before. (I always give new Zoas a fresh water dip). I threw that rock out right away but then a colony on my base rock started deteriorating There was nothing I could do but watch. A week later the colony of well over 100 polyps was completly gone. My other colonies did not show any signs of it until the 2nd colony was nearly all gone.


Fresh water dips seem to have slowed the progression of this wasting disease on a couple of my colonies along with small water changes every day.
I think I have saved these but have probably lost about 2/3 of those colonies. I have another colony that is clearly a different species and they have been unaffected.

 

[goldenmean]

Here is a full tank shot taken 5 or 6 weeks after last years Super Bowl.

The few orange zoanthis on the left did not survive.
In total I lost all of 3 colonies
I did save about 1/3 of 2 other colonies.
The colony in the center of the pic did not seem to be affected.

Right now I am noticing that the GSP are not looking too good.
In the next few months I lost them too.

My beautiful tank took a hard hit.
I was devastated!
it still is painful.

 

[tippMANn98]

THIS IS GREAT!! I love this....im still waiting for my year anniversary...