14 genera of coral in a vase for six years/allelopathy is not what we thought it was

[brandon429]

It certainly occurs on the natural reef as corals use physical and chemical means to vie for critical space, but in super hyperconcentrated reef tanks (old pico reefs) the corals exhibit habituation/stimulus desensitization and simply stop using the chemical means to any degree physical damage would register. Its true that most colonies are fragged too often to reach full size growth, but the corals have absolutely grown into place thats why you can't see frag plugs or the original locus of growth, its been laterally plated as the corals find their own niches within the extremely confined space. Since 2006 the reefbowl has been an interesting study of microbenthic life forms, live rock aging, sexual and asexual coral reproduction, even though its too small to keep a fish I don't miss them :)

There are some corals that do not habituate and appear to release terpenoids/active nematocyst or chemical X and they still include devils hand soft coral frags and gonipora frags, but in the vast majority of stony corals they can simply learn to share a gallon of water for a very long time. The bowl gets regular water changes, feeding and 2 part dosing, but its still a much higher coral to volume of water ratio than any other size reef tank for the purposes of making some general observations on nonspecific allelopathy in mixed scleractinia.

2012 updates:

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[brandon429]

and the movie to show the live action shot of the pics above taken last week


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5wGDrWIbM4

[allan]

Nice! This is your experiment?

[brandon429]

thanks for stopping in Allan! yes they are mine, the oldest pico reef in the world lives just down the street from you guys in lubbock texas near the movie theater on university lol
B

[Kristy]

Wow... so many questions come to mind. How do you do a water change in there? Just pour it out?

I definitely would miss the fish, shrimp, starfish.... something that moves.

[allan]

That is really an accomplishement. Makes me think I can actually leave a little tank here at work to give me something to do during the long empty hours.

You provide flow with the airbubbles? I'm guessing you have a heater in there?

[allan]

I thought I saw a fire banded shrimp in there?

[ErikH]

Hey, I remember this from about a year ago. Truly a spectacular feat. I forget the rundown on how you lit this thing!?!

[ErikH]

OH those are PCs? I was trying to figure it out.

[allan]

Sounds like a worthwhile effort. I can't imagine coming over to pick up a frag... and peering in at that little bowl.

"Okay, okay, one at a time. Allan! Move over, someone elses turn."

[brandon429]

yes its boring old pc bulbs! but I'll tell you this, the new LED systems don't grow crusty coralline and all old schoolers on my block like that look, its one of the few reasons I haven't switched yet. there is a gold coral banded shrimp in there, been in for about 45 months or so, a real long term resident.

older vids on youtube page show the bowl in its heyday where there was also a little boxer crab rip in 2011, they shared the tank for years by staying on opposite sides of the vase and not fighting lol
regarding movement in the tank there are some little details I left out...should have fed the bowl before the video to bring out about 100 tiny brittle stars, about 20 asterinas that move really slow, and a lot of pods.

the arms of the ophiuroids wave in the water, they make a lot of visible motion.

the water change is really easy, its weekly and I change all of it without even moving the bowl. In the lid where the incoming lines run for the heater and the airlines (heater is a 50w tetra preset) there is a large 1 inch hole cut and it stays corked throughout the week. its my feeding'/water change port!
I put in a small hose and drain it into the kitchen sink via siphon on sundays. I feed the bowl about three hours before really heavily with cyclopeeze, reefcleaners filter feeder powder and oyster eggs. The same amount of food fed and left in the bowl would kill it in two days.

this is a major feeding trick that pico reef keepers should use. very few of the methods we've been prescribed from larger tank keepers xlates over into picos that actually live years and not months. I only feed right before a water change, all animals inside adapt wonderfully to this technique and its key to not poisoning the bowl or overworking the sandbed.

then once a year I scoot out the bowl like I did in the video and roughly pour 20 gallons of water through it to force out detritus as Im back siphoning or letting it overflow in the sink.
bowl comes out sparkling, ready for another year.

lastly I dose the bowl with c balance in a certain manner like this, gives me the sps support and fugly coralline I love scraping every few months (back in my days if your tank didn't have coralline it wasn't proper)

monday half a cap of yellow bottle at 8 am
tuesday half a cap of blue bottle 8 am

repeat everyday of the week, change water on sunday, specs are consistently 480/11dkh/8.2 any time you check.

Regarding phosphate and nitrate I couldn't care less what they are, no algae grows in the bowl due to the peroxide technique:
http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=268706

[Squiers007]

Very cool! I might have to setup something similar to this at work! You mention you have 14 genera or corals in there... any chance we could get a list?

Sent using Tapatalk

[Europhyllia]

but I'll tell you this, the new LED systems don't grow crusty coralline and all old schoolers on my block like that look, its one of the few reasons I haven't switched yet.

I invite all you old schoolers to come scrape the coralline on my LED lit tank. Be my guest. I HATE it and it grows so fast you can watch it grow.

[brandon429]

the pics and vid should show:
dendrophyllia buried in brown terrible zoanthids :)
zoantharia
corallimorphs, red
protopalythoa
acanthastrea up top
montipora up top
acropora blue tip
favitesx2 variants
alveopora grown on side glass
blasto merletti
isaurus
duncanopsammia 15 header up top about to be encroached by montipora, we'll see who wins...

there are two more will go check another list of these I just did and post back! brb
B

[brandon429]

thats cool you have an LED tank with coralline we don't see that very often, nanos showing that combination aren't common like the tanks with clean walls. its usually a splash of sps in a very clean tank with hardly any calcification in the fine areas like the corners and walls of the tank, hopefully my coralline will remain like yours when I make the switch one day to free up all that lighting clutter around the tank.

coralline is the important alkalinity meter for the untested/dosed tank...when it begins to whiten thats a signal to up the dose slightly for another several months, to keep up with calcification in the bowl. Im up to half a cap now each day. one of many interesting differences between pico reefs and standard reefs is the rate of ion consumption when both systems are matured...the amount Im adding to my bowl each week would likely burn a tank 10x as big

we noticed this when others were trying to apply the same dosing to 10 and 20 gallon tanks and were getting 14+dkh/8.4 pH etc levels and dead animals. My bowl eats it up and barely holds params posted above, the number one reason you don't find gallon reefs out past a year or two is because we've been told not to dose in a system that would command near daily full water changes when matured. The dynamics of the micro reef are markedly different in several ways

consider this as well>the bubbler I used simply because it was cheap, the dynamics hadn't been revealed yet. The way the lid sits on the -inner diameter- of the vase neck takes all the splash and directs it back down without making saltcreep (notice the lid area is free of crust) so I knew cheap motion could be had with an airstone. After hooking it up it worked very well
It turned out with later online reading people were bubbling their water samples to degas CO2 before pH readings and it dawned on me my system doesn't store CO2/carbonic acid the way old tiny systems do with their bioload/bacterial respiration/detritus stores, pH fluxes and algae outbreaks are the bane of the usual pico reef once it hits two years. by degassing constantly, I get a really consistent pH between night and day and it also is an upwelling type of current, not just circular/laminar which may indeed play a role in the distribution of micronutrients/sandbed fauna, these are the details that work themselves out in time...

with full air input as the sole source of motion, there is positive pressure to vent under the lid so evaporation while restricted still occurs. I have to topoff 3 to 4 days

guys like cichlidmania26 on youtube modified the reefbowl in such a way as to go 12 days without a topoff, no tank anywhere can touch that in a house setup

he uses a powerhead for 95% percent of the motion, and only dribbles in a few bubbles to keep the lid space marginally refreshed. His topoff can go two weeks holding .023 to .0245, a reasonable shift over time. Thats a pretty big deal in reefing circles, to be free of the auto top off

just don't bump them with a nerf ball lol

the other two are frogspawn and caulastrea, frogspawn is when the side of the bowl is shown, its behind the alveopora on the glass

[CoryDude]

I invite all you old schoolers to come scrape the coralline on my LED lit tank. Be my guest. I HATE it and it grows so fast you can watch it grow.

I knew you'd have somthing to say about this, Mrs. LED queen.


coralline is the important alkalinity meter for the untested/dosed tank...when it begins to whiten thats a signal to up the dose slightly for another several months, to keep up with calcification in the bowl.

Thanks for posting brandon429. Very cool.

So, if you're seeing coralline algae lighten, you say to up your alk dosing. Does this apply to kalkwasser as well or just specifically alk levels? I don't test much either, and never knew to watch for this symptom.

[brandon429]

Cory Im not sure if the generalization would apply to other systems its just my bowl. I found in time the alk component was dropping when correlating to whitened coralline. the assumption is that increased acidic yields in the bowl are binding up free alkalinity, and its being registered in that manner. We've got a massive concentration of bacteria in the water and on every surface in the gallon environment, packed in detritus stores that the blast cleanings don't remove, fueling more bacteria as substrate, then there are the higher macro animals that take in oxygen and expel co2 and those are the best sources I can think of for alk command not even counting systemic calcification of corals and every shelled/tube animal on the live rock which number in the thousands. it seems half a cap has met the total system demand for the last several years so it hasnt been changed. I can only imagine how it would work without the air as the primary degassing source, guess we'll see in time as cichlidmania's systems age. Bacteria inside the bowl are the largest producer of co2/carbonic acid in the system Im pretty sure.

thanks for stopping by!
B