New member from Toronto

I just thought I would introduce myself. My name is Mike and I'm from Toronto. I've been in the hobby, on and off, since 1991. My longest hiatus was from 2004 to 2010; otherwise I've taken breaks of a few months here and there.

I currently keep a 60g Marineland cube that is dedicated to a single long-tentacle anemone (Macrodactyla doreensis) and a rose clownfish (Amphiprion nigripes). I'm just getting over an outbreak of red velvet algae which sort of pushed away my interest in the tank until recently. They were pretty when they were just a little patch but what a mistake I made letting the algae stay.

Up until this past Saturday, I was lighting the tank with a 250W Radium lamp on a Galaxy Select-a-watt ballast and Lumenbright Mini Pendant but have just switched over to LED. We will see how it works out.

I circulate the water using two MP10s. One is wireless and the kit to upgrade the other one is in the mail.

Here are pics of the tank when it was first set up in April 2011.




I should really take new pics. I barely remember some of the extra animals shown there.

Thanks!

 

Welcome to 3reef Mike.

That is a very nice looking cube.

Just one clown?

Very interested to see how you like the LED's and new pic's with the LED lighting.

MH Radiums are one of my favorite bulbs, I am finding it hard to make the switch from MH to LED.

 

Welcome to the forums, good to see another Canadian!

 

Thanks! Glad to be here.

I have a couple more small A. nigripes in a quarantine tank. I bought them expecting to lose one or both (because they don't tend to survive very well) and pair it up with the current resident but I'm afraid because she can be very aggressive. I also have a pair of saddlebacks. Those were the original clowns I had because I couldn't find a rose clown. But when I did find one, the saddles had to move and I don't have the heart to sell them. I wish I had a Magnifica since it's the natural host but it's too hard to find one with colours that could match my purple LTA so I'm making do.

I just did a direct swap of the LED for the MH and I was a little disappointed because I couldn't tell the difference; the colour was the exact same. I guess time will tell whether the anemone likes the new lighting or not. It doesn't seem fazed as of yet.

I added some pics:
Full tank shot:


The anemone moved to the back of the tank since those first pics:


Here are some weird polyps. I think they are blue, Australian polyps of some sort. I can't remember where they came from:


Here is the red velvet. I added 6 Mexican Turbos today to clean them up. Last week I scrubbed the rocks:


Here's more of the velvet and some coarser red stringy algae that I can't pull out. There are some green macro algae there, too. I forgot about that. I added a emerald crab today to help with that. I have no idea about the coarse stuff:


Here are some green star polyps that decided to grow on my overflow. The patch is getting bigger very fast; just like Zerg creep:


After Christmas I'll start adding more corals. I lost a lot of polyps that were "grown over" by the velvet and smothered. The GSP said, "ain't nobody got time for that," and grew over top of the velvet. Gotta love it. Now I have little pieces of GSP all over the tank that came off with the velvet as I was cleaning it up. Oh, you can see an elegance coral in the last pic, too. That's new so it doesn't look too hot just yet. It's green with orange tips.

 

I suppose you could try using some underwater epoxy and flattening out a piece and placing it over portions of the algae, leaving it in place for a week or so and move and repeat. It almost looks like a red turf algae, not sure though as I have not had the pleasure of that particular pest as of yet.

Interesting about not noticing a significant difference between the LED and Radium 250.

 

welcome, nice cube. Also glad to see more Canucks on here, specially Toronto.