trouble in paradise

Posted on March 31, 2013 by An Bollenessor under aquarium update, planted aquarium, seaweeds

A very corny title indeed but wordpress recommended trying to come up with catchy post titles so that’s my excuse… I was very pleased with the way the tank looked after my first serious session of aquascaping. My satisfaction of course did not last for too long. First, I noticed that the water turned cloudy the next day as the result of a bacterial bloom. I quickly changed two buckets of sea water and turned on the skimmer (the Red Sea Max stock skimmer makes an unholy noise and so is usually only on at night (if I don’t forget)). This seemed to help and the water turned clear again within two days or so. I had not expected a bloom to occur, as I added seaweeds (removing nutrients) rather than animals (adding nutrients), plus I had not been feeding frozen artemia for a while. Anyway, this problem has been solved. It is probably better next time to change the tank in multiple steps rather than making wholesale changes. I next noticed the Harpoon weed starting to whither. This has happened before so it was not a real surprise. A close-up of the Harpoon weed when it was still looking good:

Some Slender-beaded coral weed made it into the aquarium attached to other weeds. As expected, this weed also died and turned white:

I next noticed that the branchlets of the Red grape weed turned from a dark purple-brown into a fresh green. Although pretty, that this was not a change for the better was obvious when upon touching the plant many of the branchlets were shed. I removed this plant before this debris would clog the filter.

The main thing that disappointed me though is that the Bushy rainbow wrack steadily lost its iridescent colors and turned into the brown of the other Bushy wrack species. The fact that I had bright blue, green and purple in my aquarium was the most amazing thing about it. Before and after pics:

I reckon this has to do with the light spectrum not being right. The colors are reminiscent of the Jade vine from the Philippines. Its coloration is the result of two pigments, malvin and saponarin, being present at a specific ratio at a specific alkalinity (wikipedia again). Both Jade vine and Bushy rainbow wrack seem to be fluorescent to my non-expert eye, although a quick search on google did not give me anything on fluorescent plants. Anyway, I will make it my goal in life to find the light conditions that bring back these colors!

To properly experiment with any seaweed it will be desirable to be able to vary the light spectrum and intensity. Probably the best way to go is LED lights, although I am not very knowledgeable about lighting yet and it is all quite complicated (LUX, PAR, micro-Einsteins, Kelvin ratings…) It is also not clear to me if (affordable) LED options are on the market that actually allow you to adjust the light spectrum. I will ask around on some forums. It could also be that the light intensity is not right; I have only used one of the two fluorescent T5 lamps provided with the Red Sea Max 130D as I found the lighting too bright when I started. However, now the tank is full of seaweeds, more of the light will be absorbed and it might not look like I have a tanning bed in the living room. I will pop the other light in and see. The RSM lights are so-called 50/50 lamps that give 50% ‘day light’ and 50% ‘actinic’ (blue) light. Who knows some extra actinic light will help. I need to read up on the subject. There must be other factors as well. For instance room temperature might be too high for some species (this reminds me I need to buy a thermometer!). The Bushy berry wrack, False eyelash weed and Wireweed seem to be doing OK though. Here a picture of Wireweed:

The tank a week after planting:

some serious aquascaping

Posted on March 28, 2013 by An Bollenessor under aquarium update, planted aquarium, seaweeds

With the seaweeds collected, it was time to plant my aquarium. This time I took a more serious approach, I planted lots. Many of the seaweeds had bits of rock attached to their holdfasts which made it easy to anchor them in the gravel. Two of the weeds I tied to rocks with a piece of elastic band, easy peasy:

View from the left side. False eyelash weed Calliblepharis jubata in the front, tall Wireweed Sargassum muticum and in the middle some coarse brown sea weed which almost looks like a dead conifer. This is probably Bushy berry wrack Cystoseira baccata:

An expanded view, on the right some Red grape weed Gastroclonium ovatum, in the middle the red pluck of Dudresnays whorled weed Dudresnaya vertillicata that I already had:

A goby amidst the False eyelash weed lying on top of what may be Purple claw weed, I am not sure:

The magnificently coloured Bushy rainbow wrack Cystoseira tamariscifolia covered in green Snakelocks anemones Anemonia viridis. In the foreground the pink Slender-beaded coral weed Jania rubens and Harpoon weed Asparagopsis armata.

A close-up of the Bushy rainbow wrack. Other plants were bright green or purple. I never knew that seaweeds existed with these iridescent colours. In fact, when I glimpsed one for the first time in a rock pool I disregarded it because I thought it was some seaweed covered in oil slick! These weeds are also have a very cartilaginous texture which give them more of an animal-like appearance.

I discovered several small whitish Sea lemon nudibranchs Archidoris pseudoargus, very cool.

Protected: in search for new seaweeds

Posted on March 27, 2013 by An Bollenessor under seaweeds

first attempts at aquascaping

Posted on March 27, 2013 by An Bollenessor under anemones, aquarium update, planted aquarium, Red Sea Max 130D, seaweeds

I am not sure if I like the term aquascaping much because of it’s connotations with gardening and I like a more natural look. However, aquascaping is the general term for arranging plants in an aquarium nowadays and that is what I attempt to do as well with seaweeds. (Also, I cannot pretend that my tank looks particularly like a real rock pool…). Anyway, I will post some more thoughts on the topic of aquascaping, marine or fresh water, later but for now just wanted to show some of the first attempts at planting my aquarium, It is challenging to make any tank look ‘right’, but I found it particularly hard to recreate a rock pool feel. I soon found out that I did not have enough rock in the tank and so hauled some *heavy* ones from a nearby beach. The bare tank:

Some wrack added (I cannot remember what species and cannot tell from the picture, it did well though). A strawberry anemone Actinia fragacea on the right.

Another version with Serrated wrack Fucus serratus (left), a small mop of Dudresnay’s whorled weed Dudresnaya vertillicata (far left) and some Solier’s red string weed Soliera chordalis (middle and right). A bit messy:

A worm pipefish, dog whelk and hermit crab in front of the serrated wrack. There is a lot of algal growth and detritus on the wrack. (I have since bought a circulation pump to keep detritus in suspension so it can go into the filter, more about that later).Another go. The nice thing about having an aquarium with native species is that you can collect them yourself, which is half the fun (and free), and when something does not work out you just chuck it back and try something else. The green seaweed is velvet horn Codium tomentosum, the long brown seaweed is wireweed Sargassum muticum. Both did well, the wireweed grew quite fast, perhaps not a surprise as it is an invasive species in the UK. The red seaweed on the left is dulse Palmaria palmata, on the right harpoonweed Asparagopsis armata. The harpoonweed was not exactly thriving and the dulse was quickly eaten by the prawns:Recently, I noticed the Dudresnay’s whorled weed (love that name) sprouting from the rocks everywhere. This happened some months after removing a pluck of this weed from the aquarium. Up till then I had just planted seaweeds, but having them establish spontaneously I had not seen before. Most of the newly established weeds are only a couple of centimeters and do not seem to grow very fast, but the two weeds pictured above grew to 10 centimeters in a couple of weeks. Perhaps very local conditions in the aquarium matter.