Let the adventure begin redux
 

My third attempt at posting this....I guess I should wait until after reefcentral finish their server maintenance :)

This is my first lagoon/seagrass tank, a 29 gallon, which I just set up on Monday.

[IMG]http://reefcentral.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=224690&papass=&sort=1&thecat=500[/IMG]

The first couple of inches are a mixture of 20 lbs of Seachem's Meridian Oolitic Aragonite and a gallon of Caribsea's Refugium Mineral Mud. On top of that is 90 lbs. of Caribsea's Sugar-Sized sand. It's sloped from front to back, so there's a total of about 5" in the front and 7" in the back.

[IMG]http://reefcentral.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=224694&papass=&sort=1&thecat=500[/IMG]

I hope I'm off to a good start :)

After the tank cycles, I'm going to add a couple of pieces of cured Florida live rock from an LFS to seed the sandbed. I'm not currently planning on adding any live sand (certainly, not anything from a plastic bag that may have been sitting on a retailer's shelf for months). In the past, I've never added any live sand to any of my tanks, and after a few months, they all developed very active sandbeds.

I have questions....

I'm thinking of adding a detrivore kit, i.e. macroalgae, amphipods, mysis, other wee beasties....I'll only use a skimmer if the nitrates get too high, so this will be a reasonably nutrient-rich tank, but I think I have to keep the water flow up (volume, not necessarily speed) to keep the seagrasses happy. Will that be a good environment for amphipods/mysis etc.?

I'm usually pretty patient when setting up a tank, but not Anthony Calfo-patient. He recommends waiting for a year before planting seagrasses......he's a smart guy, but I think that's a little extreme. However, it will probably be mid-December before I'm ready to order any seagrasses. My understanding is that most of them go through a yearly cycle, dying off in the colder months...is it a bad idea to try ordering/planting them in winter?

Lighting...I'm dithering between using a 150 watt 65K pendant, or a 250 watt 10K HQI fixture...it's a 29 gallon tank, and will be about 14" from the surface of the water to the lowest point in the tank. Recommendations?

Thanks to anyone who has made it this far through my lengthy post...and more thanks to Sarah Lardizabal for inspiring me to set up this tank!

-R

Since you added mud to the sand bed the wait wont need to be long. I waited 6 months with my seagrass tank, but I didnt add any mud so I waited for the fish poo and stuff to build up a bit. 150 watts MH will be more than enough, but I think you'll be more pleased with a 10k bulb, and the growth will be fine. Purchasing the grasses in December will be fine provided you can find a supplier willing to ship, some wont. Are you planning on any other livestock? Consider a small pile of LR rubble as opposed to a 2 or 3 larger rocks. It'll create more living space for the pods and stuff.

Keep the pics coming, cant wait to watch it progress.

I would definitely wait on adding the grass. I'm not sure if it's because my lighting was insufficient or because I added it too soon, but both times I have tried keeping seagrass it just slowly died off. I'm going to let my tank mature and maybe try again in the summer, and I'm thinking about upgrading my lighting too. The lighting options you have should both fare better than mine.

As for the lights, 250w would be way overkill. Go with either a 150 or 175, Iwasaki makes nice 6500K bulbs.

Thanks everyone for the advice and encouragement!

graveyardworm, I'm not sure about other livestock. Definitely a couple of flower anemones, and probably some macros like Mermaid's Fan and Shaving Brush. Any suggestions?

I will take your advice about the LR rubble.

I will certainly post more pics...once something interesting happens :)

-Robert

I guess what I'm getting at by suggesting other livestock is 1) something to make watching the tank a bit interesting, watching seagrass grow tends to lose its novelty quickly, and 2) a means a loading the sand bed with detritus and nutrients so that it becomes and stays mature for your seagrasses.

Chucks Addiction has some great first hand info and pics Indo/Pacific from seagrass beds.

[url]http://home2.pacific.net.ph/~sweetyummy42/zone1.html[/url]

Have you seen the RK mag seagrass article, or the Anthony Calfo one?

Oh, you mean *fish*...I always forget about them, lol :)

I have seen Calfo's article, and Sarah Lardizabal's (the one in RK) is the one that inspired me to set up this tank.

Thanks for the link...interesting reading!

I am going to keep this tank strictly Caribbean, so my fish choices are limited. I'm considering a Royal Gramma (have had them in the past....well-behaved, beautiful, hardy, and....cheap!), Flame Cardinal, or Sunshine Chromis.

I'm still unpacking (just moved... setting up a tank is more fun than emptying boxes) and found my copy of Scott Michael's "Reef Fishes"...between that and Tullock's "Natural Reef Aquariums" I'm getting lots of good ideas for fish.

I'd appreciate any suggestions you might have.

Again, thanks for your replies.....people like you make this hobby even more fun!

-R

The [url=http://www.hellolights.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=33]Iwasaki DE 150W 6500K [/URL]in a [url=http://www.hellolights.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=44]mini-pendant[/URL] would be intense lighting for seagrass in that tank. Alternatives would be the Venture DE 150W 6000K which has a similar spectrum, or the [url=http://www.hellolights.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1316]Iwasaki DE 150W 20000K (AQUA2) [/URL] which is weaker than the 6500K bulb but has more blue spectra which looks better to most people. You could also use PC or T5 for any seagrass I've grown in a tank that size.

I would add live sand and feed the sandbed for a few weeks (pinches of [url=http://www.twopartsolution.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=77&products_id=162]Reef Chilli[/URL] or similar) and let your tank cycle before adding fish. You can use artificial plants as cover for the fish until the sandbed has a chance to stratify and sediments accumulate.

In my tank star grass did better in "new" sand. Shoal grass was slower to establish and like more sedimented sand but dominated the star grass eventually. Manatee grass could throw a lot of shoots in highly sedimented sand. In less you plan to fertilize the tank I would wait untill next spring to get grass, myself.

I enjoyed my seagrass tank for the 6+ years that in ran. There are [url=http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=934579]numerous coral and other inverts that can do well in a brightly lit, sand-dominated tank.[/URL]

I will be setting up a similar tank hear soon.
I have one 150w DE metal halide and a 5,000k ADA bulb.
I was wondering if I could make my own reef mud by collecting detritus from other reef tanks and mix that with sand?

I don't know what the composition of Mineral Mud is, but I think its value for plants (assuming it has any) would be from inorganic nutrients - potassium, iron, magnesium - that are less present in typical aragonite sand. Adding detritus should increase the organic nutrients available in the sandbed. Adding detritus and sand from other tanks should help a new, relatively sterile sandbed start aerobic and anaerobic bacterial processes. You may also bring in some bugs and worms that way. Personally, I'd invest in live sand from long-established vendors that have used sandbeds as part of their culture systems for many years to bring in a better diversity of bugs, worms, and micro-molluscs. Two I've used and recommend are [url=http://www.inlandaquatics.com/prod/tr_invert.html]Inland Aquatics [/URL] (IA -Indiana)and [url=http://www.ipsf.com/livesand.html]Indo-Pacific Sea Farms [/URL] (IPSF - Hawaii).

I work for a lfs and have all the live sand and detritus I need. would it be better if I mixed in some clay as well?

I've never used clay. I assume you mean laterite, or iron-rich clay used in FW planted tanks. I've used fine silica sand and fine aragonite sand, 3"-6" deep (varied due to tank currents). Seagrass grew in both. Once as an experiment I grew star grass in clay gravel for freshwater tanks. Fed inorganic nutrients, star grass grew in that as well. I did supplement iron for seagrass, using Kents iron supplement and Azoo iron supplement. I went a long time without supplementing iron and it was during that time that the shoal grass dominated the star grass in my aquarium. I suspect that there is a fair amount of iron recycling in the deeper parts of the sandbed, and some grass (shoal grass) are better suited to take advantage of that than others.

What next?

The tank is almost done cycling. An LFS got in some beautiful pieces of Florida "deco" rock (lots of zoas & macroalgae), so my plan WAS to add a piece or two, both to seed the tank, and to give me something interesting to look at....but a month later, the LFS has managed to kill all the interesting lifeforms & replace them with green slime. So that option's out.

I can either buy some live sand (from a local tank.... lots of critters) or some LR to get some life going. I was hoping to keep this a strictly Caribbean tank, but the live sand is from an Indo-Pacific tank, and the available LR is too.

Am I being too anal, wanting Caribbean LR/live sand?

-R

Forgot to mention...graveyardworm, I read the long thread about your tank on RC...great reading!

-R

If you can get the supplier to ship some sediment from the grass bed to you that would be the best course of action. I still havent found any substrates that work the magic that real seagrass sediment works. I'm still playing with some things, but real live stinky mud still holds the gold-medal for seagrasses. I'm convinced that its the microbes. Dont have the research to back up that theory yet, but that's my idea. :)

The framework you've laid out sounds very reasonable so far. As piercho mentioned, if you can wait and continue supplementing with detritus, that might be the best plan.

>Sarah

Sarah, glad to see you're back with us!

I took the plunge and ordered some Thalassia, Syringodium and Halodule....my 29g tank is young, but I don't have the time for patience :)

I asked the vendor to include some extra substrate...hopefully they'll send it in a separate bag.

Will post some pics when I get the order.

-R

Update (long)
 

I got my order from Gulf Coast Ecosystems last night.

Two minor disappointments: (1) I had asked them to include some extra substrate (wanted more microbes as Sarah hinted), but there was none...probably coz the box was already full. (2) The Caulerpa sertularioides fa. farlowii that I ordered was much less than a "pint" as advertised....more like a frag about 4" x 1."

But they more than made up for it by including way more shoal grass than I ordered, as well as a nice big frag of (I think) Gracilaria, a big browny (Sargassum?) and some little bits of C. mexicana. So overall, an A-.

I thought I had this "seagrass planting" thing figured out...I cut a 4" tall ring out of a 2 liter soda bottle. The plan was to push it all the way into the substrate, then carefully remove 2-4" of sand from inside the ring, carefully put the seagrass roots into the ring, then replace the sand.

It worked like a champ, but after the first one, the tank was so cloudy that I was essentially working blind.

It didn't end up too horrible: [IMG]http://reefcentral.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=229094&papass=&sort=1&thecat=500[/IMG]

This is a bad pic of the C. sertuarioides fa. farlowii, worse than is on Gulf System's site: [IMG]http://reefcentral.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=229096&papass=&sort=1&thecat=500[/IMG]

This is the Sargassum sp. (I think) that they sent: [IMG]http://reefcentral.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=229097&papass=&sort=1&thecat=500[/IMG]

I added a couple of pieces of aqua-cultured Florida live rock...I think this is a Manicina, but will happily be corrected:

[IMG]http://reefcentral.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=229098&papass=&sort=1&thecat=500[/IMG]

One more:
[IMG]http://reefcentral.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=229095&papass=&sort=1&thecat=500[/IMG]

One last one of the Syringodium...I love its spirally twistiness: [IMG]http://reefcentral.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=229099&papass=&sort=1&thecat=500[/IMG]

Wish me luck!

-R

Karma buena!

The shoal grass seemed to keep uprooting itself, so I re-planted it THREE times.

Last night I realized that those were NEW roots....dunno why it wants to grow above the sand!

-R

My halodule grew like that as well, after awhile it seemed to pull itself down into the sand.

Your tank is taking shape, Robert !

Did you ever narrow down a fish list ? I look forward to following this thread as I'm currently in the process of switching my 65g reef over to something similar.

Shilo,

I'm still scratching my head about what fish to add. At first I was thinking of a Royal Gramma or a Red Cardinal, but they probably wouldn't be happy with the small amount of live rock I have in there.

Maybe I'll just go with a damsel/chromis....any suggestions?

-R

What about a yellowheaded jawfish and an Argi pygmy angel?

Thanks for the suggestions...I'm going to stay away from anything that might burrow & disturb the seagrasses' roots, so no jawfish for now...C. argi looks like a definite possibility, but would one be happy in a tank with little live rock?

-R

seagrass
 

g'day mate moorie from down under iv got a 150 lt refuge with 18 cm of mud,sand,shellgrit i got all mine from a mangrove creek in queensland all my seagrass,caulerpa etc are powering im using a 40watt actinic that stays on 24-7 40 wat t daylight on for 15 hr 2 lawnmower blennies 2 pyjama cardinals that have had 30 young so far works for me .cheers mate