Few questions

[hadri420]

Hello there,

I have a few questions about my tank and its inhabitants, as I’m very new to this and am still learning how my tank is doing!

It’s been a long journey (over a year of research, testing water parameters, and experimenting with different cycling procedures in empty tanks) leading up to the tank setup.

For the setup, I’m running a 2.5-gallon shallow tank from PNWcustom (shoutout to them and their great products). My filtration includes:

• Maxspect bioballs (half a kilogram, offering 1,188 m² of surface area, treating up to 1,425 liters of water).
• A set of two micron filter bags for additional filtration.
• Activated carbon for water clarity.
• The bio blocks were seeded over two weeks with Aquaforest Pro Bio S.

I also recently added macroalgae, and I assume the zooplankton and pods I’m seeing on my sand bed likely came from them. The area with macroalgae is acting as a refugium. The tank has been fully cycled for three months now.

My latest water parameters are:

• Ammonia: 0.075 ppm
• Nitrite: 1 ppm
• Nitrate: 25 ppm
• Alkalinity: 7.6 dKH
• Salinity: 35 ppt
• pH: 8.3

A month ago, my parameters were similar except for:

• Nitrate: 20 ppm
• Alkalinity: 8.4 dKH

I keep the temperature around 23°C, but I suspect my heater may be slightly underpowered, so it might actually be around 21-22°C. The tank light is the one provided, and using the Photone app with a paper diffuser, I measured about 250 PAR at the center of the water surface and around 80 PAR at the edges. I do a 0.5L water change every two days.

Last weekend, I added three Halloween hermit crabs and some macroalgae (Chaeto, Caulerpa, red algae, and red bubble algae). This weekend, I finally picked up two corals from my LFS—a dragon soul Favia and a green-tip hammer (see pictures). As I’m not sure how well they’re adjusting, I have a few questions:

1. My Favia isn’t opening its mouth during the day but opens it at night, although I haven’t seen feeder tentacles. Is this normal?
2. My Euphyllia closes at night and opens during the day. Is this behavior normal?
3. Do I need to feed the corals, especially the Favia, to encourage feeder tentacles?
4. If so, what food would you recommend? I’m considering AF LPS pellets since I like Aquaforest products.
5. This morning, I noticed one of the hermits trying to attack the others. I separated it for the day. Is there a way to prevent this behavior?

Thank you!

this is the favia at night mouth open but no feeder tentacule appears

this is the favia at day time (i assume it can detect if the environment get darker as the sun goes down and there’s no more natural sunlight in the flat)

this is the hammer euphyllia during daytime (it has opened more than this idk why it seems closed like this)

theses are two of the 3 HC i got

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Only one week is still very new, favia takes a while to get acclimated to a new tank.

Yes its normal for corals to close at night and open in the day.

You can feed the corals if you wish, pellets are ok for most corals, I feed mine mysis or sometimes reef roids.

Hermits will often clean each others shells, or try to steal food, not always necessarily attacking. But good idea to make sure they have enough to eat, and add some extra shells into the tank so they can swap.

 

[hadri420]

Only one week is still very new, favia takes a while to get acclimated to a new tank.

Yes its normal for corals to close at night and open in the day.

You can feed the corals if you wish, pellets are ok for most corals, I feed mine mysis or sometimes reef roids.

Hermits will often clean each others shells, or try to steal food, not always necessarily attacking. But good idea to make sure they have enough to eat, and add some extra shells into the tank so they can swap.

okay thanks, for the corals i forgot to mention that i bought them this weekend (27/10) so very new they only few hours into this setup, as far as you have seen do they look healthy ?
i ordered food today, as well as vitamins for corals so they can adapt faster!!
i’ll try to find some shells on internet
thanks for your advices tho appreciate it

 

[hadri420]

update, i decided to feed my corals, i fed them with krill cut in little bits and oh god they loved it, i also decided to feed hermits, they weren’t too enthusiastic about krill but when i cut the return pump/ flow, i saw copepods, aren’t they good sign of health in a reef tank ?