Jedi's Science Reef

[jedimaster1138]

I would move your nicer zoanthids to the refugium section and get a filefish. I've seen them go to town on an aiptasia-filled reef and man, they're good. Combine them with berghias and manual killing and I think you'll give it a huge kick in the nads that will make it think twice about growing back.

 

 

That's unpossible. Most of the rastas and spidermans and the other good stuff are on big pieces of base rock that aren't coming out with out upper structure coming out too. I could get the Sunny D paly's out, but that doesn't help much. I"m not risking hundreds of rasta polyps. They actually grow for me, unlike, you know, most everything else.

 

The setosa is completely gone as of this morning. Tonight, I chip it out. There's actually quite a few aiptasia growing on the setosa skeleton. sigh

 

So I actually have a shop vac. A Shop Vac brand shop vac too. The small one. Makes cleaning up Penny shedding so much easier. So I'll probably remove the macro and put them in a bucket of water, python out the rest of the water, then shop vac out the sand. SLURP. I'm unsure about the refugium rock removal. On one hand, more rock = more space for good bacteria to live and eat nutrients. On the other hand, more rock to leech phosphate. I dunno. Mutter.

 

I dosed 15 ml of NOPOX this morning and will dose another 15 tonight. The pH dropped from 8.13 to 8.01 in the minutes after the dose, but has been climbing up since.

 

I don't know if i want to wade into biopellets or not. I'm very on the fence. There's certain advantages to just dosing carbon manually, other advantages to the BP. I might just wait and see what daily NOPOX dosing + removing the refugium sand does for a few weeks. In the interim maybe weigh all the various models of BP reactor out there.

[markalot]

 

That's unpossible. Most of the rastas and spidermans and the other good stuff are on big pieces of base rock that aren't coming out with out upper structure coming out too. I could get the Sunny D paly's out, but that doesn't help much. I"m not risking hundreds of rasta polyps. They actually grow for me, unlike, you know, most everything else.

 

The setosa is completely gone as of this morning. Tonight, I chip it out. There's actually quite a few aiptasia growing on the setosa skeleton. sigh

 

So I actually have a shop vac. A Shop Vac brand shop vac too. The small one. Makes cleaning up Penny shedding so much easier. So I'll probably remove the macro and put them in a bucket of water, python out the rest of the water, then shop vac out the sand. SLURP. I'm unsure about the refugium rock removal. On one hand, more rock = more space for good bacteria to live and eat nutrients. On the other hand, more rock to leech phosphate. I dunno. Mutter.

 

I dosed 15 ml of NOPOX this morning and will dose another 15 tonight. The pH dropped from 8.13 to 8.01 in the minutes after the dose, but has been climbing up since.

 

I don't know if i want to wade into biopellets or not. I'm very on the fence. There's certain advantages to just dosing carbon manually, other advantages to the BP. I might just wait and see what daily NOPOX dosing + removing the refugium sand does for a few weeks. In the interim maybe weigh all the various models of BP reactor out there.

 

What is Penny shedding?

[jedimaster1138]

 

What is Penny shedding?

 

LOL She's a golden retriever so...I live in a den of flying fur. During summer i can run the slicker brush down her back 2 times and i have to clean it out. In winter it takes 50 strokes to fill it.

 

And yes. There is fur in my reef. Lol

[metrokat]

Oh really? Mark talks you back from the ledge eh? And what are your bazillion messages to me, entertainment?

Mark - I'm calling you out, we are fighting over this one.

Also, all y'all notice how rock boulders instead of dainty rocks and rock wall structures instead of minimalist scapes are nitrate and phosphate factories? THIS is why I will never go for a large tank. You absolutely need boulders to fill it up, and then this happens.

Jedibear - can you do what I suggested to Mark, take a powerhead and garden hose the detritus from the rocks as much as you can? Also any rocks you can move, any, should be moved to get the garden hose behind.

[jedimaster1138]

Oh really? Mark talks you back from the ledge eh? And what are your bazillion messages to me, entertainment?

Mark - I'm calling you out, we are fighting over this one.

Also, all y'all notice how rock boulders instead of dainty rocks and rock wall structures instead of minimalist scapes are nitrate and phosphate factories? THIS is why I will never go for a large tank. You absolutely need boulders to fill it up, and then this happens.

Jedibear - can you do what I suggested to Mark, take a powerhead and garden hose the detritus from the rocks as much as you can? Also any rocks you can move, any, should be moved to get the garden hose behind.

 

lol No need to beat Mark with a high heel Kitty. I appreciate all of you helping out - you too Benny - there's enough of my OCD psychosis for everyone, don't you worry! *twitch* PS - yes your texts are frequently entertaining

 

I may take out more DT sand too. And blast things around some. But that's not something that I want to do regularly. The tank needs to get to some sort of self regulating bacteria driven autopilot.

 

I don't agree with you about the big tank though. Big tanks are actually easiest because you can fill them with algae eating tangs and other pretties. hehe. Not that I have algae in the DT. Well some bubble. And now cyano. Mutter. Anyway, remember - it's not the big tank and the big rocks that are the problem. My problem is that I spent 9 months poisoning my reef with phosphate ridden salt and now I'm paying for it. I also think I needed more flow all along to stop some of the crap settling. That got fixed in February. As far as I'm concerned, more wouldn't hurt. I want a closed loop with Oceans Motions 4-ways and Sea Swirls on the returns.

 

More rock is always better, when I have a basement I plan on filling a 300 gallon rubbermaid with all the big boulders I can find, suspended in plastic cages off the bottom, with a ton of flow. Suck it nutrients. My bacteria will eat your faces.

 

[jedimaster1138]

Removed as much of the setosa as I could tonight. Once the best coral in my tank. Big, bright, and big. I chipped out what I could of the skeleton, but really couldn't get that much out. Just got all the fleshy bits. The little frag is about the size of my thumbnail. I glued it to the top of the old skeleton because...I dunno why.

 

I don't know if I should just wait and hope the skeleton becomes covered in coraline or glue something else (rock?) on top of it. BLAH

 

[markalot]

Sorry about the setosa ... I wonder though if the acro above it is responsible.

[metrokat]

Jedibear, best give that acro above it to me for safekeeping....

[jedimaster1138]

Thanks to my horrible phone photography, what's not apparent from that picture is that the green acro, what i call the maricultured bali slimer, is actually way behind the setosa. The acro is glued to the rock on the back edge. The setosa started out forward about 7" and to the left. It encrusted and grew both back to front and left to right, and also foward, tabling/platting/setosa-ing off the edge of the rock forming a shelf 3-4" long into mid water. It was awesome. But yeah they weren't ever really touching. Eventually they would, and I was starting to wonder where to frag the slimer, but i didn't.

 

The setosa started having problems a year ago. It would develop funky necrosis on the tips, as in this picture, and would get worse with each PO4 spike and ALK spike and ALK crash. This time it didn't recover, possibly coupled by the Nitrate dropping and / or the bacteria bloom.

 

Funny thing about that green acro....that's a frag of my bigger colony which is to the left a bunch. It piece was the TIP of a big branch that was broken off by a rambunctious tang. I didn't have a good way to mount it to the same spot as the rest of the colony, so I stuck it there. It gets different light and different flow, so it's interesting how it looks a little more green and is growing mostly the same though a little more...tightly is my not scientific term.

 

[metrokat]

Don;t know what you're going on about.

This is not the slime-a-lot.

And THAT is the coral that needs to be in my tank. For safe keeping.

[jedimaster1138]

Don;t know what you're going on about.

This is not the slime-a-lot.

And THAT is the coral that needs to be in my tank. For safe keeping.

 

It's not a Slimer, but it's a slimer, trust me. If I touch it, I basically need a proton pack. It's puts out more mucus than everything else in my tank, including the gooey chalices, by a factor of 5.

 

Plus there's only one Slimer anyway.

 

 

[metrokat]

<--- noticed how you didn't say what the coral was and when I can haz it.

[jedimaster1138]

I dunno what it is. I got it from UC like 2 years ago. It's a big mariculutred Acropora that's probably a slimer or very closely related to a slimer. The colony it broke off of has long thick branches.

 

You can have it for your entire Miyagi colony and Katro

[jedimaster1138]

Here's a picture of the pseudo-slimer from when I first got it.

 

[jedimaster1138]

Big maxima doesn't look like it will make it through the weekend. Had it a year and a half year. SIGH

[markalot]

Big maxima doesn't look like it will make it through the weekend. Had it a year and a half year. SIGH

 

Sorry man.

[jedimaster1138]

The damn nutrients rising and falling have hurt the clams more than the acropora. Mutter. They actually look halfway decent. Except the shortcake (hah) and a few others with poop for color. PE is slightly better though.

 

I haven't measured phosphate in a few days. I assume it's high. Don't see a point measuring it. dKH is 6.3 ish as of last night. Continuing to dose NOPOX twice a day. 15 - 20 ml per dose, roughly.

 

Cyano is...cyano-ing.

[markalot]

The damn nutrients rising and falling have hurt the clams more than the acropora. Mutter. They actually look halfway decent. Except the shortcake (hah) and a few others with poop for color. PE is slightly better though.

 

I haven't measured phosphate in a few days. I assume it's high. Don't see a point measuring it. dKH is 6.3 ish as of last night. Continuing to dose NOPOX twice a day. 15 - 20 ml per dose, roughly.

 

Cyano is...cyano-ing.

 

To hell with the poopcake. Mine is threatening to color up again but I know better.

[jedimaster1138]

 

To hell with the poopcake. Mine is threatening to color up again but I know better.

 

It's a crazy coral. It's actually survived all the crap that's gone on in my tank over the last year and a half. But it also looks like poop. So it's both indestructible and fickle ugly. LOL

 

I removed a few lbs of sand from the DT tonight. Mostly on the right side near the land of the zoanthids. The STUFF that came out of that sand. Wow. I have to start siphoning that area regularly. On the bright side, the acros were crazy happy when that storm got stirred up. Hello filaments.

 

My goal is to get to 1" or less of sand above the trim all along the front of the tank. I guess that amounts to 2" total then when you count the distance between the top edge of the bottom trim and the bottom pane of glass. My unscientific measurement of that was between my first and 2nd index finger knuckle. Hopefully the zoanthids grow down the newly exposed sand/rock and fill in now.

 

I could probably remove another few net fulls on the left side. Another day.

 

Still haven't done the fuge yet. Next week. Wife goes to China. I might get a plastic tarp or painter's drop cloth instead of my usual towel on the floor in front of the tank while I work, method.

Also, if / when I do lose my big maxima, i'm going to seriously re-organize my sand bed and low tank stuff. Put what I can on rocks, remove more sand (maybe) and spread things out better. Then get a new Diamond Watchman Goby. Mine disappeared around the time Satan's Chromis went on his killing spree. I bet the sand sifter will help my problems. They are just a PITA when you have a lot of stuff on the sand.

[jedimaster1138]

Nitrate virtually undetectable. Just a tiny hint of color. (wheel of fortune)

Phosphate 0.23 (Hanna, too tired for wheel of fortune and the fish need to eat).

 

Alkalinity and calcium both dropped a bunch, so hellooooooooooooo calcification. yay? Will increase dosing time.

 

Unlike last time I'm not going to back off the NOPOX dosing at all for at least another week.

 

Better PE and color in the Super Slimer and Tyree Prostrata after their mild freak out recently. Phew. Kat-ro-pora showing a much deeper green, less brown. Many, many visible growth tips on the top of the giant purple stylophora colony. Underside is still completely dead, top side clearly growing though.

 

I can't tell if cyano is less or the same. Aiptasia...mutter.

 

Made an impromptu visit to a pseudo-local fish store on Friday on the way home from sweating hiking with wife and pup in a park up the Hudson and picked up a medium sized Diamond Watchman Goby. All my leveling of the sand bed last week promptly went out the window as he's been re-landscaping the tank since. LOL In a good way though. Sand is white and sorta clean. He's even into the areas that I really wanted to siphon myself but just haven't gotten to. Yay critter doing my maintenance for me. Now to obtain some robots to vacuum the apartment and unload the dishwasher...

 

Goby sifting/stirring/making a mess also has the corals all spreading their filaments and polyps all NOM NOM NOM NOM sand bed foodz nom nom nom. Man I missed my DWG. I'm pretty sure my old one was killed by Bin Laden the Chromis in January, at least that's when I remember not seeing him anymore and that was the peak of the killing spree. Mutter.

 

Fingers/toes/eyes/flippers crossed that progress is being made.

 

Still have to:

 

Rip out refugium sand

Possibly purchase biopellet reactor. Alternative to that is continue daily carbon dosing.

 

Interesting aside - I'm currently manually dosing more NOPOX - 40 ml spread across 2 doses of 20 ml, morning and evening - than I ever did when the NOPOX was on the automatic hourly dosing pump. I think back then I was up to something like 25 - 30 ml total, spread across hourly shots. What's interesting is that despite the dose being 25% or more greater than the daily total via the doser, there's 0 signs of a bacterial bloom and no coral stress.

[markalot]

Excellent progress. You are dosing a lot more NOPOX daily than I did.

 

So high phosphates but corals are coloring up, isn't that interesting.

[metrokat]

Glad to hear some positive news. Did you get the Goby at AF?

[jedimaster1138]

Glad to hear some positive news. Did you get the Goby at AF?

 

Yeah at Absolutely. Good times. They had two in separate tanks. This was the bigger of the 2 and was a little more money, but seemed more active and diggy. So far that's been the case for sure. He's made a mess out of the tank, but in a good way. Their coral selection wasn't extreme, but the fish, goodness. That's a lot of really nice and somewhat less seen fish.

 

 

Excellent progress. You are dosing a lot more NOPOX daily than I did.

 

So high phosphates but corals are coloring up, isn't that interesting.

 

Here's the noodle question - is the better coloration due to...

 

... no bacterial bloom?

... lower nitrate?

... lower, but not very low phosphate?

... the goby stirring things up and feeding the corals?

... all of the above?

 

My money is on the last option.

 

We'll see how things progress in the coming weeks.

[metrokat]

I can't stand the fact that there are no pictures on your thread. Seriously. You had a thing when posting pictures meant bad luck, it hasn't done diddly for you so I really think pictures are not only overdue, but necessary. Yes, things are poopy brown we don't hide from poop in this forum. Maybe some of your other big boy forums give a shit, but we just like salty stuff on here. /rant

[jedimaster1138]

Hey there's at least a few pictures on this page alone! PS the blue maxima in that picture is dead. As is the open brain just a bit in frame on the left. SIGH

 

I'll take some this week. Might as well document some of the stupidity. I just have to stay awake enough to do it. And spelunk the wife's closet for the tripod.

 

We don't hide from poop in this forum.

 

That's a great quote

 

Here's a picture. I never did post any of the thousands of pictures I took in Hawaii in January. This should give everyone a tease. Yes, this fish is THAT gorgeous in person. I stared at it for 15 minutes despite the wife's foot tapping. lol