TeenyReef's 10g Fusion - ATO Disaster

[gena]

No, tridacnids look basically the same throughout their life. Look up Acro All on Facebook, he breeds clams and documents the whole process and has some fantastic shots of 1mm-1cm clams.

Found him...wow! Pretty incredible.

[teenyreef]

I couldn't see any algae in your FTS, just beautiful, colorful coral.

Thanks, Dawn, but believe me, it's there. Nasty gray stuff that covers everything and get longer and longer if it isn't kept under control.

No, tridacnids look basically the same throughout their life. Look up Acro Al on Facebook, he breeds clams and documents the whole process and has some fantastic shots of 1mm-1cm clams.

Holy cow, he's has some amazing stuff!

[teenyreef]

They're clams for sure? Could they be "giant clams"? That's pretty neat either way.

I have no idea if they are really clams. All I can say for sure it that it's some kind of bivalve. Clams, mussels, oysters, scallops, they're all the same to me especially when they're about 1/4" long

[pgrVII]

When I was changing the media the other night I found a little baby clam. I dropped him in the display

 

Baby clam by TeenyReef, on Flickr

 

And since I don't have any pretty coral picture updates right now, here's one of Jasper "helping" us bring the Christmas decorations down from the attic

 

Jasper by TeenyReef, on Flickr

Good job Jasper! Good lookin dog there teeny

[teenyreef]

Good job Jasper! Good lookin dog there teeny

Thank you sir! He's a sweet boy.

[reeferbrownies]

Hmm, whats going on with the acans they used to be so fluffy.

In my tank my nitrates are at 20 ppm, sps has been browing but my acan went from 3 heads to 13 in a few months

 

Jasper is looking cute as usual btw.

[teenyreef]

Hmm, whats going on with the acans they used to be so fluffy.

In my tank my nitrates are at 20 ppm, sps has been browing but my acan went from 3 heads to 13 in a few months

 

Jasper is looking cute as usual btw.

Yeah, I wish I knew what is going on, but the acans and the trumpets are all steadily declining. Oh, and the angel eyes favia are almost all gone now, and the sunset monti and the chalice are going downhill too.

 

I'm really seriously considering pulling out all the corals that I can and moving them into the 40g tank, at least temporarily. I need to get this tank reset to normal and I may need to just pull out all the rocks, put in new sand, and do a huge water change.

[reefernanoman]

Yeah, I wish I knew what is going on, but the acans and the trumpets are all steadily declining. Oh, and the angel eyes favia are almost all gone now, and the sunset monti and the chalice are going downhill too.

 

I'm really seriously considering pulling out all the corals that I can and moving them into the 40g tank, at least temporarily. I need to get this tank reset to normal and I may need to just pull out all the rocks, put in new sand, and do a huge water change.

Oh man sorry about your troubles! I have gone through that before (remember when my SPS were dying in my fusion 10G for no reason?) and not knowing exactly what happened. Yeah, I've done that before (moving my corals to my second tank to save them). Do it right now before it's too late! My last big issue (my dumb mistake with alk swings) with my SPS was in reverse, where all my sps in my 28G were dying so I had to shove them into my fusion 10G in order for them to survive. Maybe you have chemical warfare going on between so many softies, lps and sps inside your tank? that is one reason I only have SPS in my 10G honestly. I still mix things up in my 28G though. Remember that actual water volume in our tank is about 7G only ( at least with my LR and LS amount, which is not much).

[Nano sapiens]

Yeah, I wish I knew what is going on, but the acans and the trumpets are all steadily declining. Oh, and the angel eyes favia are almost all gone now, and the sunset monti and the chalice are going downhill too.

 

I'm really seriously considering pulling out all the corals that I can and moving them into the 40g tank, at least temporarily. I need to get this tank reset to normal and I may need to just pull out all the rocks, put in new sand, and do a huge water change.

 

This doesn't sound good...sorry to hear about the decline.

[teenyreef]

Oh man sorry about your troubles! I have gone through that before (remember when my SPS were dying in my fusion 10G for no reason?) and not knowing exactly what happened. Yeah, I've done that before (moving my corals to my second tank to save them). Do it right now before it's too late! My last big issue (my dumb mistake with alk swings) with my SPS was in reverse, where all my sps in my 28G were dying so I had to shove them into my fusion 10G in order for them to survive. Maybe you have chemical warfare going on between so many softies, lps and sps inside your tank? that is one reason I only have SPS in my 10G honestly. I still mix things up in my 28G though. Remember that actual water volume in our tank is about 7G only ( at least with my LR and LS amount, which is not much).

I've thought about coral warfare, but the LPS and softies haven't changed in many months and everything used to be fine. Plus I use carbon and gfo and a skimmer to minimize those effects. Of course that doesn't mean something hasn't changed, since it's obviously SOMETHING has changed.

 

Keeping mixed corals in such a small tank is always a challenge!

 

This doesn't sound good...sorry to hear about the decline.

Thanks! The worse things get the more determined I become to figure out some way to reverse it, though.

[teenyreef]

Tonight I pulled out every acan I could, dipped them in peroxide, and put them on the sand bed in the 40g tank. I also did the same for the ricordea rock and the trumpets.

 

Then I dipped all the remaining rocks on the sandbed in peroxide and put them back in after stirring up the sand underneath them really well.

 

Oh, and I was able to move the sunset monti frag into the 40g too.

 

There was one acan frag I couldn't get unstuck, and I couldn't get the chalice off without risking breakage, so they'll just have to take their chances.

 

I didn't touch any of the main rock structure because it's all glued together and I'm not quite that desperate yet. Plus I don't want to kill off too much biofiltration capacity with peroxide dips.

 

It looks pretty sad right now with everything shriveled up and the cloudy water and the missing corals. And I'll probably have to redo the peroxide treatment on the rocks at least once or twice more before they're clean. But at least I've got most of the sensitive/unhealthy corals out of the tank so that they can hopefully recover.

[RIP Sebastian]

John, I'm having some acan issues, too. One is readily accepting food and his tentacles are constantly out. The other is not accepting food. Thoughts?

[teenyreef]

John, I'm having some acan issues, too. One is readily accepting food and his tentacles are constantly out. The other is not accepting food. Thoughts?

Are they in the same spot? Any difference in lighting or current?

 

I've had the same thing happen to me. Sometimes I can get the eating jump started by turning all the pumps off, target feeding some coral food, and letting it sit on the acan for tne to fifteen minutes. Other times I've fixed the problem by moving the acan into more or less current and/or lighting. As a last resort, you can do what I did, give it a peroxide dip. A sort dip (about 30 seconds in 100% peroxide, or one minute in 50/50 diluted with salt water) won't hurt the acan much, and it may kill any bacteria or parasites if that's what's causing the problem.

 

Unfortunately, sometimes they just don't do well. Like mine, for the last couple months. I don't know what has caused them to decline, although I think the initial setback was due to phosphates being lowered too fast. But they haven't bounced back and I just don't know why.

[teenyreef]

I took this shot not long after doing all the coral moves and sandbed stirring. I'm hoping to get an updated picture by this time tomorrow night that looks a lot better, but there are a lot of missing corals now.

 

2016-12-20 IM10 FTS by TeenyReef, on Flickr

After I took that picture, I drained almost all the water in the display chamber and spot treated the zoas on the back rocks with peroxide. I put some of the old water back in and did a 3g water change.

[RIP Sebastian]

Are they in the same spot? Any difference in lighting or current?

 

I've had the same thing happen to me. Sometimes I can get the eating jump started by turning all the pumps off, target feeding some coral food, and letting it sit on the acan for tne to fifteen minutes. Other times I've fixed the problem by moving the acan into more or less current and/or lighting. As a last resort, you can do what I did, give it a peroxide dip. A sort dip (about 30 seconds in 100% peroxide, or one minute in 50/50 diluted with salt water) won't hurt the acan much, and it may kill any bacteria or parasites if that's what's causing the problem.

 

Unfortunately, sometimes they just don't do well. Like mine, for the last couple months. I don't know what has caused them to decline, although I think the initial setback was due to phosphates being lowered too fast. But they haven't bounced back and I just don't know why.

 

Thanks for the input. They are in the same spot on the sand bed in low flow. I have been turning off pumps in order to offer food. I wait for about twenty minutes to be sure everyone has finished, but I never get a response. Maybe I'll try the dip. Thanks again!

[Droy008]

Sorry to hear about your bad luck run as of late.

It does sounds like you have a game plan though.

Here's to following along with you through this next chapter.

[ninjamyst]

sorry to hear about the issues. did u H202 any palys lately? this reminds me of when i tried to razor off paly in my nano and it released tons of toxin into the tank. all my LPS were affected and carbon didn't help much.

[teenyreef]

Sorry to hear about your bad luck run as of late.

It does sounds like you have a game plan though.

Here's to following along with you through this next chapter.

Thanks! I'll get things going again even if I have to break up the rocks to save the corals and start over with some new rocks

sorry to hear about the issues. did u H202 any palys lately? this reminds me of when i tried to razor off paly in my nano and it released tons of toxin into the tank. all my LPS were affected and carbon didn't help much.

That's a great question - there was definitely something that affected the acans severely and suddenly. The other LPS and SPS problems seem to have been more gradual and linked to being taken over by algae. But I can't say for sure if anything happened to any zoas or palys in the tank, though.

[teenyreef]

I put on my big boy pants and broke/cut/scraped/extracted just about every coral and frag off of the back rock structure. The only ones left are the montis and a little remnant of the angel eyes favia that is encrusted on a big piece of rock.

 

I still have the corals on the rocks up front that just sit on the sand bed, because I can pull them out of the tank and clean them up without removing coral frags. And the hammer is still in there because it hasn't had any problems so far.

 

The tank's a mess right now, but I'm going to do another water change later tonight since so much has been stirred up. I don't want to trigger a mini cycle since the fish are still in there.

 

The next step will be to break the rock mountain into segments. Then I'll see if I can pull them out and really scrub them up and apply peroxide, especially on the back side where it's a huge mess.

 

Btw, the banded aiptasia didn't die after I did the first application of Aiptasia-X, and now there are a few more growing in the back of the mountain. So I'll be chipping/burning them out when I pull out the rocks.

 

I expect to clean the back rocks several times over the coming weeks, and hopefully that will help get the algae back under control. I'm still debating whether to swap out the sand for new sand, or maybe just go bare bottom.

 

I'll probably end up doing at least a minor rescape by the time I'm done. But it will be worth it if I can get the tank back in shape!

[FlowerMama]

I have some aptasia also and the Aptasia Rx looks like it's working cuz the tentacles melt away but the foot is still lodged so as long as it's there that's why those little shits come back. I also have a couple that are more bulbous on the ends and they weren't killed by the regiment either. My friends bought a laser, I want to know if it works. I'm gonna shoot them an email.

[teenyreef]

I have some aptasia also and the Aptasia Rx looks like it's working cuz the tentacles melt away but the foot is still lodged so as long as it's there that's why those little shits come back. I also have a couple that are more bulbous on the ends and they weren't killed by the regiment either. My friends bought a laser, I want to know if it works. I'm gonna shoot them an email.

I've heard the lasers just make them multiply, but maybe your friend had better luck. Since I can actually take the rocks out now, I'm going to burn them out with a little torch.

 

Plus this gives me an excuse to go buy a little torch. Stocking stuffer!

I checked on the acans I moved to the 40g and they literally look better overnight. This just goes to prove that there's something really wrong with this tank and it's going to take pretty drastic action to get it right again.

[fishfreak0114]

I'm sure you'll be able to get it looking fabulous again in no time! It sure sucks when things aren't going right, I'm pretty sure I just set myself up for bubble algae . Are the fish still doing good?

[teenyreef]

I'm sure you'll be able to get it looking fabulous again in no time! It sure sucks when things aren't going right, I'm pretty sure I just set myself up for bubble algae . Are the fish still doing good?

Dang, sorry to hear about the bubble algae!

 

The fish are doing great through all this, they're all fat and happy

[Sharbuckle]

Soft reboot as in softie tank? Orrr as in just overhauling it?

 

Sorry to see such a pretty little tank get broken down. Im sure it will be back to its former glory in no time.

[vlangel]

I have been following and have felt really bad for you. Its a shame to have to resort to such drastic measures but after reading that your acans already look better I think you are doing the right thing.