dropped Posted October 26, 2016 Author Share Posted October 26, 2016 Krylon Fusion spray paint.....pick your color and remount those things! Bahaha good idea! 2 Quote Link to comment
dropped Posted October 31, 2016 Author Share Posted October 31, 2016 Tank update: So far this week I have not lost any more coral, although there isn’t much left. Parameters are pretty much near on perfect consistently. Over the last 7 days ALK has dropped from 9.3 DKH to 8.4 which im taking as a good sign in that uptake of ALK is increasing. Ive also completed the stand over the weekend. I had a local Italian kitchen company build me some panels, I think it turned out pretty dam nice. Ignore the tank itself haha. 4 Quote Link to comment
ReefWeeds Posted October 31, 2016 Share Posted October 31, 2016 The stand is beautiful! 1 Quote Link to comment
xAyanex Posted October 31, 2016 Share Posted October 31, 2016 The stand looks nice 1 Quote Link to comment
dropped Posted December 1, 2016 Author Share Posted December 1, 2016 Well its been a rocky road and things are not getting much better. Obviously i was impatient and made a few mistakes, the first being adding real reef rock, the second being, adding real reef rock without cooking the rock for a few months first! major regret on both of these points. The long and the short of it is i lost 95% of my SPS, 100% of my LPS has made it ... however is not happy. Here is a story line in pictures Before the move, everything was crammed in there and it was hard to keep everything happy and stable, hence the upgrade to a larger volume of water. Upgrade completed Added sand. I was told adding real reef rock without cycling it was not a problem.... so i added it ( why did i listen) It did look good though... Slowly but surely my SPS started to bleach and die off, this process took about a month and was very slow. I did think about pulling the rock out as soon as i saw some bleaching but was not convinced it was the cause. Here is the aftermath, most of the colony's have been fragged up trying to save bits but my efforts were futile At the current point in time i have pulled all of the remaining SPS out and placed it into my nano, the bleaching has stopped so far. No pictures of the next part, I will upload some tonight. However i have now pulled all of the real reef rock out of the tank and only have the original rock left. During this process i lost two fish, 1 bangaii and 1 lawn mower blenny which im sure was caused by nitrate poisoning. On a more positive note, I have made two upgrades, i've added a Neptune AFS and two SW-15 power heads ive also taken this opportunity with no coral in the tank to add a new ATI 6x39watt T5 power module. 2 Quote Link to comment
rickztahone Posted December 4, 2016 Share Posted December 4, 2016 That sucks . Sorry you had to go through that. 1 Quote Link to comment
dropped Posted March 20, 2017 Author Share Posted March 20, 2017 Few shots post crash, slowly building it all back up. First FTS 6.5 months old Right hand side Stag island mostly started with frags. Right side Left side Can anyone ID this acro? C 6 Quote Link to comment
dropped Posted April 15, 2017 Author Share Posted April 15, 2017 Update time. The tank has now hit 7 months post the crash and everything is back to normal so far. Over the past seven months i have made a few changes and ill show you these below. First up, i've been restocking my tank with SPS, here are a couple i picked up that are not great in colour but are coming back to life and are slowly colouring up. The coral on the very right had side had a pretty cool surprise when i dipped it and then inspected the coral to find a small shrimp! It made it through the dip which is awesome...... but what else made it through... Turns out i have a few of these "acro shrimp" now. Figured i would add a calcium reactor, i got this cheap and the c02 bottle free so thought why not give it a crack. This project didn't turn out as cheap as i thought it would as i needed a few more pieces of equipment. I also needed a regulator and another PH probe to connect to the apex. All up at this point the project was at about $300 (NZD). Calcium media was another $80 or dollars. Oh and i added a chiller which you can see in the back of this photo. I went down to the local tank filling place, turns out my tank had expired..... so had to buy another tank at $380 NZD, so we are at about $760 bucks now. The plus side to the new bottle is it's certified for another 5 years so should not have to worry about it for a while. Its also 6Kg so will last ages and came full. Cheap regulator from a local reefer, controlled by the apex. Next upgrade was the return pump. I was running a jebao DC3000 which to be honest... was absolutely fine and didn't need to be upgraded. But i upgraded it anyway to a DC7000 and eventually it will power my Calcium reactor, Chiller and my two phosban 150s. We are also some what renovating our house and the lounge is next on the hit list. Unfortunately this is where i have been keeping my frag tank. So i had to move this into the office also. Here is a very blue picture to show the tanks side by side. The next upgrade on the cards are the additional of two Kelo a100 (kessil a360 knock off's) LEDs to supplement the ATI T5 fixture i have running currently. They have been ordered so should be here in the next few days. I will use these to target light my stags. 9 Quote Link to comment
dropped Posted June 2, 2017 Author Share Posted June 2, 2017 Seems I need a better camera 2 Quote Link to comment
Jonboy21 Posted June 2, 2017 Share Posted June 2, 2017 You def need a better camera. Tank looks lovely thou. Is the big green coral on the right a Green Branching Montipora? 1 Quote Link to comment
Weetabix7 Posted June 2, 2017 Share Posted June 2, 2017 2 hours ago, dropped said: Seems I need a better camera Nice to see all that color back. I'm curious about a couple of things. I actually did go back and read your posts over the whole crash situation, and I'm wondering why you feel the Real Reef Rock was at least partly to blame? I'm also wondering why you attributed fish death to nitrate poisoning? In reading through, I never saw you post a nitrate level over .3. I also noticed that you increased the light period on your fuge with chaeto at the same time you added the Real Reef Rock, and I know that chaeto is capable of sucking up a lot of nutrients fairly quickly. A longer light cycle would have made that even more possible. Several people seemed to think you were getting an SPS stress response due to your water being too clean and not having enough nutrients, which I could certainly see being the case. I'm mostly just trying to understand the big picture and learn from it. Again, very happy for you that you have color back, and I'm sure you are too. 2 Quote Link to comment
dropped Posted June 2, 2017 Author Share Posted June 2, 2017 1 hour ago, Weetabix7 said: Nice to see all that color back. I'm curious about a couple of things. I actually did go back and read your posts over the whole crash situation, and I'm wondering why you feel the Real Reef Rock was at least partly to blame? I'm also wondering why you attributed fish death to nitrate poisoning? In reading through, I never saw you post a nitrate level over .3. I also noticed that you increased the light period on your fuge with chaeto at the same time you added the Real Reef Rock, and I know that chaeto is capable of sucking up a lot of nutrients fairly quickly. A longer light cycle would have made that even more possible. Several people seemed to think you were getting an SPS stress response due to your water being too clean and not having enough nutrients, which I could certainly see being the case. I'm mostly just trying to understand the big picture and learn from it. Again, very happy for you that you have color back, and I'm sure you are too. All valid questions and all those factors contributed to the crash. Why do i blame the real reef rock? as soon as i put it in my PH dropped. Now, i didnt notice this for a few days.. until i went back and reviewed the apex graphs. it dropped down to about 6.7. I should have soaked this rock for a month or so, its man made after all so things will leach out. During the real reef rock issue nitrates hit 3.5 ppm. not sure if this will kill a fish but it certainly didnt help. As for the cheato...... yea, this certainly plays into the problem, a very long lighting cycle pulled a heap of nutrients out of the water which is not ideal. My tank normally runs Phos and nitrate at zero. I dont work towards this, it just seems to happen. I dont think one single thing caused the crash looking back on it. 3 hours ago, stellablue said: I stalked you Got to love a good stalking, cheers for the nudge to come back! 2 hours ago, Jonboy21 said: You def need a better camera. Tank looks lovely thou. Is the big green coral on the right a Green Branching Montipora? its actually an acro, not sure what type though. Ill post a pic up soon 3 Quote Link to comment
ReefWeeds Posted June 3, 2017 Share Posted June 3, 2017 Glad you came back!! I don't think 3.5 nitrates would kill a fish - mine run around 8-10 1 Quote Link to comment
Weetabix7 Posted June 3, 2017 Share Posted June 3, 2017 12 minutes ago, dropped said: All valid questions and all those factors contributed to the crash. Why do i blame the real reef rock? as soon as i put it in my PH dropped. Now, i didnt notice this for a few days.. until i went back and reviewed the apex graphs. it dropped down to about 6.7. I should have soaked this rock for a month or so, its man made after all so things will leach out. During the real reef rock issue nitrates hit 3.5 ppm. not sure if this will kill a fish but it certainly didnt help. As for the cheato...... yea, this certainly plays into the problem, a very long lighting cycle pulled a heap of nutrients out of the water which is not ideal. My tank normally runs Phos and nitrate at zero. I dont work towards this, it just seems to happen. I dont think one single thing caused the crash looking back on it. Got to love a good stalking, cheers for the nudge to come back! its actually an acro, not sure what type though. Ill post a pic up soon Thx for the response, hoping for good things for your tank moving forward! 1 Quote Link to comment
Nano sapiens Posted June 3, 2017 Share Posted June 3, 2017 Very good to see the recovery. Pertaining to your pH drop, I noticed in your pics that the tank went from BB to a SB. Was this brand new sand? Something to consider is that adding a large quantity of new sand all at once can cause a rapid decrease in alkalinity and pH (excerpt from an old Reefs.org thread): Does adding Sand cause a drop in Alk.? by Randy Holmes-Farley » January 18th, 2002, 9:50 am Yes, adding calcium carbonate sand can lower alkalinity. Tank water is supersaturated with calcium carbonate, and the fresh sand acts as a nucleating agent to trigger precipitation of CaCO3. You can also see the pH drop for the same reason if you add enough sand. I've also seen this same comment in one of the 'The Reef Aquarium' volumes (Sprung/Delbeek). Alk and pH tend to rise after a few days when the new sand gets coated by biofilm. Lastly, cool little shrimp HH 1 Quote Link to comment
dropped Posted August 13, 2017 Author Share Posted August 13, 2017 Everything thing seems to be growing well, starting to get rid of some corals to make room for new and more exciting things. Starting with this beast And here is my 11 month FTS 4 Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted August 14, 2017 Share Posted August 14, 2017 Looks beautiful! Looks like you're getting a lot of fast growth in your colonies. What are your parameters now? Quote Link to comment
MockandRoll Posted August 14, 2017 Share Posted August 14, 2017 Tank looks awesome! I agree with nano sapiens, the pH drop was probably from the addition of sand. What was alk doing during the crash? Nitrate of 3.5 is not bad and probably did not contribute to the crash. Quote Link to comment
dropped Posted August 21, 2017 Author Share Posted August 21, 2017 On 8/15/2017 at 6:10 AM, MockandRoll said: Tank looks awesome! I agree with nano sapiens, the pH drop was probably from the addition of sand. What was alk doing during the crash? Nitrate of 3.5 is not bad and probably did not contribute to the crash. Could well have been!! Moving on from that now its well in the past (11 months ago now) On 8/15/2017 at 2:15 AM, teenyreef said: Looks beautiful! Looks like you're getting a lot of fast growth in your colonies. What are your parameters now? Errrr that would mean i need to test haha But something like this, since adding the CXRX i only really test alk. 1 Quote Link to comment
dropped Posted September 6, 2017 Author Share Posted September 6, 2017 Well the tank is now 1 year and 3 days old. Everything is growing fast, colours could be better but i guess that will come in time. Excuse the iphone 5 photo (breaking phones recently) 4 Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted September 6, 2017 Share Posted September 6, 2017 Happy tankiversary! Looks beautiful, I love how much it has filled in. 1 Quote Link to comment
dropped Posted September 6, 2017 Author Share Posted September 6, 2017 15 minutes ago, teenyreef said: Happy tankiversary! Looks beautiful, I love how much it has filled in. Cheers mate, Things are growing into each other now. I think im just going to let them battle it out naturally. 2 Quote Link to comment
RollaJase Posted September 7, 2017 Share Posted September 7, 2017 Glad to see this one has bounced back mate. Congrats on the 1 year, tank is looking great. 1 1 Quote Link to comment
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