n0rk's LEDPico Experiment Bonanza

[n0rk]

Hmm.

There's no real way to prove this, is there?

Very interesting theory, though.

 

Not unless I call in some help from a buddy who does mass spectrometry...

 

I think most tanks that have problems stem from human error.Im not sure if you use timers for lights.Or how you change your water but i find myself with a constantly changeing salt level and swings in ammonia and the other yellow one.Adding new frags to my tank often disturbs things and it drives me nuts just touching the water.I find haveing macro algaes in the tank are very helpful in stablizing the water.Even if someone has green hair algae i think its better then no algae or macros.

 

Changes in current also effect corals.Basicly if you add up all the little things from far away its really a big list.Which isnt good so the lower your list is the better your tank will probally be.Its hard for me now cause im setting the tank up for the long haul and making sure things are pefect but every week there adding that new frag and that messes with my stable things.

 

Barebottom tanks are extremely easy to clean.Maybe start off your tank by purching all your corals then adding sand to minamize sandbed disturbance.

 

It's hard to have human error come into play for a tank that doesn't get touched I've experienced this exact phenomenon more than once across a range of tanks, always following the die-off of corals. No change I've made has been significant to alter the running of the system (why change a formula which worked for a year?), the literal only difference is that there was die-off in the tank.

 

Interesting Ben...

 

If this be the case, why are the WCs not helping here?

 

Perhaps siphoning out the sand bed ( read remove) and see how the tank responds?

 

Would an increase in flow help as well?

 

I've removed the sand bed, scrubbed it down thoroughly and put it through treatments twice now, Richie. The entire tank has been taken apart twice (which is three times total now). No need to increase flow as it was already pushing the envelope from when I changed from SPS to LPS, and the problems I'm seeing aren't those which would be caused by flow. As for WCs, I couldn't tell you. I suspect it becomes bound to the rock itself which would mean it remains present in the pores of the rock, thus not being removed via WCs. Makes sense, the stuff closest the rock is the stuff worst affected (and the stuff closest to where there was the most die-off - coincidence?).

 

Alls I know is, it's ####### me off.

[Weetabix7]

I think you need to get help from your mass spectrometry friend.

DO EET!!!

If whatever is going on is a result from bad junk being bound/absorbed into the pores of the LR, that could also go a long way toward explaining my own tank struggles.

I had tank problems that kept happening, even when livestock was moved to a succession of 3 different tanks.

The live rock was one of the things that remained the same from tank to tank.

I would REALLY like to know if this was the source of the problems, esp since I still have the same LR in my current tank setup.

In my own situations, I would see a big improvement when there was a massive WC of 50% or more followed by an inevitable decline, no matter what I did.

Thinking through some of the possible implications though, would this mean that every time anyone experiences a massive coral die-off in a system, they would actually need to change out most or all of their LR?

 

On another note, I know it would be a huge pain, but replacing sand and rock for this tank wouldn't be nearly as big of a deal since it's Pico sized.

Just thinking, not saying you should jump right into doing it.

[Weetabix7]

Also, does this mean if there is a Phosphate problem in the tank that is eventually removed via media like Phosban or RowaPhos, it will still be bound up in the LR??

There's a ton of implications here, I must know!!!

[Needreefunds]

Not surprised to see Lisa jump in here, as I thought of her tank troubles as I read your theory Ben.

 

Very interesting... and it %^&&%# us off as well, cuz yur our buddeh.

[Weetabix7]

Kay wait, if this logic held true, wouldn't it mean pretty much ALL live rock is problematic?

Here's why.

You're hypothesizing that sulfate became bound into the pores of the LR after a massive die-off.

Think about what happens to LR on it's journey from the Ocean to our tanks.

It's taken out of the ocean with tons of life-forms on it.

Many of those life-forms die during transportation (massive die off) and the rock must be cured before it can be safely used in a tank.

So?

[n0rk]

This friend who kicked off this theory, his tank is quite heavily carbon-dosed and runs very little actual dissolved PO4 (he reads constantly 0.01 on a Hanna), my pico tends to agree with these findings. My Hanna reads about that as well on the pico. So, if it is PO4-related, it's localised and not actually released into the water column (through whatever mechanism, I'm unsure). I feel the products which are involved are likely NOT PO4-related, as these are readily metabolised in an aquarium whereas other things which are released via decay are not. Especially the decay of corals - as these produce things which are capable of "warfare", I feel these are at play, as well as the direct products of decay - sulphates are my biggest concern here. Especially given the way this happens and the timeframe from waterchange to things succumbing to stresses.

 

This could be interesting, actually. I think the implication as I'm assessing it here is, anything which becomes biologically active, has pores, and that sort of shebang would need to be removed and replaced, or at least treated. I'm trying to find some treatment for these things as well as an assessment of what is released during an event. This, I feel, would explain why many people have these difficulties post-crash.

 

I think this theory holds some water. It's not a new phenomenon by any measure, just a new way of looking at it I suppose.

[Weetabix7]

Kay wait, if this logic held true, wouldn't it mean pretty much ALL live rock is problematic?

Here's why.

You're hypothesizing that sulfate became bound into the pores of the LR after a massive die-off.

Think about what happens to LR on it's journey from the Ocean to our tanks.

It's taken out of the ocean with tons of life-forms on it.

Many of those life-forms die during transportation (massive die off) and the rock must be cured before it can be safely used in a tank.

So?

 

But??? ^^^

[n0rk]

And I think the distinction here is Weets, the specific things contained in corals that aren't found in other organisms, and the specific organic compositions they have. Very few things other than anemones have similar profiles. And as it's not ever in a massive concentration relative to the water volume, the opportunity for this occur is much lower.

[n0rk]

At least, that's how I'm theorising it. Be it that a crash is a MASSIVE instability of bacteria and the types of toxins involved would mean there's very little which can directly act on them biologically. In die-off on live rock, there's very little to have such a noxious effect (Ammonia is about the worst here). Bacteria can handle these rather well, so it seldom gets a chance to really be a problem. There's a lot of possible compounds here that could be at play, until I do a proper assessment and compare between tank water, rock water, and fresh NSW, it's hard to know which is at play.

 

Whatever that x-factor is however, I'm certain it's our culprit and I'm certain it's Scleractinian-specific. The factors are all consistent between the tanks which seem to experience this phenomenon. Die-off of hard corals, waterchanges helping, corals doing well for a measured amount of time then suddenly experiencing a downturn... so, to find out what's at play, we must go deeper into what comes free...

[.Newman.]

i still have no clue what happened in your pico. all i got from that is that everything died (which may or may not be true.) can you be any more specific to what happened to your pico like observations you made when it was happening? Also i agree if we want to find out if its sulfate related, go do the spectrometer test and tell us the results. It really sounds like it is worth the trouble to do to find out if that is what is happening.

[n0rk]

Seems my theory holds at least remotely true... everything is gone. I'm at least a little bit devastated given how much time and effort I put into growing this thing out only to lose it all for (at least initially) want of living somewhere cooler. Life is a cruel mother####er sometimes.

[Weetabix7]

[.Newman.]

[Needreefunds]

[n0rk]

So... do I lick my wounds? Do I build on the plan, ditch the rock and sandbeds and start again building in better failsafes? Or, do I call it quits and send this tank to the history pages like so many other picos? I'm undecided as yet. I've proven my methodology works if nothing else which was the original plan of this system.

[Aquanist]

[n0rk]

And then this happened:

 

 

Expect some more changes shortly... amongst the most recent ones includes a change in plan back towards SPS, a move to 50W of LED, and the acquisition of a clam...

 

 

[.Newman.]

[n0rk]

Hopefully I'll have some coral in there this weekend. I've got some nice Acro earmarked for it... amongst them a fluro yellow table, a teal stag, and a tricolor like the GARF Bonsai...

[.Newman.]

good luck with it. SPS pico will be higher maintenance i bet?

[brandon429]

This tank was a great statement to the predictability of old tank syndrome in aged pico reefs. it hit the age prediction nearly right on the mark...I just read the last two pages as this thread was brought up and I wanted to go back and see the sandbed, feeding and water change regimen used for its maturity. this could be a very helpful tracker/age extending thread for pico reefs of this size range. Im trying to comprehend Nork what you were meaning about sulfate as an OTS variable, I haven't had any troubles with sulfate it seems so tracking this down between two tanks would help to isolate it as a concern

[n0rk]

good luck with it. SPS pico will be higher maintenance i bet?

 

Significantly less, actually. The tank takes care of itself aside from algae scraping. That's why I've got so many peri pumps running... it does all my water changes and top-offs for me right now I'm changing about a pint out a day of water which works out to something like 6%, depending how I need to I may up that rate to around 10%. Obviously having a lot of spare NSW helps with that plan.

 

 

This tank was a great statement to the predictability of old tank syndrome in aged pico reefs. it hit the age prediction nearly right on the mark...I just read the last two pages as this thread was brought up and I wanted to go back and see the sandbed, feeding and water change regimen used for its maturity. this could be a very helpful tracker/age extending thread for pico reefs of this size range. Im trying to comprehend Nork what you were meaning about sulfate as an OTS variable, I haven't had any troubles with sulfate it seems so tracking this down between two tanks would help to isolate it as a concern

 

I don't think this was an OTS outbreak - given how well the tank was running and how balanced it had become (the problems that beleaguered it in the middle months were related to the source water as I later found out, on top of the ABSURDLY HUGE overfeeding I was undertaking as an experiment of what could and couldn't be done... as it turns out, feeding the tank ~25x as much food as is recommended doesn't work for prolonged periods), I believe it could've run just as happily for a lot longer than it did... had it been actually maintained and on a proper care schedule even moreso than I proved it could last with virtually no intervention from myself. At one stage there it didn't get a waterchange in over 2 months and still maintained no nutrients... ion deficiency was the problem I encountered along the way by not doing WCs once the DSB had come to effectiveness. I tried consistently and got 0 NO3 and 0.00 PO4 (photometer), another thing I think goes against the OTS experience.

 

The problems I described most recently I attribute to the crash when everything melted and nothing else... when the Euphyllia species melted, they brought with them some incredibly toxic substances. As to what I'm not sure. Sulphate, although I placed a lot of blame on it I no longer feel is a sole culprit - rather in the same way an anemone being minced in an aquarium will wipe out livestock for long periods to come, the products created during the death of a noxious invertebrate will cause serious harm to any and all over a fairly short timescale.

 

I noticed a significant increase in Sulphation of the DSB after the demise of the corals over the next week or so, which to me spoke volumes that it was actually present. All I know is, what was left behind is not isolated to this tank alone and under similar circumstances many tanks of much larger size exhibit similar dramas. Whatever went down... had the tank not overheated, it would still be running as it was, this much I can say with confidence.

 

End of the day... I can track the demise to the minute, whereas it wasn't gradual as you'd expect in OTS. All the symptoms developed post-overheat and the signs are consistent with other mass die-off events.

[n0rk]

Oh, and to answer more directly... husbandry didn't consist of much. Legitimately, all I did for a long time was top off once a week or so when the pump started spitting bubbles and throw in some Calcium and Alk powder every few days. I didn't bother testing, I didn't bother matching or balancing much, and I didn't bother doing any of the normal pico methods of care. I actually found better results by doing less. WCs were between 50% and as much water as I could get out most of the time... and happened basically whenever I felt compelled which wasn't overly hugely often.

[brandon429]

a year is longest time we've seen a small pico reef run untended, and even that's a darn long time... the tune of the pico must have been really well set. most hands off picos without internal waste fixation crash by month 5.

 

in having lost tanks to overheating thats a shared frustration, everyday I count on the home ac not to fail.

 

In my opinion the hands off method is best suited to pico tanks without a sandbed and that's still theoretical because none of the hands off picos made it past a year without hardware failure to know.

 

I look for threads showing otherwise pretty often. A self running pico reef using only live rock, sand, water corals and feed past a year is the sword in the stone man it will be interesting to see what repeatable variables exist in a true bare bones pico reef approach where water changes are not needed and all feed/waste is processed internally.

 

Its ideal, if you can find a way to make that repeatable it will be preferable to any method as a time saver alone.

[n0rk]

I had considered adopting the same approach again and building things to conform to what information I got out of the original build, but having been offered livestock and an opportunity to experiment with clams and SPS (as well as having a large number of dosing pumps handy that I need to give a shakedown) I've moved the focus away and am basically trying to keep things as intervention-free as possible.

 

So far, so good... I've got coralline starting to grow on my rock and the nutrients appear to be running moderately low for now (PO4 was 0.06 last I tested, NO3 is at 1). Hopefully I'll add a small canister filter on in place of an FBF next week. Only a very tiny one - it's like 1/10th of a gallon or something and flows about 70gph which should be perfect... I'll run a small amount of GFO and Chemipure. I had considered a small amount of biopellets as a strictly bacterial feed for the inhabitants, though I guess we'll see. The clam should seriously help as well I feel.

 

Either way... much less need for me to touch things this time. I want to watch it grow out into a living sculpture over time and see just how possible it is to grow Acroporidae in vessels this small.