Friar's Pico

[friar1]

Wow!

 

After a couple of days, the spots I was able to get with my torch are almost bare rock now! Barely touched the algae with the torch, but it did a really great job, without harming any corals. I highly recommend using a torch against Green Hair Algae, it really does a good job if you can get like a Pencil torch to use. I used this one: Pencil Torch but i ordered two and only one of them worked, they are only 99 cents! The unfortunate thing is I am just too chicken to get close to the corals so i will have to wait that algae out. It is shriveling in most places though.

 

Also the water changes and NO feeding have made a big difference. I am not even going to mention the Duncan (oops! there, I did it again!) hehe.

 

 

Oh and thanks Brandon for the inspiration and advice to use a torch on the algae!

 

Friar

[friar1]

Oh, I forgot,

the three XRE Cree Royal Blue LEDS that I added to the tank lighting are now getting cool results. I have been turning them on for a hour at a time, mainly so I can see the cool colors of the tank. The Duncan (Ssshhh!) and the RPEs and the new Zoas love it, start to look quite nice under the blues. And the rics no longer shrink under them.

 

I will probably gradually increase the time they stay on, to see what happens.

 

Friar

[friar1]

August FTS

Doesn't really look that brown, I could not adjust my white balance. Yes Algae, but it is really dying off.

 

(burned some more Saturday)

 

in the middle you can see the two arms of a red brittle star.

 

Friar

 

[Wendy]

Hang in there Friar. I think your corals look great & that

red brittle star really adds some pazaz to that darn algae!

[friar1]

Here are some latest pictures. Still have algae looks bad in the pics but it is going away (unless i am just having that wishful thinking :/)

 

 

 

 

 

Friar

[friar1]

Here is a shot of our brittle star that my wife took:

 

[.Newman.]

nice brittle? its reef safe right? what do you feed it/what does it eat?

[friar1]

The only thing bad I have heard about Brittle stars are that the green ones like to eat fish. I bet this one would if I had fish in there. But I have no fish.

 

I have fed it a few times, it also eats waste and floating junk. It is totally cool when you hold a piece of mysis for it, it will grab onto it like an octopus. In fact, when it gets excited like at feeding time, it really looks like an octopus kind of with its arms going all over the place.

 

I am sparsely feeding the corals, and mostly spot feeding. When I do, give some mysis to the star. It iwill mostly hide in the rocks, sometimes you'll see its arms sticking through a bunch of crevices in the rock.

 

Probably not my best decision for this tank, but I bowed to the will of my wife and daughter. I'll have to be careful I feed it regularly and not let it starve, without polluting the water with uneaten food.

 

Friar

[Mr. Microscope]

Cool! I've never seen a red brittle star. Good luck with your algae. It's a slow battle.

[friar1]

So....

I changed my dosing schedule,after advice from Brandon, from every other day to every day.

 

I am now dosing 1.5 ml of each part of C-Balance, parts A and B every day, 10 minutes apart, Part A first, water change or not.

 

Also raised the specific gravity to 1.026 from 1.023

 

Bi-weekly water changes, up to 99% of the water each time.

 

Since beginning this about two weeks ago or so, I have seen the Duncan get much larger and the Hermit crab has molted. I have about ten small feather dusters in the sand bed. And now I have coraline growing on the sides of the tank. The coraline appeared a couple days ago. I had found some coraline on the rocks earlier in this tanks life, but it disappeared. Now it looks like it is returning.

GHA is getting slowly less, it is easier to take off the rocks when it is dying as it comes off in clumps.

 

The Miami Vice Zoas are now five polyps, the Red People Eaters are four polyps. The starfish and the hermit crab are both very active and happy.

[.Newman.]

maybe i should give dosing a try huh?

[friar1]

maybe i should give dosing a try huh?

 

Hi Newman:

 

Well, it is not going to help an awful lot with algae, but it will help. I guess the elevated PH levels will retard the growth of GHA. Plus, it will definitely help with coraline algae growth, but the larger tanks don't seem to need it as much as the 1 gallon tanks. I do not know of any anecdotal info on dosing a 3 gallon. That's what you have right? I am just going by what worked for brandon429 on his 1.5 gallon vase reef, which, by the way was packed full of coral. He suggested i either increase the amount or the frequency. (Brandon, feel free to chime in by the way)

I tried to dose at 2 ml each part every other day for about a week, but I kept forgetting and missing a day here and there. So I just went back to 1.5 ml each part and went to every day. Now I don't miss a day, just part of my morning routine. I use a syringe to keep the doses as equal as possible. I also dose before the tank lights come on.

The bottles say to dose a maximum of 1ml each part per gallon per day. You might consider testing for calcium and alk if you start to dose like this, I haven't been able to get the test kits for those yet, so i am observing closely the health of my animals.

Also, keep in mind I do change out almost all my water twice a week. It's easy to do since it is a 1.5 gallon lol.

 

I do feel that dosing has helped all the creatures living in my tank to be healthier. I also feel that overfeeding led to my algae problem.

 

How's your temps been by the way?

 

Friar

[c_k_kuehne]

I am now dosing 1.5 ml of each part of C-Balance, parts A and B every day, 10 minutes apart, Part A first, water change or not.

.

.

.

.

Bi-weekly water changes, up to 99% of the water each time.

 

I guess I don't see the purpose of dosing every day if you do a 99% WC every 3 or 4 days. Dosing is usually used to replenish the lost calcium/mag. etc... between WC's. If you do a WC every 3 or 4 days then you are just flushing the C-Balance down the toilet. The bio-load never had a chance to deplete the calcium/mag. etc.. in the tank in the 3 days time between WC's.

 

If you do a 99% WC every 3 or 4 days and have a problem with calcium/mag etc... get a better salt mix and forget about dosing.

 

Now if you go 2 weeks between WC's then you might have a need to dose.

 

The reason why I do massive WC's once or twice a week is so I don't have to worry about dosing and of course to deplete excess nutrients/Nitrates etc...

[friar1]

well, c_k, just following the advice from brandon.

This is the first time I have had any coraline grow on my tank sides.

 

Friar

[friar1]

I switched to Instant Ocean Reef Crystals about a month and a half ago, was using Oceanic before that. I had coraline growth when I started but it stopped and disappeared. been doing twice weekly water changes for a couple months now.

 

When I began to dose every day, I suddenly saw coraline growth. go figure :)

[friar1]

Of course all this is only speculation on my part, since I don't yet have a test kit for Calcium and Alk. These tests i will be performing in October after I get the kits. Then I will be able to see what is happening with the calcium. I will probably then see what happens when I stop dosing and what happens when I dose.

 

In the meantime, I am Very happy with the new coraline growth on the tank sides.

 

 

Friar

[brandon429]

all of this is what makes my reefs work as I see it the fun part is picking and choosing different approaches to different systems.

 

good call on the water change and waste potential, but theres a trick to the smaller tanks Ive seen tell me what you think of this...its also like my feeding, I grossly overfeed which kinda wastes food but feeds every animal then take 80% of it back out before it settles (I change water/feed heavily 1 or 2 times a week)

 

 

 

One way to offset the age acidification in the aged pico, I have seen, is to dose mad with C balance. An amazing and verifiable fact is this below, it defies logic as does pico reefing in general:

 

my half gallon sps reef in the avatar used 1/2 cap of c balance per day on weekdays and a full water change on fridays, and each day I would alternate bottles, no two bottles on same day. (monday part a, tues part b etc) thats~2 capfulls of c balance per week into 1/2 gallon before the water change. if you scale up to a ten gallon tank and put in 20 caps a week, what happens? why can a pico take ten times the dosing (carefully added in a specific way) and still be okay?

 

Something is consuming ions at a much faster rate in the pico model of a large reef, but this really shows the impact with a tiny 1/2 gallon model dosed at the highest ion concentration that would not precipitate. I have tested and found in my opinion via system longevity that coral growth is not the only consumer of doser (part b in C balance) in the aged pico, bioacids in the system are bound by it chemically and I say the matrix of acid+base falls out of solution as a micron-level precipitate on the substrate...thats where the excess doser goes that is not in coral skeleton, in my opinion, but either way it took that much C balance to run it and tabletop the acropora. any less and the tank would start to bleach.

* the dosing didn't start like that, it -followed- the demands up to it...starting like that would fry that tank too. So, correct dosing is reactive, and predictive, if you want to rock n roll a gallon pico. if you want frags to stay in place and not change for six months in a gallon reef just do changes.

 

 

 

pico dosing is if you want a coralline problem and the perfect pH balances that implies, with corals that plate across your glass because the rocks aren't good enough. its not required for success but to me it helps repeat it.

 

 

One way I say dosing specifically battles green hair algae is that it causes excess coralline growth which competes for space on your rocks, where gha grows. Coralline is a known chemical signal producer, it has allelopathic characters among other corallines, and it doesn't support gha as well as gray or white (reflective=more photosynthesis) rock Ive seen, which is the majority of undosed picos. so in my tanks all I have to do to keep algae away is zap any natural strands that come up and make sure the rock stays thick with coralline, then Im not zapping so much somehow.

 

dosing a pico boosts the assorted twisted and contorted live rock populations as well due to their command of it in calcification. My live rock diversity increased tenfold with heavy dosing and blast feeding, here's the worm stands below. This was not part of the live rock, I bought only normal flat live rock and grew this inside the vase...

 

 

 

no change water undosed had high calcium in it after a week or two in my early tests, dosing was needed to keep it at 450 with as many corals in the vase. without dosing, to keep up with my system needs, itd need a 4x weekly change, this buys me 5-7 days of ion support. regular water changes make up for a lot in reef system approach, to me dosing is like steroids for the pico reef.

[c_k_kuehne]

Will have to read this in depth when I have more time and give this some thought.

 

I am almost scared to make any changes for fear something goes wrong this far into the contest.

[friar1]

Hey c_k,

Your tank looks pretty boss, as far as that goes, You should stick to what you are doing probably.

 

I just wanted to follow Brandon's method from the beginning, although I have had to make some changes apart from what he did.

 

Also, as soon as I get some test kits for calcium and alk, I will be able to show what my dosing is doing in my pico, but I won't be getting those kits until October.

 

Hope to see how all the remaining 12 tanks are doing by January.

 

Friar

[brandon429]

agreed totally guys CK you have natural coralline spotting over just from your disciplined water changes I totally subscribe to the aint broke don't fix it phil, my chem additions are just to take out my water change work as far as humanly possible this old and this dense, if your tank was mine I wouldn't change a thing its perfect.

 

I do believe lack of discipline in slow stocking contributes to my tank needs. where you were saying you'd play it slow adding the inverts Id have added 4, making more acid waste, + impulse coral buys and the dosing was to support all of that. worst case scenarios is in year two you'll have to change water a little more often as indicated by diatom fouling, but its a coffee cup man no ones gonna hate for it LOL. Your tank is in the top three sub gallon ones Ive seen on here including just dave someone look up his stuff it was crazy purple on water changes alone cuz he did em without skipping. Friar Im interested in how you make your own changes Im making mental notes so when people talk about it I can relate back to your experiences and pics.

[friar1]

Hi Brandon.

I change the water every sunday and thursday.

I change about 95-99%, I can't get all the water cause then I start sucking up a bunch of sand.

If I miss a day, I do two changes back to back til I catch up to the schedule.

 

Although,

I have not been super diligent until about a month and a half ago.

After I got the algae, I made sure that I changed the water on those days. or more often if I had to miss on of the scheduled days.

 

Friar

[.Newman.]

hope your algae goes away friar

[friar1]

Thanks Newman me too!

 

 

Friar

[brandon429]

Friar you've impressed me because in pms you refused to let a little algae make you change your mind on the surety of success, thats why it w work. instead of giving up on the reef you are determined to see it through and the pics show others how staying the long haul w work. its also responsible to try this hard and not give up on reef animals to reduce the consumptive aspect of our hobby.\

[friar1]

Well...

I have these animals, they are really cool, and I don't want to see one die. The Duncan in hindsight was probably a brand new frag that the Fish store should not have sold to me. It was barely open when I got it, and they did not know what it was. It is doing much better now, I am hoping it will reproduce.

 

The Red People eaters were one polyp that I got for $5 at another fish store. It is now four polyps.

 

The Miami Vice zoas are very cool, already went from three to five polyps in a matter of weeks.

 

The Big ric came with a small ric , although I only ordered one. And when it was torn from it's perch in a rock fall, it left a very small part of it's foot. That baby is in the back on another rock and is getting bigger.

 

There is a really pretty bristle worm in the tank I get to see every so often.

 

And of course the Hermit crab, which was a hitchhiker on the live rock.

 

Finally my favorite, the Red Brittle Star, "Briley" That thing is cool to watch!

 

So what, that is 8 animals? Not to mention the abundance of feather dusters in the sand bed!

 

And what did I start with? A rinky dink tank and some live rock and sand.

 

What is interesting is that that hermit crab was in his shell in the dark in a tub with the rubble of the live rock I bought. I had to break up the rock in order to get it into the tank, so I left the rubble and some fresh water, not salt mix, in the Styrofoam box that the rock came in. Left it there for two days, in the shed outside. Later on, I went poking around in there and found some shells. When I picked up hermie's shell, I felt something move inside, so I promptly put it in the tank. Wasn't long before the crab was cruising around the tank looking for something to eat.

 

So I am cool with it's progress, the algae is a pain, but oh well, I'll do the best I can with it. I am learning a lot about what it doesn't like. It does not like new water. It starts to die off every time I do a water change. Those portions become clumps that pull off very easily. I can tell when it is dying, because it looks like decay. The new stuff looks like grass. I am seeing less and less of the new stuff after every water change.

 

So three and a half months later, here we are. Can't add any animals, due to the contest, now have to really have patience. And we will see what we will see. Thanks Brandon, by the way, for the the encouragement! and all the tips!

 

Friar

 

I tell you one thing though, next tank will definitely be a glass tank!