Walker's 35g - Home of the Great Zeo Experiment

[Walker]

Hm, interestingly enough, woke up to a cloudy tank today after increasing my vinegar dose from 1ml every 2 days to 1 ml every day. I've set the skimmer cup lower to skim the gunk out.

 

My SPS' polyp extension has gone bananas, too. Huge PE on everything.

[Walker]

And with more aggressive wet skimming, 75% of the cloudiness is gone after a couple of hours. Whew.

[Walker]

I don't think I've ever seen a bacterial bloom disappear this fast... now I'm suspecting it's a spawning event of some sort. My best guess would be either the trochus snails (they've spawned before and I caught them in the act) or the clam. I think those are the only two with enough biomass to completely cloud over the tank. In any case, cloudiness has completely cleared up and the skimmer now has a half-cup full of dark skimmate. I guess if I start seeing new mini-trochus snails in a month I'll know more.

[Walker]

I am reposting something I posted in patback's SPS growth chart thread - it'd be good to have it here for future reference:

 

Ok, I picked the ones that I had good pictures on. There's a few more progress pics I can create but these are the simplest (apparently I should have saved my RAW images from my FTS shots).

 

First, some background. All of these pictures are from when the tank just recovered from an overdose of GFO (hence the faded colours). Light is a 4-bulb T5HO coralife fixture with ATI bulbs (currently 2x Blue Plus, 1x Coral Light, 1x Purple Plus), on a 9.5 hour schedule. No oddball techniques, although I try to maintain near-ULNS with GFO, purigen, and a light vinegar dosing schedule. I have been using B-ionic 2-part since February and switched to DDH2Ocean salt from basic Instant Ocean when these pictures started (April).

 

Flow is 1 MP10 at 80% and an AC70.

 

Incredible Hulk/Purple Plasma. Minimal growth on main frag, but branching has occurred from the base.

 

Green slimer. Suffered severe STN and was broken up into two frags. Has now recovered nicely with new branches.

 

Bird of Paradise. This has been my most consistent grower. This started as a wee frag about 2 inches long.

[Walker]

As far as my monthly update goes, there's been no major changes, as I've been busy taking care of a wee newborn baby girl . On the plus side, the corals have been very happy and growing like gangbusters. On the minus side, I can see that nutrients are starting to creep up with the advent of some wire algae that I beat over a year ago by using GFO. I'll start to use GFO conservatively again, as well as increasing my vinegar dosing regimen. Hopefully this time I can avoid STN'ing my SPS by increasing my oyster-feast and amino acid dosage.

 

I really like this pink prostata - it grows fast and is now branching at the tips:

 

Bird of paradise gaining volume by the week:

 

Cali tort still growing UP... I suspect it will start branching at the top soon:

 

Green slimer growing branches like crazy. It is now invading the personal space of one of my tricolor frags. The bases have already met and it seems like green slimer wins this battle. Good thing I have another tricolor frag in another location:

 

Incredible Hulk now has quite a bit of branching from the base:

[Roshan8768]

Looks good man. Love the month by month comparison growth shots, fantastic documentation!

[Walker]

FTS!

 

[Roshan8768]

Every time I see that FTS, I'm like holy coralline algae. Not that much on your rocks in comparison though, any thoughts/explanations?

[Walker]

Every time I see that FTS, I'm like holy coralline algae. Not that much on your rocks in comparison though, any thoughts/explanations?

I'm as confused as you are. My coralline grows so fast that it's almost invasive. It will crust over probes, the MP10 wetside, even makeshift algae turf scrubbers and bubble algae (!), pretty much anything in the tank within a month. Funnily enough, I started with 90% dry rock and all of this light purple stuff came from one very encrusted trochus that I added November last year.

 

The rocks are deceptive though. This coralline is fairly light purple so it's easy to gloss over in a photo. The top portion of the rocks that you don't see in the FTS do have a decent amount, but nowhere near the amount on everything else.

 

My theory is that the rocks actually have dark green coralline in the interstitial spaces that are blocking the full spread of light purple coralline. The dark purple/red stuff that I wanted to encourage (and actually came from live rock) is only just starting to spread in spots here and there.

[slowngreen]

Wow, thats crazy looking with all that coralline! Very different. Mines growing on rocks pretty fast but wont grow on the glass at all.

[Walker]

Interesting picture of shear forces generated by an MP10 current at 80%. My green slimer grew into the current of my MP10 and has grown sideways, with the side of the slimer facing the current almost completely bare of polyps, just coral skin. The opposite side that is sheltered has the normal amount of polyps.

 

[Walker]

Well, now I've gone and done it. My LFS has a 25% KZ products sale, and I was curious about ZeoVit anyway... long story short, I got the nano-pack of additives (Coral Vitalizer, AALPS, Sponge Power, and Pohl's Xtra). I've been running close to no nutrients anyway to combat algae, so I figure it's a good time to try. Big thanks to NanoTopia for giving me advice on trying out Zeo .

 

I've taken "before" shots of all my corals and will try to document changes as they progress.

 

I started today with 10 drops sponge power and 2 drops coral vitalizer. The dose for sponge power is high, yes, but it's to bootstrap the effects. It will drop down to 1 drop / day afterward. I have to say, I'm impressed - my SPS immediately went nuts, increasing their polyp extension to levels I've never seen before, even with oyster feast or amino acids. No mesenterial filaments even, just pure PE.

 

On NanoTopia's advice I'll be going with this regimen:

 

Coral Vitalizer= 2 drops, twice a week

Sponge Power= 10 drops initially, then 1 drop per day.

AALPS= 0.5mL once a week

Pohl's Xtra (regular)= 1mL twice a week.

 

I've always been a fan of tinkering with my tank, so Zeo seems to be right up my alley. Hopefully this will yield good results .

[Walker]

Dun dun duuuun...

 

[Walker]

I'll give an update on Zeo this Monday after a week.

 

I was playing around with my camera while the moonlights were on. I think these were pretty cool photos:

 

The green birdsnest flourescing like crazy in the pale moonlight:

 

SPS Corals "waking up" to the night with polyp extension - even more than in daytime! Meanwhile, LPS corals start to retract.

 

I thought this was a cool photo. I stopped down the aperature until I can JUUUUST get enough light. I don't have a tripod so it took me quite a few attempts to get it right:

[Walker]

Zeo update, week 1:

 

Impressive effects so far. I knew I was running a low-nutrient tank, but it was edifying to see corals regain their natural darker pigmentation. This was most marked in the green slimer and my green birdsnest. The flesh of the green slimer is regaining a darker green instead of the pale green I've seen since I got it. The green birdsnest is supposed to have brown flesh, but it has been completely bone-white to me. The growth tips now have that brown coloration.

 

My bird of paradise polyps are starting to have flourescent green roots, which it never did before.

 

Frags of the bali tricolor that have been slowly STN'ing are now re-encrusting and have flushed a deeper brown/yellow from a pale yellow.

 

Growth has been supercharged for stony corals - my calcium draw jumped this week, necessitating an increase in 2-part. Faster-growing SPS corals have visibly faster growth. Now, only if it would encourage my red planet to send up branches...

 

So far, I've been quite impressed. SPS corals really reacted well to the additives. LPS corals only had a small reaction, mostly with the chalice coral extending feeding tentacles, which I've never seen before. I do believe that I was starving my corals so maybe that's why it's been such a marked difference.

 

No extra algae growth or cyano so far, but that's probably because I started running GFO again plus increased my vinegar dosing to compensate for zeo.

 

We'll see how it goes after next week.

[markalot]

So you are just using the additives and not the crazy reactor thingy?

[Walker]

So you are just using the additives and not the crazy reactor thingy?

No, just the additives. I figure I'm close enough to zeo ULNS using vinegar/GFO that the net effect is the same. So far, so good.

[Walker]

Zeo update, week 2:

 

Still impressed by the accelerated SPS growth I am seeing. Now I am starting to worry that corals I assumed were far enough apart are going to overrun each other. I think that's a good problem to have . The last SPS to react was my tricolor bonsai, which was getting brown. It is now losing the brown and starting to flush blue/purple again.

 

There has been no reaction with LPS except for the chalice coral, which is now growing faster with better colouration.

 

Downside? Algae. I am seeing patches of wire algae starting to grow in various areas. I think my system is now generally higher in nutrients even though all test kits (including high-sensitivity phosphate kits) test zero.

 

I noticed that the algae would recede right after a water change (and a change in GFO), and would then start to regrow around Tuesday/Wednesday once the GFO is exhausted. I only use 1 teaspoon passively so I'll have to up that. I am also increasing my vinegar dosage to compensate for more nitrates as well.

[Walker]

Happy to report that I brought in 5 grown-out frags of green birdsnest for $40 at the LFS. This birdsnest is growing like crazy for me (1"+ a month) so good that my trimmings have value . I've given it a new haircut and hopefully in a couple of months I'll have more to trade in .

[Walker]

For comparison, newly cut frags a few months ago:

 

 

Frags last week:

 

Frags right before transport:

[Walker]

New batch of trimmings:

 

[Asureef]

Very nice growth!

[Giga]

nice colored sticks

[Walker]

Zeo update, week 3:

 

Everything's still doing well. Algae is under control for the most part, and the corals are growing well. With the system stable again, I have changed my Sponge Power dosing regimen to 1 mL once a week instead of 1 drop per day (as per NanoTopia).

 

I'll post an FTS next week with comparisons - hopefully we can see good changes and it's not just observer error.

[Walker]

Just got my two BRS pumps. Jesus H. Christ these are huge pumps.