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Cultivated Reef

Mark's Nanobox Powered 40B -retired-


markalot

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Did you do a water change?

A couple of them, and will do another tomorrow.

 

I also added some snake oil (Seachem Stability) to try and aid rebuilding some bacteria. Tank is slightly cloudy, another sign the nitrifying bacteria was damaged.

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If you want my 2 cents it sounds like since most of your flow is coming from the ac110 you probably didn't have enough flow over your rocks for them to build up bacteria so everything was in the filter. IDK though that's really weird cause you don't have a very high bioload in there.

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If you want my 2 cents it sounds like since most of your flow is coming from the ac110 you probably didn't have enough flow over your rocks for them to build up bacteria so everything was in the filter. IDK though that's really weird cause you don't have a very high bioload in there.

Doesn't take much to kill corals. I think the low load saved the shrimp and fish.

 

Sorry to hear about the mini cycle! I hope everything else pulls through without too much damage. Keep us posted on what's going on with the tank.

Thanks.

 

This morning the tank is still a little hazy but all inhabitants alive. Corals do not look worse, some better, but not by much.

 

One more dose of Sability and Prime this morning. I'm not so sure Prime really helps the corals, but at least I should be able to keep the fish and shrimp alive.

 

The Xenia took the opportunity last night to put a foot on the edge of the monti cap. :(

 

Oh, and one of my nerite snails was on the carpet, 2 feet in front of the tank. Still alive, crazy thing.

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I think xenia is a pretty good barometer of how the tank is doing. If it's still happily growing, that's a good sign :) Not good it's taking over the monti cap though. Thank goodness you didn't lose any of the fish!!!!!

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Did two consecutive 5 gallon water changes today, and the tank was cloudy even after the second change. Dosed 1 cap of Prime and 1 cap of stability after the changes. I'm also noticing increased algae growth just about everywhere, like the uglies part 2. I'm hoping some of the bio filter survived somewhere, but man this tank is acting like it's brand new again.

 

Fish and shrimp continue to act normally.

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Everything still alive, and I believe the frogspawn has stopped receding.

 

I added another nano (240gph) on the left side of the tank for additional flow and turbulence.

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Everything still alive, and I believe the frogspawn has stopped receding.

 

I added another nano (240gph) on the left side of the tank for additional flow and turbulence.

Yay...great news :)
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Same as yesterday. Both my monties have some skin, so perhaps there's hope. Some of the Xenia has shriveled up, and I'm happy about that, but I'm sure it's temporary. Fish and shrimp continue to behave as if nothing happened.

 

Algae is starting to grow everywhere. My late one armed emerald crab was either the hardest working crab in show business or whatever caused this crash is also contributing to the algae problem. I swear this tank now looks like it's just been setup. :(

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Still moving along, no deaths except the Xenia is till in decline and I'm not too upset about it.

 

I moved my purple Duncans back to the 40 and promised them they could stay a while there. Already partially open this morning, hopefully not looking for revenge. I also moved 3 acans to the 40 and a newer rock of ice somethingorother zoanthids.

 

In return, I moved a small frag of rather drab frogspawn and a one poly frag of standard color Duncan from the 40 to the 20 and they are out and happy this morning, so the incident appears to be over. Just like my crash in the 40, though, the damage has been done and it is simply showing up slowly over a week or more past the incident.

 

So, along with another 5 gallon water change I replaced carbon and this time added Phosguard with it since it appears my Phosphates are high and algae is everywhere. I'm starting to wonder if, instead of a mini cycle, I released a ton of trapped rotting detritus during a water change and had a big phosphate spike?

 

Regardless, I have to move ahead and hope for the best. I need the sand for the Rainford Goby, but I'm planning to remove most of the smaller rocks to greatly improve the flow to the sandbed. This tank is going to look ugly for a while now while I very slowly rescape it without harming any of the fish or shrimp.

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My scarlet cleaner shrimp molted this morning, first since the tank had issues, and no problems, so I'm feeling much better about things now. All fish seem to be just fine. Peppermint shrimp was hanging out below the scarlet cleaner this morning, It's unusual that he's out in the open, but he looked ok.

 

The corals I moved from the 40 are all alive and happy, existing corals still under major stress from the damage. I believe I have completely lost the orange cap monti, but the rainbow monti kept most of it's skin so hopefully it will recover.

 

- Emerald Crab - dead just before crash was evident.

 

- Branching Hammer Coral - lost

 

- Orange Monti cap - lost, but leaving in for now to see if anything comes back. I have a piece of this in the 40 so it's not totally lost.

 

- Frogspawn - significant recession, and still receding.

 

- Pipe organ - significant darkening of skeleton but I assume it will recover.

 

- Blue Zoanthids - finally starting to open back up, thankfully.

 

- Xenia - not sure. Some have withered away, some are half gone but seem to have stabilized. A clump attached to the back wall seems stable.

 

I'll take some pictures of the carnage this evening.

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Sorry to hear about your troubles, tank was looking really good! :(

 

Thanks. I've crashed both my tanks now, so maybe it will be smooth sailing from here. :) The 40 recovered quite well, so I think this will be looking good again in a month or so.

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Somehow this thread fell off my follow list 3 weeks ago it appears, and I can't see photos from work. How much GFO are you running relative to the recommended amounts, I had frogspawn recession from my GFO overdose.

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Hi Veng,

 

I had a little GFO mixed in with my carbon, but the bag was left in over a month. Lots of nutrients in this tank, lots of algae, which the Rainford loves. My mistake, as best I can tell, is too little flow in the tank so much of my bacteria set up on my filter bags, which I removed all at once. A comedy of errors, really. Usually I take a bag out, dump contents, re-fill, rinse in a bucket of RO/DI and replace. These bags were wearing down, cheap .50 cent bags, so I replaced.

 

I'm betting my ammonia spike was brief, but it doesn't take much to seriously harm corals.

 

I've increased flow in the tank by adding another nano pump, plus I've placed a bag of rocks, basically, in my AC110 which I will clean of detritus from time to time. I also started using Phosguard in here due to the algae growth really picking up. Both my leathers immediately perked up, even though they are supposed to hate the aluminum media. :)

 

With a sandbed such that I have (dirty) I don't think I'm capable of running really low nutrients, but I will certainly keep an eye out for it.

 

Starting tonight I'm going to re-arrange and remove some smaller rocks so the entire scape is more open and flowing, to help with some of these issues.

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The aluminum media stuff being bad is bullshit. Unless you run your tank at a pH of under 5 anyways. At which point all your stonies are long dead from the pH/low dKH as their skeletons dissolve.

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Phosguard is safe man! I don't see why so many people think it's bad. But glad everything is perking up. Know the feels of cloudy water when my anemone went kamikaze on a return pump a few days ago. :/

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Man, what a rough 5 hours of rescaping and cleaning. I'm happy with the flow now, kind of happy with the look.

 

Here is the best FTS I could get after rescaping and waiting until the leather came back out.

 

2013022220fts.jpg

 

It's interesting how some corals died, some look horrible, and some act like nothing happened.

 

The frogspawn has suffered horribly. A less colorful one moved from my 40 is on the left.

 

2013022220frogspawn.jpg

 

Now here is the Blasto merletti, unaware anything bad happened. It never looked stressed.

 

2013022220blastom.jpg

 

Here is the right side of the tank with the dead orange monti cap, what's keft of the Xenia (including some attached to the back wall), and one of the new rocks I bought with some purple and orange Zoas. The plug if Rainbow monti is in the sand, still has some color, and I'm hoping will recover. I'd like to cover the great white beast (rock) I added with montis. I have a frag of Pokerstar in the 40 along with Idaho Grape, and of course what's left of my orange cap.

 

2013022220rightsidedama.jpg

 

 

So now the new stuff. I wanted to introduce some rocks with various critters on them so I visited my favorite LFS and bought 2 rocks and a nice plug of what may be Armor of the Gods Paly.

 

This rock had a much larger colony of red blasto welsii on it but most have died off. They sold it for $10. :) Looks like I also got a small colony of some orangish Zoa and a pretty decent size feather worm along with 2 heads of blasto plus a half a head with a mouth near the bottom.

 

2013022220redblasto.jpg

 

On the lower left you can see some damaged Ricordia. :(

 

Here's the frag of what might be Armor of the Gods paly or something similar.

 

2013022220redpaly.jpg

 

 

And another shot of that Blasto rock, this one with the orangish polyp open as well as the feather duster peaking out.

 

2013022220blastorock.jpg

 

Wish the tank some luck and hopefully it will get back on track over the next month or so.

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I think you'll be better off adding the extra flow, you could probably get really good flow over the sand bed if you position one of your powerheads towards the front of your tank and one towards the back, with some playing around it could be nice.

 

+1 to how awesome phosguard is.

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I think you'll be better off adding the extra flow, you could probably get really good flow over the sand bed if you position one of your powerheads towards the front of your tank and one towards the back, with some playing around it could be nice.

 

+1 to how awesome phosguard is.

 

Thanks. I'm definitely going to play around with pump placement to see what i can come up with.

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2 more pictures.

 

First is what's left of the Rainbow Montipora. Honestly, the fact that the polyp holes are black and it's not losing any skin gives me hope, even though it looks awful.

 

2013022320rainbowmonti.jpg

 

Here is the other rock I bought with the yellow/orange rimmed Zoas. These look good under blue light. Happy Duncan is happy.

 

2013022320yellowrimzoa.jpg

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

March pictures. Color is slowly coming back and algae has peaked and fading, with the help of a new emerald crab.

 

FTS

 

2013030420fts.jpg

 

New green shroom on a broken piece of rock. Peppermint shrimp makes an appearance.

 

2013030420greenmushroom.jpg

 

 

Near the center of the tank. You can see what's left of the Rainbow monti, which is not dead yet, Red mushroom rock, a new Alveopora frag, and my blue zoas survived.

 

2013030420centerright.jpg

 

Just to document the recovery, I pulled my branching frogspawn frag out as soon as I determined this was just some kind of cycle. It's in the 40 next to another frogspawn and is showing some good growth back over the skeleton. You'll have to excuse the glass, I don't do windows. :D I'm lucky to keep the front clean.

 

2013030420recoveringfro.jpg

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