Mark's 150 (NanoBox Retro)

[SeaFurn]

Glad that you’ve turned the corner.

So what do you do about the stylo that lost those lower branches? Leave them be? 

That loakni is awesome - looks like velvet! 

How much time do you spend day to day keeping tabs on your tank? 

I’m sure it’s obviously more when know something is off or you go to war on Xenia! 

[markalot]

1 hour ago, SeaFurn said:

Glad that you’ve turned the corner.

So what do you do about the stylo that lost those lower branches? Leave them be? 

That loakni is awesome - looks like velvet! 

How much time do you spend day to day keeping tabs on your tank? 

I’m sure it’s obviously more when know something is off or you go to war on Xenia! 

 

Normally I spend less that 15 minutes fussing over the tank.  It's usually spent coaxing the Foxface away from where I put in the flake food so I don;t get stung, he likes to be fed by hand.  lol   Scraping the glass might be 5 minutes as well.   Mixing 2 part solution and cleaning the skimmer is about all that's left.   The less time I spend the better the tank does.  

 

I will cut those branches off eventually, if I can get to them.  Stylo skeleton is tough, very hard to cut.  

 

 

I left out another pic.  The Hawkins Echinata, which can be sensitive about some things, really took off during this whole ordeal.  Just goes to show how different acros will respond differently to the same conditions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[markalot]

 

I thought things had stabilized and I got lazy with Alk testing ... and it spiked to near 12. Damage is so far a lot less than it could have been. I lost the Sarmentosa, a wild caught, but the wild horrida is still doing ok, but just ok.

 

Here's how things look.

 

The big Red Robin is looking fine, just a little brown.

 

The Red Planet (ORA plug) is not so red but I haven't killed it yet.

 

This is the cool mint/purple tipped unknown.  So far unphased, and maybe a slight loss in color.

 

I've hacked this to bits but all the purple stylo did is use the extra KH for more growth.

 

Surprisingly the hawkins did the same thing, as did all the birds beside it.   

 

Unknown green on the frag rack is unstoppable.  

 

This is the wild caught Horrida.  It's not as healthy as it was and may be in a slow decline.  I'm worried but nothing I can do except keep things stable.  

 

Amazingly the Orange Passion frag hasn't shown any issues.   I should have waited until after the Foxface cleaned it off.

 

In the picture above with the Foxface you can see a brown frag of Palmers Blue milli and down on the rocks below an almost dead Undata, which was looking really nice just before the spike.  Damn undatas are the best looking monti so of course they die easily.  It's still has some green and a few polyps so I'm holding out hope.

 

The OP has graduated off the rack and onto the rocks.  We shall see, but me and tenuis have a tenuous relationship.

 

Vivid Rainbow is has been moved to the rockwork as well.

 

Check out the Lokani and frags.  Once again is seems the Lokani is unphased by Alk issues.  The only thing that's harmed this coral is low calcium, so far.  I mounted on of the frags pretty high on the rocks to see what it does in high light.

 

Katropora, which needs trimmed badly.  Also note nearly dead Palmer's Blue milli.  I kept a frag but tossed this and another milli that was dying.  

 

Monster Valida

 

Unknown milli like acro on the frag rack.  It was starting to color a bit when the Alk spiked. 

 

KH is now 8.2 and still slowly falling.   I'm debating where to keep it, thinking 8 might be where to lock it in so things stop changing.   Planning on getting a FTS tonight along with Nitrate and PO4 test.

[mitten_reef]

end of summer update?  

[markalot]

It's been way too long so I figured I'd post and hopefully back it up with pictures soon.

So the story goes like this....

I used diluted goat dewormer to eliminate Xenia and star polyps. It worked. PO4 and Nitrates started to rise dramatically and eventually led to a reduction in growth which led to a KH spike all the way up to 10.5. This led to the following, which I don't think can be explained by just the KH spike alone, t's just a list of observations:

Purple Stylo growth exploded.

Most monti caps suffered greatly and I lost an undata. The spongodes did fine, the red cap browned but survived, the weedy purple cap is all but dead. The orange digitata doubled in size.

Acros did ok, but some base recession started. My Red Planet frag browned but hey, it didn't die. This is a first for me, I thought I was going to go 0 for 3 in Red Planets.

My two expensive frags, orange passion and vivid rainbow, acted like nothing happened.

So now I start the correction. I stop dosing and start using NOPOX and PhosphateRx to reduce PO4 and nitrated. It works well, unfortunately faster than the KH drop, so tip burn everywhere. Every acro remained colorful but had dead tips. My hairy horrida showed a lot of stress and I was worried. It lost skin in a shaded part but did not have tip burn or show any other recession. The branch that did the best was shaded by my old blue stag, which died during this ordeal.

This was 4 weeks ago, since thing I've been at 7 KH and keeping Nitrates around 20 and PO4 around .1 It appears I need to come up with a NOPOX dosing schedule and stick to it if I want to get nutrients back in line. That dang Xenia really sucked up the excess!

It's now time to chop off all the dead tips as the acros are starting to grow again. Alk usage is very low, 50ml per day vs 180ml when everything was at full health. The purple stylo looks fantastic but stopped all growth when I lowered KH and I suspect my Alk usage will climb dramatically once it starts growing again. Might be time to get rid of the beast, or cut it back to just a small frag.

Speaking of cutting back, I tore down my 40 and a few favorites are now in this tank, including 2 hammers and a torch. I see the future of this tank as one full of more LPS with some favorite acros on top, kept small via more aggressive trimming. Since I almost never trim this will be a big change. haha.

 

As I posted in my 40 gallon thread, the clown goby and the little wrasse are doing quite well in here now, the blue chromis was dead within hours.  I've never been able to keep chromis alive in here, and I suspect it's the clowns doing the dirty work.  

[markalot]

Pictures

 

The favorites from my 40 gallon

 

FTS

 

Hairy horrida recovering slowly

 

This broke off and landed just like this.  It's already killed off the setosa where it landed and started to encrust.  I didn't dare touch it.

 

A good example of tip burn damage, as if the tips of most acros caught on fire.

 

Pile-O-Birdsnests

[vlangel]

I have not been on any of the forums much lately but decided to check in on your tanks, I mean tank.  It looks wonderful Mark although it sounds like you had some issues with Alk spikes.  That is why I have avoided SPS.  Still your tank is gourgeous and looks amazing.

[markalot]

13 hours ago, vlangel said:

I have not been on any of the forums much lately but decided to check in on your tanks, I mean tank.  It looks wonderful Mark although it sounds like you had some issues with Alk spikes.  That is why I have avoided SPS.  Still your tank is gourgeous and looks amazing.

 

Hi Dawn,

 

yep, an Alk spike.  It's a pain and one of the reasons I plan to slowly reduce the SPS in here.   Tired of filling the dosers, tired of having to constantly watch the levels, and tired of the S L O W progress.  One of the reasons I got back into planted was because plants grow so fast.  :)  

[latteslave]

Been a long time since I’ve been on but glad your tank made it through all of that.  

[mitten_reef]

👋 Hi @markalot, how's the tank doing? 

[picoreef78]

Even on a bad day your tank looks fantastic! 

[markalot]

It's been a long long time.  All healthy here, nothing bad to report in life.  The tank, though, whew.  I neglected it for a while, and during this time the alk hose fell off.  Yea, still not sure how this happened, but Alk dropped to 4.  I raised it back to 7 but then after a month of seeming stability all the corals started to die.  It ended up being super high phosphates, I guess the balance was thrown off.  Do I really know what it was?  I did the following (this was a year ago):

 

Switch to B-Ionic two part, which has trace elements in the calcium part.

Dosed a ton of NO3-PO4X, which slimed the tank, but stopped the death.

PO4 still measured above 1 but suddenly the clowns started laying eggs again.

 

So ok, backed off on the NOPOX, still a lot of neglect for another 6 months, and boom, it starts again.  Clowns had stopped laying eggs, I should have known.  Same thing, NOPOX, snot, fixed.

 

Crazy.   During this time the Lime channel on the NanoBox died, as did one ballast of T5's, but the rest works like a champ.  Still the best hybrid light out there.  One of my BML strips died as well, so I was running at 300 PAR max, with low par down near the front.  This was compounded by the fact I rarely cleaned the glass, so reflected PAR was also way down

 

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago.  I scraped the glass, man what a job, lol, cleaned the skimmer, and bought a Orphek 60" Blue Plus OR3-150 LED Light Bar.  Man, this thing is too bright, had to raise it way up, but I'm back to 150 PAR on the sandbed, which is where I want to be.  Upper tank is 350-375 PAR, which is a bit higher than I like, but seems to be working.  Now I wait 6 months. 

 

Amazingly I did not lose the Katropora, even though I thought I did.  I tiny little nub survived on the giant dead skeleton I almost tossed, but there it was.  It's been growing pretty quickly.

 

 

 

The main Lokani died, but a small frag remained.  Whew!

 

 

Not much left of the Hairy Horrida.  The slimer died back, but lives on.

 

 

The Red Robin.  WOW.  This was the most unique way any of the acros survived, basically by going into some kind of encrusting shutdown mode.  It's just now starting to show growth tips.

 

 

 

I'm, not sure if the Hawkins will survive or not, but for right now it's alive and growing.

 

 

Here is why you never leave any aptasia in the tank, even if it never spreads.  When the tank crashed even aptasia was stressed, and it reproduced.  LIKE CRAZY.  I was able to remove a lot of them growing on dead corals, but I still have a massive problem.

 

 

Random snap, Midas, Foxtail butt, and the other frag of shaded Katropora.  Doesn't look anything like a Kat, but it survives liek this in low light.

 

 

Clowns guarding their eggs from the angel. Look at all those seafoam pally's 😞  They took over as well.

 

 

 

FTS

 

 

Corals from my old 40 survived.  Hammers, Goni, Duncans (both green and purple), Blastos, shrooms, shrooms, and more shrooms.  Purple stylo had massive dieback.  I cut, removed, pulled, broke much of it and removed it fromt he tank.  What's left is mounted on top of the old skeleton, top centerish.    

 

The little green Poci frag I put up on a bunch of dead acro skeletons got just a bit large.  🙂  Most montis are still there, even a little nub of the invasive purple cap.  More work to do, maybe next week.   

 

I should add, I still have not done a saltwater change.  I used RODI to get salinity down, but no actual water change.  I probably should.  I said that 2 years ago.

[mitten_reef]

Welcome back. Glad to see the tank is chugging along, neglect or not

[Nano_Addict]

Welcome back!  Great to see this tank is still around.  Amazing all that it's been through.

[Christopher Marks]

Hope you've been well @markalot! I saw an old post of yours and got to wondering how your reef has been doing? Still on that epic no water change run? 😄 

 

Hopefully no more equipment mishaps, let's leave those behind in 2021! 🙂 It's amazing to see how quickly it has been recovering from the Alk mishap.

 

Oh, how did you end up fixing the NanoBox T5 retro? A lot of these have been aging out, I'm always glad when hobbyists can find fixes to keep them operating.

[markalot]

On 2/22/2022 at 12:45 PM, Christopher Marks said:

Hope you've been well @markalot! I saw an old post of yours and got to wondering how your reef has been doing? Still on that epic no water change run? 😄 

 

Hopefully no more equipment mishaps, let's leave those behind in 2021! 🙂 It's amazing to see how quickly it has been recovering from the Alk mishap.

 

Oh, how did you end up fixing the NanoBox T5 retro? A lot of these have been aging out, I'm always glad when hobbyists can find fixes to keep them operating.

 

Still chugging along, and still no water changes.   I did switch to ESV B-Ionic two part because I feared tank elements were getting out of balance.  Right now everything is doing well, and once a month I remove saltwater and replace with fresh to lower salinity.  I'm slow do do anything with this tank nowadays.  More pics soon.  Soon = maybe a month?  😄  

The blue LED's on the back string of LED's is out, and Lime is out.  In addition one of the T5 ballasts died.  I'm too lazy to pull it down and fix.  I've been buying Orphek LED bars, firs tone is up, second is still in the box.  Using the blue+ strips and will probably buy one of the white ones to mix in, in case more LED's go out.  

 

So in all, at full brightness, one blue+ and one coral+ T5 bulbs lit, one Orphek blue+ LED strip, and what remines of the Nanobox LEDs.  Seems to be plenty of light for health and growth.