dropped Posted August 3, 2016 Share Posted August 3, 2016 Yes, the salifert one. Honestly, I'm still not sure if they were the bad kind of flatworms. They were very tiny and it wasn't possible to really tell if they were alive or dead without a magnifying glass. I'm really just doing this more as an insurance kind of thing. Yea looks like we had the same ones. i had them from the start and they never hurt anything, but i figured i better get them gone. Link to comment
teenyreef Posted October 3, 2016 Author Share Posted October 3, 2016 It's been forever since I updated this thread! The frag tank has had some ups and downs in the past couple months and I just haven't had time to keep up the thread. I had a setback when I did a second round of bayer dip on the rocks and frags. While everything was out, I completely scrubbed and cleaned the tank including a bleach rinse. I think maybe I didn't get the bleach out completely, because when I put the rocks and frags back in, they took a downturn, with most of the SPS bleaching out and dying. I have no idea if it really was the bleach, it doesn't make much sense because I would have expected everything to die, not just the SPS, but that's all the ideas I have Anyway, after letting things restabilize, I started getting a little bit of algae again, probably because a lot of the bacteria died from whatever killed the SPS. So I moved the frag rack into the IM40 for about a month and just let the tank restabilize. I've used a drop of PhosphateRX about every three or four days to make sure phosphates are low, and it seems to have helped. I move the frag rack back in about a week ago and so far everything is doing well. In the meantime, after upgrading my Apex Jr. to an Apex Lite on the other two tanks, I put the old Apex Jr. on this tank with a wireless ethernet adapter. Next step is to get everything hooked up including the BRS dosers. Since I moved the frag rack back in with all the monticap frags, I've had to dose two part manually every day. Here's a top down shot, just to record what it looks like now: 2016-10-02 Cadlights 4g Frag Tank by TeenyReef, on Flickr Link to comment
dropped Posted October 3, 2016 Share Posted October 3, 2016 are you sure i wasn't the bayer? i read something recently where a guy took out his entire sps QT by not rising the bayer off frags well enough. Link to comment
drgibby Posted October 3, 2016 Share Posted October 3, 2016 It's been forever since I updated this thread! The frag tank has had some ups and downs in the past couple months and I just haven't had time to keep up the thread. I had a setback when I did a second round of bayer dip on the rocks and frags. While everything was out, I completely scrubbed and cleaned the tank including a bleach rinse. I think maybe I didn't get the bleach out completely, because when I put the rocks and frags back in, they took a downturn, with most of the SPS bleaching out and dying. I have no idea if it really was the bleach, it doesn't make much sense because I would have expected everything to die, not just the SPS, but that's all the ideas I have Anyway, after letting things restabilize, I started getting a little bit of algae again, probably because a lot of the bacteria died from whatever killed the SPS. So I moved the frag rack into the IM40 for about a month and just let the tank restabilize. I've used a drop of PhosphateRX about every three or four days to make sure phosphates are low, and it seems to have helped. I move the frag rack back in about a week ago and so far everything is doing well. In the meantime, after upgrading my Apex Jr. to an Apex Lite on the other two tanks, I put the old Apex Jr. on this tank with a wireless ethernet adapter. Next step is to get everything hooked up including the BRS dosers. Since I moved the frag rack back in with all the monticap frags, I've had to dose two part manually every day. Here's a top down shot, just to record what it looks like now: 2016-10-02 Cadlights 4g Frag Tank by TeenyReef, on Flickr Teeny glad to see things are recovering. Are you able to hook multiple temp probs onto the apex lite? Since your running 2 tanks off of it do you monitor both with it? Link to comment
reeferbrownies Posted October 3, 2016 Share Posted October 3, 2016 ahh I have stumbled upon another one of Teeny's threads! Link to comment
teenyreef Posted October 4, 2016 Author Share Posted October 4, 2016 are you sure i wasn't the bayer? i read something recently where a guy took out his entire sps QT by not rising the bayer off frags well enough. It's certainly possible! I did a triple rinse after the bayer dip for everything, but I wasn't especially careful about how long stuff was in the bayer dip. Although there's no way it was more that twenty five or thirty minutes at the absolute most. I also seem to remember not being careful about making sure I used old tank water for all the rinses, so there could have been a shock due to alkalinity differences between old tank water and newly mixed water. Teeny glad to see things are recovering. Are you able to hook multiple temp probs onto the apex lite? Since your running 2 tanks off of it do you monitor both with it? Yes and no. The Apex Lite itself only supports one temp probe as well as the Ph. But I had a PM1 expansion unit, so I have temp and Ph on both tanks. ahh I have stumbled upon another one of Teeny's threads! Yep, this is the oldest one. Link to comment
teenyreef Posted November 19, 2016 Author Share Posted November 19, 2016 I haven't update here in a while, but this little frag tank is still going. I'm kind of using it as an experimentation tank, to play with different filtration and dosing options. There's been some gha accumulating over the last few months (very slowly), and the SPS have remained pale with little color. And of course, that's a problem, because GHA growth is associated with high nutrient levels and pale SPS is associated with not enough nutrients. Maybe the algae is consuming all the nutrients so the SPS suffer? Nitrates are always at zero, but phosphates tend to stay high unless I dose with Phosphate RX. I even tried some carbon dosing to control nutrients but nothing really changed. I've decided to try a different approach, by trying to keep the tank as clean as possible with maximized biofiltration capacity. So I pulled all of the rubble rock out and replaced it with a biobrick on the bottom of the tank, under the frag rack. I've discontinued the carbon dosing (NoPox), but I'm using baggies of carbon and GFO in the media rack. I'm still using PhosphateRx sporadically to keep phosphates from getting out of control, but I'm going to replace both the carbon and the gfo every two weeks to make sure it never gets exhausted. I'm hoping that I can gradually reduce or eliminate the PhosphateRX, and get nitrates and phosphates low through regular water changes. The goal is to have the ratio of nitrates and phosphates in balance, and to prevent opportunistic invaders like GHA from taking over. One huge advantage of the bioplate is that it is super easy to just remove the frag rack and the bioplate when I do a water change. I just siphon out the back chambers and the bottom of the display and the tank is left completely clean. Link to comment
markalot Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 Pale is better than dead. I've learned to love the algae, but then I have a tang in a 40 gallon to keep it in check. Apparently the tailspot Blenny can eat corals if not enough algae is available, which explains why I never had an issue with one. Link to comment
teenyreef Posted November 20, 2016 Author Share Posted November 20, 2016 Pale is better than dead. I've learned to love the algae, but then I have a tang in a 40 gallon to keep it in check. Apparently the tailspot Blenny can eat corals if not enough algae is available, which explains why I never had an issue with one. I've thought about putting a small goby in here just to produce some fish poop (aka coral food). But they don't eat algae. What I need is a pico tang Link to comment
vlangel Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 Good luck teeny with the new approach. Link to comment
teenyreef Posted November 20, 2016 Author Share Posted November 20, 2016 Good luck teeny with the new approach.Thanks! I spent some time yesterday dipping the non sps frags in peroxide and toothbrushing all the frags. So they'll start clean, at least. Link to comment
teenyreef Posted November 22, 2016 Author Share Posted November 22, 2016 Here's a Quick FTS just to record progress. The zoas have opened back up after their peroxide dip. You can see how pale the SPS are. The lights were pretty blue when I took this picture so the colors are off a little. 2016-11-21 Cadlights 4g FTS by TeenyReef, on Flickr Link to comment
Jumba Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 Is the intank IM10 media basket a perfect fit for this tank? If not how did you modify it? Link to comment
drgibby Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 Is the intank IM10 media basket a perfect fit for this tank? If not how did you modify it? The new style is not. If you can get your hands on an older one I know teeny modified it a bit but i dont remember how. Link to comment
teenyreef Posted December 23, 2016 Author Share Posted December 23, 2016 Yeah, I had to make some cuts to get it to fit. It's too tall, so I took a little off the bottom all around, and I cut down the front panel at the top so that it fit under the overflow. I posted some pictures in this thread back when I did it, I'll see if I can find them. Link to comment
teenyreef Posted December 26, 2016 Author Share Posted December 26, 2016 In the last FTS (in November) you can see some algae starting to grow on the frag rack. Through the last month it started growing faster and ended up looking a lot like bryopsis. All the frags got really irritated by it, so I decided to do a really thorough cleaning and try a different approach to tank husbandry. So I did a peroxide dip for the non-sps frags, and scrubbed them all, and moved most of them into the 40g tank to recover. Then I swapped out frag rack and put the old one to soak in a container of bleach. I drained out all the water and scrubbed the entire tank to get rid of all the algae, but I kept the bio brick. One of the problems I've had with this tank is that SPS lose their color because of the lack of nutrients. And when I try to add nutrients, it just encourages the growth of algae. So I'm going in the opposite direction, just as an experiment. I've removed the floss, gfo, and skimmer, and just left the bio brick and a little bit of carbon. Then I'm going to do 50% water changes every week. The idea is by reducing the amount of artificial filtration, the tank will be better balanced. Who knows if it will work out, but I guess I'll see in another month or two. If it doesn't work out, I'll probably declare the 4g AIO frag tank idea a failure, and maybe try something else for a new frag tank. In the meantime, the freshly cleaned tank looks great, and the gsp and green monti frags I left in place as guinea pigs are doing fine, along with the macro algae. The sunlight was shining on the macro algae yesterday, and I thought it made for a really nice picture 2016-12-25 Cadlights 4g FTS by TeenyReef, on Flickr Link to comment
teenyreef Posted December 26, 2016 Author Share Posted December 26, 2016 I moved the monti caps from the 10g tank into this one just to hold them for a few days while I get the rocks in the 10g cleaned off. It will be interesting to see if they lose their color while they're in here under the new better housekeeping plan. 2016-12-26 CADlights 4g FTS by TeenyReef, on Flickr Link to comment
teenyreef Posted December 30, 2016 Author Share Posted December 30, 2016 I picked up a small yellow clown goby at the LFS today. The idea is to get some fish poop for the corals, and, besides, I really like yellow clown gobies and I've never had one since I got one as my very first saltwater fish in this tank and it died a day later. 20161229-untitled-001-3-Edit.jpg by TeenyReef, on Flickr No names until he proves that he can survive Link to comment
teenyreef Posted December 30, 2016 Author Share Posted December 30, 2016 I think I need to help this poor hermit get cleaned up. I've never seen any bubble algae in this tank but that sure looks like one in this picture. Or is it something else? Plus he has a vermetid snail on his shell 20161229-untitled-004-4-Edit.jpg by TeenyReef, on Flickr Link to comment
Droy008 Posted December 30, 2016 Share Posted December 30, 2016 I think I need to help this poor hermit get cleaned up. I've never seen any bubble algae in this tank but that sure looks like one in this picture. Or is it something else? Plus he has a vermetid snail on his shell 20161229-untitled-004-4-Edit.jpg by TeenyReef, on Flickr That's literally the worst case scenario for bubble algae, having it on the back of a hermit spreading everywhere in your tank. Link to comment
teenyreef Posted December 31, 2016 Author Share Posted December 31, 2016 That's literally the worst case scenario for bubble algae, having it on the back of a hermit spreading everywhere in your tank. Hopefully I got it in time, I haven't seen any sign of it anywhere else in the tank. And since the tank is bare bottom and has no rocks, it's pretty easy to keep things super clean. Tonight I pulled everything out, then siphoned the water out of the back chambers, and siphoned all but about half an inch from the display chamber to suck out the detritus on the bottom. It is weird that I used a toothbrush to scrub all the bigger snails? Yes, it is, but I don't want any algae anywhere Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 12, 2017 Author Share Posted January 12, 2017 Well, rats, I found the YCG dead in the bottom of the tank tonight. He wasn't eating very well so I wasn't really surprised, but it's still disappointing. At least I didn't name him before he died. I'm going to think about whether to try again, and whether to try another fish. I'd really like to find one that will munch on algae, but nearly all the good algae eaters are way too big. Maybe a tailspot blenny? Link to comment
Evanski9 Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 How are you liking the bio brick. I have been going back and forth on it Link to comment
holy carp Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 Well, rats, I found the YCG dead in the bottom of the tank tonight. He wasn't eating very well so I wasn't really surprised, but it's still disappointing. At least I didn't name him before he died. I'm going to think about whether to try again, and whether to try another fish. I'd really like to find one that will munch on algae, but nearly all the good algae eaters are way too big. Maybe a tailspot blenny? A tailspot would be nice... As long as you don't have a dendrophyllia... Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 12, 2017 Author Share Posted January 12, 2017 How are you liking the bio brick. I have been going back and forth on it It's hard to say for sure since I'm doing frequent water changes, but my nitrates are almost always at zero or below 1. So it seems to be working well. But I still get algae so it could be the algae sucking up all the nitrates. I have one in the 40g and it works great there, though. A tailspot would be nice... As long as you don't have a dendrophyllia... No dendros in the frag tank! But there aren't many hiding spots either. I guess I could put in a snail shell. Or maybe get an emerald crab... Link to comment
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