TeenyReef's 10g Fusion - ATO Disaster

[jack1978]

It's amazing, they seem to be pretty much indestructible. Hopefully when the tank recovers they'll start multiplying again and I can finally frag them

I'm sure the tank will be just fine.....you're doing all the right stuff. All the corals looked great in those last shots....but I've been drinking and looking at this while soaking in the bathtub.....yep, and no bubbles.

[teenyreef]

I'm sure the tank will be just fine.....you're doing all the right stuff. All the corals looked great in those last shots....but I've been drinking and looking at this while soaking in the bathtub.....yep, and no bubbles.

TMI

[jack1978]

TMI

TMI?...........Shoot. Did I say I was playing a game of ring toss? If so, I'm not.

 

Seriously though, the corals look great. I need to add some Z and P to the cube. Keep up the good work, Teeny!

[Droy008]

Lol ring toss.

That's how you lose your wedding band Jack...don't ask me how I know...

[teenyreef]

TMI?...........Shoot. Did I say I was playing a game of ring toss? If so, I'm not.

 

Seriously though, the corals look great. I need to add some Z and P to the cube. Keep up the good work, Teeny!

Thanks, Jack!

Lol ring toss.

That's how you lose your wedding band Jack...don't ask me how I know...

Scraping, scrubbing, and basting continues. Today I plan to scrub the back rocks and vacuum the back sand again. Then I'll just let it all sit in something close to a final scape and see how things do. In particular, I'll be watching for aiptasia to reappear and to see whether the algae growth has slowed down.

 

I also need to pull everything out of the back chambers and scrub them out - I think I'll do that this weekend.

[SouthFlorida_Tron]

So............ Pest crisis caused this mess?

I had a random outbreak of ball anemones the size of dimes and quarters just spawn out of thin air.....

[Droy008]

Uhhh I need to clean my back chambers as well.

The last chamber is such a pain with the space underneath the first 2.

I have toyed with the idea of cutting a small block of marine pure and tucking it in there.

[teenyreef]

So............ Pest crisis caused this mess?

I had a random outbreak of ball anemones the size of dimes and quarters just spawn out of thin air.....

I think the tank just went too long being out of balance and I made it worse by trying the better living through chemistry route. But since I've got the rocks out scrubbing anyway, I'm taking the chance to get rid of the vermetid snails. The aiptasia just appeared a month or two ago, so it's a new problem.

Uhhh I need to clean my back chambers as well.

The last chamber is such a pain with the space underneath the first 2.

I have toyed with the idea of cutting a small block of marine pure and tucking it in there.

That's an interesting idea. I would think it would just accumulate detritus since there's no flow there, but I know the block is intended to be in a low flow area anyway.

 

I don't worry much about that space. I just stick a turkey baster all the way down in the third chamber and blast away, then siphon out all the water.

[Droy008]

I think the tank just went too long being out of balance and I made it worse by trying the better living through chemistry route. But since I've got the rocks out scrubbing anyway, I'm taking the chance to get rid of the vermetid snails. The aiptasia just appeared a month or two ago, so it's a new problem.

 

That's an interesting idea. I would think it would just accumulate detritus since there's no flow there, but I know the block is intended to be in a low flow area anyway.

 

I don't worry much about that space. I just stick a turkey baster all the way down in the third chamber and blast away, then siphon out all the water.

The buildup is the one thing keeping me from adding it yet.

I also use the turkey blaster method to clean it out. I just thought that blocking it off while adding a ton of surface area for bacteria might be beneficial.

[RIP Sebastian]

Wow. You are so dedicated! I wouldn't be able to do that.

[teenyreef]

Wow. You are so dedicated! I wouldn't be able to do that.

It took me a lot longer to work up to it than it should have. I've known the tank wasn't right for months now, but it was only when I started losing the corals that had always been easy to keep that I decided I had to do something.

 

I just hope that all the scrubbing will be worth it, and the tank will get back in balance now.

PS: the clean up crew is scheduled to arrive today. Come on, Mr. Postman, hurry up!

[teenyreef]

Oops, the snails shipped yesterday, so they won't come until tomorrow

[Biggen]

Teenyreef,

 

How did you get your Nanobox to mount directly behind the collection cup of the Eshopps Nano Skimmer in a picture you posted earlier? I just setup mine this afternoon and I had to offset my light mount to the right in order to fit the skimmer into the middle chamber. I'm not sure I really love the aesthetics of having to offset the light/mount like this:

 

 

It's not the quietest skimmer ever. I can hear it over the fan noise of the Mini Tide. I'll probably end up setting up a timer on the controller and running it at night only. It throwing tons of micro bubbles into the display tank, but I'm chalking that up to it not being broken in yet.

 

[teenyreef]

Teenyreef,

 

How did you get your Nanobox to mount directly behind the collection cup of the Eshopps Nano Skimmer in a picture you posted earlier? I just setup mine this afternoon and I had to offset my light mount to the right in order to fit the skimmer into the middle chamber. I'm not sure I really love the aesthetics of having to offset the light/mount like this:

 

 

It's not the quietest skimmer ever. I can hear it over the fan noise of the Mini Tide. I'll probably end up setting up a timer on the controller and running it at night only. It throwing tons of micro bubbles into the display tank, but I'm chalking that up to it not being broken in yet.

 

Confession time: I just pulled it away from the wall slightly, just enough to let the bottom edge of the collection cup clear the light bracket. I'll post a picture in a little bit.

 

I had a lot of noise from mine at first. Then I turned the pump around so that it's "upside down" from the way they show it should mount in the instructions. In other words, with the inlet air tube coming out of the top of the pump, instead of pointing down. I did it because so it wouldn't stick out of the water when I moved the skimmer body up high enough to get the right amount of skimmate, but it also magically silenced the pump for some reason.

 

I never had any microbubbles, even when it was breaking in. I did get microbubbles when I tried running it without the sponge, though.

[Biggen]

Confession time: I just pulled it away from the wall slightly, just enough to let the bottom edge of the collection cup clear the light bracket. I'll post a picture in a little bit.

 

I had a lot of noise from mine at first. Then I turned the pump around so that it's "upside down" from the way they show it should mount in the instructions. In other words, with the inlet air tube coming out of the top of the pump, instead of pointing down. I did it because so it wouldn't stick out of the water when I moved the skimmer body up high enough to get the right amount of skimmate, but it also magically silenced the pump for some reason.

 

I never had any microbubbles, even when it was breaking in. I did get microbubbles when I tried running it without the sponge, though.

 

Yeah, whenever you get a chance to post a picture that would be great. You must have a your light mount flipped around 180 degrees from the way I do. I have my tightening thumbscrews on the outside of the tank with the heads pointing towards the wall. You must have yours flipped the other way around (with the thumbscrews pointing towards your display) as there is simply not enough room to mount it directly behind the skimmer the way I have my light installed. You can see in my second picture how the mounts sticks out past the collection cup.

 

I am running mine without the sponge so perhaps that is the issue with the microbubbles. I really didn't understand what the point of the sponge was so I pulled it out figuring it would just collect crap over time and I'd never clean it out on a regular basis. Maybe I need to put it back in...

 

I think my noise is actually coming from the venturi and not the pump itself. It's not bad. I'd put it around the same noise level as the fan from the Mini Tide. But it's not silent that is for sure.

[teenyreef]

Oh, I see the problem, your Nanobox mounting bracket looks quite different from mine. Is yours older? Or newer? I have three Mini Tides, all of different generations including the latest, but the all have the same mounting bracket style like mine. Here's a picture that might help.

 

20161229-untitled-002.jpg by TeenyReef, on Flickr

[Biggen]

Ah that is the difference then. I got my Mini Tide in November so perhaps Dave changed the mount. Ill IM him and see if I can get the same one you have.

 

You have your skimmer mounted higher than mine. I basically have mine resting on the bottom of the middle chamber and am just using the magnet to hold it tight against the back wall. The instructions give no indication on what level the skimmer needs to be mounted above the water level so I guess its just trial and error. How many days did yours run before it began producing skimate?

 

Thanks for answering my questions, Teeny!!

[ninjamyst]

if you are ever in Chicago, come clean my tanks for a few beer =)

[Biggen]

Well, I should stop trying to out engineer the engineers.

 

The sponge is required for this skimmer. It creates a kind of "back pressure" that forces more of the bubbles up into the collection cup. As soon as I put the sponge back on, I got immediate results. Micro bubbles were reduced in the display by 75% and the collection cup overflowed with water. I had to raise the entire skimmer up to about the level you have yours in order to have it create a dryer skimmate.

 

Much happier with how this skimmer is operating now. I should have just kept to the directions instead of trying to fix something that wasn't broken.

[Marc.The.Shark]

Damn, good job! That's starting to look pretty good. I ran into the same sand issue in my previous tank, hard to get to & small grain size & couldn't clean it, then after a year got scared to! Lol. I couldn't believe the crap in there after 2 years when I took it down. I've been trying to get more sand shifters/stirrers and snails in the new tank, but also vacuum the bigger grain every month or 2. Lesson learned! I bet the fish think that a tsunami has hit recently! Probably a nice change of scenery for them! "We just got upgraded!" Hahaha

[teenyreef]

Well, I should stop trying to out engineer the engineers.

 

The sponge is required for this skimmer. It creates a kind of "back pressure" that forces more of the bubbles up into the collection cup. As soon as I put the sponge back on, I got immediate results. Micro bubbles were reduced in the display by 75% and the collection cup overflowed with water. I had to raise the entire skimmer up to about the level you have yours in order to have it create a dryer skimmate.

 

Much happier with how this skimmer is operating now. I should have just kept to the directions instead of trying to fix something that wasn't broken.

Yeah, when I tried it without the sponge it didn't work well at all. And it just occurred to me that I haven't cleaned the sponge in about a month

 

Good luck with the new mount from Dave!

Damn, good job! That's starting to look pretty good. I ran into the same sand issue in my previous tank, hard to get to & small grain size & couldn't clean it, then after a year got scared to! Lol. I couldn't believe the crap in there after 2 years when I took it down. I've been trying to get more sand shifters/stirrers and snails in the new tank, but also vacuum the bigger grain every month or 2. Lesson learned! I bet the fish think that a tsunami has hit recently! Probably a nice change of scenery for them! "We just got upgraded!" Hahaha

I think one lesson learned for me is to either go bare bottom, or arrange/glue the rocks in a way that makes it easy to remove them and put them back after vacuuming the sand. I've been pretty good about using a turkey baster to stir up the sand, but that didn't do much right under the rocks where it got really bad.

I went to the LFS today, and, among other things for other tanks (see, now you have a reason to check out the other two threads ), I picked up a small emerald crab. I used to have one in this tank but I got rid of him when he got too big and started stealing food from all the corals. But he did a great job of keeping the algae pretty much non-existent.

 

Hopefully, between the big clean up, ongoing scrubbing and vacuuming, the emerald crab, and the snaily clean up crew coming tomorrow I'll have plenty of critters to eat all the algae.

 

Oh, that reminds me, I still need to pick up some pods and add them to the tank too. The LFS was out

 

The emerald crab didn't waste any time crawling up on the rocks and he was picking away at something. He's pretty hard to see, it's amazing how well he blends in with the rocks.

 

20161229-untitled-014-2-Edit.jpg by TeenyReef, on Flickr

[teenyreef]

The new cleaning crew from Reefcleaners arrived and has been installed. Still need to get pods but both of the LFS's I went to yesterday were out.

[teenyreef]

I think the nerites in the CUC are goners, they haven't moved at all yet

 

On the bright side, nerites are usually the most useless and annoying members of the CUC so it's not all bad. I threw in a little Prime in case there's any ammonia from snails dying, and I'll pull them out tomorrow if they haven't moved.

 

I crunched up vermetid snails on the back rocks, scrubbed them a little more, and sucked out another two gallons of sludge from the back sand. And I kind of figure out how to put the rocks back in the way they used to be

 

I worked on the big monti caps in the frag tank, crunching up vermetid snails off the bottom of them, and scrubbing off algae from the dead parts. I realized that one problem I've had is that there are multiple layers of dead monticap underneath the top part of the caps, and the dead layers have been a haven for detritus and vermetid snails, even though I've tried to keep them blown clean.

 

I ended up breaking off the old dead stuff, which left me with several good-sized chunks of monticap that I'll eventually glue back onto the rocks once everything stays clean.

 

I spotted the emerald crab doing his thing again tonight. Go little crab, go!

[teenyreef]

Since I don't have any nice tank pictures today, I'll make up for it with a dog picture

 

20161230_215346.jpg by TeenyReef, on Flickr

[teenyreef]

There was a micro brittle star in the new corals I got in the 40g tank, so I put him in this tank as part of the cleanup crew. Hopefully he'll survive and not get eaten by Doug the puffer.

 

He went through the MP10 twice, floated around a bit more, and eventually landed on one of the base rocks. I took this video of him settling into a crack in the rock. Given what he went through to survive the shipment and getting blown around the tank, I'd say he's already living a charmed life