Softie garden: Dandelion's 6.25 Arc

[teenyreef]

Good luck with the deep clean, I hope the algae doesn't come back!

 

When I treated my gha with fluco (first round), the gha grew like crazy for almost two weeks. Then, on Day 12, it almost all disappeared. I made the mistake of stopping the treatment at that point instead of letting it run the full three weeks, and it came back again. I'm in the middle of trying another round now.

[TJ_Burton]

3 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

See, THIS is what makes me really paranoid about having sand in my tanks!!!

Sounds like rinsing the sandbed is a good idea. 

 

You obviously were doing something right cause you had happy corals and great growth on all your SPS, can't wait to see the new setup!!

Yep... sand beds need routine maintenance. Thorough cleaning (gravel vac in my case) every water change, which should be at least once ever couple weeks...

Definitely not for everyone. 
Cucumbers can help large, but then again, you need quite a bit of sand bed to sustain them. I've had the best luck with pink belly species personally.

[dandelion]

16 hours ago, J-Ranko said:

I had a similar problem with my previous tank's sandbed. When I cleaned it out the trapped gunk looked and smelled like $#!&.  I went bare bottom for my new tank and I am loving it!  

I was able to keep a clean sandbed in the past, but that's with several sand-sifting inverts who kept it well maintained. I couldn't do that in 11g with the aggressive elegance coral who feasted on any snails that wandered into its tentacles.

I think the main problem for me is that the tank is too crowded so I couldn't get to a major part of the sand bed. Fact that there's a "net" in my gravel vacuum didn't help either. Anyways I am happy with a bare bottom tank.

 

12 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

See, THIS is what makes me really paranoid about having sand in my tanks!!!

Sounds like rinsing the sandbed is a good idea. 

 

You obviously were doing something right cause you had happy corals and great growth on all your SPS, can't wait to see the new setup!!

Yea I have been sucking out part of the sandbed from the other tank and rinsing it for like a year now. No ill effect seen except for occasionally killing whatever snails that got sucked up along with the sand. First few times I did it I remember my skimmer frothing crazily.

 

My corals were happy may be up until 2-3 weeks ago when algae was starting to get out of hand. I had to get an insulin syringe to inject peroxide at trouble spots everyday to keep my corals from getting smothered. It was growing at the base of my birdnest. Surprisingly my phosphate and nitrate always tested 0. 

 

 

[dandelion]

10 hours ago, teenyreef said:

Good luck with the deep clean, I hope the algae doesn't come back!

 

When I treated my gha with fluco (first round), the gha grew like crazy for almost two weeks. Then, on Day 12, it almost all disappeared. I made the mistake of stopping the treatment at that point instead of letting it run the full three weeks, and it came back again. I'm in the middle of trying another round now.

I did fluconazole at 20mg/G. did nothing. Then I bumped it up to 40mg/G. On the 8th day I went on with my deep cleaning. After looking at the sand bed, I was like no wonder I had an algae problem.

 

I did dip all rocks and corals in peroxide. The only thing that didn't get dipped was pretty much the clown.

9 hours ago, TJ_Burton said:

Yep... sand beds need routine maintenance. Thorough cleaning (gravel vac in my case) every water change, which should be at least once ever couple weeks...

Definitely not for everyone. 
Cucumbers can help large, but then again, you need quite a bit of sand bed to sustain them. I've had the best luck with pink belly species personally.

I suck out a lot of sand when I do water change on my other bigger tank. However with this being a small tank and my bird nest growing like crazy there were so many spots where I could not get my gravel vacuum to. Good thing is deep cleaning is feasible on a pico.

[dandelion]

Been lazy for a few days and didn't upload any pictures of the deep cleaned tank. Here is one:

 

As I mentioned earlier, I removed the sandbed, scrubbed and peroxide bathed all rocks, and moved most hard corals to the new Fluval tank. I was able to find a cheap mount kit on Amazon that fits the stock Fluval light, so I moved my Fluval light over to this tank.

 

Only problem is the birdnest. It doesn't seem to appreciate this light. I figured birdnest are just finicky. It took the my original frag a few months to adjust to my AI Prime, and it's still taking its time to adjust to my 29G's Maxpect Razor. It will probably take a few months to a year to go back to its former glory, that's provided it doesn't bleach first. At least I have already gathered a lot of frags.

 

That said, all zoas are doing exceptionally well. I actually think they look better under the night light mode of this light. However it's so blue that I could not take a good photo with my phone at all.

[dandelion]

I moved the stock light of of my Fluval Evo 13.5 to this tank. I must say I am pretty impressed with the colors. With daylight my zoas's colors still pop instead of getting washed out. Night light mode is a total different animal. All my softies literally just glow under it. Night mode is too blue for my phone camera though it this is some under daylight: