Ninja's Red Sea Reefer 350 - still here!

[ninjamyst]

I know there are some animal lovers on this forum!  My wife works at an animal hospital and they are doing a donation drive for dog / cat food to give to local charities.  Would really appreciate it if you can participate!!

 

Simply purchase something from the following Amazon wishlist, and it will be delivered to the animal hospital.  Send me a PM once you donate and I will gladly send you a frag of magician palys with 2-3 polyps (dino and algae free in my separate QT tank) for free via USPS priority mail.  

 

https://smile.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/67QPP4R0VM8D?type=wishlist&filter=unpurchased&sort=default

https://smile.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/30STXAKIOP46E/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_ep_ws_AAShBb79DAWK2?sa-no-redirect=1

 

 

 

 

 

In tank news, I will be going away to Colorado next week for 7 days so I am a bit worried what's going to happen to the tank.  Cyano is still there but dino seems to have died off.  Hair algae is not growing as fast.  So Vibrant is helping.  I can't wait to restock the tank with more stuff sooooon!

 

In more animal news, we have 6 dogs and a cat in the house this week =P.  My yard is taking a beating and our bed feels really cramp at night...but how can you say no to Joseph in the picture below???  He lost a leg from car accident but happy as a clam!!

[ninjamyst]

Came back from a week in Colorado and cyano / GHA / dino have taken over the tank.  I left it in pretty good shape.  My dad came over every other day to feed the fish and he claimed the algae bloom happened on the 4th day.  Sigh.  This is depressing.  I have spent so many hours trying to get this tank back in shape and it's a hopeless battle.  Months of effort wiped away in one week.

 

[mitten_reef]

yikes! sorry man.  the zoas, rics, and LPS still look really good though, please don't give up on them....

 

Just had a random thought...how much healthy/happy corals are left?  Would it be worthwhile to try to manage rescuing them in a smaller system, i.e. grab something like a used lagoon 25 or a used frag tank locally?   And just purge this one completely? 

 

 

[ninjamyst]

Went to LFS today and picked up two cleaner shrimps and one long spine urchin.  LFS said the long spine urchin is good for algae and won't carry frags around.  I just have to be careful when I do water changes to avoid getting stabbed.  

 

Some pics of our trip if you guys want to check out a desert in the middle of Colorado, surrounded by green mountains.  Never knew this existed!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/40199713@N03/albums/72157696562195861

 

 

 

20 hours ago, micoastreefing said:

yikes! sorry man.  the zoas, rics, and LPS still look really good though, please don't give up on them....

 

Just had a random thought...how much healthy/happy corals are left?  Would it be worthwhile to try to manage rescuing them in a smaller system, i.e. grab something like a used lagoon 25 or a used frag tank locally?   And just purge this one completely? 

 

 

I did set up my old 5 gallon fluval spec V to house some zoas.  Of course, that nano is covered with GHA and cyano too =(.  I think the heat got to both tanks while I was gone.  It was over 90s in Chicago and the house is set to 84.  I notice hot weather --> algae bloom.  

[DaveFason]

With weather getting hot try to put a fan in the sump. Keeping things cooler. 

 

Did you ever send a water sample to ATI or any of the other ICP testers?

[Polarcollision]

I just found this thread and happy to see you're still reefing, I dropped by to see what magic you had going on. Sorry to read about the cyano struggles. I watched a video this week about how some of the tougher outbreaks to control might actually be able to use ammonia for a food source. With outbreaks getting worse in your tank as things die, it kinda adds up, so I thought I'd suggest looking into your ammonia levels. I had some luck beating a cyano and dino outbreak by reseeding the tank with nitrifying bacteria that 'eat' ammonia with microbactor7 and also sand from another tank. I also discovered that my potassium and nitrate levels were/are out of balance with phosphates, so I now dose both so that the preferred bacteria and critters can use up nutrients instead of my cyano outbreaks. Hope that helps, and might be something not tried yet.

[ninjamyst]

My LFS tested my water a few times and everything appears normal.  Nitrate was 10.  They didn't test phosphate.  At home, I test nitrate as 0 all the time.   I can say dino is gone now  Cyano took over and beat it.  Now I just have lots of GHA and cyano.  I just did a 3 days black out, but not much improvement.  I keep buying more CUC and they keep dying on me....sea hare, urchins, turbos, hermits, trochus.  Most of them die after a few days.  I do believe I have a nitrate / phosphate imbalance but test kits are showing 0 for both for me at home, which people say is normal when algae is using it up.  I am still dosing Vibrant but realized I bought the "marine" version and not the "reef" version.  Not sure if that matters.  So far, it has just been lots of manual weekly 3-4 hours long water change to manually scrape and pull out as much GHA as I can.  But they are slipppppery.  

[DaveFason]

Have you checked you MAG as well? 

[Cutter79]

Hi everyone, I just wanted to thank everyone on here for your input and keeping this thread interesting. I have learned so much reading through 118 pages. My story. I have had fish on and off through my life always fresh water, 10 months ago I converted my 6 g Edge tank to a fish only salt water. After watching my poor clown tread water for 7 months I figured its time bring a reef into my living room. After stumbling across the reefer series on youtube I started to research the reefer 250. I found this thread by chance and was totally hooked! Reading 10ish pages per day at work by page 80 found the best deal I could from the local stores here in Edmonton AB and charged up the visa on a white reefer 350! I have had it for about 6 weeks and just started the cycle last night. The Clown and blue devil can see it across the room and they are itching to move to there new home. I dont have crazy money and have been buying stuff for the tank as funds become available. I want to do things right and hopefully dont have to buy something twice or waste money trying to cheap out. So far my tank 30lbs largo dry rock (bleached 1 week and settled in RO salt water 5 weeks) 25Lbs Life rock 3 lbs live rock from my Nano. 40lbs Carib sea ocean direct live sand. Current usa eflux 1900 dc pump. Cobalt 300W heater. I am using Redsea Coral Pro salt. I have Purchased 2 brackets for the AI Prime lights which I have decided on using. I plan on keeping the tank pretty simple and starting with easy keeping corals, suggestions? LOL. Sorry to go on and on I mostly just wanted to join the forum and let you guys know that  you have added anther person to the hobbie! Thank you.

 

Cutter

 

P.S pages 100-118 scared the crap out of me! 

[mitten_reef]

How r things looking? u mentioned on my thread that you're losing the LPS too?   Time to restart?   

[ninjamyst]

dino is back so now i have cyano, dino, and GHA.  everything is pissed off.  restart if i win the lottery tonight!

[davy jones]

At this point you dont have much to loose, try a 100% waterchange. I know it is often times frowned upon, and who knows it may not help and youll go through a ton of salt but when i got rid of my dino infection it was when i moved from my apartment to my house. I used 100% new water, and removed the sand and never saw dinos in that tank again

[WV Reefer]

I apologize for all the notifications-----just got caught up on the thread. 🙂

 

 

 

 So sorry to see all the issues you are battling right now.  sending you good reefing vibes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[ninjamyst]

3 hours ago, dirtrider225 said:

At this point you dont have much to loose, try a 100% waterchange. I know it is often times frowned upon, and who knows it may not help and youll go through a ton of salt but when i got rid of my dino infection it was when i moved from my apartment to my house. I used 100% new water, and removed the sand and never saw dinos in that tank again

I dont have enough buckets to make 100 gallons of water!  hahahaha.  My water bill is already through the roof with watering the grass this summer.  But I may have to bite the bullet and just do it....sigh.

[davy jones]

3 minutes ago, ninjamyst said:

I dont have enough buckets to make 100 gallons of water!  hahahaha.  My water bill is already through the roof with watering the grass this summer.  But I may have to bite the bullet and just do it....sigh.

Like i said, it may do nothing but waste your time and salt but after 8 months with dinos off and on, this was what worked for me to get rid of them. Hope it helps and i am really sorry to see your tank like this, it was awesome looking.

 

I am genuinely curious as to why so many people are getting dinos the last couple of years.. i dont remember this bing a thing even 5 or 6 years ago

[ninjamyst]

Latest FTS.  Things stabilized a lot and my LPS came back to life and regained color after I stopped dosing Vibrant, turned off UV, stopped running phosguard, carbon, and purigen.  Acros, stylos, zoas, RFAs, bubble tip, and more are dead but otherwise things are going oooook.  I won the GHA battle after scrubbing the tank week after week and added fluconazole.  Now, I just have dino and cyano.  If i dose nitrate, cyano takes over dino.  If i stop dosing nitrate, dino takes over cyano.  so which is the lesser evil?  right now, i am trying to dose nitrate AND dose Cyano RX to see what happens.  

 

[teenyreef]

I glad to hear things are more stable now. I know how discouraging it is when no matter what you do it just doesn't seem to help. When I was struggling so much with my 10g, I completely stopped carbon dosing and just started doing large water changes including extensive deep vacuuming of the sand bed and scrubbing the rocks. I didn't get immediate improvement, it took about a six weeks of doing this every other week before I saw improvement. But after that it really turned around.

 

I tried to simplify as much as possible, no phosphate reduction, carbon for just a few days a month. Just floss and a skimmer.

 

I also tried Cyano Rx and it seemed to help a bit. It doesn't address the underlying problems but it does help knock it out for a few weeks and give you time to get the other problems in check. Have you thought about replacing the sand bed?

[mitten_reef]

2 hours ago, ninjamyst said:

Latest FTS.  Things stabilized a lot and my LPS came back to life and regained color after I stopped dosing Vibrant, turned off UV, stopped running phosguard, carbon, and purigen.  Acros, stylos, zoas, RFAs, bubble tip, and more are dead but otherwise things are going oooook.  I won the GHA battle after scrubbing the tank week after week and added fluconazole.  Now, I just have dino and cyano.  If i dose nitrate, cyano takes over dino.  If i stop dosing nitrate, dino takes over cyano.  so which is the lesser evil?  right now, i am trying to dose nitrate AND dose Cyano RX to see what happens.  

 

looking much better than where it was a couple months ago.  

[ninjamyst]

two things that are still puzzling me though:

1. Snails keep dying.
2. Fish keep dying.  Lost new yellow tang, midas blenny, royal gramma recently

I think both are related to dino releasing toxin when snail and the algae grazers consume dino?  The royal gramma probably died from being stressed during 2-3 hours water change / tank scrubbing.  

[teenyreef]

11 minutes ago, ninjamyst said:

two things that are still puzzling me though:

1. Snails keep dying.
2. Fish keep dying.  Lost new yellow tang, midas blenny, royal gramma recently

I think both are related to dino releasing toxin when snail and the algae grazers consume dino?  The royal gramma probably died from being stressed during 2-3 hours water change / tank scrubbing.  

I agree, I think it's dinos doing it. But do double check mag, as high mag can make snails hibernate and then die. But also bear in mind that when nitrates and phosphates are zero due to algae sucking it all up, there's no telling how dirty the tank really is.

[skyscraper2290]

Glad to see the tank is stabilizing for you now! Hope you can work out the Dino/cyano issue!

[vegasgundog]

I thought I read that dinos are close to the red tide outbreaks. So sorry things have been so rough. Have you tried a 10 day total blackout? Back when I started my 29biocube I fought dinos. Nothing worked except a 10 day blackout with black plastic wrapped around the aquarium. I tried 3 and seven days but had to finally do 10 full days and never had it again.

[ninjamyst]

well, CyanoRX works great =).  Got rid of cyano right away.....but....guess who's back!!!  Dino.  Blah.  I tried a 4 days black out before and it pissed off all my SPS and was the beginning of all the colonies dying.  I guess now that I don't have any SPS left, I may as well do a black out.  Will start that tomorrow for 4 days again.

[ninjamyst]

I looked back at one of my old FTS.  I really miss this tank....sigh:

 

[mitten_reef]

1 hour ago, ninjamyst said:

I looked back at one of my old FTS.  I really miss this tank....sigh:

 

Don’t worry, you’ll be back there in no time, I’m sure of it.  Did u find a lagoon 25 yet?