Going Sloooow... Water Dog's Oceanic BC29 Build

[Water Dog]

Looking great! I like the placement of everything.

 

Thanks!

 

So for the last month and a half, what started out as a diatom bloom that wouldn't go away has started to become more of an issue. Snails helped in spots, but where they didn't touch, it was starting to get fuzzier with algae. Since it started, I have reduced feeding, reduced my light cycle, did a three day blackout before my corals arrived, ran GFO in both a media bag and reactor, put my skimmer back online and have kept my phosphate and nitrate at or near zero (I'm sure the algae has taken up the phosphate before it could get into the water column).

 

This weekend, I decided to go on the offensive and scrubbed every nook and cranny of my rock with a toothbrush and hydrogen peroxide and rinsed them off in the water from a 5 gallon water change. Several hours later, I did an additional 5 gallon water change. My acans and zoas are not happy, but hopefully they'll get over it. Once I put the rock back in, the algae started to give off a bunch of tiny bubbles which I read is what's supposed to happen after an H2O2 treatment. I'm really hoping this will work.

[Water Dog]

Quick little update... The H2O2 scrub seemed to have worked quite well so far. In more exciting news, on Wednesday of this week, I have an 11 piece SPS frag pack coming. With just weekly water changes and no dosing as of yet, my big three are

Alk - 7.3
Cal - 450
Mag - 1400

with NO3 at 5 and PO4 at 0.

I'll be sure to update this thread with photos when the SPS come in... Game on!

[SantaMonicaHelp]

Great work so far! The frags you added a couple weeks ago gave the rock some nice pizzazz; interested in seeing how you work with a new set of frags.

 

-JN

[davidcwoods]

Love the tank! I'm going slow as well with my bio29! Where did you get your frags?

[Water Dog]

Thanks guys! Acans, zoas, favias and platygyra came from AquaSD. My SPS frag pack came from ReefersGarage. I'll try to post pictures to update this thread soon.

[Pjanssen]

Yes, Please. Pictures

[Water Dog]

Currently NO3 is at 2, PO4 at 0, Ca at 440, Alk at 8.4 and Mg at 1360. Picked up a bunch of SPS frags from Reefers Garage and at Reef A Palooza NY. I've since moved some of the Acans around to make room for the SPS. My new frag additions include a trumpet, a. tenuis, deepwater acro, purple stylo, setosa, birdsnest, millepora and m. digitata. Now I'm in maintenance and testing mode. Here is a current FTS...

 

[Water Dog]

Sorry guys, it's been waaaay too long since my last update. Over the last month and a half I've had a few ups and downs here and there but I think I'm slowly beginning to dial in and catch a groove. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I had a battle with cyanobacteria for a time. I did all the customary things like cut my light cycle, reduce feeding and run GFO. I was always getting 0 NO3 and 0 PO4 yet the cyano wouldn't go away. To combat the cyano, I did a bit of research and followed a method laid out by twillard on R2R. For two weeks, I dosed 2.2ml of 3% hydrogen peroxide directly into the DT every 12 hours. This works out to be a dosage of 1ml per 10 gallons of water every 12 hours. It seemed to have worked out quite well with no noticeable adverse affects on my livestock.

Equipment wise, I have made a few changes as well. To make room for my dosing lines in chamber 3, I took the GFO reactor offline. In the InTank media basket, I'm running floss, Purigen and 3 tbs of ROX carbon and 1 tbs of high capacity GFO in a media bag (changed out every 2 weeks). I replaced the Reeflink with a WXM, added another EB8, added 2 BRS 1.1ml dosers and bought an Eshopps dual reservoir for calcium and alkalinity solutions.

 

 

 

Livestock wise, I added a sixline wrasse and also purchased an 11 piece SPS frag pack from Reefers Garage and picked up a few SPS frags from Reef A Palooza NYC as well. Among the new frags are a green caulastrea, green M. Digitata, A. Tenuis, pink deepwater acro, purple stylo, M. Setosa, pink birdsnest, staghorn acros. several milleporas and an ORA green birdsnest. I think I'm almost done stocking. I think the last piece I want to add is a Forest Fire Digitata.

 

 

My parameters have been quite steady...
Salinity: 1.025
Nitrate: 0
Phospate: 0
Calcium: 440
Alkalinity: 8.83
Magnesium: 1350

I've been dosing about 15ml of BRS 2 part calcium and alkalinity per day every hour. about 5 days in and still testing every day. Not wanting to cause an algae outbreak yet still concerned about starving my frags with 0 NO3 and 0 PO4, I am adding about 3 drops of Polyp Labs polyp booster and a tiny pinch of reef roids once a week. I also feed my acans, caulastrea and duncan Fauna Marin ultra LPS grow & color pellets once a week as well. So far so good.

[davidcwoods]

Tanks looking great! I have a similar set up on my BC29. What are you running your lights at on the retro? I ramp mine up to 60% all colors with whites maxed at 25%? Trying to dial it in for some SPS growth!

[ReefSafeSolutions]

I LOVE Reefer's Garage. Their shop is just up the road from me...you wouldn't believe how many SPS frags they have. Heck, you wouldn't believe how much of everything they have, and how healthy it all is. When you talk to the owner (Louie) you can tell he cares about the livestock and not screwing anyone over.

 

Tank is looking great!

[Water Dog]

Thanks for the kind words guys, it's a work in progress. Yeah, Reefers Garage was awesome, they ran a special for 11 frags for $100 shipped a while back... sweet deal! Currently, I have the lights on for 9 hours with a 3 hour peak of 90% blues 30% whites 80% violet and 90% cyan and a 3 hour ramp on either side. It took about a three week acclimation to get to those levels. I did bleach an acan. You can see him all the way to the right on my last FTS, he should be a deep red. I've since moved all the acans, favias and euphillia out to the edges of the rock work.

[Water Dog]

Just found some bubble algae on the base and plug disc of my green candy cane frag. Took the whole frag and plug disc off the rock, removed the two bubbles and dipped the base of the coral and plug disc in hydrogen peroxide. Hopefully I caught it in time and hasn't spread anywhere else.

[Water Dog]

In the midst of doing some water testing, my sixline wrasse jumped and tried to off himself. Over the past several weeks he has become more and more aggressive and territorial, nipping at my clowns. So back to the LFS he went. Saved me the trouble of having to try to trap him. I thought by adding him last, the clowns would keep him in his place, apparently not. Now I've got to figure out some new, more peaceful additions moving forward. I need more fish poop to feed my SPS!

[Water Dog]

Found an aiptasia on my pink birdsnest plug disk last week, so I took the birdsnest off the disk and remounted it on another... then yesterday, I found another aiptasia on the rock in front of my purple stylo, on a totally different rock from the birdsnest. Killed it with a syringe of boiling water... I really hope this doesn't become a trend. I've tried really hard in this build to try to not introduce pests using dry rock, dry sand and dipping all frags in Bayer and TTM and quarantining all new fish additions. Yet in the last 3 weeks, I've found a few aiptasia in different areas and bubble algae on two different frags... Ugh!!!

[xAyanex]

So I see you have the Nano Box Retro Large Plus M, how do you like it? I'm dying to buy a BTA, but after thorough research, I'm thinking maybe with stock lighting it's a bad idea. Basically a little over half of what I read was people saying it was a bad idea and don't use stock lighting in the Biocube 29 for nems. The rest of the people successfully had BTAs or other nems, but a lot of them complained about nems surviving but not necessarily thriving... I'm really doing it for my enjoyment to hopefully see my clownfish take a liking to it. But I don't want to stick a poor nem in barely-livable conditions for my enjoyment...

[Water Dog]

I am a big fan of the Nanobox Retro L plus M. I think it'd be more than enough lighting for a nem. I have a bunch of SPS frags in my tank and they are beginning to come into their own in terms of growth and color. My tank is only a mere 9 months old so it's relatively young. The one thing I'm confident in saying is that lighting is something I don't need to be concerned about with this tank.

[Water Dog]

Here is a FTS from a week or so ago...

 

[Water Dog]

Since my last update, I have taken the fuge basket offline. Aside from the initial growth spurt of chaeto when I first put it in, growth has since been mediocre at best. The GFO reactor is now back online running in place of the fuge basket.

 

In order to provide my coral with more nutrients my clownfish pair have a few new tank mates. All new fish were put through TTM and quarantine procedures. I now have a new purple fire fish, a green chromis and a banggai cardinal. That will be it for new fish inhabitants. Hopefully with my religious maintenance habits and the fish poop from my 5 fish, I will be able to strike a balance and keep my corals fed.

 

Dosing wise, I've been dosing 20ml each of Calcium and Alkalinity throughout the day. I'm thinking of switching from Reef Crystals to regular Instant Ocean as I'd like to reduce my current Alk level from 9.5 down to around 8. I think switching salts will help me avoid the Alk upticks on water change days as RC is relatively high in Alk. SPS have fully encrusted for the most part and new growth branches have begun to sprout up.

[Water Dog]

I started dosing KNO3 (potassium nitrate) in order to increase my nitrates. I've been at undetectable nitrates since I started this tank. Since my alkalinity runs in the high 9s to low 10s, 0 nitrates have been a concern for me. I've tried to feed my fish and coral more in an effort to increase my nutrients but I find in doing so, my PO4 goes up and my nitrates remain at 0. I made a solution from RODI water and Spectracide stump remover. Dosed my tank yesterday to 5ppm of nitrates and will monitor its effect on PO4 as well as how quickly my tank can process the nitrates down to 0. We'll see how this goes and what effect it will have on my SPS... keeping my fingers crossed!

[markalot]

Woah, very nice. How are things going in here?

[markalot]

keeping my fingers crossed!

 

bump

[Water Dog]

With dosing Spectracide Stump remover for NO3 I have been able to keep maintain my nitrates at 5ppm over the last month, so I'm pretty pleased with that. I do however, recognize that I'd like to keep my Alk lower at 7ish from 9-10. On my last bag of RC so looking to grab a 25kg box of Aquaforest Reef salt when I re-up on salt.

 

On the lighting DIY front, I've been toying with the idea of adding maybe one or even two more arrays to my Nanobox two array retro in my BioCube hood. I bought a couple of spare arrays from Dave awhile back and bought a larger heatsink and extra fans from RapidLED... just a little apprehensive about soldering is all.

 

Also over the last month, I have been dosing Vibrant to get rid of some minor GHA and cyano on the sand bed. I know it has received mixed reviews but for me, it has worked remarkably well. My sandbed is back to being white and pristine and I have no signs of GHA on my rocks. I've since cut the Vibrant back to a maintenance dose of 2ml per week.

 

I'll put up an FTS soon and if I get the courage to do some soldering, I'll document my process of upgrading my hood to either a Nanobox wide quad or wide triple retro!

[Groot]

Why are you aiming for 7 on your Alk just wondering is it because you are trying to match your salt mix or is there another reason?I also having a hard time keeping nitrates up.

[Water Dog]

Why are you aiming for 7 on your Alk just wondering is it because you are trying to match your salt mix or is there another reason?I also having a hard time keeping nitrates up.

 

I'm shooting for more like 8ish. trying to get closer to NSW levels. Based on the advice of other, more experienced SPS keepers, maintaining higher Alk levels especially with low nutrients like I have can lead to more problems for SPS, like Alk burn and poor coloration. I've been running at close to high 9s to 10 as I am using Reef Crystals which has very high Alk, like 12ish. I've been running high like that because I'm trying to maintain stability. If I ran it at 8ish, I'd have a huge Alk uptick swing on water change days. I'm almost done with my last bag of RC from a 200 gallon box and have a 25kg box of Aquaforest Reef salt (non probiotic version) coming from BRS later this week. When that happens, I'll slowly cut back on my dosing to maintain my system in the low 8s.

 

As far as nitrate goes, I was having a hard time keeping any detectable levels of NO3 for quite some time. Since dosing Spectracide Stump Remover (KNO3 aka potassium nitrate), I've been able to maintain a level of 5ppm of NO3. Information on dosing KNO3 can be found here.

 

http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/349488-dosing-potassium-nitrate/?hl=%2Bpotassium+%2Bnitrate

[Water Dog]

Here is an FTS taken from my iPhone 7 with a gel filter. Everything is encrusting quite nicely. Still working on colors for the acros though. I think things will greatly improve when I add an additional array into my Nanobox retrofit and when I lower my Alk to around 8 or so. We'll see...