Christopher Marks Posted September 14, 2016 Share Posted September 14, 2016 It's looking beautiful, thanks for posting a new FTS! I love the mangrove island in particular. I'm looking forward to watching this tank fill in. That's a great stand design, I assume there are cover panels that clip in? Great access for maintenance. 1 Quote Link to comment
Nstocks Posted September 14, 2016 Author Share Posted September 14, 2016 It's looking beautiful, thanks for posting a new FTS! I love the mangrove island in particular. I'm looking forward to watching this tank fill in. That's a great stand design, I assume there are cover panels that clip in? Great access for maintenance. Thanks There are acrylic panels, but they don't stay on the magnets very well and due to maintenance I've left them off for the time being. Quote Link to comment
Nstocks Posted October 21, 2016 Author Share Posted October 21, 2016 Small update Hair algae is starting to get out of control. I've just done another 40% water change (entire sump contents) and have reduced lights to 4 tubes rather than 8 and feed one cube a day (stopped with pellets but still put some Nori in for Sailfin) I have around 3 snails in total and I'm debating the pros/cons of adding more, specifically for the GHA. There's also another Urchin that may eat the algae, but I doubt it. This week I've started applying small hidden blobs of Masstick food to try and get Mandarin eating, since he's quite skinny and won't go for any lobster eggs that I previously managed with another Mandarin. Mangroves are growing VERY well I've removed the Caulepra taxifolia because it's growing in rock work which worries me. I now have prolifera which I prefer anyway, due to greener coloration. Gyre broke again and has been sent away for repair. I also found a small Mollusc eating flatworm in the sump return chamber that I've removed! Quote Link to comment
reefercorey Posted November 2, 2016 Share Posted November 2, 2016 Awesome tank! It looks very neat. Could you post a couple pictures of the area where the mangroves are? I am setting up a shallow 50 gallon and and looking for some inspiration as to how to incorporate mangroves. Quote Link to comment
Nstocks Posted November 2, 2016 Author Share Posted November 2, 2016 The mangroves are in a large plastic plant pot, filled with sand and are surrounded by a rock pile so there's not much to see! I'll be posting more pictures in a few weeks - just battling GHA. Quote Link to comment
vlangel Posted November 5, 2016 Share Posted November 5, 2016 This is a very cool tank and I will enjoy watching it progress. 1 Quote Link to comment
Nstocks Posted November 5, 2016 Author Share Posted November 5, 2016 Not having a CUC is starting to take its toll... Loads of algae and overall 'dirt'. I've just set up a cheato bed in the sump (300K, 20W LED 24/7) and also use nano bubble scrubbing, but I need scavengers! Can anyone personally suggest a good CUC (namely snails) for algae specifically? I also have a red tuxedo urchin that eats coraline and I'm thinking about adding another. (I personally prefer whiter rocks than deep purple since a lot of my macro algae is also red/purple) Quote Link to comment
Nstocks Posted December 26, 2016 Author Share Posted December 26, 2016 So GHA is still coming back, after 20% water changes ever week. Feeding is one rinsed frozen cube per day and a small amount of Nori for Tang. Despite throwing in 100+ CUC (most are dead) and countless attempts of GFO and algae scrubber, I'm thinking of just adding some phosphate remover, like Meleves reef suggests here: It's not 'natural' and I have no idea what will happen, but so far nothing has helped! (Other than the back breaking work of removing all the rocks, twice in the past 4 months) 1 Quote Link to comment
Nstocks Posted December 29, 2016 Author Share Posted December 29, 2016 Help! Mandarin Dragonet is probably weeks away from starving to death. In an effort to keep it alive, I've been heavily feeding the tank a variety of different foods, bearing in mind the majority of the rock work is 2 years old now and full of life... I have two options; let it die due to starvation or, place it along with some rocks in a separate aquarium, completely alone where I can better target feed/train it, without having to worry too much about polluting the larger tank. (Advice on foods to start with would be appreciated - do I try frozen mysis first since it's easy and clean compared to pellets?) For the display tank, I' removing 90% of the sand and cutting down on feeding. A lot of my 100snails/crabs have died, corals are receding, skimmer is pulling very bright gunk and hair algae is back. I'm also sending off for a ICP test today. Quote Link to comment
Muraki Posted December 29, 2016 Share Posted December 29, 2016 Help! Mandarin Dragonet is probably weeks away from starving to death. In an effort to keep it alive, I've been heavily feeding the tank a variety of different foods, bearing in mind the majority of the rock work is 2 years old now and full of life... I have two options; let it die due to starvation or, place it along with some rocks in a separate aquarium, completely alone where I can better target feed/train it, without having to worry too much about polluting the larger tank. (Advice on foods to start with would be appreciated - do I try frozen mysis first since it's easy and clean compared to pellets?) For the display tank, I' removing 90% of the sand and cutting down on feeding. A lot of my 100snails/crabs have died, corals are receding, skimmer is pulling very bright gunk and hair algae is back. I'm also sending off for a ICP test today. Move him over to another tank for now if your current tank can't handle over feeding. Get some frozen blood worms. They helped me a good bit. (More details in another post I made today). Mix Live foods with frozen foods, such has freshly hatched baby brine shrimp. 2 Quote Link to comment
hinnenkm Posted December 29, 2016 Share Posted December 29, 2016 I've just caught up on this (skimming, so sorry for not reading in depth), but to touch on a few things - a great clean up crew member for the green hair algae, if you are able to find them, are the gold ring (or money) cowries - fantastic! Urchins also do a great job if you have everything glued down securely! As far as the dragonet, sometimes mysis is a bit large for them. I've found that the Hikari mini mysis works well size-wise. The nanoV brand 'soft freeze' zooplankton is also a great food that I've used for picky eaters. If none of that is working, try hatching some baby brine shrimp - that way you'll have some other live food to elicit a feeding response. What I've found then is that for target feeding, you are able to mix some of the live with some of the smaller frozen and eventually (in most of my experience) they will start eating the frozen food and you can go from there. Best of luck with whatever you end up doing! 2 Quote Link to comment
Nstocks Posted December 29, 2016 Author Share Posted December 29, 2016 I've read about blood worms but hesitated to buy because they 1) are very large, even compared to mysis 2) look nothing like copepods! and 3) can pollute the tank quite a lot. But, to get some weight on the Mandarin, still worth a shot. 1 Quote Link to comment
Muraki Posted December 29, 2016 Share Posted December 29, 2016 I've read about blood worms but hesitated to buy because they 1) are very large, even compared to mysis 2) look nothing like copepods! and 3) can pollute the tank quite a lot. But, to get some weight on the Mandarin, still worth a shot. Oh don't get me wrong, it puts a crazy amount of waste in the tank. My Bristle worm population exploded during my time training my mandarin. This is why if you can safely keep another tank to move him to, I would. But it was the first frozen food he showed interest in and began eating. Mandarins don't really care what the food looks like, more as to the odd movements the food makes to look interesting/alive. Blood worms even though they are dead, wiggle nicely in the water flow on the bottom of the tank. If the Mandarin has a part of the tank he stays near, put a small glass bowl in the tank as a feeding side to keep the blood worms contained for easy cleanup later that day. Quote Link to comment
no694terry Posted December 29, 2016 Share Posted December 29, 2016 I just conquerd GHA in my 90 gallon. It was from buildup and high phospates. Since i used old rock, old T5 lighting, tap water, and even let kids feed the fish a few times I ended up with a lot of crap in tank that doesnt belong. Steps i took to fix it: 1) bought way more snails. Did nothing, nothing eats GHA no matter what anyone says. 2) bought lots of crabs, they worked for the new stuff, but again nothing touches old stuff 3) tried dosing Marine Algeafix, this appeared to help, but needed to keep up on water changes, I didnt. 4) Tried a Yellow Tang. It pecks at it, but a 100 of them still wont make it go away. 5) I stopped looking for bandaids. I got in there, I removed all the rock, and rinsed and scrubbed them in saltwater. It took an entire day. I then hook up a 1/2" hose and sucked off the top layer of sand that was covered in other algea and cyano etc.. 6) Then after i made that huge mess, i did a massive water change, like 50%+ 7) I started running GFO to catch any remaining phosphates and will continue to run it. I had a couple corals that i obviously couldnt scrub so i left the algea on them, after a few days, the smails and crabs and lack on nutrients have finished cleaning the algea off the corals and theres not a spec of green algea anywhere in the tank now. And the sand is still clean. So in summary. MANUAL removal is the #1 cheapest, fastest, maybe not esiest, way to rid GHA, and int he process you are rinsing the rock to further prevent it from returning. Quote Link to comment
Nstocks Posted December 29, 2016 Author Share Posted December 29, 2016 I just conquerd GHA in my 90 gallon. It was from buildup and high phospates. Since i used old rock, old T5 lighting, tap water, and even let kids feed the fish a few times I ended up with a lot of crap in tank that doesnt belong. Steps i took to fix it: 1) bought way more snails. Did nothing, nothing eats GHA no matter what anyone says. 2) bought lots of crabs, they worked for the new stuff, but again nothing touches old stuff 3) tried dosing Marine Algeafix, this appeared to help, but needed to keep up on water changes, I didnt. 4) Tried a Yellow Tang. It pecks at it, but a 100 of them still wont make it go away. 5) I stopped looking for bandaids. I got in there, I removed all the rock, and rinsed and scrubbed them in saltwater. It took an entire day. I then hook up a 1/2" hose and sucked off the top layer of sand that was covered in other algea and cyano etc.. 6) Then after i made that huge mess, i did a massive water change, like 50%+ 7) I started running GFO to catch any remaining phosphates and will continue to run it. I had a couple corals that i obviously couldnt scrub so i left the algea on them, after a few days, the smails and crabs and lack on nutrients have finished cleaning the algea off the corals and theres not a spec of green algea anywhere in the tank now. And the sand is still clean. So in summary. MANUAL removal is the #1 cheapest, fastest, maybe not esiest, way to rid GHA, and int he process you are rinsing the rock to further prevent it from returning. Done it! TWICE!!! Seriously, I've taken out every single rock and scrubbed them. A month later, did the same. I'm wondering, since some rocks are more effected than others, that some of the rocks are leaching more phosphate because they were in my Brother's Biorb tank which had a lot of cyano and other algae... But the new rocks I added still have algae so... Part of me wants to remove all the rocks (cost £600) and replace with branching real reef rock. IDK, my initial vision for the tank is never going to be achievable due to the severely limited types of macro algae we get over here, and I haven't found a single retailer/shop that will order anything more than a few "rarer" types for seahorses. Feeling really down with it all right now and I'm sort of set on branching rocks and Zoos and ditching the mangrove/algae look Quote Link to comment
no694terry Posted December 29, 2016 Share Posted December 29, 2016 I gave up on my 15g and started over new. just put new sand in it today. and orderd dry rock from BRS. The old rock is being cooked to go into the 90 gallon. Have you looked into vodka dosing? Quote Link to comment
Nstocks Posted December 29, 2016 Author Share Posted December 29, 2016 I haven't looked at Vodka or Carbon dosing, I don't want to get into that to be honest - Keep is extremely simple (although perhaps I took it too minimal!) Reboot Plan Move the majority of the rocks to the sump as is. Then, pressure wash some rocks that I will use in the display. It will be very, very minimal, just scattered rocks, some macro algae and eventually zoas. The focus for this tank was going to be a lot of fish - I haven't added any in 5 months and it's very low stocked. The desire for macro algae haven has passed. It's just not possible to do how I want it to without access to more than 5 very common macro algae. The mangroves will likely go in the sump too, unless someone in the UK wants to pay top dollar for them (I paid £110 when they barley had leaves!). I love them but for such a large tank they don't do enough for me just yet. I also need to come up with a better mesh to stop the fish from jumping. The DIY mesh that BRS sell has been ok, but now it's broke and I'm fed up with it constantly falling in the tank. Quote Link to comment
Muraki Posted December 30, 2016 Share Posted December 30, 2016 Do you have any pictures of how bad the GHA is currently. Just curious. I cycled back a few pages, but did not see anything horrible. Quote Link to comment
Nstocks Posted December 30, 2016 Author Share Posted December 30, 2016 Here's some picture from last week. It's pretty much as bad as it was a few pages (weeks) back. I'm going to add the ATM Colony I have, turn skimmer off for a few days, then add NOPOX with skimmer on. Image below shows the extremely green/blue skim after not using a skimmer for a month as it didn't produce a single drop of junk. 1 Quote Link to comment
Muraki Posted January 1, 2017 Share Posted January 1, 2017 Oh dang. That is a lot of GHA. Along with your manual removal, try to move the caulerpa from the rock into the sand bed and let it go wild. Enough Caulerpa along with Manual removal should help out compete the GHA. I grow my Caulerpa in the sand bed and my clowns love it. I just keep the runners away from the rock work. And with the amount of free space in that sand bed, You might be able to grow enough Caulerpa to do the job. It's worth a shot if you are up for pruning the runners that go near the rock. I keep enough Chaeto in my sump along with the Caulerpa in my display to out compete all problematic algae. But my Fuge and display are the same size. I might as well add, I don't do water changes, I just dose. Only time I had GHA grow is when one of my fuge lights burnt out. Once it was replaced, its already going away. *** I want so see a massive Caulerpa "Grass" field. *** Quote Link to comment
Nstocks Posted January 1, 2017 Author Share Posted January 1, 2017 I have around 5 'plants' of Prolifera, some grow faster than others but it's likely not enough to outcompete. I'd estimate growth rates are half a leaf per week on most plants (I know these aren't the correct terms!) The display is completely different now. 60% less rock work, all of the rocks look brand new, not a single strand of hair algae in the DT. Mangroves are also out for the time being. I'm not quite sure on the goal of the DT, all I know is that I want it to remain very open and empty as this tank was planned for mostly fish. Perhaps I'll still have the macro algae in the DT and Zoas only could be interesting. The sand bed is almost gone.... This morning I found my Diamond Goby dried up on the floor . I removed the mesh screen because it broke and as luck would have it, a fish jumps out. The light fixture covers the majority of the open area around the tank and moving it 5" above the water surface makes the tank look awesome! I'm still planning on ditching the mesh screen because I hate it. Next step is to remove Mandarin Dragonet, possibly with the mangroves in a separate tank so that I can target feed before he starves to death (frozen bloodworms delivered this week) Not doing water changes would be a dream! Perhaps now with running Rowaphos, keeping skimmer online and other things will allow for that. (Siporax may help too). ICP results should be back within the next week too. 2 Quote Link to comment
Christopher Marks Posted January 1, 2017 Share Posted January 1, 2017 Sorry to hear about your Diamond Goby Did you move the mangroves to the sump to make a refugium instead of keeping them on display? Quote Link to comment
Muraki Posted January 2, 2017 Share Posted January 2, 2017 Sorry to hear about the Goby, Hopefully the Mandarin begins eating the frozen blood worms so you can slowly switch it to a better frozen food. Fingers crossed for you. Quote Link to comment
Nstocks Posted January 2, 2017 Author Share Posted January 2, 2017 The mangroves are currently in the sump, in a large plastic container full of sand. Surprisingly the roots haven't grown that much! For the time being the macro algae is also summed, until I finish the DT rocks cape. Quote Link to comment
Nstocks Posted January 9, 2017 Author Share Posted January 9, 2017 How does everyone deal with moisture that causes mold on walls/ceilings? Google search brings up a lot of suggestions for a dehumidifier, but with an uncovered aquarium it seems counter intuitive? Quote Link to comment
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