Mitten_reef’s IM30L

[mitten_reef]

2 hours ago, DaveFason said:

So glad the light it ok. Maybe less beer for each water change

 

-Dave

Drinking away my sadness that the quad is still sitting on the counter, and not on the top of the tank. 

[mitten_reef]

#TBT

A close-up pic of my @Cultivated Reef's Bird of Paradise frag from 11/26/2016, the day it arrived.  But it started to lose some flesh and was touch and go for the first week or two after arrival.

 

Suffice to say it had recovered quite well since then. Here it is on 3/25/2018.

 

[teenyreef]

Wow, nice! My BOP in the 40g is one of my favorites.

[mitten_reef]

Ugh, can’t seem to get alk back up, been hovering in the mid-5 range, probably for over a week now. Not good .

 

some acros are starting to show STN around the bases where there is less light. Red dragon took a big hit, spot a whole lower layer of branches that are just bone white. 

 

Doing water change first thing tomorrow. Feel like there might be something else going on as well. ?

 

 

[HarryPotter]

11 minutes ago, micoastreefing said:

Ugh, can’t seem to get alk back up, been hovering in the mid-5 range, probably for over a week now. Not good .

 

some acros are starting to show STN around the bases where there is less light. Red dragon took a big hit, spot a whole lower layer of branches that are just bone white. 

 

Doing water change first thing tomorrow. Feel like there might be something else going on as well. ?

 

 

 

 

 

my Alk was low too recently, but not that low. Best of luck- super glue is your friend for RTN.

[mitten_reef]

As if the stupid alk/STN/RTN issues aren’t enough, the BTA decided to split last night. Now the new one is walking toward my leng si cap. Wtf. 

 

The major casualty so far is red dragon, a handful for branches (1-2”) are now stripped down to the bone. 

 

While doing the waterchange, changed the floss and cleaned out the return pump really well today. I received some blue hypnea from livestock classified. The algae didn’t quite survive the shipping. I think, as most of the macro melted away, it threw my tank out of whack beyond just the alk issue. Sigh. 

 

Hopefully, 20% wc will bring some normalcy back to the tank. 

 

[Zuma]

Great looking tank, really like the open scape.

[ninjamyst]

10 hours ago, micoastreefing said:

As if the stupid alk/STN/RTN issues aren’t enough, the BTA decided to split last night. Now the new one is walking toward my leng si cap. Wtf. 

 

The major casualty so far is red dragon, a handful for branches (1-2”) are now stripped down to the bone. 

 

While doing the waterchange, changed the floss and cleaned out the return pump really well today. I received some blue hypnea from livestock classified. The algae didn’t quite survive the shipping. I think, as most of the macro melted away, it threw my tank out of whack beyond just the alk issue. Sigh. 

 

Hopefully, 20% wc will bring some normalcy back to the tank. 

 

water change should stabilize the tank.  alk is our worst enemy.  when my SPS started to RTN, my alk spiked to almost 11.

[mitten_reef]

10 hours ago, Zuma said:

Great looking tank, really like the open scape.

Thank you for stopping by.  Glad to hear that you like the scape.  Personally, it is getting more crowded than I initially had hoped.  But most, if not all, is due to growth - so can't really complain.

1 hour ago, ninjamyst said:

water change should stabilize the tank.  alk is our worst enemy.  when my SPS started to RTN, my alk spiked to almost 11.

Thanks!  That's a perspective I hadn't considered, what if growth stops and alk spikes.  I'll definitely  watch out for that.  Even though I don't have the nanobox on there right now, the SPS still looks like they're growing - certainly not as visibly fast as they used to.  But fast enough that I can't seem to raise alk.    

[DaveFason]

Try to slow down on all the changes. With the different light, lower ALK, etc.  Increasing the ALK will also do a number on things. 

[mitten_reef]

27 minutes ago, DaveFason said:

Try to slow down on all the changes. With the different light, lower ALK, etc.  Increasing the ALK will also do a number on things. 

Thanks Dave.  most of the changes were not really intentional - the usual story, haha. 

 

I think the Alk has been drifting lower the last few weeks because I've reduced the dosing to anticipate slowdown on growth (I guess that was the only intentional part of this whole story).   I'm just trying to bring it back up to a safe zone right now.  dKH in low/mid-5's was just begging for trouble, which it turned out to be. 

 

With lower amount of light, I suspect that Acros had slowed/stopped growing, but Monti's continues their march to dominance.  With nanobox quad on, I could visibly/readily see growth on Acros, but less so on Monti's.  Now the growth are in reverse. @markalot mentioned at one point, that once the tank hits a sweet spot, Acros will outgrow monti's any days, regardless of how dominant monti's may have seemed.  I think I was reaching that sweetspot right before the light went in for a swim. 

 

So far the red dragon seems to have responded well after the water change, and the back-of-AIO equipment cleaning over the weekend. 

[markalot]

10 hours ago, micoastreefing said:

Thanks Dave.  most of the changes were not really intentional - the usual story, haha. 

 

I think the Alk has been drifting lower the last few weeks because I've reduced the dosing to anticipate slowdown on growth (I guess that was the only intentional part of this whole story).   I'm just trying to bring it back up to a safe zone right now.  dKH in low/mid-5's was just begging for trouble, which it turned out to be. 

 

With lower amount of light, I suspect that Acros had slowed/stopped growing, but Monti's continues their march to dominance.  With nanobox quad on, I could visibly/readily see growth on Acros, but less so on Monti's.  Now the growth are in reverse. @markalot mentioned at one point, that once the tank hits a sweet spot, Acros will outgrow monti's any days, regardless of how dominant monti's may have seemed.  I think I was reaching that sweetspot right before the light went in for a swim. 

 

So far the red dragon seems to have responded well after the water change, and the back-of-AIO equipment cleaning over the weekend. 

 

If you didn't lose the red dragon then you're doing something right, IMO   Monties can grow into and over Acros so don't ignore them, they can be invasive with how they compete.

[mitten_reef]

22 minutes ago, markalot said:

 

If you didn't lose the red dragon then you're doing something right, IMO   Monties can grow into and over Acros so don't ignore them, they can be invasive with how they compete.

Once things look to be a bit more steady, I plan to prune most of the monti’s down a bit, really more like all except the leng si. They’re all getting into invasive status indeed.  

There’s a local frag swap coming up two wknds from now, might try to take a bunch of trimmed-off pieces there. 

[mitten_reef]

Red dragon took a turn for the worse. After stopping the RTN on the bottom branches, I noticed the colony started to show splotches of white. Well, after about a week of watching this white splotches slowly spreading, a big chunk of the colony just lost flesh all at once today. 😣😥 I guess it’s been STN’ing on the side. 

 

On a positive note, finally started to see some pe on the acros again - especially happy to see pe on the contest frag after a week of it looking very tightened up. 

 

 

[mitten_reef]

Today (under neutral light)

 

3/25/2018

 

 

Fragging what’s left of it right now. Wish me luck. 

[mitten_reef]

The carnage - the browner ones were the RTN’d from over a week ago.

the future - hopefully there are enough branches that one will survive 

 

 

[A Little Blue]

Sorry to hear/see that. 

[mitten_reef]

18 minutes ago, A Little Blue said:

Sorry to hear/see that. 

Thanks. It’s definitely tough losing a whole colony, especially tougher for one as finicky as red dragon. 

[HarryPotter]

 never tried that one but I’ve heard how finicky they are

[teenyreef]

I hope the red dragon pulls through! I've had mixed luck with them - I tried one or two that stn'd, but the third one I got grew well in the 40g and a frag of it is growing even better in the 10g (with a little less light).

[mitten_reef]

43 minutes ago, HarryPotter said:

 never tried that one but I’ve heard how finicky they are

You should give it a try! 

33 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

I hope the red dragon pulls through! I've had mixed luck with them - I tried one or two that stn'd, but the third one I got grew well in the 40g and a frag of it is growing even better in the 10g (with a little less light).

Thanks, the remainders are gonna need a lot of luck. 

[AvaS]

Hope the pieces you saved pulled through!!! 

-Ava 

[mitten_reef]

7 hours ago, AvaS said:

Hope the pieces you saved pulled through!!! 

-Ava 

Thanks.

 

a quick not-so-good update on the remaining branches. 

I had about a dozen or more clippings of various sizes last night glued on the rocks. Today there seem to be only 3 survivors left 😱.  Tomorrow will likely tell the fate of those three. 🤞

[samnaz]

dang! sorry to see much loved pieces suffer such an awful big loss. that blows, man. what happened?? things were smooth sailing last I checked in months ago...

 

fingers crossed at least one of the survivors made it to today.

[samnaz]

did the quad survive the spill?