Nola & Bosco's Red Sea E260 - New FTS

[Nola Bear]

PC Rainbow has to be one of nicest looking corals imo. You have got to love the oranges and the pinks. A few of my friends have WD and SC OP, which are really nice, but I think I prefer the PCRainbow. Now if someone was going to gift me a piece of Looney Tunes, I mean, I’d take it, but.... 

 

i also love pale flesh (it’d be really weird if I just stopped typing there...) pale flesh, blue tipped sps like blueberry acro and pearl berry. 

[Nola Bear]

Trying to keep track of what I have

 

[Nola Bear]

Just acclimated an ornate leopard wrasse. Beautiful fish. 

[Nola Bear]

Man, though, my jerry springer damsel was a real dB for the first 24-48 hours. It’s weird which fish turn out to assert alpha status. 

[teenyreef]

On 9/30/2017 at 9:38 PM, Nola Bear said:

Now that i look at it, this tank is going to bounce back just fine and will be better than it has ever been until the next natural or reefing disaster, which most likely will happen any moment now.....

 

Anywho, I'd like to thank a few people who have been incredible sources of inspiration and support on here, whether they know it or not. @teenyreef has been an inspiration to all. As has @metrokat @ninjamyst @RIP Sebastian and @4x5 @Mikeymikemike @TJ_Burton

keep us all motivated. Thanks to all who let me lurk in the shadows. 

Thanks! I've fallen way behind and missed your post.

Wow, you've more than come back from the hurricane disaster, though! What a great collection you've got going 

[Nola Bear]

19 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

Thanks! I've fallen way behind and missed your post.

Wow, you've more than come back from the hurricane disaster, though! What a great collection you've got going 

Thanks for checking in, Teeny! This is the happiest I’ve been with the tank. Though the growth has slowed for some reason, I’m loving how things are going. I’m also staring to add small rubble Zoa islands since the zoos seem to really like the tank. 

[Nola Bear]

On another note, had a few too many beverages last night and made way too many bids on the wwc eBay auction. I’m sure I will be outbid on all of them eventually; if not, I’m in trouble. 

[teenyreef]

8 hours ago, Nola Bear said:

On another note, had a few too many beverages last night and made way too many bids on the wwc eBay auction. I’m sure I will be outbid on all of them eventually; if not, I’m in trouble. 

So far I've resisted the Ebay auctions for that very reason 

[Nola Bear]

On 12/3/2017 at 10:59 PM, teenyreef said:

So far I've resisted the Ebay auctions for that very reason 

Out of 46 bids (I’ve either got a drinking problem or a coral problem...def both) I ended up with 6 

[Nola Bear]

[teenyreef]

Nice job getting some great deals! Everybody gets excited about their live sale prices but honestly from where I sit, the live sale prices only get them down to what I consider "reasonable". Nothing worth staying up all night for. You got the same corals at about 1/4 of the live sale prices, which is sweet

[Nola Bear]

1 minute ago, teenyreef said:

Nice job getting some great deals! Everybody gets excited about their live sale prices but honestly from where I sit, the live sale prices only get them down to what I consider "reasonable". Nothing worth staying up all night for. You got the same corals at about 1/4 of the live sale prices, which is sweet

Thanks! You are dead on with that. These auctions are the only way I will buy from these guys. Otherwise prices are just bananas. Plus my brother in law is going to be driving to the east coast and is stopping at WWC on his way back home to collect the haul so I was able to avoid shipping too, which really helped to enable me. 

[teenyreef]

Sweet! I was a victim of bad timing. I was in Orlando last week until Thursday night, so I could have picked up live sale stuff while I was there to avoid the shipping. But I didn't buy anything, and the Ebay auction was after I left.

[Nola Bear]

Stopped by a buddy’s place who had a bunch of Jf jackolantern frags for dirt cheap. 

 Grabbed two of them. For size reference, They are on 4x4 tiles (I cut off the edges of tile for better placement)

 

[Nola Bear]

I have this stuff growing all over the rocks pretty much everywhere. Not sure what it is. I have a feeling that it is a strain of bacteria as a consequence of dosing no pox. It’s hard to even come up with search terms for it. It is grayish, web or net like...?, and blows off easy; it is unsightly, but I don’t believe it is affecting coral growth necessarily, possibly slowing growth. 

 

Im going to gradually cut back on nopox dose over 2-3 weeks and see what effect that has. 

 

Id love to know what it is so that I can read up on it. If anyone knows, please tell me. 

[Nola Bear]

Well, I’m 99.9% certain I have a strain of Dino’s in the tank. I don’t have a microscope and wouldn’t know what to look for if I did. It is a dark brown/red thin snot-like substance that has bubbles  at the end of each snot string. It is pretty much everywhere when the lights are at peak. I am going to start by using Bioclean, which some fellow reefers have used with success. We shall see. The product boasts strong dose of bacteria that will outcompete for the nitrates and phosphates that allow the Dino’s to thrive, I think. 

[Nola Bear]

Read up last night on a good r2r thread about using metroplex for Dino’s. If the bioclean doesn’t work, then that will be my next try. But with bioclean only be dosed every 15 days, I have a month and a half to do three doses and see if bioclean works. This will be a true testament to my patience. 

 

What I find interesting is that the corals are growing really well with the Dino’s in the tank. 

 

Also looking into getting a different, larger skimmer.  Since I have this tank set up as an aio, then I’d have to do an ext. I have been looking into the reef oct ext version. Not sure which size, but I know I want to do it right the first time type of thing and will oversize, so it is either the 110,150,or200 which range from 250-450. I wonder when the next big sale is. Maybe a new year sale,,,?

 

 

 

[tanacharison]

 

19 minutes ago, Nola Bear said:

Read up last night on a good r2r thread about using metroplex for Dino’s. If the bioclean doesn’t work, then that will be my next try. But with bioclean only be dosed every 15 days, I have a month and a half to do three doses and see if bioclean works. This will be a true testament to my patience. 

 

What I find interesting is that the corals are growing really well with the Dino’s in the tank. 

 

Also looking into getting a different, larger skimmer.  Since I have this tank set up as an aio, then I’d have to do an ext. I have been looking into the reef oct ext version. Not sure which size, but I know I want to do it right the first time type of thing and will oversize, so it is either the 110,150,or200 which range from 250-450. I wonder when the next big sale is. Maybe a new year sale,,,?

 

 

 

Oh no! I hope you can figure it out.

[Nola Bear]

Things appear to be under control. After about 20 days of no WCs, heavy feedings, and two doses of bioclean, Dino’s are no longer visible. 

[Christopher Marks]

On 11/1/2017 at 6:29 AM, Nola Bear said:

Trying to keep track of what I have

 

How are all the frags coming along? Haha I think I saw some new additions after this too! You should keep posting labeled FTS's like this from time to time  

[Nola Bear]

Tank is moving along nicely! Really happy with the growth im getting. Been trading frags recently and so I went in the tank today and fragged up some more to have on the rack! 

 

Trading a nice, chunky Frag for a piece of rr Wolverine, and then traded another in to the lfs for half off a sunburst anthias. 

 

 

 

 

[ninjamyst]

I am battling dino right now and wondering why no water change and feed heavily will remove dino?  I thought that's the opposite...

[Nola Bear]

13 hours ago, ninjamyst said:

I am battling dino right now and wondering why no water change and feed heavily will remove dino?  I thought that's the opposite...

After everything I read, what I was able to boil the info down to is that Dino’s will thrive on the iron, I believe, that is replaced with WCs, so if you stop the WCs then you start to starve them. The heavy feedings then actually target growth of other algae like gha or ba, and they then outcompete the dinos for food source. I also used the bioclean bacteria to also outcompete the weakened dinos   This is how I understood the process, and I was cleared in a month. Now, I’ve also read plenty about the various strains of dinos which must also be taken into consideration, and that some are toxic when dying which can have harmful effects on fish, inverts and corals. I suffered no losses, but at the worst, dinos were attached to my yellow tang’s scalpels at the base of its anal fin. I hope this makes sense

 

if if I can help In any way, let me know. There is a really good thread on r2r, that was going to be my plan b, that really dives into the chemistry of it all. 

[ninjamyst]

13 minutes ago, Nola Bear said:

After everything I read, what I was able to boil the info down to is that Dino’s will thrive on the iron, I believe, that is replaced with WCs, so if you stop the WCs then you start to starve them. The heavy feedings then actually target growth of other algae like gha or ba, and they then outcompete the dinos for food source. I also used the bioclean bacteria to also outcompete the weakened dinos   This is how I understood the process, and I was cleared in a month. Now, I’ve also read plenty about the various strains of dinos which must also be taken into consideration, and that some are toxic when dying which can have harmful effects on fish, inverts and corals. I suffered no losses, but at the worst, dinos were attached to my yellow tang’s scalpels at the base of its anal fin. I hope this makes sense

 

if if I can help In any way, let me know. There is a really good thread on r2r, that was going to be my plan b, that really dives into the chemistry of it all. 

that makes sense and fits what I am seeing.  I am running Aquaforest balling method and one of the component is heavy metals which includes iron.  I will have to stop dosing that component.  I am slowly winning against dino with just lots of manual scrubbing and water changes and getting my chaeto growing again.  Now I am battling some GHA and turf algae.  I do think mine is the toxic kind and it ended up killing most of my fish and everytime I put in snails, about 50% of them will die off in a few days.

[Nola Bear]

36 minutes ago, ninjamyst said:

that makes sense and fits what I am seeing.  I am running Aquaforest balling method and one of the component is heavy metals which includes iron.  I will have to stop dosing that component.  I am slowly winning against dino with just lots of manual scrubbing and water changes and getting my chaeto growing again.  Now I am battling some GHA and turf algae.  I do think mine is the toxic kind and it ended up killing most of my fish and everytime I put in snails, about 50% of them will die off in a few days.

Yeah, that sounds familiar to the things that I’ve read about toxic strains,especially about snails that actively try to consume it. Have you been adding beneficial bacteria too?

 

I’m not sure if I’m allowed to post this here but this is the thread I was talking about for my Plan B, if plan a hadn’t worked. 

 

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/dinoflagellates-dinos-a-possible-cure-follow-along-and-see.253917/page-51