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Madcat's Fluval Evo 13.5 - new shrimpy


Madcat

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YOU GUYS. I'm heartbroken. You remember how The Saddest Trumpet was so fat and happy? It was doing so so good. I did some rescaping last night and thought I had finally glued it down to my rock. But a hermie must have knocked it over in the night. It landed on my acan and the acan ATE IT.

 

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What's making me crazy is I got up early to pee and glanced in and saw them and I was like "that's probably not good" and I went back to bed. The next time I looked the flesh was sloughing off the trumpet. The acan looks pretty happy.

 

Why didn't I just stick my hand in and move the trumpet?

 

Hopefully it will recover. It started out as a stumpy little head and a half. Now it's just half a head. I'm really sorry, trumpet. ?

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3 hours ago, Madcat said:

YOU GUYS. I'm heartbroken. You remember how The Saddest Trumpet was so fat and happy? It was doing so so good. I did some rescaping last night and thought I had finally glued it down to my rock. But a hermie must have knocked it over in the night. It landed on my acan and the acan ATE IT.

 

IMG_8462.thumb.JPG.eb00fc57b3791ef70307b8022020446d.JPG

 

What's making me crazy is I got up early to pee and glanced in and saw them and I was like "that's probably not good" and I went back to bed. The next time I looked the flesh was sloughing off the trumpet. The acan looks pretty happy.

 

Why didn't I just stick my hand in and move the trumpet?

 

Hopefully it will recover. It started out as a stumpy little head and a half. Now it's just half a head. I'm really sorry, trumpet. ?

Oh nooooo! Do you have any Lugol's iodine on hand? A dip may help. A cup of tank water, 2-3 drops of Lugol's, 3-5 minutes. It may help. The saddest trumpet is a survivor, I have faith in it! fingerscrossed

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  • 2 months later...

Long time no post!

 

Puzzle and Jeff are doing well. Jeff doesn't eat prepared foods anymore - just algae (I assume) - and he's fat and poops constantly. Still hoping to find an extra-tiny husband for Puzzle, but I'd like to straighten the tank out first. I got a little lax in my maintenance... my mistake was not really changing up my routine even after the macro died (and was no longer there to suck up nutrients). So I have a few infestations I'm battling. Cyano, GHA, aiptasia...

 

I went to the LFS store yesterday to arm myself, and picked up a new friend while I was there. His name is Pepe because I'm unoriginal.

 

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I knew there was a chance he wouldn't touch the aiptasia. I also figured that would be just my luck. But Aiptasia X has become hit-or-miss. I thought I'd give this guy a shot. Imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning and the aiptasia was GONE.

 

Overnight. All of it. One or two tufts left. Pepe is sleeping and will probably get to those later.

 

YOU'RE DOING AMAZING SWEETIE.

 

I also gave the tank a real good scrub and a big WC last night, and added some GFO to my filter. We'll see how the algae battle goes!

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  • Madcat changed the title to Madcat's Fluval Evo 13.5 - new shrimpy

Haha, I've been too embarrassed to take a FTS for awhile... But here, this was post-scrub and WC (so the corals were still a bit peeved):

 

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I just want my tank to look crisp and colourful and NICE, like everyone else's. :( (I know part of that is lighting. But a better light won't help me right now if it's just gonna highlight all the grossness, lol.)

 

ps. Saddest Trumpet made a real comeback!

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14 hours ago, Madcat said:

Haha, I've been too embarrassed to take a FTS for awhile... But here, this was post-scrub and WC (so the corals were still a bit peeved):

 

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I just want my tank to look crisp and colourful and NICE, like everyone else's. :( (I know part of that is lighting. But a better light won't help me right now if it's just gonna highlight all the grossness, lol.)

 

ps. Saddest Trumpet made a real comeback!

Don’t worry if your tank doesn’t look as nice as you like, this hobby has lots of highs and lows. Plus your tank is still maturing too, my tank is about a year old now and still looks terrible :lol:

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4 minutes ago, jesseatam said:

Don’t worry if your tank doesn’t look as nice as you like, this hobby has lots of highs and lows. Plus your tank is still maturing too, my tank is about a year old now and still looks terrible :lol:

I second this comment. My tank is just shy of year old and I am currently dealing with the worst cyano outbreak I've had to date. I've been trying different "fixes" and a lot them just seem to throw things out of whack. I've finally decided to just stick to a thorough and routine maintenance practice/schedule, and just be patient. Just stick to it and keep up with your routine. 

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Peppermint shrimp are amazing. I had tiny aiptasia in a couple spots that were bugging me. They were embedded inside my zoa frags so they were hard to get to.

 

I added one peppermint shrimp and my aiptasia problems vanished overnight lol.

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I've just read this thread from start to finish. I enjoyed the journey. I hope you start posting more often. I like the energy of the past posts. Also, Jeff is hilarious. Love him.

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On 2/8/2018 at 11:25 PM, Cintax said:

I've just read this thread from start to finish. I enjoyed the journey. I hope you start posting more often. I like the energy of the past posts. Also, Jeff is hilarious. Love him.

lol! I love him too, even when he's being The Worst Fish Ever(TM). I should really try posting more often again.

 

Things I've done:

-Another water change

-Removed some more sand

-Added GFO to my media basket

-Used UltraLife Red Slime Remover Nano

-Bought 3% hydrogen peroxide so I can tackle the GHA

 

My poor ric mushroom is PISSED. Not sure if it's the GFO or the Slime Remover or both. BUT... my tank is looking the littlest bit happier. There's still some cyano on the sand but it's not exploding out of control like it was before. Pepe has killed ALL the aiptasia, including a big one on the side of my powerhead that ate Aiptasia X for breakfast. The main damage control left to do is keeping my corals happy. I haven't been feeding them because I don't want any more nutrient issues till everything is less out of whack. There's a little cyano on my acans (which live on the sandbed) that I keep trying, gently, to scrub away. My poor clove polyps haven't opened up in a couple days - I don't know if they're being bothered by algae or if they're mad for the same reasons the ric is. Worst off is my beautiful purple gorg. It was so lovely - now it's being strangled by algae! It gets these weird pink things on it. I keep trying to clean it off with a toothbrush but you can see the damage. (Ignore all the other ugliness...)

 

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I've had to call time of death on two "arms". Not sure if I'm supposed to clip them off or something.

 

I've just about talked myself into coughing up the dough for a Sicce 1.0. They seem to come quite highly recommended - and I'm sure I need something that's going to produce actual flow in my tank! Also, the trickling noise my current pump makes when it sucks the water level in the back chambers down has been banned by the Geneva Convention as a form of torture. It makes me want to punch through the glass. I ran out of distilled water to top it off once and didn't think I was gonna make it. Anyway - Sicce 1.0 - good choice?

 

Pics! Here's the sad ric - it only just started to split, too. It has three whole mouths. Or had, before it shriveled up like a raisin.

 

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The Saddest Trumpet really made a comeback!

 

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Puzzle says hi!

 

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And of course, the mysterious Jeff in its natural, scuzzy environment.

 

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ETA: He's in good body condition considering he mostly feeds himself!

 

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I use a turkey baster to blow the algae and other nonsense off my gorgonians. They really need to be in a high flow area so it doesn't accumulate on them in the first place. You can try blasting the cyno off and vacuuming it up with a syphon. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Good news: The cyano is gone!

 

Bad news: Pepe is EATING MY CORALS!

 

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I got home from work yesterday and the Ugly Acan was a skeleton. What the crap?! Tonight I can see that my trumpet has been gnawed too. I have to assume it's Pepe the shrimp. But I don't have time to get him back to the LFS for a few days... Why is nothing in this hobby straightforward?!? Can't I just have a shrimp who takes care of aiptasia AND is nice to corals?? :(

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  • 2 weeks later...

Update: This tank is kicking my ass, you guys.

 

I was able to return Pepe last week and I picked up 3 trochus snails to try and help with the algae. They have BARELY moved in a week. They sort of change position so I know they're alive, but that's it. I have no idea what the problem is.

 

I bought a Sicce 1.0 and have actual flow in my tank! So that's good. It might be too late for the gorg, but we'll see.

 

The cyano is gone and the aiptasia is gone. However...

 

The GHA is TAKING OVER. I started spot-treating with H2O2 last week. So far there's been pretty much no change. I think, if anything, more algae has grown. I removed my 1lb chunk of rock (which has the biggest infestation) and gave it a good H2O2 treatment during my WC last week, and all the algae on that has turned white which seems promising - but now I swear there's new stuff growing on top of the old!

 

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All my corals are pissed off. Pepe stripped one of the acans to its skeleton. The other still has some flesh but it's very flat-looking. Most of the trumpet is gone. Everyone else just looks generally unhappy. I dunno if it's the GFO that's annoying them, or what (they were unhappy before I added the new pump, so it's not that).

 

Anyway. Yeah. :( If I was made of money, I'd just buy a new tank and move Jeff and Puzzle and the hermies over. This tank is really stumping me.

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GregEmmitte

Try adding some macro algae to help absorb nutrients.

on my 5 gallon I also incorporate Denitrite and Phosgaurd both made by seachem.

 

Also on my 60 gallon I had a nasty outbreak of white slime bacteria and cyno. This is a full typical saltwater set up with sump and refugium but, due to over feeding I have higher nutrients. 

I used Dr Tim’s waste away in conjunction with removing cyno with a turkey baster and it solved both my cyno problem and white slime issues.

 

Might help you as well.

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This is just my own personal experience so don't take it as gospel. I've had good success using Vibrant, a small chaeto fuge, and a strict maintenance regimen to eliminate a GHA issue. I started dosing 1 ml a week immediately after my weekly water change about 2-months ago. It took a few weeks but it worked to eliminate the GHA. I did experience a large cyano outbreak on the sand bed at the tail end of the GHA die off. I've seen some folks speculate that this is due to the increased nutrients from the dying GHA. The cyano outbreak was also aided by the imbalance in nutrient consumption because of the elimination of the GHA as top consumer.  Several more weeks of Vibrant doses and thorough sand bed vacuuming during water changes cleared up the cyano. Again this is just my personal experience, but Vibrant and adhering to a strict maintenance regimen worked for me. 

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Hmm, I'm not sure my LFS carries Vibrant but I can take a look. I'll maybe look for some new macro too. I did really like my macro, even though it was crawling with pods and ended up going sexual and making a big mess. My tank was so nice and clean and happy while it was in there.

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  • 3 months later...

At last I have an update for you guys. The tank has been continuing to kick my ass despite my efforts to get the algae under control. Black-out, minimal feeding, adding a macro (more caulerpa was my only option aside from chaeto, and I pulled it last week when it showed signs of going sexual), spot-treating with H2O2, and treating the tank with Fluconazole all failed to work. And - while I wasn't doing water changes during the Fluco treatment - the cyano returned.

 

It was several hours of work, but today I removed the sand bed, took out as much hair algae from the rocks as I could by hand, dipped the rocks in H2O2 for a few minutes, rinsed them in old tank water, and replaced them. I cleaned the walls and back chambers while I was at it.

 

I am very un-proud of my "before" picture. I didn't really want to post it, but (if this works) maybe it will at least give some other struggling newbie hope for the future.

 

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Jeff was a dick and refused to come out of the rock so I could clean it - I had to use a screwdriver to chisel the opening where he was sitting a little wider and it was a huge relief when I got him out without hurting him. Puzzle swam right into the net for both removal and replacement (they and the hermies hung out in a bucket with an air pump and heater while I worked) and now he's having fun chasing the bubbles coming off the rocks because he is Best Puppy. I thought I would try going bare bottom, because I was just so sick of pulling out handfuls of cyano-infested sand every week, but I don't know that I love the look of it. I have two bags of new live sand set aside - I may add them yet. Puzzle will be easy to put aside during sand implementation, but if Jeff wants to be a dick again he may just have to deal with sand cloudiness while it settles. 😕 

 

Anyway. Fingers crossed that this, and regular maintenance, kill the algae for good. I'm sad about the corals I've lost. But I hope this can be a fresh start.

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