Innovative Marine 25 Lagoon

[DaveFason]

Sorry to hear. Look into a couple products to compete with the cyano bacteria. In the past I used Brightwell MicroBacter7 and had great results. As well Acropower can help. 

 

-Dave

[Thrassian Atoll]

Thanks.  I am going to test daily and go slow.  I think my biggest miss perception was that the chemipure blue wasn't removing as many nutrients as I though it was.  In the beginning, my nutrient levels were really high and it was taking a ton of water changes to bring it down.  I guess now that it was down pretty well, the chemipure blue kicked it into high gear.  

 

If anybody else else has any insight or wisdom, please let me know.  I think I am on the right path for recovery but any advice is welcomed for sure.

[Thrassian Atoll]

49 minutes ago, DaveFason said:

Sorry to hear. Look into a couple products to compete with the cyano bacteria. In the past I used Brightwell MicroBacter7 and had great results. As well Acropower can help. 

 

-Dave

The cyano is completely gone.  That's how I know I stripped the tank can completely.  I am dosing 2ml of acropower right now twice a week.  I know that can raise nutrient levels.

[Thrassian Atoll]

Lost the large frag/mini colony of Circus Show from pacific east aquaculture.  He's the first one I have lost.  Everything else still looks pretty bad.  Not a ton of rtn but a few burnt tips still and terrible color.  Decent polyp extension on some of my Acros.  My clam is closed though and my candy cane hasn't even tried to open at all.   Going to do a water change soon, even though I am trying to bring up my nutrient levels.  

[gogeta]

Dude! That sucks! Just be careful about now trying to re-add nutrients too quickly. It's easy to make a mistake and then go crazy trying to fix it and cause more problems. Just add your dosing slowly and bring it back. Access the RTN in a majority of cases you will need to frag them further for survival. 

[Thrassian Atoll]

46 minutes ago, gogeta said:

Dude! That sucks! Just be careful about now trying to re-add nutrients too quickly. It's easy to make a mistake and then go crazy trying to fix it and cause more problems. Just add your dosing slowly and bring it back. Access the RTN in a majority of cases you will need to frag them further for survival. 

Thanks.  Yeah, usually if it rtns it's a gonner.  I am going to go slow.  I just hope the nutrients was the issue and it's not something I end up chasing forever.

[gogeta]

Yeah I had an issue a while back where my alk took a swing and affected some sps but just to be sure I did near a week of water changes every day just Incase something got introduced to my system. 

[Thrassian Atoll]

25 minutes ago, gogeta said:

Yeah I had an issue a while back where my alk took a swing and affected some sps but just to be sure I did near a week of water changes every day just Incase something got introduced to my system. 

I want to do a ton of water changes but I don't want to keep decreasing the nutrients.  It's a terrible dilemma.  

[gogeta]

22 minutes ago, TILTON said:

I want to do a ton of water changes but I don't want to keep decreasing the nutrients.  It's a terrible dilemma.  

Oh ofcourse haha! Didn't think of that. Fortunately for me when I did it my nutrients were a little higher than I would want so it worked well.

 

i think to help with increasing nutrients but not over doing it while increasing dosing and feeding do it but spread it out more than normal so the system doesn't get overwhelmed trying to break down large amounts in one hit

[Thrassian Atoll]

1 hour ago, gogeta said:

Oh ofcourse haha! Didn't think of that. Fortunately for me when I did it my nutrients were a little higher than I would want so it worked well.

 

i think to help with increasing nutrients but not over doing it while increasing dosing and feeding do it but spread it out more than normal so the system doesn't get overwhelmed trying to break down large amounts in one hit

 

Yeah.  I could look into the stuff people use to increase po4 and no4.  I don't remember what it is without looking.  

[gogeta]

4 hours ago, TILTON said:

 

Yeah.  I could look into the stuff people use to increase po4 and no4.  I don't remember what it is without looking.  

Coral food, reef foods, ammos is literally the easiest way 

[Reefaddiction]

8 hours ago, TILTON said:

 

Yeah.  I could look into the stuff people use to increase po4 and no4.  I don't remember what it is without looking.  

I’ve heard of people using “stump remover” to increase nitrates. It apparently can slowly and safely raise nitrates without affecting phosphate. I’ve never used it but I’ve heard it works. I personally would rather feed my tank a little heavier but unfortunately that does add phosphates as well. 

[Thrassian Atoll]

I am just going to keep feeding my fish twice a day and use a little reef roids.  My clam is open today and looks great.  My candy cane is puffy up a little bit.  Nothing looks like it has gotten worse.  I am going to test everything today and see where I am sitting.

[Thrassian Atoll]

After taking my chemipure blue offline and reducing my calc and alk dosing, here are my numbers as of tonight.  

 

No3 - 4 ppm

 

Po4 - .02 ppm

 

Alk 7.8 DKH

 

Here are a few photos to show how dull my montis got and how bad the green one is doing.  This is how most of the corals are.  I can tell the one ree monti is already gaining s little color back though which is great.  I am going to let the nutrients raise some more and add 1 bag of chemipure blue, wait a while, test, add another etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Thrassian Atoll]

Lost my badfish acro last night.  A few more frags are doing really bad.  Some of them, like my big grape juice looks completely unfazed.  Alk has been stable right around 7.5.  I have been checking daily.  For some reason I am having to dose less and less though.  I had my dosing stable for a month or 2 with pretty high dosing of 2 part and my numbers were always stable.  I wonder if for some reason it just changed my numbers drastically at one point for whatever reason and raised my alk really high?

 

 For some reason my nutrients have not gone up.  I am feeding daily, switching between frozen and flake.  I am using acro power, 5ml a week.  I am using marine snow and phyto here and there.  The only media I have is 2.5 tbls of carbon.  I did turn my skimmer back on though to keep my ph up but I am running pretty dry.  

 

I havent really seen seen an improvement with colors, but time will tell I guess.  I also have kept my light turned down some.   

[xiaoxiy]

No stray wires in the tank right?

 

Also how much are you feeding?

[Thrassian Atoll]

2 minutes ago, xiaoxiy said:

No stray wires in the tank right?

 

Also how much are you feeding?

 

Everything is working fine that I can tell.  I can check for stray voltage when I get home.  Not really sure how though.  I have a voltmeter but don't ever use it.  I am not very electrical savvy.  

 

I feel like I am feeding quite a bit.  I have 3 fish.  They don't eat everything, but it doesn't settle once the pumps turn back out.  What's left gets caught in the filterfloss.  I change that at least once a week.  

 

I am guessing the nutrients will go up starting soon I hope.  I am only having to clean my glass like once a week right now.  I really just want my phosphates around .005-.006 and nitrates around 7-8ish and keep it in that area and see how things do.

[xiaoxiy]

5 minutes ago, TILTON said:

 

Everything is working fine that I can tell.  I can check for stray voltage when I get home.  Not really sure how though.  I have a voltmeter but don't ever use it.  I am not very electrical savvy.  

 

I feel like I am feeding quite a bit.  I have 3 fish.  They don't eat everything, but it doesn't settle once the pumps turn back out.  What's left gets caught in the filterfloss.  I change that at least once a week.  

 

I am guessing the nutrients will go up starting soon I hope.  I am only having to clean my glass like once a week right now.  I really just want my phosphates around .005-.006 and nitrates around 7-8ish and keep it in that area and see how things do.

STN crashes are always tough, especially since it can be hard to pin down the culprit. I also feel that damage from nutrient deprivation can persist for a while, even after the issue is fixed. When I starved out my tank, I had frags that kept dying weeks after I fixed the issue. Then one day, everything started growing again.

[Thrassian Atoll]

2 hours ago, xiaoxiy said:

STN crashes are always tough, especially since it can be hard to pin down the culprit. I also feel that damage from nutrient deprivation can persist for a while, even after the issue is fixed. When I starved out my tank, I had frags that kept dying weeks after I fixed the issue. Then one day, everything started growing again.

It's good to hear that you figured out what it was.  I have some new frags coming this week, which is probably dumb on my part.  I couldn't pass up the deals though.  It might be good in the sense though that if everything is good and stable in my tank again, that these should do well and will help me know whether everything is stable or not.

[Thrassian Atoll]

I have lost some more stuff over the course of the past couple of weeks.  Pretty much all of my high end frags.  My parameters seemed to be in check.  I have raised nitrates and phosphates back up.  I get a dusting on my glass every few days now.  Unfortunately cyano is starting to come back too.  Alkalinity has been stable for a while in the low 7s.  

 

I am starting to see some polyp extension on some stuff.  I also added a couple of frags, couldn't pass up the deal, to see if my water is stable.  Some of the stuff like the largest monti and largest acro colony I have were completely unfazed.  Kind of weird.  I wonder if everything was colony size if I would have even noticed the alk spike/low nutrients?  I still think a couple more things will die that have stn but I am pretty sure the tank is back on the right track.  I am guessing it's going to take months for the survivors to color back up again.  

 

You live and learn in this hobby.  I am going to take it easy for a while on purchasing new stuff until everything else starts doing well again.  Also going to purchase another fish soon.  Think I am going to get s blackcap basslet if I can find one.  

 

My nanobox hybrid should be here soon.  I can't wait.

[Christopher Marks]

How's your nano reef progressing in the new year @TILTON, have you been able to find some stability and fight off the cyano return?

 

How about that NanoBox Hybrid?!

[Thrassian Atoll]

On 1/11/2018 at 4:50 PM, Christopher Marks said:

How's your nano reef progressing in the new year @TILTON, have you been able to find some stability and fight off the cyano return?

 

How about that NanoBox Hybrid?!

Hey!  Thanks for asking.  I found stability but my sps kept deteriating to pretty much losing everything.  I am not sure what the deal is.  I got a black cap basslet recently.  He’s doing well.  So 4 fish total now.  

 

The hybrid is prett nice.  My buddy is suppose to come over tomorrow with a par meter so I can get it dialed in.  

 

I have have an sps order from Vivid that I will have him send once I know things are better.  I also have 8 colonies in my buddies tank that we split the purchase.  He’s going to chop those in half once it’s good too.  So I pretty much have nothing right now, but once the I know the tank is back to normal, I’ll have a bunch of sps waiting.  

 

What’s crazy is my 5 gallon is doing amazing.  Granted no sps, but LPS and softies are exploding.  I have barely any money into that tank and just do water changes pretty much.  

This tank I put so much money into it and have a billion things going and it’s the one to basically crash coral wise.  I guess keeping it simple is better.  ?‍♂️ 

 

So we shall see how the tank does this month and hopefully I can start filling it with corals again.  Been a roller coaster for sure.  

[gone_PHiSHin]

man i am sorry to hear of the troubles.  we've all been there.  

 

i guess just a few words of encouragement:  this is one of my favorite tanks going, LOVE the dimensions of the 25 lagoon, with all the best equipment, great aquascape, and a wonderful light.  we all know how bad it sucks to lose expensive corals right before your eyes and feel helpless, but be optimistic and try to take away a learning experience from it.  i think you know what started the instability (it all began with the 4 packs of chemipure), so all you can do now is learn from that and move on.  i would hate to see this tank given up on!  take things REALLY slow, don't overreact, and keep it stable! look forward to the fact that you have a cool buddy willing to get some corals back in there when it's ready. 

 

cheers man, looking forward to seeing that new light over your new corals when the time comes.

[Thrassian Atoll]

10 hours ago, gone_PHiSHin said:

man i am sorry to hear of the troubles.  we've all been there.  

 

i guess just a few words of encouragement:  this is one of my favorite tanks going, LOVE the dimensions of the 25 lagoon, with all the best equipment, great aquascape, and a wonderful light.  we all know how bad it sucks to lose expensive corals right before your eyes and feel helpless, but be optimistic and try to take away a learning experience from it.  i think you know what started the instability (it all began with the 4 packs of chemipure), so all you can do now is learn from that and move on.  i would hate to see this tank given up on!  take things REALLY slow, don't overreact, and keep it stable! look forward to the fact that you have a cool buddy willing to get some corals back in there when it's ready. 

 

cheers man, looking forward to seeing that new light over your new corals when the time comes.

Thanks!  Appreciate the kind words! Definitely not going to give up on her.  It’s still a young tank too, so that may have helped with the instability.  Think it’s 6 months old to the day almost.  I am going to do a 50% water change tomorrow, test everything really well and go from there.  Seeing some algae on the back panel, so I know there’s some nutrients.  

 

I am going to keep the alk around 7.5ish and get my lights to around 250 par and go from there.  I’ll grab a frag or 2 from a friend in a couple of weeks and see how they do.  

[William]

I had this problem for a while.  My corals ended up doing better when I lowered my lighting levels, stopped using filter media and fed the tank a bit more. I also started dosing iodine, but would would only dose it if you test for it.