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Just now, gena said:

My pink goniopora is a goner too :unsure:.

I'll try again someday, but i get the feeling they really like an established tank with a pretty decent nutrient load, and far more gentle trip home from the store, as well as no being bulldozed over by snails...   Just bad luck all around for the little guy. 

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Had to do a water change this morning.  Got distracted and left lid off yesterday with no bubbles going for a few hours.  SG had crept up to 1.029 and sps was lightening up with no polyp extension. Which is pretty unusual for it. Other parameters looked ok.   I also turned off the coral light on the container next to it, just incase it was getting way more light than usual and was not acclimating well.  Corals had all apparently gotten quite used to daily 100% WC, and so have remained fairly shut down most of the week.  Couldn't tell if things were all just splitting, or suffering.  Hopefully getting the SG back inline will make everyone happy again. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

January FTS and late weekly report...

 

Not sure what the heck happened, One stressful 4 hour period without flow, aggressive snail, chemical attack from other corals? Who knows but my SPS looks like hell, and I'm not sure if it's going to survive. :unsure: It's almost completely white, but still has all of it's polyps.  I keep seeing my trochus on it. I'm really not sure.   But for whatever reason, moving from a daily 100% WC to 2 a week just kicked the hell out of things.  Alege didn't get any worse, corals just looked unhappy very quickly.  Zoas are doing fine. Monti is the same. GSP is doing good. It's finally encrusting to the rockwork.  Hammer is very subdued since the lack of daily WCs. One head has been recessed for quite a bit, so I'm hoping for a split as opposed to death...  

 

Finally got my algae barn copepods in, and added them today. So we'll see what kind of effect this has on everything.  I added about half a bag, which is a lot, but I think it'll workout ok. I also did a 100% WC right before so that I can maximize the amount of time the pods will have to settle into the rockwork.  Picture is spotty since I just fed some reef chili. I find that things do better if I feed a bit upfront, as opposed to a bit before WC.  Which is the opposite of everyone. I get no noticeable parameters changes, and it keeps the water nutrient rich for the corals. 

 

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Dang, sorry to hear about the downturn. My guess is the cause is the elevated salinity in that one episode. Elevated salinity can really throw things for a loop, and sps is always super sensitive to parameter swings of any kind. You could try moving it to a shadier spot just so it can try to recover.

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3 hours ago, teenyreef said:

Dang, sorry to hear about the downturn. My guess is the cause is the elevated salinity in that one episode. Elevated salinity can really throw things for a loop, and sps is always super sensitive to parameter swings of any kind. You could try moving it to a shadier spot just so it can try to recover.

I haven't done my weekly update yet, but i think it's going to pull through. as its started extending its polyps as of today. I'm thinking maybe the copepods have helped. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

quick update. Acro seems to be coming back quite well. Copepods still around and growing. Found some little jellyfish things in the water swimming around while hunting pods.:blink: Looked them up and forgot the name already.  :blush: Reviews on their good/bad nature were mixed.

 

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3 hours ago, jahnje said:

quick update. Acro seems to be coming back quite well. Copepods still around and growing. Found some little jellyfish things in the water swimming around while hunting pods.:blink: Looked them up and forgot the name already.  :blush: Reviews on their good/bad nature were mixed.

 

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The common name is hydroids, they have several life stages. The one that looks like a jellyfish is the medusa life stage. There are hundreds of types of hydroids. In a mixed reef, they are kept in check by other inhabitants.

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19 hours ago, pj86 said:

The common name is hydroids, they have several life stages. The one that looks like a jellyfish is the medusa life stage. There are hundreds of types of hydroids. In a mixed reef, they are kept in check by other inhabitants.

I guess I'll leave them alone for a while and see what happens.  I'm not sure I have any other critters in here that would eat them.  They seem to have come out of nowhere.  I've never seen them before, but this is the longest i've got without a 100% water change either, about 2 weeks. 

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So here a shot of my acro coming back from the dead... Was completely RTN/bleached?  like you see on the left side. no green whatsoever. This is what it looks like now after the addition of some copepods from Algae Barn two weeks ago.  I'm really no sure that the cause was, but it was quick. I finally did a 100% WC after 2 weeks.  Everything else seems to be doing fine at the moment. 

 

IMG_9920.thumb.jpg.4ee302926ae093ea1b7f7a41def44772.jpg

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20 minutes ago, jahnje said:

So here a shot of my acro coming back from the dead... Was completely RTN/bleached?  like you see on the left side. no green whatsoever. This is what it looks like now after the addition of some copepods from Algae Barn two weeks ago.  I'm really no sure that the cause was, but it was quick. I finally did a 100% WC after 2 weeks.  Everything else seems to be doing fine at the moment. 

 

IMG_9920.thumb.jpg.4ee302926ae093ea1b7f7a41def44772.jpg

Hey, who cares why, its just nice that it is coming back!

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playing with a friends macro lens today. Nothing too exciting, mostly just learning. 

 

fingers over the white lights.

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and with full lights...

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Some FTSes for February.  Currently I'm doing a 100% WC every two weeks. Feeding reef chili everyday, as well as KZ nano-power. I'm  syphoning ~60 ml of water and detritus off the bottom using a syringe connected to a pipette. I'm replacing it with ~60 ml of copepod culture which I'm growing next to it. I add  2.5ml of OceanMagik Algae to feed the pods.  And 50 ml or  so of RO/DI to keep the salinity in check as needed.  At this point most of my diatoms, and cyano?  have gone away, and algae growth seems to have transitioned to other varieties. None of which have I really tried to identify since even with the insane amount of food i'm feeding have not really grown quickly.    And I think they keep any trace amounts of nitrates and ammonia in check. 

 

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Happy hammer, has some red algae at it's base that is neat to look at with a flashlight.  GSP in the back has really started to attach to the tiles.

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rescued candycane on bottom left keeps chugging along.  Seems to have reacted to the addition of pods very well, and seems to be sweeping at night. I'm hoping it will overgrow the confines of its original skeleton soon.  SPS in the center just has its own plan.  Has completely re-encrusted over its old base, and part of its stalk.  Pods love to walk around on it, so I can only assume it's eating constantly at this point.  Rescue Monti in the back upper right really hasn't done anything at all.  Though with the addition of pods I think.hope i'm beginning to see the addition of tiny polyps.  

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This is my snail poop sucker. The rigid pipette on the end of the airline makes spot suucking amazingly easy. At the same time it's powerful enough to suck a whole giant algae tuft right off the underside of a frag plug, from above.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

The contest is coming to a close!  March 31st will be the official end of the competition and then the voting will begin.  In order to help the community decide what tanks to vote for, each remaining contestant will need to do the following:

  1. PM me three (3) final photos that you think summarize your container reef.  The composition for two of these is up to you, but one of them should be a final FTS taken sometime during the month of March.
  2. PM me a written summary of your container reef build and experiences throughout the competition.  This should be no more than 250 words.
  3. These items must be private messaged to me by midnight (Pacific Standard Time) on March 31st.
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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 5 months later...

Random update... So a few days after the previous post I woke up to find my acro bleach white, and xenia shrunk. I can only imagine that one for the other corals or something nuked it with a tentacle or something. Completely disheartened I abandoned the entire project  for 4 months.  No water changes, no feeding, no top-off.   Just bubbles,light  and temp...

 

Finally in July, feeling guilty, I decided to do a 100% water change, and inspect the carnage.  The results, for posterity, were the following:

Acro, still dead.

Xenia, Still dead.

Trochus Snail, dead. 😞

Algae, lots. 😐

copepods, Still around. 😊

Hammer, shrunken and unhappy, but alive.😐

Zoas, 1/2 lost out to algae.😐

GSP, Grown and doing well.😌

Montipora, covered in algae and Super Happy, and finally growing... 😆

 

Analysis:

The Algae gave the pods a nice home to live in, and fed the monti and GSP. The hammer with it's larger mouth really wanted larger food, same with the zoas.

 

Current state:

Seeing as the monti now has tentacles and great polyp extension. I decided to concentrate on reviving as much as I could.  This meant clean up as much of the algae as possible, and get some real flow into the system.  That didn't work very well for the 1 gallon container.  Little pico pump I bought just didn't fit anywhere, or blocked too much light.  So I bought a 5 gallon container and a Cobalt 106 GPH powerhead, and an Inkbird heater controller .  I also switched to daily micro feedings of reef chili and amino acids.   This had some problems, in that though the flow was great, the combo of the lights and the powerhead causes the temperature to climb to over 81F during the day.  So I've attached the powerhead to my temperature controller for my QT system which causes it to come on and off sort of randomly throughout the day.  I also added an old HOB filter for a 29 gallon tank on the back to make constant flow throughout the day, and left the bubbles.  Everyone seems to have adapted and appreciated the higher flows in the tank.  I've added  few snail as well.      

 

Future:

I think I'm going to move all of this into a 20 or 29 gallon long in a little time so that I can have a few fish in here. I'm just can't think of any fish that would be happy in a 5 gallon tank. The plan is to connect this system to my 220g system, or at least it's 40G sump, since the 220 is still occupied by koi, and not attached to the sump yet, which is just empty and idle.     

 

FTS from there other day right after move to 5 gallon:

IMG_7570.thumb.JPG.07ee3db1b9e12d40ad3de1d18b07d23a.JPG

 

 

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