Lula Mae's "Make a Wish" IM 14 peninsula--tank came down today. RIP

[Lula_Mae]

On 7/22/2018 at 8:15 AM, seabass said:

To me, that means that the dinos are dispersed in the water column instead of being clustered on the surfaces (possibly an ideal time to move them).  I might try pouring clean saltwater over the corals you wish to transfer (versus dipping them in saltwater).  That way, you are flushing them with clean water which contains no dinos.  This is, of course, just my opinion and a lot of speculation, so take this advise with a grain of "salt".

Thanks for that suggestion.  I haven't actually done anything with the tank due to working a good bit of overtime, I've cleaned up 'mats' a couple of times of what could be dinos but it was on the stuff on the tank floor mostly,not on the rock structure.  Tank is sort of just hanging out for now till I get energy and motivation to do something with it.  Soon, I hope.

[SeaFurn]

Bummer you’re having such trouble with cyano. I’m really surprised that water changes would make it worse. 🤔

Hopefully the chemiclean makes a dent in the problem (sounds like it will) and you can figure out the cause. 

[seabass]

8 minutes ago, SeaFurn said:

I’m really surprised that water changes would make it worse.

We often see this with dinos (not to say this isn't cyano).  IDK, I suppose that it could be a bacterial imbalance.  You might try dosing Microbacter7.

[Lula_Mae]

1 hour ago, SeaFurn said:

Bummer you’re having such trouble with cyano. I’m really surprised that water changes would make it worse. 🤔

Hopefully the chemiclean makes a dent in the problem (sounds like it will) and you can figure out the cause. 

Yeah, I was surprised too but do recall reading on here that someone else had that experience too. 

1 hour ago, seabass said:

We often see this with dinos (not to say this isn't cyano).  IDK, I suppose that it could be a bacterial imbalance.  You might try dosing Microbacter7.

It's definitely not like the dinos in the jar. It's deep red and likes to mat, and the only bubbles come from the pump sucking in air and shooting out micro bubbles. I did try adding Microbacter7 as well, and maybe Biospira too (can't remember). Not consistently, but every couple days when I'd think about it. 

 

I checked on the dendro while ago and it looks pretty well gone.  It's moved, though, so at least the worm seems ok. Maybe it'll stage an amazing comeback like @fishfreak0114's does, but I don't hold out much hope.  I guess in the scheme of things, one loss isn't too bad, but did it have to be one of my favorite things in the tank?  I am super bummed right now. 

[Lula_Mae]

 

Pic from before treatment, moonlights on and light from the lamp on my desk illuminating.  The upper right is the macroalgae which floats when the microbubbles get into it. Gets enough cyano on it that I considered taking it out. 

 

 

Dendro last night, it looks worse now. 

[fishfreak0114]

Don’t give up on that dendro!  Mine has looked worse I think. It’s actually in a downhill bout right now and it might not come back this time. You can still do iodine dips, but put it in a Tupperware upside down and put just enough water that it doesn’t cover the whole thing so that the worm is safe. And try your best to let frozen food rest on it. I don’t know if it actually does anything, but it seemed to help mine in the past. 

[Lula_Mae]

On 8/26/2018 at 10:15 PM, fishfreak0114 said:

Don’t give up on that dendro!  Mine has looked worse I think. It’s actually in a downhill bout right now and it might not come back this time. You can still do iodine dips, but put it in a Tupperware upside down and put just enough water that it doesn’t cover the whole thing so that the worm is safe. And try your best to let frozen food rest on it. I don’t know if it actually does anything, but it seemed to help mine in the past. 

You know what? I looked in the tank last week after working a bunch of shifts close together (and mostly ignoring the tank lol), and THERE IS FLESH ON IT!!! Yayyyy!!!!

 

I have a bigger problem right now though. This rude girl Florence has come to town and is totally cramping my style! Seriously, though, hurricane Florence is trudging her way through the Carolinas causing loads of trouble. We're expected to get tons of rain (which just started in the last hour), some wind, possible flooding, and so on. My state does not have a good history with F-named hurricanes--Fran and Floyd did a lot of damage years ago. Those F-ing hurricanes! 

 

Living out in the countryside, I'm really concerned about the possibility of an extended power outage. I made the decision last night to move all the corals I could into the big tank because I only have one battery-powered air pump--and I'm scheduled to work this weekend, so I'll be heading in to sleep in a spare room at work because making the drive in this weather would not be safe. All I have left is the zoas from the old jar which I will rinse in fresh saltwater as previously suggested and hope for the best. 

 

Pics if I get to upload them tonight!

[seabass]

Wishing you the best of luck!

[teenyreef]

Good luck! After going into full blown panic mode earlier this week, we missed the worst of it. In fact it looks like she's going to completely circle around my part of southeast Virginia.

[Lula_Mae]

Thanks guys!  Yeah, I'm glad she's giving you guys a wide berth, Teeny, I expect southeast VA would face some of the same issues of eastern NC!  I've seen some pics and video and man, eastern NC is absolutely devastated.  The flooding is incredible.  I'm attending a school in the region online and classes have been postponed for a while till they can assess the damage and figure out what's what. 

 

I took this pic at dawn yesterday morning, showing the clouds as the storm slowly makes its way inland.  We didn't see rain till after 4 pm though.

 

And took this video yesterday afternoon, trying to capture the fast-moving clouds and wind (probably blowing around 20 mph).

 

This pic is from the other day:

 

and when I discovered my dendro alive (cue squealing and happy dance lol):

 

Last night, the tank is now the evacuation center!

 

Dendro doesn't mind new friends:

 

Refugees from the desktop pico and the little frag tank. Front left in front of the cabbage leather you can see the new blasto I picked up last week!  It had bits of ORANGE in the outside edge under blues:

 

Back corner with zoas from the former jar (I did rinse them with fresh saltwater first!).  The Hermit is in the tank now too, somewhere.  There was, sadly, no sign of the pom pom crab.

 

 

And lastly, a real treat from the mystery man himself!  The other night Merlin decided to not be shy and hammed it up for the camera, so I got a video!!!

 

Leaving in a bit for work for the weekend, going to leave hubby with instructions.  Got Violet a go bag packed just in case but hopefully it will be fine and there will be no need to leave.

[seabass]

The evacuation tank (Superdome) is quite full.  Glad your dendro is doing good.  Hope you don't lose power or have to leave.  Best of luck to you, your family, and your Superdome.

[teenyreef]

Wow, that's great news about the walking dendro! Good luck with the coral refugee camp 

[Pjanssen]

All looks great. Hope you are weathering the storm fairly. Happy about your walking send to, sadly mine didn’t make it. But I think the little worm is still alive though cuz the skeleton still walks

[Christopher Marks]

Wishing all the best @Lula_Mae!

 

In better news it looks like you knocked out the cyano algae entirely! Hopefully the power stays on for more smooth sailing!

[Lula_Mae]

15 hours ago, seabass said:

The evacuation tank (Superdome) is quite full.  Glad your dendro is doing good.  Hope you don't lose power or have to leave.  Best of luck to you, your family, and your Superdome.

 Yeah there isn't much space left on the sandbed! Last I spoke to my husband (around 7), we still had power and internet so hopefully it stays on. My parents lost power for a few hours but got it back. 

 

12 hours ago, teenyreef said:

Wow, that's great news about the walking dendro! Good luck with the coral refugee camp 

Haha thanks! And yeah, I was really excited about it lol. 

 

11 hours ago, Pjanssen said:

All looks great. Hope you are weathering the storm fairly. Happy about your walking send to, sadly mine didn’t make it. But I think the little worm is still alive though cuz the skeleton still walks

Thanks, so far, so good.  I'm at work right now and left my husband with instructions to drop a pouch of chemi-pure in the tank if the power went out. Hopefully he remembered to put the airline for the pump in before he went to bed lol. 

 

10 hours ago, Christopher Marks said:

Wishing all the best @Lula_Mae!

 

In better news it looks like you knocked out the cyano algae entirely! Hopefully the power stays on for more smooth sailing!

Thanks! I hope so lol, and hope I didn't introduce any dinos from the jar residents.  I'm starting to get hair algae on some of the macro so hopefully that means things are in a little better balance. 

[Lula_Mae]

Lula Mae reporting live from North Carolina here.  Happy to say that we have made it through the storm unscathed.  The creek a few hundred feet from our house overflowed and covered the road but it's downhill and posed no danger to us. My husband said we never even lost power or internet. Some family did but finally got it back. Lots of low spots still have water and the local rivers are up but we are fine and I am so incredibly grateful because I know it could have been so much worse. 

 

Watching footage of eastern NC, seeing how Wilmington is totally cut off by floodwaters, watching the utter devastation and loss of life... multiple spills of sewage or toxic materials into the waterway and the environmental impacts that may have...this is worse than the damage done by Floyd in '99, and that took years to recover from. 

 

I think the worst, for me, is the three babies who lost their lives. A mom and 8 month old baby when a tree crushed their house in Wilmington, a 3 month old when a tree fell on his house (his mother was holding him) and a year - old baby swept from his mother's arms by floodwaters. Florence's youngest victims. 

 

Atrium Health in Charlotte has deployed a mobile hospital to Pender County area whose tiny hospital (25 beds) had to be evacuated due to flooding. They're setting up where they will be the only hospital for a 50- mile radius (eastern NC is incredibly rural!) to provide desperately needed healthcare. It's the largest operation they've done since Katrina. The Cajun Navy rescued something like 143 animals from the Carteret County animal shelter. A restaurant cooked a meal by cell phone light so people could have a hot meal. As sad as I am about the damage and devastation, stories like this make me happy because it shows that people will still step up to help strangers. I'm incredibly thankful for the people who've come to help my state in this awful time. 

[teenyreef]

I'm glad to hear you're OK and undamaged. My heart goes out to those who are dealing with this, it's really bad.

[Lula_Mae]

1 hour ago, teenyreef said:

I'm glad to hear you're OK and undamaged. My heart goes out to those who are dealing with this, it's really bad.

Yeah, I lived in SC 3 years ago when it flooded (my town got 22" in 24 hours!!!) and this is just as bad if not even worse.

[StinkyBunny]

Glad you made it through unscathed by Flo, we rode out a storm with my buddy's dad in Kure Beach one year. The chief of police told me that they closed the bridge when the winds got to 74mph and we would be cut off from the mainland. I said I have 700hp in the truck and that if they saw me coming, the shit got real on the island and to get out of the way, lol.

 

Now onto the dinos. Dunno how close to the coast you are, but the Stripe leg hermits that are indigenous to the Carolina coast WILL eat dinos. you can find them just about anywhere along the coast up to the mouth of the Chesapeake bay. They range in size from 1/2" to over 2".  We collected about 30 of them and they have decimated the algae in our tanks. M had dinos in hers and they mowed through it like mad.

[Lula_Mae]

On 11/18/2018 at 6:24 AM, StinkyBunny said:

Glad you made it through unscathed by Flo, we rode out a storm with my buddy's dad in Kure Beach one year. The chief of police told me that they closed the bridge when the winds got to 74mph and we would be cut off from the mainland. I said I have 700hp in the truck and that if they saw me coming, the shit got real on the island and to get out of the way, lol.

 

Now onto the dinos. Dunno how close to the coast you are, but the Stripe leg hermits that are indigenous to the Carolina coast WILL eat dinos. you can find them just about anywhere along the coast up to the mouth of the Chesapeake bay. They range in size from 1/2" to over 2".  We collected about 30 of them and they have decimated the algae in our tanks. M had dinos in hers and they mowed through it like mad.

Sorry, I just saw this!  That's crazy, I don't think I'd have the guts to ride out a storm on the coast haha.  Unfortunately I'm a good 4-ish hours from the coast, close-ish to Charlotte.  I do have a teeny little hermit that hitchhiked in on my Reef Cleaners order that I think is a thin stripe hermit?  Think he might do the job?

 

I'm kind of at a crossroads with this tank.  Still have dinos that I need to deal with, and I've got a nasty strain of bubble algae invading as well (I pulled off all the bubbles I could find and literally days later there were more than I started with!).  I've always had a little bubble algae in my tanks but it was easy to keep under control with just twisting off the bubbles when they got big enough, I never had them return so quickly before.  Sometimes it feels like I've had one problem after another with this tank and I'm tired of it.  I don't do anything with it except feed Merlin--almost all the frags are still in the sandbed, I've never even glued anything down!  The neglect over the busy holidays hasn't helped either.  The walking dendro is still there but not very happy right now.  I still think the IM14 is a lovely tank but I guess it's just turning out to be that what I thought I wanted isn't really what I want, if that makes sense.  I can't figure out if it's the AIO part I don't like or if it's just so much bigger than the picos I'm accustomed to that I don't really know what to do with it, or what.  I've considered for months just getting something smaller, slapping an AquaClear on the back, and calling it a day (although I can't make up my mind what I want to do there either lol).  And maybe starting fresh with actual live rock because I've had so many issues with this dry rock that I'm kind of over it. 

 

I dunno.  Just wish I could decide what to do.  Thoughts and suggestions welcome.

[seabass]

Fresh start with new live rock.  Just cure it separately, then frag and transfer the things you wish to keep (dipping and/or rinsing everything first).  You could use the same tank, or pick something more to your liking.  Fighting problems sucks.

[vlangel]

It is discouraging having problem on top of problem.  I feel like dinos are a product of using dry dead rock.  When I worked at the lfs in the late 90s when everyone started with live rock, dinos were not even heard of.  I am guessing that is because of the diversity of micro life in and on the rock.  Of course that opens up the possibilities of getting unwanted hitch hikers.  I have always been able to deal with HHs however.  Dinos on the other hand terrify me, but fortunately I have never had them.  Maybe that is because I have always used live rock.  I don't know though, there is still so much that is a mystery.  I feel for you Lula.

[Lula_Mae]

17 hours ago, seabass said:

Fresh start with new live rock.  Just cure it separately, then frag and transfer the things you wish to keep (dipping and/or rinsing everything first).  You could use the same tank, or pick something more to your liking.  Fighting problems sucks.

I think I'm going to do that.  There's nothing decent available locally (mostly Real Reef type rock) so I'm thinking about ordering from Gulf Live Rock.  Probably going smaller since I think this was just too much tank for me haha.  I think even 10 gallons would feel more manageable and if I got a cube-ish shape like the IM10 it would free up a lot of space, which is at a premium in my little apartment.

8 hours ago, vlangel said:

It is discouraging having problem on top of problem.  I feel like dinos are a product of using dry dead rock.  When I worked at the lfs in the late 90s when everyone started with live rock, dinos were not even heard of.  I am guessing that is because of the diversity of micro life in and on the rock.  Of course that opens up the possibilities of getting unwanted hitch hikers.  I have always been able to deal with HHs however.  Dinos on the other hand terrify me, but fortunately I have never had them.  Maybe that is because I have always used live rock.  I don't know though, there is still so much that is a mystery.  I feel for you Lula.

I agree, most of the tanks I've seen with dinos (and the ones I've had personally) started with dry rock.  I feel like I never had so many problems with my tanks until I tried all dry rock.  Being able to aquascape is cool but I've not been impressed otherwise lol.  I also miss all the neat hitchhikers that used to come in on rock, the time I found a bit of Florida live rock at an LFS, I was so fascinated!  It was really cool stuff.  I am willing to risk yucky hitchhikers for the chance to not deal with dinos again.  Ha!

[emkop]

On 12/28/2018 at 6:50 AM, Lula_Mae said:

I think I'm going to do that.  There's nothing decent available locally (mostly Real Reef type rock) so I'm thinking about ordering from Gulf Live Rock.  Probably going smaller since I think this was just too much tank for me haha.  I think even 10 gallons would feel more manageable and if I got a cube-ish shape like the IM10 it would free up a lot of space, which is at a premium in my little apartment.

I love my IM Nuvo10 my dad and I both have one, mine at home, his at the office. They are super easy to maintain and stock . Although for me going from a 65 gallon reef to a 10 was a big adjustment in stocking selection for both corals and fish. I suspect that will be less of the case for you as you can move the pink streaked wrasse with ease and he should be super happy in the 10. 

[Lula_Mae]

On 12/29/2018 at 5:47 PM, emkop said:

I love my IM Nuvo10 my dad and I both have one, mine at home, his at the office. They are super easy to maintain and stock . Although for me going from a 65 gallon reef to a 10 was a big adjustment in stocking selection for both corals and fish. I suspect that will be less of the case for you as you can move the pink streaked wrasse with ease and he should be super happy in the 10. 

Thanks for the input, I still have not decided what to do haha.  We've been working on cleaning and organizing the house and I think I'll probably be shifting some stuff around so that would give me the chance to do a deep clean on the tank.  Hopefully I get the chance to work on it today and see if I can't get things cleaned up in the meantime.