IM 20 Nuvo Fusion (livestock)

[Litt]

Day 5 of cycle:

 

SG:  1.0245

Temp:  77.8

NH3/NH4:  0

NO3: 6

NO2: 0.05

pH: 8

KH:  11dKH, 3.93 Meq/L

 

Ammonia has now dropped to 0.  The alk seems to remain high.  I suspect this is because of the RSCP salt mix that I use....it is known for having high alk.  One of the chemicals RS provides in the cycle kit is to raise the alk to around 8.4.  It seems like I won't ever need this.  Nitrites and nitrates are slowly dropping.  Water remains very clear and no signs of any algae yet, however, the water smells much more like marine water than it did.

 

My ATO pump comes tomorrow.  It will be nice to get that hooked up.  I am surprised how much evaporation happens in 24 hours.  My return pump chamber almost empties in this amount of time.  Quantity wise this is only about half a gallon but still surprised.

 

I swung by the LFS today to see what they had as far as CUC goes.  I am planning to add them in about another week so (assuming numbers remain stable) was trying to plan out what to get and how much.  It seems opinions on size of CUC widely varies.  I am planning to start off small with maybe ~6 snails and a few crabs at first.  I would like to add a shrimp at some point but will wait until I get stabilized with the initial crew.

[Litt]

Almost two weeks now into the cycle.  I can't quite get the water parameters to stabilize.  The nitrates are always very high and ammonia and nitrite don't quite want to drop to 0:

 

SG:  1.026

Temp:  77.6

NH3/NH4:  0.1

NO3: 30

NO2: 0.1

pH: 8.1

KH:  9.5dKH, 3.39 Meq/L

 

The Red Sea cycle kit recommends a skimmer be used.  I wonder if the NoPox dosing is causing the chemistry to be off a bit without the skimmer running.  I have seen some other threads of similar behavior with NoPox.  I may try and run a skimmer for a few days and see if the numbers will drop.  Ammonia has been pretty constant at 0.1 for about 5 days.  I want to add CUC but thinking I should wait until I see that number drop to 0 again.

[mickeyc1195]

i finally got my nuvo 20 back up and running cant wait to start stocking it again... I like the look of the nano box i think i may switch over from the AI prime to the nano box soon

[cobra2326]

Man, I remember how anxious I was to get ammonia to zero. I started with some dry and some fresh live rock in my Fusion 10, but my cycle still took about 5 weeks before ammonia hit zero. I didn’t use any bacterial seeding or anything. It was painful, but it’s a neat process to watch and learn from. After that of course, nitrates were at 50+! Took months of water changes and cleanup to get those down, now they’re zero and I’m feeding the corals to try to get them slightly elevated.

[Jaredgib]

Any updates?

[Litt]

Ok, lots of updates.  It has now been about 7-8 weeks of running.  I have had some ups and down but tank is running smoothly.  Here is what has happened (multiple posts coming):

 

At the two week mark with parameters stable, the reef mature program recommends adding the CuC.  This became the first livestock in the tank.  I picked up 2 emerald crabs and a variety of 5 snails (turbos, astrea, cerith, etc.).  They are camera shy so I don't have pictures of them (actually it is just hard to find them and they are small so the pictures don't turn out great).  

 

The crabs immediately went to work on the rock.  I don't think they had even hit the bottom of the tank before their little claws were out scouring the rocks.  The snails immediately went to work also scrubbing the sand and the glass and the rocks.  I had picked up some food for them as the tank didn't seem to have much algae but it seems they were happy at the moment.

 

I kept dosing NoPox into the tank but couldn't get the nitrates to come down.  The ammonia and nitrates were stable at 0 and 0.02 respectively, but nitrates were all over the place.  Sometimes in the 5-10 range and other times in the 30-50 range.  I did a couple of 2-3 gallon water changes to try and export some of the nitrates.  I went back and read the reef mature kit a bit closer, it strongly recommends that if you are dosing NoPox that you should also be skimming.  At this point my only filtration was still the two filter socks and whatever natural filtration was starting to build up in the rocks and sand.

 

At this point I decided I would pick up a skimmer.  I had researched these a fair amount and seems like they would be a good addition regardless of what was going on in the tank.  If there wasn't much to skim then no harm done but if there is something to skim then this would take care of it:

 

[Litt]

I have read a lot of complaints about the IM ghost skimmer....loud, not much skim-mate, lots of micro bubbles, etc.  My experience is that this is is not loud at all.  I can't even hear it.  It does however, create lots of micro-bubbles.  More on this later.

 

At day 21, the skimmer was not producing any skim-mate, just lots of bubbles but I have read that these take time to break in and honestly there still wasn't a lot of nutrients in the tank to pick up so I wasn't too surprised.  

 

The reef kit suggests to now add first fish.  Back to the LFS.  Keeping with the standard practice, I picked up a pair of very small clown fish (store bred).  Each one was about an inch in length.  I was hesitant to pick up two at the same time but also didn't want to create territorial issues by adding one later.  Being that both were very small, I decided to get the pair.

 

 

[Litt]

Bad bad crabbies (my fault actually).  So not having fed any of my CuC to this point (I figured they were still munching algae although I couldn't visibly see any) as soon as the clown were in after acclimation the one emerald crab literally stood on a rock with his pincers out trying to grab a fish.  When would would get close he would quickly try and snatch it.  It was actually a bit comical to watch.  Realizing I was bad for not feeding more, I dropped a few seaweed pellets into the tank and the crabs immediately grabbed them and started eating.  Lesson learned, you need to feed the CuC if there isn't much going on in the tank.

 

It is a bit of a trick to figure out feeding schedules, how much, and how often.  The clown fish ALWAYS seem like they are starving.  Anytime I get close to the tank they are at the top waiting to be fed.  The snails just seem happy to be cruising around, and the crabs are always scavenging.  I realized though that as long as I was dropping a few seaweed pellets per day, they weren't try to grab the fish and mostly kept to themselves.  They still will climb around the rocks eating stuff at night but they really like to be fed in the day.

 

About two weeks of this went on.  I was feeding daily both the crabs and the fish.  With the fish I was alternating frozen shrimp and pellets one per day.  This is about two weeks after the skimmer also.  It took a fair amount of time to dial the skimmer in.  For the first two weeks it was doing nothing but producing bubbles and no foam was ever being produced.  It was also putting tons and tons of micro-bubbles into the tank which made the water look cloudy.

 

After tinkering with it for 5-6 days I finally got it dialed in.  First, to get rid of the micro-bubbles, I did two things.  The instructions recommend that it is put in the tank a certain way with the input towards the filter socks and the output towards the pump in the center.  Logically it makes sense but in practice makes lot of bubbles on the out-take.  Instead, I turned it around.  This had a dramatic effect on the amount of bubbles being produced into the return chamber and ultimately into the display area.  Second, I added a piece of filter floss between the outtake and the return pump chamber.  With these two changes, it eliminated 95% of the bubbles.

 

At this point also, skim mate was starting to be produced and thick foam was finally starting to form.  I think this is mostly of a function of the tank actually have something to produce as well as the break-in period being over for the skimmer.  Here is what it the catch chamber looks like now after about 3-4 days:

 

[Litt]

Around about the same time (two weeks after fish introduction), brown algae was starting to form on the rocks and glass.  I was doing weekly water changes of about 4 gallons per change and all water parameters were stable and at expected values.  My nitrates had stabilized around 7-8 and were consistently at this value throughout the week.  My filtration at this point was still just filter socks and the skimmer.  The brown algae continued to grow about 5 days and then I come in one morning to a very large green algae bloom.  The water was so green you couldn't see the other side of the tank and all brown spots were now green.

 

Water parameters were still normal at this point and fish seemed totally fine and CuC was eating well all around.  I know algae is part of the process but I think I was likely over-feeding the tank and this contributed to the large bloom.

 

I did a 5 gallon water change at this point and let things take its course for the next few days.  I also reduced the amount of feeding by only feeding the frozen shrimp (which are mostly water) and I stopped feeding the CuC (they had algae everywhere to eat).  I also reduced my light cycle from 12 hours to 8.

 

The green algae however, was not subsiding at all.  There was no visible change to the water clarity nor the glass.  I could run the magnet across the glass and 8 hours later it would be covered again.  Time to be a little more dramatic at this point so I picked up a small 9 watt UV light.  I had heard these were great for green algae.  I dropped this in the back chamber of the tank one evening and came back the next morning to clear water.  In about 10 hours it had reduced the green algae by about 80% and only a thin film was left on the glass.  I left this running for a few more days and the green and brown algae are completely gone.

 

Water parameters stable, fish happy, CuC happy.

[Litt]

Second step to filtration upgrade is now to change out the filter socks.  I bought two media baskets to upgrade this.  In the top row of each basket I now run some filter floss.  The floss has two stages, a very coarse piece and then on the back is a very fine piece.  I picked this up from amazon in a large roll.  Cheap, convenient, can cut it to size, and seems to work very well.  In the second chamber of each side I am not running chemi-pure elite.  The bottom chamber I am now running purigen.  Water clarity has never been better.

 

[Litt]

Water parameters stable and clear water (it has been now about 3-4 weeks since adding fish), it was now time to add my first coral.  Back to the LFS to find something easy to care for.  The LFS recommended a small paly to start off with.  This has been in about two days now.  It loves to catch the shrimp that float around during feeding but my crab has also realized that it can come and steal that shrimp when its around.  I may get rid of this crab at some point in the near future but will wait and see how it plays out.

 

 

 

They are open most of the day except when the crab comes around.  The crab doesn't seem interested in the palys themselves, just if they have any food hanging off them.

[Litt]

New inhabitant yesterday.  A nice Torch coral.  This coral looked relatively small in the LFS but after a few hours in my tank he really extended out and is quite large:

 

 

So far so good on the rest of the tank.  Everything is staying stable and no big issues to speak of.  I am maintaining 4 gallon water changes once per week, filter floss changes twice weekly, empty the skimmer twice weekly, and the purigen and chemi-pure are not ready to change out or clean yet.  My paly has almost doubled in size over the last two weeks.  I have been feeding it mysis shrimp and it just loves it.  The emerald also loves it and likes to go scavenge pieces from the paly right after feeding.