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Lizzyann's IM 20 Peninsula


lizzyann

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I've checked off three things on my to do list!

 

I treated the pipe organs with hydrogen peroxide to try to kill the sponge - did a low/medium strength dip according to these guidelines I found:

 

Justin Credabel's hydrogen peroxide dipping guidelines
Tolerance
Dip 5 minutes Milliliters of Hydrogen Peroxide 3% to Liters of Seawater Type of Cnidarian
Low 20-40ml
Acropora (tolerance varies widely among species), Montipora, Astreopora, Duncanopsammia, Turbinaria, Galaxia, Cyhpastrea, (*Alveopora)(**Hydnophora) Echinophyllia, Mycedium, Oxypora, Tubastrea,
Low/Med 50-70ml
Pocillopora, Seriatopora, Stylophora, Caulastrea, Clavularia, Pachyclavularia, Sympodium, Cespitularia, Yellow Leathers, Pachyceris, Echinpora, Leptoseris, Pectinia, Psammacora
Medium 80-120ml
Porites, Xenia, Brown Leathers, Pavona, Fungiids, Heliofungia,
Med/High 130-200ml
Goniopora, Favia, Favites, Goniastrea, Platygyra, Leptastrea, Blastomussa, Cynarina, Physogyra, Plerogyra, Symphyllia, Sinularia, Corallimorpharian (Mushroom Anemone)
High 210-350ml
Zoanthids, Palythoa, Scolymia, Acansthstrea, Micromussa, Lobophyllia, Euphyllia, Catalaphyllia, Trachyphyllia,
Coral can be dipped longer in a lower concentrate solution. ? concentrate for up to 20 minutes for deep, persistent algae or bacterial infections, or necrotic areas.

 

I only soaked them for 5 minutes and poked around and scrubbed just a little. A lot of bubbles seemed to form in the sponge, but it really doesn't look like it affected it much after being back in the tank for a few days. Might have to make a separate "help me!" post on this one. 

 

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I also built the pavona mountain for my clam. It kinda looks hideous at the moment 😝. I think overall it went well though, and in a few months (or years 🤦‍♀️) it will look as good as ever.

 

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The main thing is that the clam has more light now! She seems quite pleased. I really don't like the way the tray looks up there, but didn't want to mess with trying to remove the clam. The couple polyps of pink diamond zoas I put beside it slowly melted but I'm gonna try one more time and hopefully they, along with the pavona, will cover the tray nicely.

 

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I also decided on a replacement for the acans and picked out a scoly from Austin Aqua Farms. It seemed like a pretty good price for a bleeding apple, and even has a little maroon in there as well as the red/orange! It's still getting adjusted, but here's a couple quick pics:

 

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I've been dealing with some really excessive algae growth on the glass recently, like I scrape and it's covered again in an hour or two. The water just doesn't seem super clear either, though I've never had crystal clear water in any of my tanks so 🤷‍♀️. I have some stuff to start dosing nitrate coming in the mail (it's still somewhere between 0 and 0.3), but I'm a little hesitant to start if this glass film keeps up. It's also time to change out the chemipure so I probably don't want to do all that at the same time.

 

I'll probably wait a while on fragging the duncan as well. The carnage from cutting up the pavona gave me enough stress for a couple weeks!

 

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Anyone else get so sad about all the little scrap "throwaway" pieces when you're fragging? Makes me want a frag tank even just to keep em going and give them away for free!

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On 1/13/2021 at 2:24 PM, lizzyann said:

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Hah, I actually just posted this photo for someone else but it's on the pervious page. Here ya go! The one at the back of the tank (or on the right in this pic) has higher light for the SPS and such, and the one at the front is a bit dimmer, though it's exaggerated in this photo because I've got the front one in acclimation mode. They are 8-9 inches from the water surface.

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Didn't take the time to actually get any great, in-focus, photos, but just wanted to note that I started dosing nitrate today and just within an hour or two of dosing a little I swear everything got SOO much brighter and puffier

 

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Oh and clam seems to be doing great! With her up on the pedestal I can see all her new growth!

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  • 1 month later...
On 3/3/2021 at 9:52 AM, Christopher Marks said:

This journal needs a bump!

 

How has everything been going with the new nitrate dosing in your reef @lizzyann? Cool to see such a quick response on the first dose. 

Thank you! I've continued to be busy and distracted lately and need the peer pressure to post 😂 but the tank is doing well! The nitrate dosing was going well, I went slow and brought it up to around 2.5 at the highest and that lowered the phosphates as well. Everything seemed to respond nicely, then I went on vacation a couple weeks ago and got a little off track but nothing's too far off and all the corals are doing well enough. 

 

Only issue I've had is the pipe organs. They were slowly disappearing (my best guess is they were being "suffocated" by a gray sponge that started growing in them) and I tried to treat them a couple times in different ways but to no avail. The smaller one pretty much completely bit the dust and the other only has a few polyps left. It's definitely a hard loss because I looked so long for those pieces and they did so well for so long, but I really don't know what else I could have done.

 

On 3/3/2021 at 2:41 PM, DevilDuck said:

+1 This is one of the best journals I've come across! Great pictures and a pleasure to read.

Thanks I really appreciate that 🥰

 

Since it's been so long I guess I should share a few photos just to prove the tank is still kickin 😝

 

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Had to do another trim on the purple monti caps. Oh and 👏three of the fish in one shot!!👏 Yasha ditched her tunnel a week or two ago and has been hanging out. The other two pick on her a bit (especially Junior the jester, while Lily the possum tends to be sweet) but hopefully it's fairly harmless. She has developed a lot of black speckles and markings recently too, though I'm not sure how recent as I rarely see her whole body when she keeps to the tunnels and caves. Doesn't seem like it's unheard of but I couldn't really figure out why or what it might mean. Maybe just old age? Doesn't look like injury or infection or anything.

 

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I just trimmed the Grube's Gorgonian and there's really three pieces there, selling the extras. Also fragged my duncan a while ago so it's a bit smaller now!

 

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Scoly is doing great!

 

I did get a new addition when I started to really give up on the pipe organs 😬. Giving a bowerbanki a second shot! I love them so much and the one I had before really did well for a while before just kinda shrinking away, so hoping maybe having a more mature tank might help. 

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Annnnd the rock flower anemone and pink feather duster were looking extra cute today

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  • 5 weeks later...

I've got sad news to report, my sweet yasha goby seems to have left this mortal world. I feel like you can never be sure but I moved rocks around looking for her and, like I mentioned before, I was already a little worried about her since she had been hanging out in the open so much and had been developing all those black markings. She continued eating well and never seemed like she had any issues, so I'm just going to tell myself she died of old age. She had been with me for about 2 years, which I know isn't that long, but she was wild caught so there's no way to know how old she was. I did read some general fish info online about fish getting discolored markings in their old age so maybe it's actually a possibility. She was also always a little skinny though, so maybe she had some parasites that eventually did her under or just starved herself on her own. Here's a picture of her with the black markings, would love to know if anyone has any ideas about it!

 

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Coincidentally, there have been some captive-bred yasha goby's from Roger Williams University at LiveAquaria recently, which is what I searched for for months before getting ol' yashyash. I was thinking it might be fun to have a pair but for some reason they only have females for sale. It's also been really difficult to find any of the red banded pistol shrimp lately and I'd rather get them at the same time to pair up, but I don't want to miss my chance for the captive-bred gobys. They look super fat and healthy!

 

There's been a couple other bad luck/bad tank keeper happenings lately. My inkbird probe seemed to get way off, and was saying the tank was staying around 78 even though the Apex was showing it dipping down to 74. I should have started troubleshooting immediately, but was busy and kept putting it off and just hoping the apex was wrong. It wasn't and the tank was extra chilly without the inkbird kicking the heater on for a few days! Corals and fish were a little unhappy but I think everything pulled through fine. The combination of low temps and me not spot feeding the tank as much lately led to the tiniest bit of dinos gathering on my gorgonian, but I think they're already diminishing after I've corrected everything. 

 

Then my pump has been a little frustrating lately by very occasionally not coming back on after it is off for feeding or water changes. I always can just clean it and get it going again, but it's a major PITA to pull out and the other night I didn't think about checking after feeding and it was off all night. Again, everything seemed grumpy but fine now. Not sure if I need a new pump, or a better filter system before the pump so less debris is getting to it to clog it up. 

 

Still struggling with keeping up with nitrate dosing. I'm just not going to be able to do manual daily dosing for anything right now so I think if I actually want to keep it up I need to put it on the open dosing pump slot.

 

Anyway, that's it, but here's some pictures of lil Yasha/Yashi/Yoshi/YashYash. RIP pretty lady!

 

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  • 5 weeks later...

Welp. More bad things.

 

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I had a RTN event with some of my SPS 😭.

 

Thankfully I only completely lost the mad raver millepora, and the spathulata, both of which I didn't really love or just weren't in good spots to be their best selves. I was actually able to save most of the blue tort by fragging off the affected areas (obviously missed a bit on that nub above though). Same with the starburst monti and it seems fine now. The spath actually already had some slowly receding tissue over the past few months, which I assumed was just from it being shadowed by the fiji leather for a long time, as well as having some lil worms living in it. I do wonder if that one struggling sort of influenced the mass RTN, combined with fluctuating temps and poorer water quality.

 

I do think it mostly came down to me not paying enough attention to the tank. I haven't been sticking to my feeding routine, haven't been good about weekly water changes, the inkbird has been messing up and I've been procrastinating on doing something about it leading to lots of temperature fluctuations, was having issues with flow through my filter media so took out the chemipure for a bit, and just generally haven't been looking at the tank as much. I've noticed there seems to be a bit of dinos or some other brown stuff accumulating just a little bit here and there as well. When I have done testing nothing has been out of normal (even after removing the chemipure) but obviously some of the corals have a been a little unhappy. Besides the acro RTN, the gorgonian has been closed often and the yellow fiji leather has been super grumpy.

 

I did a water change, fixed the heater issue (apex is now controlling the heater and keeping it solid but I do feel like I need a back up situation), and put new small packs of chemipure in. Everything seems to have stabilized, but the leather and gorg still aren't super happy. The leather actually started to get a little necrotic spot a day after the SPS RTN, but I've kept it blown off and I think it's stopped growing and seems to be healing. Planning to stay on top of things and hoping everything will get back to normal here pretty quickly.

 

So also, before all this, I got a new yasha goby! I didn't want to miss the captive bred stock at LiveAquaria and they've also started stocking coco worms in the diver's den again so I got one of those as well. 

 

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She was great for a couple days, eating everything and seemed to behave pretty normally, but has since disappeared. She was sooo tiny so she could just be in hiding, but I don't have a great feeling about it with everything else that happened after her disappearance. I took some of the rock out to look for her but didn't see anything. Also checked the back chambers but it's hard to see in the bottom because the glass is all covered with spirorbid worms. Also nervous that she could probably fit through my top screen. Then on top of that, the pink and green pinstripe rock flower anemone got mad when I was moving rocks and started traveling, now looking terrible far back in a cave. The pink feather duster also hasn't come back out after moving the rocks. What if I squashed the tube or something right where she was hiding? 😭 Ugh. The coco worm is doing well at least? Haven't gotten any pics of it yet though.

 

And really all the rest of the corals and critters are fine, so I'll just try to be thankful for that and get everything back on track! Here's a few pics of the good:

 

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Still sad the meteor shower is winning against the bizarro though.

 

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Problems or not, the tank looks amazing and your photos are awesome, as usual! It's unfortunate to hear about your losses, but I'm sure that things will come back around into a new kind of balance before too long. 😊

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  • 2 weeks later...

Beautiful tank! Im.sorry to hear about the problems it's been having. I love the rfas. I have a 20 penensula with the same skimmer and media basket but I have that chonk mighty jet pump in mine. I have a question where did you manage to squeeze in that heater I dont see it in the display. Is it in that weird horizontal compartment that these nuvos have at the bottom? I'm sorry if its mentioned in the thread and I just mised it I  usualy run my tanks sans heaters but for some reason this tank runs cooler than my other 20 and my old 10. So now I need to hide the heater.

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On 5/24/2021 at 11:24 PM, LazyFish said:

Beautiful tank! Im.sorry to hear about the problems it's been having. I love the rfas. I have a 20 penensula with the same skimmer and media basket but I have that chonk mighty jet pump in mine. I have a question where did you manage to squeeze in that heater I dont see it in the display. Is it in that weird horizontal compartment that these nuvos have at the bottom? I'm sorry if its mentioned in the thread and I just mised it I  usualy run my tanks sans heaters but for some reason this tank runs cooler than my other 20 and my old 10. So now I need to hide the heater.

Thanks! The heater is slipped in beside/behind the return pump in the last chamber. It's vertical, the sicce pump I've got leaves just enough room for the thin cobalt neotherm to slide in also. I have to take it out to get the pump out, but can't really complain about that!

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Thanks for the reply. I dont think it will fit behind the mighty jet that thing is prety crammed in there. Also evaporation causes the level to fluctuate too much in that chamber I would need to hook up my ato again and that thing beeps too much. Usualy chooses to do so at 2 am while I'm trying to sleep. I may look at a new ato that I can silence and see if theres another heater I can squeeze in.

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That's a good plan. I feel you! I eventually got a used APEX from someone near me and that's one of the big ways it comes in handy, turning off the ATO when it starts beeping at me in the middle of the night without having to get out of bed 😝

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  • 4 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...
On 10/18/2021 at 12:17 PM, ererer said:

@lizzyann, how's the tank and all the inhabitants?

Thanks for asking! Everything is.... ok. I've only gotten busier and busier in the last few months as I've been planning my wedding, but we just got 'er done a couple weeks ago and I'm finally starting to come back to normal life! I knew it would be stressful but never realized having (and fully planning) a wedding would be SO time consuming. A rare outside-of-reef-tank-life photo to prove I'm not just making this up (but no faces😜):

 

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The tank continued to have a lot of ups and downs. After that acro RTN in May I got things on track for a short while and got overly excited, had empty space, and bought an ORA stellar stylo. I also fragged the pink birdsnest to make room for other things. The dinos continued to get worse though and I finally did a serious treatment for them (a couple days of lights out and UV, followed by repopulating pods, phyto, bacteria, and clean up crew) in September and that knocked them out pretty well. In my haste I forgot to reduce the alk and calcium dosing during that blackout and they shot up, putting my acros through a bunch more stress. I lost another piece of the tort, and most of the flaming unicorn acro. I've likely lost my grube's gorgonian as well, I think from being swamped by dinos before the treatment. Things were looking up after the treatment and I was starting to get things back into shape a little bit but then I was out of town for almost 2 weeks during the wedding and honeymoon and things got a bit hairy again. 

 

I think parameters are mostly back on track now but still having issues with lots of nuisance algae and a little dinos. Same ol' issues for my tank. Still wish someone could tell me exactly how these two things, that people say are caused by the exact opposite situations (an excess and a lack of nutrients), are happening at the same time. I haven't started dosing nitrate again but I think that will be my next step, especially if I can clear out some of the algae first.

 

Another huge bummer was officially losing the new yasha. I actually found her in the back chambers months later, was ecstatic, and went to work getting her out. It's soooo difficult and I was (very carefully) trying everything. It was a stressful ordeal but I eventually got her. I put her in the display and something is obviously wrong. I can't see anything specific but she's pretty lifeless. She was still alive so I gave her some time in the hopes she was just stressed but she didn't make it. I was pretty upset at the fact that I might have done something to kill her in trying to catch her in those tight back chambers 😭.

 

Lily (the yellow banded possum wrasse), Junior (the captive-bred court jester goby), and Randall (the randall's assessor basslet) are still kickin it though! Monti the conch is well, as is the coco worm, the crocea clam, and my dear Maraschino the pom pom crab. Most of the other corals I haven't mentioned are doing pretty well. A section of the cyphastrea died after the alk flew up during the blackout, but seems to be coming back, and the piece of pipe organ that I had been nursing seems to have finally bit the dust, but that's been expected for a while. It would kinda come back here and there but looks like the sponge was able to take over even more with things getting out of whack most recently. The pavona mountain I built for the clam has filled in well, though I could never get pink diamond zoas to grow around the clam and now there's just a bunch of algae surrounding it. 

 

Anyway, that's the full update. Here's to hoping I can get everything back to normal now that my entire life is getting back to normal, as well as hopefully having time for more photography! I took a few quick shots for yall to prove the tank does still exist 😝!

 

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😬😬🤷‍♀️

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