Lizzyann's IM 20 Peninsula

[Tigahboy]

Great shots!  

[minimal]

This tank is gorgeous. 

 

Thanks for the response!

[medinar83]

Awesome tank! Love the simple look 

[lizzyann]

So, a real update! It's a long one.

 

First, the dinos. They aren't totally gone and at this point I wouldn't be surprised if me and dinoflagellates are in an ongoing battle till the end of time with the way they've continued to pop back up. They have been mostly diminished again though! I didn't do anything major, just went back to regularly scheduled feedings and maintenance, slurped it up with a turkey baster when I could, and added a little more pods and phyto. There's still been some tiny strands at the tips of my bird's nest and gorgonian, but certainly on the decline and not bothering anyone. I noticed with the resurgence of dinos my pod population was greatly diminished. I still have never seen Lily eat any of the food I put in the tank, only pick at the rock and glass, so I assume she's living on pods (or maybe other tiny things?) and I need to make sure there's always some in there. Here's my princess:

 

 

Now there's a new pest on the block! Hydroids. I haven't figured out exactly what kind they are and they don't seem to be bothering anything terribly yet but I'm still scared! When they first started growing in number I took heart in reading that they would likely die back on their own but the opposite has happened and they're actually covering a LOT of rock.`

 

 

Anyone have an ID? I saw mention of blunt end (aka wedge aka Dolabella auricularia) sea hares eating hydroids so I'll start looking around for that. Physically removing them or taking rock out to treat is probably out of the question. Hopefully they'll just continue to not bother anything, though they may be irritating the leather. It's probably the only coral that even looks slightly unhappy right now (it looks fine, just not as big and fluffy as it used to).

 

This could also be because of other little issues like the dinos or alkalinity changes though. I realized like a month ago that my dosing pump was actually not keeping up with alk consumption at all and it's been dropping. Since I was so busy I didn't have time to follow it well and am only now getting it back on track. It got down to around 6.3 and is almost back to 8.5 today. I have the pump set to add 10ml of solution (BRS pouches) every day, but I'm thinking it's probably not actually getting that much in there because of bad connections. The problem is the soft tubing that fits well on the doser doesn't fit well into the bulkheads on my containers, and the stiff tubing the fits the bulkheads doesn't fit the doser nipples. That said, adding 5-20ml manually raises the alk a lot less than the BRS dosing calculator says it will, so maybe this tank really is just flying through alk solution. Calcium hasn't been consumed nearly as fast.

 

One more negative is that my macro algae hasn't done great. This isn't surprising since my nutrients have been really low, but a couple are doing ok and I'm satisfied with that. I really only wanted a little something that looked nice and helped with diversifying the system and taking care of excess nutrients. I originally bought like 6 different types of macros and the codium and something that was sold as dragon's breathe (but obviously wasn't, and wasn't priced to be) are in good shape! The bush gracilaria or whatever it was with cylindrical banches did somewhat ok but I just didn't love the look of it and it caught a lot of debris. I got a pencil cap that just slowly deteriorated, one of the halimedas died, and the other is hanging on but doesn't look good. I'm hoping with getting nutrients back up maybe it will pull through. I resupplied with some pom pom gracilaria though and it seems to be doing well. It looks similar to the other one I already had sold as dragon's breath so I'm not sure if that one is a halymenia or is it just another gracilaria. I can never get a good picture of it but I do really love this little section in the back of my tank where the algae are doing well and a couple of my mushrooms seem to be thriving.

 

 

Besides some issues here and there, the tank seems to be doing awesome now that I'm back to normal routines. Soooo I decided to buy more things, a cynarina coral and a yasha goby! I had some super frustrating issues with UPS and they ended up taking two days to get to me, but both seemed in good shape. 

 

With all its translucence, the cynarina is impossible to capture in a photo:

 

 

I've only been able to get a couple crappy cell photos of the yasha from when I first put it in because I've barely seen it since:

 

(EDIT: I just noticed you can see the pistol shrimp in this photo!! Behind the algae to the right of the yasha's head. This was literally when the yasha first got into the tank and swam around to the back. I guess the pistol somehow immediately knew it had a friendly visitor and came out to invite the yasha in?! I NEVER see the pistol come out of the rocks, even when putting out food or when a snail or Lily swims by or anything! I'm so amazed by this.)

 

After being in the tank for a minute it darted under the back rock where the pistol shrimp was residing and I didn't see it for 5 days. I started to get nervous so on my next water change I picked up the rock and of course the little scaredy cat was under there and really mad that I uncovered it. It darted around then went back under the rocks. That was almost a week ago and I still haven't seen it again, but I guess I've just got to let it do it's thing. I'm reminded that it took around 4 months for Lily to finally be really comfortable swimming all over the tank and in the open. This is what I get for choosing shy fish! I have seen what is likely burrows the shrimp and fish are working on, and I've been trying to squirt food near them, so maybe one day I'll see that beautiful fish again and get to enjoy the symbiotic relationship that it and the shrimp are currently, hopefully, nurturing behind closed doors.

 

I sold most of my random frags I wanted to unload so one of my next goals is to decide which (if not all) of the acros I want to keep and get them glued down. I think I'm procrastinating on that because part of me still isn't happy with the rockscape in the back of the tank. At one point when I was fooling around with it I balanced the main SPS rock on top of a single rock (instead of bridged over two) which created a really cool overhang that I feel visually balanced the front rock a little better. It wasn't stable at all so if I want to achieve that I'm going to have to clean all my extra pesty dried out rock, hammer stuff apart, and spend a long time pulling rocks in and out of the tank. Not sure if it's worth it. I'm also curious if I should turn the lights up some more on the SPS. It currently fluctuates around here for about 4.5 hours at the highest points: 

 

Then a total light period of like 13 hours with ramp up and down. I feel like that's already a lot? I just want to get more color out of my new/fancy SPS and don't have the experience to know how do that. They also are over to the side right now on the frag rack so I'm sure PAR will be a lot higher in the middle on the rock. The other SPS all look pretty good.

 

 

I tried to do a weird photo-merge to get a larger range of focus on this photo, only kinda worked.

 

So anyway, figuring out what to do with SPS and that whole rock, getting rid of hydroids, coaxing out the yasha, and making sure ALK is stable are all my new goals.

 

Now here's the rest of the photo dump I promised:

 

I feel like the color changes in these guys all the time.

 

 

Anyone know what little eggs these are on the glass?

 

Leptastrea continues to chase back meteor shower cyphastrea, while the meteor shower and bizarro mingle politely. 

 

 

One of my friends said the ricordea looked like Dip-N-Dots. So true!

 

Got the black sun coral glued down and it's doing well! These sun corals are so fun to me.

 

 

Annnd maybe my favorite photo of the bunch, here's Lily playing hide-n-seek:

 

 

[lizzyann]

Crap. The hydroids are spreading and got on my little acan rock. I noticed one of the acans seemed a little unhappy for a couple days and finally noticed some of the hydroids on there, so I'm guessing maybe it's getting stung. 

 

I also noticed a few little baby aiptasia on my SPS rock today. 

 

I've been working on eradicating the vermetid snails but they also seem like they are multiplying like crazy. 

 

Some of this may be remedied by not feeding the tank, but then I'm afraid the dinos will just take hold again. 

 

I don't see any hydroids on my front rock. Would it be worth scrapping the back rocks completely? Replacing them with dry rock maybe? The SPS would at least be easier to re-glue than all the encrusting stuff on the front. 

 

Would getting rid of rock that I see hydroids and stuff on but not replacing the sandbed and/or ALL the rock eradicate most of these pests? Or do I need to start over completely somehow? If I replace 3/4 of my rock with dry rock, will all my inhabitants be able to survive the re-cycle or do I need to set up another tank?

 

I could still just try to kill the aiptasia, continue crushing vermetid snails, and go ahead with trying out a sea hare to eat the hydroids, but I don't know if that's all too risky in that waiting to see if that will work will give things time to start killing coral left and right.

 

I'm kinda freaking out! 😰

[Tamberav]

I had hydroids and a smothered them with super glue and epoxy. That did the trick. Basically so they couldn't even be visible anymore under the layer. I got the idea from when Metrokat had them.

[lizzyann]

Just now, Tamberav said:

I had hydroids and a smothered them with super glue and epoxy. That did the trick. Basically so they couldn't even be visible anymore under the layer. I got the idea from when Metrokat had them.

They are basically covering all three large rocks in the back half of my tank (where the SPS and yellow leather are) so I'm not sure that would be possible. Good idea for the little rock with the acans though, maybe I can prevent them from spreading further there.

[Tamberav]

9 minutes ago, lizzyann said:

They are basically covering all three large rocks in the back half of my tank (where the SPS and yellow leather are) so I'm not sure that would be possible. Good idea for the little rock with the acans though, maybe I can prevent them from spreading further there.

 

I would be tempted to replace the back rocks then. I put a rock of hydroids in a bucket in the basement for a year with no heater (just flow) and no top offs and they never died off, they didn't spread but certainly didn't die. There may be many types of hydroids but in my experience, they are extremely resilient. The completely smothering them was the only thing I found that rid myself of them. Even trying to drill them out of the rock didn't do it if I missed even a small piece. 

[Pjanssen]

On 5/28/2019 at 5:15 PM, lizzyann said:

How do you do this? AWESOMENESS!

[Daniel91]

Best of luck with the hydroids - I wish I could provide guidance.

 

Just wanted to say that I really enjoy your shots - they are amazing.

[Tamberav]

17 minutes ago, Pjanssen said:

How do you do this? AWESOMENESS!

My pixel can do it but I think iPhone can too? Mine just has a motion on off button and I can export it as a gif

[medinar83]

I want to thank you for showing me what hydroids are, I received a coral on a very nice branching rock, little did I know that it was covered in hydroids and had no idea what they were until I saw your post, rock went in the garbage, I hope you get yours under control. 

[Pjanssen]

1 hour ago, Tamberav said:

My pixel can do it but I think iPhone can too? Mine just has a motion on off button and I can export it as a gif

So you export it to a program then embed here?

[lizzyann]

1 hour ago, Pjanssen said:

So you export it to a program then embed here?

Yea I have a Pixel also. Google photo makes little animations, or I am able to make animations manually with a set of photos. Then in the drop down menu for the photo/animation there's an option to "export as gif" and it just saves the animation as a gif file, which can then be embedded into your posts.

[lizzyann]

I don't have much confirmation that it will work to totally eradicate the hydroids, but I went ahead and bought a blunt end/wedge sea hare that will be getting here next week.

[billygoat]

Oh jeez, dinos and now hydroids!? You just can't catch a break! I had some issues with hydroids early on with my tank, but they ended up just crashing out to nothing within a few weeks of their appearance. My understanding is that they either appear and then vanish, or appear and... don't. Forever.

 

Here's hoping yours aren't going to be a permanent feature! 🤞

[ninjamyst]

Best of luck with your fight against dino and hydoids!  Your photos are amazing and make me miss having a decent camera and macro lens 

[lizzyann]

17 hours ago, billygoat said:

Oh jeez, dinos and now hydroids!? You just can't catch a break! I had some issues with hydroids early on with my tank, but they ended up just crashing out to nothing within a few weeks of their appearance. My understanding is that they either appear and then vanish, or appear and... don't. Forever.

 

Here's hoping yours aren't going to be a permanent feature! 🤞

That's what I assumed would happen from reading other people's experiences and since it seems like the system is still getting balanced, which is why I didn't try to do anything about it when they first appeared! 🤦‍♀️

 

 

Since freaking out, I've done more research and come across a few nudibranches that will eat them as well, but none that are imported for the aquarium trade. There are random reports of aiptasia-eating filefish eating them, peppermint shrimp, some hermit crabs, and the occasional emerald crab. There's also people that have successfully treated them with fenbendazol, but it's intense for the system, probably would kill some good guys, and I would have to remove a few of the corals and all the snails to treat, which also would make it possible to bring the hydoids back into the system. Then there's also the option of putting everything in quarantine and starting over, probably with dry rock, but I don't know how successful that would be either. I'm bound to miss some hydroids on corals when putting back into the system, and I'd be concerned about suddenly fully stocking a newly cycled system anyway.

 

The acan that was looking really rough actually seems better today, and nothing else seems too unhappy, so I think I'm just going to keep riding it out for now, and hope the sea hare can help out when it arrives.

[banasophia]

11 hours ago, lizzyann said:

That's what I assumed would happen from reading other people's experiences and since it seems like the system is still getting balanced, which is why I didn't try to do anything about it when they first appeared! 🤦‍♀️

 

 

Since freaking out, I've done more research and come across a few nudibranches that will eat them as well, but none that are imported for the aquarium trade. There are random reports of aiptasia-eating filefish eating them, peppermint shrimp, some hermit crabs, and the occasional emerald crab. There's also people that have successfully treated them with fenbendazol, but it's intense for the system, probably would kill some good guys, and I would have to remove a few of the corals and all the snails to treat, which also would make it possible to bring the hydoids back into the system. Then there's also the option of putting everything in quarantine and starting over, probably with dry rock, but I don't know how successful that would be either. I'm bound to miss some hydroids on corals when putting back into the system, and I'd be concerned about suddenly fully stocking a newly cycled system anyway.

 

The acan that was looking really rough actually seems better today, and nothing else seems too unhappy, so I think I'm just going to keep riding it out for now, and hope the sea hare can help out when it arrives.

Ah man, sorry I’m late to the discussion, but glad to hear you are getting a sea hare.

 

The hydroids in my tank looked the same as yours, and wedge sea hares ate them. They would never get 100% of the hydroids before I would need to rehome the sea hare to avoid starvation, so I would just “rent” a sea hare periodically for hydroid population control. Emerald crabs also ate them to some degree, but not enough to make a dent in the population. 

 

Treatment with medication in my tank was never an option, since the medication that people recommended to treat them would also kill most of my corals... I just made it a point to avoid stocking certain corals that are more sensitive to hydroids (Duncan’s and GSP were sensitive, as I recall.)

 

I would have tried a fish to control them (considered a yellow coris wrasse) but my tank was already heavily stocked with fish. Other reefers had told me they would eventually disappear on their own and they did, at around 10 months in. 😅

 

 

 

[lizzyann]

11 hours ago, banasophia said:

Ah man, sorry I’m late to the discussion, but glad to hear you are getting a sea hare.

 

The hydroids in my tank looked the same as yours, and wedge sea hares ate them. They would never get 100% of the hydroids before I would need to rehome the sea hare to avoid starvation, so I would just “rent” a sea hare periodically for hydroid population control. Emerald crabs also ate them to some degree, but not enough to make a dent in the population. 

 

Treatment with medication in my tank was never an option, since the medication that people recommended to treat them would also kill most of my corals... I just made it a point to avoid stocking certain corals that are more sensitive to hydroids (Duncan’s and GSP were sensitive, as I recall.)

 

I would have tried a fish to control them (considered a yellow coris wrasse) but my tank was already heavily stocked with fish. Other reefers had told me they would eventually disappear on their own and they did, at around 10 months in. 😅

 

 

 

Thank you for all the info! Definitely makes me feel a little better that yours were a very similar type and still disappeared even after being overrun with them! Did you ever try holding back on feeding or anything to try to combat them? I know that could help but I don't want my NPSs to suffer and my nitrates and phosphates are still super low so I don't really want to cut back anymore and get another dino bloom. Even though I'm well over a year into my initial tank, I only transferred everything to the 20 and added new rock and such 5 months ago, so the tank probably is still going through a lot of maturing and adjusting. Gives me hope, thank youuu! 

[banasophia]

3 hours ago, lizzyann said:

Thank you for all the info! Definitely makes me feel a little better that yours were a very similar type and still disappeared even after being overrun with them! Did you ever try holding back on feeding or anything to try to combat them? I know that could help but I don't want my NPSs to suffer and my nitrates and phosphates are still super low so I don't really want to cut back anymore and get another dino bloom. Even though I'm well over a year into my initial tank, I only transferred everything to the 20 and added new rock and such 5 months ago, so the tank probably is still going through a lot of maturing and adjusting. Gives me hope, thank youuu! 

Yeah hopefully just riding it out will work for you too... maybe with the help of some sea hare containment measures. 🤞 I couldn’t reduce my feeding due to my NPS corals and my mandarin... in fact, hydroids really love baby brine shrimp which I feed regularly, so I’m sure that contributed to the problem. Glad it’s behind me!! My Nuvo still has some hydroids, but a different type, and not as widespread... hoping they will magically vanish soon as well. 🤞🤞🤞

[YHSublime]

I've always had hydroids disappear after time and proper husbandry. I have heard of many cases were folks just break down their tanks because they have over run as well. How old is the setup? 

 

[lizzyann]

4 hours ago, YHSublime said:

I've always had hydroids disappear after time and proper husbandry. I have heard of many cases were folks just break down their tanks because they have over run as well. How old is the setup? 

 

I started with a 10 gallon 15 months ago (my first SW tank), but moved everything over to a 20 (adding some new live rock and sand and such) 4 or 5 months ago. The dinos and hydroids and other pests didn't really start until I got the 20 going. I didn't really make note of the first time I saw the hydroids because I figured it wouldn't be a big deal and just go away, but I probably first noticed them a month (or up to three months, I'm bad at time 😬) ago.

[lizzyann]

wtf 😓😥 

 

 

[lizzyann]

Still worried about Lily and not sure what to do, but she looks and is acting about the same, so no worse at least! Someone on R2R mentioned a FW dip to see if flukes come off her. Tempted but a little scared, and I'm sure it would be really hard to catch her. Seems like a lot of work and stress (for both of us) just to check for flukes. I could always try to check out how the yasha is looking while I'm moving rocks around though.

 

Anyway, here's a cute pic of a lil baby blue spotted shroom that has some really cute lil baby colors. 🤷‍♀️