Xanthine's Biocube 16 - the journey continues

[Xanthine]

Tank is continuing to do well with keeping alk stable around 8.3

Small amount of cyano over on the left side of the sand (the part I didn't wash) 

I'm only doing tiny amounts of manual removal daily now (like not even enough to have to replenish any water after!)

Some diatoms on the sandbed but not a concern at the moment. 

 

Good news - my trumpet coral and my blasto have risen from the dead!!! Both of those had been so matted down with cyano for so long, I didn't have much hope. But without a doubt both are coming back now.    Now to cross fingers for my zoas to join my zombie coral gang!

 

This is the first time in a long time almost every coral has some polyp extension going on at the same time. 

 

 

I've had the hydor off for a while now - I keep awaiting the BTA to move and don't want it to get shredded. 

I swear though every time I unplug it, the whole tank does better.

Then eventually I'll put it back on because 'reef tanks need more flow than just the return pump' ...and things go ugly again. 

 

EDIT: I ended up switching the hydor out of this tank and putting the Jebao OW-10 from my other tank into this one. My husband was complaining about the sound the OW-10 was making in the other room when I had it on random mode.  

I'm now a believer in flow again - I just didn't have the *right* flow in my biocube with that hydor. It seems to be working much better in my 20 cubey, and so far the corals seem to like the OW-10 in the biocube. Lots of arm waving action! 

 

The BTA is nearly invisible here, but its directly southeast of the frogspawn, upside downish under the rock still. It occasionally will grab onto a mysis but then retreats back into the darkness and low flow area.  Previously I flipped the whole piece of liverock around to force it to be in the light....but it moved back into the depths.

I'm kind of ignoring it for now because I'm not sure what else to do?

 

[Xanthine]

Weekend update! 

I've been cutting down on the testing/dosing to every other day as things have stabilized.

Now that the cyano is mostly gone, the KH is staying more stable on it's own and I only need to dose 1ml of Reef Fusion #2 every other day to maintain above 8 dKH. 

 

I'll probably take the UV sterilizer out soon and keep in storage in case the dinos ever make a return (knock on wood)

 

My coraline is also coming back! It's one of those things that I don't really notice, but looking back at the pic from last weekend - there has been growth for sure on the back wall!

 

I'm having some hair algae on the rocks, which makes sense to see - now that the turbo and starry blenny aren't in there.

I might pop the turbo back over for a supervised target algae munching visit.

 

I'm really liking the Jebao OW-10 in this tank. I still have it set on the lowest speed, W1 wave mode, with slowest pulses. 

The corals seem to enjoy it but the clownfish is obviously not a fan. I'm hoping he will get used to it soon.

 

I added a hammer from my other tank to this one a few minutes ago. We'll see how it does. 

 

Overall it feels really good that my tank seems to be on the way to recovery. 

It's nice being able to just sit and enjoy the tank.

 

 

 

[Christopher Marks]

Very positive progress @Xanthine, glad to see it’s recovering well. Slow and steady! Keep up the good work. 

[Xanthine]

August update:

I was out on work trips most of this month.

Right before the first long trip, I noticed my turbo was acting unusually sluggish. I put him in the little tank (only had zoas, hermit, snails, little feather dusters) and hoped for the best.

Of course after I got back 5 days later, the house smelled awful and it was clearly apparent that snail had died and killed that entire tank with insane ammonia levels and weird white bacterial death mats.    I'm SO glad that the turbo was in that tank instead of the others. I'm also questioning that my husband didn't notice the death smell ....

I tried to rescue my favorite rock that was filled with feather dusters by setting up a trash can tank with air/heat/pump, then had to head out again for my second trip.

Anyways here's what the biocube looks like after almost a month of neglect - not so bad actually! (After glass cleaning and some cyano siphoning)

The weird black cyano seems to be gone, in it's place is a more traditional red cyano.

It's covering the hammer the most- I'm hoping it will recover but it is really receding into its skeleton and looks mad.

 

Also since my last post I moved some blue cespitularia from my JBJ20 to this tank - and it is really growing quickly! At least 10 new arms/heads? in the past 2 weeks!

 

 

 

[Xanthine]

This week I was home - headed back out on the road for the next two weeks. 

I realized my newest bag of IO has been mixing lower magnesium (1125) than usual/prior bags (1230). 

My tank Mg levels have been trending down - esp after water changes. 

 

So I slowly have been dosing 10ml a day of Kent Tech M, to go from 1125 - 1155 - 1170 - and now today it's at 1200.

In conjunction with that, my calcium has been low too, at 345, so I've been doing 5mL a day of Seachem Reef Fusion #1 to bring it up - 345 -375 - 385 -and now today it's 400. 

(Alk has been relatively calm between 8.45-9.3)

 

Unfortunately also since my last post, the hammer developed brown jelly that QUICKLY took over - in a couple of hours. I gave it a Seachem Reef Dip and moved it to QT immediately to help protect my fav torch from also getting it.  So far the torch is still ok, but that hammer is dead dead dead. I'm bummed but glad it happened during the one week out of five that I'm home. 

 

So together with my parameters looking closer to targets, and getting the sick coral out, corals are looking better and starting to get more polyp extension again! 

Little bits of red cyano + diatoms on the sand but not too bad. 

 

(Please ignore the huge aiptasia next to the frogspawn. I've been battling that bugger for like a year. Peppermint shrimp, boiling water, lemon juice, boiling lemon juice, joe's juice - he keeps just coming back stronger. I gave him another injection of joe's juice a few minutes ago but I'm sure he'll be back in a few weeks like always. )

 

[Xanthine]

Well looks like having my alk, mg, and ca at the generally recognized 'optimal' levels really makes a difference!

 

Since my last post, I added more sand - so now I'm seeing more diatoms, and put my UV back in. Some cyano on the back wall but decreasing.

 

My monti seems to have died? I'm confused because it was encrusting over the rock and doing well, but after I got back from my last work trip it seems to be covered in diatoms/algae. 

I directed more flow onto it and we'll see what happens, but I haven't seen any sign of polyps in awhile. 

 

I moved my purple torch and my duncan from my JBJ to here - I'm considering getting a Valentini in that tank so moving corals out. 

 

I also just added some GSP and Sinularia.  

I LOVE the way GSP looks but never got any because 'everyone' warns you it will take over your tank.

Every time I would see someone elses tank with it, I would get jealous! 

Decided to stop living in fear of a 'weed' and got some.

Honestly, I'd be super pumped at this stage of my reefing to be able to watch something grow quickly.  

 

I'm planning on making a GSP island once I rearrange my rocks and move corals around, so I glued some to real reef rock rubble that I put at the top left for now.  

I also glued some of it to flat rock chip, bottom right, that I might put on the back wall.  

 

Here's the tank just starting to wake up this morning:

 

 

 

[ReefAdoRe]

On 9/21/2019 at 10:31 AM, Xanthine said:

Well looks like having my alk, mg, and ca at the generally recognized 'optimal' levels really makes a difference!

 

Since my last post, I added more sand - so now I'm seeing more diatoms, and put my UV back in. Some cyano on the back wall but decreasing.

 

My monti seems to have died? I'm confused because it was encrusting over the rock and doing well, but after I got back from my last work trip it seems to be covered in diatoms/algae. 

I directed more flow onto it and we'll see what happens, but I haven't seen any sign of polyps in awhile. 

 

I moved my purple torch and my duncan from my JBJ to here - I'm considering getting a Valentini in that tank so moving corals out. 

 

I also just added some GSP and Sinularia.  

I LOVE the way GSP looks but never got any because 'everyone' warns you it will take over your tank.

Every time I would see someone elses tank with it, I would get jealous! 

Decided to stop living in fear of a 'weed' and got some.

Honestly, I'd be super pumped at this stage of my reefing to be able to watch something grow quickly.  

 

I'm planning on making a GSP island once I rearrange my rocks and move corals around, so I glued some to real reef rock rubble that I put at the top left for now.  

I also glued some of it to flat rock chip, bottom right, that I might put on the back wall.  

 

Here's the tank just starting to wake up this morning:

 

 

 

Love your journal, thank you so much for sharing your battle, ups and downs. This is the truth of what happens sometimes (or most of the time?). Reading it gives me patience!

[billygoat]

This tank is really very beautiful. It's great to hear that you haven't gotten discouraged and have just powered through all the challenges you've faced. You've got a lovely aquarium to show for it! 😊

[Xanthine]

Happy Tank update!  

My Valentini puffer came in for my other tank (and immediately munched on some Xenia within a few minutes) - so almost all of the coral from that tank has been transferred into here.

I also moved the rocks around and started putting corals back up on the rocks.  I'm not totally satisfied, still too 'pile of rocks' for my taste, but it's a start.

(Next is getting that cespitularia off of that eyesore tile now that I know it's doing well in that spot. )

 

You may also notice some new inhabitants! Purple firefish, midas blenny, and skunk cleaner shrimp! 

Normally I wouldn't add so much at once but now that liveaquarias free shipping minimum is $149, I combined buying them with my valentini. And I knew I was going to be home for two weeks in a row so I went a little crazy! I'm going to keep a closer eye on my parameters and feed lightly for a bit.  

 

Also I recently refreshed my snail cleaning crew. The nerites went to town on the cyano - no issues now.  Side effect - they also love munching the back wall coraline - but that's a tradeoff I'm totally ok with!

[Xanthine]

Here's the Toby puffer in my JBJ -  the reason why my biocube got the increase in coral 🙂

I took the main xenia frag out since she loves eating it, but some of the migrants/props stayed behind. They get nipped at but are still doing ok. 

A rare pic of all 3  tankmates having a 'yellow butts club' meeting!

[Xanthine]

Oops did an unintentional experiment -- forgot to plug my UV back in after turning off for feeding a few days ago....

Not 100% sure this is related to UV and not the increased bioload/feeding - but byebye white sand, hello red cyano again.

 

Also - I'm so glad I didnt chuck the monti when I thought it was dead a few weeks ago. It's definitely coming back 🙂 

UV is back on now, we'll see what it looks like tomorrow.

 

[billygoat]

Interesting! Do you usually run the UV sterilizer 24/7? I wonder if that alone has been keeping your cyano at bay. 🤔

[Xanthine]

52 minutes ago, billygoat said:

Do you usually run the UV sterilizer 24/7?

Yep - I saw improvement, and went with the approach of, hey, it's working, might as well leave it and not change anything.  

I'm so curious to see if it goes away over the next few days without changing anything else other than plugging it back in!

[Xanthine]

Here's a fun side tank shot I like.

My Midas blenny has started to show off with puppydog antics, begging for food and attention. 

He's getting his color back and seems to be adjusting nicely. He learned very quickly the long pipette means target feeding time!

 

The cleaner shrimp is hilarious. He goes wild the second an algae wafer hits the water, and scurries to get a piece before the hermits do. His little feet move so fast. 

 

 

In contrast - I haven't seen my purple firefish for a week now...not even during feeding.

I triple checked all the back chambers and all around the floor. I've heard they like to burrow and hide - I'm hoping that's the case but time will tell I suppose. 

 

Also - I think it's too soon to call it, but having the UV back on seems to have helped with the cyano, yay!

[Ocean_dreamer89]

On 10/11/2019 at 6:51 PM, Xanthine said:

Here's a fun side tank shot I like.

My Midas blenny has started to show off with puppydog antics, begging for food and attention. 

He's getting his color back and seems to be adjusting nicely. He learned very quickly the long pipette means target feeding time!

 

The cleaner shrimp is hilarious. He goes wild the second an algae wafer hits the water, and scurries to get a piece before the hermits do. His little feet move so fast. 

 

 

In contrast - I haven't seen my purple firefish for a week now...not even during feeding.

I triple checked all the back chambers and all around the floor. I've heard they like to burrow and hide - I'm hoping that's the case but time will tell I suppose. 

 

Also - I think it's too soon to call it, but having the UV back on seems to have helped with the cyano, yay!

If you don’t mind can you share the pipette you use to feed with and what you feed with it? I’m having trouble finding one that is large enough to spot feed pellets or mysis. And that’s interesting that the shrimp eats the wafers! I might try that.

[Xanthine]

On 10/14/2019 at 7:10 PM, Ocean_dreamer89 said:

If you don’t mind can you share the pipette you use to feed with and what you feed with it? I’m having trouble finding one that is large enough to spot feed pellets or mysis. And that’s interesting that the shrimp eats the wafers! I might try that.

Of course!  I started off using one from my former lab but then found them on Amazon for cheap!  In case the link doesn't work, full name is:

Globe Scientific 139050 LDPE Extra Long Transfer Pipet, Non-Sterile, 300mm Length, 23.0mL Capacity (Box of 100))   

Only 15 cents each, really long, large bulb, and super easy to cut the tip to accommodate different sized food!

You can also reuse them a TON also so that one box I bought in Jan 2018 is still like 75% full.

 

 

As far as what I feed with it - a mix of a lot of stuff! I mix up spectrum pellets, marine one pellets, frozen mysis, marine cuisine, emerald entree, brine, reefroids etc. I make up a slurry depending on what I'm feeding that day. I always start with the big stuff like mysis to keep the fish away from stealing when I feed the LPS.  

Being able to use the pipette to exactly target feed means you don't have use too much. 

[Xanthine]

Well, came back from another work trip to find that the UV sterilizer being back on did NOT help with the cyano.

My kH was also dropping low just like the last cyano outbreaks.

Now that I know to watch alkalinity closer and raise it back to ideal, I think I'll manage this better.

Also since I was away, this stuff grew very matted so it wasn't actually too bad to manually remove. 

 

 

I thought I'd share a pic with how I like to do this because I don't think I've seen anyone else do it:

I sink a clear disposable cup into the tank, then use tweezers to pick up the mats, then drop them into the cup.

This keeps the cyano very contained and doesn't spread it throughout the tank while trying to remove, and really speeds things up.

Once done, carefully pick up the cup and you're done!

(Previously I would try to suck it up with basters or lift each piece out of the tank, but inevitably at least some would drop/fall out and land somewhere hard to get to.)

 

 

[Xanthine]

Cyano still a little present but not out of control and corals don't seem to be impacted much.

I have noticed the asterinas appear to be chowing down on it - when I pull the floor mats up, I have to pick the little guys out. Can't say they are eating it for sure but it seems like it. 

 

Had a bit of a scare last night - was going to unplug pumps for cleaning and somehow pulled my LED plug instead. I could NOT get the LEDs to come back on at all after plugging back in! Typically after a powerloss the fans turn back on, and the lights are dim but ramp up quickly, but not this time. Set the hood to SHO mode to test - LC1 daylights and LC3 blue moons then started working, but the LC2 Beauty refused! I panicked a bit, but hey, it was late night anyways, might as well look at it more in the morning.

 

Well - this morning, everything is back to normal. SHO demo mode tested out just fine like nothing had happened. 

Guess I don't have an excuse to go buy that new AI HD+ Prime after all.....

 

Messing with the lights so much did make me realize I haven't looked at my preset times for awhile. 

My current settings:

LC1 11am on - 6pm off

LC2 7:30am on - 7pm off

LC3 7am on -10pm off

 

I did some googling and I think I should probably gradually extend my daylights some.

I'm only running 7 hrs but general others settings seems to be more like 12.

I might wait until this latest cyano is better under control though. 

 

Here's the tank waking up this morning.  

Putting the Jebao back in after cleaning is always fun - with the increased current both the blenny and the clown like to get in front of it and swim against the flow.

I like how this pic shows the eel-like waviness of the blenny. 

 

[billygoat]

Hmm so I guess it wasn't the UV sterilizer after all that was beating back the cyano. Cyano is so strange; I feel like every system gets it at some point and every time it is different. Recommendations for what to do about it work in one tank and then do nothing in the next. In mine for example it no longer grows on the substrate at all, but forms a thick layer against the glass under the sand that as far as I can tell will probably end up being permanent. 🤷‍♂️

 

Your aquarium looks great though! It's cool that you're still using the stock BioCube lights. Tanks like this always interest me because they show what people can do in the hobby even without expensive lighting upgrades or such. 😊

[Xanthine]

Instead of getting mad the fish keep messing up the focus trying to take pics of corals...I decided to put them in the spot light today! 

 

Mr "obviously I'm the center of the show" Nemo

 

Ms. "Let my beautiful eyes distract you from the fact I only eat the algae off my favorite perch and ignore the rest" Midas

 

The photo bomb that inspired it : (He is saying: EEK get rid of these microbubbles!)

 

[Xanthine]

Adding an extra hour to my lights seems to have given a boost to my algae growth, as expected.

I'm glad I only made that minor one hour change instead of going all in adding 3+ hours! 

I really don't want to get another bulldozing turbo snail, but that's the only snail species I've had luck with eating the horrible red wiry turf. It really chokes out corals fast and it is near impossible to get complete removal manually, so I'll need to figure something out. Maybe an urchin.

 

The cyano is going away proportionally to the algae coming back, and tied to raising my KH. 

I'm looking into getting a dosing system, as it seems apparent my tank suffers during my longer work trips/large swings and does much better with small ~2ml doses daily. 

 

I just took my UV out, it was taking up so much space in the tank.  

My midas has been acting weird and scared suddenly, not eating as much, and went from yellow to pink.  I think my clown might be bullying maybe.

The toadstool and the sinularia are both waxed over/shedding soon.

 

My purple torch got really weird thin scraggly bottom tips today as soon as I started my reef-roids/mysis spot feeding.

I don't think I've seen it do this before. After eating they went back to normal.

 

 

Spot feeding LPS is my favorite part of having a tank - Duncan's especially. I try to maintain feeding equality and each head gets at least 2 turns each. 

 

 

And FTS after.

 

You can really see here how much the nerites love eating the coraline - the right side of tank is where UV was blocking access to it. I wish they'd eat the hair algae on the rocks instead.  

I also just glued my flat GSP rock to the back wall. I'm hoping it spreads and covers that patchy coraline!

 

[Xanthine]

Sad news - I'm 99.9% sure my midas blenny died overnight.

I couldn't find her in any of her usual spots this morning, and also suspiciously couldnt find any of the hermits.

With a flashlight I finally found the hermits all gathered in a little cove under the rock the blenny favored. 

 

I'm really bummed as I loved her coloration and she had such a fun personality and was such an easy feeder.

It's also really making me feel like a failure. She relied on me to provide a safe home.

 

Parameters :

• Salinity (refrac)   1.025
• Temp (old school floating) 76F (digital 1+2) 77.4 , 78.4 
• pH (API)    8.2
• Amm (API)    0
• Nitrite (API)  0
• Nitrate (API) 0    (salifert) 0.2
• Phos (seachem) <0.05
• KH (salifert)  8.6
• Ca (salifert)  420
• Mg (salifert) 1275 

Nothing is jumping out at me from my tests. 

She went from no issues to downhill very fast. 

My theory is maybe the UV was helping reduce the bacterial toxins and removing it let them repopulate quickly?

Maybe my cyano is an especially toxic and she ate some during her algae nibbling? 

 

Note - My cobalt neotherm is set at 76 because my digital therms always showed higher than setpoint.  I recently started using an old school analog Marina therm to cross check my digitals since they read an entire degree off from each other. I have 5 or 6 amazon 'Zacro LCD digital's total and they all read differently....   I'll probably up the setpoint on the cobalt to 78 now. 

 

[Wonderboy]

So sorry about your blenny - it really doesn't sound like your fault - quite often things happen way outside our control in this hobby - we just have to make the best of it

[Xanthine]

I had to remove the left two rocks today to retrieve the blenny remains.

It was a good opportunity to also search for the purple firefish that went missing weeks ago without a trace - but no luck. 

 

I took the rock that had a lot red wiry algae out of the tank for some manual dental pick scraping.

Switched the scape a little bit - the top left rock is now the bottom left rock. 

Can't tell it from this pic, but it changes the depth of things and reduced some of the (literal) dead spots in the back.   

Oddly once I rearranged them, the hermits were suddenly super interested in eating the green hair algae! 

 

Here's a weird messed up white balance pic with the blues on.

I like how it shows the return of the green on the melonberry monti - I'm SO glad I didn't throw that frag out when I thought it was dead.

[Xanthine]

I think I was spoiling my CUC with too many free buffets .... now that the blenny is gone (so no more algae wafer feeding), suddenly most of my snails and my hermits have decided algae tastes pretty good after all! 

They have been busy munching away.  Here's a before/after of the top left area from last sat to today. Also I'm loving the purple polyps getting their color back.

 

  

 

I bought a small lawnmower blenny last week.

I had considered getting another bicolor, like I have in my puffer tank and love, but then decided on a tailspot to replace the midas. 

BUT...then I went to a LFS for snails, saw a small lawnmower, and couldn't resist. 

 

This is why I only go to LFS's a couple times a year.

I almost always come home with something I didn't intend....

 

Anyways - he's been in my pico/QT tank and doing well. He's still pretty terrified of me so I have to observe from about 5 ft away. 

I'm hoping the cyano/bacterial blooms will be more under control soon, then I can add him to the biocube. 

 

Speaking of cyano, the current outbreak has switched back from the maroon red kind that mats, to the dark black kind that forms strings.

It's harder to manually remove than the matting kind, but there isn't much of it. It's mostly on the sand still at least. 

You can see the hermit track pacing lines around the edges of my tank now, since this strain doesn't mat as much it is more easily disturbed by movement on the bed.

This black stuff seems to offgas some sulfur compounds - almost threw up doing a water change, blech!

 

I really wish I still worked in a micro lab with access to $$ scopes...i would love to see these strains in more detail.