Lorekeeper's 10 Gallon Mixed Reef!

[straydog]

Glad to here he is eating, alot of fish are hit and miss on there eating habits. I like to ask stores to feed the fish I'm buying before making a purchase. 

But sometimes there is that one fish I just can't leave the store without weather it eats or not.

[Lorekeeper]

As far as I know, it WAS eating in the store. I didn't see it eat personally, but it had a pretty healthy belly on it. That, and he's ORA, so it surprised me that he was having any issues with eating at all.

 

The tank got a 50-60% WC today, and everyone seems pretty happy. The clown and anemone are working really well together, the blenny is starting to actively scavenge around the tank, and most of the coral are responding well to the new light. The only coral I'm concerned about are the orange zoas that didn't take my month away very well. They're still only opening slightly for a little bit everyday, so I may be close to losing them. I may give them a quick Iodine dip when I get back into town to see if that gets them into better shape.

 

Parameters are as follows (so I'll know how everything goes over the weekend):

Ammonia/Nitrite: 0 PPM

Nitrate: 3 PPM

PH: 8.1

SG: 1.025

[Lorekeeper]

So, I got home yesterday afternoon to a milky white tank. The anemone died sometime while I was away.

 

I did a pretty much 100% WC. Drained the tank to around 2 gallons, refilled it with fresh saltwater, drained it back down to about halfway, and refilled again. SG was within 0.0005, and temps were within 1-2F. Might have been an overreaction, but I've heard far, far too many stories about nems crashing tanks. I also dropped some new carbon into the HOB.

 

The anemone caused a pretty bad algae bloom on it's way out as well. The water's pretty cloudy (still!), and the tank is pretty much covered in film algae, with some hair algae thrown in there as well. I'll be doing 1 gallon WC's a day for the next few weeks to try and combat the algae as much as I can.

 

Luckily, I don't think I lost anything else in the tank. Both fish are doing fine (the clown was having issues when I got home, but quickly perked up after the WC), all my inverts are accounted for, and all my corals are at least alive, if not extremely happy. I had to do a peroxide dip on my GSP due to the insane amount of hair algae on it, so hopefully that begins to dissipate quickly. I'll also be doing dips on my zoas (probably a 1:4 ratio of saltwater:salted peroxide) to try and get them a leg up. I might even try and spot treat rocks as I see spots get particularly bad.

 

As much as this sucks, I'm luckily the tank is still going. Had I been a day or two longer, I have no doubt that it would've been a disaster.

[Lorekeeper]

I replaced the HOB I was using with an Aquaclear 30, loaded with carbon and Phosguard for now. I may eventually make it into a Fuge, but for now, I'm just trying to get the tank back together.

 

Everyone's doing alright, including the dipped GSP. I saw a few polyps peeking out right before lights out tonight, so hopefully they do well in the coming days. The tank is slowly clearing up as well, and I've yet to have any sort of parameter spike.

[Lorekeeper]

Started to see my fish struggle a bit, so I added an airstone to the tank. The tank is as cloudy as it was yesterday, so I'm not sure what else to do at this point other than wait.

[Lorekeeper]

I went ahead and did a deep cleaning. Brandon suggested it, and so far so good.

 

I drained the tank, removed all of my rock, coral, inverts, and fish, and added them into a bucket of old water. I cleaned out the tank using tap water and peroxide, scrubbed it with a rag until I was satisfied, and put it back together. Re-acclimated everything as if they were new arrivals. 

 

Everyone was noticeably stressed, and I wouldn't want to do this often for multiple reasons - one of which is that it was a lot of work, even on a 10 gallon! - but also because of how hard it was on the fish. That said, after my fish continued to struggle and the bloom actually got a bit worse, I asked for advice and went with the best suggestion. Glad I did! 

 

Corals opened farther than they have in a week, fish were out exploring instead of sitting in a corner, and I can actually see everything! It's great! 

 

Here's a terrible FTS:

[Lorekeeper]

Pics!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Lorekeeper]

Day 3, and clear as can be. I think I kicked the bloom!

[Lorekeeper]

Picked up a hammer frag and 3 nerites for $15 today - love the new LFS!

[Lorekeeper]

 

Not bad for $15!

[Firefish15]

@Lorekeeper I've enjoyed reading this thread so far! I just started my own 10G, so I've been finding other people with the same size, just to see what they're doing with them.