Dave's 20g glass box 🎉 Water Box 20 IS STILL GOING.......

[jack1978]

20 hours ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

👀

For ####s sake, Dave!  Did you drop your stash in the tank again?!?! 

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

1 hour ago, jack1978 said:

For ####s sake, Dave!  Did you drop your stash in the tank again?!?! 

🤣 Nah, but there may have been an incident with a mr clean magic eraser 😬. That was last weekend though.

[jack1978]

27 minutes ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

🤣 Nah, but there may have been an incident with a mr clean magic eraser 😬. That was last weekend though.

I saw that - glad the tank is good!

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

I ended up downloading a lux app on my phone. It's pretty sweet. From my looking around the web for good lux numbers for reef tanks, I found that im shooting for 60-70k lux. I was curious about that so I went outside and the midday sun is 108k so I figured in the water it's probably 60-80k. So with all that I measured my tank and max at the surface is 23k 🙄.

I new I needed more light and I've been running my ai prime hd super low. I had a problem with my sps I got from mitten browning out( I know what that looks like now 😂). So I talking with him we got a good goal for the tank. First problem was I only had my lights peaking for 4 hours. Over the course of 2 months I'm now at 8 hours peak. What a difference that made. The bubblegum digis have started to get pink skin again and that was just basically increasing the peak of the lights. I have started bumping up the channels also now.

Here's where I'm at now. I still have another week on acclimate. After that's done I'm gonna push it another 5 percent and set to acclimate for a few weeks. Slow ####ing process 🙄

 

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

2 minutes ago, jack1978 said:

I saw that - glad the tank is good!

Yeah me too. Glad I have extra water on hand all the time along with a big thing if carbon. My purple stylos are are still slightly piss but they will get over it.

I'm actually really impressed with fritz salt. It was emergency ready in a little over an hour. I normally let it mix for a day but you know.. emergency time drastic measures.

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

Can anyone tell me how the #### you get a rock flower to move his ass... He's a stubborn SOB. I have one rock flower that I want to move because I wanna yank one rock out.

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

Dexter kill room??

 

 

 

Did I mention how much I dislike painting... Especially having a reef tank in the same room 🙄

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

Still hate painting

[FISHnChix]

8 minutes ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

Still hate painting

Painting sucks!!!!

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

It's only the living room right now so thank God. I'm surprised how fast new paint dries. I can start doing the second coat in a few hours

The ceiling is the absolute worst ####ing thing to paint. I can't wait till it's just the walls and trim left

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

Katie bought a roller that sucks the paint into the handle. No mess really. Fill the handle then twist the handle to get paint to the roller. It's really cool. ####ing bitch to clean out though lol

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

####ing cats... It's apparently ####ing play time I'm the kill room 🙄

[seabass]

It's been awhile since your last update.  You mentioned in my Vibrant thread that, "now i am having an issue".  What's up with that?

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

3 minutes ago, seabass said:

It's been awhile since your last update.  You mentioned in my Vibrant thread that, "now i am having an issue".  What's up with that?

So it's gonna be a long update. I'll do an update when I get home from work. I've been pretty pissed with the tank and what had happened. I'm still trying to figure out what's going on.

Lets just say this is my first time having an almost tank wipe due to something I should have caught before it got bad. 

 

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

wow... four months. 

Some things have happened in my tank. Most not good.. actually all not really good. So back in may the tank was rocking and rolling all things good. I think maybe I just got complacent, got lazy, had covid to deal with, furloughed and just lots of stuff on my mind. It was probably all that if I'm being honest. I stopped testing, water changes slipped but that wasn't too bad to be honest. Everything was looking amazing and I felt that it was on autopilot and it didn't need me messing with it.

 

I had gotten algae under control and for the first time in a very long time I thought the tank looked amazing, so amazing that I went out and bought two acros. They were beautiful. The sunset monti was stunner my zoa's were burnt orange and looked awesome. The digis started to color back up after I almost killed them. The purple stylos were coming back (another that I almost killed) and looking fluffy.

 

We got to mid june- july and I noticed some corals looking off. I'm not one to freak out, they are corals and they go and get pissy every once in a while, so I figured they had some issues to work out. I noticed the acros loosing color and I figured that was gonna happen as I've been slowing giving the tank more light. @mitten_reef pointed out that my light was wrong. I wasn't giving them enough light. I worked through that earlier but I knew the acros could use more light. I have plans to get the red sea light.. not super important right now. 

 

I lost an acro........................ Yes lost it, as in I have no ####ing idea where it went. I have looked everywhere for it. Something must have knocked it loose and it fell between the rocks that are all glued together. It's gone... haven't seen it in months. That one was looking so pretty and it was filling up the frag plug so fast. The other acro I have is still alive and with what happened in the tank, which I will get to in a sec, I'm surprised it didn't jump right the hell out of the tank..... instead my blenny jumped and I now have a kracken reef custom acrylic top. 

 

So, I should have been paying closer attention to the signs the tank was trying to tell me something was a miss, and like I said I stopped testing and somewhere in there I was forgetting to dose... like a lot and I'm guessing you know where this might be going. What I do know is my tank was and is to a point still using .4-.5 of alk a day. You couple that with not testing and dosing when I remember and the combination of the summer and how my tank started to get hot.. hotter than ever actually and by the time my dumbass finally was like there is something wrong with tank it was almost too late. 

 

I noticed my sunset monti bleaching, my digis bleaching my hammers and frogspawn closing, blasto closing, acans closing and even my zoa's all closed. I tested and it was bad. 

Alk had dropped to about high 4's, nitrates at like 5ish, phosphate 0. The only thing that was where it should have been was the salinity and that's because I have an auto top off. 

I got so relaxed and they tank looked so good that I basically forgot about it. 

I.... ME.... ####ed my tank and almost killed everything in there. To top it off I started to get dinos because the water was so clean. So not only was I battling trying to bring alk back up and get nutrients in the water I know had to deal with dinos. Worst ####ing case because I wanted to do water changes to help fix the water chemistry issue but know I had dinos and water changes are the last thing you do I had to come up with a plan.

 

I jumped on algae barn and ordered hundred dollars worth of pods. I got phytoplankton, I dumped as much reef roids as i could and I bought bottled phosphate and this was all while dosing the tank with calcium and alk slowly to bring it all back to normal. The tank was starving for nutrients and whatever phosphate I would dose it was sucking it up in days. I didn't do a water change for almost 5 weeks. I did start to see some signs of things turning around. The dinos went away for the most part, some of the corals started to open halfway and I noticed some color come back. I ended up getting tropic marin all for reef so I could step away from two part. I like it very much. It's simple and I've got the tank at 7.5- 7.9 now with about 5ml of all for reef. 

 

I have lost one frag of the digi, I have lost 4 heads of my hammers, two on one 6 head piece and 2 on a 2 head piece. I lost lost about 3 heads on a 7 head acan. I'm almost positive the sunset monti is gone. The one acro is fine just browned out.  The purple stylos look like they are going to survice and the other digi may or may not. It's got algae growth on it so it's probably gone. My bright orange acan echinata is like black? It has some slight orange on it but it's basically black.. not sure what that is. My favias I have are bleached? light in color. Since my zoas have been closed for months they are browned out with almost zero orange. My  euphyllia are not anywhere near as puffy but they go through moments where it looks like they are opening back up then back to being closed. My rock flowers are fine which is a plus. They actually started to close too. 

 

So there is my suppppper long update. If you made it to the end I thank you. I am still trying to figure out what to do. Right now I'm just trying to keep things as stable as possible and hoping things turn around. I have gotten phosphate to actually read it's about .003 on salifert. Nitrates are still hovering around 5. I just don't know what to do. Do I go and do water changes every few days? Do i just keep dosing and not do water changes? The coral all look shitty and it's super disheartening. Some of these corals I've had for years now at this point and to see them die was an eye opener. This is the worst tank situation I've ever had and it's all my fault. I thought the tank looks amazing I can just let it do it's thing...... Normally that would be the thing to do but I still had to make sure alk was were it should be. 

 

I live and learn and I know what not to do. Now I just need the tank to get better. I have no idea how long it's going to take and if it will ever recover but my fingers are crossed. 

 

Cheers everyone and I hope you all have a good night!😃

[seabass]

Wow, that story just kept getting worse.  The alkalinity dip was bad enough, but to add dinos to the mix - that's rough.  However, your current course of action actually sounds good.

 

I'm not sure about anything that you can dose to get rid of dinos.  But just throwing this out there (although I have no idea how effective it is on dinos):  https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/80-gallon-dinoflagellate-treatment-bundle-dr-tim-s-bundle.html

 

I would almost anticipate that you might have to repeat the treatment, so being an 80 gallon treatment might not be the worse thing.

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

3 minutes ago, seabass said:

Wow, that story just kept getting worse.  The alkalinity dip was bad enough, but to add dinos to the mix - that's rough.  However, your current course of action actually sounds good.

 

I'm not sure about anything that you can dose to get rid of dinos.  But just throwing this out there (although I have no idea how effective it is on dinos):  https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/80-gallon-dinoflagellate-treatment-bundle-dr-tim-s-bundle.html

 

I would almost anticipate that you might have to repeat the treatment, so being an 80 gallon treatment might not be the worse thing.

Yeah I done messed up pretty good huh? 🙃 The uodate went on longer than I thought but I wanted to get all the info I could in there. As for dinos I think those are under wraps for now. I haven't seen the snot goblins in a couple weeks. I got an explosion of coraline algae which I think would be a good sign right?

I wish everything would just perk up and color back up. I should take some photos for reference.🤔

[seabass]

It always takes a long time for corals to recover.  But it sounds like you have already corrected the problems.  Now you just have to wait.

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

12 hours ago, seabass said:

It always takes a long time for corals to recover.  But it sounds like you have already corrected the problems.  Now you just have to wait.

That's what I am thinking too... just a waiting game now. I'm gonna do a photoshoot when I get home today. I'll upload them so you guys can see what the poor tank looks like... It's embarrassing  

[debbeach13]

At some point most of us for what ever reason try the reduced maintenance routine. Some times it is OK but I think that is in softie tanks. Good luck with bring it back to its former glory. Looks like a good plan and like you said it will take some time. 

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

1 minute ago, debbeach13 said:

At some point most of us for what ever reason try the reduced maintenance routine. Some times it is OK but I think that is in softie tanks. Good luck with bring it back to its former glory. Looks like a good plan and like you said it will take some time. 

I'm thinking my biggest thing was not realizing the alk consumption and it not sinking in that it was consuming so much, but yeah the lack of maintenance kinda killed it. Surprising though was the fact that my nutrients bottomed out with the lack of maintenance... that's what is kinda weird to me. I thought it'd be the opposite. 

[mitten_reef]

9 minutes ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

Surprising though was the fact that my nutrients bottomed out with the lack of maintenance... that's what is kinda weird to me. I thought it'd be the opposite. 

Once you have good growth and a mature tank, corals consume a lot of N and P. I have barely registered any N or P since I finally started looking at them this year. 
 

[A.m.P]

26 minutes ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

I'm thinking my biggest thing was not realizing the alk consumption and it not sinking in that it was consuming so much, but yeah the lack of maintenance kinda killed it. Surprising though was the fact that my nutrients bottomed out with the lack of maintenance... that's what is kinda weird to me. I thought it'd be the opposite. 

Every time I stop testing N03 or P04 they end up at zero within two weeks. 

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

12 minutes ago, mitten_reef said:

Once you have good growth and a mature tank, corals consume a lot of N and P. I have barely registered any N or P since I finally started looking at them this year. 
 

I didn't even realize that!! This is the oldest saltwater tank i've ever had... That makes a lot more sense. So i'm guessing i'll have to dose nutrients as well as alk no?

[A.m.P]

18 minutes ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

I didn't even realize that!! This is the oldest saltwater tank i've ever had... That makes a lot more sense. So i'm guessing i'll have to dose nutrients as well as alk no?

I like to do bottled phyto instead of straight P04, figure it gives pods and corals something to snack on while keeping nutrients up, but since it's less accurate my tank goes through swings, honestly my systems just a constant-mess lol. Do whatever Mitten suggests haha.

Oh, and all-for-reef will slowly bring your nutrient levels down as well, something to be aware of, the effect isn't huge but it is there.