Tiny Fish, Big Tank - sublunary's RSR 250

[sublunary]

1 hour ago, Tired said:

Oh, cool! That's really rare in aquaria, though I guess it doesn't help that not too many people keep gorgonians. Did you see any others releasing any other gametes? It would be amazing if they spawned successfully and actually landed more gorgonians, though I'm sure all those eggs probably wound up as fish snacks.

I didn't see any others releasing gametes, and I only have one of that species.  I'll settle for the free fish food, and the extra motivation to indulge in night time tank viewing. 

[vlangel]

On 12/28/2020 at 10:14 PM, sublunary said:

Thank you.  I always find losing animals makes me lose my confidence for a bit, even if other things are going well. 

 

I did have a nice confidence boost tonight though.  I went to check out the tank during moonlight, and noticed a few little white spheres floating around.  The more I looked, the more I noticed, gently floating up and around like a slow motion snow globe.  I traced it to my tall orangey gorgonian. 

 

 

I've never had a coral spawn before, so I'm super excited.   I love how the hobby gives me these moments of unexpected beauty. 

That is super cool and something I have never experienced.

[sublunary]

I've had a couple of weeks to adjust to the Reef LEDs.  I've finished up my acclimation period, so they're at full strength.  I chose the 20k setting, which runs 100% blues and 50% whites.  I honestly prefer a much whiter tank, but picked a bluer setting to hopefully favor the corals a bit more than the algae.   The tank looks pretty purple, which I don't love, but don't entirely hate.  I'm down to a manageable amount of GHA and haven't had to do any manual removal in quite a while.  The corals seem to be liking it.  Some of the zoas I had nearly given up on are opening now. 

 

I find it really interesting that 2 clumps of sympodium getting different amounts of shadow have noticeably different colors now. 

 

The lights were advertised as being designed to focus more light into the tank, creating less shadowing in the tank and less lightspill into the room.  Compared to the Primes (which were admittedly a few inches closer to the water surface) there is sooooo much more light spill.  Light everywhere.  And yet some of the shadowing inside the tank is a bit worse.  Oh well.   I can deal with both.

 

I'm really liking the moonlight setting.  With the primes, I could set moonlight, but kind of had to guess at what color channels and intensities to use, and never found one I liked.  The automatic moonlight channel on the ReefLEDs is a great gentle light that looks fairly natural to me.  I don't think they were running long enough to give them credit for the gorgonian spawn, but it's possible. 

 

The one thing I really don't like about them is that they SUCK for photography.  The AI Prime app had a nice big button for "All On" so that with one click I could make the lights a good mostly-white blend that was pretty easy to take photos under.  No such button from Red Sea.  I really wish lighting apps would include an option to schedule a photography mode that would last for a set time the way pumps have a feed mode.    I should set up a custom schedule that's just 24hrs of mostly white that I can switch to for pictures.  I don't know why I didn't think of that before. 

 

Look at all this purple.  It's awful.

 

You can barely see the fish.

 

 

As you may be able to see above, my brown slime is still an issue, and is getting a bit more pernicious. I finally got a decent enough sample under the microscope and it's definitely dinos.  I'm not able to make a firm ID of what kind though, so if you think you can help, please head on over to my:  Dino ID Thread

 

So I'm hoping to get a more narrow dino ID to so I can make a game plan.  I stopped doing water changes once I started suspecting dinos.  Nitrates are still over 25, phosphate still low but detectible.  I'm siphoning them into a filter to remove some without removing water.   I'm kind of hoping I have one that I don't need to buy a UV for, mostly because I know I'll get so nervous about hooking it up that I'll procrastinate on it...

[sublunary]

I've got a preliminary ID of my dinos as amphidinium.  The amphididumim behavior described in most guides I've seen doesn't seem like mine - they are frequently confined to the sandbed and don't form strings.  Mine are on every available surface and very stringy.  They aren't supposed to kill corals and CUC like other strains.  I've had quite a few losses I attribute to them.  But the more I compare microscope videos the more convinced I am.   And they're one of the hardest to get rid of.  Yay.  

 

I've spent a while reading the big R2R threads and gathering materials, and more or less have a plan.  Amphidinium are not light dependent, and blackouts don't seem necessary.  They hunker down in the sandbed at night instead of going into the water column, so UV fixtures don't seem to help.  I'm reading mixed reports on whether regular removal of dinos, by siphoning through filter sock is actually helpful.  Raising temps only seems to help people temporarily.

 

The main solution seems to be increasing biodiversity and particularly increasing diatoms to outcompete the dinos.  This includes having detectible nitrates and phosphates, increasing silicates, and making sure diatoms and other critters have what they need to multiply.  Having diatoms take over seems to be the key.  

 

I haven't done a water change in quite a while, so my trace elements have probably been pretty well depleted by the dinos.  My nitrate remains high (between 25 and 50).  Since my last post, my phosphate bottomed out, even with increased feedings.  Kh and Calcium are kept pretty stable by dosing.

 

So here's the plan:

I've been siphoning dinos into a 5 micron filter sock a couple of times per week.  I'm going to make that a bit more frequent. 

I'm going to do about a 10% water change this weekend to get some trace elements in there for the diatoms to use.

I started dosing silicates about a week ago at a very low dose.  My Si test kit arrived today, so I will be able to ramp that up in an informed way going forward.

I have started dosing NeoPhos to get/keep my phosphate detectible again.

I'm going to keep dosing my home brewed phyto and copepods. 

I'm getting an IPSF order on Thursday for a microfauna boost.  A few people have had success covering the most infested parts of their sandbed with IPSF's wondermud so I figure it's worth a try.  This will also replace some of the sandbed worms I've lost. 

 

Some people have said they've only had success beating ampihdinium with removal of their sandbed.  I really, don't want to do that, so cross your fingers it won't come to that.  I like my sand-burrowing critters.

 

There's a lot of conflicting stories and not a lot of success out there, so I may be in for a long ride.  

 

FPG came out to flip it's fins at me as I was working today.  It didn't appreciate the flash,  But at least I have a photo to post...

 

 

 

[vlangel]

Wow, I feel for you!  It sounds like you have a solid plan however.  I wish you the best of luck.

Great pic of the FPG.

[Ocean_dreamer89]

On 1/9/2021 at 6:23 PM, sublunary said:

The one thing I really don't like about them is that they SUCK for photography.  The AI Prime app had a nice big button for "All On" so that with one click I could make the lights a good mostly-white blend that was pretty easy to take photos under.  No such button from Red Sea.  I really wish lighting apps would include an option to schedule a photography mode that would last for a set time the way pumps have a feed mode.    I should set up a custom schedule that's just 24hrs of mostly white that I can switch to for pictures.  I don't know why I didn't think of that before. 

I had this same issue with my ReefLED 50.  There is a fix for it, but it's kind of hidden in the app and not a one button push.  I'll do my best to explain how with screen shots.

 

Go to the main menu for your light and click the 3 dots on the upper right

 

It'll bring you to this menu and click Manual

 

You'll then be able to adjust the lights using the slider.  When you exit out of this mode, it'll go back to your schedule for your lights.

 

Hope this helps!

[sublunary]

On 2/7/2021 at 3:24 PM, Ocean_dreamer89 said:

 

Hope this helps!

Oh wow, this helps so much!  I might never have figured that out on my own.  Thank you!

 

[Ocean_dreamer89]

No problem! I had to comb the web to find that out haha

[sublunary]

Update on the dinos - I hate them and they are winning.

 

First step is to raise the PO4 to around .10.  According to the math on the back of the bottle, about 20ml of neophos should do the trick.  Ha.  I'm increasing my dosage periodically and am currently around 80ml twice a day and barely keeping it around .02.   Some of the corals look a bit perkier since I've started dosing - particularly the leathers and clove polyps.  So perhaps they are sucking it up that quickly?

 

For manual removal, I've been alternating siphoning dinos out and just turkey basting corals and changing filter floss.  The dinos are back covering the corals less than 8 hours later.  It's frustrating not to be able to get ahead of it. 

 

I've stopped dosing silicate right now, because I think I need the PO4 higher before diatoms can take hold.  

 

I tried adding the IPSF wondermud, but that doesn't seem to have done anything.  The dinos just moved onto the top layer of substrate.  They included some ulva, which some people had reported would chemically suppress dinos.  It doesn't.  They are happily growing right on the surface of the ulva (just like the other macros I have in there).   (None of the macros are growing, so I don't think they're sucking up the PO4.)  One of the other suggestions floating around is to cover the sandbed in chaeto, which I will try once I get PO4 higher.  But I don't have that much hope for it. 

 

I'm fairly sure I've lost all of my herbivorous snails bigger than a collonista.  The urchin seems to be finding enough to eat, and will actually eat some dinos.  I thought I had lost my feather duster, but was happy to see that it had only shed and regrown it's crown.  I was also happy to see one of my pom pom crabs the other day, so they are hanging in there.  The fish are all doing well. The Rainford goby has started eating pellets, which is funny since it always takes a few tries to catch them.   It was grabbing pellets off the water surface yesterday and actually shot water out of the tank in the process. 

 

The whole thing extra disheartening because it's the one year anniversary of adding water.  I'd like to be posting growth pictures and discussing plans to order mandarins.  Instead I'm drowning in brown gunk, and seeing no end to it.   Sigh. 

 

[Tired]

Keep up with the phosphate. If 80ml isn't doing it, try more. 

 

It's good that the Rainford is on prepared foods. Take advantage of that- stuff it whenever you feed it. That'll help keep it fat. 

[sublunary]

Things are still ugly in the realm of the tiny fishes.  Dinos everywhere!  Rocks, sand, floating along the top of the water.  Everywhere.

 

Even so, I think it's getting a bit better.  The sand doesn't get as completely covered as it had been.  There are several spots of some weird looking gunk that the dinos won't grow on.  Not sure if it's a bacterial mat of some kind, or something else.  But it's interesting.  I'm getting green hair algae on the power heads and return nozzles. I never thought I'd be quite this happy to see GHA.  I'm less happy to see all the bubble algae (green and red).  That will be my next battle if I ever kick the dinos...

 

I've succeeded in getting the phosphate up enough that it's been between .07 and .11 for the past three weeks.  I'm still dosing phosphates twice a day, but I've been able to cut the amount by about 2/3.  I started adding silicate again.  My nitrates are the lowest they've ever been - between 2.5 and 5.  So I'm debating whether I need to dose those up a bit as well. 

 

Something is making the water slightly cloudy.  I'm not sure exactly what, Just something else to make things less than pretty. 

 

I've been seeing a pom pom crab and porcelain crab pretty frequently lately. 

 

Fish continue to do well.  The rainfords continues to eat everything in sight, except nori.  The yellow assessor disappeared for about a week, but reappeared today like nothing happened.  Yellow rose goby has been more skittish, and I haven't seen the pistol shrimp in a while, so I'm a bit worried the pistol is gone.  Flaming prawn gobies are still making occasional appearances to flash disapprovingly at me. 

 

 

What I'm most happy about right now is the microfauna.  Copepods have always been good, as well as these other shield-shaped tiny bugs I haven't ID'd yet.  I finally, finally have amphipods again.  My tanaids are multiplying.  Collinistas are still an army.  I've picked up a handful of baby snails that might be nassarius or marginellas.  I even saw a sphaeromatid isopod, and I thought they all died out like 6 months ago.  That gives me a lot of hope. 

 

And because I am a glutton for punishment,  I decided it would be a good idea to start up a 5 gallon AIO pico.  I got some free live rock from a local reefer, and a couple pieces from an LFS.  Using one of the AI Primes that's no longer over the main tank.  I figure it will help keep me engaged in the hobby if I have something that's not drowning in dinos.  I'm also debating using it as a refuge for a couple of corals that are not doing well in the main tank.  The snake polyps cannot stay dino-free for more than an hour and are really looking rough.  But I'm not sure how to do it without ending up with 2 dino tanks.  So it's just hypothetical right now.   I sold it to B as a temporary tank for that purpose.  But I'm kind of tempted to get some RFAs and try my hand at nems.  But who knows.   This was a couple weeks ago already.  It's hit the diatom phase now (and you know I put it under the scope to make sure lol).  

[Tired]

Any plans for mobile critters for the new tank? You could always go with the opposite of this one, and put something big in there. Sure, it'd be a bad idea and not good for the fish, but think of the symmetry!

(Don't do that.)

 

More nitrates can't hurt, as long as you don't dump the whole bottle in there at once. Whatever gets competition going against the dinos.

 

What are those pink corals in the right center of the tank, the ones that look like when a cat bushes its tail out? They look a bit like massive gorgonians, but I don't think that's right. 

 

I wouldn't go putting anything covered in dinos into a fresh new tank, particularly not one with clean rock anywhere in it. Maybe once it's got a nice big algae surge going on. 

 

For the snake polyps, are you able to hang them in the water column somehow, so a powerhead is cleaning them off? They might not like that very much, I don't know how much flow snake polyps like, but it probably wouldn't be worse for them than just being covered in dinos.

[sublunary]

On 3/13/2021 at 2:12 AM, Tired said:

Any plans for mobile critters for the new tank? You could always go with the opposite of this one, and put something big in there. Sure, it'd be a bad idea and not good for the fish, but think of the symmetry!

(Don't do that.)

You mean this shouldn't be my first foray into tangs?  😭

I'm not sure yet.  If I go for RFAs, might go for anemone porcelain crabs and venus shrimp, or something similar.  I know sexy shrimp are the obvious choice, but I've never been a fan of them. 

 

On 3/13/2021 at 2:12 AM, Tired said:

What are those pink corals in the right center of the tank, the ones that look like when a cat bushes its tail out? They look a bit like massive gorgonians, but I don't think that's right. 

They are corky finger gorgonians.  Normally, they are puffed up evenly all the way down.  Here's the best pre-dino picture I could find. 

Oh man, this was just three months ago.  If only I'd started dosing phosphate then....

 

On 3/13/2021 at 2:12 AM, Tired said:

For the snake polyps, are you able to hang them in the water column somehow, so a powerhead is cleaning them off? They might not like that very much, I don't know how much flow snake polyps like, but it probably wouldn't be worse for them than just being covered in dinos.

That might be worth trying, but I'm not sure if there's a level that the coral will like that the dinos don't.   From what mccarrol has said, dinos actually like high flow.  I have some stuff on a frag rack that I've moved into different flow areas, and so far haven't found a spot that doesn't attract dinos as of yet.  Maybe If I get desperate I can find a way to tie the frag disk to the screen lid and really suspend it lol. 

[sublunary]

6 weeks later things are still dirty, but a little more green.   Warning, this might be painful to see...

 

 

 

Most of the time, there are still dinos on the rock and glass, but they are growing on top of green algae now.  I've gotten back to siphoning them out regularly, and they seem to be growing back slightly more slowly.   One of the many recommendations I'm trying is less glass cleaning, which is why parts of the glass look particularly atrocious. The back is abut 1/3 covered with cyano, which I guess is an improvement.  The sandbed is still pretty gross.

 

The sideways black contraption is a drop-in uv filter.  I narrowed down the causes of the cloudy water to a probable bacterial bloom, and the uv cleared it up.  I'm leaving it in and occasionally blowing dinos into the water column and hoping it zaps them.  Not super effective for amphidinium, but it feels like doing something.  *shrug*

 

The tank is using phosphate at about 0.15 ppm per day, and I'm dosing to keep it above 0.10.  I've gotten nitrates detectable and hovering around 1ppm.   

 

The corals are looking happier. At least the leathers, though they still aren't totally dino-free

 

 

 

 

The cespitularia is happiest of all.  It has basically dropped a puddle of itself to start spreading.  I'm half tempted to move that puddle onto a rock and just let it take over.

 

 

The pico is coming into its own.   It's quite a bit cleaner, but I'm learning just how hard it is to keep a bare bottom that way.  I get it clean, add water back, and the process of adding water finds more dirt and sends it flying.  I forgot to take a FTS, but here are some macros.

 

I am letting clove polyps take over as much of the bottom of the tank as they feel like. They are growing super fast compared to the ones in the big tank.

 

The three porcelain crabs are doing well.  There's one in the middle of those cloves.  This is the only one who felt like sitting for a portrait.

 

I got my first 2 RFAs and both of them have moved into impossible to photograph places.  Because of course they did. Here's the best I could get. 

 

There's also a couple of zoa frags in there, and the snake polyps.  I felt confident enough to move them over after a good fresh water scrub, and it looks like that was enough.  They're not opening yet, but they already look a lot healthier.  If that goes well, there are a couple of other frags I might move over to let them recover.  

 

So yeah, still fighting, still going back and forth between depressed and optimistic.  But not giving up.  

[Tired]

Hoo, look at all that! Good competition, at least. And no surprise your soft corals love the nutrients, they do great in dirtier tanks.

 

Once the dinos are down low enough that they aren't toxic to inverts any more, you might get a tuxedo urchin or two. They're great for eating longer algae, and they're fun to watch. They'll move small coral frags, but it doesn't look like you have anything small enough that they'd move it. 

[sublunary]

I'm still here and I feel like I've turned a corner.  It's been a couple weeks now since I've seen anything that looked like dino strings.   GHA and bubble algae are firmly established and it's time to kick up my CUC. 

 

Have some dirty pictures:

 

Yellow assessor (at the top) is acting like itself again.  It's cruising around the tank at all times, going after food like a champ and generally hanging out with the court jester goby again.   This is probably the biggest thing that makes me feel back to normal. 

 

 

 

Cespitularia is less happy now that I peeled the new growth off the glass, but still growing.

 

 

Hermit crabs are the biggest part of my CUC right now, since my ISPF order came with a bunch. I did not realize how big my old ones were until I got new ones. 

 

 

Yellow Rose Goby moved it's entrance.  I don't believe the pistol shrimp made it through the dinos 😞

 

The barnacle blennies are still great (my pictures of them were just bad).  I haven't seen the flaming prawn gobies in a couple of weeks, but that doesn't mean much.  I've still got a purple porcelain crab hanging around.  The last time I saw the pom pom crab it somehow had a pom pom again.  So I guess it dropped them before and at least one of them survived?  

 

I lost all my LPS and some of my zoas, but the leathers, gorgonians and mushrooms all made it through.  The clove polyps and sympodium are making a come back.  I'm going to stay away from hard corals for a very long time. 

 

So here's some of what I tried and my thoughts:

Dosing Phosphate and Nitrate - totally necessary and the most important part of fighting dinos. My tank had a huge phosphate deficit, and I could see changes as the rate of PO4 consumption slowed.  I also got a lesson in how PO4 is necessary for nitrates to get processed, as I finally have acceptably low nitrate readings.  I will definitely keep both on hand even when I stop regular dosing to keep levels where I want them.

Dosing silicates - not much impact.  I haven't seen a diatom bloom, but I also haven't kept up on dosing silicates.  So I don't think it hurts, but also don't think it was vital for me. 

Adding biodiversity - I think this is really helpful, but also think I did it too early in the process.  I don't think the IPSF mud was all that helpful, but don't feel like I can really say for sure.

Dosing phyto and copepods - I was doing this already before the dinos took over, so I'm not sure how it helped. 

Lowering white lights - The Red Sea LEDs have 3 different pre-programmed temperature settings.  I originally had the 20K, then switched to 23k (more blue) for a while.  I've switched back to 20k in the last couple weeks.  I think I saw a bit of reduction in dinos from doing this, but that might just be the effect of other things I was doing.  I did not change the length or timing of photoperiod at all. 

Bubble scrubbing - I did not intend to do this.  At one point my return pump started spitting microbubbles randomly and it took me an embarrassingly long time to remember that I could adjust the flow on the pump itself.  The microbubbles caused the dinos to collect in this nasty froth on the top of the water surface.  This clogged the overflow grates, resulting in the pump kicking more microbubbles.  But, it pretty effectively picked the dinos up off the rocks and out of the water column and put them on the surface where it was easy to remove them.

UV - the drop-in UV did a great job of removing the bacterial bloom.  I don't think it did much of anything to the dinos.  The dinos on the glass made it hard to keep the suction cups attached to the glass, so it kept floating away and malfunctioning anyway. 

Carbon - really important to replace frequently.  It doesn't affect the dinos, but can help draw out the toxins.  I saw a lot of improvement in coral appearance and fish behavior when I started replacing the carbon more often. 

Skimmer - I didn't see any difference with skimmer on or off.  For my tank, I don't think it mattered. 

Water changes - I stopped water changes in December when I realized what I was dealing with.  Since then I've done 3 or 4 5 gallon changes, some with water removed from the pico when I changed the water on it.  I find removing dinos through a water change to be easier than siphoning them into a filter sock, just because I'm clumsy and keep knocking the hose out of the sock.  I did not see any increases in the dinos when I did small water changes, but I'm going to hold off a while longer before doing large and/or regular ones again. 

Trace elements - I did not does any, so they only came in through

Temp - Some people raise the temp to like 82-84, some people swear by it, others say it does nothing.  So I didn't.  I kept my normal range (76-78), except one day when my cat pulled the temp probe out of the tank and I didn't notice until the tank was up to 80.  

Glass cleaning - I saw someone recommend to stop cleaning the glass, and I think that actually made a big difference.  After a few weeks of not cleaning the sides of the tank, they were covered in enough algae there was no room for dinos. The algae kind of spread from there and took over more space from the dinos.  The algae on the glass also gave a lot more habitat for microfauna.

Filter floss - I kept using this the whole time.  It helped me catch/remove a lot of dinos that went down the overflow.  I don't think this hurt.

Sand cleaning - I stopped vacuuming the sand a few months ago and I think that actually helped. I've got a ton of algae growing in the sand now, which I think helped displace the dinos. The sand was actually the first area to clear - the dinos lasted much longer on the rocks, walls, and pumps.  This makes me think I was right at first that it was prorocentrum, not amphidinium.  

Flow - At some point the Hydros app updated and deleted my gyre program.  I didn't notice right away, because I wasn't cleaning the glass.  Then I forgot my password... anyway the gyres were off for a while.  And I think it actually helped.  The amount of foam collecting on the surface dropped a lot after the gyres went off, and by the time I fixed the microbubble problem, there was barely any. 

 

So all of that said, I'm not declaring victory.  I'm going to slowly continue manual algae removal, add some CUC and keep watching my nitrate and phosphate levels.   And we'll see where we go.  A couple more weeks and I'll do a waterchange.  and take it from there.  Reefapalooza is in my area this weekend, but I think I'm going to skip it for another year to remove the temptation of buying anything I'm not ready for. 

 

[sublunary]

Everyone send me good thoughts and vibes.  Tank has been slowly improving, with a lot of bumps on the road.  Everything has been looking up. 

 

I just landed in another state to start a 5 day vacation, and got a notification my gyres aren't connected to the internet.  Power company website says our power won't be restored for another 11 hours.  The person checking in on the tank/cats can't get 5o us because she's trapped by flooding two towns away (and can't even get to her house.. )

 

Seriously the first night the house has been empty in a year and a half....  I'm sobbing in the airport right now. 

[Tired]

That's not a good thing, but it's not necessarily disaster. You have a pretty lightly stocked tank, so oxygen hopefully won't be a major problem. You've got a shot at things working out okay. 

[sublunary]

Power came back on after about 5 hours.  Apex shows the temp dropped about 2 degrees in the sump, which isn't too bad.  A friend stopped by the house confirmed the pumps are running and the house doesn't have any obvious flooding or damage.   I won't know for sure until next Wednesday, but it sounds like i might have made it through ok.  

 

What an emotional rollercoaster.  My heart goes out to everyone dealing with fallout from the storm right now.  NJ is a flooded disaster, and we only got the last bit of it. 

[Tired]

5 hours no flow and a two-degree temperature drop shouldn't be any problem. Particularly not the temperature drop. I had my pico wind up in the high 60s for a couple days straight during a really, really cold spell in my area, and all that happened was some corals were the tiiiniest bit retracted until it warmed up again. I mean, I don't advise doing that, but still- two degrees is nothing. 

[sublunary]

Woof last week was a lot.  I basically relived all of the trauma from Hurricane Irene in the span of 5 minutes.   Thank you Tired, and everyone else who showed support.

 

Things look mostly ok.  The only confirmed loss was my conch. 

 

Confirmed alive: both scarlet cleaner shrimp, pistol shirmp, YR Goby, Rainford Goby, Yellow Assessor, both barnacle blennies, pom pom crab, urchin, 2 anemone porcelain crabs. 

 

Not seen yet: FP gobies, pitho crabs, emerald crab, 3rd anemone porcelain crab, and blue porcelain crab.

 

Corals seem fine, but pretty much all I have are softies anyway, so wasn't overly worried about them.  My lone RFA looks good.   I had a bit of an algae explosion, but I'd prefer that over a resurgence of dinos.   Maybe this weekend I'll start taking pictures again instead of waiting until things look more pristine. 

 

Until then, RIP you glorious weirdo.  

[Tired]

Good to know most things came out okay! Too bad one of the "maybe" species is a fish that I'd imagine you don't see much in the first place, that might take awhile to let you know if they're alive. 

[sublunary]

Proof that things are up and running, and back to full-on algae ugly.  Every time I try to clean the side glass, I get a resurgence of dinos on the rocks.  I have no good explanation for that, other than the tank likes being shaggy.  So shaggy it will stay a bit longer. 

 

Assessor is back to being pretty happy and pretty camera shy.  This cave has become his safe spot.

 

His buddy the rainford goby is still doing well.  He's doing nothing to help with the algae, and has decided he loves sifting sand right onto the cabbage leather. 

 

The purple broccoli-looking thing behind him is an Asterospicularia - a type of leather I'd never heard of until recently but ended up really loving.  For a while it was hosting one of the anemone porcelain crabs, but I think that crab didn't make it through the blackout. 

 

This one made it through just fine, even though he has decided he prefers rocks to corals or anemones.  I've gotten quite a few of these random white sponges, which I'm loving. My tanks have always had a few of those, but never this big.   The barnacle blennies are still going strong, though their hiding spaces didn't make for good photos today.

 

 

Goby and pistol shirmp made it through just fine as well. 

 

also, I did have a flaming prawn goby sighting last week!  Though he didn't come out today before my camera battery died.  I am sure at this point that the pitho crabs and emerald crab are no more.   Which just means it's time for yet another order from Reef Cleaners....  I need help with all the bubble algae, even more than the GHA....

 

A couple of months ago, I got myself a Red Sea Reef Dose.  My Alk and calcium are the most stable they've ever been, and I've eliminated the chance of me forgetting to dose phosphate.  I am still going through a ton of phosphate to keep it detectable.  I think that will only stop if I can get the algae in control, but I much prefer the algae to the alternative....  

 

 

[greenerdayz]

I love all your livestock and am excited to see the tank keep improving! I especially like your Rainsford goby 

[sublunary]

On 10/5/2021 at 1:35 PM, greenerdayz said:

I love all your livestock and am excited to see the tank keep improving! I especially like your Rainsford goby 

That's greenerdayz!  The Rainford is a character, I'm glad I decided to get him. 

 

 

I finally had time for some photos today, and of course the new ReefBeat update rendered the app unusable and preventing me from adjusting my lights .  So apologies for the terrible color balance.   But here's a bit of what's going on...

 

 

Softies are doing well enough I am trying a couple of easy LPS again.  

 

 

Toadstools are getting big enough, i think I'm going to move at least one of them. 

 

A couple of weeks before the panic-inducing blackout, I had broken down the pico and added it's stuff to the main tank.  (Surprise, surprise, I suck at anything that requires regular maintenance.)  I ended up really liking the RFA I had (the one with orange edges), and it did pretty well, so I got a couple more this week.   Of course the shrimp refused to get out of the way...

 

 

Porcelain crabs who moved over are doing pretty well too, though this guy had a difficult molt for some reason, and now one of his claw arms is kind of messed up. 

 

 

I'm clearly dealing with a ton of hair algae and bubble algae.  I seem to have the worst luck with things I buy to eat them.  I cannot for the life of me keep emerald crabs, pitho crabs, turbo snails or urchins in this tank.  They just slow down and die, and I haven't figured out why yet.   Smaller snails - fine.  Porcelain and pom pom crabs - fine.  Shrimp - fine.   I don't get it.