Seafurn's Old School Pico featuring Chrysophytes, Cyano, and Brown Algae

[SeaFurn]

@mcarroll @Amphrites @seabass Thanks for all this information.  I'll read through it. 

 

The reason for my question is that my forest fire succumbed recently (as in right after I started dosing the nitrogen and phoshphorus).  My psammacora is now slowly receding tissue right in front - beyond parts that are getting shaded.  My parameters, nitrate and phosphate, have definitely been swinging so before I started trying to amp up the phos, and by that I mean only to 0.05-0.1, I wanted to make sure overshooting that by a lot wouldn't cause any major problems. With my test kit, there is a high liklihood I'll overshoot though.

To me there's a been a link between the forest fire loss and the psammacora now - and it may just be higher nitrates and low phosphates like you've all mentioned. 

Funny how my focus has shifted from the algae problem, huh?  I guess it's all related if you think about it. 

 

Forest fire:

 

 

Psammocora:

 

 

[SeaFurn]

Bubblegum looking mch better today:

 

 

Frogspawn always a trooper:

 

 

[SeaFurn]

The rocks are looking a lot better!  The snails and hermits have been going to town on the algae.  Big shoul out to the hermit crew especially since I've been so surprised how much they've taken out alone.

Nitrates have been in the 3-4 range the last few days.  Have not been dosing ntitrogen, just feeding heavy.

Phos - still undetectable; I've been dosing 1/2ml of phosphorus per day which should translate to 0.25ppm according to the Sechem calculator but get 0 when tested. 

Alk 8.0

Ca 410

Mg 1395

 

Bubblegum is back to happy; Psammocora looking worse; and the hammer has been almost completly deflated the last several days as well as the acan.

It's so strange that the frogspawn looks great like the pic above and the other LPS looks so bad.  That's got me so confused - especially with parameters stable the last week. 

Pics to follow....

[SeaFurn]

 

 

Psammocora looks like it's still deteriorating.  Compare to picture in previous post.  Any ideas?

 

 

Hammer and acan looking rough

 

 

Ricordia looking colorful!

 

 

Fish Update: The goby ended up in the filter for the better part of a day this week. I knew something was wrong when I turned off the pump to feed him and he didn't come right away.  He's usually freaking out as soon as I walk up to the tank around 6pm. After retrieving him in the filter (which was a huge PITA) I went to plop him back in the tank just as he decides he's gonna try some high degree of difficulty/high scoring triple back flip with a couple of twists high dive into the tank - and he ends up on the carpet!  Clearly 0 score for that one.  So I snatch him up and again he goes for it.  Carpet AGAIN.  OMG this isn't the Olympics.  I finally get him back in the tank and for the next day he's so embarrased he doesn't even show his face - not even to get fed.  But he's finally out perching around again so I think he's over it. 

 

[jservedio]

Looking much better. A lot of corals aren't going to die or start receding right away when there is a major stress - sometimes their decline will be delayed by weeks or months. Most people experience this with acros that grow like mad for a couple of months from the "carryover" effect from their previous tank and then just STN abruptly even though parameters have been fine.

 

As long as you can keep things stable moving forward, hopefully it'll recover on its own. Psammocora aren't the most delicate of corals, so hopefully it'll recover. You lost much less than I did from chrysophytes, so you are in good shape.

[mcarroll]

On 2/21/2020 at 11:12 AM, SeaFurn said:

My parameters, nitrate and phosphate, have definitely been swinging so before I started trying to amp up the phos, and by that I mean only to 0.05-0.1, I wanted to make sure overshooting that by a lot wouldn't cause any major problems.

I'm not gonna suggest you read 6000 posts in my R2R dino thread, but LOTS of people elevated PO4 to 0.10 or higher -- a lot higher in a few cases -- with no apparent side effects at all.  (Unless you want to count good side effects.)

 

This is consistent with papers I've read on corals and PO4 as well, for what that's worth.   

 

Spikes in N are not good (especially bad under zero-PO4 conditions), but I've never heard of an issue with rising phosphate alone -- especially not when they are known to be lacking.  Lacking is where the problems all arise with PO4.

 

I say proceed with confidence.  👍

 

On 2/21/2020 at 11:12 AM, SeaFurn said:

I guess it's all related if you think about it.

It sure is!

 

On 2/27/2020 at 12:00 PM, SeaFurn said:

Big shoul out to the hermit crew especially since I've been so surprised how much they've taken out alone.

Hermits can be nice since they're better equipped for large algae than the snails are. 

 

Problem is they are scavengers, so when the algae is gone they will (potentially) eat anything else left that's smaller than they are and not able to swim away.  Much less chances of this happening if you have the little blue-legged hermits....not much is smaller than them.  But other hermits are capable of real damage if they get too hungry.  (Not a concern you want for your cleanup crew....they are supposed to be for leftovers, so you don't want too many.)

 

On 2/27/2020 at 12:00 PM, SeaFurn said:

Nitrates have been in the 3-4 range the last few days.  Have not been dosing ntitrogen, just feeding heavy.

Phos - still undetectable; I've been dosing 1/2ml of phosphorus per day which should translate to 0.25ppm according to the Sechem calculator but get 0 when tested.

Here's the condition I was warning on earlier.....nitrates without phosphates...dangerous for corals.  If you weren't dosing PO4 those corals would probably already be toast.

 

You just need to amp up your dosing. 

 

Firstly, I'd dose and then test 30 minutes later to see if you get a result that looks like the concentration you expect based on the calculation. 

 

If you still get a zero, or anything significantly lower than the calculated target, then calculate the correct amount for a second dose to get the tank back to your target.  Retest again.  Repeat as needed.

 

I've never seen anyone have to dose more than twice, but the idea is to keep going until there's testable phosphate in the water at the level you want it.

 

Remember that the precision is in your calculation of the dose....the testing is only to verify it.  What's important is that you have a good estimate of your system's water volume.  Overdosing is not a real concern in your instance (or maybe not in any instance).  👍

 

On 2/27/2020 at 12:00 PM, SeaFurn said:

Bubblegum is back to happy; Psammocora looking worse; and the hammer has been almost completly deflated the last several days as well as the acan.

It's so strange that the frogspawn looks great like the pic above and the other LPS looks so bad.  That's got me so confused - especially with parameters stable the last week. 

PO4 is ultra-low and every coral has slightly different needs AND every coral is receiving different levels of flow AND different levels of light.  The ones that are in marginal flow and higher light (for example) or who have a thicker boundary layer (for another) could be expected to be doing worse than other corals that are less compromised.

 

 

[mcarroll]

On 2/21/2020 at 11:12 AM, SeaFurn said:

Scavenger at work.  😉

[SeaFurn]

On 2/29/2020 at 2:44 PM, mcarroll said:

Hermits can be nice since they're better equipped for large algae than the snails are. 

 

Problem is they are scavengers, so when the algae is gone they will (potentially) eat anything else left that's smaller than they are and not able to swim away.  Much less chances of this happening if you have the little blue-legged hermits....not much is smaller than them.  But other hermits are capable of real damage if they get too hungry.  (Not a concern you want for your cleanup crew....they are supposed to be for leftovers, so you don't want too many.)

 

I''m definitely going to be rehoming several snails or they are going to starve. There's only seems to be this thick red algae that comes cleanly off in sheets when I blast it with a pippette. None of them seem to be a big fan of it.  

 

On 2/29/2020 at 2:44 PM, mcarroll said:

You just need to amp up your dosing. 

 

Firstly, I'd dose and then test 30 minutes later to see if you get a result that looks like the concentration you expect based on the calculation. 

 

If you still get a zero, or anything significantly lower than the calculated target, then calculate the correct amount for a second dose to get the tank back to your target.  Retest again.  Repeat as needed.

I haven't done this yet (busy weekend)...BUT, I did verify my test kit works.  Here's what I get when I take 10ml of newly mixed water and add 1 drop of phosphorus.  I'm glad to know the kit works - and know that I should get a reading at some point.  

 

 

Psammocora, acan, and hammer are still disgruntled.  

[mcarroll]

43 minutes ago, SeaFurn said:

I''m definitely going to be rehoming several snails or they are going to starve. There's only seems to be this thick red algae that comes cleanly off in sheets when I blast it with a pippette. None of them seem to be a big fan of it. 

Ya....anything that's had a chance to "mature" is generally less palatable to most herbivores.....that leaves removal up to you or to "just waiting".  Cyano tends to not hurt anything (thankfully) and eventually removes itself just as quickly as it showed up.

[fenderchamp]

@SeaFurn  Did you ever change back to a more aggressive water change schedule? I remember one of the things you did prior to the algae issues was to cut your water changes back in an attempt to run a little more "dirty".