merickson45's Tank Journal

[merickson45]

I just noticed what might be a problem with my Scrambled Eggs Zoas. One of the polyps has been closed up for a few days and now I've noticed that it's turning a little black in the center. Any idea what this could be? If I compare to older pictures, it definitely looked better a few weeks ago...the other Zoas in the tank are doing quite well.

 

I've also noticed a lot of copepod interest in this Zoa, both at night and during the day. Not sure if that is important, just thought I'd mention it.

 

[Wonderboy]

Micro dose 50/50 tank water/H2O2 slowly straight to that polyp

[merickson45]

Update time!

 

Had some issues over the past two weeks, but I think I've sorted everything out. I had started dosing Calcium Hydroxide in the ATO water, but I think I overdid it, giving me alkalinity readings of 10+. At the same time, I finally got a salinity refractometer, and after calibrating it with calibration solution, I measured my water salinity to be around 1.030! My only explanation for this salinity creep is leftover salt in my storage container, which I've been refilling at my LFS (their water is around 1.026). I've since halved my Ca(OH)2 dosing and brought my salinity down slowly over the past week. I've also removed the Chemipure Elite because I think it was stripping my water, since my phosphates were 0.00 on a Hanna ULR Phosphate Checker. Going to stick with regular carbon for now.

 

A few of my corals had been closed up (a zoa and the GSP), and I'm guessing it was probably due to these issues. The Zoa has started to open back up (although it's got some funky coloration now), but the GSP has been slow to recover. I did micro dose H2O2 straight to the Zoa polyps, as Wonderboy suggested, which may have also helped. Overall though things seem happier since I made these adjustments, now I'm just going to try and keep them stable. My recent parameters (yesterday) are:

 

Nitrate: 2.5 ppm

Phosphate: 0.06 ppm
Calcium: 425 ppm

Alkalinity: 8.6 dKH

Salinity: 1.025

 

In other news, my clownfish is doing well in QT, and I'm getting ready to do a tank transfer tomorrow. So far no signs of any disease!

 

By the way, once the clownfish is out of QT, I'm considering either getting a shrimp goby (in which case it will go into QT) or converting the tank to a coral QT tank. Do you guys think it is necessary to QT corals? I'm leaning towards yes. My thinking is why go through all the trouble of QTing my fish only to have some disease/pest hitchhike in on a coral (since I've heard dipping isn't always enough). Thoughts or comments appreciated!

 

Pictures for documentation:

 

 

[merickson45]

Been a busy December and early January, but I finally have time for an update!

 

Corals are doing well, I think I've finally got the tank stable enough that they're settled and starting to grow. The Duncan is really taking off, with 3 new small polyps. The Candy Cane has formed one, maybe two new mouths and I expect it will split soon enough. The Scrambled Eggs Zoa has recovered and has formed 3-4 new polyps. The Utter Chaos Zoa now has five polyps and is headed towards a sixth. The small orange and purple unidentified Zoa had a bit of a setback when something ate one of the polyps (still don't know what...), but it seems to be recovering with two small new ones. The Pavona has started creeping down the rockwork, and the Frogspawn is as awesome as ever. The only one that hasn't been doing well is the GSP. It seems to be suffering a slow death, and I can't figure out why. Besides this though, things are looking good.

 

 

I also transferred the clownfish over a few weeks ago, and so far it seems happy. I was a bit surprised, since I thought clownfish tend to stay in one area, but he swims all over the tank.

 

 

I should mentions that around mid December I removed the Purigen and Chemi-pure Elite. The corals did not seem happy, and I think that I was stripping the water. I currently have no chemical filtering and everything looks way better and is growing, so I think I'm going to stick with the minimalist approach and rely on weekly 20% water changes for nutrient export until I see any issues. I do have carbon on hand just in case. Also, around the same time, I started testing salinity and noticed it was around 1.029. I slowly started bringing it down, and it's now stable around 1.025. This also lead me to discover that my local LFS cannot be trusted when quoting their water salinity, so I started mixing my own saltwater too.

 

Finally, I bought a Micromussa Lords, Acans Echinata, Ricordea, and Zoa which are currently in QT. I recently had a pretty bad cyano outbreak. I cleaned it up and did some big water changes, and I think everything is going to pull through (although the Acans looks a bit ragged). Anyone have any tips for preventing cyano in an empty QT?

 

Here's a tank shot for future comparison. Happy New Year!

 

[billygoat]

Great update @merickson45! The tank looks really beautiful, and it's great to see everything thriving and doing well. Strange that your GSP of all things would be the coral with issues, since it's reputed to be practically unkillable... but all things considered it sounds like you have conquered the majority of your issues and have everything on the right track. ☺️ Your frogspawn coral looks especially lovely.

 

I love your photo montage of small shots of all your corals too! I might have to steal that technique. It fits the journal format very well.

 

How long has this tank been up and running now?

 

 

[merickson45]

Yea, that's exactly what I though billygoat, I've read so much about GSP being indestructible...not sure what's going on...

 

Glad you like my format, it helps me keep track of things. I like to be able to flip back through and quickly see the progress for each coral! The tank has been up and running since October, so roughly 3+ months. It had been running for about a month before that at my LFS, but it was only housing the GSP and some Blue Clove Polyps (which I did not keep) at that time.

[merickson45]

Update time! Probably going to start doing these every two weeks, since things are more stable and every week is kind of overkill...

 

Not much to say this time, everything is doing really well! The Duncan has around 5 new polyps growing (which are hidden by the main ones) and the Candy Cane has three mouths, soon to be three new polyps. The Scrambled Eggs Zoa and the Scooby-Dooby Zoas (previously the unidentified Zoa, unless someone corrects me...) are both growing fast, multiple new polyps. The Utter Chaos Zoas are growing more slowly, although there is a new polyp growing in the back. The Pavona continues to encrust downwards. The Frogspawn seems very happy, but does not seem to be growing (do they tend to be slow growers?). The GSP, which was looking pretty bad, seems to be coming back (I guess unkillable is right, for better or worse...)

 

 

The gang also says hi!

 

 

I've also got a few corals in quarantine (two Micromussa, two Zoas, a Palythoa, a Ricordea, a Hollywood Stunner Chalice, and Acans). I plan to return the Palythoa to the LFS, I only got it because it was attached to one of the Zoa frags that I picked up. The Red and Blue Micromussa was slightly damaged when I bought it, but I really liked it and got a terrific deal, so I decided to try and save it. Also, the PVC tubes are there to block the flow a bit for the Micromussa, Acans, and Ricordea since they like lower flow.

 

 

 

I've been struggling a bit to keep this QT stable, and I had a Cyano outbreak before I upped the flow a bit (which got rid of it). The Acan looked like it was going to die after the Cyano outbreak (retracted, skeleton showing), but it's been slowly rebuilding itself (though it has gone from a nice orange/green to brown). It looks really bad, but trust me, it looked worse a week ago. Everything else bounced back very quickly. Right now the only thing off is the nitrates, which are steady around 10 ppm. I spot feed the corals in this tank conservatively, so I'm not sure where it is coming from. I suspect it might have to do with not having any live rock/sand, but I was hoping to keep it simple and easy to clean. Right now the setup is just a heater, a Koralia Nano powerhead, a Hipargero AquaKnight light, a DIY auto-top off and an HOB with Fluval BioMax. I previously had a sponge and carbon bag in the filter, but took those out because they were trapping detritus. This could also have been contributing to the nitrates, and maybe it just hasn't been long enough to see a difference. When setting it up I dosed Seachem Stability to establish the biofilter, and I add a dose after every water change (per the instructions). Does anyone have any tips for keeping this sort of QT stable (if it's possible)?

 

That's all for this week, happy reefing!

 

 

[merickson45]

Been too long since the last update! I added a bunch of new corals, and most of them have been doing very well.

 

Although you can't see it when it is open, the Frogspawn which started as two polyps is now splitting into six (three each)! The Candy Cane is splitting more slowly than I expected, but will soon be three polyps. The Duncan has tons of new polyps, can't be stopped. The Pavona has continued encrusting (though I'm hoping it will start growing vertically at some point). GSP came back but hasn't been going crazy.

 

 

The only issue I've been having is the Scrambled Eggs and Scooby-Dooby Zoas have been closed and stretching for a while, and I can't seem to figure out why...a new Zoa I added (green with yellow skirt) is also closed, while the other three (Rastas, purple/red/green, and Utter Chaos) are always open and thriving.

 

 

Over the past month and a half I added a Ricordea Florida, Acans Echinatas (tiny and big), Gonipora, Toadstool Leather, various Micromussas, a Hollywood Stunner Chalice, and an Acropora. The Acans has bounced back from how it was in QT (turned totally brown) and is now a nice orange/green. I was given an extremely tiny frag of what I think is the same Acans, which has been slowly growing. The Goniopora took a while to come out, but is now always extended during the day (still have to figure out where to put it). The Micromussa are doing well, one has about 4-5 new polyps already. The Hollywood Stunner is nice, but I wasn't expecting the sweepers to be THAT long, so I had to place it as far as possible from everything, which is hard in such a small tank. It's currently pretty well isolated, but as it grows it may start stinging things. I also got a small Acropora frag, because I wanted to see if it would grow in my tank. At first it looked like it was starting to bleach (didn't do well in the QT), but it seems to have stabilized (we'll see).

 

 

 

Full tank shot for future reference. Until next time!

 

[merickson45]

One more thing I forgot in the previous post! My brother gifted me a Raspberry Pi a year or two ago, which I hadn't found a use for until now. I decided to put together a simple reef controller by following the tutorials over at reef-pi! I picked up a wifi controllable powerstrip and have set up Kessil lighting control and temperature monitoring (still a few bugs here, may have received a defective temperature probe). I also set up the ATO pump/float through the powerstrip to only turn on once every four hours, check if the water level is low, and refill if necessary, then turn off. Now I have more peace of mind that I won't come home to a disaster 🙂

 

Here's a few pictures, still messy, but I plan to build an enclosure and organize the cables as a weekend project sometime soon.

 

    

[merickson45]

Time for a monthly update! Everything is doing well, and I think I've made progress on my problem with closed/reaching Zoanthids! Here are some pictures

 

 

 

 

The only new addition is a orange and green Leptoseris, which I'm still monitoring to see how it acclimates. Everything else is growing and seems quite happy. I decided to try reducing my light schedule in an attempt to get the Zoanthids to stop closing up and...it worked! Mostly at least. Now most of the Zoas are almost always open (the Scooby-Doobies and the red/purple/green ones are still a little closed every now and then). Overall a big improvement. So far none of the other corals have complained about the reduced lighting schedule. In case anyone is interested, I was running the lights at 70% blue from noon-10pm with around an hour of intensity/color ramp up and ramp down. I left the same ramps and shortened the time to 2pm-10pm.

 

I also took down the QT (there was nothing left in it) because I don't plan on buying anything for a while (currently under lockdown). I added the Trochus snail from my QT to the display, doing fine so far!

 

 

Here's a FT shot. Stay safe, until next time!