Seafurn's Old School Pico Gets An Upgrade - 365 Day Challenge

[WV Reefer]

On 7/2/2020 at 9:58 PM, SeaFurn said:

Day 125

 

On a little weekend vacation to see family in OH. Drove through part of your beautiful state @WV Reefer.

 

So this is one thing I’ve got the tank sitter keeping her eye on - how much the water level rises in the first chamber and how that changes salinity. It’s already pretty high and that’s with clean filter floss. That’s because the pump is pretty strong and chamber design limits the flow. Add to that floss that becomes more clogged daily - which causes the water level to rise - which causes water level in the second chamber to drop below the top off sensor -which causes the ATO to slowly keep adding water to the second chamber to keep it level with sensor. Adding enough water over time could change the salinity - or worse, completely overflow the tank if the floss got too clogged. 

You can see I’ve moved the ATO fill tube to the second chamber now so I don’t run into the problem that happened the last time I was away. The tank sitter can use the Hanna checker to make sure salinity doesn’t change and if it does she can replace the floss. 

I thought about just running it dirty (no floss at all) while I was away but let’s see how this goes. 

 

Where did you pass through? Up I-77?

[SeaFurn]

1 hour ago, WV Reefer said:

Where did you pass through? Up I-77?

Yeah up I-77 from Charlotte and then caught 33 at Ravenswood/Silverton over to Athens OH. 

[WV Reefer]

10 minutes ago, SeaFurn said:

Yeah up I-77 from Charlotte and then caught 33 at Ravenswood/Silverton over to Athens OH. 

Not too far from me. We live in Parkersburg which is just a bit further up 77 and my husband is from Tuppers Plains, OH 

[SeaFurn]

Day 127 (Vacation - Day 3)

 

The report from the tank sitter this evening said everything looks good. Salinity is holding steady. 

 

I did take advantage of the July 4th sales and picked up a Hanna Ultra Low Range Phosphate Checker and extra reagents today! I’m so looking forward to not having to use that Salifert kit ever again! I’m really interested to see what the actual reading is for the tank. 

[SeaFurn]

Day 128 (Vacation - Day 4) 

 

Headed home tomorrow. Supposedly everything looks good in the tank.  

Here’s the water level in the first chamber as of this evening. It has definitely risen compared to the other day. Salinity is holding steady at 1.026 so that’s good. 

 

[jservedio]

Your tank is looking much better now! I missed it when it happened, but with acros when it comes to STN, I tend to not do anything about it and let nature take it's course until it progresses to the point where it's almost entirely gone and then make a last ditch effort by fragging. Most of the time for me, the STN just stops on it's own so long as everything is perfectly stable and there are no more mishaps. I've had STN happen twice on multiple colonies due to an alk spike twice in the last 3 years and haven't lost a single acro from it. Every time it stopped and the acro regrew over the dead skeleton after a month or so with the exception of one that had to be clipped, but it was saved.

 

I've literally never had success stopping STN by putting super glue down and have killed frags this way before. I have saved a couple of acros by entirely clipping off a healthy frag - the yellow tips on my right island started as a 1" single branch frag, STNed up to about the top 1/2", I fragged it off and it grew out and is happy like 2 years later.

[SeaFurn]

Day 129 (Vacation - Day 5)

 

It says vacation day but it sure didn’t seem like it. Our typical 10 hour drive home turned into 14 with the extra 4 hours consisting of sitting on I-85S in SC two hours from ATL due to a multi-car and semi pile up that blocked all lanes. Miserable. It’s been quite a while since I’ve taken a pee in the middle of a highway! I don’t have a clue how my wife held it so long. 😬😂

 

The good news is the tank looks great. (The psammocora looks a little worse, but I was expecting that.)  The water in the first rear chamber had risen to the level of the ATO fill tube so it’s good that I moved it. I changed the floss when I got home and the water is back down to the level it was in the first pic I posted. 

 

@jservedio thanks for checking in and passing along that info. Yes, the tank is looking much better now - except for the salinity swing set back. I’ll give your method a try next time it happens. I need to take a close look at the acro over the next few days to see if the STN has stopped or if it’s still getting worse. I was expecting it to be completely white and dead when I got home tonight but there’s a surprising amount of tissue on it still. 

[Tired]

Your wife probably held it in for lack of better options. Lack of certain equipment makes peeing in random places a lot harder. Much easier to flash strangers your buttocks. 

 

Glad to hear everything is doing well.

[SeaFurn]

Day 130

 

Glad to be home and able to keep my eye on the tank while I work!

Tested the water today just to see how things were after 5 days. Nothing notable other than alk tested slightly higher than last check before I left. It’s a Salifert test kit and I’m really careful to make sure I don’t introduce error when I titrate so not sure what that’s all about. I would have thought there would have been some alk consumption in the past 5 days. Nitrates hardly registered and phos was undetectable. So I dosed nitrogen and phosphorus. The snails are doing a pretty good job keeping up with the algae. 

 

Otherwise, like I mentioned yesterday, the psammocora is looking rough and the acro is still hanging in there. Just glad things went well while I was gone. 

 

Will post some pics later this week.

[SeaFurn]

Day 131

 

It’s not looking so good...but I’m not giving up on this guy yet.

(Yes, the glass is really dirty!)

 

[SeaFurn]

Day 132

 

The Hanna alk checker arrived tonight. Going to read up and run a test tomorrow! 

 

Here’s the cyphastrea. I can’t tell if the tissue is still receding or if it’s stopped. Either way - this one isn’t looking good but I’m just going to give it time. 

 

[SeaFurn]

Day 133

 

Well damn. Here I thought there might have been a little phosphate present in the tank anyway. Maybe the Salifert test kit doesn’t suck as much as I thought. Oh well, I guess I can and should increase my phosphate dosage. I’ll do that slowly. But hey - I do love this Hanna checker! 

 

[SeaFurn]

Day 134

 

Update on the hammer that spent a couple months recovering in the 45 before being moved back to the pico. I’m really happy this one has made a full recovery!

 

 

[SeaFurn]

Day 135

 

Phosphate moving in the right direction! 

 

And this - snail flash mob in the upper tank corner this morning! Why do they do this sometimes? It’s not the first time. 

 

[Tired]

My dwarf ceriths do that too. No clue why. They seem to favor the same spot, too. At least they're staying in the tank! They spent the first couple days in this tank periodically trying to escape. 

[SeaFurn]

Day 136

 

I was just checking on the tank tonight and one thing that surprises me is how much tissue the acro has lost but yet how much PE it’s showing in some parts. I still don’t think it’s gonna make it but it’s a fighter. And the psammocora is looking a little greener. Gotta focus on the positive these days. 

 

[SeaFurn]

Day 137

 

Top down shot of the acro from this afternoon. What do y’all think? Will it make a come back if I don’t screw things up? It’s lost a lot of tissue and I can’t tell if it’s stopped losing it. 

 

Tested parameters again today.

Nitrates < 1

Phosphates = 0

Alk = 9.9

 

I was hoping phosphates were going to be at 0.02 today so I’m a little surprised it’s back at 0. This tank is just using everything up so fast. I’m going to start adding one extra drop of nitrogen and phosphorus daily. 

 

[Tired]

I'll be honest, I don't know much about SPS. But I see what look like intact polyps, and some of them are connected to each other. Every coral that's produced via sexual reproduction lands as a single polyp and grows from there, and you have places with multiple polyps connected to each other. I think that coral has a chance. I have an acan coming back from way worse (as in, not really any intact polyps), though I think acans are better at that sort of thing.

[A.m.P]

8 hours ago, Tired said:

I'll be honest, I don't know much about SPS. But I see what look like intact polyps, and some of them are connected to each other. Every coral that's produced via sexual reproduction lands as a single polyp and grows from there, and you have places with multiple polyps connected to each other. I think that coral has a chance. I have an acan coming back from way worse (as in, not really any intact polyps), though I think acans are better at that sort of thing.

Yeah, sadly our corals don't have the same "biology" as wild corals. They don't really have the same feeding responses or resiliency to changing parameters, and the young planula have distinct advantages over an injured colony (stored energy, lack of stress, raw numbers etc.).

 

I'm not insinuating it doesn't have a chance but acros have the reputation they do for a reason, they don't tend to behave like frogspawn which come back from a single speck of green or GSP which snuck in on a rock as a single polyp from a fiesty damsel nipping it.

 

But sometimes they do make it through, I hope yours does.

[SeaFurn]

Day 138

 

Time to scrape the glass. I’ve got a lot of green fuzz growing on the glass around the bottom of the tank. 

 

[SeaFurn]

Day 139

 

Check this out! Found this in a box today - unbroken! Price sticker says it’s 1994 vintage and I paid $8.69 at Pet World Inc. (I think in Appleton WI) Tried it in my 45 and it was a dead nuts match to the Hanna checker at 1.025. Pretty cool.

 

[debbeach13]

I tried to find one of those recently but no luck.

 

[SeaFurn]

57 minutes ago, debbeach13 said:

I tried to find one of those recently but no luck.

 

https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/high-precision-hydrometer-tropic-marin.html

 

Prices have really gone up!!

[Tired]

Oh, neat. I have an antique version of that, bought from a place that salvages old sailing ships. They used it to measure the salinity of the ocean- I suppose to check if they were near a river? I'm not sure. I haven't yet checked how accurate it is, I'll have to look up how to convert the units on it. It's the same principle as all floating hydrometers, only the weights are contained in a little ball at the end of it, then there's a narrow section, then the part with the readings widens again. 

[debbeach13]

That’s ridiculous. Maybe I found it and decided no way but thanks for the link. You never know.