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Mitten_reef’s WB55.2


mitten_reef

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On 9/15/2021 at 10:13 PM, ECLS Reefer said:

I feel ya. I’m having a super bad issue now with the cyano in the big tank and my euphyllia slowly dying off. Being at work so much is not keeping my tanks happy 😢

Can’t imagine keeping one tank with your kind of work schedule, let alone multiple tanks. Hopefully you’ll get some break to check all the tanks soon

On 9/15/2021 at 11:09 PM, ninjamyst said:

my DOS just died so I am manually dosing now too =(.  I also lost 4-5 heads of gold torch.  We suffer together.....

Hopefully the colony is still ok?

15 hours ago, debbeach13 said:

Sorry to read about the torch. Now that you found the problem was probably the alk swing at least you can correct that. 

It didn’t help the torch, but def helps other corals in the tank

4 hours ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

oh man that sucks about the torch 😢. The other two are looking good from the pictures though. 

They’re showing promising sign, guess I’ll need to be a bit more attentive since this tank is still young-ish compared to my old system 

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I finally bit the bullet and ordered an apex system with the whole Trident testing thing since I’m just not home as much anymore and not eyes on the tank. I finally had to resort to dosing something to beat back the cyano and I was so worried about the fish and the oxygen in there. So let’s hope this final investment is worth it. Do you use that controller? I can’t remember.

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1 hour ago, ECLS Reefer said:

I finally bit the bullet and ordered an apex system with the whole Trident testing thing since I’m just not home as much anymore and not eyes on the tank. I finally had to resort to dosing something to beat back the cyano and I was so worried about the fish and the oxygen in there. So let’s hope this final investment is worth it. Do you use that controller? I can’t remember.

baller!  no, I don't even own an apex....let alone trident.  

 

I've seen a few tanks with really good results when they started automating their alk testing and dosing.  can't wait to see how your experience is with it.

 

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1 minute ago, mitten_reef said:

baller!  no, I don't even own an apex....let alone trident.  

 

I've seen a few tanks with really good results when they started automating their alk testing and dosing.  can't wait to see how your experience is with it.

 

I mostly got it for peace of mind. And the ORP monitor. I don’t know why all those euphyllia have died but the cyano has gotten bad, so I atribute it to that. And the treatment evidently sucks a lot of oxygen out of the water. I worry about the fish and the rest of the corals if it is low. 

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Mounted most of the frags onto the branch this wknd.  gonna stare at them for a while to decide if I like the placements before taking any pics... 

 

I'm having some major issue with invasive orange sponge that seems to creep and cover everything in its path, two or three of my branches are half-covered in this thing. to make matter worse, the bubble algae is spreading out of control right underneath the sponge, no snails or crabs would go near either pests (sponge is toxic to most fish and inverts, or at least not tasty, so I read)

 

Reached out to @johnmaloney from reef cleaners for some advice, he suggested two types of urchins to try (rock boring or pencil).  I'm having a pencil urchin incoming today, look forward to testing it out.  I didn't go with rock boring, only cuz I don't feel like getting jabbed by those spines.  Got a bunch of mithrax crabs while we're at it, it's gonna be a one-two punch on getting of rid of pests effort.  

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11 hours ago, mitten_reef said:

Mounted most of the frags onto the branch this wknd.  gonna stare at them for a while to decide if I like the placements before taking any pics... 

 

I'm having some major issue with invasive orange sponge that seems to creep and cover everything in its path, two or three of my branches are half-covered in this thing. to make matter worse, the bubble algae is spreading out of control right underneath the sponge, no snails or crabs would go near either pests (sponge is toxic to most fish and inverts, or at least not tasty, so I read)

 

Reached out to @johnmaloney from reef cleaners for some advice, he suggested two types of urchins to try (rock boring or pencil).  I'm having a pencil urchin incoming today, look forward to testing it out.  I didn't go with rock boring, only cuz I don't feel like getting jabbed by those spines.  Got a bunch of mithrax crabs while we're at it, it's gonna be a one-two punch on getting of rid of pests effort.  

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-09/jf/
It's old as dirt, but maybe a captive bred angel will eat some of your sponges and not your coral? Otherwise the only way I know of to be rid of persistent creeping sponge like that is dental tools and kalk paste... 

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22 hours ago, ninjamyst said:

Foxface took care of my bubble algae issue.  Good luck with yours and the sponge.

If the mithrax can’t get it done, I might have to figure something else out. Completely forgot about baby fox face that @teenyreef used to keep for algae control in his 40. 

15 hours ago, A.m.P said:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-09/jf/
It's old as dirt, but maybe a captive bred angel will eat some of your sponges and not your coral? Otherwise the only way I know of to be rid of persistent creeping sponge like that is dental tools and kalk paste... 

thanks for the article!  I’ve only read secondhand knowledge on angels, but I also talked to a guy with a tank full of angels, that none of his touch/eat the sponge.  I also have a pygmy cherub angel, that wants nothing to do with it either. 

well, here’s the urchin doing some work. It came in comically large for my type of scape, so let’s hope it can do a decent job around the tiny cracks and corners. 
 

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after a few hours, I’d like to think that this is the first time I can truly see the underside of this branch in a while and ALL THOSE JUMBO BUBBLE ALGAE. 
5A69A29F-7EE7-41F5-8B86-F89AF019FC95.thumb.jpeg.2d98f8b5bb56b3317eeaeaf7bf79c80f.jpeg


Now I just hope that the army of 6 mithrax will take the opportunity to go graze on the algae now that the sponge coverage is gone.  This would make for an awesome collaborative pest removal by the CUCs. 
 

Also based on the size of this guy, the newly glued acro frags are probably at risk of falling off if they get bumped 🤣🤷🏻‍♂️

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You know you got a bit of a bubble algae issue when you moved stuff and the little green bubbles start flying all over the tank…..ok, that’s a bit dramatic, there may be about half a dozen floating around right now

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46 minutes ago, debbeach13 said:

Looks like treasure to me.

kinda remind myself of that crab guy from Moana....Shiny, everything shiny, I have to get them all, and pile them up....

 

Jemaine Clement sings Moana's “Shiny” in Maori.

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10 minutes ago, joshthebox said:

If you don't mind me asking, what bulb combo are you running on your 4 bulb sunpower? 

I actually was about to go and comment on your thread later today. Mine is 3 Blue+ and 1 coral+.  

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10 minutes ago, mitten_reef said:

I actually was about to go and comment on your thread later today. Mine is 3 Blue+ and 1 coral+.  

Sweet, thank you so much! I think I might try out that combo in the near future! Curious to see if I find any colour/growth changes running mostly blue instead of full spectrum. 

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This scoly continues to surprise me. 
Yes, it looks beyond amazing in this pic from  Monday (to me at least), but it does come with some concerns. the black surface area will occasionally threw out mesenterial filaments this past week or so, while the black ring was developing. And last night I found two skeleton blades exposed, about 1/8-1/4” each.  But even later last night, the coral shows sign of feeding for the first time in over a week, so whatever was going might be subsiding. 
It’s be very interesting to see if this black ring remains moving forward. 

10/6

FB936C5E-D924-4AE2-BA7A-EE9A99BD4AB0.thumb.jpeg.2919375ad67c50da2baeee5014c73b23.jpeg

10/11

016B8F38-EFF2-44C8-A3AA-609F3B186FBC.thumb.jpeg.1ecaf99e341ed6fc900484135285a825.jpeg

 

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1 hour ago, mitten_reef said:

This scoly continues to surprise me. 
Yes, it looks beyond amazing in this pic from  Monday (to me at least), but it does come with some concerns. the black surface area will occasionally threw out mesenterial filaments this past week or so, while the black ring was developing. And last night I found two skeleton blades exposed, about 1/8-1/4” each.  But even later last night, the coral shows sign of feeding for the first time in over a week, so whatever was going might be subsiding. 
It’s be very interesting to see if this black ring remains moving forward. 

10/6

FB936C5E-D924-4AE2-BA7A-EE9A99BD4AB0.thumb.jpeg.2919375ad67c50da2baeee5014c73b23.jpeg

10/11

016B8F38-EFF2-44C8-A3AA-609F3B186FBC.thumb.jpeg.1ecaf99e341ed6fc900484135285a825.jpeg

 

So in love with that scoly. Such a great save!!

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happy to report that the combination of two urchins and the mithrax (emerald) army had pretty much eliminate the bubble algae infestation. I think the urchins did most of the work tho, tbh

 

the invasive sponge continues to thrive in certain areas where the urchins might be too big to get into, so gonna have to give them more time to find and take care of those areas.  thinking of turning one of the two in to LFS in a week or two, don't need two bulldozers in the tank. 

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  • mitten_reef changed the title to Mitten_reef’s WB55.2

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