Stan’s Innovative Marine 25 Lagoon

[Stanboy]

Update on screen top. Apparently this black screen top seem to drop the par significantly. From my measurements it seems to be dropping the par by 30 when I place the screen over my apogee. So I tuned each light I had to be 30 more par. Hopefully bringing up the par will make my corals happier. 
 

The par measurements were taken right under the light with and with out the screen top 6 inches off the top of the apogee sensor. 
 

Edit: For people that don’t have a par meter and wants to get a decent idea of what the setting difference was. For the AI Prime I went from 119% to 135% that is using the double finger drag to move all the channels up by the same ratio. For the kessil I went from 56 intensity to 72 intensity. Keeping my color at the same level. 

Edited August 7, 2021 by Stanboy
Added extra details

[Stanboy]

Wanted to add some photos. Was playing around with the little macro lens that came with the orange filter for my phone. Noticed how my goni is glowing now. Not sure what happen but it was super pissed off and now it bounced back and starting to glow. 
 

I feel I am starting to run out of space with all the hammers. If anyone have tips or links for how to take photos would love to learn. Have access to my sister’s fancy camera but not sure what to do. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Stanboy]

So I have recently removed all the captain jerk palys in my tank. They were spreading too quick and my elegance was not able to fight the toxic sting of the paly. I value my elegance and my gonis more than the captain jerk palys, so they had to go. I have saved one frag plug of it, so if anyone in NYC is interest hit me up. Free to the nice people, who spends the time to read my journal. 
 

Sadly after removing the paly I am not sure if it is the toxins or me disturbing the rock and siphoning all the detritus under it. But it seems that my tank is not too happy. All my hammers have shrunken and it seems that most of them have scars or coral tissue showing. Not sure what happen during the time, if it was the paly toxins? But all my gonis and torches are fine. Only my frog spawn and hammers have all these scars all over them and they are definitely not happy. They were all swollen up after I changed the water, then the night of I saw scars and coral flesh all over the euphyillia. If anyone may have an answer it would be great.

 

On a bright note, I have decided to install two led bars in my cabinet. After buying some LEDs for my car, I decided to grab extra so I can put it in my cabinet. I’m always using my flashlight and was a little tired of holding my flashlight to work on the stuff inside my cabinet. Now that I have to change my auto water change jugs and refill my kalkwasser, I’m inside working on my cabinet a lot more. Luckily I equipped a lot of spare plugs in my battery pack so I can get 12V anytime. This saves me an outlet and trying to hide a power brick. I spliced a plug to the light and now I have a bright cabinet. I took the other light and put it on top of my tank. This way I can easily light up the back chambers. I find myself holding my flashlight in my mouth all the time while I’m working in the back chambers and have gotten tired of it. 
 

here is a pic of my dark messy cabinet. 
 

 

Now here it is after I installed the bright white light. Now makes me want to add lights on the other shelves, but I honestly will never need it. 
 

 

Now this is the light mounted to shine on the back chambers. Was the best I could do to hide it, since I didn’t want to drill the light into the wall.

 

Now here it is lighting up the dark back chambers. It might not look like a lot, but the key thing I always look for is water level and what’s in the skimmer cup. I would always have the change the skimmer cup with a flashlight in my mouth. Not I don’t have to no more. 

 

[ninjamyst]

Sorry to hear about the hammers.  Are you running carbon in case it's toxin from.the palys?  My guess is the sudden change in nitrate / po4 from cleaning under the rock.  But it's weird other corals are not affected.

 

New cabinet lights look great.  I like how you mounted the fans too.

[Stanboy]

On 9/1/2021 at 8:59 AM, ninjamyst said:

Sorry to hear about the hammers.  Are you running carbon in case it's toxin from.the palys?  My guess is the sudden change in nitrate / po4 from cleaning under the rock.  But it's weird other corals are not affected.

 

New cabinet lights look great.  I like how you mounted the fans too.

Ye I doubled up and renewed my carbon expecting the toxins. Ye I did it once and they never got that pissed off. But it seems what ever happen in the water has cleared up now. Everything is back to normal except for some hammers taking more time to fluff up. 
 

Thanks. I will always recommend the kessil hard mounts any day for nano tanks. Even people that don’t use kessils and want a hard mount I would use the mounts. I is holding up my fans and an extra light bar, and the mounts are still solid. Much different from the AI prime mounts. Ironically I have an AI prime on the kessil mount. 

[Stanboy]

9/9/21 update:

 

One major thing was replace the frag rack. I saw someone take a bunch of small racks and kind of do a stair look to display the corals. I decided to order some frag racks and give it a try. I like the look and it helped not stopping the flow. 
 

I also sold a big piece of frogspawn to give my tank some room since the gonis were getting a little too fluffy. 

 

As for everything else, my PH has been shooting up really high since I have not been doing any more water Changes. My Alk consumption seems to be increasing by a lot and the coraline been growing like crazy. I think my tank starting to enjoy the dirtier water since I left a lot of detritius and no more massive water changes. I think I have found the new regimen of just siphoning maybe a gallon of water just to get the detritus. Usually take two weeks for it to be too much for me to look at. My tank is still running on auto water changes so after 7 days it changes out 4 gallons. 
 

 

 

[Stanboy]

Small update - 9/11/21

 

Done some research and wanted to try carbon dosing. Found out why my tank’s alk consumption was growing, it was due to my nutrients rising. Noticed now that my tank seems to be enjoying the extra nutrients more. After not performing a water change for two weeks and leaving it to slowly change water on its own, my nutrients creeped up.  Now my N03 - 10ppm and my P04 - 0.04. These are really nice numbers, but it was a big jump from undetectable P04 and 2ppm nitrates.

 

So I am going to try logging my progress with tropic Marin’s approach to carbon dosing. After doing a lot of research, I wanted to try to see if the extra bacteria will help out my corals. As of now I am starting to dose with 1/4 of the dosage for 0.25ml a day. Then will add another 0.25ml every week. Hopefully the corals enjoy the extra bacteria. 

[Stanboy]

9/12 Update:

 

Tested my tank and noticed that the nutrients dropped fast 8 ppm. My nutrients are now:

 

salinity - 1.025

alk - 8.1

N03 - 1.5ppm

P04 - 0.01ppm

 

I have now realized a quarter is much since my tank enjoyed the dirtiness. I have now switched to NP Plus to add back some nutrients but I’m going to go even slower at 0.5ml. Then add 0.5 every week. 

[Stanboy]

9/23/21 Update -

 

It seems my tank has been really liking the addition of NP Plus. My Ph has creeped up to 8.5 now as a peak and my Alk consumption has increased. I tried Bacto Balance but I think my tank likes the NP Plus more. Believe Bacto Balance is too strong for my tank since I have really low phosphates already. My nitrates now are staying low around 2ppm. So it seems my nutrients are pretty stable and there is an addition of nutrients, since my glass actually needs scraping now. Before I would go a week before my tank gets any algae in the glass. So I am going to continue dosing 0.1ml until my phosphates start creeping up high high. 
 

As for my tank, my hammers have gotten bigger and my gonis have extended a lot more. I believe my tank is liking the extra nutrients and bacteria. Will continue to observe if there are any ill effects. Here are some pictures that I enjoyed from my tank. Enjoying my gonis. 

 

 

 

 

[Stanboy]

10/28:

Been gone for a while since I’ve been busy with work. Let’s give a quick update on what’s going on with the tank. So now that I have been adding NP Plus my tank has been sitting on an average tank PH of 8.4-8.5 which is fairly high. It seems that it might be a lot of photo synthesis since I have been getting more algae on my glass. Also the coraline algae has coated the back of my tank. As for my Alk consumption it has raised to 2ml per day as oppose to being 1.2ml a day before. 
 

The only con is the bryopsis is taking advantage of the extra nutrients maybe with the extra phosphates. So I have noticed a lot more bryopsis growing around the tank. But I think this is more about me letting the detritus build up too much after a month of no water changes than the carbon dosing. Since my nitrates have dropped significantly. But my corals stony corals have been growing like crazy and the hammers looking fluffy. I am going to consider treating the tank with flucanzone. But I am waiting after my vacation and all the heavy work so I have an opportunity to monitor the tank. Now I just have to watch it grow more and can’t do anything about it. 
 

Here are pics of the tank:

 

Full tank shit of the tank. Looks the same only thing is the Goni has shrunk since the clownfish have decided to host it. 

 

Euphyillia corner

 

my elegance coral has started to extend and became gigantic. I think it’s trying to ask for more room 

 

One of my favorite hammers. Super happy. 

[jack1978]

Beautiful pieces you got in there!

[Stanboy]

11/18 Update 

 

Finally got some time to monitor the tank, so I decided to treat the tank to fight the bryopsis in the tank. It has not been so bad that I cannot see my corals, but it has gotten worst to the point that I think it is growing onto my corals. I have then did a lot of reading and giving flucanzole a try. I decided why not since I can medicate and monitor the tank with a little bit more free time. 
 

I have started treatment in 11/15 so it has been 3 days since the tank has been medicating. I have removed all my chemipure blue media and turned off my skimmer. Also retired my auto water change. I have dosed less than half the recommended dosage. I have only used 1 pills worth of reef flux which it states can treat a 10g tank. I have a 25g tank which holds approximately 22g as I was filling it. As of right now all my corals are fine and no ill effects yet. Hopefully this persist. I have noticed now that some of the bryopsis is starting to turn white. The main thing is I can clean up around the corals, but on a section of rock I guess this bryopsis is so healthy since it’s under the light and good flow. It has suck a strong grip I have no possibility of ripping it off the rock. I am going to leave the treatment up to 2 weeks. If everything clears after two weeks I’ll leave it for another week since the package says to have it for three weeks max. 
 

I am continuing to dose vibrant and continue to carbon dose to offset the nutrients from all the dying bryopsis. I actually have to test it soon since it is starting to die off and some patches are just gone. As for all the bryopsis I have around corals and their frag disk, I have manually removed all I can so that there’s is less pollution on the tank. I’ll keep people posted hopefully this can help others with bryopsis issues. 

Here is some photos of the bryopsis:

 

 

 

 

Here is a photo after 3 days. The tops of the bryopsis is starting to get white. 

 

 

Here you can see patches are gone. 

 

Here is just a bonus torch pic because I had my coral viewer out and the torch was looking good during all this medication. 
 

 

 

 

[Christopher Marks]

How’s your reef doing these days @Stanboy? Such a great collection of coral here. 

 

Hopefully the bryopsis continued to recede after your treatments.

[Stanboy]

On 2/20/2022 at 10:58 AM, Christopher Marks said:

How’s your reef doing these days @Stanboy? Such a great collection of coral here. 

 

Hopefully the bryopsis continued to recede after your treatments.

Unfortunately the tank has declined a lot. I have been very busy with work and was not able to keep up with the maintaince of my tank. Once one of my nice frogspawn died it kinda killed my mood and the tank soon spiraled quickly. I have manage to keep most of my corals alive and happy now. But I have to fight a huge case hair algae. 
 

I have recently decided to do a full tank restart because I didn’t like the rocks after a while. They moved so much that it was blocking the flow and became very hard for me to clean and maintain. This tank will soon get shut down because I just got a really good deal on a nuvo40. Since I’m going to go through the effort on restarting, why not go bigger with the exact footprint. 
 

Don’t really want to show the tank now because of all the algae. But I have SPS that don’t every want to stop growing so I think something is good with the water.