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jefferythewind

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jefferythewind

Hi, The water parameters are doing OK I think. I test Alk every day and phosphates intermittently. The phosphates stay around 0.1 with my current dosing scheme which I have been doing since the burns appeared. The rest of it does look healthy, here is a better picture. The flow is good, it is right in the middle at the top of the tank and I have 2 power heads and a filter that all kinda point toward the middle. 

 

I'm pretty sure this is called a purple bonsai acropora.

 

I have been laying off the coral foods. I just add a drop or 2 when I do a water change, but the algae has continued to grow everywhere.

 

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1 hour ago, jefferythewind said:

purple bonsai acropora

A beauty!!  (And now on my list!)

 

1 hour ago, jefferythewind said:

I have been laying off the coral foods. I just add a drop or 2 when I do a water change, but the algae has continued to grow everywhere.

It's possible that even that is too much....or it's possible that you just still need to increase pressure on the algae via your CUC.  (You continue picking out the large stuff too.)

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jefferythewind

Yeah i think i could use a few more snails I guess. I'm not super worried about the algae since everything is doing so well. I feel that maybe a few more hermit crabs could be beneficial not so much for eating the algae but for scraping it off the rocks while they dig around. 

 

Here is an update on the millepora. Starting to grow pretty quickly!

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
jefferythewind

Something I wanted to do for a while is get an APC power supply with a battery backup just in case we the power goes. I was more worried in the middle of the winter when the room was probably colder than the corals would have liked up. We lost power one time but got it back after a few hours. The temp only dropped about 5-6 degrees. if we lost power i imagine the temp could drop at least 10 degrees to meet room temp. Anyways I remembered the other day to order one and I got it. Looks pretty sweet. I just set it up and somehow it feels better.

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jefferythewind

Got a couple peppermint shrimp for the aptasias but i'm a little doubtful mostly because a few of the aptasias are even bigger than the shrimp! I also picked up 3 more turban snails and 10 tiny hermit crabs to strengthen the CUC dept. Recently the long stringy algae has been much less which nice but still plenty of the soft algae that blankets everything so should be plenty to eat.

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On 3/14/2021 at 6:01 PM, jefferythewind said:

Got a couple peppermint shrimp for the aptasias but i'm a little doubtful mostly because a few of the aptasias are even bigger than the shrimp!

They still "can" do it....but if I were you I'd take care of all the Aiptasia that you can get to by hand....use some Aiptasia X or similar.  Only leave the ones that are too hidden for the Peppermint.  (They are kinda spotty at this duty IMO....my guess is that they have to be starving in order to be motivated enough to eat an anemone.  I could be wrong.  Size won't be an issue if he decides to do it tho.)

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jefferythewind
21 hours ago, mcarroll said:

They still "can" do it....but if I were you I'd take care of all the Aiptasia that you can get to by hand....use some Aiptasia X or similar.  Only leave the ones that are too hidden for the Peppermint.  (They are kinda spotty at this duty IMO....my guess is that they have to be starving in order to be motivated enough to eat an anemone.  I could be wrong.  Size won't be an issue if he decides to do it tho.)

Yeah so far i don't think there has been been any eating of anemones. It funny they look very small in the tank i'm sure they were pretty freaked out at first. My cleaner shrimp which i got 1.5 years ago are huge in comparison. I'll take a look at aiptasia X. The LFS gave me this white stuff to drop in the mouth of the aiptasias and I tried it a couple times and they instantly appear to deflate and die however they all have come back again in the same spot. I'm not totally into killing things for no reason. So far they don't seem to have hurt anything. 

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On 3/21/2021 at 9:13 AM, jefferythewind said:

I'll take a look at aiptasia X. The LFS gave me this white stuff to drop in the mouth of the aiptasias and I tried it a couple times and they instantly appear to deflate and die however they all have come back again in the same spot.

Sounds like more or less the same stuff....there are a few brands.  Watch a YouTube on how to do it properly as you can definitely be doing it wrong.  Keep at it! 👍

 

On 3/21/2021 at 9:13 AM, jefferythewind said:

I'm not totally into killing things for no reason. So far they don't seem to have hurt anything. 

In the long run they will thrive on fish food and end up blanketing your rocks.  Good if your want an Aiptasia-themed tank.  🤪

 

They sting like an anemone, so they will be hostile to things that anemones are hostile toward...like corals...and critters small enough for their stingers to paralyze. 

 

Whatever controls them in the wild (Butterflyfish, etc) we don't have around.  So if you want to be patient for your shrimp to get the ones you have, that's fine.  But if they spread at all (which might be into a space you can't see) try to notice immediately and take control yourself.  IMO.  👍

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jefferythewind

no idea what happened, there used to be 2 aptassias growing on the previously damaged parts of this orange setosa, but within a couple days both have spontaneously died! Setosa 1 - Aptasia - 0.

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mitten_reef
38 minutes ago, jefferythewind said:

spontaneously died

don't be fooled!  just like desired anemone that can detach/walk off from your preferred location, aiptasia can just pick up and go plant themselves elsewhere in the tank.  just a thought....

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jefferythewind

Things are going well. Getting back in the grove with just weekly water changes the past few weeks. I've worked a glass cleaning into the routine and the past 2 weeks I've hand-pulled a bunch of the grass algae. I'll put a clean piece of filter floss in there before the cleaning and water change and take out after a day or two. The floss takes all that crap out that got stirred up during the change. Love how it looks the next day. I also moved the Duncan since the mushroom corals were too close. New spot looks good.

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jefferythewind
3 hours ago, Thrassian Atoll said:

Can you pull the small rocks on the left and do some peroxide spot removal of the algae?

Yeah those rocks were some chunks of live rock i added a while back now but the rest of the big rocks are my original dry rocks. Anyways those chunks just have the grass and green mushroom corals on them. I think they are also home to the new peppermint shrimp. The rocks would be easy enough to pull but they have a lot living on them and i've never done spot removal with peroxide before.

 

I've seen the overall algae level go down since i stopped with the heavy coral foods. Now the snails are paying more attention to the rocks. Im going to try to see if i can keep the trend going and keeping pulling.

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  • 2 months later...
jefferythewind

Been a while since I updated. Been on a couple threads about my algae issue, new sump, and sand ideas. I made a lot of progress with the algae and then i put the new sump online that really changed everything. Every day the colors of the tank are getting better. Everything seems happier even the fish. The soft algae is not an issue any more although i still have some chunks of turf algae in there. I also dont need to dose phosphate anymore, which is awesome. Also i have gone light on the coral foods. I got a couple new frags which unfortunately have found a spot on the rack front and center. I find the light is best there. They are a holy grail acro, myagi tort, and green millepora. 

 

 

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  • 1 month later...
jefferythewind

It's been a while since an update. Tank is doing well. I finally lost the bonsai that was on its way out for a while. Besides that I have the 3 new acros which are doing well and my 2 older acros are doing great. I ended up stopping completely with any coral food or additives. I've just dosed Alk and Ca now for many weeks and the tank looks great. Still now turf algae in spots and recently a little outbreak of red cyano but overall not a big deal. Also finally fixed the plumbing in the sump so the motor sits correctly on the suction cup feet and it is so much quieter now. Here is a pic after i finally mounted the new acros and got rid of the frag rack in the display.

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  • 1 month later...
jefferythewind

I thought i woukd give an update. I've been doing well with the corals. My maintenance routine has really come down to basics: weekly water change, daily feeding fish food (Hikari) and daily testing/dosing of Alk/Ca. No more additional supplements. Now all corals are doing great. My purple millepora is just exploding. The holy grail i would say is the second best for the acros right now. All the montis and softies are doing great. I'm starting to run out of space!

 

The only negative is that a couple weeks ago my 2 cleaner shrimp which I've had for 2 years disappeared. I caught the wrasse picking at one of the dead bodies, other one I didn't find. No idea. This is also after slowly losing quite a bit of my CUC.

 

One thing i've noticed with the tank is that things are always changing. I started off after year 1 with Purple coraline growing everywhere and then over the next year it slowly receded until there was nothing left. Now i am getting both purple and green Coraline coming back. Also one day the tank started consuming more and more Alk after being steady for like 6 months. 
 

Anyways, thanks for reading.

 

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jefferythewind

Not sure what has been going on but the Holy Grail started to look terrible so I remounted it to a frag plug and put it back on the rack, along with the green millepora. They seem to be doing better and I've done more water changes recently and all the corals seems to love it.

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