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Innovative Marine Aquariums

Adventures in keeping a SPS reef


Llorgon

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I tested my water again on Sunday night. My main 3 consumption has dropped again. 

 

Temp: 78

Salinity: 1.026

Alk: 9.6

Cal: 485

Mag: 1500

Nitrate: 6.1

Phosphate: 0.07

 

I'm on day 4 after dosing flux rx. Seeing a bit of an improvement on the gha situation. I'm still scrubbing the rocks daily to help speed the process along.

 

Apex is still being a pain and I haven't got it back up and connected to fusion yet, but I am working with support.

 

Flux rx says it can take 10-14 days to work. Should I wait until the 14 days to start adding pods and CUC or better to start adding them now? My only concern is what if it isn't actually gha and just looks like it. Then the new CUC starves.

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I'm not following super close but my instinct says you gotta focus on the basics. Forget chasing parameters and dosing with literally anything. Reset from whatever chemical measures you're taking.

 

IMO all you need to get to a good place are: Light (intense but short photo periods), flow (lots and lots of random flow), water changes (one big one and lots of small ones for where you are now), cleanup crew (lots of variety. In my 30 I have 20 various hermits and 30 various snails, and an emerald), and patience.

 

I'd run carbon in your case but that's it. A chaeto reverse fuge is a good idea too.

 

I remember one of my tanks looking a lot like yours and this is the advice I'd give myself.

 

Sorry if I'm jumping in and lecturing but I looked at your most recent photos and thought maybe I could help.

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20 hours ago, Looselyhuman said:

I'm not following super close but my instinct says you gotta focus on the basics. Forget chasing parameters and dosing with literally anything. Reset from whatever chemical measures you're taking.

 

IMO all you need to get to a good place are: Light (intense but short photo periods), flow (lots and lots of random flow), water changes (one big one and lots of small ones for where you are now), cleanup crew (lots of variety. In my 30 I have 20 various hermits and 30 various snails, and an emerald), and patience.

 

I'd run carbon in your case but that's it. A chaeto reverse fuge is a good idea too.

 

I remember one of my tanks looking a lot like yours and this is the advice I'd give myself.

 

Sorry if I'm jumping in and lecturing but I looked at your most recent photos and thought maybe I could help.

You're definitely right on needing to get back to basics. I added the Flux rx to try and make a bit of a dent on the algae before adding some more cuc.

 

I'm going to add a seed pack of pods and get some more cuc. Once the cycle of flux rx is done, I am going to get some chaeto to replace the caulerpa in the refugium.

 

What would you recommend CUC wise? Right now, I have a couple trochus, a few cerith, a bunch of small stomatella's and there was a fighting conch in the sand, but I haven't seen it for awhile.

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Sounds good. Tell me about your lights and flow?

 

11 minutes ago, Llorgon said:

What would you recommend CUC wise?

Hermit crabs. Get a few of any kind you can find. Diversity helps because they all pick at different stuff. About one per 1-2 gallons.. 

 

1‐2 Turbo snails. I wouldn't usually recommend but they're amazing at GHA. They're also bulldozers and you may want to re-home when things are looking up. Trochus and ceriths are good. Get more of them too. 🙂

 

Check out Reef Cleaners. I always get extra hermit shells too.

 

An emerald or two wouldn't hurt.

 

Do some big WCs and run carbon before you add CUC.

 

I'm against chemical treatments like flux in general. They don't get to root causes, stress livestock, and kill diversity, which you want to help balance and compete with pests.

 

For really bad algae (is that all GHA or some Bryopsis?) I like manual removal, peroxide targeting, diverse, hungry, CUC, and elelevated mag (esp. if any of that is bryopsis) and temperature (80+).

 

The reverse cycle chaeto should help. Intense light on that.

 

Keep us posted!

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2 hours ago, Looselyhuman said:

Sounds good. Tell me about your lights and flow?

 

Hermit crabs. Get a few of any kind you can find. Diversity helps because they all pick at different stuff. About one per 1-2 gallons.. 

 

1‐2 Turbo snails. I wouldn't usually recommend but they're amazing at GHA. They're also bulldozers and you may want to re-home when things are looking up. Trochus and ceriths are good. Get more of them too. 🙂

 

Check out Reef Cleaners. I always get extra hermit shells too.

 

An emerald or two wouldn't hurt.

 

Do some big WCs and run carbon before you add CUC.

 

I'm against chemical treatments like flux in general. They don't get to root causes, stress livestock, and kill diversity, which you want to help balance and compete with pests.

 

For really bad algae (is that all GHA or some Bryopsis?) I like manual removal, peroxide targeting, diverse, hungry, CUC, and elelevated mag (esp. if any of that is bryopsis) and temperature (80+).

 

The reverse cycle chaeto should help. Intense light on that.

 

Keep us posted!

Lights are 2 radion Xr30 Blue's AB+ setting at around 40%.

Flow is 2 octo pulse 2's. They are on SPS mode and vary from 15-85% speed. I probably need more flow or at least play around with the placement. I have been thinking of getting a gyre or two.

 

I'm in Canada so reef cleaners isn't an option. I try and order CUC from various LFS when they are in stock.

 

I'm hesitant on the crabs since the last time I had them they would kill the snails for their shells.

 

My idea with the flux rx was to get rid of as much algae as I could and then start adding the CUC and pods and the rest so it wouldn't come back. I'm 5 days into the flux rx treatment. I am going to do a water change on Sunday.

 

I'm really not sure on what kind of algae it is, I think it's gha, but it could be lyngbya. Another reason I was hoping the flux rx would help out in knocking it back.

 

Water changes are an interesting one. Before the cyano and gha, I had about 25 growing SPS frags. From Jan- end of June they were growing, then after one water change my pacman RTN'd. Since then, after every water change more SPS losses would occur. I'm now down to 4 frags. When things were going well, I was doing weekly wc, but after all these issues started people said to do monthly water changes instead, so I am giving that a try. Sunday is about a month, so I will do a 15g water change then.

1 hour ago, Looselyhuman said:

Oh one more thing. Your sandbed is in rough shape. Stir up a section right before each water change. Don't go crazy as a lot of shit will come up. Or vacuum..

Ya, the sand has gone to shit. Common thing in my tanks even if I vacuum. It was looking alright after adding the fighting conch, but it's looking bad again so I am thinking the conch might not be alive. I have been stirring the left side daily to try and help with the cyano.

 

The tank in general is just a mess after whatever affected it in the summer. It hit my older 25g as well unfortunately.

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Ok sounds like you're set on a course.. I feel you need the crabs (see note about extra shells), more, smaller WCs --  despite the bad experience -- and more flow couldn't hurt.

 

This is the basics stuff.  WCs get you back to a baseline state. It shouldn't be painful to get there but if corals have adapted to weird conditions it could cause problems. You can't stay like that forever though. 🙂

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Made a few purchases today.

 

Ordered a large seed pack of pods/rotifers, it's rated for a 100gal+ tanks so hopefully that will help in cleaning up some of the algae

 

Ordered 5 cerith and 5 nassarius snails. I'm going to start small in case it is lyngbya and not gha so I don't spend a bunch of money on CUC and have them all die.

 

Ordered another tunze refugium light and an 2k gyre to help add some flow.

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It's now 9 days after adding flux Rx. There seems to be no change in the algae. Since there was pretty much no die off, I'm assuming this is lyngbya and not gha.

 

Here's the tank after not scrubbing the rocks or stirring the cyano side of the sand for 2 days.

 

I'm going to do a 15g water change tomorrow and try and suck out as much of all the nasty stuff as I can.

 

The pods and snails I ordered should come on Tuesday. I ordered a pod seed pack rated for 100g tank, so I hope they can help out a bit in cleaning things up.

 

Since I was finally able to get the apex connected to fusion again, I can see what the pH is doing. pH seems to go between 8.4 - 8.2.

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6 hours ago, Jaren45 said:

Don't lose hope yet, flucanozole will take much longer than 9 days to start working. All 3 times I used it it took around 20-25 days after dosing

Oh really? I've only dosed it once before on my 25g and all the algae was pretty much gone by day 4. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Been away on a fishing trip for 5 days. Came back to a tank covered in algae 😞 all over the rocks, really looking crappy.

 

The pods seed pack came on Thursday while I was away and I had my wife add it to the tank for me. They haven't made a dent in the dt algae or cyano.

 

It's pretty safe to say that the flux rx didn't do anything to the algae. So I am definitely thinking I am dealing with lyngbya.

 

The caulerpa in the refugium is now completely gone. Not sure what happened when I was away, but it's gone now.

 

My gyre pump and second refugium light came today so I will hopefully be getting them setup in the next few days.

 

Anyone have any suggestions on gyre placement? I will have 2 octo pulse 2 and one 2k gyre.

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Since all my recent posts have been negative lately, here is some good news. Colour is coming back to my one montipora! I also saw my fighting conch for the first time in weeks.

 

I'm seeing some bubble algae on the rocks as well. Not sure if that is good or bad.

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I spent some time today pulling out algae from the display. It pulls off the rocks pretty easily so hopefully that is a good sign. I pulled out about another cup. I will do some scrubbing and pulling out of algae again tonight.

 

I picked up some peroxide today so I can start trying the 1ml/10g at night and see how that goes.

 

I'm looking for some positive ID on this algae. It didn't seem to respond to flux Rx, but it pulls off the rocks pretty easily and doesn't leave much behind. See pictures 

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I'm slowly making a bit of a dent in the algae. Since all the snails I added seem to have survived, I'm going to slowly start adding more.

 

I can see more bubble algae showing up on the rocks. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but I guess I will need to get some hermits or an emerald crab.

 

I really need to find a good way of getting the algae off the LPS bases. They are really annoying the corals. I'm thinking of trying a peroxide dip. Unless anyone has better suggestions?

 

I did a 10g water change on the weekend and I vacuumed the left side of the tank. Obviously I didn't get all the cyano because I can see small patches starting to come back.

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New snails and crabs have been in the tank for a few days and seem to be doing well.

 

I have been really focusing on the two top rocks for algae removal this week and I seem to be making some progress.

 

I have been looking into peroxide dipping euphyllia, everything says they handle it well. So I'm going to try that this weekend to get the algae off the frags.

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I did another water change yesterday and sucked out a bunch of the algae and scrubbed the rocks. I'm definitely seeing progress. One of the trochus snails is even on the rocks today!

 

I tried a h2o2 dip on the euphyllia frags. I put them in a bucket of tank water and then added h2o2 until I saw bubbles and left them in there for 3 minutes. This morning, most are open a bit more than before, but I didn't succeed in killing off the algae. I think I will try a stronger dip later on this week and see if that will kill the algae.

 

My space invader pectina, which took a big hit still has algae at the dead parts, but is looking way more puffier than it has been.

 

On the downside, because there always has to be a downside, I can see small red dots on a bunch of my LPS. I'm guessing my original dip of the corals when I put them in the tank, didn't kill them all off. The guy I got these from said they could be red planaria. Hopefully if I do a h2o2 dip of all LPS it will get rid of these guys as well.

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I did a test dip on a euphyllia last night in full h2o2 for 2 mins. No adverse effects that I saw last night, once lights come on I will check today and see how it's doing. Hopefully it killed all the algae.

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