Natalia’s Evo 13.5: alk spike aftermath

[natalia_la_loca]

This tank is more or less on autopilot as I’ve been busy with other stuff this summer. At this point, no water changes in 3.5 months. There’s a big ugly green film on the back glass that I probably should clean. On the other hand, the snails are doing great. No bubble algae observed in last 3 weeks but I have zero doubt it’ll be back.

 

 

The ppl eaters have been closed for a while, no idea why. Other zoas are fine

 

 

 

 

[Merthynia]

On 6/28/2021 at 3:23 PM, natalia_la_loca said:

these zoas like this tank too, they’re growing…

 

Wow! Natalia you’ve upgraded to a tank! I’ve always admired your reef bowls and I loved checking on the progress. I happened to stumble across this thread tonight and I have to ask if you know the name of the paly/zoa on the right of this image. They are my FAVORITE morph that I used to have in my 3 gallon and I’ve been trying for years to find those suckers. 

[gena]

That "big ugly green film on the back glass" is awesome!!!!  Plus your pods love it, I'm sure.  I know the pods in my tank are all over it.  Looking fabulous in there!!!!!

[natalia_la_loca]

17 hours ago, Merthynia said:

Wow! Natalia you’ve upgraded to a tank! I’ve always admired your reef bowls and I loved checking on the progress. I happened to stumble across this thread tonight and I have to ask if you know the name of the paly/zoa on the right of this image. They are my FAVORITE morph that I used to have in my 3 gallon and I’ve been trying for years to find those suckers. 

Yeah, I’m back in it, decided I wanted to have some fishies again ☺️ 
 

I think those zoas were sold to me as petroglyphs but they may be something different. I’ve had them for at least 3 years. They’re some kind of vamp morph. Here’s a pic of them from above that I took this afternoon. With diva damsel 

 

 

6 hours ago, gena said:

That "big ugly green film on the back glass" is awesome!!!!  Plus your pods love it, I'm sure.  I know the pods in my tank are all over it.  Looking fabulous in there!!!!!

Haha I’ll go with that 😆 the pods love it for sure!

[Merthynia]

15 minutes ago, natalia_la_loca said:

Yeah, I’m back in it, decided I wanted to have some fishies again ☺️ 
 

I think those zoas were sold to me as petroglyphs but they may be something different. I’ve had them for at least 3 years. They’re some kind of vamp morph. Here’s a pic of them from above that I took this afternoon. With diva damsel 

 

 

Haha I’ll go with that 😆 the pods love it for sure!

I love having little fish to dart around the tanks! Inverts are amazing, but nothing beats some of the tiny goby and wrasse species! Have you ran into aggressiveness with your damsel? I’ve thought about adding one to my 30 gallon tank, but I don’t need another jerk.  

 

That image is fantastic!! If you ever frag a polyp off, let me know! I’d love to buy one! 

 

[natalia_la_loca]

5 hours ago, Merthynia said:

Have you ran into aggressiveness with your damsel? I’ve thought about adding one to my 30 gallon tank, but I don’t need another jerk.  

 

That image is fantastic!! If you ever frag a polyp off, let me know! I’d love to buy one! 

 

Tbh the only real aggression I’ve seen is from the dottyback, who pursued and nipped my pistol shrimp and watchman goby relentlessly until I had to rehome them. The dotty tries to go after the damsel too, but the damsel is way too fast.

 

I actually have a polyp from that colony growing out. It shrank a bunch because it was in the shade in my reefbowl but it’s growing again now that I’ve moved it to the nano. If it continues to get bigger and start to multiply, it’s all yours.

[Merthynia]

2 hours ago, natalia_la_loca said:

Tbh the only real aggression I’ve seen is from the dottyback, who pursued and nipped my pistol shrimp and watchman goby relentlessly until I had to rehome them. The dotty tries to go after the damsel too, but the damsel is way too fast.

 

I actually have a polyp from that colony growing out. It shrank a bunch because it was in the shade in my reefbowl but it’s growing again now that I’ve moved it to the nano. If it continues to get bigger and start to multiply, it’s all yours.

Nano-reef crashed and ate my comment from earlier it seems. I did not realize that dottybacks were that aggressive! I’ve never owned one myself. Do you have any secrets for your dragon’s breath? I’m pretty sure that’s what I spy there. The few times I’ve managed to get some, it’s turned bright orange and melted away.

 

Omg you are amazing! When I have some time and my laptop, I’ll try to link an image of the colony of those that I had, I’m positive they are the exact same. They are in my 3 gal thread.

[natalia_la_loca]

On 8/30/2021 at 12:40 AM, Merthynia said:

Do you have any secrets for your dragon’s breath? I’m pretty sure that’s what I spy there. The few times I’ve managed to get some, it’s turned bright orange and melted away.

 

When I have some time and my laptop, I’ll try to link an image of the colony of those that I had, I’m positive they are the exact same. They are in my 3 gal thread.

It was sold to me as dragons tongue, halymenia durvillei. I don’t do anything special for it other than not doing water changes 😅 maybe dosing all-for-reef adds some trace elements it needs. I also have gracilaria hayi, which is super vigorous and great for nutrient export.

 

yeah I’d be curious to see if what you had is the same as these zoas! They’re really pretty and healthy, they’re one of the few zoas I’ve had that show a real feeding response.

[natalia_la_loca]

Tank is still doing great overall, despite the fact that it went without AFR dosing for a few days because i miscalculated the fluid volume in the dosing container and it ran dry. Nutrients also got really low because I got busy and let the macro grow too big. Possibly as a result of those things, I lost the people eaters 😞 and the pink goniopora isn’t looking happy. Hoping it will come back now that I’m being better about maintenance. The other corals look fine.

 

During the period of neglect, some bubble algae popped up again in the usual spots. It doesn’t seem to be spreading further. (Yet.) It’s still easy to pull the affected frags, remove manually and treat outside the tank. More coralline is growing now. It’s starting to compete with the green film algae on the back glass.

 

BTW I’m now dosing 8ml of Tommy’s Phyto (4 sp blend) daily, and 8 drops Brightwell coral aminos. Still no water changes. Running UV sterilizer 8 hrs nightly on a timer.

 

FTS

 

 

 

This acan lost most of its color in the reefbowl. It’s looking much better now

 

 

This ric had some creepy red hair algae on it the other day. Pulled it, peroxide, back to tank, all clear.

 

My stomatella snails are breeding!!!! Here’s a baby

Finally, need to marvel at the healing powers of serpent stars. My harlequin serpent had some terrifying injuries a few months ago, I suspect because of the pistol shrimp (no new injuries since returning the shrimp to the LFS). The black and white pattern has also changed, maybe as part of the healing process? Idk.
 

Injury first spotted

 

About 3 weeks later

 

Yesterday

[natalia_la_loca]

Blue leg hermit has a baby trochus hat today 🥰

 

 

[natalia_la_loca]

This pic shows the little dots of pink coralline that are popping up everywhere. 

this tank may not be doing it for goniopora (thinking I might move it to the reefbowl, where my original 5 year old colony is still doing great) but nephthea, duncan and euphyllia are absolutely thriving. I love how they undulate in the current.

 

 

FTS

 

 

 

[natalia_la_loca]

Btw the porcelain crab still seems to be doing well, pops up occasionally at feeding time. Was hangin with the serpent star yesterday.

 

[natalia_la_loca]

No water changes in 7 months…niiice

 

Fish, inverts and LPS are doing great. Softies are a mixed bag. The green ricordea is doing great, but orange rics do not like this tank. And yesterday I finally moved the goni to the reefbowl because it looks terrible. Its mom is still thriving in the reefbowl, so I’m optimistic.

 

I’m still dosing All for Reef via the Kamoer X1 and 8 ml of Tommy’s Phyto manually each day. Manual top off a couple times a week.
 

Caracalla the dottyback is doing a surprisingly good job cleaning the sand. Now and then I see little snowstorms when they move the sand around, and I have to change out the filter floss a couple times a week.

 

Saw and removed a couple more bubble algaes a couple weeks ago. Although it’s in the system, it shows no sign of taking over. Fingers crossed that trend continues.

 

I’m harvesting gracilaria hayi about once a month for nutrient export. Other than that, nutrients seem to be taken up very nicely by the corals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[natalia_la_loca]

A year and a half since the last update! As with the reefbowl, a few things have changed.

 

Over the winter I let maintenance slide. The nephthea and frogspawn colonies were getting huge and I wasn’t super confident about fragging either of them. They started to shade and kill other corals, including the entire bubblegum digitata colony, which was probably using up a lot of calcium and alkalinity (bit of foreshadowing there). Things were more or less on autopilot with dosing All for Reef. I slacked off on water testing too, which…bad idea!

 

Early this spring I noticed one of the micromussas was bailing polyps. I stupidly figured I wasn’t feeding it enough and just tried target feeding. I didn’t realize something was seriously wrong until the duncan and frogspawn started bailing too. Finally I did a water test and alkalinity was above the maximum number detectable (Salifert).

 

Another dumb mistake: I figured I could reduce the alk gradually by just turning off the AFR dosing and doing a couple of water changes. This didn’t lower the kH fast enough, so every LPS proceeded to bail and all the zoas closed and started to recede. I was also super bummed to lose the hermit and porcelain crabs. Finally, the alk spike may have killed Caracalla the dottyback, who went into their cave and never came out again.

 

By the time I took real action and changed out all the water, the damage was pretty much done. The few remaining LPS continued to bail until they were all gone despite the kH being a solid 9. But the zoas started to recover. The Gracilaria hayi came apart in a few pieces but survived. Caligula the damsel, Beetlejuice the serpent star, and the green nephthea showed no stress throughout. There were also no nuisance algae blooms other than a slight uptick in bubble algae.

 

As with the reefbowl, disaster brought some positive changes. With little left to lose, I decided to take on the bubble algae by adding an emerald crab. Ive found it to be super efficient and harmless to coral. Interestingly, it doesn’t eat the Gracilaria hayi macroalgae…in fact it delicately picks bubble algae off the leaves.

 

I also fragged the nephthea like crazy to keep it from dominating the tank again. After some trial and error I figured out I could glue a little piece of Marco rock to a frag plug, then rubber band frags of nephthea to the rock, nestling them in a hollow area of the rock so that the rubber band doesn’t cut off circulation. After about 3 weeks the frags attach and I remove the rubber bands. Another week and the frags go to the LFS.

 

For now I’m sticking to just weekly 20% water changes rather than going back to AFR. Since I’ve been dosing nitrate and phosphate in the reefbowl to fight dinos, I’ve been paying more attention to the nutrient numbers in the Evo too.

 

And I’ve gotten a bunch of new corals. Rather than going back to euphyllia, I’ve filled a lot of space with zoas. I added a couple of blastos, a couple of micromussas, a koji wada pink nephthea (bit overrated imo), some rhodactis shrooms. And since I’ve changed up the maintenance regimen, I decided to see if this new environment would be more hospitable to ricordea and goniopora, both of which have failed to thrive in the Evo in the past. So far, they’re doing great.

 

 

I also added a porcelain crab and a hermit crab. The porcelain crab likes to hang out on the green nephthea.

 

 

Finally I was faced with the prospect of getting a new fish. I knew this was risky because I had a well established damsel in a small tank, so I decided the best option was another dottyback who could defend itself if necessary. Enter Nero the neon dottyback. After some brief bullying by Caligula, Nero successfully got established and the two fish now actually get along better than Caligula and Caracalla did. Nero is pretty good about moving sand around in aesthetically pleasing ways, something I missed from having a pistol shrimp. Nero also loves to move asterinas who get too close to their cave, which I find incredibly cute.

 

 

 

So the Evo is doing a lot better now. Phosphate is weirdly high, hovering at 1.0 no matter how many water changes I do. Nitrate is so low that I’ve been dosing NeoNitro. I’ve been fragging the gracilaria but have kept the frags in the tank for now, in hopes that they’ll take in some of that phosphate. In any case, the corals look great and nuisance algae is virtually nonexistent.

 

I feel like I should clean the back glass but I’m a little worried my snails will starve. Except for the cowrie, they were all born in this tank. 

 

speaking of snails: after carefully adding a few tiny limpets that came in on frags, I seem to have a breeding population of limpets, and they survived the alk spike. All the trochus snails and the cowrie survived too, as did the isopods and amphipods. I did add some Galaxy Pods from algaebarn in hopes of replenishing the pod population. Idk if it did much, but I see plenty of pods now.

 

btw I changed up the decoration outside the tank too!! I love these mantis shrimp and ichthyosaur plushies ❤️

 

 

 

 

 

[Woodini]

Awesome tank!! I like the lighting setup too…. Very clean

[natalia_la_loca]

49 minutes ago, Woodini said:

Awesome tank!! I like the lighting setup too…. Very clean

Thanks! Was very much going for a clean look with minimal cords or visible equipment. I’m really glad I went for a free standing light fixture, I like the look and it makes it easier to get in there for maintenance.

[Lebowski_]

On 6/3/2023 at 4:09 PM, natalia_la_loca said:

A year and a half since the last update! As with the reefbowl, a few things have changed.

 

Over the winter I let maintenance slide. The nephthea and frogspawn colonies were getting huge and I wasn’t super confident about fragging either of them. They started to shade and kill other corals, including the entire bubblegum digitata colony, which was probably using up a lot of calcium and alkalinity (bit of foreshadowing there). Things were more or less on autopilot with dosing All for Reef. I slacked off on water testing too, which…bad idea!

 

Early this spring I noticed one of the micromussas was bailing polyps. I stupidly figured I wasn’t feeding it enough and just tried target feeding. I didn’t realize something was seriously wrong until the duncan and frogspawn started bailing too. Finally I did a water test and alkalinity was above the maximum number detectable (Salifert).

 

Another dumb mistake: I figured I could reduce the alk gradually by just turning off the AFR dosing and doing a couple of water changes. This didn’t lower the kH fast enough, so every LPS proceeded to bail and all the zoas closed and started to recede. I was also super bummed to lose the hermit and porcelain crabs. Finally, the alk spike may have killed Caracalla the dottyback, who went into their cave and never came out again.

 

By the time I took real action and changed out all the water, the damage was pretty much done. The few remaining LPS continued to bail until they were all gone despite the kH being a solid 9. But the zoas started to recover. The Gracilaria hayi came apart in a few pieces but survived. Caligula the damsel, Beetlejuice the serpent star, and the green nephthea showed no stress throughout. There were also no nuisance algae blooms other than a slight uptick in bubble algae.

 

As with the reefbowl, disaster brought some positive changes. With little left to lose, I decided to take on the bubble algae by adding an emerald crab. Ive found it to be super efficient and harmless to coral. Interestingly, it doesn’t eat the Gracilaria hayi macroalgae…in fact it delicately picks bubble algae off the leaves.

 

I also fragged the nephthea like crazy to keep it from dominating the tank again. After some trial and error I figured out I could glue a little piece of Marco rock to a frag plug, then rubber band frags of nephthea to the rock, nestling them in a hollow area of the rock so that the rubber band doesn’t cut off circulation. After about 3 weeks the frags attach and I remove the rubber bands. Another week and the frags go to the LFS.

 

For now I’m sticking to just weekly 20% water changes rather than going back to AFR. Since I’ve been dosing nitrate and phosphate in the reefbowl to fight dinos, I’ve been paying more attention to the nutrient numbers in the Evo too.

 

And I’ve gotten a bunch of new corals. Rather than going back to euphyllia, I’ve filled a lot of space with zoas. I added a couple of blastos, a couple of micromussas, a koji wada pink nephthea (bit overrated imo), some rhodactis shrooms. And since I’ve changed up the maintenance regimen, I decided to see if this new environment would be more hospitable to ricordea and goniopora, both of which have failed to thrive in the Evo in the past. So far, they’re doing great.

 

 

I also added a porcelain crab and a hermit crab. The porcelain crab likes to hang out on the green nephthea.

 

 

Finally I was faced with the prospect of getting a new fish. I knew this was risky because I had a well established damsel in a small tank, so I decided the best option was another dottyback who could defend itself if necessary. Enter Nero the neon dottyback. After some brief bullying by Caligula, Nero successfully got established and the two fish now actually get along better than Caligula and Caracalla did. Nero is pretty good about moving sand around in aesthetically pleasing ways, something I missed from having a pistol shrimp. Nero also loves to move asterinas who get too close to their cave, which I find incredibly cute.

 

 

 

So the Evo is doing a lot better now. Phosphate is weirdly high, hovering at 1.0 no matter how many water changes I do. Nitrate is so low that I’ve been dosing NeoNitro. I’ve been fragging the gracilaria but have kept the frags in the tank for now, in hopes that they’ll take in some of that phosphate. In any case, the corals look great and nuisance algae is virtually nonexistent.

 

I feel like I should clean the back glass but I’m a little worried my snails will starve. Except for the cowrie, they were all born in this tank. 

 

speaking of snails: after carefully adding a few tiny limpets that came in on frags, I seem to have a breeding population of limpets, and they survived the alk spike. All the trochus snails and the cowrie survived too, as did the isopods and amphipods. I did add some Galaxy Pods from algaebarn in hopes of replenishing the pod population. Idk if it did much, but I see plenty of pods now.

 

btw I changed up the decoration outside the tank too!! I love these mantis shrimp and ichthyosaur plushies ❤️

 

 

 

 

 

Truly awesome! Love your style.

[natalia_la_loca]

4 hours ago, Lebowski_ said:

Truly awesome! Love your style.

aw thanks ☺️☺️☺️

[natalia_la_loca]

Something has survived!

 

The other day I found this tiny loose frogspawn behind the rocks. It appears to be the only survivor of all the LPS that bailed out after the alk spike. So I got one of those glass plant cups for freshwater planted tanks, added some marco rock rubble, and popped it in. Really curious whether I can nurse it back to health. 
 

[phinatic]

1 hour ago, natalia_la_loca said:

Something has survived!

 

The other day I found this tiny loose frogspawn behind the rocks. It appears to be the only survivor of all the LPS that bailed out after the alk spike. So I got one of those glass plant cups for freshwater planted tanks, added some marco rock rubble, and popped it in. Really curious whether I can nurse it back to health. 
 

Looks like the bailout survival strategy worked! Pretty cool to see nature at work.

[debbeach13]

Dam it's cute!

[natalia_la_loca]

I knew I’d have to face this eventually, but it happened a little sooner than expected: had to move this bernardpora to the sand bed because it was pissing off the pink goniopora next to it. Looks like it’s already sending out some sweepers to wipe out any competition in its new spot. It’s next to one of Nero’s little caves, so I’m looking forward to lots of photo bombs.
 

Here is the pink goni, with the bernardpora’s replacement: a teal-green goni from Unique Corals. I’m hoping these two will be able to touch without problems. (never mind drama queen in foreground)

Btw, I noticed that pink goni has a single bright green polyp. I’m hoping it will grow more without the bernardpora annoying it. It’s easier to see from above when the polyps are retracted.

[natalia_la_loca]

Probably too early to judge one way or the other, but it seems like the frogspawn may be starting to color up. Either way, it at least isn’t getting worse! It’s also kind of fun having this little wine glass thing in my tank. It’s like a mini reefbowl lol.

 

 

Since I’ve gotten more proactive about detritus removal in the reefbowl after the dino outbreak, I’ve been working more on detritus control in the Evo too. The other day during a regular WC I pulled the big nephthea rock and siphoned the sand underneath it. Holy crap what a lot of mulm, the waste water was dark gray. Now I’m thinking maybe I’ll blast the sand with a turkey baster every morning to get stuff into the water column for mechanical filtration. I don’t want to get old tank syndrome later on. Have also read that dinos like high-detritus tanks.

 

one thing that was nice is there was no sulphur smell when I pulled the big rock. I’m guessing that’s because I’m running a shallow sand bed.

[banasophia]

I hadn’t heard of bernardporas before so I just looked them up and this was one of the first articles I saw about them… talking about their aggression toward goniopora and their formation of those sweepers that apparently have additional stinging cells… you probably already know all about this, but I thought I’d post the link in case anyone else following along wants to check it out. 

 

https://reefbuilders.com/2020/08/20/goniopora-vs-bernardpora-fight-which-flowerpot-coral-will-win/

 

 

I really love your damsel!!

[natalia_la_loca]

9 minutes ago, banasophia said:

I hadn’t heard of bernardporas before so I just looked them up and this was one of the first articles I saw about them… talking about their aggression toward goniopora and their formation of those sweepers that apparently have additional stinging cells… you probably already know all about this, but I thought I’d post the link in case anyone else following along wants to check it out. 

 

https://reefbuilders.com/2020/08/20/goniopora-vs-bernardpora-fight-which-flowerpot-coral-will-win/

 

 

I really love your damsel!!

Yup, that’s exactly the article that clued me in about bernardpora and their aggression, thanks for linking it here! They can be confusing because they’re so similar to goniopora. Also they’re sometimes sold as “micro goniopora” or just goniopora. Other than the sweepers, it’s a wonderful coral so far.

 

I know right?! Caligula is such a great fish! I absolutely love azure damsels. Completely worth the (relatively minor as damsels go) risk of aggression.