The Great Wave - Waterbox Peninsula 3620 - Alkalinity fluxing!

[ninjamyst]

Did they refund the cost of the firefish too?

[DevilDuck]

1 hour ago, ninjamyst said:

Did they refund the cost of the firefish too?

No, technically not a DOA since it was alive when placed in the tank. The delivery wasn't delayed so I did not get the 7 day extra guarantee.

[DevilDuck]

My fish troubles continue.

 

Just checked the tank and my Carpenter's Wrasse and the Blue Dot Watchman goby are both missing. Not a trace to be seen. Not in the overflow, not in the sump, just vanished. I hope they didn't go carpet surfing, checked around the tank and didn't see any bodies. 

 

This is really disappointing. 

 

[Xj reefing]

Sorry for all your disappearances hopefully they are okay

[DevilDuck]

Just saw the that Blue Spot Watchman goby is still alive and well. It was hiding with the tiger pistol shrimp. So the only causualty so far was the Carpenter Wrasse. Less of a bummer.

I've made the decision to remove Richard The Dick Princess Damsel into the QT and rehome him, ending his reign of terror.

 

Not looking forward to having to catch him! 

[DevilDuck]

Fish drama continues, last evening I caught the Blue Spot Watchman swimming at the top of the tank trying to get away from Richard the Damselfish who was attacking him relentlessly. I attempted to remove Richard by he's much too quick. I caught the watchman instead and move him into the QT.

 

Unfortunately, this morning I found him dead. 

 

I've ordered a fish trap on Amazon and will attempt to trap the bully. 

 

[DevilDuck]

The trap is up and set! I have to leave town for a couple of weeks to visit my parents giving the fish some time to get used to it.

My possum wrasse has already fearlessly explored the inside looking for scraps.

Richard who hates and distrusts everything, of course is wary of it. Hoping he'll warm up to it after fasting for a few days.

 

[DevilDuck]

Found out what happened to the missing Carpenter's wrasse. I cleaned a stack of my used filter socks this morning and found the dried remains of his head and tail. 

 

Not sure if he died and ended up in the overflow. Or jumped into the overflow and died. 

[DevilDuck]

My greatest fear has surfaced, Dinos.

 

I went on a week long trip to see my parents in Chicago and came back to a tank taken over by dinos.

I don't even have words to describe the fight ahead. The glass and nearly everything is covered.

 

I'm so overwhelmed right now that I going to start a new thread in the forumn and get some major help...

 

Came home to major dino outbreak. - General Discussion - Nano-Reef Community

 

 

 

[ninjamyst]

Dang...tank issues always come up during vacations.  Good luck with the fight.  Been there done that.  Dosing nitrate and pods was the silver bullet for me.

[DevilDuck]

A little reprieve in the middle of the dino battle. Looks like my Porcelain Crab is doing great in his new home.

Noticed the color and polyp extension on the Chili Pepper plating monti is looking great under the blues.

 

 

 

[DevilDuck]

There are ups and downs in this hobby. I was riding high for a while now, but the last month and a half were very humbling.

 

I took stock of my losses today:

 

Yellow Coris Wrasse

Flasher Wrasse

Randall's goby

Blue Dot Watchman Goby

2 Astrea Snails

 

I'm going to take a break from adding any new fish until the dino outbreak is cleared.

 

On the bright side, after searching through the sand for Larry the Conch he was found alive and well. 

 

[DevilDuck]

Dino battle seems to be taking a small turn for the better. 

 

 

I believe the dark red is the start of cyanobacteria

 

The back wall is covered with some green hair algae

 

Larry The Conch makes an appearance after 3 weeks of hiding under the sand.

 

So far only coral losses have been 2 aveloporas.

[DevilDuck]

Successfully trapped and re-homed Richard "The Dick" today. He's going to a local hobbyist's 200 gallon tank.

 

Used this trap: Amazon.com : Medium Fish Trap for Aquariums/Acclimation Box : Pet Supplies

Attached a small mirror to the other end using a couple of drops of hot glue: Amazon.com : Coghlan's Featherweight Mirror : Personal Makeup Mirrors : Sports & Outdoors

 

Put the whole thing on the sand bed next to his favorite sleeping spot. A few hours later he was in the trap attacking his own reflection when I casually walked by and sprung the trap!

The tank is now a lot more peaceful, the Yellow Banded Possum Wrasse was out and about freely exploring the rock work for tasty pods.

 

[DevilDuck]

Big photo dump update.

 

5th dose of Dino X and I'm starting to see more white sand! 

 

No more large clumps of stringy dinos, more diffuse and lighter dusting. Under the microscope, there appears to be less Amphidinium some are now motionless.

 

Green hair algae has taken over the back wall and starting to take over the rocks. Not pretty but much easier to manage than dinos. 

You can see the new residents in this shot, a midas blenny and diamond watchman goby.

 

[Tamale]

Seeing all the hard work you’ve put in despite the setbacks has been awesome. Real inspiration to a new hobbyist like me who’ll almost certainly run into these problems in the future! Keep fighting the good fight!

[DevilDuck]

14 hours ago, Tamale said:

Seeing all the hard work you’ve put in despite the setbacks has been awesome. Real inspiration to a new hobbyist like me who’ll almost certainly run into these problems in the future! Keep fighting the good fight!

Thank you, the last few months have been tough! I'm hoping by reading this thread and my dino battle thread that you learn from my mistakes and never have to deal with these problems. 

[Tamale]

6 hours ago, DevilDuck said:

Thank you, the last few months have been tough! I'm hoping by reading this thread and my dino battle thread that you learn from my mistakes and never have to deal with these problems. 

It seems like almost of the problems you’ve encountered have really been out of your control and you handled them really gracefully. The Dino’s have definitely been a trip. But again you’ve been super on it!
 

 I don’t think it was ever discussed in that thread but would you attribute them invading due to the lack of phosphates? How could that have been prevented? Does your no water change experiment come into play at all do you think? 

[DevilDuck]

19 hours ago, Tamale said:

It seems like almost of the problems you’ve encountered have really been out of your control and you handled them really gracefully. The Dino’s have definitely been a trip. But again you’ve been super on it!
 

 I don’t think it was ever discussed in that thread but would you attribute them invading due to the lack of phosphates? How could that have been prevented? Does your no water change experiment come into play at all do you think? 

 

Good point, I didn't do a postmortem on what I think contributed to the dino outbreak. Thinking back, with 20/20 hindsight, I think I know the main reasons and they were all within my control. Mistakes were made mainly due to my lack of experience.

 

• Not catching it early on and misidentifying the problem - There was some dis-coloration in the sand bed back in Aug. You can actually see the dinos in my post on Aug. 30th The Great Wave - Waterbox Peninsula 3620 - Page 2 - Large Reef Journals - Nano-Reef Community. First picture of the barnacle shells. I initially mistook this for cyano or diatoms since this was a young tank, I attributed it to new tank uglies. I was in denial. Sometime in early Aug. I didn't notice the DI gel in my RODI unit was expended and was at about 2ppm. My ICP water test showed some silicates. I honestly thought the silicates were causing a minor diatom bloom. I should have positively ID'ed them with a cheap microscope and started treatment early. Now I know that the amount of silicate showing in the ICP water test was not enough to produce a large diatom bloom. 
   
• Chasing numbers and not keeping things stable - I kept forcing the often seen target of "0.03-0.05 ppm for phosphate" cycling between using PhosGuard to lower and dosing to increase phosphate too quickly. I should have let the tank mature and settle into its natural phosphate range. Keeping both nitrate and phosphate both detectable and stable instead of chasing some arbitrary number. You can clearly see the swings and my attempts to "force" the amounts looking at my phosphate and nitrate graphs from July to early Sept, leading to a huge crash in phosphate that went on uncorrected for over 2 weeks when I was out of town. This was when the dinos really gained steam and took over.
   

 

• Lack of Patience - It remains to be seen if I took the right approach when I choose the nuclear option and started dosing Dino X. I did a ton of reading on the giant Reef2Reef thread and was scared off by reports of people battling dino and not making progress over at all for 6 months to years. Many threw in the towel and restarted from scratch. This tank is in the middle of my living room and honestly, the thought of having an ugly tank for months in such a visible area of the house after investing so much into it wasn't appealing at all. I picked the riskier, easy and quick route. It will not suit every one. Time will tell if I can make it work and put the dinos into an extended remission.

 

[DevilDuck]

Video Update:

 

 

[Xj reefing]

The tank looks great!

[Tamale]

Looks amazing! Awesome work.

[DevilDuck]

I haven't seen any changes to the dino population after my 7th dose Dino X. Their number have declined significantly, but progress has slowed significantly.

Multiple samples from the water column show no sign of dinos, they just seem to inhabit the sand bed for now. 

 

These sand dwelling Amphidinium sp. are not as toxic as other varieties of dinos. I have resolved at this point to stop fighting them full force with chemicals and instead start a more natural approach. I am hoping now that the dinos are weakened, a big increase in competition will knock them out. 

 

2 days after my 8th dose, I loaded up my reactor with activated carbon and let it run all day to clear out any remaining traces of Dino X.

Turned off skimmer for the next 48 hours. UV will be left off.

I dosed some MB7 and tossed in the remaining live phyto I had and dosed some more SpongeExcel.

 

My order from Indo-Pacific Sea Farms(ipsf) also arrived, which contained the following:

• WonderMud -- find sand/mud silt mixture with a bunch of hermits, snails worms and ocean life in it
• Live Sand Activator -- pea sized gravel with snails, hermits and bristleworms in ocean water
• 2 bags Live Reef Amphipods in sea water
• Pod Mat - Large portion of ulva and red ogo macroalgae
• Sea grapes - medium portion of edible Caulerpa lentillifera macroalgae
• Some more CUC - 6 Nerites, 6 microhermits, 6 littorinid snails
• Coralline Algae Booster - playing card size plastic plate about 70% covered with corralline algae
• Sargassum sp. Macroalgae (freebie)
• Decorative Hippopus Clam Shell (freebie)

Everything arrived within 2 days from Hawaii. Packaging was very nice, and you get a lot for your money. The two freebies are nice, just not too sure what to do with the Sargassum yet. My fish got a feast of amphipods and the tank got a huge dose of biodiversity!

 

After 15 mins of temp acclimation. I added the WonderMud, which clouded the tank for a day. Pour everything in sea water and all.

 

 

Live Sand Activator after some of the WonderMud silt settled. There most of the hermits and snails that were included already scooted off and around the tank.

You can see pieced of ulva and red ogo included for the hermits to cling on to. My tiger pistol shrimp's hideout is betweent he RFK rock and the back wall. I'm sure he'll appreciate all the new building material.

 

Micro-hermits already getting to work on the gha.

 

One of the two plastic panels coated in coralline. Time will tell if it will spread.

 

An unfortunate tragedy also occurred when I was adding in the live sand and mud into the tank. It startled my green clown goby, which dove into my mini maxi carpet anemone.

I managed to free him but he is in very rough shape. I don't think he will make it through the night. 😞

 

[DevilDuck]

Goby is missing and assumed dead. 

 

I was feeling pretty bad about accidentally killing one of my favorite fish. So I thought I drop by the lfs and find a replacement.

As with any trip to the lfs, I came back with more than I originally intended.

 

They had one very small green clown goby, which went into hiding immediately after I released it into the aquarium. I haven't seem him in a couple of days.

 

I picked up a shrimp goby, nice Wheeler's shrimp goby for my Randall's (candy cane) pistol shrimp. They paired up immediately.

 

Oddly, my tiger pistol shrimp, which has been missing for weeks since my diamond goby took over his tunnel. It re-appeared and started tunneling a few inches away from the Randall's. Their proximity makes me uneasy as the tiger is twice the size of the candy cane. I may need to move the tiger pistol to the other end of the tank.

 

 

Also added this medium orange fin Tomini Tang to the tank. The largest, most expensive fish purchase I've made to date. Forgive the cloudy white specks, I just fed the tank to lure the tang out of his cave in order to get a picture.

 

I also let the lfs talk me into picking up a pencil urchin. They told me it was reef safe, but I've read some other's experiences contradicting that. Time will tell if I need to banish the urchin into the refugium. 

 

 

[DevilDuck]

I spent an hour or so toothbrush scrubbing and plucking away the green hair algae. I didn't do a perfect job, but at least it's mostly back to some bare rock.

The sand bed is now 80% clear of visible dinos. Under my cheap toy microscope, dinos are still visible, but their population density is much, much smaller. I actually have to hunt around the slide to find them. What I also do not see are diatoms, even after using up an entire bottle of SpongExcel. I've sent in my ICP test and curious to see how much silica I've added to the water.  

 

I'm cautiously ramping the lights back up to normal intensity and duration.

 

 

 

Some coral and inverts that have been impacted by the dino treatment. My pulsing xenia has died back to one cluster. Most of the xenia turned white, and lost their "fingers"

They seem to be shrinking away. I'm hoping it recovers. It was a fast-growing nuisance, but it's my fiancé's favorite coral.

 

 

My rose bubble tip anemone hasn't been happy since moving into this tank. I think the reduced lighting during the dino treatment has added even more stress.

It's tentacles have shrunk significantly and no longer bubbley. Fingers crossed it survives. 

 

Finally, we have corraline algae! Those coralline booster plates from ipsf.com and corraline encrusted shells from AddictiveReefing really did a good job seeding the tank.

 

Right now the tank is trending at .20-ish ppm for phosphates and 20-25 ppm for Nitrates. My alkalinity has been rising, not sure why. I've stopped dosing CarboCalcium for now.

 

Shout out to @nathenvan for the nice gorgonian frag!