Hello all. I decided to be brave and start a thread on my pretty-sad biocube in hopes that someday in the future I will be able to see how far it has come.
As the first post it's a long read, but might help somebody avoid my errors, or at least provide some sympathetic groans ;-)
The back story; I have about 15 years of sporadic reefing experience in total. I fired up this tank roughly 6 years ago when we moved to our current home. I have limited resources to put toward the tank, so I have tried to find the highest quality mid-level equipment that I can. The tank is a 29 gallon biocube AIO. I have it retrofitted with a Captive Reef 120w LED lighting system (no longer in business as far as I can tell), a couple current USA circulation pumps on a wave timer, an AquaC remora HOB skimmer, and a Tunze osmolator 3155 ATO.
The tank ran well for 3 years as a mixed reef, with sps , lps, and zoa's all doing well. Then the trouble started...I brought in some live rock, did a carbonated water flush to chase out any bad critters (did find some fire worms) cured it, and added it to my aquascape. First I noticed an isopod stuck to the side of my clown fish. Turns out I had imported cirolanid ispods. I managed to catch them all over a period of several weeks, mostly by using my own hand as bait after the lights went out.... Those suckers are so predatory that they would dart out of the rocks and attach to my fingers! I could feel their bite as a little prick, but it was the only way I could find to catch them.
Shortly after the isopods were no more, I noticed my zoa garden receding. Then I lost a small goby, as well as my Pederson's anemone shrimp. Finally, after much flashlight investigation, I found a eunicid worm in one of the rocks. He was almost 6 inches long with pretty black and white mouth tentacles. Bad guy did a lot of damage before I caught him!
A few weeks after Eunice left the tank, I started seeing red planaria. The whole tank was soon carpeted, as they do. I tried every non-chemical method I could find to reduce numbers, but when they started stressing my sps corals I used Salifert flatworm exit. Despite running 4x the carbon that I usually did, the death toxins nuked all of my sps corals, including a 10-inch bird's nest coral, an 8-inch green planet acropora, and all of my LPS. So now, at about year 4, the fish, snails, some zoa's, sea whips, and one encrusting montipora were the only survivors.
At this same time, I started having some health problems, and my husband and I were also starting a small business. Discouraged and with plenty else to do, the tank fell by the wayside. I stopped testing, stopped dosing, drastically reduced water changes, and basically just kept it topped off.
This period of severe neglect lasted for almost 2 years. During this time, fern caulerpa proliferated until the tank was a green jungle filled with amphipods and spaghetti worms. The fish (two PJ Cardinals, an oscelaris clown, an orchid dottyback, and a kole tang) flourished in this environment, as did one particular zoa. Interestingly, there was so much life in the jungle that my fish were virtually feeding themselves, and were getting chubby on just a few supplemental feedings a week.
With the start of the new year, I decided that I needed to either revive the tank or take it down. After some soul-searching I decided that the joy I get from a healthy reef outweighs the time commitment needed to keep it that way. I wish that I had taken a picture of the jungle, but I didn't. I ripped that stuff out by the gallon-full. Talk about some nutrient export! What was left was a brown, detritus-filled landscape. I discovered a few choked-out zoa's and a sea whip under the green, as well as a surprise that my encrusting montipora (I think it's a mind trick, but too discolored to be sure right now), as well as a Duncan coral had managed to hold on.
Testing revealed that other than very low calcium, and fairly high phosphorus, the params weren't that bad, so I did a lot of detritus siphoning and water changes over the next week, then bought some new corals.
The tank is now re-stocked with some brand new coral frags that I will be adding to over time, and slowly getting cleaner and brighter.
Thank you to anyone who has made it this far!
My big takeaways; you can never quarantine enough, you can catch small isopods at night using your fingers as bait, fish like jungles, tanks can survive more than you may think, and nothing beats regular maintenance!
Current situation: same tough as nails 5-year-old fish (kole tang, oscelaris clown, orchid dottyback, and a pair of PJ cardinals), some new sea whips, sps coral, florida ricordea, favia, and cyphastrea, all too new to evaluate yet. Running the same equipment as before, but I have one filter basket set up with Innovative Marine nuvo purity pack (a combo of mechanical and chemical filtration), and the other set up with macro algae and live rock rubble seeded with pods. I have a submersible grow light on this side.
I dose kalk in my ATO reservoir, and hand dose calcium, magnesium, and alkalinity as needed based on testing. Once I have a routine down I will report it!
Future:
Continue cleanup and caulerpa control. I have a viparspectra 165w programmable LED light coming next week. It's off-brand but the reviews were good both here and reefcentral, so I will see!
I know I probably jumped the gun on starting new sps frags before I have everything completely worked out, but I will evaluate how my starter frags are doing and normalize my routine, then probably get a few more acropora and revive my zoa garden... I miss them!
I like having some interesting inverts, so will probably introduce an abalone, urchin, and possibly some smaller cleaner shrimp in time.
My goal is to really streamline my maintenance so that I can continue to do a good job over the long run, while keeping my tank as a stress-reliever instead of a stress-er
The post-clean-out wasteland Jan 2, 2020
(white lights)
The tank today (Jan 11,2020), 9 days later, white lights again
As the first post it's a long read, but might help somebody avoid my errors, or at least provide some sympathetic groans ;-)
The back story; I have about 15 years of sporadic reefing experience in total. I fired up this tank roughly 6 years ago when we moved to our current home. I have limited resources to put toward the tank, so I have tried to find the highest quality mid-level equipment that I can. The tank is a 29 gallon biocube AIO. I have it retrofitted with a Captive Reef 120w LED lighting system (no longer in business as far as I can tell), a couple current USA circulation pumps on a wave timer, an AquaC remora HOB skimmer, and a Tunze osmolator 3155 ATO.
The tank ran well for 3 years as a mixed reef, with sps , lps, and zoa's all doing well. Then the trouble started...I brought in some live rock, did a carbonated water flush to chase out any bad critters (did find some fire worms) cured it, and added it to my aquascape. First I noticed an isopod stuck to the side of my clown fish. Turns out I had imported cirolanid ispods. I managed to catch them all over a period of several weeks, mostly by using my own hand as bait after the lights went out.... Those suckers are so predatory that they would dart out of the rocks and attach to my fingers! I could feel their bite as a little prick, but it was the only way I could find to catch them.
Shortly after the isopods were no more, I noticed my zoa garden receding. Then I lost a small goby, as well as my Pederson's anemone shrimp. Finally, after much flashlight investigation, I found a eunicid worm in one of the rocks. He was almost 6 inches long with pretty black and white mouth tentacles. Bad guy did a lot of damage before I caught him!
A few weeks after Eunice left the tank, I started seeing red planaria. The whole tank was soon carpeted, as they do. I tried every non-chemical method I could find to reduce numbers, but when they started stressing my sps corals I used Salifert flatworm exit. Despite running 4x the carbon that I usually did, the death toxins nuked all of my sps corals, including a 10-inch bird's nest coral, an 8-inch green planet acropora, and all of my LPS. So now, at about year 4, the fish, snails, some zoa's, sea whips, and one encrusting montipora were the only survivors.
At this same time, I started having some health problems, and my husband and I were also starting a small business. Discouraged and with plenty else to do, the tank fell by the wayside. I stopped testing, stopped dosing, drastically reduced water changes, and basically just kept it topped off.
This period of severe neglect lasted for almost 2 years. During this time, fern caulerpa proliferated until the tank was a green jungle filled with amphipods and spaghetti worms. The fish (two PJ Cardinals, an oscelaris clown, an orchid dottyback, and a kole tang) flourished in this environment, as did one particular zoa. Interestingly, there was so much life in the jungle that my fish were virtually feeding themselves, and were getting chubby on just a few supplemental feedings a week.
With the start of the new year, I decided that I needed to either revive the tank or take it down. After some soul-searching I decided that the joy I get from a healthy reef outweighs the time commitment needed to keep it that way. I wish that I had taken a picture of the jungle, but I didn't. I ripped that stuff out by the gallon-full. Talk about some nutrient export! What was left was a brown, detritus-filled landscape. I discovered a few choked-out zoa's and a sea whip under the green, as well as a surprise that my encrusting montipora (I think it's a mind trick, but too discolored to be sure right now), as well as a Duncan coral had managed to hold on.
Testing revealed that other than very low calcium, and fairly high phosphorus, the params weren't that bad, so I did a lot of detritus siphoning and water changes over the next week, then bought some new corals.
The tank is now re-stocked with some brand new coral frags that I will be adding to over time, and slowly getting cleaner and brighter.
Thank you to anyone who has made it this far!
My big takeaways; you can never quarantine enough, you can catch small isopods at night using your fingers as bait, fish like jungles, tanks can survive more than you may think, and nothing beats regular maintenance!
Current situation: same tough as nails 5-year-old fish (kole tang, oscelaris clown, orchid dottyback, and a pair of PJ cardinals), some new sea whips, sps coral, florida ricordea, favia, and cyphastrea, all too new to evaluate yet. Running the same equipment as before, but I have one filter basket set up with Innovative Marine nuvo purity pack (a combo of mechanical and chemical filtration), and the other set up with macro algae and live rock rubble seeded with pods. I have a submersible grow light on this side.
I dose kalk in my ATO reservoir, and hand dose calcium, magnesium, and alkalinity as needed based on testing. Once I have a routine down I will report it!
Future:
Continue cleanup and caulerpa control. I have a viparspectra 165w programmable LED light coming next week. It's off-brand but the reviews were good both here and reefcentral, so I will see!
I know I probably jumped the gun on starting new sps frags before I have everything completely worked out, but I will evaluate how my starter frags are doing and normalize my routine, then probably get a few more acropora and revive my zoa garden... I miss them!
I like having some interesting inverts, so will probably introduce an abalone, urchin, and possibly some smaller cleaner shrimp in time.
My goal is to really streamline my maintenance so that I can continue to do a good job over the long run, while keeping my tank as a stress-reliever instead of a stress-er
The post-clean-out wasteland Jan 2, 2020
(white lights)
The tank today (Jan 11,2020), 9 days later, white lights again
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