AJ's Acro Adventure [RSR 750XXL]

[AJsReef]

Plan to increase nutrients continues - Decided to finally begin adding fish. Due to the insane prices of Hawaiian fish and the fact I've had my Yellow and Kole Tangs for almost 10 years I decided to go preQT'd this time. Big shout out to Adam at Ocean Devotion LA, really great communication! I have a Flame Angel, McCoskers Wrasse, and Copper Banded Butterfly going through QT now. New fish expected in a few weeks

 

[AJsReef]

Reading through Shane of SBB corals thread he highlighted the importance of a maintaining your RODI water quality. Leading to... RODI maintenance day, all new filters, new auto shut off valve and addition of a booster pump. My production rate doubled with the pump pretty cool.

Tested the water prior and TDS 0/chlorine ULR 0/Silica 0 but resin looked pretty spent. Couldn’t decide what order I put the cation/anion in so did a full replacement. First time using the chlorine tester but wanted the piece of mind.

 

[AJsReef]

Quick update on the Dinos - Seeing drastic reduction this week following the Elegant treatment and increasing nutrients. I decided to slowly raise the temp to 82 degrees for awhile since there seems to be a fair amount of evidence to suggest Amphidinium don't thrive at the temperature.

With the increase in nutrients I am definitely seeing more algae growing around the tank which typically would make me panic but I am embracing it this time. Following Shane/SBB build thread once more I decided to add more Astrea snails (100 to be exact) in attempt to stay ahead of outbreaks.

Lastly, as another attempt to enrich nutrients and ultimately diversity I'll be dosing 50ml Phyto daily on top of my N/P dosing. Really hoping to put the Dinos far behind me!

 

[revhtree]

Good news you are seeing a decrease! Sorry but I haven't read through but are you running UV?

 

[AJsReef]

Good news you are seeing a decrease! Sorry but I haven't read through but are you running UV?

Hey Rev, I panicked when I saw the Dinos start to come back. Purchased a Pentair 80w UV before I realized I likely wasn't dealing with Ostreopsis but rather Amphindium. The UV I do believe helped stop the spread and has done wonders with water clarity.

Still searching for the recipe against Amphindium though. Right now I changed quite a few variables at once (which I said I wouldn't) in an attempt to get well ahead of it. I've lost a few Acros but luckily nothing too expensive. Really hoping the road to recovery is well on its way If I kill more Acros my wife may kill me...

No doubt though, my lack of true understand want ULNS meant is the root cause IMO. High input/out appears to be the key to success where I was focusing on minimizing inputs

 

[AJsReef]

Here we go again,

Woke up late last week to see some flesh looking thin on my Orange Passion but decided to just monitor and send off my Tritons ICP. To make matters worse I lost 2 more frags over night and my LPS even looks unhappy. Truly stumped on this one... I reviewed my test results and did not see a spike that would've caused it over the past week parameters were;

Alk between 6.7-7.2
Ca between 445-480
Mg between 1350-1315 (slow decline)
Phosphates - .03-.05
Nitrates - 3.5-5

The only change is that I slowly raised temps from 79-82 over a period of about a week rolling into last Thursday. I'm not sure this change would initiate such a response?

To make things even more interesting my Triton came back and I'm not seeing any obvious causes?

 

[TX_Punisher]

ave you tested for silicates? Added anything plastic or acrylic to the tank? Frag racks, egg crate, etc?

every time I add something new like any of the above I get a Dino outbreak. I’ve added purigen bags to the sump to help absorb anything that may have been released making sure to keep an eye on alk and po4. Raising nutrients also helped.

 

[AJsReef]

ave you tested for silicates? Added anything plastic or acrylic to the tank? Frag racks, egg crate, etc?

every time I add something new like any of the above I get a Dino outbreak. I’ve added purigen bags to the sump to help absorb anything that may have been released making sure to keep an eye on alk and po4. Raising nutrients also helped.

Funny you mention silicates I actually have a Hanna Silica checker coming in the mail. I ordered it if the Dinos kept on to induce a silica bloom.

According to Triton though Silica is well within “normal” ranges. Definitely wondering if the coral woes I’m seeing now are just due to the Dinos 2 weeks back. Definitely weird.

 

[AJsReef]

Quick update - It appears Dino population has been drastically diminished, I am seeing very few bubbles on the back glass.

I have lowered temps back to 78-79 range but maintaining Phyto Dosing (~70ml day) and dosed silica from .82 to ~2 in efforts to actively out compete them.

New fish incoming tomorrow!

 

[AJsReef]

New fish are in, and my tank finally looks like a reef!

HUGE shout out to Adam at Ocean Devotion LA for the pre-QT'd fish. Stellar communication, can't recommend enough. It's the first time I've shipped fish and they have been completely unfazed as soon as I opened the box.

In all I added - 1x Copper Banded Butterfly, 1x Flame Angel, 1x McCosker's wrasse, 5x Lyrtetail Anthias. Hoping this helps to bring my nutrients up. I've been stable at .03/5 but would love to get to .06/10-15 based on discussions with others and local reefers. (Will get more pictures when they settle in )

 

[AJsReef]

New fish are doing swell, the added color from the Anthias has made a huge difference. From a nutrient perspective corals seemed to have colored up some. However, N/P (8/.03) is still very much the same. Which makes me confident to try and add some more Anthias just to up "natural" nutrient production.

The Garf Bonsai frag that's been in the tank through the craziness off last year has really taken off, encrusting onto the rock instead of just growing upwards. It's very cool to see acros starting to encrust, hopefully I don't jinx myself.

In other news, I may have found the cause for some unhappy corals a few months back. I trusted my pH probe too much and found it was considerably out of calibration when I recalibrated. Meaning my 7.6 "low" during Dino treatment was potentially quite a bit worse, WHOOPS. This also makes sense though, as even with a vented skimmer the overall CO2 in my home these days is greater as I'm home much more since quarantine. In response, I ordered a Hanna pH checker to validate readings more frequently. I'm also seriously considering a Kalk Reactor to maintain 8.1 as my bottom point. Luckily, thanks to APEX I was able to get a very solid feel for what my evaporation is daily. The plan is to have the Kalk dose during lights out at a volume consistent with evaporation. Allowing finer control than just using the ATO albeit I will probably slightly limited in overall dosing volume... Should be a fun little experiement... That said I wanted to use a Versa pump as noise is a key concern with it running at night and of course they are sold out everywhere...

I did pick up some more acros locally as well as a very bright gold hammer to add some color and movement down low!

 

[AJsReef]

Some weekend maintenance fun -

My overflow kept gurgling driving me nuts. I kept "tuning" the gate valve until I ran out of ability and it was wide open. I became very concerned that I had something clog my return. Until I realized it was likely the Clarisea nozzle in the sump. Well, after a quick (annoying) disassembly the nozzle was definitely clogged. Quick citric acid soak and back to normal operation. That said, I guess I should add this to the 6-12 month cleaning routine for pumps, etc.



My Hanna pH checker arrived. Honestly, very disappointed with it. It throws 8.6 or flashing 8.6 no matter the pH/time of day. Meanwhile, Apex is showing 7.9-8.25. I recalibrated the probe again to confirm these numbers. As well as used the fluid to check the Hanna which reads .2 low. Completely lost here so I guess time to reach out to Hanna.


Finally, I tackled another project. To my surprise with the UV running 24/7 the 80W of heat generated is just enough to push my tank to heat up. I was seeing highs up to 80 degrees which is fine. My concern is this is with my AC set a few degrees lower than summer months. Luckily, I have had a chiller in my garage from my tank tear down 4 years ago. Pulled it out of storage, quick clean and booted up to test. Runs like a champ! I went ahead and plumber directly after the UV since the GPH ratings are nearly identical. Plumbing was a little bit of a pain, had to make a few Home Depot trips to get the right parts to hard plumb into the chiller. I guess the thread is slightly not standard? Nothing some tape and thread putty couldn't solve . However, my valve placement on the initial UV install was off and I managed to flood my fish room...Why do "simple" tasks always get complicated? The heater is technically undersized but I don't anticipate it needing to cool more than 1-2 degrees with a relatively low ambient air temp. (ignore the wiring, it's still on the to-do list, ha)



Closing out with a quick side shot. I was a UV none believer but its assist with Dinos was great. But the clarity is on another level. This is without carbon!

 

[AJsReef]

Took a big step this weekend and finally decided to clean the back glass. I left it untouched for over a year while the tank "stabilized". In the past few months it started to look a little nasty but I kept putting it off. Due to the sheer amount of coralline covered in weird algae I did my best to collect all the scrapings. It didn't stop my tank water from being a hint of pink for a few hours. It is definitely nice to have a strong contrast in the background!

I was able to turn off my N dosing at the moment as well as I've committed to HEAVY feeding. Nitrates 10 / Phosphate .04 and the tank seems to be taking off!

 

[AJsReef]

Fun day, my ClearView lid FINALLY came in. I've been looking forward to ditching the Red Sea DIY lid for months. Apparently I've been impatiently waiting so long even my wife is happy it arrived. With the new lid installed it also meant I could finally install my 4x Radion... What a difference! Shadowing has drastically reduce and I have much more wiggle room in PAR. I took a PAR readings before/after and on the same schedule I was seeing 40-100 more PAR in the mid/lower level and up to double par on top of some of the Arches. The quick blast of high PAR on my Walt Disney looked amazing. Of course, I reduce my intensity for now so that I'm averaging about a 30 PAR increase across the board and will slowly ramp up. Super excited to be able to beam light at my Tenuis frags! Although, I already could see how a fifth light in the middle could help long term if I manage to grow these frags out.





Water Parameters are holding well - NO3 - 10-15, PO4 .03, I bumped Alk up now that I have supporting nutrients to 8.5 targeting 9. That said, with the nutrients my turf algae has taken off in the bottom of the tank. I've been adding more snails unsuccessfully but have a Fox Face coming in next week and contemplating some Urchins before I consider Fluconazole again.