Aquavim 150 Gallon Corner Tank

[alabella1]

I have a yellow coris and a neon dottyback that just arrived from TSM. I'd also like a pair of Bellus Angels and possibly a Chevron and a Purple but I will be adding them slowly over time most likely and fully QTing everything because I just cannot take any more chances with this tank. All the loss and the missteps. I feel like/hope I am finally in a good place here and want to keep things going smoothly

 

[alabella1]

I have to LOL at my previous post because that period of stability did NOT last. Ich and Velvet came to visit again and claimed a bunch of my fish. I have no idea what the heck happened to my coral but almost all my torches, frogspawn and hammers bailed on me. Vermetid snails are also in the mix now. This week I plan to just tear it all down and start over. All fish back into QT and all rock nuked. Sand out. Bleaching the whole thing. New sand, new rock, clean fish, inverts and corals. Much Stricter QT going forward.

 

[FnNewGuy]

Sorry to hear about the issues. Its a beautiful tank with a unique design. Good luck with the rebuild!

 

[alabella1]

June 3rd is around the time I started talking Alexander Kolesnikov of Reef Exclusive and trying his methods.

Per his instructions I drop the tank temp to 75, turn my return pump to 100% and upgrade my return hose to 1 1/4", added a few more heads for flow, reduce the depth of my sand to 1" and upgrade the pump on my skimmer from a MAG9 to a MAG24. He also has me dose a mixture of RODI and potassium permanganate which he calls ApRedox.

June and July fish were back in and doing okay. Signs of ich and velvet came and went but nothing was dying. The potassium permanganate was somehow keeping them alive. I went slow. I'd introduce maybe 1 large or 2 small fish from QT per week to let the tank adjust to the load.

Mid August I sold my Neptune Sky lights and replaced them with 3x Reefi Uno2 Pro lights.

The Velvet still comes and goes but everything is alive.

End of August I suddenly lost a few fish within days. I stay the course.

Mid september something's not right. I'm noticing more red/brown on the sand. My euphyllias all start bailing their polyps. I lost all my hammers and frogspawns. Then my torches all start going one by one. I am currently down to 2x remaining of my once 11 beautiful torches. I move most coral out to another tank for observation/growth.

In the past few weeks I've lost 5-6 more fish and others are looking less than healthy. That is where we are today.

Jeff @ Lifereef who I also hit up for help says maybe my sand and/or rock is compromised. If that is the case what could cause that and how can I fix it? At this point I'm ready to try anything. I just need to get this turned around or I'm going to just cash out because it's not fun anymore. If the rock and sand just sucks I will tear down, get some new live rock, replace all the sand and start over in the new year.

So just to give you a snapshot of what I am doing now.

Tank at 75. Salinity at 1.026. Alk about 7. Calc 420ish. Mag 1400ish. Nitrate 20. Phos 2.5. I dose phyto at night. Nothing else. I feed only Ocean Nutrition flakes 2x a day. I am still running water through the fuge and can see pods everywhere and feeding them phyto but no chaeto and no light... Actually I just turned the lights on and added a softball of chaeto to it a few days ago. The red and brown have largely cleared from the sand since I increased the flow but I'm still occasionally seeing red or brown on my frag plugs and frags. I added two gyres along with my 2 MP40s.

Alexander insists my issues are my sump is not exchanging enough water, my skimmer is inadequate and that I'm having an ammonia issue that is causing the ich and velvet to take hold. He has 7 pillars he stresses...

1. By any means it is necessary to maximize the Flow and Circulation of water through the SAMP. The main thing is that this current should be enough to lift the Ammonia up and drive it through the Skimmer.
2. Increase Skimmer Power to 100%
3. Do not change the water at all.
4. Minimize Fish and Coral Feeding and stop dosing of Micronutrients and Amino Acids.
5. Feed Fish only low-nutrient food, always rinse Frozen Food in Osmotic Water before feeding.
6. If possible, remove one or two of the most sick Pisces by giving them for treatment to the nearest store and so on, this will reduce the load and quickly restore the ORP. Fish can be returned after 1-2 months when your system restores ORP above 300.
7. Accelerate the recovery of ORP by dosing ApRedox 1 ml every 12 hours. (This is the mix of potassium permanganate)
By following these seven rules, you will easily defeat Cryptocaryon and Oodinium!

 

[Idech]

End of August I suddenly lost a few fish within days. I stay the course.

I’ve read your post and all I can think about is how many fish have died in your tanks.

I don’t want to be rude or unpleasant, but losing fish over and over again means there is something not working in your fish keeping. We all lose fish at some point, but it’s important to learn from your mistake so it doesn’t happen again.

Buying already QT’d fish might be a good start. Then avoiding stressors for the fish.

I really wish you much success, and a good and long life for your fish.

 

[alabella1]

I’ve read your post and all I can think about is how many fish have died in your tanks.

I don’t want to be rude or unpleasant, but losing fish over and over again means there is something not working in your fish keeping. We all lose fish at some point, but it’s important to learn from your mistake so it doesn’t happen again.

Buying already QT’d fish might be a good start. Then avoiding stressors for the fish.

I really wish you much success, and a good and long life for your fish.

I've tried everything at this point. I bought cheap fish and QT'd myself. I bought QT'd from both TSM and Dr. Reef. Honestly, the fish that are doing the best and have lived the longest are fish I got from a guy leaving the hobby and moving away and those have been rock solid. They have shown signs of ich or velvet and they have fought it off, so I'm confident in them for the most part. It's any new additions that have been struggling, so I'm off of new fish for awhile. I will reboot the tank. Slowly bring back the original fish into the fold and let the tank get a little more age on it before adding anything else. I'm also planning to get some good aussie live rock as well as some good live sand in the mix.

 

[alabella1]

I'm off from work this week, so it's rebuild time!! Started off first with doing TankDNA and Microbiombe tests on Tuesday and mailing them off to Aquabiometics.

Yesterday and today I moved on to operation remove rocks and save all critters.

Happy to report all the rocks are out!! It went off mostly without a hitch. No one really hitchhiked out but for a couple snails and a small serpent star. The big big issue was somehow in the hoopla my humu trigger found himself STUCK in one of the rocks. I literally took a hammer to the structure to break it apart so I could pull him out. He's back in the tank swimming around like nothing ever happened!!

If I had to choose a single GOTCHA moment here... well... it was water displacement. Less displacement from rocks meant I needed a decent amount of water so the system could get back up and running. Thankfully, I had the Brute I was using with the high salinity to chase the critters out of hiding. I just added more rodi and ran it back into the sump and we're back in business.

Next up... Start getting the rubbermaid ready for QT

 

[alabella1]

Also I got my new live rocks cooking. I had about 130lbs or so sitting in 5 gal buckets unused for this build so they should be spotless as they have been sitting for quite some time. 2 buckets were good but one bucket smelled pretty bad and the rocks looked a little suspect so I'm not using them. Temp cranked to 80-81 and turbostart added to the bucket. Let's ROCK!

 

[alabella1]

Had a very productive New Year's Eve and New Years Day. Started by moving all the coral to it's new home - a 24x24 frag tank I picked up from a friend a few days ago. Next it was drain the water level down so I could catch fish and critters. Fish were fairly easy. They are all safe in the holding tank and will start copper tomorrow. CUC have all been moved to their new home, a small 10 or 20g tank. Gave them some fresh sand at the bottom since some enjoy burrowing like the nas snails and the conch. Today I search for more critters in the sand bed. I removed all the sand (which I will sift through tonight or tomorrow). I refilled the tank and now it's ready for bleach!

 

[Kodski]

Do you run a UV sterilizer? I think that would be very beneficial in your situation and definitely wouldn't hurt to have one moving forward.

 

[alabella1]

Another productive day. Drained out the bleachy water, refilled with clean water to rinse, drained out all clean water and any remaining sand. Tank is clean and air drying. Also disconnected and removed to sump for a good cleaning. Also removed all pumps to clean as well. Going to need to go into the overflow and do some scraping because it is Vermetid shell central in there. I also sifted through my 2 buckets of sand and rescued as many snails as I could. I found something I've never seen before. Red and stringy, I assume a worm of some sort. Almost looked like a shrimp with no legs. I saw a bunch of them while sifting.

 

[alabella1]

Do you run a UV sterilizer? I think that would be very beneficial in your situation and definitely wouldn't hurt to have one moving forward.

I did not run one on this tank. I did pick up a Classic Aqua UV 57-Watt. Some say run one, some say don't. Some say it will mask problems and kill beneficial bacteria. I just don't know.

 

[Kodski]

I did not run one on this tank. I did pick up a Classic Aqua UV 57-Watt. Some say run one, some say don't. Some say it will mask problems and kill beneficial bacteria. I just don't know.

I 100% would. It will only help. UV will kill bacteria as that is one of it's intended purposes, but the reality is, once established you won't be killing off bacteria that is attached to rocks and sand, only the free floating bacteria which wont make an impact. Plus with your experience I'd think the little bit of bacteria would be well worth the chance at fixing the issue. Or at least helping with the issue.

 

[alabella1]

A couple updates. Apparently the USPS f'd up my shipment to Aquabiomics (surprise) and it didn't arrive until 1/2 so I got dumped into batch 64 so i won't see reports til 1/26 which absolutely sucks as I am treating my fish for I have no idea what. I should have just shipped it out the day after I received it (xmas holiday shipping be danged). Live and learn I guess. I finished cleaning the tank this weekend. I put in the new sand and began filling the tank. My first 60g is in and this tank looks dang near 1/2 full so I'm beginning to think that the tank itself is not quite 155g, especially if you subtract the fill height, so I need to take that into account when doing total volume in the future. I plan to finish filling the tank today and will likely add in my few rocks which have been cycling in my brute with turbostart and nitrocycle. Today or tomorrow I will likely begin to reassemble my sump as well and really get things rolling.

While the tank was empty, I took the time to move it out and opened up the hole in the floor I had behind it for ethernet coming up from the basement. I ran 3 small RODI tubes and a 30ft Apex aquabus cable. The framework is laid now, for when I am ready, to work on tying the mixing station into my apex as well as implementing AWC and auto top off of my 15g top off reservoir.

Finally, I spent 4-5 days ramping up the copper power in the rubbermaid tank and we have reached 2.3 which is where it shall stay for the next 14 days and hopefully all goes well with that. For now everyone looks okay and are all eating and swimming around the tank.

Also... Kids caught me stuck inside the tank... see pix

 

[alabella1]

HUGE bummer of the weekend was in my smaller QT tank which is home to fish that were never in my DT. It had a pair of Bellus Angels and my Madagascar Flasher Wrasse. I had just finished a round of 3 doses of General Cure. A few days had passed and it was time to start copper. So on Thursday I put in 5ml of copper to the 30g tank. The male bellus seemed to start a downhill turn so I immediately did a large water change. During that water change for some reason the flasher went insane. He was jumping, bobbing, breathing super heavy. The only difference was I used tap water rather than rodi to make the water this time, but I added the proper amount of Prime and tested it all ahead of time. Assuming it had something to do with the water for some reason I did another large WC with RODI mix this time. Despite all that, the male Bellus passed Friday morning. The flasher's fins were looking a little ragged so I gave him 1 hour Cipro baths on both Friday and Saturday night. Despite all that, I found the flasher dead yesterday morning and I am absolutely devastated. He was easily my all time favorite fish. He was going to be the crown jewel of the new tank. I was taking my time with him and doing all I could to make sure he was 100% healthy. He was amazing for a month and a half. Happy, social, eating like a pig. He mad it through the 3 round of GC no problem. It was not until that water change day that things went sideways. Here are some pix of alives and deads of these two fish.

 

[alabella1]

Now another wrinkle to this tale is the female Bellus. She was a beautiful, healthy looking, colorful fish. She was doing great until one day I saw her head was a little twitchy and she had a cloudy eye. I assumed parasites so I started the tank on GC that day. Her eye cleared up almost immediately but something else began to happen. She was losing color. Now, I believe what is/was happening is that she is transitioning. WHY the heck would that be? She was in the tank with another male. Why would she transition. Also... would that for some reason cause her to become aggressive and start picking on the other two? In the event it was aggression, after I found the male bellus dead I put her in the penalty box so that the flasher could get some relief, but that poor guy never calmed down and was breathing heavier than I've ever seen a fish breath before. I wish there was more I could do for him and that I saved him because he was truly a beautiful fish. The LFS feels terrible for me and my luck and may help me out with a discount on another, but I just don't know. I would plan to do HTTM with that one and isolate it 100% on it's own because I just don't know what went wrong here.

 

[alabella1]

Today's update... The bucket I was curing the live rock in came back with 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and 20 Nitrate. I moved the rock to the DT along with more water. The sump is almost put back together. I may finish that tomorrow so I can get the full system up and running. For now I added my 2x Gyres for some flow. I started rebuilding the refugium with 5lbs of miracle mud and some marine pure blocks. Tomorrow my copepods and amphipods arrive from Dinkins so into the fuge they will go to start repopulation. Tomorrow or Thursday I am going to pick up some of that aussie live rock which will be my scape on top of the live rock I already added. I will probably cure that in a brute for a bit as well before adding it to the DT. QT fish in the Brute are all still doing well.

 

[alabella1]

Here's my little bit of live rock in the DT. Tomorrow morning I am going to pick up 50lbs of Aussie Live Rock to add to this. It's gonna look so awesome!!

 

[alabella1]

Picked up my Aussie Live Rock yesterday morning. Gave it a quick dip in SALTY water 1.040 and then right into the DT. It looks awesome. All crazy branches with all kinds of life in them and on them. I used my rock as a base and then just kinda slapped these all together on top and it came out pretty good. Today I turned on the lights and was so surprised at the color that bursted from these rocks. In was not expecting that at all. I will see how the cycle goes and I will also be getting doing an aquabiomics test to make sure all is well, but as of now I cannot say enough good things about Jason Giannas and Pristine Marine Aquariums. His rock is amazing and for anyone interested you can get it here - https://pristinemarineaquariums.com/products/australian-ultra-supreme-live-rock

Sad news from the QT... a few days ago I lost my whitejaw cardinalfish and today my poor Hippo Tang died as well.

 

[alabella1]

More rocks under white light