Benji’s Reef (Uncensored)

[Skippy The Meh]

Howdy all! I recently made some mistakes which lead to some drastic changes to my reef and started a new journey for me. (Thats the nice way of saying i messed up so bad i got a new tank). So i thought i would start a thread to share my reefing journey and maybe help some people not do what i did or will do:)

So ill get y’all caught up to where im at now as quickly as possible:

Quick back round: My dad had a 300 G old school mixed reef growing up, then about 5 years ago i decided to get back into the hobby got a 15G AIO then upgraded to a Cobalt 50G long AIO. The tank i currently have.

This brings me to last week. I decided to splurge on BRS over black friday and ordered a bunch of new gear and corals. Including a sicce uv clarifier. I got it hooked up and called my wife over to show her my handy work. It was at that moment i realized i put the hoses on backwards (it clicked, thats probably why it was so noisy… DUH). So without thinking i pulled the pump plug - or what i thought was the pump plug - and the light plug. And proceeded to just yank the hoses off to swap them around…. Ya i know, i know, im an idiot on so many levels, just listen okay…. So ya water drained out everywhere, i thought it was just the water that was in the canister until i realized the pump was just pumping the water out right onto the floor while i was running around cursing and grabbing towels. Well i got it cleaned up and realized water got onto the controller piece of one of my AI Axis 90’s (thank god i have 2) and fried it. Then i realized that all the water got sucked out of the back (sump) portion of the tank and collapsed the rear wall and busted every seal between the chambers and the bottom seal. Wall bowed in a good 2-3 inches. Why would it not be better sealed/supported you may ask? Good question dear reader. Yours truly bought the tank and didnt catch the fact that someone removed the the center brace/divider in the pump chamber of the sump. Likely, they then had it collapse, did a half butt reseal and sold it to the first fish store that would do a trade in. Then some idiot bought it on a whim….

So i bought about 20 tubes of JB weld water weld (which i can confirm does not harm livestock at all even in high quantities) and patched it up and started looking to purchase a replacement tank bc my patch job doesnt fix root cause.

You ready for another bone head move on my part? Good because i got one more for you. I realized my auto top off had ran for a good while before i got it turned off. So i checked my salinity and sure enough it had dropped to 1.023. Not a big deal i thought, lets just add some salt real quick and finally get to bed. So i put about 2 cups of salt into a container put about a quart of water in, swished it around and dumped it in the tank in front of the gyre and went to bed. Needless to say i woke up in the morning with some corals fried and some just very very unhappy.

Everything is temporarily patched and healing (pictured below) and i ordered a Nyos G2 440 to replace it. I will continue to update this thread with all the uncensored progress and stupid mistakes i make as i build out the tank and set it up.

To the 2 people that made it through my rant, Thanks for reading!

Most recent pics:

Currently, my favorite coral:

 

[Skippy The Meh]

 

[Reef Jedi]

I’ll be the first to make it through the rant!

That’s quite the story. Wow! Hopefully this next tank is smoother sailing and better luck!

I’ll pray to the reef gods that’ll be the case. Also! Start a build thread under your profile so we can follow along!

Happy reefing in the meantime and hopefully the patch holds.

 

[Skippy The Meh]

I’ll be the first to make it through the rant!

That’s quite the story. Wow! Hopefully this next tank is smoother sailing and better luck!

I’ll pray to the reef gods that’ll be the case. Also! Start a build thread under your profile so we can follow along!

Happy reefing in the meantime and hopefully the patch holds.

Thanks and will do!

 

[Skippy The Meh]

First piece of equipment for new tank got delivered today, i went with the simplicity 240 for the skimmer. Let me know if yall have any feedback on that decision, it seemed like a pretty decent skimmer.

Rock for new aquascape will be in on Saturday and i plan on gluing it up sunday. Tank is scheduled for delivery Monday.

Will keep yall updated as we progress. In the meantime, id be interested to hear any suggestions for additional equipment, and moving stuff over to the new tank.

Heres all the stuff that will get moved to new tank:

Maxspect gyre
Sicce uv clarifier
Axis 90 return pump
Meridian 35
Helio heater
Red sea ATO
Red sea dose
Chihiros dose

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[Skippy The Meh]

Quick update. After a futile attempt to exercise my electrical engineering degree and remove my broken axis 90 controller and replace it with a 24 v voltage regulator (i can sometimes have a big head and think im smarter than the manufacturer- in this case it got me a nice little zap from 24v dc, just enought to wake me up), i just broke down and bought a red sea reef run G2 8000. Which in itself was painful bc my lfs owner is a total d bag and i had to listen to him lecture me on how good he is at reef keeping.. like alright buddy i get it ur cool can i buy my pump and go home pls. Anyway tank comes in tomorrow, aquascape is currently soaking in some RO water to get all the dust off it. Will post some pics when it comes in.

Thanks for following along with my chaos and perpetual negativity:)

 

[Skippy The Meh]

Tank is finally up and running! Heres some pics! We added a copperband and hawkfish and just put in all our acros we got at tck auction.

The butterfly seems to be a picky eater with the mysis shrimp but is constantly picking at the rocks. Any suggestions on training him to eat? I got some freeze dried black worms on the way.

The only issues i had getting everything together was the stand, which didnt have the directions in the package to put together and it also did not have the little rubber feet. I called BRS, they gave me emailed me the instructions and gave me a $300 reimbursement for the feet and i went to the hardware store and solved the issue for $2. BRS is really the gold standard for a reason, great customer service.

I also learned that the syphon valve on my red sea ATO needs to be above the water line otherwise it doesnt prevent syphon… you can fill jn the blanks on what happened there.

 

[Skippy The Meh]

Hers an update after 6 days of up and running. Will be looking to add some torches and frog spawns to the lps area next.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Hers an update after 6 days of up and running. Will be looking to add some torches and frog spawns to the lps area next.

Have an idea of what torches and frogspawns you want to add?

 

[Skippy The Meh]

 

[Skippy The Meh]

Hers an update after 6 days of up and running. Will be looking to add some torches and frog spawns to the lps area next.

Have an idea of what torches and frogspawns you want to add?

I havnt really decided yet. Any suggestions?

My only criteria thus far is that they cant be green or orange (my wife said we have too much of those colors).
im particularly drawn to the indo gold torch though.

I tend to struggle with euphyllia for some reason, so hopefully this go around ill have better luck:)

 

[Skippy The Meh]

Havnt updated in a while so here is the latest:

Tank is going through an ugly phase with the diatoms ramping up. I typically just let the tank do its thing until they go away, so thats the current plan. There are surprisingly a lot of copepods on the glass. Im surprised bc im running a UV clarifier 24/7. I assumed that would kill them, but im not going to complain they will definitely be a helping hand to my diatom issue.

I also added a Reef Factory smart roller, which has been pretty sweet and a 2 stage brs reactor.

Overall corals all look happy and heathy so pretty pleased with the progress thus far.

 

[Skippy The Meh]

Figured id post an update since i haven’t in a while. I have added some torches to the mix along with an octopus spawn and another hammer frag. I also upgraded my flow to an mo 60 - which was totally worth it- and hid my max spect gyre on the wall behind the lps garden.

I started to do reef snow doses once per week with my bacteria and coral food dose. I can tell a marginal difference in water clarity.

I have also been dosing coral booster every other day and have seen some great growth on my sps coral.

 

[Skippy The Meh]

My recent battle against Amphidinium Dinoflagellates and green hair algae. I won heres how i did it:

At the beginning of February i left my state for about a week for my grandmothers funeral. When i can back i had a thick (1/4”) mat of algae on the bottom of my tank- i did not take pictures because i was not very happy to say it mildly.

First i checked parameters and discovered parameters remained with in my preferred operating range:

DKh- 8.5
Ca- 400
Mg-1350
PO4- .06
NO3- 10.0

So i bought a very cheap microscope, and identified that i had Amphidinium Dinos. Which made sense because this species primarily inhabits the sand bed, which decreases the effectiveness of a UV sterilizer which i run 24/7.




Please excuse my horrible pictures. Like i said cheap microscope.

I tried the patience deal for a couple weeks, and the issue only worsened. During this time i was also dosing coral snow (calcium carbonate) mixed with microbacter 7. This has worked for me in the past and i do still believe it helped, but i did not see any recession of the dinos.

I checked my phos and it was over my .1 threshold. And thus my first mistake was made. I through in a 10ml carbon dose and within 24 hours my phos bottomed out. I tried for days to increase it by dosing phosphate and continued to get 0.0. I dont have microscope images from this time period but the concentration of dinos on sand bed was very high. Then, 5-6 days later phosphates shot up to .35 and GHA and cyano joined the fun.

I read an article that said manual removal using a 5 micron filter sock and returning water to tank (no water change) was best. This was a ton of work and 3 days later it all came back with a vengeance. I added phytoplankton and copepods to increase micro diversity after sifting sandbed with hopes of out competing the dinos.


Now heres where i start to win:

At this time i was finally able to stable out my nutrients. I accepted that not all my corals were going to survive and left my nutrients a bit high. Nitrates at about 15 and phosphate at .15. I did this as opposed to silica dosing with the thought it was similar in principle. Meaning i was encouraging other algae to grow and out compete the dinos. At this time i also ordered the UV sweeper from 3D reefing which had 3 -5 day shipping). 3 days later the originally thick algae mat on the sandbed and now on my rocks, and the cloudy algae ridden water had started to subside. Still imo a severe case but i had movement in the right direction. Then the UV sweeper came in and i immediately started using that 2-3 times per day. in conjunction with microbe lift special blend (what 3D reefing recommends for dinos) in my reef snow.

I saw results in less Than a day and by day 2 my sand was white again with only small specs of GHA left. By day 3 it was crystal white. In areas that are too small/tight for the sweeper to reach. There is still a brown dust- Even today 6 days later. Over the next 3 days the healthy microbes i had been encouraging to grow spread up the rock scape allowing my tangs, copperband, and snails to naturally take care of it.

Now i am very slowly bringing down my nutrients with small doses of carbon, skimmer and GFO. They have steadily decreased by about .03ppm per day.

Some corals are still not back to normal but it seems i will likely only lose a couple. The man ones affected are my acros. Lps, soft corals, montis, and chalices are all doing just fine. Will post tank pictures and references to all my research in upcoming post.

 

[Skippy The Meh]

Here are my references:

Coral snow:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/extreme-water-clarity-and-cyano-eradication-made-easy.916381/
Dino ID:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/microscopy-thread.1138845/

3D Reef How to:

 

[Skippy The Meh]

Got some new additions to the tank. In addition to a splurge in coral, i have added a foxface Rabbitfish - who has survived thanks to @painter1982 advice to get my sailfin tang off his back- and a canarytop wrasse that is still in qt; both from WWC. I also added some more rock work to make room for more corals and add some extra hiding holes for fish. Heres some pics:

 

[Skippy The Meh]

 

[Skippy The Meh]

 

[sgdnycct]

Following!