Bikini Bottom Mk. 1

[FenrirAysen]

Ammonia is down to 0.62. so it's falling. We had other problems though. I nearly had to kill my Rhodactus Mushroom, Bob getting rid of a couple Bristleworms that hitchhiked in on him apparently and had a network of tunnels underneath him. Had to dip Bob three times and take bone cutters to the rock he was mounted with.

I just couldn't risk them infesting the tank. I'm hoping Bob recovers but we put him through quite a rough treatment. If he is alive in the morning he'll be the toughest sea creature I've ever seen. We finally got the worms though. Tough little jerks.

 

[FenrirAysen]

We're at 0.48 Ammonia. This is a significant improvement and its trending down. I've created a spreadsheet on Google Drive to permanently track all metrics and create notes of everything I do when I touch the tank. This will help me build a body of historical data I can use to learn from.

 

[FenrirAysen]

Attaching this. I will put it at the top of the first post as well for anyone who wants to follow along. Denizens happy, Ammonia now down to 0.20. Nitrite and Nitrates highly spiked, but everyone seems happy. 10ml a day of KH Red Sea Foundation B seems to be covering the worst of things. Just listening to the tank, but it looks like we're coming out the other side. Seeing brown algae from all the Nitrates, but the snails are ontop of it. Bob is happy, he's letting go of the rock fragment he wouldn't leave, and has rebounded completely from his bristleworm episode.

 

[FenrirAysen]

We've hit a remarkable improvement in numbers, but now i'm going through ugly phase. And I hate it. :loudly-crying-face:

 

[FenrirAysen]

I got 10 more Trochus snails, and a Starry Blenny. Beautiful little guy. Seems pretty polite and *very* inquisitive. My tank looked way better after just one night of having it all in the tank. Think i'm gonna test less frequently for now except my alkalinity and just let things play out for awhile.

 

[FenrirAysen]

We're reefing! Been attending RAP Texas and I got to meet some if the staff! Very exciting!

 

[FenrirAysen]

I was doing great with the tank and then a few days ago I dosed Reef Pro Mix AB+ . BIG mistake. The tank is only a month and a few days old. (For some reason I kept telling people it was a couple months old, then realized no, I was setting up the TANK a few weeks prior, but I didn't start cycle until February 18th.) It was doing great. And I literally dumped gasoline on it. Dinoflagellates. Everywhere. Clean up sandbed? Back in four hours even more matted. Its insane. I even dosed Hydrogen Peroxide. The gremlins didn't care. I just got done scooping up the top layer of substrate, rinsed it in RODI water, and then rinsing again with mixed salt water, and reintroducing it back in the tank.

Then I dosed some Turbo Start and Seachem's Pristine to give it some good bacteria. Hopefully it reseeds before the dino's can. The stuff is nasty. I'm maintaining the spreadsheet with whatever tests I take that day, so feel free to take a look at the initial post link. Its embedded!

What upsets me even more is my acro's have been really happy.The tank is way too immature to handle dosing amino acids.

 

[FenrirAysen]

Still battling dinos. Trying to set up both competition and dose with Hydrogen Peroxide. Cleaning up the sand bed and getting nitrates up. 7 days so far. Really hoping to see the other side soon.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Still battling dinos. Trying to set up both competition and dose with Hydrogen Peroxide. Cleaning up the sand bed and getting nitrates up. 7 days so far. Really hoping to see the other side soon.

Best of luck with dealing dinos! We are currently battling them as well!

 

[FenrirAysen]

Today was the first viable break in the growth pattern I've seen but it's still there. My new cleanup crew reinforcements are coming today. I already have 10 Trochus, 3 Nessarius. I'm adding 10 Cerith snails and 1 Strawberry Conch.

 

[FenrirAysen]

Best of luck with dealing dinos! We are currently battling them as well!

Been a bit depressing after the great week I had going into RAP but hopefully we're getting close to the end. Sometimes it feels like nothing I do matters but it grew back in much slower today.

 

[FenrirAysen]

Things are slowly improving! My lights are currently on a 8 hour window. One hour ramp on both ends. Dino's are obviously still there, some more than others, but larger clean patches or cleaner patches are coming along. Parameters in the tank are stabelizing but now i'm noticing i'm having to top off with RODI now which for a month I had to top off with the mixed saltwater. I'm also noticing that with treating dino's and having to increase nitrates i'm increasing Magnesium well beyond the recommended range, so i'm pulling back on flakes today and just focusing on frozen foods. I did a six day course of phyto which was fun to do as well, some extra bacteria, tons of copapods, and shorter photo periods. I even did hydrogen peroxide during the first week or so.

Honestly nothing seemed like a silver bullet, which I kinda gathered from watching tons of videos and reading posts here. The low down i'm coming away with is, do all the things, be consistent and taper off slowly. Truth is, they just have to be eradicated from every angle and eventually other things will take their place. I refused to buy UV, and its probably just as well. I was going to get a microscope, but I decided it'd just be better for the reef in general if I attacked the problem holistically and from every aspect rather than trying to find that "one thing" that worked.

I won't lie, I was tempted multiple times to just do a 100% water change. But i've managed to tough it out. Because i've heard that doing that is really just a temporary relief and sometimes it can exacerbate the rebound.

I did notice the dino's tried to attack my low laying coral. I lost a single acro frag, which to be honest, wasn't surprising. The older ones that had been in my tank from the word go have weathered it well. I moved them all up in the tank, made sure they ate, and I blew them clean of any stringy hanger ons as I saw them. I also increased aeration of my water for the fish. I noticed my YWG got a little sickly with a white patch where his yellow faded. I moved him to our 9 gallon display and in two days he healed completely so I assume it was all the irritation from treatments and the dino bacteria in the tank.

I also moved my larger montipora frags out of the tank to protect them from similar issues, and they are thriving in my wife's 24G. I dipped both before rinsing and transferring them to her tank, and it seems to have worked out. Both are thriving with great visible polyp extension. Bottom line? I removed and medicated anyone that exhibited high risk, hit all the notes, and i'm staying consistent. Hopefully in another week or so this will be behind me, but I won't be surprised if it fights hard before I extinguish it completely.

 

[FenrirAysen]

I HATH DEFEATED THE CYANO AND DINO OUTBREAKS! Victory shots!

 

[FenrirAysen]

Picture Update! My wife @Freya got me a Goniopora and big four headed torch for our anniversary!

 

[KrisReef]

Things look like they are moving nicely.

I would encourage you to quit flying as fast and hard as the jet in your posts. Slow down and let the tank catch it's breath. Every little change we make especially in new tanks could be the flight correction that sends us flying into the Hudson. I never could go slowly either, but i wish I had. GL :smiling-face-with-sunglasses: :rolling-on-the-floor-laughing: :thinking-face::cool:

 

[FenrirAysen]

Things look like they are moving nicely.

I would encourage you to quit flying as fast and hard as the jet in your posts. Slow down and let the tank catch it's breath. Every little change we make especially in new tanks could be the flight correction that sends us flying into the Hudson. I never could go slowly either, but i wish I had. GL :smiling-face-with-sunglasses: :rolling-on-the-floor-laughing: :thinking-face::cool:

Yeah. I'm going to do my best to just leave everything alone at least until June now. I'm hoping to eventually graduate into a much bigger tank next year when the fish I have are reaching their max sizes and corals are starting to stretch their legs a bit. My dream is a 250+ gallon in my new office that's going in downstairs with a layered rockscape setup that allows for more separated layers of life in the water column but its going to be a much bigger project so Bikini Bottom was always about proving I could be a decent animal husband and not kill all the things.

 

[rhitee93]

I'm just catching up on your progress. Looks like things are coming around.

I'd second the advice to just stop fooling with it for a few weeks. Do maintenance and testing, but don't make any other adjustments or additions for a bit. Give the biology in the tank time to work.

 

[FenrirAysen]

I'm just catching up on your progress. Looks like things are coming around.

I'd second the advice to just stop fooling with it for a few weeks. Do maintenance and testing, but don't make any other adjustments or additions for a bit. Give the biology in the tank time to work.

I appreciate you checking in! It's encouraging to have experienced reefers chime in and give me a nudge. I'm twitchy if left in a vacuum.

 

[rhitee93]

I appreciate you checking in! It's encouraging to have experienced reefers chime in and give me a nudge. I'm twitchy if left in a vacuum.

Yeah, I understand. A little feedback does a lot to dampen oscillations.

One of the hard things for me to learn is that my tank and I live on very different time constants. When I see something going adrift I want to react immediately and see the change in hours. The tank, oh the other hand, thinks 3 or 4 weeks is an immediate change and will get angry if I force it to move faster than that.

In the end, I had to learn the tank will get what it wants in its own sweet time. I can fight it and lose, or join it and enjoy to ride making suggestions along the way.

 

[FenrirAysen]

Yeah, I understand. A little feedback does a lot to dampen oscillations.

One of the hard things for me to learn is that my tank and I live on very different time constants. When I see something going adrift I want to react immediately and see the change in hours. The tank, oh the other hand, thinks 3 or 4 weeks is an immediate change and will get angry if I force it to move faster than that.

In the end, I had to learn the tank will get what it wants in its own sweet time. I can fight it and lose, or join it and enjoy to ride making suggestions along the way.

That's a fair point. I'd rather be sippin drinks with it and having a good time than feeling like i'm not doing enough to make it happy lol.