Bubba's SPS Journey

[bubbaque]

Urchins are great at eating the turf algae and certain long spine ones will not pick up or knock over frags. I got lucky and found a nice one. I also have a blue tuxedo urchin, dang thing thinks it's a frag rack, stupid animal.

You are right and the urchins do eat it when they feel like getting to it, lol. I have 12 urchins with the variety being tuxedo, pincushion, long spine and rock-boring but they have more interest in keeping my bare bottom and glass clean of coralline.

I must say the thing I hated about BB was the pink bottom but that is no longer an issue. The urchins keep it so white it looks like sand, haha.

Not sir if I missed it or over looked it. Only made it through about 50 pages so far lol. But what are you dosing?

I don’t dose anything other than using a calcium reactor and kalk. Right now my dosing is mainly kalk as I’m dosing about 3.5 gallons of saturated kalk a day to keep ph up to 8.3.

Somehow stopped getting notifications on your thread Bubba. Sorry for the troubles. Such a drag it is always the favorite sticks that get hit, but by the looks of it you came out OK. I have some pretty heavy system mods underway so I am walking on eggshells myself. Feel like I am overhauling an engine while in flight. Over the Pacific.

Over what span of time did you implement these changes?
- sand bed
- refugium
+ denitrator

Just like the others, I am a fan of your work with SPS and will patiently and confidently look forward to more stick pics from you. Hang in.

I added the refugium I think in October. I removed the sand over the first 3 weeks of December and added the denitrator the day before Christmas. Big changes happened in December and I’m sure that’s what caused my issues.

I did actually take pics yesterday but when editing them all I could notice was algae and I’m not going to share that. Hopefully the algae scrubber helps and I’ll share pics again.

 

[Epic Aquaculture]

Thanks for checking in. Yes all is well with me and the family. The corals are starting to look pretty good again but since I have no export system other than my skimmer I am dealing with green turf algae at the moment. None of my tangs or snails eat it, which is driving me insane. I did build an algae turf scrubber and installed it a couple weeks ago to help with the exporting of nutrients and to hopefully get rid of the algae.

Hey Bubba, I've been running an ATS on my system for almost 2 years now, and I swear by it. My liverock has no algae other than coraline, but I harvest a couple of pounds of algae from my ATS every other week. Helps to dial in the nutrients too as you can reduce or increase photo period on the ATS to reduce or increase NO3 and PO4...

 

[bubbaque]

Hey Bubba, I've been running an ATS on my system for almost 2 years now, and I swear by it. My liverock has no algae other than coraline, but I harvest a couple of pounds of algae from my ATS every other week. Helps to dial in the nutrients too as you can reduce or increase photo period on the ATS to reduce or increase NO3 and PO4...

That’s great to hear.

My old tank relied on chaeto and it worked great but for some reason my chaeto turns gross on this tank and the reason I tried the denitrator. Also my old tank had a separate tank in my garage that had the chaeto so the light didn’t affect my skimmer. This time having it in my sump next to my skimmer it was growing a ton of coralline in it.

I ended up building my own algae scrubber and it’s been running two weeks today and it’s getting some growth so I’m hopeful.

 

[bubbaque]

Little progression of my diy scrubber over the 2 weeks.

At first I thought it was going the way my chaeto went with turning gross and growing slime. I rinsed it off after a few days and algae seemed to take its place.

This pic was from Thursday.

This is today and did the first scrapping.

 

[Epic Aquaculture]

Little progression of my diy scrubber over the 2 weeks.

At first I thought it was going the way my chaeto went with turning gross and growing slime. I rinsed it off after a few days and algae seemed to take its place.

This pic was from Thursday.

This is today and did the first scrapping.

Looking better Bubba! Each time you clean it, take some of the "good looking" algae and rub it really good on the screen where things are growing well yet. Once it's well established it will grow great!

 

[ReefDemon]

@bubbaque I read this thread from start to finish, finally caught up 248 pages later. Firstly thank you for sharing all the knowledge and info and being honest with your methods, I’ve learned more from this thread than I have from various other sources over the years.
You’ve changed my reefing style, from dosing all kinds of potions and ULNS to keeping it simple, and saved me money with the best results I’ve ever had. You, @FarmerTy and @Dugless are my inspirations, keep doing what you guys do!

 

[DivingTheWorld]

THIS THREAD NEEDS UPDATES ! :p

 

[bubbaque]

@bubbaque I read this thread from start to finish, finally caught up 248 pages later. Firstly thank you for sharing all the knowledge and info and being honest with your methods, I’ve learned more from this thread than I have from various other sources over the years.
You’ve changed my reefing style, from dosing all kinds of potions and ULNS to keeping it simple, and saved me money with the best results I’ve ever had. You, @FarmerTy and @Dugless are my inspirations, keep doing what you guys do!

Reading all those pages is an accomplishment, lol.

I am glad to hear you are having great results. Keeping it simple definitely is the way to go buy right now with my current algae issue I’m ready to throw everything at it to get rid of it.

THIS THREAD NEEDS UPDATES ! :p

I agree and I wish I wasn’t so embarrassed by my algae or I’d take more pics. I’m really hoping my algae scrubber starts helping and the tank finds it’s balance again or all pics will look like this haha.

 

[ReefDemon]

You’ve got this! This tank will be back to its former glory in no time. The hilarious thing is, when your tank isn't going so great the results are still better than most people can hope for! :D

Now, I‘ll be in Ty‘s thread playing catch up over there.

 

[drawman]

Reading all those pages is an accomplishment, lol.

I am glad to hear you are having great results. Keeping it simple definitely is the way to go buy right now with my current algae issue I’m ready to throw everything at it to get rid of it.

I agree and I wish I wasn’t so embarrassed by my algae or I’d take more pics. I’m really hoping my algae scrubber starts helping and the tank finds it’s balance again or all pics will look like this haha.

That acro still looks great! I absolutely have the same stuff and it is a PITA. Here's hoping that algae scrubber decimates it!

 

[DivingTheWorld]

It's not about the algae, I mean who doesn't have algae?! I know you're hiding some awesome acros and that's what we're looking for.

 

[bubbaque]

It's not about the algae, I mean who doesn't have algae?! I know you're hiding some awesome acros and that's what we're looking for.

You don’t got algae like what I’m going through right now that’s for sure. Taking out the sand and adding/removing the denitrator threw off what balance the tank had. I normally tell people not to worry about algae and just up your cleanup crew. I’ve ordered 250 hermits, 2 sea hares, 6 emerald crabs, roughly 60 snails of all varieties, 12 urchins and have 10 tangs and only the urchins eat it but they are so slow and don’t get the cracks and seem to prefer to eat the bare bottom.

I’m sure I will lose tons of acros during the process of me trying to rid this as natural methods aren’t working or taking too long. I will probably add gfo or other methods to starve this out.

This is what 50% of my rock looks like currently. It’s horrible!

 

[drawman]

You don’t got algae like what I’m going through right now that’s for sure. Taking out the sand and adding/removing the denitrator threw off what balance the tank had. I normally tell people not to worry about algae and just up your cleanup crew. I’ve ordered 250 hermits, 2 sea hares, 6 emerald crabs, roughly 60 snails of all varieties, 12 urchins and have 10 tangs and only the urchins eat it but they are so slow and don’t get the cracks and seem to prefer to eat the bare bottom.

I’m sure I will lose tons of acros during the process of me trying to rid this as natural methods aren’t working or taking too long. I will probably add gfo or other methods to starve this out.

This is what 50% of my rock looks like currently. It’s horrible!

I think I told you this already but I've resorted to taking my rocks out during water changes and applying peroxide. I think my urchins eat it somewhat as well but sure don't seem to go after it very well.

 

[DivingTheWorld]

Sorry Bubba, that does look pretty bad, but I know you’ll get through it. I’ve had good luck with short spined purple urchins. They have a white body color with purple spines. When I had bad algae years ago, they were the only thing that ate it. I preferred little ones because they could get into the nooks and crannies and around corals.

 

[Ultra Aquatics]

Sorry to hear about your algae issues, any chance it’s bryopsis?

 

[bubbaque]

I think I told you this already but I've resorted to taking my rocks out during water changes and applying peroxide. I think my urchins eat it somewhat as well but sure don't seem to go after it very well.

It would be very difficult to take out my rock as it’s all glued together

Sorry Bubba, that does look pretty bad, but I know you’ll get through it. I’ve had good luck with short spined purple urchins. They have a white body color with purple spines. When I had bad algae years ago, they were the only thing that ate it. I preferred little ones because they could get into the nooks and crannies and around corals.

I do have multiple types of urchins. Couple long spine, tuxedo, pincushion and even a rock boring urchin. They do eat it for sure but just so slow.

Sorry to hear about your algae issues, any chance it’s bryopsis?

No this is green turf algae. Which is turning out to be nearly as bad with trying to find something that eats it.

 

[jda]

Go to ReefTopia and get you 30-50 of the pincushions. You need a full platoon and not just a unit of them. Any less and they just take their sweet little time just to mock you. You can give them away when they mow it down in a few months... or they can stick around and keep your coralline in check. The urchins are not effective if you let your N or P rise too much... does not have to be at NSW, but cannot be too high either. If the N and P gets too high, they just really seem to slow down - if it gets really high, they will die. IMO, snails are a joke for a job like this. Fun fact, but these can live to be more than 100 years old, I guess. Other than moving around frags, they are my favorite algae eaters, are cheap at hardy.

Sea Urchin, Pincushion - L. variegatus (4 Lot)

Pincushion urchins do very well within a Reef Aquarium and control a variety of algae. We do our best to select interesting colors when collecting these. Size varies from golf ball to slightly larger when collected for the marine aquarium. Variation of colors.

reeftopia.com

 

[Ultra Aquatics]

It would be very difficult to take out my rock as it’s all glued together

I do have multiple types of urchins. Couple long spine, tuxedo, pincushion and even a rock boring urchin. They do eat it for sure but just so slow.



No this is green turf algae. Which is turning out to be nearly as bad with trying to find something that eats it.

That sucks, you could give AlgaeFix a try. It’s a very good algaecide and I have found it to be very SPS safe. I have used it to get rid of hair algae before.

 

[SeaDweller]

Hey bubba, what’s all the super fuzzy brown acros you’re growing so well? Dayam, me jelly.

Chin up bubba, you’ll get it under control. I bet you’ll conquer that before we get COVID under control.

 

[bubbaque]

Go to ReefTopia and get you 30-50 of the pincushions. You need a full platoon and not just a unit of them. Any less and they just take their sweet little time just to mock you. You can give them away when they mow it down in a few months... or they can stick around and keep your coralline in check. The urchins are not effective if you let your N or P rise too much... does not have to be at NSW, but cannot be too high either. If the N and P gets too high, they just really seem to slow down - if it gets really high, they will die. IMO, snails are a joke for a job like this. Fun fact, but these can live to be more than 100 years old, I guess. Other than moving around frags, they are my favorite algae eaters, are cheap at hardy.

Sea Urchin, Pincushion - L. variegatus (4 Lot)

Pincushion urchins do very well within a Reef Aquarium and control a variety of algae. We do our best to select interesting colors when collecting these. Size varies from golf ball to slightly larger when collected for the marine aquarium. Variation of colors.

reeftopia.com

The problem is with urchins is I mounted my corals all weird by mounting them to frag plugs with the stems so I can fit more corals. I notice in the spots where the urchins eat it they can’t fit under the plug so it looks like little algae bushes around the plugs.

My nutrients are higher than you like but not something I consider crazy high. Today was .04 and 10 ppm but I’m not sure nutrients matter with algae in the display consuming it.

Hey bubba, what’s all the super fuzzy brown acros you’re growing so well? Dayam, me jelly.

Chin up bubba, you’ll get it under control. I bet you’ll conquer that before we get COVID under control.

My corals are prepared for the COVID by wearing algae masks.