OP
OP
ReefDreamz
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- Joined
- May 14, 2008
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13 Month Update
Well the tank is now over one year old and I haven't updated this build thread since month 6. In that time I've struggled with a few major issues. The first being green hair algae. At first I tried some of the common approaches. I ran Rowaphos to lower PO4, which didn't help and seemed to make things worse. I tried a Dolabella Sea Hare which lived for a few weeks, didn't eat any of the GHA and died. I tried a course of Fluconazole which didn't work really at all on the GHA but did kill some Bryopsis I also had.
What actually did work for me was a multipronged approach beginning with manually removing the GHA on a weekly basis via a brush and a siphon tube into a filter sock. Removing the Rowaphos and actually increasing my fish load, feeding more, and raising nutrient levels. Really beefing up my CUC including adding roughly 70 scarlet hermit crabs and lots of snails. Finally, what I really believed helped was continually adding more and more coral to tip the balance of nutrient uptake away from the algae and to the coral, basically using coral to starve the algae.
The second big hurdle I had to overcome was a bacterial/brown jelly problem to which I lost quite a bit of LPS including some torches, many micromussa frags, candy canes, and others. I solved this by doing a course of cipro in the tank which worked beautifully.
I'm really pretty happy with my reef now. The corals seem to be growing well including about 20 SPS frags that I've added over the last few months and I don't have a spec of algae in the display anymore. My next challenge is aiptasia. I have about 10 relatively large aiptasia that I can see so I'll need to figure that out. I think my fish load is maxed for my size tank, at least for larger fish so I feel like a Copperband is not possible at this point.
Well the tank is now over one year old and I haven't updated this build thread since month 6. In that time I've struggled with a few major issues. The first being green hair algae. At first I tried some of the common approaches. I ran Rowaphos to lower PO4, which didn't help and seemed to make things worse. I tried a Dolabella Sea Hare which lived for a few weeks, didn't eat any of the GHA and died. I tried a course of Fluconazole which didn't work really at all on the GHA but did kill some Bryopsis I also had.
What actually did work for me was a multipronged approach beginning with manually removing the GHA on a weekly basis via a brush and a siphon tube into a filter sock. Removing the Rowaphos and actually increasing my fish load, feeding more, and raising nutrient levels. Really beefing up my CUC including adding roughly 70 scarlet hermit crabs and lots of snails. Finally, what I really believed helped was continually adding more and more coral to tip the balance of nutrient uptake away from the algae and to the coral, basically using coral to starve the algae.
The second big hurdle I had to overcome was a bacterial/brown jelly problem to which I lost quite a bit of LPS including some torches, many micromussa frags, candy canes, and others. I solved this by doing a course of cipro in the tank which worked beautifully.
I'm really pretty happy with my reef now. The corals seem to be growing well including about 20 SPS frags that I've added over the last few months and I don't have a spec of algae in the display anymore. My next challenge is aiptasia. I have about 10 relatively large aiptasia that I can see so I'll need to figure that out. I think my fish load is maxed for my size tank, at least for larger fish so I feel like a Copperband is not possible at this point.
