First saltwater tank, 40 breeder

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KleineVampir

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Hopefully I can take some of my past mistakes out of the tank along with this 'sand' if you can call it that! And maybe get this tank looking the best it ever has!
 
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I got 2 out of the 5 20 pound bags today. The question is, do I just go over the old stuff with the new stuff? Or do I try to suck out the old stuff? Maybe it's just up to me but what I think I'll do is get a filter sock out and try to siphon some water and sand into it, just into my sump since I don't want to actually remove any water. If I can do it reasonably quickly and easily, I'll suck as much out as I possibly can before I start putting in the new sand. If I can't suck it out I should probably just go over the top of it. Might be overcome with the urge to just go in with a big yogurt container and shovel it out though! Not sure if I can allow this horrendous crushed coral mess to be in there anymore at all!
 
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KleineVampir

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Thinking about doing a gigantic upgrade. It's not just the sand... the more I look at it and think about it, this tank has some serious issues! Just the setup in general is not exactly something you want to be stuck with forever. It was good to learn on but it would be really nice to get something more self-contained and professional.

 
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Ok, one day maybe. Soon! Home improvements are still gonna be ongoing probably for about another year so I think I'll stick with this tank for a while longer. The beauty of just keeping the old tank is that: The price is right! But, that doesn't mean I won't keep trying to make it better!

Anyways today I got the turtle grass, and well, it's big! So I decided to go ahead and pour 40 pounds of sand into the tank despite not having the other 60. I'm not happy about how long it's taking for the other 60 to get here. But I guess the fact that it's 60 pounds of sand and that it's coming from Georgia just means it's gonna be slow af.

Now the grass has plenty of sand around it, giving it room for its roots to grow and stuff; provided it makes it. The plant looked nice and healthy on arrival but we'll see if it can survive me dumping sand on it and the cloudy water and everything! I'm hoping a combination of this grass and the deep sand bed really help balance the nutrients in the tank. Plants were the key in going water change free in the freshwater shrimp tank. Perhaps they'll be the key again!
 
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KleineVampir

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Also I'm doing the scrubber at night only. That way it gives the grass a chance to absorb some nutrients during the day. Not that the scrubber has been doing anything lately anyways. And I'm not feeding the corals anything. No aminos or coral chili. Just feeding the fish every other day with selcon. A bit of iodine every other week. Changing the filter socks every 8 days. Every 4 seemed like way too much for my tank. Barely even looked like it did anything.
 
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I bought 2 freeze-dried foods: mysis and brine shrimp. The selcon says it works best with freeze-dried mysis which I'm sure is true. The food I have now is just frozen brine shrimp. I'm hoping freeze dried + selcon is a good combination.

When I use the frozen brine, I put it in a small bowl with RO water and some selcon for a while but honestly I don't think it's actually absorbing much. But I still wait a while in the hopes that it will absorb some and eventually throw it in the tank after a few minutes. With the freeze dried I wonder if I even need the RO water in there with it or if it will just absorb the selcon directly. Maybe I'll need the water to get it to distribute evenly. The other advantage of freeze-dried foods is that you don't have to keep them frozen. So that adds a level of convenience and the ability to stockpile.

I'm definitely sold on the selcon since fish deaths have completely stopped since I started using it. If they die now I have to think it was from old age. I think many died because I was not feeding enough. Another advantage of freeze dried is that it doesn't come in cubes. So you can feed as much or as little as you want. That'll allow me to buy more fish in the future without putting any of them at risk of malnutrition!

Also at least for now I'm subscribing to the believe that coral doesn't need 'food'. Maybe for a frag tank, but if you have fish in your tank I say just feed them and they will create the coral food!
 
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Well, the good news is that I got a nice little harvest out of the scrubber. First one in probably 2 or 3 months. Bad news is that I don't think freeze-dried foods are particularly great. If one of them is decent it's the freeze-dried brine shrimp. The mysis does have a problem with floating, though honestly they both kind of do. I tried feeding both on one day which was too much. I kinda regret that. But oh well, I only feed every other day. I guess that proves the fish are really not that hungry to where they will eat as much as I put in there. So every other day seems fine.

The algae situation in the display is... kind of ok. The really thin GHA seems to have been destroyed after the peroxide. Now there is thicker algae that grows slower. It's a little fuzzy but not too bad. There may be some phosphates slowly coming out of that rock yet.

I will say, about algae scrubbers... 24 hours is great when your levels are high. But I think 18 is possibly the most all-purpose amount of time. Or possibly better yet, the 16 hours during the night. I theorize that if the nutrient levels are too low and the light is on too much, you will just grow slime which prevents the growth of that beautiful thick hair algae that you want. Giving it a break reduces the slime and gives the nutrients a chance to build up more. So when the light does turn on, it actually gets going on growing algae.
 
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KleineVampir

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Wow...so that "conch" I've been talking about is actually an olive snail. So yeah, those little baby trochus snails I put on the sand....I think that's what happened to them. Apparently these guys are "predatory" though you'd think they would just be more of scavengers. So it's like having a giant nassarius snail. What a monster!
 
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KleineVampir

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Well, I guess it's time for a little critter infusion! I bought 9 short spined urchins, another cardinal fish, and a peppermint shrimp to help with the aiptasia. If these urchins can't solve this algae problem, I don't think anything can!
 
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The other exciting thing about the urchins is that they may very well represent the final piece of the 0 water change puzzle! I got the algae down to a pretty manageable level...if something could just come along and actually eat it, I'd be golden! And I do like urchins.
 
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KleineVampir

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You know, this method of reef keeping does come with some algae. But A: you don't have to do water changes, and B: It is pretty stable. People always complain of big catastrophes...well, one of those is yet to happen to this tank and I don't think it will. I'm just saying, it's not perfect but I think the upside is that it is very stable and you don't get any big surprises.
 
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KleineVampir

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Man...Just feels like the desperation goes on and on in the fight against algae. I'm trying putting the algae scrubber inside the filter sock. Kind of a tight fit but thankfully it does go in. I figure that's where all the flow and nutrients are so why keep it right next to it? I'm interested to see if it works. Also amped it up to 24 hours after turning it off for a few days. I think it needed a break.
 
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Ok a lot of the corals are closing up, the algae is growing out of control, and the scrubber is not working for some reason. Even though I put it in the filter sock, I think the 24/7 was a bad idea. I thought the nutrients would be so high in there that I could run 24/7 but apparently it just grows slime or something. Though I'm not sure exactly why the scrubber wouldn't work.

So enter operation vibrant. Also I bought some steel brushes so maybe I can really scrape the crap out of that scrubber to hopefully reset the darn thing. The little toothbrush ain't doing it.
 
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KleineVampir

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Well so far the vibrant doesn't seem to be doing much. Maybe it takes a while but it has been nearly 3 weeks. 3 doses anyways.

I got a good harvest out of that scrubber so apparently putting it inside the filter sock does work. I guess you have to have pretty particular equipment and a particular setup to be able to do that, but...for me at least it works.
 
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Ok last Wednesday I started double-dosing vibrant. And honestly, it's looking like it should have looked from the beginning. I guess this system is just that fargone to where the people at vibrant just didn't anticipate the need for so much.

Also just before that, I pulled out an entire 32 ounces of algae! Yes, an entire 32 ounce plastic yogurt container just about totally full of algae, along with some water. I guess it started out-competing the scrubber really hard. Taking the nutrients out of the water before the scrubber can get to it.

Also about...4 days or so ago...I just shut the scrubber off. I think running it for this long without it working just grows a slime coat over it. Also there are a lot of pods in there. Not sure if that means they are actually eating the algae as it grows or what.
 
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KleineVampir

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Also given that I'm not winning these battles, I'm thinking about putting in a massive mangrove refugium. Now, if I haven't been getting the bathroom remodeled for the last few months, I'd be able to do this kind of fun stuff. But it looks like I'm done paying for that so I'll be back to possibly having some fun!
 
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