Fostering Fillory - Mixed Reef - IM 25g

[Reef of Fillory]

Hey guys! What a ride this time...

Tank's looking uglier and uglier. I removed all of the SPS except the big green one on the top. The zoas are being covered with dinos, and aren't opening unless I keep blowing them off with a baster.

Dosing 1 oz of Phyto twice/day every day, and I'm now dosing Neophos and Potassium Nitrate to raise nutrients. I've left the fuge running, but i've removed all of the ChemiPure Blue, filter floss/pads and purigen. I'm also running the skimmer super dry.

Nothing looks happy, but it does seem like the duncan and frogspawn are doing okay. The leathers get covered and close up, but if I blow them off they seem okay as well.



Foster son (10yo) pulled off the MP10 motor and sand must have gotten into the wet side, so it's broken [tried soaking/cleaning it etc. but it still makes crazy amounts of noise]. Going to get some more phyto, a new wetside and maybe some chemiclean from the local store this evening.


Not sure what else to do. My next step might be to start over, but I don't want to trade in the fish I currently have as they all do very well together [think I got lucky on the wrasse and the regal]. If I could feel confident in starting new with all of the fish from the start, I would consider draining, cleaning and putting it back up with dry rock.

I'm sure it'll get back on track at some point, but for now i'm just riding it out...

 

[Reef of Fillory]

The guy that runs the LFS told me he's had success with the Dr Time Dino treatment plan in the past for dinos that go away at night. His first suggestion was a UV sterilizer, but I don't run a sump and don't have space for on to be installed. I considered just hanging one off the glass while it worked on getting rid of the dinos, but afterwards I would just sell it or have to store it.

He did suggest stopping phyto dosing (as I was about to buy phyto from him lol).

So this is the current state of the tank... 3 day black out while dosing refresh and then uncover and use waste away for about a week at 1/4 dose daily.

 

[Reef of Fillory]

The tank is chugging along...

I did 3 days of blackout in the tank, and now I've been doing blues only on the AI Primes during the day [manually turning it on/off].

There is still some coverage on the sand in spots, but overall it looks to have done a good job. I'm seeing a few little tufts of GHA in a couple of places which is a good sign. I never had any algae growth at all in the past.

Currently i'm running the skimmer, but almost so dry that I don't collect any skimmate. No filters/floss/media etc.

I haven't tested yet, and I've been manually activating my auto feeder 2-3x extra per day [for a total of 5-7 rotations/day of flake, pellets, reef chili].

I'll take some pictures in a day or two when I start to bring the white lights back in.

I did the Dr Tims dinoflagellates guide steps for the first 3 days, but never actually dosed the "waste away" because I don't want it lowering my Nitrate/Phosphate.

 

[Reef of Fillory]

Wow has time really flown by with the new kiddos!

Tank is running without touch/intervention right now.

What we have left is the BTA's [the original split], leathers, zoas, a hammer frag and a frogspawn frag.

I'm running the AI's only, on acclimation mode and I'm planning to pick up a clam this week and start bringing the metal halides back on starting with 1 hour/day and working up to around 5 hours/day.

I've set the Autofeeder to turn 3 times per day with flake/pellet/reef chili, and I manually turn it about 2x/day randomly.
The refugium is still growing chaeto, and the glass is not covering substantially/quickly with algae.

I still have some cyano in one particular spot on the sand.

I'm going to try to test tonight [been sick the past 5 days or so] but I haven't tested since before the blackout.

Pictures are hard to take since I am not currently running the Metal Halide, so it's super, super blue on every picture and I don't think they turn out very good.

 

[Reef of Fillory]

Here are some pics

 

[Reef of Fillory]

Tank's been on autopilot. Haven't tested, but I've been kind of dosing vibrant at 1ml/10gallons every week [I've missed a week or 2 though].

Autofeeder filled with flakes and pellets [no frozen, no additional feedings].

The Refugium section needs cleaned out with my next water change. There is a thick mat of hair algae covering this compartment now and the chaeto is just hanging on.

The dinos/cyano + blackout took out a few of the corals, and a couple others have declined noticeably.

Will try to post updated photos after the lights turn on.

 

[Reef of Fillory]

Updated pictures

 

[ramona]

How is the tank doing now?

 

[Reef of Fillory]

How is the tank doing now?

My wife and I are moving and can't have a tank at our next rental, so the tank came down yesterday.

Zoas, anemone, hammer and a few others were doing pretty well. Especially given the lack of attention in the past couple of months. I'm sure the water parameters were not great, and most of the corals in the previous pics ended up dying [although I suspect something was picking at them].

I'm sure another tank will pop back up at our house in a couple of years. We're looking to build in 2ish years, and I'm wanting a room dividing peninsula tank in the 160-250 range.

Towards the end, some clumps of hair algae were popping up, we had the mojanos and ball anemones that came in on my original rock, and a bit of cyano on the sand/rocks. I was running chemipure blue and I suspect that I was using too much of it, but the main inhabitants didn't show any stress/issues so I just let it ride.