gofor100
Active Member
LONG OVERDUE UPDATE
Hey Guys,
It has been WAY too long since my last substantive update, and, honestly, I had to prioritize my tank over posting on this thread (as you will see below)
. Long story short, something got into my tank and took out most of my fish, so I caught all of the remaining fish, placed them into medicated tanks, and started the fallow period back on January 1, 2022.
1. 76 Day Fallow Period
First, the 76 day fallow period ended on March 18th, and I am happy to report that there is finally fish back in my tank for the first time in 2022!!! I ended up just putting my Blue Star Leopard Wrasse in the DT, and then temporarily housing my Flame Hawkfish in an acclimation box until I can get some of the more passive fish in my tank first so that the Flame Hawkfish doesn't pester them at all after their initial introduction. The other survivors we sold as I officially decided to go in a different direction with my fish selection- that is, only getting fish that are reef-safe rather than having to worry, for example, "Why is my clam not opening up... is it a fish, or is there something off in my tank?". I just don't want to have to worry about yet another variable when keeping corals/inverts in this tank.
2. Turf Algae Defeated
Second, while there were no fish in the tank, I was finally able to defeat the dreaded green turf algae... and it took pretty much the entire 76 day fallow period to do it. I first treated some rocks out of the water with H202, then followed that up with trying to starve it out by doing minimal feedings (I have some cleaner shrimp that still needed SOME food), skimming heavily, and cranking up my refugium light to the max. This approach solved probably 80% of the problem, but after about 1 1/2 months, it seemed to hit a plateau in improvement. And just when I was about to try what would probably be the most aggressive approach (using a product like Vibrant), the Vibrant thread was circulating (which I'm sure we've all seen or heard about), so I decided to go with an alternative "aggressive" approach. This involved dosing Microbacter Razor and Microbacter Clean in conjunction with each other (following the instructions on the bottles), then also going in almost every other day or so and spot treating the remaining spots of algae, followed up with a good brushing of the rocks to rid the rock of any dead or dying algae and siphoning up as much algae/debris stirred up by the rock cleaning. Now that the algae is gone, I'm just doing a maintenance dose of both Microbacter Clean and Microbacter7 as I start adding fish back into the tank (and, so far so good). As you will see in my progress pictures, this has worked WONDERS.
3. Time to Reflect- Lessons Learned
As it relates to the algae outbreak, I think I went about adding corals and fish all wrong. I added most of the fish I had wanted before adding a decent amount of corals. In hindsight, I feel this was one of the contributing factors to the algae outbreak as I didn't have many corals that could uptake the nutrients produced by all of these fish. I had thought that my skimming and refugium would be sufficient, but I don't believe my chaeto ball was large enough to compete, and while my skimmer is a beast, I may have needed to skim a little bit wetter along with water changes if I wanted to add all of those fish without also having a heavier coral bio-load. I obviously would've been able to get ahead of this had I been better about testing my nitrates/phosphates weekly, since by the time I started seeing algae pop up, those nutrients were reading really low, so I didn't react as aggressively as I probably should have (which, at this point, would have probably been simply spot treating with H202 and dosing Microbacter7, along with heavier skimming/water changes).
As it relates to fish/fish disease, while I can't nail down the origin, I think I can make an educated guess that whatever took out my tank came from one of two sources. First, I can't help but think about back when I added "quarantined fish" from the "vendor to remain unnamed" and immediately saw some flashing and what could have either been lympho, flukes, or some other parasite that ultimately took my fish out once I started dealing with the algae overgrowth (placing stress on the entire system and decreasing the fishes' immune systems, letting the parasite/disease to overtake them). The second potential source is reefcleaners, as, since I they state their inverts come from fish-free systems (which would imply they are free from any fish-borne parasites/diseases), I did not quarantine any inverts I received from them. What I did not think about, and failed to ever confirm, is whether they keep their "new arrivals" (who presumably can possess fish-born parasites/diseases since they are coming from the ocean) separate from their existing stock of inverts. If they do not keep them separate, then, in my eyes, obtaining inverts from them is the same as obtaining them from any other vendor that do keep fish in their system, and should be quarantined if you want to avoid introducing any fish-borne parasites/diseases in your tank.
With that, here are some progress pics (pardon the different filters- I'm still trying to figure out how to get the most accurate pictures on my phone, but will try to break out my DSLR to get some better pics soon):
December 31, 2021:
March 18, 2022:
Thanks for reading!
Chad
Hey Guys,
It has been WAY too long since my last substantive update, and, honestly, I had to prioritize my tank over posting on this thread (as you will see below)
. Long story short, something got into my tank and took out most of my fish, so I caught all of the remaining fish, placed them into medicated tanks, and started the fallow period back on January 1, 2022.1. 76 Day Fallow Period
First, the 76 day fallow period ended on March 18th, and I am happy to report that there is finally fish back in my tank for the first time in 2022!!! I ended up just putting my Blue Star Leopard Wrasse in the DT, and then temporarily housing my Flame Hawkfish in an acclimation box until I can get some of the more passive fish in my tank first so that the Flame Hawkfish doesn't pester them at all after their initial introduction. The other survivors we sold as I officially decided to go in a different direction with my fish selection- that is, only getting fish that are reef-safe rather than having to worry, for example, "Why is my clam not opening up... is it a fish, or is there something off in my tank?". I just don't want to have to worry about yet another variable when keeping corals/inverts in this tank.
2. Turf Algae Defeated
Second, while there were no fish in the tank, I was finally able to defeat the dreaded green turf algae... and it took pretty much the entire 76 day fallow period to do it. I first treated some rocks out of the water with H202, then followed that up with trying to starve it out by doing minimal feedings (I have some cleaner shrimp that still needed SOME food), skimming heavily, and cranking up my refugium light to the max. This approach solved probably 80% of the problem, but after about 1 1/2 months, it seemed to hit a plateau in improvement. And just when I was about to try what would probably be the most aggressive approach (using a product like Vibrant), the Vibrant thread was circulating (which I'm sure we've all seen or heard about), so I decided to go with an alternative "aggressive" approach. This involved dosing Microbacter Razor and Microbacter Clean in conjunction with each other (following the instructions on the bottles), then also going in almost every other day or so and spot treating the remaining spots of algae, followed up with a good brushing of the rocks to rid the rock of any dead or dying algae and siphoning up as much algae/debris stirred up by the rock cleaning. Now that the algae is gone, I'm just doing a maintenance dose of both Microbacter Clean and Microbacter7 as I start adding fish back into the tank (and, so far so good). As you will see in my progress pictures, this has worked WONDERS.
3. Time to Reflect- Lessons Learned
As it relates to the algae outbreak, I think I went about adding corals and fish all wrong. I added most of the fish I had wanted before adding a decent amount of corals. In hindsight, I feel this was one of the contributing factors to the algae outbreak as I didn't have many corals that could uptake the nutrients produced by all of these fish. I had thought that my skimming and refugium would be sufficient, but I don't believe my chaeto ball was large enough to compete, and while my skimmer is a beast, I may have needed to skim a little bit wetter along with water changes if I wanted to add all of those fish without also having a heavier coral bio-load. I obviously would've been able to get ahead of this had I been better about testing my nitrates/phosphates weekly, since by the time I started seeing algae pop up, those nutrients were reading really low, so I didn't react as aggressively as I probably should have (which, at this point, would have probably been simply spot treating with H202 and dosing Microbacter7, along with heavier skimming/water changes).
As it relates to fish/fish disease, while I can't nail down the origin, I think I can make an educated guess that whatever took out my tank came from one of two sources. First, I can't help but think about back when I added "quarantined fish" from the "vendor to remain unnamed" and immediately saw some flashing and what could have either been lympho, flukes, or some other parasite that ultimately took my fish out once I started dealing with the algae overgrowth (placing stress on the entire system and decreasing the fishes' immune systems, letting the parasite/disease to overtake them). The second potential source is reefcleaners, as, since I they state their inverts come from fish-free systems (which would imply they are free from any fish-borne parasites/diseases), I did not quarantine any inverts I received from them. What I did not think about, and failed to ever confirm, is whether they keep their "new arrivals" (who presumably can possess fish-born parasites/diseases since they are coming from the ocean) separate from their existing stock of inverts. If they do not keep them separate, then, in my eyes, obtaining inverts from them is the same as obtaining them from any other vendor that do keep fish in their system, and should be quarantined if you want to avoid introducing any fish-borne parasites/diseases in your tank.
With that, here are some progress pics (pardon the different filters- I'm still trying to figure out how to get the most accurate pictures on my phone, but will try to break out my DSLR to get some better pics soon):
December 31, 2021:
March 18, 2022:
Thanks for reading!
Chad
