How not to start a reef tank, my first reef tank build

[Bruno_Soares]

Looks good. I suggest filling the big brute with RODI each time. amazing how many 5-gal buckets I have forgotten about and overflowed onto my kitchen floor

That makes two of us... (at least)

 

[NY_Caveman]

Y'all would have a stroke at how I reef. I rarely test anything. I just watch my tank. It will tell you when something is off.

I will tell you a secret (when I reefed in the early 90s I never owned a single test kit - just one hydrometer).

 

[erk]

Y'all would have a stroke at how I reef. I rarely test anything. I just watch my tank. It will tell you when something is off.

I run my tank this way to a certain extent. The only thing I check on a regular basis is alk. The Hanna checker makes that easy. I check 3 times a week. When I do see the inhabitants acting up, then I break out the full array of tests and go to town.

As for the refractometer discussion, I bought a Milwaukee digital refractometer for the very reason that I was tired of calibrating the garbage refractometer I had. Other than the Hanna alk checker, best equipment purchase ever.

 

[Why-Me]

Y'all would have a stroke at how I reef. I rarely test anything. I just watch my tank. It will tell you when something is off.

This is what I did with that 20 gallon tall I just transferred from.
Checked salinity every 2-3 weeks and did water changes every 10 to 14 days whenever it looked like it needed it.
Checked alk 3 times the entire 5 months it was set up LOL.
#honestyinreefing

 

[living_tribunal]

I run my tank this way to a certain extent. The only thing I check on a regular basis is alk. The Hanna checker makes that easy. I check 3 times a week. When I do see the inhabitants acting up, then I break out the full array of tests and go to town.



As for the refractometer discussion, I bought a Milwaukee digital refractometer for the very reason that I was tired of calibrating the garbage refractometer I had. Other than the Hanna alk checker, best equipment purchase ever.

I never thought I’d be saying “jeeze I want a bunch of expensive testing equipment” but man do I want a nice refractometer and the full hanna suite.

 

[Why-Me]

Next month I'm getting a Hannah salinity checker. They're $69 and do quite a good job at testing salinity and it floats too.

HI98319 Salinity & Temperature Tester - Hanna

Hanna Instruments HI98319 Water Salinity Tester measures conductivity (EC) to determine the salinity & temperature of natural and artificial seawater within seconds.

www.saltwateraquarium.com

 

[living_tribunal]

A few more observations from today:

There are random reddish dots scattered throughout the tank (on the sand and potentially what’s on my favia).

The acan seems better in his new spot but still isn’t 100%. The purple edges also seem slightly brown. He’s still not nearly as puffy as when I got him. He will put his feeders out throughout the day.

Also, does anyone know what the growth is on my green lepto? I don’t think it’s the coral but the coral has encrusted over it.

The Bryopsis has spread to a few frags. There is some bubble algae as well on the lepto frags.

I’m going to clean most of them, cut from plug, dip in coral rx, and re plug today.

I’m hoping that this isn’t a bacterial infection on the acan.

 

[living_tribunal]

I’m thinking what happened is maybe I turned down the flow too much for the acan and blasto which caused cyano to pop up on the sand bed?

It even looks like there I a brown dot on top of the frag rack which wouldn’t be consistent with cyano. Maybe I should up the flow a little.

I tested for phosphates and they were slightly elevated at .15. I’m going to cut my once weekly target feeding until it goes away. I’ll probably syphon the sandbed with the next water change as well.

 

[Why-Me]

I’m thinking what happened is maybe I turned down the flow too much for the acan and blasto which caused cyano to pop up on the sand bed?

It even looks like there I a brown dot on top of the frag rack which wouldn’t be consistent with cyano. Maybe I should up the flow a little.

Possibly dinos
new tank, lights on all day now...

 

[living_tribunal]

Possibly dinos
new tank, lights on all day now...

I just moved the pump to the back corner of the tank and increased the flow.

The acan doesn’t look to happy but it stopped all of the micro bubbles and will probably be better for all of the other corals.

The browning of the acan and favia has me worried. It doesn’t look like brown jelly but does indicate something isn’t right.

The lepto frag plug is pretty dirty as well. I know what I’ll be doing today!

 

[living_tribunal]

Possibly dinos
new tank, lights on all day now...

I think you’re correct about the Dino call. It would explain how they made it to the top of a plastic frag rag.

I’m thinking maybe one of the snails died which caused a spike in nitrates. That coupled with the mysis shrimp feeding was too much at one time for the tank to handle.

I’m going to just do a 50% water change today. I am also going to order my salifert suite early to start tracking this stuff. My api test kits just aren’t good enough. The sandbed is new enough that I think I can syphon it all without causing a gas spike in the tank.

It’s probably a good idea to do the cleaning while the corals are being dipped so the sand doesn’t bother the frags.

 

[Why-Me]

Usually diatoms come from silicates in the sand in a new system.
You're doing good though keep it up!!

 

[Why-Me]

Sorry not dinos...Diatoms

 

[living_tribunal]

Usually dinos come from silicates in the sand in a new system.
You're doing good though keep it up!!

Good is as relative as it is subjective!

I should made the initial broadcast feed much smaller. I did 1/4th of a mysis cube. My thought process was that none of the shrimp nor coral had any food yet and that a decent mysis feeding would help most of the inverts, coral, and biodiversity in the tank.

Let’s see if I can curb the Dino’s before they become an issue.

I’m happy I’m experiencing/learning how to deal with all of this now instead of the dt. Qt tanks are a must imo, especially for beginners.

I’m only a week deep and I’ve gone to war with aptasia, bubble algae, bryopsis, and potentially I sleep well knowing that none g this crap is in my display tank yet.

If this was my dt, I would have been a prepubescent crybaby in the various help me forums.

 

[aqua_code]

The acan is prob used to being fed, it looks ok from your recent picture.

Bryposis and Bubble algae are no joke. Bubble algae took me atleast a year to fully eradicate.

not dinos...Diatoms

The brown on the sandbed is diatoms I agree. I dose oceanmagik and microbacter7 to encourage beneficial algae to take over. I've been fighting dinos with this approach, and I don't think diatoms have a chance either. The majority of the time, dinos look like this picture:

you will see a bubble attached to a string.

 

[Why-Me]

Agreed that's why I say doing good keep it up.
I haven't dealt with bubble or aptasia yet just a bunch of GHA, got a lawnmower blenny for that and he loves chomping down on that green grass in there!!
All my corals have come from local frag swaps or local reefing forum so I can drive and pick them up. Haven't ordered corals online yet.
To piggyback on what @aqua_code said, I would get microbacter 7 or microbacter clean

 

[living_tribunal]

The acan is prob used to being fed, it looks ok from your recent picture.

Bryposis and Bubble algae are no joke. Bubble algae took me atleast a year to fully eradicate.



The brown on the sandbed is diatoms I agree. I dose oceanmagik and microbacter7 to encourage beneficial algae to take over. I've been fighting dinos with this approach, and I don't think diatoms have a chance either. The majority of the time, dinos look like this picture:

you will see a bubble attached to a string.

I’ll see if I can get a better picture.

Regardless, I think the best first step is removing the frags from all of these old plugs before the bryopsis spreads to the sandbed. The bubble algae has been contained to just the single plug so far as well.

I had cycled this tank before adding cuc but maybe since I hadn’t fed anything the misis ended up making greater than 1ppm of ammonia for the 10g and since the lights were on I got the diatoms.

I think I should switch the bacteria feeding in my dt to a mysis cube every 3 days with the lights off so I don’t encounter any diatoms when things start going in there.

 

[living_tribunal]

Agreed that's why I say doing good keep it up.
I haven't dealt with bubble or aptasia yet just a bunch of GHA, got a lawnmower blenny for that and he loves chomping down on that green grass in there!!
All my corals have come from local frag swaps or local reefing forum so I can drive and pick them up. Haven't ordered corals online yet.
To piggyback on what @aqua_code said, I would get microbacter 7 or microbacter clean

Is microbacter just a super clean ammonia source to feed your bacteria?

 

[Why-Me]

It's basically beneficial "goodguy" bacteria that establishes itself within the rockwork and sand that acts as biological filtration, kinda helps mature your tank to be able to process the ammonia, nitrogen, phosphate, nitrate, nitrite etc.

 

[Why-Me]

There's a good 1-2 minute explanation of microbacter products and the difference.