Husker Reefer 350 build

[Smite]

Unfortunate series of events happened. Velvet broke loose and killed all my fish except one lone Pajama cardinal that never seemed to be affected. This lone cardinal has been the only fish in the tank for over 3 months. Do i pull him out to quarantine before added any new tank mates?

Having all brand new dry rock- Dino's set in and completely took over. Tried dosing Neophos and Neonitrate during the fish-less phase. Lost over $2500 in Acropora and probably another $1,000 in other corals because I could not keep my nutrients stable and off zeros allowing dinos to choke them all out. Also had a heater fail that did not help any measures.

Rookie mistake loading up this tank on corals with it being immature. As I restart, I plan to take a more simplistic approach to keep all my parameters stable and add corals slowly as it progresses.

Final nail in the coffin- after I defeated dinos I had a battle with Derbesia, which is a devil algae from hell. Going through week 3 of vibrant and it is melting it all away. Sooner than later I hope to be able to restart with precautions.

Frustrating for sure but lessons learned.

I've been hit by velvet 2x. First time I lost just about everything so I feel your pain. If it were me, I'd remove that cardinal fish and start the clock on the fish-less period from that point. You'll need to treat the cardinal before he goes back in the tank if you go that route.

Glad to hear you knocked the dinos back. No doubt vibrant works, and you may already know, but it has been found to be an algaecide from what I've read around here. It's not what they claim, bacteria. Not a big deal if you lost most of the pieces you cared about but something to consider if you think about using it once stoked up in the future.

Sounds like you've got the right game plan/mind set. I've started tank upgrades in the past with dry rock and bottled bacteria. While one was pretty successful it was a complete pain to navigate all the early tank stage algaes, dinos ect with acros in the system. Slow and steady has a better success rate and is much less stressful.

Great looking build so far. Cabinet looks clean, nice work!

 

[Husker-reef]

I've been hit by velvet 2x. First time I lost just about everything so I feel your pain. If it were me, I'd remove that cardinal fish and start the clock on the fish-less period from that point. You'll need to treat the cardinal before he goes back in the tank if you go that route.

Glad to hear you knocked the dinos back. No doubt vibrant works, and you may already know, but it has been found to be an algaecide from what I've read around here. It's not what they claim, bacteria. Not a big deal if you lost most of the pieces you cared about but something to consider if you think about using it once stoked up in the future.

Sounds like you've got the right game plan/mind set. I've started tank upgrades in the past with dry rock and bottled bacteria. While one was pretty successful it was a complete pain to navigate all the early tank stage algaes, dinos ect with acros in the system. Slow and steady has a better success rate and is much less stressful.

Great looking build so far. Cabinet looks clean, nice work!

Thanks for the insight, Matt. I am getting a quarantine setup. Unfortunately I have zero acro's left at this point due to the dinos, nutrient issues, and derbesia. Similar to byropsis so I figured I would nuke it and restart. Hopefully I can fully remove it out of my system once it has done it's job.

I am intrigued to try that bacteria culture you used when you transferred everything over to your big tank. They sell it at my LFS.

Keep up with the great work and awesome pictures, look forward to your posts!

 

[Smite]

If it's the PNS brand bacteria, give it a go for sure. It's a great product.

 

[Husker-reef]

I've been hit by velvet 2x. First time I lost just about everything so I feel your pain. If it were me, I'd remove that cardinal fish and start the clock on the fish-less period from that point. You'll need to treat the cardinal before he goes back in the tank if you go that route.

Glad to hear you knocked the dinos back. No doubt vibrant works, and you may already know, but it has been found to be an algaecide from what I've read around here. It's not what they claim, bacteria. Not a big deal if you lost most of the pieces you cared about but something to consider if you think about using it once stoked up in the future.

Sounds like you've got the right game plan/mind set. I've started tank upgrades in the past with dry rock and bottled bacteria. While one was pretty successful it was a complete pain to navigate all the early tank stage algaes, dinos ect with acros in the system. Slow and steady has a better success rate and is much less stressful.

Great looking build so far. Cabinet looks clean, nice work!

What is your quarantine process? Getting my quarantine all set up currently. Going to add the first dose of copper shortly.

 

[Smite]

What is your quarantine process? Getting my quarantine all set up currently. Going to add the first dose of copper shortly.

I no longer QT fish. I'm relying on good nutrition to help their immune system now. My issue was setting up a secondary QT for coral/inverts, I just wasn't going to do it. So I started asking myself why I was putting the fish through such a hard process treating prophylactically and stopped. I was losing fish here and there that I didn't feel I should ect.

It's a big gamble when it comes to velvet/ich and I don't plan to add anymore fish. If i do it'll be observation based.

When QT'ing I was using copper power at 2.5ppm checking with a hanna copper checker. I believe for 2 weeks then transferring to a sterile system where I'd treat with prozipro or general cure for flukes and also metroplex/focus in food for internal parasites. So it was about a 3 week process for me, geared mostly towards making sure velvet wasn't going to make it's way into my tank.

 

[tcarstens4]

Being a fellow Nebraskan, there are definitely some of our LFS’ that I trust more than others when it comes to getting healthy fish… That being said for our QT’s when we have actual sick fish we’ve done the 80/20 method that Elliot from marine collectors did with BRS to help get our fish disease free.

 

[Husker-reef]

Since there was velvet in my display took the precautionary route and pulled the fish and added to QT. Going fishless until velvet life cycle is complete. Reading that 6 weeks is ok, also 76 days. Will determine that down the road.

scopas , ywg, pintail wrasse, and pajama cardinal in .25ppm cupramine. Will bump up to .50 in the coming days. Fingers crossed the pintail does fine in QT

 

[Husker-reef]

Being a fellow Nebraskan, there are definitely some of our LFS’ that I trust more than others when it comes to getting healthy fish… That being said for our QT’s when we have actual sick fish we’ve done the 80/20 method that Elliot from marine collectors did with BRS to help get our fish disease free.

As you may know, Nebraska Aquatics runs a 14 day QT with meds to eradicate velvet, etc. before moving to their floor tanks. Which is awesome. Now running fish-less as a precautionary measure to eradicate my display tank.

 

[Husker-reef]

I no longer QT fish. I'm relying on good nutrition to help their immune system now. My issue was setting up a secondary QT for coral/inverts, I just wasn't going to do it. So I started asking myself why I was putting the fish through such a hard process treating prophylactically and stopped. I was losing fish here and there that I didn't feel I should ect.

It's a big gamble when it comes to velvet/ich and I don't plan to add anymore fish. If i do it'll be observation based.

When QT'ing I was using copper power at 2.5ppm checking with a hanna copper checker. I believe for 2 weeks then transferring to a sterile system where I'd treat with prozipro or general cure for flukes and also metroplex/focus in food for internal parasites. So it was about a 3 week process for me, geared mostly towards making sure velvet wasn't going to make it's way into my tank.

Thanks for the reply and info!

 

[tcarstens4]

Yeah I was about to mention they are the only ones who truly QT, others tend to just toss fish in their tanks.

 

[Husker-reef]

Yeah I was about to mention they are the only ones who truly QT, fish freaks kind of just tosses tons of fish in tanks, I went in there yesterday and there was like 4 fish dead in one of their tanks. It’s a shame because each of the tanks are connected with each other and they have a ton of NFS on their tanks because there’s ich/velvet in a bunch of them

Yeah I have noticed the same thing. Would be awesome if they did QT like the other store because they always have a huge selection of fish.

 

[tcarstens4]

Yeah it is sad because they seem to get the most fish in but also have the most ammount of fish that come in unhealthy. It’s too bad

 

[Husker-reef]

Need to invest in a camera. iPhone not the best pics.
my SPS are growing well =)