I need help, I'm at wit's end, I don't want to tear it down but I'm in a bad place.

[Fishdisease]

My goal is to save my tanks, because I'm at the point where a complete tear-down is a real possibly. I've got 2 problems, an out of control aptasia infestation and random coral death. The system is 3 years old, and these problems just started a few months ago. When I say that my tank is infested with aptasia I mean 1000's of them, easily. I just lost 2, 20+ head hammers to brown jelly last month, this week I lost 2 acan colonies and a beautiful mummy's eye chalice to unknown causes. I also tripped in the fish room, grabbed a drain pipe and shattered a pane of glass in my frag tank (it's fixed now but just speaks to the luck I'm having this year). I've successfully fought hair algae, bubble algae, red turf algae, green turf algae, alkalinity crashes, cyano, equipment failures, unemployment, broken tanks, and many, many other things and I'm at my end with this problem. How do I deal with this? how does every tank I see look great and mine's on the brink of disaster.

Here's what you want to know.
- 400 gallon total vol in 3 tanks with 90 gal sump with chaeto refugium - these tanks have been setup for 3 year, I've got 15 years in reefing.
Everything is Apex controlled, lights on 10 hours per day, Tunze ATO, carbon 2 hours daily
Parameters (I test alk and cal every day and adjust with Randy's 2-part which is also on a doser)
alk - 11.5
cal - 430
mag - 1100
NO3 - 2-5
PO4 - 0
salinity - 1026 (35 ppt)
ph 8.1-8.3
temp 78-80

My main problem is Aptasia. Look at the pictures below! How did it get this bad? I have no idea. I always had a couple aptasia here and there and would always rely on Aptasia-X to deal with it. About 6 months ago a noticed a few more than normal and now I honestly must have 1000+ that I can see and a ton more just waiting to grow. I;ve been working extra to make up for tough times due to covid and it seems like this cropped up overnight. While the frag tank and softie tank are fine the main tank is absolutely terrible. They are everywhere and nothing I've done has helped. I've added peppermint shrimp, a filefish, a seconf filefish and I recently added 10 berghia (which weren't cheap!).

Between the aptasia and constant death that has plagued me since this spring I'm almost ready to drain it and turn the space into a bar to drink away my sorrows. You know how much money I've put into this system (looking at probably ~15k) and I've saved it all from working extra jobs and not spending elsewhere. It's not like I can get any of that back and I really want to make these top notch tanks.

SO, what do I do? How do I do it? If it's too far gone then so be it, but what do you do that makes your tank successful? What am I doing wrong? Please ask me the hard questions, let's dig down into this and figure it out. I might be a bit high and a bit drunk tonight (hence the rambling post) but I'm at the point that I'm almost ready to let the aptasia/death win.

All pics taken tonight with my potato phone

Money shot(s). Everything is plumbed into the same sump. Ignore the cable management as I had to undo everything when the frag tank cracked last week (the small tank to the left in the bottom picture)

Here is the softie dominant tank pics, generally happy with this tank, it has a few aptasia, and nothings died in here for a while

Now to the horrible parts, I've also got some sort of algae in this tank that encrusts on the glass, it's not coralline, it does deposit a white calcium crust that is hard to get off of the glass. I also have a green glass algae on this glass that's almost impossible to remove, I have to get into the tank and really scrub it.

Did you see the aptasia? Well, here's a closer look, it's like this absolutely everywhere

and one more of my sailfin, just because.

Help

 

[Mical]

Get yourself a pair of Aiptasia eating Filefish -> https://www.liveaquaria.com/product...efish-captive-bred-ora-?pcatid=3555&c=30+3555

Don't expect overnight results but within a week or so Aiptasia will vanish. According to ORA they are shy, eat at night. I can attest to this because I had it as bad as yours & these guys decimated them. Even after aiptasia is gone, they eat pellets, flake & mysis and mine have been model citizens around coral.

 

[Fishdisease]

Get yourself a pair of Aiptasia eating Filefish -> https://www.liveaquaria.com/product...efish-captive-bred-ora-?pcatid=3555&c=30+3555

Don't expect overnight results but within a week or so Aiptasia will vanish. According to ORA they are shy, eat at night. I can attest to this because I had it as bad as yours & these guys decimated them. Even after aiptasia is gone, they eat pellets, flake & mysis and mine have been model citizens around coral.

I've had one in there for 6 months, it doesn't eat aptasia at all, just mysis. I had him in the frag tank before it broke with nothing but various sps frags and a ton of aptasia, he almost starved before I put him back in the main display. Now he acts like a clown, waiting for me to feed the tank. He's useless.

 

[Pkunk35]

Imo berghia nudis will eradicate them all given enough time. More than likely I think some kind of dedicated hand eradication along with a pest eater whichever it is but I think you can totally do it because I have had horrible aiptasia problems but beat it back! You just gotta go hard at em by hand too imo before they do further damage to coral

 

[Pkunk35]

Start killing by hand any that are near coral first.

 

[DC Reefer]

I feel your pain with the aptasia. I had a tank that had it pretty bad, pretty much on everything. I added the file fish and the peppermint shrimp and thought they were doing nothing. Then about 6 months later noticed that I could hardly find any aptasia. I think these are slow working solutions to manage the aptasia but once in not sure you can ever completely rid a tank of them but you can control them. How long have you had the aptasia eaters in the tank?

 

[Mical]

I've had one in there for 6 months, it doesn't eat aptasia at all, just mysis. I had him in the frag tank before it broke with nothing but various sps frags and a ton of aptasia, he almost starved before I put him back in the main display. Now he acts like a clown, waiting for me to feed the tank. He's useless.

The only thing I can say re: the filefish you have it's not an aiptasia eating FF. There are a handful of F/F out there. Some do & some don't eat aiptasia. Not trying to be sarcastic just trying to help you, it would be a shame if you tore those tanks down.

 

[vetteguy53081]

For the aptasia. . the fastest weopon for me is a kleini butterfly. make sure it has blue on its face,. The yellow one may bother coral, for some reason the blueish does not.
They eat aptasia like candy, friendly with other fish, eats all dry and frozen foods and nice colors

 

[Fishdisease]

Imo berghia nudis will eradicate them all given enough time. More than likely I think some kind of dedicated hand eradication along with a pest eater whichever it is but I think you can totally do it because I have had horrible aiptasia problems but beat it back! You just gotta go hard at em by hand too imo before they do further damage to coral

How do I get the ones that are hiding along the base of the larger colonies? My only thought is to pull the colony of the rocks, frag them to get rid of the dead parts, dry out the rock to kill the aptasia and start again. Any suggestions?

 

[sunken3]

well so much to take in. sorry about all of your issues. it can be very frustrating for sure. i have had terrible aiptasia outbreaks in the past... i have tried all the aiptasia-x.. (and other types). they seem to work, but then a few weeks later i have baby ones everywhere. I have a manjo wand.. super cool, but alas, only works against ones easily reached (which clearly yours are not).

i used a combo of items - and have basically all but eradicated my issues (i had way more than you and way bigger).
i used peppermint shrimp, berghia nudis, and a copperbanded. first i killed a lot of the big ones with aiptasia-x, then added the kill crew. don't be shy, dump as many in as you can afford.

the shrimp are easy to keep.. copperbanded's are a little trickier. i had issues keeping them years back, but now they are in line with all my other fish (easy).

berghia,, those guys are tricky. if you acclimate them right and dont have wrasses that may eat them, they will propagate like crazy and aiptasia is all they eat. if you dont acclimate them right, you wasted your money.

on a side note, you may want to reduce your alk... you are teetering on the max amounts. i'd drop it to the mid 9's.

also do you run carbon? you have a lot of those death green paly's..

good luck!

 

[Leslie Tabor]

Ok first off what is your cleaning/ maintenance/water change schedule? Your pumps are kinda a disaster...not being rude just saying...loss of flow could be an issue.
I feel the tanks that look the best keep it simple. Dosing seems to cause more trouble for more people.
For the size of your tanks and the amount of aiptasia, you need WAY more than 10 berghia. They aren't cheap but they work. It will take time. You can help them out cleaning the pumps...
These are just thought and my opinions. All that junk algae and crust on your glass is due to high nutrients regardless of what test kits say. It needs nutrients to grow. It just needs some elbow grease. This set up is beautiful it would be a shame to tear it down.

 

[Fishdisease]

The only thing I can say re: the filefish you have it's not an aiptasia eating FF. There are a handful of F/F out there. Some do & some don't eat aiptasia. Not trying to be sarcastic just trying to help you, it would be a shame if you tore those tanks down.

I did not know that. He was sold to me as a aptasia eating FF by my LFS, who I trust, but maybe he got it wrong. I'm in Canada so it's a bit harder getting specific fish/inverts. I'll look into it. It's been frustrating because I've done everything that I've read about, and nothing is working. I'm not incompetent, but this makes me feel very incompetent.

 

[Daddy-o]

I had the same issue with Majanos (thousands). Started one one side of my reef. Pull a rock or 2, soak in vinegar 5 minutes, rinse in RO and put it back in the tank. Worked my way across in an afternoon and only lost 1 coral out of 100.
Cheers! Mark

 

[gmdcdvm]

I second the berghia nudis. Luckily, there is a guy here in the bay area who is actively breeding them. I had a small outbreak of aptasia. I bought 4 from him. He told me how to handle them and how to introduce them into the tank. They can be very delicate. He also mentioned I might never see them again, but they will be there doing their job. First 3 or 4 weeks I did not notice any changes. Then, within a week I could not find anymore aptasia. My son used to come down and give me a head count of all the "bad anemones" he could find. Have not seen on now if over a month.

As for the rest of your issues I have no clue. I am to new to the hobby to have any good opinions about what might be going on. Good luck with all of this. The setup looks awesome!


Gerry

 

[Pkunk35]

You can buy berghia and keep them in a separate small container and literally feed them aiptasia on a aiptasia rock. After this they will often reproduce usually directly on the rock itself. You can add the eggs and rock back at night if you want a way To try and increase their chances of survival and reproduction in your tank.

 

[Fishdisease]

well so much to take in. sorry about all of your issues.....

i used a combo of items....

the shrimp are easy to keep.. copperbanded's are a little trickier..

berghia,, those guys are tricky. if you acclimate them right...

on a side note, you may want to reduce your alk... you are teetering on the max amounts. i'd drop it to the mid 9's.

also do you run carbon? you have a lot of those death green paly's..

good luck!

So many issues! I've tried a copperband but he only lasted a week then died, he didn't eat a thing in that week so I'm not sure if it was me or not. Yeah, multi sided approach is what I've been trying, it's a good call.

I spent 3 hours drip acclimating the berghia, no wrasses, but read that sometimes larger pods will cause problems with them.

Noted on the alk, you're the second person this week to mention it, so Ill definitely look into it further.

Yup, run carbon 2 hours a day (runs the system volume through the carbon 3-4X per day)

 

[Mical]

\i did not know that. He was sold to me as a aptasia eating FF by my LFS, who I trust, but maybe he got it wrong. I'm in Canada so it's a bit harder getting specific fish/inverts. I'll look into it. It's been frustrating because I've done everything that I've read about, and nothing is working. I'm not incompetent, but this makes me feel very incompetent.

Don't feel incompetent, we all learn & that's why we're here. Personally I think your tanks are awesome (less the aiptasia issues) Lot's of good advice & suggestions above, take a deep breath and "go at it" as you have when building those tanks.

 

[sunken3]

I second the berghia nudis. Luckily, there is a guy here in the bay area who is actively breeding them. I had a small outbreak of aptasia. I bought 4 from him. He told me how to handle them and how to introduce them into the tank. They can be very delicate. He also mentioned I might never see them again, but they will be there doing their job. First 3 or 4 weeks I did not notice any changes. Then, within a week I could not find anymore aptasia. My son used to come down and give me a head count of all the "bad anemones" he could find. Have not seen on now if over a month.

As for the rest of your issues I have no clue. I am to new to the hobby to have any good opinions about what might be going on. Good luck with all of this. The setup looks awesome!


Gerry

ya, I used to breed and sell berghia. they will reproduce like crazy in the right environment and die off quickly in the wrong. just dropping them into a main display tank will likely just see them die.

 

[sunken3]

Don't feel incompetent, we all learn & that's why we're here. Personally I think your tanks are awesome (less the aiptasia issues) Lot's of good advice & suggestions above, take a deep breath and "go at it" as you have when building those tanks.

yep - i would like to say all reefers (except those crazy lucky ones) have had aiptasia issues. you got to come up with a plan and stay on it.. not just once a month.

not to sound mean, but the last time i had it really bad was when I let my tanks go on autopilot... so maybe you need to get back into this full steam ahead!

 

[Fishdisease]

Ok first off what is your cleaning/ maintenance/water change schedule? Your pumps are kinda a disaster...not being rude just saying...loss of flow could be an issue.
I feel the tanks that look the best keep it simple. Dosing seems to cause more trouble for more people.
For the size of your tanks and the amount of aiptasia, you need WAY more than 10 berghia. They aren't cheap but they work. It will take time. You can help them out cleaning the pumps...
These are just thought and my opinions. All that junk algae and crust on your glass is due to high nutrients regardless of what test kits say. It needs nutrients to grow. It just needs some elbow grease. This set up is beautiful it would be a shame to tear it down.

No offense taken, I completely agree. I have 4 of those gyre pumps in the 2 tanks and a couple of weeks ago I tackled the 2 in the softie tank. The mate to that one in the picture is soaking in vinegar right now.

I do a 10% water change every 2 weeks, RO water, Red Sea Coral Pro Salt, clean my carbon/skimmer/heaters monthly

I just added the cheato in the fuge chamber on the sump last month to help combat the nutrients, I agree, where there's algae there's nutrients.