Jackie and Glenns 180g Reef Build

[jsker]

Does anyone else's doser tubes get clogged at the outlet ends? I've been having a real problem with this lately....

My alk gets clogged up, even when it is 5 inches above the water. I have been making an effort to keep it unclogged.

 

[prsnlty]

... And Caught Up!

Jackie,
I hope your 180 is still on the upswing. It's like looking into a fairy tale.
With all your skills, laughter and your Atlantis 180 I don't even know where to begin.

Besides God, Who taught you how to master so many things?
Did you grow up building things or did Glen teach you?

We are all pulling for your reef and the bridge would be nice to watch you build and I know it would be magical in your 180.

Thank you for being my friend and you have blessed all our lives on R2R.

PS: When I was running the Apex DOS pumps. My end lines are up high too and I'd squeeze the end of the alk line during my weekly water change so it would not crystal up and clog.

Freddie

Aw thank you Freddie that's such a wonderful comment and I too and thankful for our friendship!!! R2R and the good people here has been blessing to me in many ways for about 6 years now, like one big family and I appreciate everyone here more than I can say [emoji4]

Haha, I grew up this way. My mother was crafty, could sew and cook and was always making things for herself rather than purchasing them. She's also very musically inclined and can play anything with keys or strings. Country music is her forte. My father was a builder by trade, painter and quite the artist. And I don't think there is anything that he does not know how to do. So I got lucky in that respect and learned to be quite inventive LOL. My parents had for girls and my dad had a boy from a previous marriage. Every one of us has some sort of talent thanks to them. Glenn actually hasn't taught me anything but we work well together. He's a semi driver now but grew up building houses in nearly all aspects of the trade and has only been doing OTR since moving to FL 13 years ago.

I was about to post an update when I saw the new post from you guys and will explain that in my following post...

Jackie

 

[prsnlty]

Update...
There have been no more Coral deaths in a while now. However I did accidentally break the center of my green slimer last night [emoji24] I was wiping the glass and didn't realize how close to the glass one of its branches were and I hit it breaking the center stalk out. Right now I just have the whole middle portion of it laying on top of itself and I'm not sure what to do at this point. Here's a before and after picture posted below however even though it doesn't look that bad it's just because I have it laying inside of its own original base.

So besides my latest incident, I haven't done much with the tank. I am basically just letting it sit there and get well. I do have what appears to be a cyanobacteria issue although this is not red and slimy or bubbly it's more Brown and dusty than anything but it disappears after dark. I'm debating on treating the tank because I'm trying to keep it stable as possible. I do have issues however such as my glass filming up within an hour after cleaning it. I have been low dosing vodka but I think I may have to actually dose properly or come up with another game plan what do you guys think? I'm about to start testing everything and I'll post those results after I get finished.

 

[GoVols]

Jackie,
I'm sorry about your slimer, been there and done that.

You are a way more advanced reefer than I am but when I see brown, dusty and recedes at night then diatoms comes to my mind.

Freddie

 

[prsnlty]

Jackie,
I'm sorry about your slimer, been there and done that.

You are a way more advanced reefer than I am but when I see brown, dusty and recedes at night then diatoms comes to my mind.

Freddie

Originally I had thought that also but they don't really resemble diatoms. But again they could be. I just feel like I'm fighting a very long uphill battle. I do believe that my sand bed did die from the power outage and I do believe also that the tank is trying to come back still. Another reason why I don't really want to add any coral into it for quite some time. One of my LEDs has been out of commission for a couple of months as well and I think that that might also have something to do with it. I have been so busy I just have not had the time to pull that led down and open it up and clean out all of the salt spray. I disconnected it because the lights were flickering and I knew it had to do with salt. I was going to start the Rock and began collecting things to do so but I think it may be more important for me to deal with the LEDs and other aspects first.

Yeah I nearly cried when I broke that Slimer! Being that it's one of the few a crows that survived and I had to go and break it [emoji33] [emoji30] [emoji24]

 

[Salty1962]

I also had bumped my GS and broke off some main stalks. I placed them back on the remaining coral and after a couple of months it grew back together and was solid. So I think you'll be ok with it. Awesome tank!

 

[GoVols]

Originally I had thought that also but they don't really resemble diatoms. But again they could be. I just feel like I'm fighting a very long uphill battle. I do believe that my sand bed did die from the power outage and I do believe also that the tank is trying to come back still. Another reason why I don't really want to add any coral into it for quite some time. One of my LEDs has been out of commission for a couple of months as well and I think that that might also have something to do with it. I have been so busy I just have not had the time to pull that led down and open it up and clean out all of the salt spray. I disconnected it because the lights were flickering and I knew it had to do with salt. I was going to start the Rock and began collecting things to do so but I think it may be more important for me to deal with the LEDs and other aspects first.

Yeah I nearly cried when I broke that Slimer! Being that it's one of the few a crows that survived and I had to go and break it [emoji33] [emoji30] [emoji24]

Seems like life and reef keeping things comes in bunches and I have just about cried too.

You will over come, recover and we're all pulling for you and the most beautiful 180 that we've ever seen. ;Singing ;Singing ;Singing

Freddie

 

[prsnlty]

Current Parameters;
Hannah for alk
Salifert for KH & NO3
RD for CA& MG
Apex all else:
Time 12:45
Temp 77.2
PH 8.24
PO4 .06
NO3 .02!!! (not 2 but .o2- too low)
ALK 10.5 (1.0 too high)
MG 1400
CA 330

 

[prsnlty]

I also had bumped my GS and broke off some main stalks. I placed them back on the remaining coral and after a couple of months it grew back together and was solid. So I think you'll be ok with it. Awesome tank!

Thank you

Thats what i was thinking of trying, BUT it is a huge and unbalanced center with a less thick center bottom trunk (where it broke.) So I have to figure out a way to keep it balanced with all of the flow so it doesn't keep falling down.

 

[prsnlty]

Seems like life and reef keeping things comes in bunches and I have just about cried too.

You will over come, recover and we're all pulling for you and the most beautiful 180 that we've ever seen. ;Singing ;Singing ;Singing

Freddie

Thank you I do miss how it looked and how well it was doing before the crash very much, but I think it'll be like that or better one day again. [emoji12]

 

[prsnlty]

I'm still mad about the discontinuation of seachem reef salt... [emoji34] I ordered a box of reef crystals. If I didn't have such a bad taste in my mouth over aquaforest probiotics Reef salt I would get their regular Reef salt and Red Seas alkalinity is way too low for me. (Sigh)

 

[prsnlty]

Well today I changed out media reactors and did a 28g wc in the 180. Then did some cleanup and chopped the red m.cap away from the struggling bonsai and broke away the green and German blue digis from the bn. Was thinking about why I never seem to learn (cuz I know better) but do it anyway... MOST monti's are a royal PAIN! Ugh...

On another thought path a little more concerning; this brown algae or bacteria(not sure) that is in the tank is spreading [emoji33] [emoji19] I know that it is not diatoms however it could be some form of cyanobacteria and again I don't think it's that because I already have some cyanobacteria in the tank (lol) so that leaves either a precursor to hair algae development or a species of dinoflagellates. Both in my opinion are equally bad news! This stuff is reddish brown but more to the brown side no bubbles no slime. It tends to vanish overnight and come back in the light. However areas where it exists on the sand bed and keeps returning daily turn green eventually and makes the sand kind of clumpy. I have vacuumed it all off and it comes back anyway. The rocks are now getting covered in it as well. I am debating on h202 and I think that I'm going to take this ssue to Randy @Randy Holmes-Farley since I am at a loss and don't want to do the wrong thing considering the tanks delicate state for the last couple of months.

I ran some water tests before and after the water change and everything looks good as far as testing goes other than no3 at .02 PPM so I might as well say 0ppm. That needs to come up. PO4 is .05 now and coming down. I'm only running 1 cup of gfo so I don't strip it. The 180s happy po4 # is .04.

I also did an invert (cuc) count... not good. Aside from the orange spot goby I also lost many snails due to the crash. I hadn't replenished any because I wanted to be sure everything was in the clear before I did. Now it looks like I probably need $200 worth of snails and Scarlett legs! Ugh I need to win some LiveAquaria money!! Course it would help if I would participate in the contests lol. And sometimes I do it's just hard to keep up with and do everything else I need to do too [emoji23]

You ever see a huge flat head screwdriver spin around and smack someone in the forehead? No? Let me tell you that it produces quite a knot!!! I'm just glad it was the handle that hit me LOL that's what I use to break loose the phosban reactor tops from the canister. My hand slipped


I'm going to post some pictures of that reddish brown stuff in my tank and I welcome you to chime in with your thoughts. Most of these pictures are after lights out and I used the flash on some of them to see how it looks in different lighting. It is also under the sb (last pic)!

In the 2nd to last pic you can see the clumpiness of the sand.

 

[prsnlty]

Also my glass is covered in it within minutes of scraping the glass. Within 2 hours it's brown. The odd thing is the water itself is actually crystal clear!

 

[hybridazn]

Also my glass is covered in it within minutes of scraping the glass. Within 2 hours it's brown. The odd thing is the water itself is actually crystal clear!

Wow that's really crazy! I forget what lighting you are using but is it possible it's time for a bulb change?

 

[prsnlty]

Wow that's really crazy! I forget what lighting you are using but is it possible it's time for a bulb change?

I have a combination of 6 t5s and AI LEDs. I am actually in the process of light changing. Two new ones go in as they arrive this week to the following week and two more the week after that. I do not change all 6 at once it's too much of a shock on the corals. I was thinking the same thing however they're not overdo. And there were times before where they were overdue that I didn't have this issue.

 

[prsnlty]

Since all lights are on I took some fresh pics. In most you will see the reddish brown stuff and a little cyano here and there. I took a long view shot to see the glass film which only gets worse throughout the day. So before lights out I'll take another one for you to see the difference. Hence why I didn't clean the glass before taking these pictures. On a positive note you can see some of the acros that are skinning back over themselves and the others on the frag racks that are coloring back up. The only corals that were completely unaffected in one way or another were the slimers. The purple Slimer is growing nicely too the Red Robin was only affected by color change. Now it looks purple. I am not sure why that happened. However it is growing beautifully.

The favias are super happy, the little one was barely alive and is great now. The sunset monti is also returning. The last pic is just how massive that m.cap is and I had to cut it off of the Bonsai to the right of it. The second to last picture is of the Red Robin stag, which is no longer red.

So anyway here are the pics....

 

[hybridazn]

Pics look great! It looks like things are getting back on track for you

 

[prsnlty]

Pics look great! It looks like things are getting back on track for you

Thank you! Yes with exception to the reddish brown stuff. It concerns me quite a bit because I'm worried it's going to turn into a full-blown problem. Which of course this tank really doesn't need right now...

 

[prsnlty]

I really really really want to put acros on these rocks and mount all the rest of the corals that I have. Plus I have someone holding some for me that I would love to have. But everytime I look at it I have to remind myself it needs more time

 

[Janci]

The tank looks good Jackie.
Balance will come back soon.