jcolliii's IM25 Lagoon journey - MASTERTRONIC up and running!

[jcolliii]

4-23-20 top three-quarter down.

4-23-20 top down. Can see a bit of the red-brown stuff starting to coat the sand. Not too bad. Some cyano in there as well, but really happy with the trend right now.

 

[TheWB]

4-23-20 top three-quarter down.

4-23-20 top down. Can see a bit of the red-brown stuff starting to coat the sand. Not too bad. Some cyano in there as well, but really happy with the trend right now.

Tank is looking great. I like how open your sandbed is. I wish I would have left myself more access. I’ve really been fighting the urge to redo my scape lately.

 

[jcolliii]

Thanks! I've always liked a lot of 'sandspace'. Both the torch and the Lobophyllia will go into the rockwork when I get a chance to trim the big fat base on that lobo some time. That should clean things up a bit more.

Really like your aquascape - what do you mean about access?

 

[TheWB]

Thanks! I've always liked a lot of 'sandspace'. Both the torch and the Lobophyllia will go into the rockwork when I get a chance to trim the big fat base on that lobo some time. That should clean things up a bit more.

Really like your aquascape - what do you mean about access?

Thanks, I actually like my scape too but there are areas that cannot be cleaned easily because I can’t move the rock structures without taking some pieces apart. Can’t clean the sand under the island for example. It’s raised up so there’s flow under it but I’d have to take the whole piece out to actually vacuum it. Not that it can’t be done but it’s more difficult than I would like it to be. The tank is also just a little crowded in my eyes now that I’ve lived with it for a while. I’ve kind of been inspired by that big mangrove lagoon tank at WWC lately. I keep imagining a mini version of that type of scape, minus the mangrove. It would be much easier to clean than what I have and I like the open look better. It would be a total reset though, which could take a while. I don’t want to stress out the fish so I probably won’t do anything.

 

[jcolliii]

Well, I finally got around to downsizing the skeleton on the Lobo that I got from ASD a few weeks back. The skeleton was massive on this guy, and I've been having troubles trying to figure out where to put it with all of that skeleton. It was kind of like Vanilla Ice's hair back in the day.

So, I went out and got a diamond blade for the dremel today, and decided to take a little bit off of the bottom. I'd asked, both in this thread, in a new thread in the LPS forum, and dug up an old thread where someone else had asked the same thing without reply, so this was going to be a bit of an experiment. I decided I was going to try about an inch down from the edge of the polyp, so I grabbed the coral, grabbed some water, and out onto the back deck I went.

Yep - that is a dinosaur eating garden gnomes. I'm a paleontologist, and I hate garden gnomes. Anyhow - I made that first cut at a slight downward angle about an inch down from the polyp margin tissue because I know that the coralites in LPS are usually cone shaped and I wanted to minimize any tissue bisection.

I kept stopping, swishing it around in the water to keep the skeleton cool and the clean, looking for any color inside of the skeleton, and sniffing for the telltale 'cooking coral' smell. None at all on the first polyp. So I continued on to the other two in the same manner.

Got it cut on the outer three faces, then gave it a bit of a shallow cut on the inner face (again, swishing every few seconds in tank water), gave it a bit of a pull, and off the bottom bit came.

Here are the two bottom pieces of skeleton that I cut off. No live tissue whatsoever. So to answer the question I posed in the LPS forum about how much old skeleton can be cut safely off of a thick-fragged Lobo - an inch down from the live tissue margin, and at a slight downward angle appears to be safe!

About an hour later - like nothing had even happened (terrible non-filtered phone lighting).

 

[jcolliii]

4-30-20 Update.

Nearly all of the red stringy junk is gone. Still have a couple spots near the base of the rock on one side where there is a little bit of it. The sand bed is now clean reliably for 3 days or so and I just went 5 days without having to vacuum or stir it, so really great progress. In fact, when I do vacuum now, that red color is gone from the floss in my DIY vacuum device and it's more just a normal sand goop color now.

The reddish slime that began cropping up here and there during my second week of Vibrant has also called it quits, and I am mostly down to a brown biofilm of some sort and the more typical blue-green cyano. The cyano also appears to be in decline. Partially, I think this is due to a better balance, and partly due to the fact that holy carp - those snails are MONSTERS at devouring anything and everything! The brown stuff, the red stuff, the cyano - it's all on the menu for those guys! They do a fantastic job at keeping the rocks clean! Hope I have enough in there to keep them going after this is through.

The nitrate has remained pretty steady right around 10 - have not had to dose anything after the first two days, but I test it about every 3rd day to make sure. I'm not all that concerned with PO4 - it's low, and will likely be maintained by feeding. I only check that once a week - last time it was 0.05ppm. Man, oh man, I cannot say enough good things about that Salifert PO4 test kit: 1) it's super easy and quick to perform; 2) if you follow the increased resolution procedure the color is pretty dang easy to interpret; 3) it's *spot* on the standard I have. Easily head and shoulders above the Elos kit it replaced. But, I bet the Elos kit would be easier to read if I doubled the reagent and halved the reading also (the Salifert procedure for making those low-range readings much easier to obtain). My last PO4 test was 0.05ppm.

The corals are doing great and the pale tips on my valhala frag indicate it's picked up its growth rate. The slimball that was in tissue recession (it did lose quite a bit of tissue at the base, but never stopped growing) also appears to be putting on new tissue over the old skeleton. The Lobo acted like nothing even happened and eats like an absolute pig.

Things are going well, and I keep following the procedure I laid out previously - although I may start running the UV only at night now.

Pardon the glare.

 

[jcolliii]

DIY Tropic Marin All-For-Reef

Since every single place that I have looked did not have any AFR in stock and I'm about 3/4 of the way to the bottom on my bottle, I decided to order the materials to make my own from BRS - they generally carry all of the separate components to make your own, and I think my order came to around $100 - which sounds like a lot, but it'll make enough for my tank for several years, and they were out of the small sized Biomagnesium, so I had to get the larger size which increased my tab slightly.

The components required are TM's CarboCalcium powder, BioMagnesium powder, and their Pro-Trace A and P-T K+ elements. At the time this was written, BRS has only the A elements and CarboCalcium in stock. :-( You'll also need a clean container of at least 1000ml (1 liter) volume - I used a 1.58l juice bottle that I soaked overnight with a vinegar-water solution to get out any residue.

The instructions are given *by Tropic Marin* on BRS' website. It's 140g. of the CarboCalcium, 12g. of the BioMag, and 100ml each of the A and K+ Element solutions. I did not realize how many elements are in each of those solutions. This really is an all-in-one solution with majors, minors, and traces! Mixing was pretty straight forward as well. As you can see, I used my label maker on my bottle to mark some graduations on my container for next time I mix a batch up - make sure lines are on the meniscus!

I massed out my calcium component on my postal scale (which is pretty accurate) after adding a sheet of paper and then zeroing out for the weight of the paper. Had to do it in two parts because 140g of this component is quite a bit.

Did 100g the first go then 40g next time. Into the bottle and started stirring. Took a good while to get a significant portion of the Ca into solution. The magnesium component is much smaller - only 12g., but the crystal size is quite a bit larger - and that took some time to even partly dissolve. Here is what the solution looked like at that point. Still a lot of the components on the bottom. Keep stirring...

Then the A- Elements and then K+ Elements next - 100ml of each. I measured this out with a 20ml syringe x5 of each solution (which JUST fits in to the small reservoir top of the containers). Then stirred. And stirred. And stirred. Several hours later there was still a bit of that more granular Mg component on the bottom, but it has since dissolved this morning.

At my current dosage of 6ml per day, this one liter of solution should last me 125 days. One liter of the pre-made soln is $33.17. One liter of this is less than $20 (because the Ca and traces will be used up after 5 liters, but I'll have a LOT of the Mg powder left). So, at $13 bucks savings per liter by DIY-ing the solution, the savings add up to $67 over the course of 5 liters.

If you do the DIY route, you do need to have an accurate scale that reads in grams. Alternatively, I suppose you could use a scale that reads in decimals of an ounce and then convert, but the masses do need to be pretty spot-on so that the solution is balanced.

Anyhow.

 

[jcolliii]

So after looking at a lot of photos of different clip-on type lens filters for assisting in taking color-corrected LED-illuminated photographs of reef tanks, I thought about vintage color correction filters that had been used for specific lighting conditions during the good old days of film. In looking through Nikon's old offerings, I found the A12 - a glass filter designed to adjust tungsten film to be used in daylight conditions without the blue cast that tungsten film would have under those conditions. So I ordered one from an ebay seller and waited. And waited. And waited. never received tracking, seller never responded to emails. So, finally, after the receive by date goes by, I filed a claim fro reimbursement from ebay. Then I had to wait 4 more days before I got a refund (wanted to make sure seller didn't ship after case got started).

After I got refunded, I bought a different one on ebay. The 52mm size fits my 50mm f1.8, my 24mm f2.8, and my 105mm f2.8 macro, so that is nice - one filter, 3 prime lens choices! I got the filter in about an hour or so ago, and after playing with it a bit, I can say there is a remarkable improvement in color rendition, and almost no need for adjustments in PS or LR. I can't wait to play with this a bit more when I have time later and the sun goes down. A quickie for now. Only adjustments were for exposure, a tiny tweak to the white balance, and adjustments to highlights and shadows. This is really close to what my eye sees. The A12 might be a winner for DSLR LED reef photography. And it's cheap. I paid $16 for a glass filter shipped.

These are the exact colors that this Lobo appears to the eye under my evening lights...

Can't wait to play with the 105mm macro later!

 

[jcolliii]

A couple pictures under more normal mid-day lighting (slightly more white, less blue).

So much texture in there. Slightly deformed from shooting at a bit of a downward angle.

Sinularia is a bit bluer than actual. Still difficult to get the color correct. Might have to try a custom white balance. Problem with that is that light color changes through the day. Might have to use manual mode on the lights to establish a lighting profile and use that only for all photos.

 

[TheWB]

A couple pictures under more normal mid-day lighting (slightly more white, less blue).

So much texture in there. Slightly deformed from shooting at a bit of a downward angle.

Sinularia is a bit bluer than actual. Still difficult to get the color correct. Might have to try a custom white balance. Problem with that is that light color changes through the day. Might have to use manual mode on the lights to establish a lighting profile and use that only for all photos.

Nice looking shots. I like both corals as well.

 

[jcolliii]

Grumpy III

 

[jcolliii]

Kenny. He's got a ton of character. Easily the most sociable and fun to watch fish in the tank. He sleeps on top of and wrapped around the little round IM magnetic algae scraper when the lights go out. Really great little fish. Bothers no one at all and is bothered by no one. That is, unless Orca (the orchid dottyback) bothers him, then he will assert himself a bit more.

 

[TheWB]

Kenny. He's got a ton of character. Easily the most sociable and fun to watch fish in the tank. He sleeps on top of and wrapped around the little round IM magnetic algae scraper when the lights go out. Really great little fish. Bothers no one at all and is bothered by no one. That is, unless Orca (the orchid dottyback) bothers him, then he will assert himself a bit more.

Those are nice pics. I never get good ones of my fish with the iPhone.

 

[jcolliii]

5-7-2020: Progress toward reduction of diatoms and/or dinos.

It's been just short of a month since I laid out my complete strategy for the reduction of the red-brown grunge on my sand bed. At that time, I had relatively clean rocks with some patches of microbial mat here and there on the rocks and a smidge of some green cyano here and there. I also had a brown coating on the sandbed in places and in other places a sticky red-brown mat that occasionally had stringy, sometimes bubbly, goo that formed hair- or tendril-like streamers that waved in the current. This, I am assuming was due to an outbreak of dinos.

The approach that I took has appeared to have worked out pretty nicely. My sand bed is nearly pristine! I think the last time I vacuumed (before today) was nearly a week ago, and I have only stirred up the sand bed twice over that week. There is still some cyano present, but it is gradually declining - either receding on its own or being eaten by the snails. What a great change. The skimming, the UV, the changing out the floss daily, the additional snails, the Vibrant, and the vacuuming - in addition to dosing NO3 to around 10ppm (only had to dose twice!) has really all combined to lead me to where I am now - a nice clean sand bed and increased coral growth.

I am still struggling to maintain PO4 levels. Right now I'm at 0.015-0.025 or so - I'd like that to stay around 0.1ppm, but I don't want to dose that. I feed my fish pretty heavily - mostly flake and pellets, and the corals get spot fed 2x per week - again pretty heavily. I may have to feed more frozen or order some PO4 additive to get that PO4 up to where I want it. I'll give things another few weeks to stabilize before going that route though I think. For now, I'm super happy with how this has turned out.

 

[jcolliii]

A bit of an update - been working on a restoration of my 2003 Mini Cooper that I bought new, and that has taken a lot of my time.

Tank is doing well. I no longer have an issue trying to maintain NO3 or PO4, and now that I am doing water changes every week or so (3-4 gallons), that makes up most of the Ca and Alk demands - so dosing is down to quite low levels. I have had a bit of a hair algae issue - not too bad - but ti always seems to get in to the zoas, so I am trying to bring the NO3 down to around 5 or so ppm and maintain it there - that seems to be the sweet spot. But, the nitrates are getting trapped and re-released by the sand. And I can't put my powerheads where I want because of the sand. So, I made the decision to get rid of the sand. Then I will be able to put my powerheads as low as I want and not worry about making pits and craters. Will be nice to turn these things up above 3 as well.

The Jebao pumps continue to run absolutely silently and flawlessly. I have to clean them about once a month which is super easy. Power them off, pull the wire to release them from the magnet mounts, toothbrush the back side, remove the front side and take the propeller off, brush those over the sink, rinse, and repeat for the other one. Takes 5 or 10 minutes for both pumps.

The IM skimmer is running great as well. I just had to take it out and clean it for the first time this past week - skimming was more or less at a standstill - the pump inlet had clogged up with grunge that had gotten past my blob of filter floss. Cheaned it out and it immediately went back to producing great skimate. Seem to be a great, hard-working skimmer.

The IM ATO is another story. Don't know why it does this, but when it kicks on, sometimes (and this is usually at night), the controller will kick the pump on for a few seconds, and then off for a few seconds. It is not because the water level is fluctuating - it is clearly low enough that the pump should come on for a good 45-50 seconds. Not sure what is going on - and it doesn't happen all of the time. This unit may be going back to IM for replacement. Have to check the wires and clean the sensors first though.

Lights are not on right now, so no photo until later. Corals are all in the encrusting phase, not so much new branching growth, but the LPS are really expanding nicely. The Acan, the three maze brains, and the Favias are doing fantastic. In fact, I was sent a wrong coral by World Wide Corals 6 months ago - was supposed to be a maze brain and they sent some sort of baby blue favia instead. That coral has colored up to be one of the most amazing colored Favias I have ever seen - it has a sky blue outer ring, a vibrant yellow inner ring, and a blue center - it will be a show stopper when it gets bigger. I've been feeding only once a week though, so growth has slowed a bit, but I need to start feeding a bit heavier to get that guy growing. I guess it was maybe 2 polyps when I got it and now it's up to 4 or 6 - something like that. Funny how the accidental corals can end up becoming show stoppers!

Anyhow, I'll try to get some pictures later.

 

[jcolliii]

Just a heads-up for my midwest peeps: Menards has 24"x48" sheets of 1/4" thick black HDPE for around 26 bucks. They also have white. Just a heads-up if anyone else ever wants to go bare bottom and doesn't want to pay 20+ oversize fee on top of shipping and lives in the midwest. Picked up a sheet today in preparation for the switch over in a few weeks.

 

[jcolliii]

Was going to take my time transitioning to bare bottom, but then I thought to myself about the fact that I stir my sand bed every couple of days, and that my parameters are pretty stable. The slight rise in nitrate and phosphate may be coming back out of my sand bed (although, when I stir the sand, I do see bubbles of gas coming to the surface - probably nitrogen or CO2 I'd imagine). I also do not have a deep sand bed - it was for looks, basically. So I decided to take the rest out in one day. I've been siphoning the sand out for part of the afternoon (have to stop soon to make sushi), and have nearly all of it out. I hit the rocks with a turkey baster to dislodge sand clinging to the biofilm, and moved both of my pumps to the bottom on one side to help round up stray grains. I have a few corals on the bottom that I have knocked off of their mounts, but I am just about there. Lights are off and natural sunlight is all that is lighting this up at the moment.

I filtered all of the water that I siphoned out through a makeshift floss/carbon tube filter and changed about 4g to make up for the disturbance. Running my pumps pretty high to make sure any gasses that are not desirable get exchanged quickly. Have not seen any spike in nutrients and NO3 is fairly low after the water change at around 7.5 ppm.

The starboard is only quarter inch - which is pretty darn robust. I cut it slightly smaller than the screen top to make up for the silicone seams on the bottom - I cut the starboard 15 5/8" x 22 5/8". It was pretty dusty, and who knows what else was on there, so I cleaned it well with tap water and then used about 1/4 cup of salt mix to give it a good scrub on both sides, and then another rinse in tap water. Nice looking stuff - can't wait to see in in there. It does have a slight bow to one side - that is the side that will be up when I put it in and the rock structure should flatten it out very nicely.

I think the black will really accentuate the colors of the fish and the corals, and hope that it will be fairly easy to keep clean as the snails will now be able to crawl all over it (turbos *HATE* sand) and eat off the biofilm. If coraline starts to grow, then I'll have to get an urchin or two to keep it clean.

 

[TheWB]

Bold move with the sand, that’s a lot of biological filtration to remove all at once. I hope it works out for you. Bare bottom will be so much easier to keep the tank clean. I just can’t do it personally, without sand my tank would just look wrong. Maybe I could get used to it but it would be incredibly difficult to pull the trigger on finding out. Plus my wife would hate it.

 

[jcolliii]

I've got some biomedia in the bottom chamber on the right side, and there is quite a bit of surface area on my rock structures. I think I may order some of that 'biobrick' type stuff to cut and add to the other side for a bit more biological. I can already see where all of the detritus will swirl into little piles for easy removal. Will certainly keep track of nitrates every day for a while now. Really digging the look, but also really like the look of a nice clean sandbed. I see a lot of people making faux sandbeds now - epoxying sand onto the white or sand colored starboard. Neat idea.

Anyhow - I have a bit of recementing to do, and a couple crumbs of sand that came from the bottom of the structure when I put it back in the tank. Color is pretty awful - I can't find that darn orange filter I just bought, but this is as it sits now. I think I'm going to cut a couple short pieces of ABS to elevate the lobo up off the substrate a bit. May cut a small hole in the backside as my blenny is always looking for a cozy place to sleep. Right now, he wraps himself around the algae magnet and sleeps like that. When I turn the return pump off to feed, after he's done eating, he backs in to one of the return nozzles and just sits there surveying things until I turn the pump back on. That shoots him out like a spitball! He's a funny guy. I'll have to get a picture of that next time.

 

[TheWB]

I've got some biomedia in the bottom chamber on the right side, and there is quite a bit of surface area on my rock structures. I think I may order some of that 'biobrick' type stuff to cut and add to the other side for a bit more biological. I can already see where all of the detritus will swirl into little piles for easy removal. Will certainly keep track of nitrates every day for a while now. Really digging the look, but also really like the look of a nice clean sandbed. I see a lot of people making faux sandbeds now - epoxying sand onto the white or sand colored starboard. Neat idea.

Anyhow - I have a bit of recementing to do, and a couple crumbs of sand that came from the bottom of the structure when I put it back in the tank. Color is pretty awful - I can't find that darn orange filter I just bought, but this is as it sits now. I think I'm going to cut a couple short pieces of ABS to elevate the lobo up off the substrate a bit. May cut a small hole in the backside as my blenny is always looking for a cozy place to sleep. Right now, he wraps himself around the algae magnet and sleeps like that. When I turn the return pump off to feed, after he's done eating, he backs in to one of the return nozzles and just sits there surveying things until I turn the pump back on. That shoots him out like a spitball! He's a funny guy. I'll have to get a picture of that next time.

Looks good with the starboard. You know what might also look pretty cool is if you added a couple of those Marco rocks that are flat cut on one side and natural on the other. Two of them right in front of your main structure would make it look more natural while still maintaining the ease of cleaning without the sand. You could tuck that lobo in between. Just a thought.