Jimbo's CDA 250 Build

[Jimbo327]

Instead of showing the cups of GHA that I pulled or the MP40 covered with GHA being cleaned. I'll post some torch and fish photos to enjoy for the weekend. The gem tang’s damaged fins and tail is almost fully healed! My mandarin goby is super fat and a big ole head, he must be eating good. Not sure what kind of HG torches the front one is, but the bright back one is a Malaysian HG torch.

 

[Jimbo327]

I’m pulling about a cup of GHA per day. I target little sections of the tank. It gets tiring to stand on a small step ladder, bending over and reaching deep into tank, while fending off the damsel protecting its spot…pulling bits of GHA off the rocks.

 

[Jimbo327]

You know you have been pulling GHA for a long time when your fingers becomes like prunes. I pulled another 2-3 cups of GHA out of the tank. Knocked over some of my rockscape. It's a lot harder to rescape when it's full of small little frags attached to it. Snapped a few SPS frags in half as I'm trying to move rocks around.

I think my clown is hosting in my mini Goni on the sand.

 

[backbayreef]

You know you have been pulling GHA for a long time when your fingers becomes like prunes. I pulled another 2-3 cups of GHA out of the tank. Knocked over some of my rockscape. It's a lot harder to rescape when it's full of small little frags attached to it. Snapped a few SPS frags in half as I'm trying to move rocks around.

I think my clown is hosting in my mini flower pot on the sand.

Just get +20 turbo snails man — they decimated my GHA in 2 days! My 2mos old tank is clear of algae. I do have some cyano in tight spots but those little Mexican snails will get there soon enough.

Ich situation contained?

 

[Jimbo327]

I bought a couple turbo snails yesterday, so they are already hard at work. I just wanted to speed it up and pull the longer GHA pieces because I don't think they touch those. I will probably got get more snails this weekend from the LFS.

I'm trying to tackle my problems from the easiest to the hardest. Get a few wins. So GHA is first to be fixed, and I think this should be contained in less than 3 weeks.

The aiptasia and dino are the 2 issues I'm fixing next. I'm already UV sweeping the sand daily. I'm trying to be more diligent and hopefully, I can kill off the dinos if I keep it up. Aiptasia would probably need more injections, I'm just not sure what will work better than my previous attempts with vinegar, this I will need to experiment with and hopefully, it doesn't cause an aiptasia explosion/spread. The 3 peppermint shrimps I added a few weeks ago are MIA. I may add a few Berghia just to see if it does anything.

And ich is still manageable. I still see a few spots here and there, but it is not a big problem right now. The fishes are still eating and fat, so I think they are going to be able to tolerate the ich for now. I think I will start catching the fishes in after I can get some of the other issues under control. I have to set up 2 systems. One is a big temporary QT tank for copper where most of the fish will go. And another system with 2 small tanks/buckets for the mandarin goby to do TTM since they can't tolerate copper. And that's if I can even catch all of them without breaking down the whole tank. I might wait until after the holidays since there is so much other things (family, holiday, visits, etc.) to do.

 

[marcus aurelius]

Following. Looks great. Here's mine. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/180-upgrade-mixed-reef.1012730/

 

[Jimbo327]

My workload at the 9-5 is picking up because 2 of my co-workers are on maternity/paternity leave.

I'm still manually pulling the GHA whenever I have time, but I think I'm losing the war. I decided to add some fluconazole into the tank because GHA is overtaking and suffocating many of the frags.

Sometimes, you just got to do what you have to do.

 

[Smite]

Hopefully the flux works for you Jimbo. I know it works for some but for me it would only take out bryopsis, never really affected my GHA. I know you know, but all that worked for me was manual removal and the addition of as many tangs as I could kept and still have them get along. I still get GHA in my fuge at times but nothing in the display due to the tangs.

 

[Jimbo327]

I have so many tangs, and they are all fat and happy. But not one of them is grazing on this GHA buffet in my tank. I think my tangs are lazy bums or they just used to eating the sheet of nori I provide everyday.

And I'm about to kill the blue damsel since it attacked my hand when I'm pulling GHA near "his" rock. Spooked me that I yanked my hand and snapped a SPS frag clean off the base.

 

[Smite]

Well there you go! No more Nori, seriously. That and manually getting it knocked back may just work.

 

[Jimbo327]

When life gives you lemon, you better make lemonade!

I have these mats of GHA on my sand, usually it's in the back corner of the tank. (I wasn't kidding when I said I have a lot of GHA.) I picked it up the whole mat and moved it over to the front of the tank. I placed it right on top of the sand where the dinos are. :rolling-on-the-floor-laughing: I'm going to smother the dinos like how the GHA smothers my zoas and frags.

 

[Jimbo327]

I mixed some Mrs Wages pickling lime and Potassium Chloride into a paste, and squirted it into all the Aiptasias that I can reach with a syringe. Very satisfying to see them shrivel upon contact with the paste. Would be awesome if they die and not spread all over tank.

I have to figure out a way to reach the ones in the back. I really need a longer syringe. Hmmm....

 

[Jimbo327]

After pulling countless cups of GHA over the past week, I noticed that some GHA grows very well and is hard to pull. Literally, the roots of the GHA is holding onto something, and when you try to pull it...you can't pull it completely clean off. I dug down and found that the GHA loves growing over the bubble algae. I think the GHA smothers the bubble algae and use it as a source of nutrient to grow strong roots. These are definitely tougher GHA and may not be easily killed by a single dose of fluconazole. The areas where there are no bubble algae, it's easy to pull the GHA. I think multiple doses of fluconazole may be necessary if you have a lot of bubble algae in the rocks.

Went to the LFS today to replenish some CUC. Mainly for the emerald crabs to eat bubble algae. But also added more snails and crabs since many of the CUC died because of the dino on the sand.

4x Emerald Crabs, 5x Turbo Snails, 5x Hermit Crab, 5x Nassarius Snails, 1x Fighting Conch, 5x Bumble Bee Snails.

And I got that weird dino looking algae growing on my glass again. Last time, I scraped it off and probably spread it around the tank. This time, I UV sweeped it on the glass, and killed it in place. Won’t fool me twice.

 

[Jimbo327]

Went to the local OC Coral Show today. I bought 5 tickets and won 2 raffle prizes!!! Very lucky! I collected the raffle prize from a SPS vendor (Defugiums Reef). Normally, I just drool over their high end sticks. To my surprise, the raffle prize was a tiny nub of a rainbow splice SPS, the vendor said it was an accidental frag, so it only shows green for the moment.

I think I spent like $100, and came home with 4 really nice corals, a bottle of pods and phyto. And I even gave away a $50 gift certificate (raffle prize) from another vendor to some young kids at the show, hopefully it'll get their tanks started and more younger generation into the hobby.

 

[JoJosReef]

Went to the local OC Coral Show today. I bought 5 tickets and won 2 raffle prizes!!! Very lucky! I collected the raffle prize from a SPS vendor (Defugiums Reef). Normally, I just drool over their high end sticks. To my surprise, the raffle prize was a tiny nub of a rainbow splice SPS, the vendor said it was an accidental frag, so it only shows green for the moment.

I think I spent like $100, and came home with 4 really nice corals, a bottle of pods and phyto. And I even gave away a $50 gift certificate (raffle prize) from another vendor to some young kids at the show, hopefully it'll get their tanks started and more younger generation into the hobby.

Sad I couldn't make it!

 

[Jimbo327]

Going to try something new. When I dosed Fluconazole, I had to turn off my skimmer for a couple days per instructions, and my nitrate and phosphate didn't really rise at all. And I liked how my tank looked. So temporarily, I'm going to run my skimmer for 7-8 hours at night only. (Tentatively 10:30 PM to 6 AM). Let me see if my tank likes less skimming.

There are several potential downsides:

1. Lower pH and Less Oxygenation of water
2. Higher DOC in the water
3. ATO will be affected by water level changes if skimmer is off/on
4. Skimmer may overflow upon turning back on at night
5. On/Off may shorten pump life

Always a debate if we are over skimming our tank and keeping it too clean. Well, I'm not sure. So I'm going to experiment with my own tank and see how it goes. I know dinos show up when we have too low N/P bottoms out and corals start to pale out as well.

What I'm hoping for is keeping more nutrients in the tank for majority of the day. But still keep all of the benefits of using a skimmer by running it at night...oxygen boost, removing DOC, allows carbon/LC dosing, running ozone, etc.

 

[Jimbo327]

When life gives you lemon, you better make lemonade!

I have these mats of GHA on my sand, usually it's in the back corner of the tank. (I wasn't kidding when I said I have a lot of GHA.) I picked it up the whole mat and moved it over to the front of the tank. I placed it right on top of the sand where the dinos are. :rolling-on-the-floor-laughing: I'm going to smother the dinos like how the GHA smothers my zoas and frags.

As crazy as this sounded, I think GHA mat did smother the dino on the sand! And I just moved this GHA mat around the sand where I saw some brown color and put it on top, then after a couple days it was gone and the sand is white. And like I said, I saw this weird brown algae on my glass a few days ago, maybe it was an last ditch effort for dino to find somewhere bright to populate....but I UV sweeped it on the glass and it was gone from the glass the next day. I think the type of dino I had was Coolia, which is not that common.

So tonight, I removed all of the GHA mats from my sand. Will the brown dino return? I guess we'll find out in the next few days.

 

[buruskeee]

Here is a photo of the flatworm on the glass.

It looks like you had (have) pyramid snails in addition to the flatworm. Haven’t read through the whole thread yet, were you able to eradicate the pyramids?

 

[Jimbo327]

No, I don't have pyramid snails. I have 3 healthy clams. Maybe they are some other types of baby snails.

 

[buruskeee]

No, I don't have pyramid snails. I have 3 healthy clams. Maybe they are some other types of baby snails.

I suggest to investigate a bit more. That pic I have quoted from you that has those rice grain looking snails attached to the Trochus look very much like pyramid snails.