Looking for advice on my 5 month old 13.5 Evo. (warning LOTs of information)

[DannoOMG]

It will get eating soon. Many fish refuse food after being moved.
Did you do any qt or get a qt’ed fish?

I do not. I rolled the dice. Who knows if the LFS store does that. He's the only fish in the tank and probably will be for the rest of his life.

The guy who used to work there was pretty adamant about inspecting fish with diseases but that means a whole lot of nothing in most cases.

 

[DannoOMG]

Took this coral out of my bosses tank. This blastomussa just straight up hated his tank. It got to this point once in his tank. Started making a great comeback and then got back into this shape. My tank seems to like blasties so I brought it to my tank and MAYBE it will come back.

*edit* Weird spelling/grammar

 

[Sharkbait19]

They are tough. I thought mine was gonna die many times and it always kept coming back.

 

[DannoOMG]

It looks like my sea lettuce might not be working out... It is lighter in color than when I put it in the tank. I put it in my tank on 1/25/22. I even try and dose with "ChaetoGro" since my tank is low in nutrients at the moment.

I will check back on it in a week but if it shrinks anymore I am tossing it.

 

[Sharkbait19]

Does it have a light on it?

 

[DannoOMG]

Does it have a light on it?

Yes sir. My old display tank light I am using it as a reefugium light. 23k "power". It comes on around 9 PM and turns off around 4 AM.

Nano Marine 3.0 is what I am using.

 

[DannoOMG]

Tailspot blenny pulling quite the "George Brett." Wow. Side note. I got a little cleaner shrimp for my tank cause my mom likes that kind of critter. Day 2 the blenny lets him clean the inside of his mouth and body. Kind of weird these critters let them do that and they probably never met in life.

Also I don't know exactly what coral this is. Some kind of Acan but Wilson or something.... meh.

It looked nice so I picked up at the LFS.

Also for reference the full tank shot. It's a crap mess and you can see where the GHA likes to propagate. I took the bottom right rock out and scrubbed it in old tank water. Well almost 2 months later...

0 Phosphates and 0 nitrates (not even trying to do that at this point. It got strong again. Trying to keep feedings as small as possible. A real hair puller.

 

[Sharkbait19]

Looking really good now! Massive improvement!
The new coral looks like an acan - not too hard as long as you keep it in medium light and medium flow.

 

[DannoOMG]

I thought I would update this thread on how my tank is doing. (Poorly) And this is why... I think.

My battle with too many Nitrates and Phosphates has led me to 0 Phosphates and 0 Nitrates. Using Salifert for Nitrates and Hannah for Phosphates.

Also trying to battle GHA. So I wanted to try this drop scrubber. It uses an air line and I have the light on a timer.

Here is some progress...

(week 2)

(Week 3 or today)

I can't fathom what is shown as far as algae growth in the scrubber has contributed to this...

So aside from Cyano, I have Dinos now. I am feeding A LOT more than I normally do now to try and fight this. I added some beneficial bacteria, made my lights dimmer and have a longer ramp up time so the PAR isn't so strong. Made my scrubber light reduce by 3-4 hours. The dinos is definitely murdering some of my corals.


What a disaster! Just letting you guys know I am sucking pond water right now. Maybe I will come out victorious and have an amazing tank... or maybe it will crash.

=)

I also hope I am not being annoying bumping this thread. I started a build thread on Nano-reef forum but they don't seem incredibly active. So I prefer this place to be my home.

 

[jazzfisher]

Hang in there! I went through a bunch of messes before it got better!

 

[DannoOMG]

Added some reefroids cause my Nitrates are still 0 and so are my Phosphates... Turned off the scrubber cause...

All of my corals are closed up and ticked. It looks like a Sci-Fi horror movie in there. My 2 monti's are bleached. I am thinking if by a few weeks things look worse this may be the end of the line for this tank. I will try and find a hobbyist in NH that wants to pick all of this up and save them.

 

[jazzfisher]

You are not at the end of the line! Do a big water change, Remove as much of the hair algae/cyano as possible manually. Vacuum or turkey baste your sand bed. What lights do you have and what are they set on? Try dosing Brightwell BacterClean-follow directions on bottle. You can do it!

 

[DannoOMG]

You are not at the end of the line! Do a big water change, Remove as much of the hair algae/cyano as possible manually. Vacuum or turkey baste your sand bed. What lights do you have and what are they set on? Try dosing Brightwell BacterClean-follow directions on bottle. You can do it!

I am using a Hydra 32 by API.

It starts at 9 AM and turns off at 6 PM with a 2 hour ramp up and 2 hour ramp down time.

UV : 50%
V : 50%
Royal Blue : 50%
Blue : 50%
Green : 5%
Dark Red : 0%
Moonlight : 0%
Cool White : 6%

I looked up Brightwell BacterClean. Nothing with that exact name but is that the same as "nitrifying bacteria?" I have use FritzZyme Live Nitrifying Bacteria last week cause I read having low biological bacteria can cause this when No3 and Po4 is 0.

I am very flustered lately so my brain isn't working 100%.

 

[jazzfisher]

Clean Click on the link to see Brightwell Clean. Ok use the Fritz as directed-it is a nitrifying bacteria which is good.
Your Lighting is too low & short, I also run AI lights. Use the acclimation mode for the next 2-weeks (keep the 2 hour ramps) Bring your UV up to 115, V 115, RY 88, B 88, G 4, DR 4, ML 0, CW 25-35. Also I would extend your off time. I start at 9am and end at 8.

I had so much green hair algae I had to take my rocks out & scrub them every week but I just hung in there and the tank will come around, it doesn't happen over night.

 

[DannoOMG]

I have decided I am going to do a rip clean of my tank. Brandon has convinced me and to be honest I think I can pull it off in a timely fashion.

I did a 33% water change last night to suck out as much dino/cyano as possible...

Came back from work this afternoon...

Ooopsie doodles?!

What a mess.

I am going to try and do this rip clean this weekend and hopefully my 10 gallon buckets come in by then.

Hopefully I don't mess this up and can show the before and after pictures.

 

[jazzfisher]

It doesn't look that bad! But hoping this works for you! There are many ways to reef, looking forward to after photos.

 

[DannoOMG]

P.S.

I swear I didn't know this. I don't know if it matters or not... but the live aragonite I got when I first installed the tank...

I never rinsed it out... I don't know if that has contributed to my mess. Just throwing it out there.

 

[brandon429]

No the skip rinse won't affect invasions later on, the majority don't pre rinse.

The reason we do pre rinse all sand, all the time in rip cleans, is threefold:

-i have 20 links handy to show a small % of skip rinses that didn't clear for 10-20 days, horrible persistent clouding though their peers promised a two day clear up. Can post if wanted. We are avoiding being in that 5% risk group by pre rinsing. After they settled their tanks were fine but for two weeks: not fine. A pre rinse simply guarantees perfection.


- we don't want sandbed clouding masking other clouding events. With the sand totally clear, if you get a cloudy response from the rip clean by not cleaning up thoroughly we could catch it in time before tank harm. With skip pre rinse we could be waiting days for assumed sand clouding to clear while in reality action would be needed to redo skipped cleaning portions of rocks or change water etc

- for after pic gold. We rinse because after pics from rip cleans are shocking vs cloudy after pics that don't impress for a few days.

It's a very nice system here agreed doesn't look that bad above. A rip clean will give the final edge of control in your favor, and they're always refreshing and regenerative when done thoroughly and rinsed correctly. It'll give you that detail control you want back. One pass isn't a likely fix you'll need ongoing care if you have true dinos but this will align control in your favor from the start

 

[brandon429]

After rip cleaning the first regrowth preventing change I would make is to lower the light intensity down as overall % power


the corals are fine with much less intensity and invasions will have a harder time gaining from the extra spillover light. Overpower lighting is among top causes of algae invasions, moreso than any parameter.

 

[DannoOMG]

I am done with my rip cleaning. I started at 8:30 am and finished around 3:00 pm. I had also scraped rocks on two nights prior to the rip cleaning. If I had not done that I'd still be cleaning the place up until 8 PM or later.

Here are some of the rocks I scraped algae off. I also put peroxide on algae spots for 5 min before rinsing off in old tank water. I did some of these rocks here prior to to the rip clean.

Before: (Notice the hardened sand at the base of the rock structure. It was solid. I had to break it off)

After: Sand concrete removed. I assumed this happened because of my dosing of Calcium and Alkalinity?

Before:

After:

It was very difficult to find algae out of the water. I also ended up becoming impatient and instead of using a dollar store paring knife to scrape stuff off I ended up cutting chunks off with wire cutters. I had a spray bottle with tank water to keep these damp as I worked.

Heated up a new batch over saltwater overnight:

Rip clean begins. Next morning I drained all the water from my tank into another 10 gallon bucket for my corals/rocks/critters to hang out in for the day as I work. I gave them a heater and pump for circulation to keep them happy.

I took as much sand out of the tank as possible and placed it into a bucket. I spent over an hour rinsing it and turning it with a NEW cat litter scooper that I had lying around. I kept rinsing until the water was clear. Then I took 4 gallons of RO water and rinsed it again to get the final result.

Before caca water:

After sparkly clean:

On to cleaning the tank. This tank is a colossal PITA. The back chambers were hard to clean out via scraping. The tank was pretty gross.

I ended up spraying the entire tank in white vinegar. Let it sit in the sun while I cleaned the sand. I rinsed it out with the hose and then I put paper towels soaked in vinegar on the glass and back wall. Waited a little bit and began scraping. The back wall is not the greatest thing to scrape. I ended up using a sponge that you use to scrub pans with and smashed every inch of the tank as I could with it and vinegar.

I also cleaned powerheads/pumps/mechanical filtration holders with vinegar too. Also the spot that you plug up on the back wall to make all the water go into the overflow was an algae mess all the time. I scraped it and drowned it in peroxide.



When I was done I rinsed it with the hose and then rinsed it with some RO water. Dried off and brought it back into the house.

I began filling the tank back up with the new heated water. I made sure my salinity was the same as the old tank water. Just around 1.026 for new and old water. I then put rocks back in the tank and scraped things as I went. Ended with putting all the livestock in the tank.

I took this picture with higher lights so you can see all the little algae I missed.

Lowlight pic:

I was told by brandon to make my light very low for 2 months to help stunt regrowth. Now I just had this present brandon. Let me know if it should be higher...

API Hydra 32:

UV : 10%
Violet : 10%
Royal Blue : 15%
Blue : 15%
Green : 5%
Dark Red : 3% (no idea why Dark red is on)
Moonlight : 0%
Coolwhite : 0%

I know I don't have the black backing on the glass. I tried to restick it but it wouldn't stick. I will deal with that later. Quite a day of cleaning. Hopefully this turns things around in the tank. Now Brandon has instructed me where to go from here. I have to take time and gather all this thoughts so I know what I am doing cause I am semi-dumb and can be a slow learner.