Macca's Budget 180gal Upgrade

OP
OP
MaccaPopEye

MaccaPopEye

Well-Known Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 5, 2016
Messages
697
Reaction score
1,232
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Tonight is a boring night shift so now is as good a time as any for a bit of an update.

First how about a FTS and then I will get into my algae issue (looks nowhere near as bad in the FTS haha).
20170201_174746_zpsfka2ytgn.jpg


Pretty much after the first month post tank transfer I have consistently had 0-5ppm NO3 (almost always closer to 0) and undetectable PO4 (salifert kits). However mid-December I started to get some green algae spreading on the higher up rocks. Nothing too bad but noticeable. I attributed this to the ATS screen losing water flow a couple of times (never saw a spike in nutrients though).

But like I was in a horror movie, towards the end of December the algae really started to explode (tests still showed next to no nutrients). Thinking my lights may have been contributing to this I turned the whites off and ran with only blue light for a month. This did absolutely nothing to halt the algae. Even with manual removal where I could it spread. Fast.

Tangs seem to pick at it but not really eat it. The urchin crawls all over it but doesn’t seem to eat it. Snails all stay on the glass and even when I place them on the rocks don’t seem to eat it and just motor back to the glass (I never get anything other than coralline on my glass though).

By now most rocks have a decent amount of algae if not fully covered. Pulling it out doesn’t help as it just grows straight back. I am having horror thoughts that this whole tank move did nothing and I have gone from 1 algae filled tank to another.
20170201_174913_zps17g3pwpu.jpg


But like hell I am going to give up as I am really quite happy with how I set up this tank. So I pulled some out to try and get a good photo to confirm it is actually GHA and not something else. Not the best photo but this seems to be as clear and zoomed in as I can get. It doesn’t look quite like other pics I have seen of GHA, but it certainly doesn’t look like bryopsis.
20170205_131646_zpsmyhd5hab.jpg


I have been doing a lot of reading about treating GHA with peroxide and seen a lot of good results. So to test it out I placed a bit of the algae in a small container filled with 6% HP (3% is recommended so 6% should certainly kill it). Well after 2 days of soaking in HP it hasn’t even started to go white in the slightest.
20170206_054150_zpsfk94taad.jpg


Disheartening to see that HP likely won’t help me. However I have come across the thread about treating bryopsis with Fluconazole (R2R is awesome isn’t it - https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/bryopsis-cure-my-battle-with-bryopsis-using-fluconazole.285096/) and in this thread I have found a possible ID for the algae I have – derbesia! Image searches of derbesia look pretty much identical to what I have. It is apparently a type of turf algae that is more similar to bryopsis than GHA and it can thrive in low nutrients and is very hard to remove (my exact situation).

It seems that if I do in fact have derbesia it may have come in on a coral (I think I remember the one too which was put in a couple of weeks before my original algae outbreak) and spread fast in my old tank. 6+ long months of fighting it with a mix of water changes, manual removal and adding a kick butt ATS helped start to slowly bring the algae down in the old tank. But bringing across 3 rocks and a fully mature ATS with derbesia into a tank full of nice new rock would have caused it to then spread fast in the new tank.

Good news is that apparently a treatment of fluconazole also seems to kill it! I don’t want to get my hopes up but I am also very excited to try it. Attempting to acquire the 4000mg of fluconazole that I will need may prove difficult as it appears you need a prescription to purchase it in Aus, however I will be giving it my best shot this week.
 
OP
OP
MaccaPopEye

MaccaPopEye

Well-Known Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 5, 2016
Messages
697
Reaction score
1,232
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Now an update on the coral.

After I thought things had stopped dying off unfortunately things kept going downhill for a few more days. All parameters were kept stable but over the week following my last update I lost my torch, all of my remaining hammers, one entire favia and most others kept getting worse but didn’t completely die.

Parameters have been stable since the incident over a month and a half ago now (8dkh, 430-450ppm Ca, 1290-1350ppm Mag). For the coral I had before the sudden Alk change it seems things have continued to very slowly go downhill. A bit over 2 weeks ago now a friend needed to get rid of some torches to make room in his tank as he said they were too big. I didn’t realise how big they were but they are huge! I am really hoping whatever is effecting the other coral doesn’t harm these too, but a couple of weeks in and they seem to be doing well with the longest sweepers I have seen.
20170201_174934_zpsq2rmlkpw.jpg


The 2 moon corals seem to stay ok for a week or two then recede a little bit and repeat. Both have good polyp extension at night though. One lobo looked to be doing fine and then 2 weeks ago started losing tissue and is now completely dead, the other one seems to be still receding slowly yet still has good polyp extension at night. Same with the favias, they have good polyp extension at night and the tissue seems to recede slowly at times and other times appears to stay stable.

Red moon with slowly receding lobo in the background (and now dead lobo on the right before it died)
20170201_174831_zpsen2ku9gr.jpg


Green moon and one of the favias in the background
20170201_174825_zpsfqtgbv74.jpg


Dead lobo
20170204_143931_zpsg7xjfsaa.jpg


Favia
20170201_174924_zpsgilslia8.jpg


The clams are both doing very well and are still my favourite tank inhabitants. My only frustration with them is that the electric blue is so much duller in my photos haha
20170201_174835_zpsm3zkdnrw.jpg


And after days and days of rinsing I got the black sand in! I do like the black sand, it really makes any coral on the sandbed look great and seems to make the tank look deeper. Don't know if I like it more than white sand though haha. But I am content with it for now :p
20170201_174754_zpsw2iz9c1j.jpg

20170201_174736_zpsjfvlvcbo.jpg
 
OP
OP
MaccaPopEye

MaccaPopEye

Well-Known Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 5, 2016
Messages
697
Reaction score
1,232
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Bit of an update after my fluconazole treatment!

I am now very confident that the algae I have is derbesia and not GHA. I ended up doing two 14 day treatments with fluconazole and it has certainly made a big dent in the algae but unfortunately it's not all gone. I have turned the skimmer and carbon back on and will see how the tank goes over the next couple of weeks and hopefully the algae keeps dying.
PhotoGrid_1489474035810_zpsulu31k5n.png

PhotoGrid_1489474253385_zpslxhptq6d.png
PhotoGrid_1489474360799_zpsbmggkjig.png


As for my coral issues - things are still going down hill and I don't know why. Parameters overall have been quite stable for the last 2+ months Alk (8dKH), Cal (450ppm), Mag (1300ppm), NO3 (0-1ppm) and PO4 (usually 0 but currently 0.05ppm after the flucc treatment).

Yet coral is still dying and it is getting quite frustrating. Just before the treatment I got 2 nice hammer colonies from a tank shut down (with 2 coral banded shrimp, an abalone and 2 large snails) and so far the smaller hammer (approx. 5 heads) has died due to polyp bail out and the larger one is not looking good with some heads looking like they might peel off and others retreating into the skeleton. Both were in low flow areas on the sandbed so not in super high light and not touching other corals.
PhotoGrid_1489664928792_zpsampbycm9.png

PhotoGrid_1489664719076_zpsdg21gljf.png


All other coral, my trachy in particular looks inches from death one day and then fine the next. All of the torch coral added before the treatment is still OK but every now and then a few of the heads will look sick but so far have always bounced back.
PhotoGrid_1489664393066_zpspqozmqfm.png


Could this be a parasite? One that goes after multiple types of LPS coral? My BTA (2 now), both clams, zoas, multiple mushrooms and both leathers are completely fine if not thriving. Everything else seems to be either dead now, dying off or barely surviving.

Any suggestions appreciated :)

Cheers,

Macca
 
OP
OP
MaccaPopEye

MaccaPopEye

Well-Known Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 5, 2016
Messages
697
Reaction score
1,232
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Well this is where in at right now with the larger hammer colony. Not happy at all.
20170318_221512_zpsgsoej98s.jpg

Over the last week the alk has slowly dropped 1dkh (down to 7) but that's not so low that this should be happening. Other parameters are Cal-430 Mag-1300 NO3-1ppm PO4-0.03ppm.

I raised the alk back up to 8dKH tonight and will see where things are tomorrow. My Trachy again was looking fine this morning and then like death tonight.

I've heard low nutrients can be bad for LPS but also know of many stunning ULN tanks that are full of thriving LPS. Either way my only nutrient export atm is filter socks and my very undersized skimmer (and biological filtration). Feeding schedule is 1/4 of a Nori sheet with 1 cube of frozen per day and every couple of days a pinch or two of pellets. I've only got 6 small fish and 2 shrimp so that feeding seems pretty decent to me and nutrients don't seem to be rising at all.

The Trachy does look like it puffs up a bit when I turn the pumps off, but the flow is already low enough that the hammer barely moves yet it's still dying so I don't want to turn it down any more.

Open to any suggestions as to what this could be?
 
OP
OP
MaccaPopEye

MaccaPopEye

Well-Known Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 5, 2016
Messages
697
Reaction score
1,232
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
My LPS have continued to decline. I started another thread to try and find a solution. It seems like the most common suggestion is that I don't have enough nutrients aka my water is "too clean".

So my ATS is staying off for now and my skimmer has been turned off as well until I can get nutrients up. Feeding has been increased from 2 frozen cubes and 1/4 of a sheet of Nori per day to 3 frozen cubes and 1/2-1 sheet per day.

Ive also ordered some amino acids to dose so hopefully things will pick up soon.

Especially hoping things pick up as I got another hammer colony from yet another tank shut down (won't be many reefers left over in my area soon :p). Really hoping I can keep this one alive, I also picked up an awesome clam.
20170329_133721-01_zpsjmohtqiv.jpeg

20170328_191701-01_zpsj3c95mbw.jpeg
 
OP
OP
MaccaPopEye

MaccaPopEye

Well-Known Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 5, 2016
Messages
697
Reaction score
1,232
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Time for another update.

Tank is still not doing very well unfortunately. Algae issues AND LPS issues are both still persisting.

I raised nitrates slowly up to 25ppm and phosphate up to 0.5ppm and kept it there (no WC, removed ATS and doubled feeding) this has done nothing to stop the death of all of my LPS coral.

I got a triton test done which showed I have low potassium and iodine (and off the charts Barium which is very likely a testing error) but that shouldn’t be killing LPS coral like this. Other than that nothing was out of the ordinary with my water test. The last hammer colony I added looked healthy for a month before it too started to die off one polyp at a time. I still have no explanation as to what is causing this!!

I have since decided that if my nutrients aren’t the issue then I would try and bring them back down to a “reasonable” level. Not 0 like it was but I am aiming for around 5ppm nitrate. I don’t want to add the ATS back just yet at it would fill up with derbesia again. While the fluconazole got rid of a lot of the derbesia it didn’t remove 100%. I didn’t hit it with a third treatment and it came back with a vengeance (likely helped by me trying to keep nutrients high). I plan to try and get some more fluconazole and try a stronger dose at some stage soon.

But since I didn’t want to use the ATS right now I got myself a used TLF 550 and turned it into a cheato reactor! For now I have taped the old ATS flood lights to the side until my LED strip arrives (in a week or so). However the flood lights are doing awesome! The volume of cheato is increasing fast. The red box is the size the cheato was when I set this up a week ago and it has since doubled. In just a week :eek:
20170602_132639_zpsfwouhcac.jpg


A bit over a month ago and then again last week there was some extreme low tides during the middle of the night so myself and another reefer went to check out the reef. To avoid dumping 40+ pics in my tank thread I made another thread you can check out if you want to see the pics from the night time reef walk:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/walking-around-the-reef-at-low-tide.308556/

During the first trip just over a month ago I picked up a medium favia colony, a small moon coral and a fungia plate coral to see how they go. Unfortunately LPS still seems to only last a month before deteriorating :(

Here are the corals after I first added them
20170429_122350_zpsjawr8zwy.jpg

20170429_122358_zps2xdul4ga.jpg

20170429_122345_zpshageki4c.jpg


The fungia plate seems to be doing ok still and doesn’t show any signs of deteriorating (I feed the fish directly over the top of it to try and help it get as much food as possible). The favia was the first to start receding and the moon coral didn’t take long to follow suit. Here is when they were first added and today (5 weeks).
PhotoGrid_1496377687801_zps971pu7pl.png


On the second night time trip a week ago I found a cool green mushroom coral. Since they are doing fine in my tank I grabbed that one :p I also got a frag of an SPS colony to see if SPS is any different to LPS in my tank and a small green turbinaria (cup coral). If the turbinaria and SPS frag don’t do well and I can’t get any suggestions for why this is happening to me then I am giving up on stony coral. I’ll stock the tank with mushrooms and soft coral and get a whole bunch of non-LPS safe fish because I can’t keep just adding things to die.
20170529_114740_zpsu8aaybiz.jpg
20170529_114752_zps4jnjovdg.jpg

20170529_114745_zps6feub8ls.jpg


One thing about my issues that I am finding interesting (yet still sad) is zoas. I have 2 rocks with the same zoas on them, both are on the sand bed and are under the same light intensity just separate sides of the tank (should be very similar flow too). One rock, on the left side of my tank has had the zoas slowly die off over the last 3 months. They just shrivel up and let go. The other rock is doing fine. This is 3 months difference on the same rock.
PhotoGrid_1496377781307_zpsjqzeldf9.png


On a positive note though we had a local meet up at the collectors place and I bought some mushrooms and rics as they seem to do ok so far in my tank. Here is some pics after I added them. Unfortunately the last 2 seemed to not like where I placed them in the tank and they let go and floated off, I haven’t been able to find where they ended up which is a bummer.
20170426_190521_zpshkgwzoib.jpg

20170426_190517_zpstsjlhycd.jpg

20170423_135203_zps23wtelrt.jpg

20170423_135151_zps54fkmei2.jpg

20170422_151638_zpspfm0y40f.jpg

20170422_151611_zpsaafxqyzz.jpg

20170422_151615_zpsatp8rvt5.jpg

20170422_151617_zpsacja3ple.jpg

20170422_151648_zpsxm4tpkzf.jpg

20170422_151629_zpsgknunvqr.jpg


Cheers,

Macca
 
OP
OP
MaccaPopEye

MaccaPopEye

Well-Known Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 5, 2016
Messages
697
Reaction score
1,232
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
LED strip arrived today. It makes the reactor looks much cleaner. Hopefully the LED strip gets the same growth as the floodlights did as growth with them was awesome.

I should have had the foresight to remove the label though haha. I also plan to black out the back and sides of the reactor with tape to reduce light spill.

I haven't tested Nitrate or phosphate since putting this on but was thinking about testing tomorrow if I get time.

PhotoGrid_1496827395077_zpsm5fdhye9.png
 
OP
OP
MaccaPopEye

MaccaPopEye

Well-Known Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 5, 2016
Messages
697
Reaction score
1,232
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Short update and some sad news. No pics in this update though.

First off, the timer for the algae reactor lights got stuck in the "on" position. I didn't notice for at least a week or so. Turns out that 5 meters worth of 5050 LEDs was probably overkill. When left on 24/7 it got VERY hot, the reactor turned into a heater and cooked the algae until it was white mush :eek: (and probably made my chiller work a bit harder to keep the temp down).

I cleaned the reactor out (opening it was the most foul thing I have smelled in a long time), got some more chaeto from a mate, cut the light strip in half, wrapped them back around the reactor and put a new timer on. Looks to be going well now. With half the original lights on for 12hrs a day the algae doubled in around 2 weeks. If I decide I want to up the intensity I can always re-solder more of the lights back on.

I also finally completed my water mixing station which I had been putting off for ages. I don't do a WC often but this will make it way easier! And being able to have water waiting in case of an emergency WC is a nice comfort. I used 2x 200L drums, one will always have 200L of RODI in it for top off and the other will always have 200L of RODI waiting for a WC, dump in salt, mix for 10min and it's good to go.

I have also decided that I will be having a go at building a DIY controller. This will be a very slow project and won't be finished for a while. But I will be using the ReefPi software which is being developed by a fellow R2R member, and it's looking great so far! Most of the bits I need have already arrived and I will start building when I get back from a holiday in September :) I'll post updates of my build process both here and in the ReefPi thread.

The derbesia was still covering every rock surface and I had been considering doing another 2-3 rounds of fluconazole to really make this algae tick off but someone strongly recommended I try vibrant. I'm a very sceptical person and have been more or less ignoring the "vibrant hype train", but with fluco being $60/treatment (just a bit less than 1 bottle of vibrant) I figured what the heck, lets give it a go. I have only been dosing it for around 2 weeks but so far it seems to be going very well (heavy dose of 1ml/gal every 3 days). I will eventually update on how it goes after a couple of months but so far it is exceeding my expectation and around 30-40% of the algae has already died off (yay I can barely believe it!).



Now for the devastating news I guess. Not too much more to say other than F**K velvet.

Yes. I am one of those reefers that didn't quarantine. For lots of reasons (really just excuses looking back).

On my last low tide reef walk (end of June) I picked up 2 small butterfly fish. A Mulleri butterfly (blackfin coral fish) and a Marginalis butterfly (Margined coral fish), both beautiful and fat fish. Both fish were eating frozen food within a day and were settled in with aggression from the yellow tang stopping within a week.

A bit over 3 weeks later at night time I noticed that the mulleri was absolutely covered in white dots, seemed like it happened overnight. It died just under 2 days later. In the last week alone my Darwin glow fairy wrasse and marginalis butterfly have disappeared (no bodies found), today I also found my yellow tail damsel and royal dottyback dead. The blue tang is completely covered in tiny white dots, the yellow tang wont come out with the lights on and looks very blotchy in the dark, the bristle tooth tang is covered in so many dots it looks like its covered in gold dust. The 2 clowns and black cardinal fish look OK but I don't have high hopes.

Ich I could maybe keep them eating and possibly have an ich management tank until I can treat. But velvet has struck so fast I don't have time to do anything. Even if I could get a hospital tank asap I just started my block of shifts so won't be able to get anything set up for at least 6 days. Then I also go on a 3 week holiday in a couple of weeks and a QT tank can't be left that long without a lot of attention. Chloroquine phosphate seems impossible to get in Aus and copper would take at least a week to ship to me. So there is no way I will be able to treat the fish in time :(

If any of them make it through then after my holiday I will get them out of there and treat them properly while the tank goes fallow (will do the full fallow period to cover ich as well just in case).

And yes. I will be getting a QT tank so that in the future I can QT all new arrivals....... Learning the hard way, as I have read about so many others doing.
 
Back
Top