180 gallon SPS focus build

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It has been pretty devastating last couple days. Another shipment from marine collectors came this Tuesday, they're 4 wrasses and a majestic angel.
PXL_20200929_182739182.jpg

These are they in bucket for acclimation. The carpenter wrasse was lying on its side not moving much. That got my wife worried. I thought it's normal as wrasse sometimes do that when stressed, like from shipment. But now I think about it, they usually find a corner to crumble up instead of lie down in the open. When it went into the tank, it went straight into rock work. I thought it's normal because of it's scared. But the next day, I found it like this instead ...
PXL_20200930_173449320.jpg

The fin of it was totally intact, no evidence of serious fighting.
PXL_20200930_174439041.jpg

The yellow wrasse and timor wrasse were doing fine the second day, just didn't came out until 2pm. After they came out, they went around the tank fine. But the rhomboid was still very nervous. It only showed itself for couple hours, and didn't came out to eat anything. The pintail wrasse didn't show any interests at chasing it at all, just continue hanging in the open like it used to.

Then on the third day, the rhomboid wrasse dropped dead as well.
PXL_20201002_012723013.jpg


I don't really know how to feel about this whole thing. After losing 4 out of 5 sunburst anthias and a regal angel in quarantine, I decided to buy the bullet and pay the premium (basically $100 additional per fish) to buy quarantined fish that are supposed to be good quality. But the same again they just drop dead at me all the same. 8 fish I got from marine collectors so far, 3 died within the first week. One on the next day, one on the second day, one in day 5.

The guarantee on the fish from marine collectors are also only live arrival. I'm not convinced that the wrasses was my fault. Even they were not dead at arrival, they didn't look in the best shape either. That sounds worse than buying from LA with 14 days guarantee and QT myself. Usually when they pass 14 days in my QT, they do fine after.

I also learned that in marine collectors don't use copper on wrasses, but do TTM with bath every 12 hours. I'm not expert on TTM or wrasse, but I can't imagine handling them every 12 hours and expect them to relax at all.

I have next shipment with Lineatus Wrasse and regal angel coming in 2 weeks. I will be lying if I were not worry about them at this point.

The fantasy of "paying more to buy better quality fish" is kind of dead to me so far. I don't always get what I pay for when buying fish. Maybe I will go back to buy cheap ones locally and take the risk and QT myself. I'm not sure if all pre-QTed fish vendor offer no guarantee beyond live arrival. Even though I understand the work been put at the fish are spent even the fish came out dead, but I think the premium are part to cover those risk. Paying the premium while still taking the risk myself doesn't feel right to me as a buyer.
 
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A bit too much too fast. I wouldn't add anything else until the tank is truly cycled and stable. Very nice tank and setup. I would really like to see this turn out well.
 
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Maybe. But the plan was also ran over with the vendor and was batched as suggested. It had cycled for couple weeks and having fish in it for over a month now. Maybe it's not most stable for the dedicates corals, but it's definitively stable enough for fish, and the LPS in it.

On the bright side, the big guy majestic angel is doing pretty great so far. It still mostly hopping around its corner under shade, but every day it came out a big more. But it's definitively still afraid of me, and paying attention at what I'm looking at. The tank was right behind my work desk. Several times when I turn back to look at the tank, saw it was about exploring. When it saw me looking at it, it turn right back to its cozy corner.
 
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ICP test came back and aluminum was high on all my tanks, close to toxic level. After some consultation, I decided to remove the bio block to remove the chance of them leaking aluminum. It kind of match my observation in the 42G, where if I skip a water change, the coral immediately look miserable. Initially I thought it was the carbon was old as I changed it when WC, and it was from anemone chemical warfare. But it could very well just be aluminum building up, and got reset by water change.

Also I lost the yellow wrasse as well. Earlier this week it stopped coming out in the morning. Then several days later I found its body. The day before it stopped coming out, I flipped through all rocks look for potential predators because Elliot suggest something in the tank was predating on the fish that cause the dead of previous fish. I didn't find anything, but may have been scared the yellow wrasse too much that led to its demise?
 
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PXL_20201020_225052608.MP.jpg

The Orphek OR3 Reef Day LED bar is in place now. I had to order a 3m extension cable from Orphek to have enough to place the power supply under the cabinet. The color it adds is amazing. The light is mounted to the door of the canopy, pointing about towards the back, to give the coral more light from the front. I always use LED. The SPS close to the front of the tank usually don't have the best color facing the front, probably because the LED are shining them from behind. So I hope this addition will solve it. Also the XR15 in the middle is a bit dim. The 4" long LED will be focusing more to the center to balance it out. One of the reason I choose the 4" instead of 5" model, besides the price difference of course.
 
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FTS with the LED bar shining into the tank and yellow filter. There are plenty of algae problem in the tank. I think I have cyano, dino, diatom, hair algae, basically every kind of them. But on the other hand I'm not really bother by them. It's the ugly phase of the tank and I honestly don't think it's that ugly. About once a week I took a brush to get most algae off the rock and let the filter floss to take them out, so the tank looks better. I'm expecting once I had the tangs in, the algae will be controlled better. Still wondering if I should get another package of clean up crew. I really want to get an urchin to work. But I tried twice so far and both died within couple days. Something is wrong I think.
 
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The last shipment from marine collectors supposed to come last Monday. But we wanted to try Delta instead of Fedex this time and missed the booking timing, so it's bumped to this Monday. Then on Sunday I was informed that the fish were not looking good, and thus suggested not shipping them. I do appreciate that, it's better to have them shipped just to die in my tank a week later (like the previous ones ...). Now I need to make sure the shipment will not be collided with the TSM one. Both of them have wrasses and I won't have enough acclimation box if they come the same week.
 
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After dig up a bit of info on dealing with dino, I conclude to two primary solutions. First is raise temperature to 82F, which many said to solve the problem, while some said only mitigated to some extend. Second is UV, which most people suggest as the final tool that actually solved it. I DO have a UV. That make me went back to double check its flow rate. The AquaUV 57W is recommended to have 1033 GPH flow rate. I am feeding it with a dedicated Maxspect Jump 8K to the display. It's flow is 898 GPH to 2113 GPH. I have been running it at 50%. So if there is no head pressure loss, it would be at the right rate. Then here is its pressure chart.
headpressurechart_1.jpg

The tank height from sump is about 4 feet. I have 10 elbow and 9 feet pipe. If it goes with the 1' loss per 90 elbow, I would have exceeded its max head of 14 feet and it will get minimal at max, which is not the case at all. So if not counting elbow, it will be about 1.5m head. Just to throw a random amount for plumbing and let's say 2m, that will give it 5KLPH (1320 GPH). That's 62%. So I will want to target 1000/0.62=~1600 GPH. Assuming its power to control is linear, the percent I want will be (1600-898)/(2113-898) =~ 60%. So upping power from 10 to 12?. If estimate for head loss up to 2.5m, then it will become 90% ... It's hard to actually set it right without a flow meter.
 
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Just double checked with AquaUV's manual. The 1066 GPH flow rate is for 90,000 µw/cm², which more close to Pentair's suggestion for protozoa rate of 180k. For 30k, the algae rate, it will need 3200 GPH :eek: . I guess I can safely raise the pump power to 18 (out of 20), to maximize for algae cleaning.
 
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Just tried my best to measure the flow rate using a bucket. It came out to be about 400 GPH, with pump at max. That's a lot lower than expected. It's also done without the educator, so the actual flow will be even lower.

Going back to the chart, that's the flow for about 4m (13ft) head. So the rule of thumb estimation is actually close?
 
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PXL_20201026_054525148.jpg

Chaeto is finally growing. Have been trying to dose ChaetoGrow every day for last couple weeks. Also got a new batch of chaeto before that.

On the other hand, phosphate has been in 0.01 for two weeks. Nitrate at 5. Have been feeding quite a lot already. I think it's close to limit of what the fish can eat. Not sure how much room I have to feed more. Corals are similar. Tried to feed them every day and some actually look worse. Probably used more energy to expell excess food than that it can digest. Maybe I should try turn off skimmer? Hopefully it will get better when the two fish order came in a couple weeks. That would double the among of fish.
 
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Dino is still going on. Having nutrient bottom up probably not helping either. But after I turn up return to better match UV flow rate, it seems spread less.

I also turn up temperature from 76 to 80, cause some said it help to fight dino. That was not a good idea. Cyano exploded after that. Dino still there. Also couple corals are showing sight of stress. So I'm turning it back to 78.

I also did some cleanup and siphon out as much dino as possible as water change. Looking at those in the bucket, it looked just like the algae I got in my previous tank. I never came to realize that's different from hair algae and alike, nor find it especially hard to get rid off. Just typical husbandry is enough to deal with them in the long run. So I'm now done with my little dino fighting experiment, just let it take its course.

On the other hand, I'm wondering if I should bomb the cyano with red slime remover now. It's definitely at the level that annoys me a lot. Also they are that type of stuff that I have to do something to get rid of them. Initially I plan to bomb them after I got down first couple round of corals, as new frags will reintroduce them again. But it goes pretty bad now that maybe I should bomb them first before adding SPS. Maybe wait till the week before new fish coming in, as the tang gank will be able to keep algae down after the treatment.
 
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Last week, I decided to carry out the cyano treatment.

This is what it looked like before the treatment
PXL_20201027_014248070.MP.jpg


I added one dose for 180 gallon volume. Then two days later, it turned to this
PXL_20201030_013251261.jpg

PXL_20201030_013303023.jpg


Most of the cyano are gone, but still plenty of dino remain. I added the second dose after 48 hours mark to get the treatment complete. Then another 3 days later, cyano are all gone. But even the dino is a lot less.
PXL_20201101_042611475.jpg

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I'm glad that my theory was right. Even red slime remover don't directly treat dino, it did great help to my case. Dino thrives in too low nutrient. Cyano is great at striping nutrient to nonexistent. As both were raging in my tank, they were benefiting each other. By wiping out cyano, I removed a good part of nutrient up take, leaving it out in the tank, thus helping other organism to compete with dino. It's all about shifting the competition advantage. I tested the water last night. Phosphate was 0.02ppm. It's not much, but a welcoming sign from the 0 last week.

Now there are still quite a bit of dino hanging on rock and tip of corals. But it's not carpeting the sandbed anymore. I still need more steps to really get rid of it. There are three plans
  1. Dose phosphate
    • I started this last night, added 0.01ppm. I'll see how this goes. Now I think of it why my phosphate is so low in relation to nitrate, I realized maybe because of fishless cycle with pure ammonia. I literally dumped a whole 60ml bottle when cycling, with no matching phosphate going in. After that, if the food input and nutrient up take were all in related balance portion, then those additional nitrate from cycling never got taken out besides water change. So if this theory is correct, I will only need to add phosphate to restore the balance, and don't need consistent dosing. I'm targeting 1~5 ppm nitrate and 0.03~0.1 phosphate.
  2. Dose vibrant
    • I started dosing Vibrant just after cycle finished, but stopped it once I found out the first chaeto was not growing. I figured I should give chaeto a chance to start and vibrant was not helping at least. Now that the chaeto was going, I think it can take a bit of competition.
    • Another good indicator is that I read some reports that vibrant made dino disappeared, at least for couple weeks, even it came back later. A couple week is all my tank need I believe. Again it's all about competition advantage. Giving all other organism in the tank several weeks of head start will probably be enough to help them win it all.
  3. Micro bubble scrubbing
    • This one was also mentioned a lot in dino treatments. It make special sense to me, because the theory about it is to scrubbing detritus directly out from display tank, also trigger corals to release excessive mucus, which also clean dirt out of them. Cleaning dino out from frags is exactly the thing I need. Giving the coral room to settle in and start growing. Once they got it started, they are capable of fencing dino off of them.
I'm still debating whether I should do all three at the same time. Phosphate dosing is already started. Vibrant is the easiest next step. Micro bubble scrubbing I'm still a bit unsure, especially of how it interact with Vibrant. But again I'm hesitate to wait too long, because I'm afraid of dino get a hold again. It make more sense to beat it as it's down so to speak. I'll probably read more into micro bubble scrubbing first.
 
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Also in last weekend, I got my first big pack of corals. Just look at them before they went on the rock. So pretty.
PXL_20201031_225408613.jpg

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The guy I got it from was running the tank at 300~600 PAR. Mine was at 130~180 PAR, with light at 50%. So I'm bumping it up, 5% a week, to 80%, which will be 240~300+ PAR. I'm thinking about hitting it even higher, as acros in higher light seem to express better colorations. But my tank is not deep enough. When my center rock work at 260 PAR, the sand bed is also at 200+ PAR. That would give me real trouble with the LPS that I also want to keep. So ramp up will have to be very slow, if at all.

The trachy in the picture above definitively like to stay under the shade there. I moved it out the shaded several weeks after its introduction, thought it would get used to the tank. But nope it barely inflate for more than a week. Then I moved back to the shade, and two days later it already puffing back up. I do miss the florescence it has when under brighter light though ...
 
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In the past week, I tried all stuff I mentioned. I dosed vibrant, then started to try micro bubble scrubbing for couple days, and in the same time start to dose phosphate. Dino is regularly fading out.

After micro bubble scrubbing for 3 days, I stopped it, or say did bother to continue with it. At that time dino already showed obviously retreat, but not gone yet. Phosphate is still 0.

Then couple days after stop doing micro bubble scrubbing, dino continue to retreat. So I considered it as a non essential treatment for dino. In the mean time I increased dose of phosphate, and manage to keep the level around 0.03 ppm. Dino disappear in the same rate, if not faster. As of yesterday, dino is almost gone.
PXL_20201111_001935118.MP.jpg

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Most noticeably, the hawkins echinata frag, left to the seabae anemone, is now free of dino during the day. Before the treatment, and during micro bubble scrubbing, it always got the dino threads lingering on its tip. During the early treatment I also lost the red dragon frag. It was covered in dino every day, even after I basting it off couple times a day. Then eventually one day it just turn pure white. It was not the healthiest to start with.

From the test and dosing last couple days, it showed that my tank is consuming 0.01 ppm of phosphate everyday. So I'm doing about 0.01 ppm of it per day in average. For nitrate, it reached 20 at the highest last monday and wednesday. Two days ago it's 10. Phosphate dosing is a must in this case because it's too out of balance with nitrate. There aren't enough of it for the organism in the tank to grow and thus consume nitrate. I won't be able to solve this purely by feeding more, because I am already feeding a ton by any standard. I have auto feeder with PE pellets and benereef, doing 4 times a day. Then I feed 3 times of frozen a day, more than a cube each time. Sometimes at night I also feed another half cube to the sun coral. By the evening feeding, the fish are visibly less eager to the food compares to the morning. I hope later on phosphate will catch up with nitrate and the balance will be restored. Then I won't need to dose it anymore.

I also have two fish shipment coming next two weeks, so I'm not too worry about not having enough bioload. They will also take care of the several patch of hair algae currently in the tank. So not something I need to worry about at the moment. Given the bioload planned, I don't think I will need to dose phosphate long term.

Kalk dosage up at 600ml/d, alk is stable through out the day. The tank is getting into shape nicely.
 
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I was considering WWC Coral Club gold subscriptions. So I searched around to get an idea what to expect from it. I'm mostly looking for higher end sticks, majority acros. Also some higher end favia and chalice, so SPS and LPS will be the choice. But looked at some example of what people get from gold pack, it seems not a good choice for me. It's majority monti cap and birdnest on sps, neither of those I liked. Leptoseris for LPS, which I already have many bright color colonies. Then it's this post finally made my mind to not toss up with coral packs.
 
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Dino is coming back some today. Tested phosphate and it is 0.003 ppm. Yesterday it was 0.04. All I did is increased algae reactor photoperiod from 12 to 14 hours. I guess phosphate dosing will last a bit longer. Also added another dose of vibrant. It's every two week now. But I think I will do it weekly for couple more dose, to have the situation more stable.

I do think phosphate is the main driver of dino in my tank. Today is the first time the dino bouncing back, and also the first time to drop to none since I start dosing phosphate. I will raise it up to 0.1 ppm this time.
 
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