Mike's 29 Gal Nano Post Crash Update with lots of pics

[NS Mike D]

Seems like the crash that started with an electrical short last February was another lifetime. Adding the second DIY sump in addition to the 5 gal CPR HOB is doing the job. The second hand Corona LEDs and the second hand Apex Classic have made quite a difference that I have begun the restocking. The GHA/dino war has finally tilted in my favor, but many weekly rock scrubbing battles lie ahead. I tried a week of H2O2 dosing, and that really helped except that two pieces of the same acro got very upset, turned a dark brown and tips and a section of the encrusting base bleached. These pieces (originally one until I bumped it and it broke in half) have survived every mistake over the past three years so I am hopeful in this time next year they will be flourishing.

The mandarin dragonet appears happy, so the dual pod farm sumps along with daily feeding of mysis/brine and reef frenzy are working and while this all led to outbreak of cyano/GHA/dinos, I end the year confident that my corals are greatly benefitting from the additional feeding and the sumps and cleanup crew keeping a balance.

So much for boring stuff, and now for some pics

My watchman originally set up home behind the back wall rockwork. I'm so happy he relocated to the front this week. Something about this fish brings me joy more than any others.

FTS this morning. Finally at the point I feel confident to be adding corals again

Added the Apex and modded cheap home depot nightstand and cleaned up the rats nest

recently added corals

I broke a branch, still waiting for PE, but colors holding

added last weekend, waiting for PE

some other corals in the tank

 

[NS Mike D]

this was what the electrical looked like before the apex and cabinet

 

[NY_Caveman]

Looks like a great recovery!

 

[NS Mike D]

Looks like a great recovery!

Thank you getting there. It's been a lot of work and will take time to fill in the empty space while keeping the algae at bay.

I have to figure out why that tunze's prop in the pic keeps wobbling. I finally got one that isn't on the pic to stop jamming. Always something

 

[NS Mike D]

It was a good day today. The algae and other nuisance re-growth was minimal. I don't remember a Saturday with me feeling this confident about the direction of the tank.

I made 5 gallons of RODI and instead of changing 5 gals every 2 weeks, I will make 2 gals of saltwater and start 2 gal weekly water changes to help keep things more stable. I do have 5 gals of roodi with kalk in the ATO and that has been holding my ALk fairly steady at 9dkh (I need to test today).

The male clown (and to some extend the female) has really taken to the Duncan which is softball sized now. I'm hoping this is a long term love affair so that I am not tempted to replace the BTA.

Still waiting for SPS polyp extension. I'm hopeful. The 2 pieces of algae covered sps that has been through the war with me and suffered with the peroxide dosing is regaining color. The broken off frag appears to be well on its way to recovery. I will wait for the main piece to let me know where to frag it and start with a new clean piece. I'm confident that it will let me know by the summer.

I'm very grateful for R2R for helping my journey is many different ways as I sit back, feet up , tree procured and decorated, Stone IPA clone homebrew, Jets on TV, my 14th ranked UB Bulls winning today and currently enjoying this view:

This weeks FTS (apologies for the bright spots, took the pic with the phone needing full zoom as I wasn't moving from this comfortable position)

 

[Hermie]

Hey man, I found your posts by searching for "Mandarin" on the forum. It's really interesting because my setup currently and what I want to eventually do are almost exactly how you've had your tank for the past year or so... I have a 23gal with a 10gal DIY sump (DIY overflow) basically a lot of DIY and similar size to your tank and the reason I found your stuff, I want to get a mandarin eventually.

It's great to see how everything has progressed for you, the big lesson I am taking away is that I need way more rockwork in my tank because the Mandarin is going to need places to hunt for pods instead of camping out and eating everything up. I'm also expecting to add more "refugium space" for copepods to populate in safety like you have with the HOB Chaeto fuge. So those are two lessons definitely for me.

A couple things I'd offer as feedback, well, as far as your mandarin eating healthy it seems you are doing great there, but that you are running into algae issues at the same time. One thing that greatly helped me expand my copepods was to remove my filter floss from my sump. The floss was doing an excellent job at removing particulates in the water, super clear water, but after I removed the floss, I am now seeing dozens and dozens of Tigger pods on my DT glass that were never there before, they are literally all over the place. It took a couple weeks to a month for it to happen. Basically, what I am saying is that you could try removing your filter socks and that would let you feed less which would overall decrease your nutrients and decrease the nuisance algae. The way I look at it, copepods and microfauna will populate faster than algae if we limit the food and light, so the copepods would eat the algae before it can become a problem. I'm not sure how this affects hair algae tbh, I don't think pods eat it, but it's something to consider.

One other thing I would offer, for what it's worth (which isn't much), is I wonder how much the corals are eating copepods that the mandarin could be eating. This isn't specifically for your setup, but it's something I think about as I am QTing my corals now before I put them in my DT. I noticed a marked decrease in copepods in my QT after putting some candy cane and a few softies in my QT tank. It could be either the bayer dip I did or I think the candy canes are eating them, or the corals are putting off some poison that kills the copepods (not sure here). Anyway, I would just suggest maybe slowing down on the corals until you have a good handle on your algae issues, but that's just what I would do as an inexperienced reef keeper myself.

Anyways, thanks for your posts, looking forward to how everything develops for you, and I hope to be able to house a mandarin too down the road.