Mixed Reef 167gal Peninsula

josephxsxn · Jul 11, 2021

With the biopellets having been offline for alittle while now I am starting to see alot of color return to some corals and the montis are looking better for sure. Lost 2 monti caps, and possibly going to still lose a third but think that the worst is over and everything is getting happy again. Waiting for the Berghia Nudibranch to do thier thing, I know it's not instantaneous just hoping my serpent Seastar and strawberry crab are not eating them.

Got my sulfur denitrator hooked up today and plumbed into the tank. Wish I could tell if the water in it was circulating or not better but the pump is running so here is hoping.. was a total pita to find the right fittings to pump it into my manifold... Ended up using a 1/4 OD push connect which isn't the right size but appears to be doing the job.

josephxsxn · Aug 1, 2021

Sulfur Denitrator tested at 18ppb nitrite today and 1ppm nitrate so I have increased the drip rate to roughly 2 drips per second... Hopefully in the next few weeks I start to see a difference in the tank which is still testing at 25ppm nitrate... PO4 tested at 0.03ppm today so the Lanthanum Chloride is still doing well at 2ml per day.

josephxsxn · Aug 22, 2021

Tank is now testing 12ppm with the Nypos Nitrate kit, only 1ppm coming from the sulfur denitrator so I increased the drip rate today.

Didn't do a water change since the 2nd until today. Things seem ok. The red monti cap is regrowing now over dead spots and the green monti caps are starting to regain some green color in spots but still look very bad. The purple monti cap has tissue recession but it does to be slowing down, hoping it stops soon.

I decided to break the plug from the Superman Monti off and leave the rest which was on the rock. The plug had some alage problems. My red and blue favia
also seems to have some alage issues so I decided to take all lose plugs and hydrogen peroxide dip them. Used 36ml 3% h2o2 for 5 minutes on both the Superman monti and my sunburst grafted monti, and 10 minutes for the favia.

Hopful that the red monti cap starting to grow again is a sign that the tank is starting to get over it's biopellets overdose.

josephxsxn · Nov 22, 2021

Long time since my last update, had alot going on personally...

Nitrates in the tank are down to 5ppm and phosphates float around 0.06ppm normally. Saddly my monti caps are still having issues and recently my devil's finger leather shed a big chunk. Other things have started growing like crazy again like the WWC Yellow tips, my Lobo and yellow pallys.

Last phosphate test as of yesterday showed 0.00 phosphates so I turned down the Lanthanum chloride to let them come back up.. also saw the start of dinos again on the sides of the tank but nowhere else. Because they are not bad yet I decided to just immediately do a blackout for the next day or two and hope that by reducing the lanthanum will let the phosphates come back up and prevent a full blown dino outbreak.

josephxsxn · Nov 25, 2021

Did 2 days of full blackout with Lanthanum turned down from 3ml per day to 1ml per day. Phosphates have risen from 0.00ppm to 0.07ppm... turned Lanthanum from 1ml off completely (0ml) and turn the lights back on today. Hopfuly this will stop the dinos from getting a grasp on the tank by doing this so aggressively right when first seen.

josephxsxn · Feb 23, 2022

Another long time without an update... My some of my last remaining monti-caps have bite the dust saddly with only the neon green one appearing to start regrowing. One of my clams died a few weeks back., another of my encrusting montis also bite the dust. Other things appear to be doing well so far, pallys growing faster then I have ever seen. Lords are doing well and have started to grow again, WCC yellow tips has branched alot and is looking very good.

Watching some youtube video about problems with algae on glass I have started to wonder if my ongoing issues are from the old biopellet use, or if its from my auto-feeder feeding small foods that the fish don't fully cleanup. I cut way back on my auto-feed cycles and duration and hope to see some improvements like reduce algae growth and for whatever my monti blight is to end...

I dont think I had been giving the tank the attention it needed because cleaning the glass had become a huge problem and was making me depressed about it all. I tried multiple magnetic scrapper from the Algae Free ones, to the Tunze Strong+ scrapper and nothing would work well enough forcing me to always go back to using hand scrappers.. Hand scrapping was require quite the effort, time and very demotivating. Finally I decided to spend the money on a F-5 Mighty Magnet, along with some Dozer and Algae Cutter pads... BOY! I wish I bought this forever ago. The Dozer pad works just as well the hand scrappers and let me remove tons of coraline algae that had been growing for a long time, the algae cutter bag works great for hard old algae that wont come off...

Will get some new photos of later this week.

josephxsxn · Dec 21, 2022

Well wanted to give a final update here.. I decided to shutdown the tank and gave my fish and many coral to my good friend @Ben Pedersen who's been in the hobby longer then me. As of yesterday it's fully offline.. I did keep a small 40gal tank with some select corals and such but for the most part I am done...

I really feel the difficulty in cleaning the acrylic tank burned me out, it was impossible without hours of work pretty much every week to remove the Coraline from the sides of the tank and keep it gone. Even bought a mighty magnet and was using dozer pads but it was still very difficult. It's sad that I feel my acrylic waterbox killed my joy of a hobby that I loved so much, if I ever go at it again I'll only buy glass like my old tank was, it was much easier to clean with a metal scrapper and let me focus on enjoying the tank more.

Gumbies R Us · Dec 21, 2022

I'm sorry to hear that you shut down your tank. At least you were able to still find your fish and coral a good home. Best of luck in your endeavors!!