My 20 gallon adventure

[HollyFish]

Whatever works works!

Hopefully the skimmer performs well for you. The smaller ones are usually a bit more finicky.

I haven't vacuumed my sandbed ever, but people do. I mix it around vs vacuuming it. I have a single tiger conch and a few nassasrius snails motoring around as well

Ya I hadn’t used it yet since it’s still establishing bacteria but my phosphates are at .30 ppm so I need to get that down so might sift the sand bed with my water change and see what my numbers are and then add rowaphos if I still need to lower it

 

[count krunk]

Good idea, I try to keep my phosphate around .05 ppm

 

[HollyFish]

Good idea, I try to keep my phosphate around .05 ppm

Ya I’ll be trying to stay between .03-.07. I find it odd (and really nice) that I haven’t had any algae outbreak so far from it

 

[HollyFish]

The start of my diatom portion of the cycle Ugly stage starting

 

[count krunk]

it sounds like a large truck is backing up through your home! the uglies are bound to happen. Just keep levels right so you don't get dinos!

 

[HollyFish]

it sounds like a large truck is backing up through your home! the uglies are bound to happen. Just keep levels right so you don't get dinos!

Ahaha it was the microwave from my fiancé

 

[HollyFish]

My Buddy (the one that originally got me into the hobby) and I have had a slight issue this week. Salinity dropped to 1.022 from 1.025. We let the LFS know and they tested their water we got today and it’s perfect at 1.025 so going to do a decent sized water change tomorrow to bring it up. Hammer hasn’t extended his normal amount since the salinity drop. Along with that I had to grab this purple fire fish at the store today along with some trochus snails for the diatoms that have started to outbreak. I also am adding some chemipure elite to get my phosphates under control. I’m down to .023 from .30 but still need to bring it down. Anyway, that’s all for now, Happy New Year everyone!

 

[count krunk]

How did the salinity drop?

.023 is pretty low, I wouldn't try to go lower.

 

[HollyFish]

How did the salinity drop?

.023 is pretty low, I wouldn't try to go lower.

The only thing I can think of is that the LFS gave us water with low salinity. We went today and let them know and they tested their current water and what we got and it’s 1.025 so I’m going to do a big water change and check it each time from here on out

 

[count krunk]

Salinity will drop over time from adding tipoff. At least I have noticed this. But you change 5g on a 20g system every week right?
. So I agree, they must have given you some lower salinity water.

 

[HollyFish]

Salinity will drop over time from adding tipoff. At least I have noticed this. But you change 5g on a 20g system every week right?
. So I agree, they must have given you some lower salinity water.

Ya agreed. I’ll be testing it when I get it from now on just to make sure

 

[HollyFish]

Woke up to the diatoms really taking over, video doesn’t do it justice haha I’ll be cleaning glass, scrubbing rock, sifting the sand and doing a 5 g water change today to hopefully continue to get my phosphates down to the correct range. Also adding chemi pure elite into the filter to help that. Will test 24 hours after I do all that today

 

[count krunk]

I don't think diatoms feed off of phosphate, but rather silica. Diatoms are part of a new tanks life. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Again don't get your phosphate too low or dinos may pop up

 

[HollyFish]

I don't think diatoms feed off of phosphate, but rather silica. Diatoms are part of a new tanks life. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Again don't get your phosphate too low or dinos may pop up

Will do, I’m going to test phosphates tomorrow to see where I’m at and go from there. If I was to just let the diatoms go rampant, what would happen?

 

[HollyFish]

Just went to the LFS to get SW for the week and came back to my fuzzy mushroom spitting his guts out...all 6 other corals look great. Normal like I read or should I interfere?

 

[count krunk]

My style of reefing is non interference. No qt, no fiddling. I try to set up the environment and make environmental adjustments as needed. I also try to stay away from chemical problem solving, like chemiclean.

I would leave the mushroom alone. Diatoms will burn themselves out, not something you really need to worry about.

 

[HollyFish]

I decided to just leave the diatoms alone, I did clean my glass since I can’t do without clean glass haha did a 5 g water change and everything looks happy again. I had a salinity issue with the LFS’s being low then high today but I’m back to 1.025 and am going to let it be thanks for the help guys!

 

[HollyFish]

Met a guy from the forums here yesterday for two frags of green toadstool and then my LFS had a nice sale going to I grabbed an emerald grab (for my hair algae) 2 bumblebee snails, a mandarin goby and 4 frags (candy cane coral, two different zoa colonies, and a piece of pipe organ coral. Tank is fully stocked on the fish side and pretty close on the corals, I’m in love with it

 

[HollyFish]

My buddy that originally got me into the hobby has been having some issues where his corals wouldn’t open. His issues first started when he went to Disney for a week and let his wife’s friend take care of the tank. I think they over fed a ton because he came back to a tank full of hair algae. He cleaned everything and it would come back the next day so I told him let’s get the levels in line then clean it all up so we did. Phosphates at .05 and nitrates >5, everything in perfect range except PH would love 7.8-8 throughout the day. I went over to this house to cleanse everything so we cleaned the glass, toothbrushed the rocks and siphoned the sand. When it was all mixed up, you couldn’t see halfway through the tank to the back (it’s a 20 g cube) and he woke ul the next morning to both his clowns and gramma and goby dead along with his corals being all closed up. I have since taken his hammer coral and dipped it and moved it to my tank to hopefully save his $100 purchase. Any idea what happened other than the fish couldn’t breath from the amount of algae? In hindsight I guess we should’ve moved everything to buckets and cleaned. We did a 50% water change and he added microbacter7 and vibrant cleaner to help lee the algae away (the night we cleaned everything) Added a pic of his hammer in my tank, it’s still alive thankfully. Otherwise my tank has been doing well, have some diatoms on the rocks and some brown algae on the substrate. Going to siphon my sand and leave the diatoms alone. I’ll also post my phosphate levels in a pic, I’m trying to keep them stable with consistent feeding but it seems to move around a good bit. Not sure what to do there. They tested .01 today

 

[count krunk]

I doubt the hair algae caused the fish deaths. .05 is in the ideal range. Did you mean .5? Of course if there's a lot of alage that's going to reduce the amount that's in the water.

Like two months ago my tank had so much hair algae in it you could barely see in. That really kicked me into gear and you can see what it looks like now on my build thread.

My po4 came in at .1 during that and I since upgraded the skimmer and starting running gfo or carbon in a mini reactor.