Gichigami.reefer

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I have always wanted to get into saltwater tanks had a bunch of freshwater from imported flowerhorns to a big Rubbermaid with motoro stingray and catfish but never took the dive but October 2023 I took the dive after being out of keeping fish for 4 ish years after tub crashed from dead fish. But anyway I decided to make the dive into reefing and it’s definitely had its challenges for me. I started with 10 gallon cheap tank with hob filter with intank basket inside an jabeo slw20 and ai prime 10 pounds of dry rock live sand and dr Tim’s to cycle .
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it ran for an about 5 months total . I lost sps corals trying to jump to far ahead had cyano battle endlessly having trouble keeping Po4 from bottoming out .
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started to “leveled out” to where I could enjoy it after chemo clean. 4 ish months in. Then fast forward a month I began to notice water around bottom of tank and my ato going fast and salinity slowly dropping over a coulple weeks and it turned out to be the seal dripping really slow under the tank so got my hands on an innovative marine 40 and began building stand getting everything ready to transfer .
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Got everything transferred beginning of March and found some rock from a buddy I put in a bucket with saltwater heater and wave make and some media I had from my 10 gallon let it cycle for a month or so using dr Tim’s ammonia to keep it going and all that. Added rock to everything end of may 2024.
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kept getting more and more coral got a actual ato instead of the gravity bottle it wasn’t enough to keep up and also bought doser because I was tired of measuring out all for reef everyday and didn’t want any fluctuations so got ato hooked up and got hygger dosing pump set up tank was on autopilot and was seeing some actual growth from some coral to my excitement. Had bit of a cyano outburst but that only lasted a few weeks and went away with turkey baster and water changes lost a few coral that were new the sps
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went back to autopilot until July I had a alk dip that damaged the sps flesh just a little bit but I got that fixed and started testing more frequently.
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I think this is where I went wrong around end of august I made the mistake of “I can get these damaged gha covered coral and save them“ when I didn’t know what I was doing yet I still don’t. Here are pics from other persons tank.
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But hey the corals free tangs eat algae and cuc it’ll be fine right? Kinda seemed to be getting better
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tank started to look nice and full I was enjoying it algae from the free gha coral was looking better but then I hurt my back not too long after and algae exploded and started taking over coral
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I’m still in the battle lost almost all my coral had to “let it go” for a month but in that month is when I lost a lot here are some before and after the “crash “ this is August 24th after I got ai blade to help with light spread
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this is November 24th some very sad Zoas and mushrooms and a rbta that shut and moved survived
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I got algae somewhat under control other than my Zoas on frag rack still won’t open and the zoa colony that was posted above so I tried adding more “tester corals ” mainly sps but all died except the gsp showing lots of coraline growth on back wall and bottom
December 1st
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January 6th
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IMG_2085.jpeg so still working on getting rid of algae not going to add anything until I get algae 100% gone and get the frags I have back to full health and open. My plan is to get everything under control and make a order up from wwc or maybe tsa for mainly sps that’s my main goal is sps dominate tank but gotta take baby steps think I went to far too fast bit off more than I can chew. Any advice from fellow reefers or tips to get headed in the right direction would be much appreciated. Like I said before above my main goal it to get algae gone and get a spa/ acro dominated tank but have lots to learn and do before I get there. IMG_1730.jpeg
 
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Are you still using AI Prime on the 40 gallon? AI Prime is hardly strong enough to keep sps alive so that might be part of why you lost sps corals. One AI Prime on a 40 won't keep many corals alive.

A hob filter on a 10 gallon with 2 clowns is not enough filtration IMO, that might be part of why you had algae issue's. What filtration are you running on the 40?
 
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Gichigami.reefer

Gichigami.reefer

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Are you still using AI Prime on the 40 gallon? AI Prime is hardly strong enough to keep sps alive so that might be part of why you lost sps corals. One AI Prime on a 40 won't keep many corals alive.

A hob filter on a 10 gallon with 2 clowns is not enough filtration IMO, that might be part of why you had algae issue's. What filtration are you running on the 40?
Hob was a Aquaclear rated for 30 gallon seemed to be good I was just having lots of 0 Po4 tests I think but not sure

I am running a ai prime and a ai blade grow now on 40 with pennywise 81% from Facebook group (I’ve turned it down to 51 % version since most coral are gone) but I was seeing growth on a psammacora and encrusting monti just very very slow like 1/8 inch max in a 6 month period and I was definitely having issues keeping alk stable in the beginning between that and bottoming out Po4 and “tinkering “ I think that was my issue but now I’m not sure what my problem is other than algae I get false 0 No3 test consistently for the past month and a half or so every so often I might get like 3 ppm max but can’t get it up gha soaks it up to fast. Filtration on the 40 I’ve got a basket on one side with filter pad on top then chemipure elite nano on middle shelf and biomedia on bottom and on other side I’ve got chunks of small rock and a big bag of media to add to surface area since I have no sand don’t mind ghetto light shades

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Gichigami.reefer

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What are your CUC members?
I’ve got 2 turbo snails like 8/9 hermits 4 astrea snails not sure if it’s counted but added some tiny bristle stars for diversity and the tank is ridiculously covered in pods when lights go out if you take out flashlight and I got the blue eye Kole tang in hopes it would help with algae
 
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Gichigami.reefer

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What are your CUC members?
I think I just brought the algae in on the damaged coral and thought I was prepared to get rid of it and save coral but it slowly spread small and I couldn’t tell til it was too late so now I’m trying to get it gone and have a sort of “reset”
 
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Gichigami.reefer

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updated aquascape not really liking it but it’ll do for now toppled everything over while pulling off gha and this was best I came up with for now gonna probably end up redoing it plan is eventually acro dominated tank once get all algae under control and gone and stuff has been stable for a while this scape might be better for that since I have way more surface area to mount coral vs before it was kinda more caves and stuff for the fish but not very many places to mount corals . What do yall think ???
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Gichigami.reefer

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Update month 9 & 1/2 running nuvo 40

Made myself some diy filter socks today really easy just extra doser tubing and a sewing kit and filter pad. Seems like it’s working good and tank is looking a little better day 4 of dosing 3% H2o2 2ml per gal in hopes to eliminate gha along with manual removal it is still present on rocks but definitely 80 % better. coraline algae is taking off currently dosing 5 ml of all for reef to keep alkalinity 8.5-9 dkh. Zoas are still not opening but my mushrooms are looking good . I plan on renting par meter this weekend to get a schedule dialed in and get everything back on track for some new corals after my back surgery at the end of the month. Also trying out aquaforest hybrid pro reef salt and I am impressed with how easily it mixes and how clean it is vs reef crystals 10/10 would recommend it. did a small 2 gallon water change yesterday sucking out gha with air tubing as syphon and got all my “tank stuff”organized also pic of my favorite fish in the tank 6 line wrasse
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Gichigami.reefer

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Decided to rip gsp off the rock and glue it to the back panel it’s starting to open back up along with a tiny piece I saved from before the crash . zoa frags still not recovered yet but Yuma mushrooms looking awesome and the Goni still has fluorescence so I haven’t given up but looks pretty well toasted . I spent like a hour ripping algae off rocks think I made a pretty big dent in it. I made a couple gallons of saltwater this morning and going to scrub rocks with toothbrush and suck out floating pieces with small airline tubing so I can get as much material as possible without taking too much water to fast will update in another week or so. Wish me luck!
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On a side note can anyone id on what this maroon spot is ? there’s 2 right by eachother been there a while , it’s like 1/8 inch thick hard but almost feels a little bit slimey
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Gichigami.reefer

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Another update spent 2 hours scrubbing rocks after previous post rock looks better algae both coming back as fast been testing everything every other day nitrates have been a steady 0 for a while been trying to get them up a little bit didn’t want to over do it nothing new has been added or changed other than the scrubbing of rock so I assume the die off was significant and I need to do another waterchange because my nitrates are 80 ppm!!!! Jesus I didn’t expect that so now to mix up some water perform a water change and hope for the best. Any advice from fellow reefers? Here’s some pics of current tank I think it looks much better just worried about such high nitrates they have never been that bad

Side note very excited watchman goby grew a pair and has been out lately
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Gichigami.reefer

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Little update for anyone that would like to follow along haha

Still have been sucking out the green hair algae and scrubbing rock and doing water changes and then I let the wavemaker blow the debris into a net I hold in from for the first few minutes I kick everything back on. I feel that I’m finally making some headway and I’m trying to do this as natural as possible here is updated pic. I’d say I’m 90% rid of it
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Another learning curve/adventure
Looking back now I feel like an idiot not renting a par meter. This is 100% the greatest 20$ I ever spent renting this thing without it I was 100% guessing and I couldn’t have been more wrong. I just checked my par levels for the first time using the apogee par meter from brs a fellow reefer was kinda enough to loan me , it was super simple and easy to use
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but at the first initial testing with current light settings at the top of my rockwork i was only getting 83 par at the highest and the bottom of the tank I was only getting par in the 20s !!! No wonder I haven’t had any success with sps they all slowly just bleached over 2 weeks and were toast and I didn’t see much growth with LPs or zoas. But anyway I tweaked my settings and this is what I come up with.
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I put everything on a 14 day acclimation starting at 70% so it’s not such a drastic change to the few coral I do have but these are the par levels I was able to achieve with a single ai prime 16hd reef and a 21 inch blade grow set to 95% intensity.
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I have back surgery in exactly a week from today. Gonna pick up a green slimer frag and a grafted monti cap from a buddy as testers while I heal. I plan on just working on pulling algae out and keeping filer pad and socks clean. Putting together an refugium in back of aio chambers before I get chopped into to help keep nutrients low and hopefully out compete the algae in the display and to top it off my wonderful wife offered to perform a couple water changes for me if I teach her, so she’ll be helping me for a month or so! Will update again after a little bit of healing to show how the testers are doing and the new additions I have in works once I’m mobile. Wish me luck on my surgery and my nuvo 40 reef adventure.
 
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Gichigami.reefer

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Little update I had got 90% rid of it got a couple “testers “ to watch grow see how tank was doing . All the spongodes I glued to frag plugs died grafted monti cap on plug died as well as the piece on the rockwork , the spongodes on the rock is doing good as well as the Bali green slimer and the no name acro I assume ? Not sure but Then I had my surgery had to leave it be for a week and a half and algae exploded all over again. Floconazole should be here today then gonna do 50% water change and hope for the best. Wish me luck and let me hear your experience with floconazole if you’ve used it?



Edit tested and afr had clogged up in the little plastic connector pieces so it wasn’t pumping dkh was 6.2 slowly going to raise and hope it’s not too big of a swing
 
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Gichigami.reefer

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Little update currently doing a flux rx treatment on the tank hoping to finally eradicate the gha I’ve tried everything possible and it’s been months and I’m done and at my wits end it’s like never ending madness of algae haha so it’s been about 48 hours and I’m already seeing a ton of improvement in the strength of the algae. Pieces have been just breaking loose on there own I’ll just see a chunk floating a few seconds before it gets sucked into back chambers. I’ve been changing filter floss daily and also manually removing algae as much as my back will let me.
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This was a hour and a half of ripping out little chunks after the first day
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Also entered in the contest for the orphek led bar and the other contest for the Tunze wavemaker wish me luck with my algae problem and my contest haha

happy reefing everyone
 

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