PandoraChalk's 14 Gallon Aqueon Tank (Concluded due to tank failure)

PandorasChalk · Nov 14, 2021

Week 13

Tank is doing well, my zoas are all growing new polyps at a surprising rate. I dialed in this cheap light to a decent setting and ever since I have noticed better responses from all of my corals (except my plate, which I think is dead or in the process of dying).

Posted a thread today here about some possible feather duster worms or aiptasia on a frag that's been in the tank for a month now. Hydroids or worms is the split answer, but regardless later this week I am going to remove the frag and use tweezers to remove the offending pests and seal the areas just in case.

Snails have been doing a great job keeping the sand turned and clean. Last week the back half was pretty nasty with general detritus, but they all showed up and did a solid job (must of noticed me looking at it).

Tank as of November 14th, 2021

Rare picture of the Xenia. Massive glowup since they initially arrived months ago

PandorasChalk · Nov 19, 2021

Wife surprised me with an early birthday gift in the form of lenses!

PandorasChalk · Nov 24, 2021

Week 14
My snails have learned that they can burrow under my zoa frags and tip them over. Going to get some glue and start moving them up a little bit onto the lip of the cave behind them this week.

My.... hammer or torch or whatever this thing is is doing very well. I have noticed with the light change it is stretching out a bit more and inflating more. Starting to see some light coloring on the tips, which is nice.

With Black Friday upon us I am going to look around at some corals for the top of the main rock work, and maybe look at a new tank.

PandorasChalk · Nov 29, 2021

Week 15
Picked up a few new additions over the Black Friday weekend! First off was a double headed torch coral which was... bigger than I expected!

I also picked up a clove polyp frag for $10. There was only two polyps visible when I bought it as a thick green hair algae was all over the frag. After the dip I spent about 5 minutes taking tweezers to remove the algae and uncovered several other polyps that were being smothered by the carpet!

I also picked up a Scooter Blenny, which has been busy eating my copepods that my tank has had for a few weeks now. I am also adding copepods as I lack a refugium and honestly the past few weeks I was wondering what the little bugs were that came out at lights out were and noticed about 90% of my detritus started vanishing slowly when the snails did not touch it. I really like them and it's pushing me to get an overflow box so I can have at least a tiny sump under this tank until I get a bigger assembly. I have an order coming from algae barn and I am picking up an overflow box this weekend since I have a spare 5 gallon I can turn into a mini-sump.

So far I have been happy with my salt tank, and it is really making me wonder if I should start phasing some of my freshwater tanks out and do one big salt tank. I love freshwater for the plants mostly, but so far every fish I have owned has had some sort of personality in this little salt tank. The only things I have on the freshwater side that are comparable in interest are my shrimp, which I'd never phase out because they are my babies. My wife is all for getting a 100 gallon for the downstairs as she loves this little tank and often sits in the office and just watches it.

PandorasChalk · Dec 4, 2021

One of my clownfish after feeding started to discolor. This happened before with a red dot on it’s head, now it’s all over. I think it’s from swimming through my new torch which it was doing this morning.

PandorasChalk · Dec 7, 2021

Week 16
Received a shipment from Algae Barn of copepods and phytoplankton this week. Copepods were acclimated then tossed in, and been dosing phyto once a day (3 ml). The first part of week barely anything different, then Friday started seeing at night the pods on the glass. The blenny is loving it, picking up weight which is good.

New torch is really branching out and flowing! Look at this beaut!

I still need to glue coral to rocks, but been on the fence as I want a bigger tank but want to keep this tank and it’s rock and sand as a QT unit. Corals would come out to new tank as well as fish and CUC once it’s all cycled.

That clown above made a full recovery, and is no longer looking like a victim. Lesson learned!

PandorasChalk · Dec 13, 2021

Week 17

Finally glued the zoa frags to the rock work behind where they were resting. Placement looks a bit wonky right now because many are still on the plug's top piece, but as they grow those will hide. I kind of kept them close together because the frags were cheap and the colors are pretty muted. I do have a bam bam frag that is still on the sand, I may move it to a bigger area so it has a bit more room than the others to grow. I will have a picture once all of them are open. They were being a bit grumpy after the glue work was done last night.

I am starting to wonder if my blenny has an internal parasite. He will eat processed foods, and my tank still has enough pods when the lights go out they get on the glass. But he is losing weight despite being target fed until he loses interest daily. and has become less active. Reaching out to a local reef buddy today and asking if I could borrow his QT for a bit for him to keep an eye on him.

My big torch coral keeps pooping! Picture below was taken for a thread I posted here about a poop that stayed on the coral for almost an hour before breaking off. I bet the pods, phyto, and the tank maintenance debris is finally getting to it. It looks goods and the sweepers are getting bigger so I am in no way worried.

PandorasChalk · Dec 14, 2021

Here we are Week 17! I still have one zoa frag to move up onto rocks, which I will do this weekend.

PandorasChalk · Dec 17, 2021

Came home today from work, went to feed my blenny and he was dead. He has some weight on him, had been getting active again, but I think he may of been sick or had complications from being sick. Really unfortunate, I think I am going to chill it on fish for now until I have my new tank.

PandorasChalk · Dec 20, 2021

Week 18
Outside of the blenny dying nothing to report. I have been keeping an eye on the tank real close because myself and a friend think the blenny had been sick at purchase and it went away in QT, but had already done damage. Really unfortunate I love the little pod eaters.

Debating if I want to get an overflow for this tank and use a spare 5 gallon I have in the garage as a sump. I want a bigger, better tank but the price is extreme and with what I have on hand I could add an overflow to this tank and run a sump for 1/4th the cost. If anything the overflow and sump would stay on this tank when I upgrade, since I want this tank to be a QT tank down the road.

Corals are doing well, my blastos are finally, after like a month opening more and really showing off their colors. I moved them to a place with less flow and that seemed to helped tremendously.

PandorasChalk · Dec 23, 2021

Had my first aiptasia sighting in my tank today! One of my zoa frags, the one I have yet to put on the rock work, has been staying mostly shut since I bought it. I have done several dips but it's always been half shut. Last night I was doing my nightly aquarium watch and seen on the backside something tendrily coming out of the sand. Did a top down look and plain as day it was a textbook aiptasia. I pulled the frag out and the aiptasia was on the bottom side of the plug.

I tried to scrape it off, no luck. It's small, so I smothered it in super glue and made sure it had no escape routes.

The frag is back in the sandbed for now, monitoring it. Today I may try to remove the zoa from the frag since it's on it's own little rockwork.

PandorasChalk · Jan 13, 2022

Weeks 19 - 21
Been super busy this past holiday! Nothing crazy to report, I moved some coral around a bit on the left side of the tank on Week 19. I switched the location of the clove polyp plug and the small hammer I had. Both are doing way better in their new homes, the hammer especially has started to spread out more in the flow and I have noticed the tendrils (Arms? Wigglers?) are starting to lengthen. Color has also deepened a bit to a nice dark purple.

Ordering some snails today to help shore up my CUC. I have started to get some basic sand level uglies that go away easily when a cerith or the nassarius turns the sand. Hoping they can keep it a little more maintained between water changes.

Still in the market for a new tank. On this site there is someone about 10 minutes away selling a very nice setup for $2000 but that is outside my price range.

PandorasChalk · Jan 15, 2022

Woke up this morning and my Banggai was dead laying on the sand.

My CUC was all over him. He was fine before lights out. Did a water parameter test and everything is normal (even tested Mag/Calc/Alk). Nitrates is at 8, which is a tiny bit high but I doubt would be enough to cause an issue since it's usually around 5.

A part of me is wondering if I need to switch foods. I currently feed Marine Cuisine cubes, cutting one in forths and feeding a forth daily. All fish ate it, even the Banggai. But I feel it's not great. LFS has nano foods that are frozen I may go get today and slowly switch to, or feed a mix of both. They have LRS which I have heard is a good frozen food to feed.

PandorasChalk · Feb 7, 2022

Weeks 22-25

Been super busy once again! Life comes at you fast, that's for sure!

Tank has been hit or miss. The corals that are in the tank have been doing very well.

The zoas have been very much hit or miss. Some are showing new polyps, at least 1 a week on some of the colonies. One of the zoa colonies fell off the rock and damaged a polyp. It's been closed, and it looked really bad there for a moment, but it's starting to look a little better. Another smaller colony of magician zoas had another outbreak of colonial hydroids, so I had to remove it and remedy that. Zoas are still not opening fully on that colony since, my guess being the stress of being handled and having hydroids plucked away.
My GSP is doing very well. Out of everything in the tank, the GSP has been the most successful. It's crawling off of the initial rubble it came in on and is starting to spread down onto the rock that it is on. In the new tank it will go to the back wall, so it can creep off the rock and hopefully along the back glass.
In the back corner is the xenia, which has had some ups and downs. It was pretty closed up for a minute after a water change, my guess being the water landed near them and they hated it. Otherwise it's been a pulsing, fluffy ball of coral.
The torches have been doing amazing. Where I've had a few "huh" moments on the zoas and the xenia, these LPS have been looking great. The small torch has grown considerably and it super fat and inflated in the top. The large torch is still trucking along, the purple color is darkening up a bit which is good.
The small frag of clove polyps has been doing great and has doubled in polyps over the last four weeks. I moved them a bit higher and gave them plenty of space to really go crazy.

Unfortunately, I found out my Phosphate test kit was broke as I have started to get what I thought was dinos, but instead have deduced that it is brown algae/cyano. My Phos was reading 0, and my nitrates were reading .5. I took my water in to get tested at the LFS since this seemed suspect (I feel frozen food) and found my Phosphate was actually 1.5! Picked up some GFO and have it running as of this morning to help bring that down.

Still looking at a new tank. The local fish store has pre-drilled Marinelands with stand for about 500. I'm not looking to go too big, they have a nice 60 gallon that is more tall than wide I may get. I'd love a sump to work with and have even considered trying to put a sump on my 14.

AFHokie · Feb 27, 2022

Great thread, I love your regular updates and I just bought this same tank today for a nano build. After having it home I’m seeing a lot of people comment about broken glass and not being able to mount lights because it’s so thin. Is your light mounted on the glass like normal or did you fabricate something?

If it can’t handle a big HOB (likely going with Tidal 55 or 75) and an LED clamp I’ll return it before I go through any trouble setting it up.

PandorasChalk · Mar 1, 2022

AFHokie said:
Great thread, I love your regular updates and I just bought this same tank today for a nano build. After having it home I’m seeing a lot of people comment about broken glass and not being able to mount lights because it’s so thin. Is your light mounted on the glass like normal or did you fabricate something?

If it can’t handle a big HOB (likely going with Tidal 55 or 75) and an LED clamp I’ll return it before I go through any trouble setting it up.

Thanks! Mine is mounted right on the glass, and seems to do well. My tidal 35 is also on the glass, but it’s the most I’d hang off of the glass honestly. Tank altogether feels kind of cheap for what I paid.

PandorasChalk · Mar 2, 2022

Week 26 - 28
The dark days are upon the tank. This past two weeks I have had a major dino outbreak take root. I misjudged and thought it was diatoms at first, but now the gunk is all over. Parameters are 0 Phosphate and 2 Nitrates, which would make sense to cause dinos to take root.

We also had some other changes to the tank:

I added several Astrea snails, a Nassarius Snail, and a Turbo snail to the tank. This allowed me to figure out....
The 'Nassarius snail' I had since the second week of fish being in the tank is actually a Whelk Snail. It was immediately going after all of the other snails, and after some ID work here on the forums as well as elsewhere, I found a new home for him. I am starting to wonder if this is what may of killed my blenny and my banggai as the Whelk was on them when I found both. This one had a hard appendage it was trying to stab things with, so it would make sense to me (also used to follow the blenny around).
As said above, dinos have moved in and I am starting the 'treatment' by feeding frozen food to my clowns daily. I may replace the banggai this week as well, as before the blenny and banggai passed my levels were higher and I only had a little bit of diatoms in the back of the tank. I am also waiting on a microscope I ordered to come in so I can ID what kind of dinos I have.
I did add a chalice coral right at the start of Week 26, before the dinos showed up. It's still doing well.
My xenia is looking poor, and some of my zoas are not fairing well. I imagine this is because the levels are low and dinos keep forming on them daily. LPS is all doing great though, and GSP and clove polyps are thriving.

Will post pictures this evening and document how things go over the next few weeks.

PandorasChalk · Mar 6, 2022

Week 29

I work for a school system so I cancelled my microscope and took a sample in to look at while at a school building:

Not a great picture, but I am leaning towards Prorocentrum dinos as it lacks a tip and only the rock layer slimes vanish at night mostly. I also think I may have large cell in the sand, but we’ll start with one at a time.

I ordered a hang on UV sterilizer and will be here this week. I am going to cut my photo time down until it shows, then once it is hooked up I will do a 2 day blackout.

I have also noticed now that I am testing daily my Ph is about 7.6. I started using Marine Buffer which has brought it up to 8, and my Alk from 6.8 to 7.4. My Xenia and Zoa are still ticked, but my Phsphates are still reading 0 with a Salifert kit. Nitrates is around 4. When I get a sump I will have a protein skimmer which will have a CO2 scrubber on the air intake.

To help with bioload I did replace the banggai with a firefish. This little guy is doing great! Eats like a champ!

Hoping my next update will have the UV going and we can get this dino situation nipped. I am thinking of dosing Phosphate as well.

PandorasChalk · Mar 6, 2022

Maintenance Update #1 - Dinos?

Figured I'd do every other day updates while I'm working on this (possible) dino issue to help catalog what I am going through for anyone else, and for myself in the event I need to reference back in the future.

Here are some pictures of the slime and dinos today after the light being on for a few hours:

Started Hydrogen Peroxide dosing at 3 PM today. Lights came on at 5:30 PM, they turn off at 10:00 PM. Dosed 1ml.
Yesterday I changed the flow pattern on the Nero 3 from 6% Pulse every half a second to the random current setting, with a 4% lowest and a 15% maximum. This can be a LOT of flow for this tank, but....
I am noticing since the light has been on today that the brown slime is not as bad! Usually when lights would come on after about 45 minutes to an hour the brown slime would be stringing off of the rocks, corals, and sand bed. The only stringy stuff is what stays on the glass, and only a little has shown on the rocks.
Did another dose of Marine Buffer today to help slowly raise Alk/Ph in the tank.
I have a Ph test kit coming this week from Salifert as well as a Low Phosphate Checker from Hanna.

Current levels:
PH: 8.2 (API)
Salinity: 1.026 (Refractometer)
Nitrate: 2 ppm (Salifert)
Phosphate: 0 ppm (Salifert)
Magnesium: 1450 ppm (Salifert)
Calcium: 450 ppm (Salifert)
KH: 10 dKH (Salifert)

Going to halt Marine Buffer after today as my KH/Calc/Mag/Ph is high or where I want it. What helps is we've had some nice weather and I have been leaving the windows open + the tank lid off.
Some of the zoas are slowly opening today, which is good! One of my xenias is stretching out but the tops are still tight.

PandorasChalk · Mar 9, 2022

Date	Ph	Nitrate	Phosphate	Magnesium	Calcium	KH
3/6/2022	8.2	2 ppm	0.0 ppm	1450 ppm	450 ppm	10 dKH
3/9/2022	8.2	10 ppm	0.01 ppm	1450 ppm	430 ppm	9.6 dKH

Maintenance Update #2 - Nutrient Wars

Received my Hanna ULR Phosphate checker today, used it immediately!

Test Observations:

Phosphate is now reading 0.01 ppm which is good. For the past 6 days I have been feeding heavily frozen food and trying to raise everything.
With Nitrates being 10, once I have the liquid Phosphate in my hands I plan on halting frozen feedings and going back to pellets . With pellets I can ensure all pellets are eaten to slow down Nitrate increases while Phosphate gets back in line without a water change.
I am considering going and getting a filter sock from the LFS and doing a small 'water change' through the sock, so I can get some of the fish poop/gunk out and re-add the water.
One of my colony of Xenia is hanging in there barely, but the smaller of the two I am for certain is dead (picture below). It is curled in on itself super tiny. Shame, but if it's the only coral I lose (hopefully only coral) from this I'll take it in stride.
I am dosing 1.4 ml of Hydrogen Peroxide every morning before work still.

Here are some pictures from when the light turned on right at 4:30, will post pictures around 9 after lights have been on for a bit to see the slime's progression. One thing I am noticing is I am starting to see green, which I also take as a good sign!

Little bit of green algae forming here... not a great spot but I'll take it.

Usually this Zoa frag (and the one in the foreground) along the edges get a thick brown mucus longer lights are on. Showing the frag right now with no mucus.