Quarantine Tank Reboot Journal

[Boochika]

Recently joined this community a week or so ago and it's been wonderful. I thought I would chronicle my journey through restarting my system so others could benefit from what I've gone through.

Posted my introduction a week ago here.

Some background:

Tank has been up for over 2 years, but for almost the past year it's been at my parents for a few months while I moved. Since I moved I sort of neglected it and now that I've been quarantined at home I've been dedicated to getting it back on track.

I previously used NoPox to keep down phosphates and nitrates, but have learned a lot this past couple of months if I'm going to keep LPS and softies I can't run and ULNS-style tank. So I've stopped dosing NoPox and begun dosing reef roids and aminos to help my struggling LPS corals.

One of my biggest struggles is figuring out flow for my tank. I currently have a Tunze 6105 (oversized for an 80g I know) but I run it at about 1000gph and a koralia 850gph. All of my corals are LPS currently and all located in the bottom 3rd of my tank.

I rented a par meter to measure at multiple spectrums, intensities, and light elevations throughout my tank to determine hot spots and where par was best suited for particular corals. Despite all this I still feel like my Kessil AP700 is roating my corals. I turned it down to 30% from 50% even though I don't anticipate any of the corals will be seeing much higher than 100 par at this point.

My plan going forward to fix some things is to:

1. Perform ICP tests as a baseline for any possible ailments
2. Change RODI filters and begin measuring TDS with a new meter
3. Using Phosphate-E instead of NoPox to see if I can get my nitrates to rise from absolute 0.
4. Perhaps add in some more rock to deflect some flow from my powerheads and protect some of my more fragile LPS corals that haven't expanded.

Coral listing is as follows:

1. Australian ultra acan (barely holding on, never fully opened up which is why I suspect flow)
2. Frogspawn coral, possibly octospawn (seems to open and close throughout the day)
3. Purple and Green zoanthid colony - the only coral that seems to be doing well so far
4. Small green favia frag (grave digger) also hasn't opened fully for 4 days
5. Rainbow lobophyllia, came to me in rough shape but hasn't gotten worse. Might do OK
6. War coral (hasn't fed and only a few polyps opened after almost a week)

 

[Boochika]

Below are all the par measurements that I took as well as my tank lay out. As you can see there is a pretty flat rock layout that I think allows for too much flow. I think this flow is irritating the corals. I have a large rock curing right now I intend to put in the tank once it's completely finished.

Should note I've been dipping all my corals in Bayer. Less than recommended dosing. I do about 2 mils to 4 cups of water. I don't notice any vermetid snails or other pests in the tank.

Fish are:
2 ocellaris clowns
2 banggai cardinals
1 fire fish.
1 Orchid Dottyback

Inverts:
Legion of nerite and nassarius snails
A few cerith snails

 

[Boochika]

Should note my parameters below:

77-78 degrees
PH 8.03
Salinity 1.0252
Alk 8.5-9 (what is the definition of stable?)
CA 420
MG 1350
No3 - 0
Phos - .03-.07

 

[Boochika]

Starting to get a little panicked here as it seems none of the new corals I out in aside from the zoa appear to be opening at all. I think I had my first polyp bail out on the acan and it looks toast. I'm not suspecting lighting though it may be a little low.

Frogspawn looks like it's next to go. I feel like if corals aren't opening flow has to be to blame primarily. Is my tunze 6105 just too strong?

I am just thinking that flow is killing me or something in my water I'm not detecting that's harmful. I have an icp test coming in the next few weeks. Going to test the tank and water changes.

 

[Boochika]

I performed a 40 gallon water change at the weekend and just tested my water and I'm delighted to say that I finally have some faint pink on my Red Sea Nitrate Pro test kit. So I definitely have nitrate. I'd say this has happened about 1 week to 10 days after I stopped dosing NoPox in the tank. I'm going to control the tank right now with weekly 10% water changes and see how it goes.

The negative has been that there has been some sludgy green algae, but I'm chalking this up the stinky NSW I changed the tank with last time that resulted in the red tide locally and likely added way too much bacteria and dead organisms to my tank. I waited for the smell to subside in my mixing contained after I collected it, but after my partial water change of 15 gallons I measured a .270 phosphate in the water. I dumped the water and made new water from my RO system

I have a brand new TDS meter from BRS on the system to validate my RODI water that I make so I can be certain it's acceptable for the tank. I measured phosphates in the water I made after mixing for 5 hours at around .06, this should be suitable for my tank although I would like to see it lower. I'm going to start mixing the water in my shed with all my fish equipment instead of out in the open outside, hopefully this will help with preventing dirt and dust from getting into the trashcan.

 

[Boochika]

I received my tank ICP test results back and honestly everything looks pretty good. The only red flag appears to be high tin (?) which could be from some rusty screws and nails that were above my sump and have since been removed. My stand also has a covering on it with magnets that are fully rusted out, but not over the sump and I can't believe that this would fall into the water, but I'm going to remove everything with rust on it anyways or encapsulate it in silicone. Some of the screws have completely disintigrated. I find this a little hard to believe, however, as I have zero iron in my tank. I'll have to do some research on tin with no iron.


From an elements standpoint very low on iodine. This might be something I dose in the future after I get ICP test results back from water change station. Other elements were low but still in the green and no bother really to me.


I'm not sure if tin in the water would be the cause for my LPS corals to be unhappy, but I'm sure it's not good for them either.

I think it will be interesting to get the ICP test results back from my water change station to see how it compares with my display tank numbers. I consistently read similar PO4 readings between the 2 of about .06 ppm. ICP kit told me .02 in my display.

 

[Boochika]

Seemingly my tank seems fine. Corals are still struggling, but consistency in the tank over the past month has improved.

Despite what seem like low nutrient levels I still have GHA grown in my overflow and tank. I'm thinking it may be indicating that my system has higher nutrients than I can measure because of the uptake by the algae, however over the past week it's been dead stable at .5 nitrate and .06 po4. I'm planning for a water change at the end of the week.

My question for the #reefsquad is whether or not adding a refugium (something I've always wanted) would help with reducing this GHA growth in my tank. I know it can reduce nutrients, but can it successfully reduce GHA algae growth in a tank that seems to have routine outbreaks every month or so despite regular water changes and OCD maintenance?

I don't have space for an algae scrubber otherwise I would go for one. My plan is to add a fuge or buy a new sump that has space for it. Right now my sump is poorly designed for a fuge and I'd only get about 5"x13.5" of surface are for the algae growth.

 

[Boochika]

Fuge is just about up and running. Only have my Chaeto to add.

Something I realize I drastically underestimated is how much a larger sized clean up crew 50-60 critters vs 10-20 can accomplish with cleaning rocks and processing left over turds and fish food. I feed light, but I've always felt that the food 'mist' from the frozen mysis was a large contributor to my algae issues.

Since I've had this larger clean up crew for about a week they have noticeably cleaned about 1/8th of my dirty rocks. That's pretty impressive and I'm hoping the combination of the cleanup crew with the fuge will set me off in the right direction. If I had done this in the beginning the clean up crew could have likely kept the algae in check instead of actually having to "clean it up".

Over the past few weeks I've performed a 100% water change or more with water I've made myself. I've added a couple more zoas (something I know does well in my tank) as well as a duncan (something I've had success in the past with) to test out how my water is doing besides just my manual chemistry tests. Basically testing pathogens and what not.

I've also added chemipure as a means of carbon to clean and polish the water to remove any chemicals and harmful bacteria. The Duncan is flourishing in the week it's been in the tank with each head nearly an inch in diameter and tons of tentacles. It's refreshing to see and I'm hopeful this is just the beginning of a larger turn around.

 

[Boochika]

So after many water changes and getting my tank back in line my tank has really started to come around. I lost quite a bit in the process, but all my fish and inverts seem fine. As I posted somewhere else the seams of my tank apepared to be failing so I purchased a new tank and stand and set it all up last weekend. Here are the results so far.