Reef Rehabilitation 29g cube and equipment room build

[NY_Caveman]

Beautiful fish!

 

[AaronFReef]

Thanks @NY_Caveman

Unfortunately things keep getting worse. Dinos are back and this time it looks like coolia dinos. Coral are dying back still and are quite unhappy. I remounted the Jebao 55w Uv yesterday and ran a cobalt MJ to it again. Hopefully it knocks them back. My skimmer is going nuts so it probably is.

I believe this happened again since my nitrates dropped to 1 or less and my phosphate than fell very low as the Dinos started up again. This was probably because of so many water changes recently along with stopping dosing the neonitro which I stopped because I worried it was causing the issues. I had noticed some sort of correlation between dosing that and things going downhill for my coral. I bought a new bottle to try now because the cap on the bottle I have now is faulty and may have allowed oxidation and caused some sort of issue.

A reefing friend suggested that I’m doing too much. Too many water changes, too much skimming, too much chaeto scrubbing. I’m going to set the chaeto aside and try and keep it alive while I figure out what’s happening and when the skimmer settles down, pull that offline for now as well.

edit: adding photo for reference

 

[AaronFReef]

Well after 24 hours of my 36 hour blackout and with lots of UV running my dinos are gone! It’s really amazing. Just did lots of blasting with a baster and got it out. My skimmer cup was overflowing like crazy with the nutrients generated and my phosphate is now super high at 0.25 ppm. I stopped running my fuge lights on my chaeto though to try and dirty up the tank a bit but I turned everything back on so it doesn’t rise so high too fast while the Dinos are getting nuked. Got some shots of my tank showing the die off of my SPS but luckily I don’t think any are completely gone yet though some are nearly gone like my cali tort

 

[AaronFReef]

 

[AaronFReef]

Well I haven’t posted in a month. I lost four or five acros completely and some partially. Things finally seem to be doing better the last week or so. Still have dinos on the sand and stir daily but I believe they are dying off. I’ve been swapping the filter sock every morning to try and remove some that may have been caught, and dosing microbacter 7. Two days ago I dosed vibrant to knock back the GHA which is probably bryopsis but I’ll give it a try. Fingers crossed I’m through the worst of it. Nutrients have been very stable as has al my parameters finally.

I set up a 10g IM Nuvo Fusion yesterday night to use as a coral QT. It’s just freshwater to clean it out right now and leak test it. I’ll put salt in this weekend. Hoping to put a six line wrasse in soon and some black egg crate to hold the frags and some marinepure balls from my DT to instacycle it. When this stabilizes in a month I’ll add a spare couple frags I have of zoas to see how they fare for a month before adding some purchases. Really looking forward to it.

 

[AaronFReef]

Got the coral Qt (Innovative Marine Nuvo Fusion 10) up and running with Kessil A80 bought from a friend yesterday. Hoping to put a sixline wrasse and some seasoned marinepure balls from the display in tomorrow.

 

[AaronFReef]

Got the coral Qt (Innovative Marine Nuvo Fusion 10) up and running with Kessil A80 bought from a friend yesterday. Hoping to put a sixline wrasse and some seasoned marinepure balls from the display in tomorrow.

Since that pic I added a Hydor Koralia nano powerhead as well and an Eheim Jager 50w. It was off by 4 degrees but got it calibrated and should be good now.

 

[AaronFReef]

Well it’s been one year since I started this tank. It has been a headache often but I still think it has leaned towards bringing me joy. I love to work on it and try and steer it away from the brink. It often lingers there as hard as I may work or as much as I restrain myself from touching it.

I’m still battling dinos though I feel I am getting the upper hand finally. I have bryopsis covering far too many surfaces and tips of acros. I just dosed reef flux flucanizole and hopefully in two weeks it will be on the road to recovery. Oddly enough, for no reason I can think of, my ORA red planet is RTNing. The rest of my corals seem to be very happy. Lots of new growth on acros compared to past months. The green sinilaria has been unhappy for a week at least. It hasn’t been fully open since probably July when the Dinos began.

The coral QT has been up and running for over a month and with a handful of corals in it: frags of zoas out of my display, two heads of kryptonite candy cane, dragon soul favia and a pinwheel discosoma.

I’m hoping to clear out all algae issues and get back to a stable tank soon. I’m running only a skimmer, large amounts of carbon, and weekly water changes for filtration. I feed polyp booster and brightwell aminos biweekly. I dose sponge power, vibrant and microbacter 7 to try and defeat my pest algae’s. It’s been mostly pretty looking to me for the last month though. Finally feeling hopeful again.

 

[AaronFReef]

Day 0 bryopsis and dino pic:

 

[AaronFReef]

Well, things are looking majorly up. Lots of updates to go around.

The fluconazole worked wonders. All the bryopsis was dead by about day five or six. I added a lot of cleanup crew simultaneous to starting the treatment and I think part of my problem was not replenishing my cleanup crew as the Dinos decimated them. I still have a hundred plus baby margarita snails from 1/8” to 1/2”. It’s amazing the variety in size from one spawning event. I added my third emerald crab and they’re doing work. Some banded trochus and turban snails too. The Dinos seemed to have disappeared right as I pulled the UV early in the treatment which is amazing. I had bought a nice AquaUV 15w to replace the deteriorating Jebao but I’ve ended up not needing to plumb it in. It’s really nice having my lid not all cocked because of the piping.

I stopped the treatment by adding carbon and doing some water changes (first five gallons and then five days later ten gallons due to being out of water) because my favorite coral, my Walt Disney appeared stressed. Turned skimmer back on five days later (no time to prep it). Yeh WD hasn’t been as extended by far over the last week. I keep thinking it’s getting better but then it retracts a little more. Hopefully it will like all the new water last night. It seems to be hanging in there. Amazingly my ORA red planet has stopped losing tissue and it’s kind of extending a bit more where it didn’t recede. Everything else seems great.

the coral qt has been growing lots of GHA so I’ve been adding baby margarita snails to it. The coral have looked kind of upset so I did a 50% water change yesterday. I added carbon back about four days ago but it didn’t seem to show much improvement. Not sure why they’re unhappy. Everything looks gorgeous though. Hope they continue to improve. hoping to rebuy some strawberry shortcake and a couple more acros.

 

[AaronFReef]

Coral health has been mostly great now for a couple weeks. The Walt Disney still isn’t extending polyps like before the fluconazole but it has lots of new noticeable growth tips that I swear I can see grow day by day. The ORA red planet has been hanging in there. Everything else has been super happy and fluffy and extended. I’ve had decently high nutrients with phosphate around 0.010 ppm and nitrates around 10 ever since the treatment. Unfortunately i think some GHA is jumping into its place. May have to do another round of fluconazole to make sure it isn’t bryopsis and see if I can’t complete a full treatment this time.

Two days ago I moved all the coral in QT into the display. They’re sitting in the front right corner away from the light to slowly adjust. All seemed happy right away. Chalice and kryptonite candy cane are puffy. They spent between 60 and 30 days in there.

Yesterday was the Silicon Valley coral farmers market and we went a little wild. Got six coral: wife chose a nice zoa, a nice teal and green mouthed ricordea, and a whopper of a red trachy. Daughter chose a nice purple and pink ricordea. I chose a metallic zoa and a beach bum monti to replace the Orange monti we missed so much from our first stocking. They’re mostly doing great in QT. My daughters ricordea might have a torn foot that I didn’t notice when buying it. It was straddling some substrate and a large shell and the vendor may have torn it to bring it to the show I would guess. Hopefully it’ll cheer up soon.

pics to come tonight!

 

[AaronFReef]

 

[AaronFReef]

 

[AaronFReef]

you can still see the Dinos. It was a million times worse yesterday until I did a water change and siphoned the sand I started to suspect the indirect light coming through the window above it and filtered through a “blackout curtain” was affecting the Dinos. We will see over time if they dissipate.

The new coral in bottom right after coming in from the QT.

I moved the acan up on the rock and it has gotten insanely puffy it’s hard to judge scale but I’ve never seen an acan this puffy and large per mouth. About 2.5” long per large mouth.

GARF bonsai hanging in there and slowly recovering over it’s dead skeleton

The Walt Disney has been putting out tons and tons of new growth tips and is noticeably growing every day. It’s polyp extension over much of it is lacking and it looks mostly white in the new areas which worries me

ORA Laura’s purple polyp is a great grower but a little too green right now and the polyps are an ugly brown. Perhaps it’s getting too much light. May break it off and move it some day.

the new corals: kryptonite candy cane, avatar chalice, jack o lantern leptospirosis, and rear row is reverse prism favia and dragon soul favia

Zoom in on WD

recovering Christmas monti and a happy but low polyp extension blue mille and utter chaos zoas

This one is becoming one of my favs: ARC firework

my most unhappy coral: ORA red planet. It’s still slowly dying off I think

 

[AaronFReef]

I added five more acros yesterday from a good friend who keeps fragging me some amazing corals off his colonies. He gave me an awesome tort, a replacement pink and teal Jason fox branching cyphastrea to replace my daughters lost coral she picked from RAP, and a few others I forgot the identity of. They all went straight into the DT because I trust his tanks after a coralrx and lugols dip.

My phosphate meanwhile is shooting through the roof up to about 0.25 ppm now. I can only assume it’s the Vibrant going to work now that I upped the dose two weeks ago to twice a week. I don’t see less algae but it must be dying or else it’s some of my recently dead snails though I thought I’d been pretty good at removing any larger ones.

My daughters ricordea in the QT didn’t make it but hopefully some of the little polyps on the shell it was attached to will grow into ricordeas and not aiptasia lol. The rest of the coral are doing great including the trachy. Pics to come maybe next week.

 

[AaronFReef]

The new corals in the display and QT are all doing great. The Walt Disney is really starting to shoot out on all these growth tips it made from the base which makes me feel this has all been worth the trouble of Dinos and bryopsis. Speaking of bryopsis, it has been growing steadily back, helped on by taking the curtain down for a half day that blocked direct sunlight to the darker sides of the rock while we put up a new blackout curtain. I started fluconazole on the display again on Sunday to try and kill it off for good with the intention of finishing the regiment this time.

thus far the ARC fireworks has gotten a bit ticked off and the zoas seem a bit upset but all the Params remain in check with no rise yet in nutrients. Only reason I can think they’d be upset is the removal of carbon when I started the fluconazole. Hopefully the carbon wasn’t so absolutely necessary for my tank to live. I’ll send off an ICP test tomorrow to make sure it wasn’t masking some metals or something corroding in the tank.
Here’s some pics!

 

[AaronFReef]

Here’s my March monthly update:
Things are going great. While the Dinos made a big comeback, siphoning the sand heavily has really knocked them back. I will probably keep that up at least weekly for a while with 8g water changes. I added an Icecap K1 Nano skimmer to see if it would work better than my ASM. I had been concerned because my phosphate was lingering between 0.10 ppm and 0.13. Couldn’t get it down even with water changes and was not really feeding coral at all. So I added GFO in the la set carbon swap last week and it has been doing great. The levels are stable around 0.06-0.07 now that I’m feeding coral heavily but I have to measure daily to maintain this.
All my acros are doing great and my chalice is really growing. My new acros I got last month have encrusted and put on some measurable growth which is good to see. I feel like I need more light for them to thrive though. My Walt Disney is like 50% growth tips so I’m sure it will burst into growth soon.

 

[AaronFReef]

Things have been improving mostly in the system this month. The Dinos have gotten worse and I had to pull the trachy back into the QT system. It was covered in more and more mesenterial filaments the last two weeks as the Dinos bloomed and/or the other following problem caused it:

Once again a calcium test has hosed me up. My calcium had dropped to 325 ppm. My Red Sea kit was reading at 400 when an ICP came back at 325 and my Salifert read 225. I ordered new tests and I think I’ll just make it a maintenance task in apex fusion to buy new tests at least every six months. It’s so weird. I am really over the top when it comes to maintaining them as well. I rinse the tubes with tap then RO then fill with distilled and I keep my reagents upright and sealed at room temp as much as possible.

the reason this happened is that since my flucanazole dosing in February, I had left my calcium dosing about 2-3 mL of CaCl per day when my alk has been around 5-6. I just followed my test results even though it was counter to my understanding of balanced uptake. Fixed it now with some hand dosing twice a day for four days.

The corals are all growing great. Lots of new growth on my acros and recovery from the ones that were damaged to near death like my Christmas monti cap.

I wanted faster growth (before I realized my calc was probably the main issue) and bought an Aquatic Life T5 hybrid and added it on. A friend with the most phenomenal acros suggested I use two purple plus and two blue plus so I bought that plus one more blue plus if I found that I liked the three blues more and I decided to go with the latter setup. The purple plus was too much white for my taste. I might switch back just because the acro guy is my sensei.

I lost the algae blenny to starvation about two weeks ago. He just didn’t eat the algae and the one heavy feeding a day wasn’t enough for him. I also fed often every other day a piece of nori. Maybe worms I guess. He just kept getting skinnier. The other fish are all fat and happy.

My phosphates have been getting too low from the GFO so I pulled most of it before it got dangerously low. They’ve been hovering around 0.05 and I upped my nitrates to 7.5-10 by dosing. Some bryopsis looking brown algae is making a real comeback and all I have left is two emerald crabs and a hundred baby margarita snails so I’m going to remove many of the small margarita snails and add 10 astraea. I also ordered two peppermint shrimp because two aiptasia keep popping up in the softy rock from deep in the core of it.

No pics yet of the new light which I have moved around from like 14” above water to 24-26” so I can still squeeze my head under it and peek from
above.

here’s some pics from a few weeks back.

Growth from the beginning of this coral I think in July 2019 to now. Not great but something.

 

[AaronFReef]

Things generally seem to be getting better. I did a three day full cardboard wrapped blackout to try to kill off the Dinos again (first time in maybe six months or more) which did nothing but anger my acros which some lost color. The dinos did take a hit when I did another big manual siphoning and have been doing every morning filter sock swaps. The socks were full of dinos the first few days as evidenced from a microscope. Still coolia as IDed by @taricha the dino doc

At this point about a week and a half later all acros seem to have recovered pretty well as I acclimate back and slowly being T5s on. nothing else seemed to care about lights out except perhaps my sonic flare zoas which have been on their way out (maybe zoa pox. Been doing nightly dips in furan 2).

Up to 1.5h now on those. I went to two purple and two blue after all since it’s not all day that I have to look at a White tank and I do like the extra pop of color.

The new skimmer Icecap K1 is finally back online. It rattles still from some washer falling out or something but it’s not pulling much. Both skimmers aren’t pulling much so I think my system just doesn’t produce much or the organics are consumed. Meanwhile my nutrients are great at about 0.07-0.1 ppm PO4 and 10 ppm NO3 very stable. I’m feeding a quarter cube daily of mysis and calanus or rods food and doing coral feeding of two scoops of reef chili and three of reef roids to my acros and zoas and LPS about once a week when nutrients allow.

Meanwhile my hair algae/bryopsis is returning. I can’t tell what it is yet. My margarita snails keep the short stuff at bay but when it grows longer they can’t eat it. Only have one banded trochus and four nassarius snails left. Have ten astraea and five nassarius in the coral QT waiting to come in. Added one peppermint shrimp to display (after its partner died in QT I moved them into display after three days) to get the aiptasia in the LPS/shroom rock cave. I also bought an vivid confetti acro which came with a freebie teal shortcake from AquaSD with those inverts. They’ve been in QT since April 30 so one week.

Yesterday I added two big rocks from the sump that have been cycling for a couple months to have more room and less sand. The sand grows the Dinos so I figured let’s cover it up more. I will epoxy and superglue them together today and they will be the zoa garden I’ve been working towards with little plugs of my favorite zoas.

I’ll get some pics here soon but I’m happy. My Walt Disney is beginning to look like a mini colony finally

 

[AaronFReef]

These pics are from April 30th and May 1st. The growth in the Walt Disney over the last two weeks is incredible I just noticed. I’ll grab a pic today when the lights come on.

here’s the new teal shortcake and vivid rainbow from @AquaSD