Reef Rehabilitation 29g cube and equipment room build

AaronFReef · Aug 18, 2019

Few new goodies from RAP California. Daughter chose a pink branching cyphastrea. Got an awesome pale birds nest with purple tips. And an orange short tentacle purple rimmed fungia. Tanks looking good. Tons of coralline growth. Haven’t had a chance to see what’s up with calcium now that I have turned off calcium dosing for a week to let it drop. The cyphastrea is already RTNing so hopefully it holds up through the night. Maybe just too much with the travel.

AaronFReef · Aug 23, 2019

I got my PAR meter rental from BRS again this week which is an awesome service which allows me to fine tune my height again and my colors with a lot of Kessil A360X settings from Ibacha who has a very nice and similar setup. I run much more intensity than he does though since I’m really targeting Acros. I’m targeting a max of 350 PAR at the peak and lowest of 100 in corners and achieved that by raising my light a notch and maxing the intensity and upping my UV from 30% to 50%. I may drop it back down after I retest and see how the coral respond. I’m currently slowly ramping from 94% to 100% on intensity so they actually saw a slight drop in PAR since I raised it but didn’t up the Intensity live on day one.

I had thought my chalice was dying off from too much PAR but it was only at 100 so I don’t think that’s it. It must be the low mag and high calcium. My calcium is now around 475 still with no dosing and my mag is a mess. I get a reading of around 1275 with Salifert and 1400 with Red Sea. My last triton said 1375. I haven’t dosed it and I am using a 50/50 mix of Brightwell (pow mag) with Tropic Marin Pro Reef (high mag) which shouldn’t be raising it beyond 1375 so I’m just lacking time to fine tune it. Hopefully some water changes this weekend and one more round of Red Sea testing will help me nail it down. Chalice is almost gone sadly.

Everything else is happy. Plate is questionable because it’s racing around the edge of the tank trying to find a happy spot. Perhaps out of the circular flow from my MP40 which blows around the edges of the the tank. Trying to find a spot to try it out of that gyre that won’t let it get stung or sting other corals if it dances around any more.

AaronFReef · Aug 23, 2019

My new target Kessil settings.

AaronFReef · Aug 27, 2019

I got rid of the yellow tang on Sunday giving him to a friend setting up a frag system we needed one more thing for his cleanup crew. Now the firefish are coming out more regularly which is great. I think I just need to get maybe a yellow coris wrasse and perhaps some clowns to add some life to my tank. Meanwhile I’m getting my calcium down and my magnesium back up from 1275 to 1350. No idea how the mag dropped so drastically.

AaronFReef · Sep 1, 2019

A couple months ago when my snail population was at its peak, I had lots of eggs being laid but sadly they kept disappearing or I’d clean the glass and remove them except for the back wall. Well now my tank is crawling with a hundred plus baby snails. I have this UV flashlight for finding pet pee stains that I’ve been using with my tank this last week for fun because it makes everything fluoresce and found that the snails stand out amazingly well with it.

Can anyone iD this guy? At times I’ve had astrea, maragarita, trochus, and nassarius snails in the tank. These guys cruise the rock work, glass and sand. Here’s a big specimen. They have a banding to the shell that didn’t come out well in full sunlight.

AaronFReef · Sep 3, 2019

Finally have all my parameters in check. Man these Salifert tests really become worthless about halfway through. My magnesium kit still has about 1/3 of the reagent left. I compared it to a brand new Salifert test and it was 100 ppm higher in the new test. So I’m now a bit high on mag again ‍

But still in a good range. 1375 mag, 430 calc, 8.4 dKH. Salinity 35 ppt. Lights at max intensity and almost ramped to 50% UV.

Everything is really starting to grow and I made my first frag from some blue zoas I had that had grown off into the sand off the disc. Had to glue another rock to my green Sinularia frag (used to think it was a nepthea) since it had gotten so top heavy I’m loving the tank and it’s doing its job of rehabilitating me mentally

AaronFReef · Sep 13, 2019

I did something dumb the other day and my tank is suffering for it. I was cleaning the fuge and pulled out the chaeto which had grown large and became essentially a sponge filter. It was chock full of pineapple sponges which my whole tank is thanks to the silicate dosing for the dinoflagellates probably. This cloud of stuff came out along with tons of sponges and made a massive mess of the water for a little. Simultaneously or around the same time I pulled out the floating sponges for my HOB for my QT. More on that in a second. Well I think the addition of a bunch of trapped debris and removal of three of four HOB sponges floating in my sump may have caused a temporary ammonia spike because my coral have been very upset for a week or so. I did a massive water change yesterday and drained the fuge using a maxi jet as a vacuum and cleaned the chaeto out too. Of course this released more pineapple sponges though not much debris this time since I cleaned well. The sponges stick to everything in the display and seem to tick off the coral they stick too. Parameters are great as verified by both Red Sea, Salifert and in some cases Hanna. Stable alk as can be and good calcium and magnesium. Dosed some nitrate from 2.5 to 5 ppm around the same time as the original fuge mess so this could be it too. Anyways, I don’t know what is happening but it’s not good. Have some tips on some acros sloughing off and bleaching and my
Monti cap is bleached looking with some algae growing in the middle of it. Zoas are about 50/50 closed/open all week. Acan not as puffy. The same day this began my acan and plate coral got in a turf battle as the plate rammed into the acan.

Fingers crossed things pull through okay. I’ve done all I think I can.

AaronFReef · Sep 13, 2019

So now. On to why I pulled the HOB sponges for the QT. I ordered three fish from LiveAquaria and set up my 29g QT again. I got a small yellow coris wrasse, a blue flasher wrasse, and a royal gramma. The salinity came in at 21 ppt. Thanks LiveAquaria.... so I pulled a ton of water out and added lots of RODI and got the salinity down to 23. Then after a 30 min temp acclimation I plopped them in. The yellow coris had a sunken stomach and swirled around in the bottom of
the tank with the flow. The other two fish are strong as oxen. So the yellow coris of course died two days later after hiding between some pipes til his death. Called live aquaria who just refunded the sale price I paid and made me pay full price for the replacement... . Got a medium this time and he seems mildly healthier though the flasher wrasse won’t leave him alone and is flashing at him nonstop. They’re supposed to be compatible tank mates but I think the flasher is a jerk. He even flashes and darts at the royal gramma at times.

The yellow coris has spent much of his time at the surface of the tank so I figure he may have gill flukes so I prepped a RODI bath for him yesterday. Matched temps and aerated for an hour. Tossed him in and he freaked out and then flipped upside down breathing super hard. I only waited about sixty seconds before deciding he wasn’t gonna be able to stand it and pulled him back out. He seems the same today as pre-dip. I’m feeding general cure and vitamin and garlic soaked pellets which no one seems to really take along with calanus and mysis on which they feast. The yellow coris ate previously but today didn’t. I’m not sure the wrasses can live together and I may have to choose one or the other....

AaronFReef · Sep 24, 2019

Qt fish are doing good in copper with copper power and are on GC soaked food. Coris wrasse gets abused by the flasher and hangs out on the surface a lot but I’m going to keep him happy until we get to the display I hope. Then they will have broken line of sight and relax I hope.

Display meanwhile is going downhill. Every parameter I can measure is stable and spot on but every time I do a water change I notice coral death of terminal polyps. I can’t figure out why. I’m being careful about salinity and temperature now. Before I had been a little cavalier about temp and would think 2 degrees was close enough with dilution of five gallons in the sump. I’ve also disturbed the sandbed and detritus each cleaning which could be to blame. The sand bed in the front is filthy when siphoned or disturbed. I might go bare bottom next tank.

The most likely culprit I can think now is that I had a frog poop and sit in my RODI and it might have fouled the water with some toxins.

AaronFReef · Sep 25, 2019

Well I found the culprit I believe. My RODI gets partial sunshine on it sitting outside as I’ve been too lazy to drag the beast mounted to plywood back to the garage after use. It was covered in thick brown and green algae in the mechanical filtration portion. I thought it was a thin layer but it was staggering. Also my saltwater bucket had tons of brown algae and some kind of gunk in the bottom. I can’t imagine what it was. Maybe something climbed in and died... really wanting to move forward on the fishroom construction but not getting help from the contractors on the buildout as they’re busier than heck. My fault on the water. Lesson learned the hard way. Darn. Hopefully some clean water and good water changes will get things back in health

count krunk · Sep 25, 2019

you just need to verify the buckets are clean and the water is too. Fishroom not needed to get that done.

AaronFReef · Sep 25, 2019

True. As I say, my fault. It’ll help though with not having cords running into a trash can propping the lid open a bit outside is what I was getting at.

Sure took a while to notice! Must have been at least a month.

count krunk · Sep 25, 2019

i use a hose to drain water out of my canoe. It has this strange red alage on its walls from the sun. I also use it to drain and add water to my tank haha. No negative affects yet. The water itself though is very clean.

AaronFReef · Sep 29, 2019

Well I finally have some new saltwater mixed up and ready to do a water change this morning so I’m really hoping it turns things around. Oddly enough my digitata has shown to be one of my most sensitive corals. It’s lost half of its tissue. My sunset mille has lost half of its tips but is otherwise okay. My monti cap has lost tissue on the middle of its flat surface which has been overgrown by a bit of green and brown Macroalgae. The plate coral has had recession in spots which I know is usually fatal. My birds nest has been hard to gauge since it’s always white but it appears dead. It’s been a big screwup with the mixing station algae issues.

AaronFReef · Sep 29, 2019

Massive water change done. 12g out of about 40g system volume. I had to clean the fuge pretty hard again because the lights and glass just get covered in hair algae preventing the chaeto from growing and that combined with doing a vacuum job on the sandbed made quite a storm of detritus get kicked up. Also some of the top corals became exposed for ten or so minutes to cooler air temps. I raced to get water back in for them.

As usual I didn’t learn a thing and over did it and hopefully it doesn’t become an ammonia spike. The water cleared quickly and I thought that was odd so I looked around and saw my IceCap gyre 1k wasn’t spinning. I gave the powerheads a clean and found the gyre was full of these baby snails of which I have 100+ or varying sizes in the tank. They’re all baby margarita snails from what I can tell. This stirred everything up again and hopefully sent it down to the filter sock for removal tonight.

So I hope I have fixed a few problems and the corals are happy for it instead of ticked at the instability. Only time will tell. I’m feeling optimistic though that I finally found my major culprit and my corals will start to heal. I’ll do some small water changes over the next few days.

AaronFReef · Oct 2, 2019

I decided to not overdo it and didn’t do any further water changes. Instead I’ll make less
Quick acting changes. For example I upped the flow through the carbon yesterday morning since I noticed it was pretty close to a trickle through my BRS mini reactor.

Today I am noticing corals extending more and finally seeming to turn around and show improvement. Some SPS even miraculously colored up noticeably in short order. Figured it’s time to get some pics. This is as Lights began to dim which is when my corals start deflating, especially zoas and the acan.

AaronFReef · Oct 10, 2019

The tank seems to be doing about the same. I haven’t done a water change in about a week and a half to test of stability would help but it’s still not looking so hot. Going to try one this weekend.

The yellow coris wrasse starved to death sadly. He just would spit any food I gave him and I fed heavy in QT. The flasher wrasse seemed to keep him on edge so I don’t think they would have worked but I tried my best to keep him going. I put him in the display early so he could eat live food but he just hid partially under the sand. Perhaps the special grade sand was too coarse for him as well. Sad but I guess the pair wasn’t going to play nice anyways.

The display got the Blue flasher wrasse and royal gramma added last night after their prophylactic treatment in QT with copper and General Cure. The flasher freaked out after being added and then hid somewhere after the algae blenny approached him. He’s really a jerk of a blenny. Very territorial. Hope the new additions don’t get bullied but I guess I will pull them if need be because the blenny does his job.

AaronFReef · Oct 12, 2019

All the new tank mates are getting along great. Eating well and seeming well adjusted.

The coral meanwhile ate continuing to die off. I’ve lost the digitata now and have some major bleaching on my cali tort and GARF bonsai as well as my wife’s favorite no-name.

I have a possible new culprit today which would be a brass wire holder I had near the corner of the sump on the stand wall to hold up some sensor wires. I took it out and did another 20% water change and replaced my carbon. I also found my slimmer Venturi was plugged in the air intake as it always is and was causing massive salt spray. I keep losing track of that and just get used to it being noisy and malfunctioning. Lastly I added some marine pure balls to try and stabilize the bacteria in the tank since my sand keeps getting disturbed by the flow.

hopefully one of these many changes cleans the tank up and gets my corals saved. Finally a messy pic: