Reef Rehabilitation 29g cube and equipment room build

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gatohoser

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And the promised pics unclean glass and all. Trying to let the glass get dirty to fight the Dinos.
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Yeah I still need to sort out the hanging cables and get some extensions for the T5s
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the new rock here giving me a zoa island or at least more acro room lol
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Beach Bum monti
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ARC Fireworks my slowest growing coral hopefully the based out growth and new T5s Plus raised A360x will send it into overdrive
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mu fastest grower I think from a friend back in February or so
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My favorite: the Walt Disney growing like a weed finally! Colors a bit off after the blackout but it will come back.
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Three or four heads now on the Kryptonite candy cane and some nice extension on the octospawn/hammerspawn euphyllia
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Avatar chalice
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great growth on the smaller Snozzberry as I call it. Didn’t realize I had this frag when my friend gave me a second bigger one.
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What was originally a beautiful blue mille but now is a strange no PE neon green encruster. I think this one doesn’t like the near constant flow it’s leaning into from the MP40QWD causing a gyre but I can’t give up on it’s encrusting now. We will see what the lights do to it.
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Finally getting my Christmas tree monti to rejoin all its strange little polyp islands that survived in a forest of bryopsis with zero visible green tissue but plenty of living polyps it’s a miracle it survived.
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This guy had some cool pink tips when it was happy before the blackout fingers crossed it gets its color back.
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ORA Laura’s purple polyps got its light color back after months of neon green and I like it but the polyps are still an ugly brown. If it wasn’t one of my biggest I’d pass it on. You can see the nice encrusting I’m getting from my frag of Jack o lantern leptoseris here and the just hanging in there Dragon Soul Favia. That one has never really overcome some Ulva or something that grew on one edge of the skeleton at one point.
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more of the small snozzberry.
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More of the Club as I call it from the clubbed growth it started with on the right side
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And a final shot of my WD
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I know my tank struggles and it hasn’t always been beautiful but I’m so thrilled to have worked so hard and have my first real acropora growth I can remember. C5850ACC-46CE-4010-B674-F1F2137193D4.jpeg
 
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I’ve been meaning to make the time to update and I just haven’t but things are great. My algae has exploded between cyano and diatoms and bryopsis or hair algae. That sounds bad. It’s really really good. The Dinos are really finally disappearing. I’ve had periods over the last month with solid mats of cyano and diatoms on the sand and though I can see dinos still under the microscope I think they are really struggling against the algae. The key seems to have been allowing the sand to stay dirty and most importantly perhaps not cleaning the glass. The film started on the glass and spread down to the sand in a clear and slow manner over two weeks and then began to cover it all. I left it dirty for a couple weeks until I couldn’t stand it and have been beating it back. The last three days after a water change my phosphates And nitrates are tanking so I’m dosing heavily and scrubbing with a toothbrush all the rock still in the tank to release nutrients. I’ve been coral feeding heavily and even dosing amino again to up the nutrients and keep the algae fed on the sand against the Dinos. Over the last month my acros are exploding with new growth and I think things are on the up and up after a year of battle. Phew.
 
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New @AquaSD shipment is doing great except the sonic boom zoas. They won’t open for me. I gave them along with all my new corals dual dips in CoralRx followed by a lugols dip with three days in between and they all are doing good except that guy. Fingers crossed.

The display is growing well and the alk, Ca and mag usage are sky rocketing. Hard to keep my alk stable with how quick it’s changing. Dosed like 11 mL two weeks ago and now it’s at 18. Luckily I check daily. But my phosphates have tanked along with nitrate when the cyano and bryopsis really exploded the last couple weeks. I keep having to dose nitrate and phosphate along with heavy feeding to maintain it. It’s been under 0.05 ppm PO4 so you know what that means: dinos are on the rebound. All the corals seem a bit teed off since I dosed 5 ppm nitrate. They never like when I dose nitrate.

I’ve been scrubbing the rocks for hours in the tank hoping to free up the nutrients and deplete the consumers And have been occasionally disturbing the cyano. Fingers crossed I stay ahead of the Dinos. Counts are going up under the microscope.

Besides coral growth, the color has been improving lately. I’ll try and snap some pics.

Fish room progress is incoming soon I hope. The patio has been on a long wait list for my contractor and I finally decided to move on without him and ask the fish room contractor to take a look. Might be getting that done here shortly. Woohoo!!!
 
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There has been a lot of change in the tank in the last week. Foremost is I swapped the Icecap Gyre 1k with a new MP40WQD off of eBay. I didn’t want Mobius so that I could still use the Apex module to sync the old one with it so I bought it that way. It’s increased the flow while freeing the view massively. I’m not sure it’s flowing over the SPS just right yet since it’s all along the back wall that they push making a gyre towards the front. The sand is all pushed out in back too with my colonies of blue zoas being used as carpet to hold down what can be covered.

I also moved over the new corals from AquaSD to the sand to acclimate including the ASD Rainbow Pirate and Wonder Woman acros, dragon eye, kaleidoscope, and Miami Heat zoas, and a freebie rhodactis that is really awesome.

The algae has required multiple hand prunings and multi hour scrubbing of the rocks with toothbrushes. I’ve done it in the tank because the phosphates were near zero because of the algae explosion. I’ve been dosing both NO3 and PO4 a lot lately to keep it non zero but the darn algae just sucks it up.

The acros have mostly turned whiter or browner in response to the zero phosphate which I’m bummed about. Hopefully they rebound quickly. I almost lost my blue mille (which is alway green for me) due to it being thin tissued from the stress and then me trying to blast some dog hair off of it with my Kent Marine target feeding tool. It makes a fine jet that can damage tissue if used too close and too rough I learned. The mille is hanging in but it’s just never been happy for me. Never seen polyps on it for a year but I’m hesitant it off and move it and lose a years worth of encrusting.

To that end I added a sea hare and a bunch more gigantic snails this week. I also have ten mollies slowly drip acclimating to saltwater to use in the display.

Most interestingly, the fish room is finally making progress towards reality again by the patio being worked on and the fish room therefore becoming next on the to-do list.

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Tank has been spotless for a couple weeks since I added the sea hare (who’s been passed on the next home) and the snails. I was just low on clean up crew I now realize. The Mexican turbo snails decimated the gelidium red wiry turf algae for me which is awesome. Since everything is now more stable because of this, my acros are taking off even more.
Also the patio is nearly done clearing up room for the fish room plans to be made probably next year.
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Well after an insane heat wave that kept my tank pushing 80 degrees with multiple box fans blowing over it and then a week of a wildfire coming within a mile and smoking the place out and causing us to evacuate, the tank held up to a serious stress test. Things look great and the acros are growing as fast or faster than ever. The rock did get some bleaching on the coralline but I think that will be temporary.

Meanwhile the zoas are still shrunk often so I’m going to treat the whole tank with chemi clean to see if that doesn’t help. I’ve heard some good things from that treatment and I’ve tried dipping in H2O2, lugols, and CoralRx and isolating. I’m of the theory now that there is simply some bad bacteria in my tank that upsets them.

Added some new drags from a friend that only spent about 1.5 weeks in QT thanks to the fire. I had to move them over since I wasn’t sure I could keep the quarantine at a safe level to leave running while evacuated so I did my dip procedure and put them in with fingers crossed.
The new frags are Rasta zoas, sonic flare zoas, peach zoas, eagle eyes, and one more assorted zoa, as well as a euphyllia cristata, two interesting discosoma type mushrooms with some vessicles.

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I have two QTs set up right now for some new denizens. I have a sixline wrasse going through copper. My firefish disappeared mid summer which we didn’t realize for a week or more since it only ever hid all day besides feeding.

Also have a nice order from @AquaSD with a TSA Bill Murray and some other goodies like PC Rainbow.

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Looks great !! keep it going !!
 
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Tank is thriving and growing like crazy. I’ve had some screw ups I’ve learned from like calibrating your temperature sensor regularly. Mine had gotten four degrees high so tank was cold. Same goes for rechecking salinity probe with the Tropic Marin hydrometer. I’ve added many many new corals late this summer and this fall including a PC rainbow, and a TSA Bill Murray. Got a bunch of nice milles too including AquaSD rainbow mille. Some nice goniopora, and a rainbow acan as well. Here’s some pics from just now.
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Winter has been mixed in the tank. I’ve had some issues resulting from my clean up crew getting depleted and not wanting to go to the aquarium store to buy more. The issue has been algae. I’ve had numerous alk swings from neglecting to fill the dosing containers in time. They’re used up in about three weeks right now! Lots of alk being used. Keeping my pH very high from all the dosing which is great too. I’ve also had the lights fail or go haywire at times along with me tinkering with flow when I shouldn’t have causing stress during bad times. This has led to loss of some coral and algae growing on others that has caused dieback but I think I’m through the worst of it. My worst issue now is algae using up nutrients as fast as I can feed to keep the nutrients from bottoming out for dinos. I’ve been trying since about June to get a Tomini tang for the tank but just can’t source one locally so I’m going to special order a quarantined one I think.

I’ve sold a few hundred dollars worth of zoa and leather frags and Jack o lantern leptoseris out of the tank so that’s been helpful.

The issues I mentioned aside, I’ve been having a lot of fun looking at the tank growing.

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Growth has been good for a while again on and off. Lost my royal gramma around the time of the last post. The teeny 2” sixline had become a terror and had both the flasher and the gramma hiding all the time or they’d get a terrible chase. So I pulled all the rocks and moved him to the coral quarantine. The flasher started getting braver but he was still thin so I fed heavy but he just got skinnier. Should have pulled and medicated him for worms as the stress must have made him susceptible. He starved two days ago with a full belly.

The addition of more emerald crabs and new banded trochus and a turbo snail has drastically beat back the algae. Reef flux is pushing the bryopsis back once more. I had a bout of dinos again from using Red Sea AB+ plus other coral foods to try and raise my nutrients which were bottoming out but dosing nutrients back to 10 ppm NO3 and 0.07 ppm PO4 and some sand stirring with my always-on UV has them nearly defeated again.

meanwhile I’ve been fragging my avatar chalice like crazy as well as my green Bali slimer which competes against more desirable acros for space at the edges and made a couple hundred fragging some basic zoas and the green nepthea. That is all to say it’s been a mixed bag of trouble but still great growth where algae isn’t fighting the tips of my acros. Wish I had a tang to keep them clean and let them reencrust their exposed skeleton. That’s been a zero reward hunt.

here’s some pics of the denizens:
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The tank has been so happy lately I had to do some major rearranging to reduce coral warfare last night. It’s making me really start investigating and planning for a mid size upgrade while I save up for the fish room build. That has been stalled due to the budgeting (and cost overrun on my estimate for the patio that was a pre-req to build the room) and so I think I’ll go four to six foot 24x24” in the meanwhile to let things expand. Even the coral qt has become a holding tank for coral frags waiting to go for credit to my LFS from the display. I’ll try and get pics up tonight. Here’s something for the meanwhile.
Added a Tyree Red Dragon.
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Now for the big change. Yesterday my wonderful wife and I had to move the tank across the room.

Details on how this was done for the interested(TLDR: we moved the tank across the room) :
First I prepped the electrical cabinet as much as possible, pulling any plugs I could and freeing up the connection to the tank where I could. Then we pulled all the media from the sump and kept it submerged in a bucket. Using a maxi jet attached to a Python hose we pulled as much water from the sump as we could into a bucket or two. Then we siphoned out the tank into a large yellow top extra strong Rubbermaid storage box. When coral were exposed we began moving them into the brute which was roughly the same footprint as the tank luckily. All the rocks with acros attached were moved over. We pulled five more gallons into a bucket and when all the water was nearly pulled out of the system between these and almost all the corals were out we caught the two spot bristletooth tang and two clowns and kept them in the bucket with some corals that wouldn’t fit and an air stone. No heaters were needed for the most part because it was roughly tank temp in the room.
Once I ran a heater on the coral for an hour until it didn’t shut off around 79 even when turned down twice. when all the water was pulled we used the python on a hose bib to pull the last fractions of water out and then disconnected the last electrical and cleaned the sump and back of the tank from salt creep. Then my wife and I over about 30 mins slowly crept the tank, stand, and sump in one piece over across the room.
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when the tank was in place almost I started rewiring it all and when complete we scooted it the last few inches into place and began everything in reverse, using some fresh saltwater to top off from any water we hadn’t added back due to the detritus in it. Now it sits in a new spot.

Next up, the reason for the change.
 
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Now in that last pic you can see a big bare wall where the tank used to sit under that now open window. What I hope will be there soon is either a 180g or 225g Crystal Dynamic aquarium. I’m working through budget on it and planning ahead on all the pre work that needs to be done. That includes opening up that whole wall and:
1.) rewiring the electrical to include two circuits spooled up in the attic above it that were meant for the fish room that budget never seems to allow but which are battery backed up
2.) closing off that window as much as we love the view of that sycamore tree to prevent light and visual framing issues
3.) replacing the wood with drywall since that wood paneling is ancient and therefore completely unobtainable in that same pattern of tongue and groove

On the new tank, I’m heavily considering having a bar built into the steel stand which Crystal Dynamics can and have done before. Their examples are beautiful. It would have the same wood top as the stand itself most likely or else I’ll just have them leave it unfinished and I’ll tile it myself.

I’m looking at a Bashsea smart series sump in 48”. Thinking six Xr15s over it. Using my two Mp40s and a Gyre xf 330. Will probably start it with an undersized Dalua skimmer my buddy is selling and both my existing COR20 and a reef octopus return he is also selling for dual return reliability. It’ll be a simple setup with room for a refugium and a media reactor and the skimmer. Filter socks work for me. In fact nowadays I don’t even run them to let the nutrients stay more stable. That’s all for now. Hopefully progress and perhaps a new build thread to come!
 
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