Ryshark’s 120-Gallon Acropora Tank

[ryshark]

Have you considered getting some live rock from an established system to give yourself a jump-start and seed the rest of the tank? I had good success with this and have had sps in the tank since day one. Acros at around 2-3 months.

Hi, thanks for the suggestion. I've done that before and it is a good recommendation with good live rock, however, I got micro vermetid snails from that last time. Also, I don't have a source to get good live rock. I really want this Brightwell MicroBacter cycle to work as it has for some reefers I follow on IG. I'm going to force myself to be patient and wait for the new Start XLM to arrive and if that doesn't work, I'll do what Smite did and try Turbo Start.

 

[ScottB]

I've written here many times that dead rock starts should be left to advanced reefers only. A live rock start can be challenging enough, but these biomes are so noisy, volatile and, well ugly.

You are no noob and ur setting this up as a personal challenge which is cool and I look forward to following. I just don't think this method should be promoted to new reefers. After 8 months of uglies and casualties, too many of them bail. <rant over>

I've tested Marco rock for the presence of stored PO4 and found none in a bucket of NSW with flow after 3 weeks. Do you intend to saturate that rock with a touch of phosphate or no?

 

[ryshark]

I've written here many times that dead rock starts should be left to advanced reefers only. A live rock start can be challenging enough, but these biomes are so noisy, volatile and, well ugly.

You are no noob and ur setting this up as a personal challenge which is cool and I look forward to following. I just don't think this method should be promoted to new reefers. After 8 months of uglies and casualties, too many of them bail. <rant over>

I've tested Marco rock for the presence of stored PO4 and found none in a bucket of NSW with flow after 3 weeks. Do you intend to saturate that rock with a touch of phosphate or no?

Thanks for the reply. I think with today’s products (when viable) it is possible to start a tank with 100% dry rock. I don’t plan on adding phosphate unless I’m at 0.0, my plan is to feed the fish quality food and feed the reef things like oysterFeast and I’ll get phosphate from that.
I had a 180-gallon tank for several years and grew many 1” sticks into giant colonies, so I don’t consider myself a noob. Here is a pink lemonade frag I grew which stared out as a 1” frag and here is an ORA Hawkins, which started as a small frag on the old rubber black ORA plug.

 

[elorablue]

I did a dry rock dry sand start and also used the brightwell system. Cycled and processing ammonia in 10 days. No problems Almost 8 months later I still dose the Clean weekly.
In my experience, it works well.

 

[ryshark]

I did a dry rock dry sand start and also used the brightwell system. Cycled and processing ammonia in 10 days. No problems Almost 8 months later I still dose the Clean weekly.
In my experience, it works well.

Thanks, I’ve found several with your same results using XLM then Clean. Unfortunately for me I got a dead bottle. I even ordered to get overnight shipping and waited until the temperature outside in my area was mild before I placed my order. I did this in an effort to protect the bacteria in transit. So much for that….. it must have died in transit somewhere else.
Now that I think about it, the sticker which seals the Starter Kit box closed popped open with minimal effort. Usually I have to either cut or peel off those type of seal protectors. Maybe it was a returned box…..

 

[fushi]

I also just decided to get back into the hobby after a long break.
The things acropora can get you to do is amazing. lol

Hopefully the mbXLM arrives soon.
If your impatient like me, i would just dump a bunch of bidigest in, I have really come to like the stuff.

You might also want to check out the reef moonshiners method as I think it gives you a leg up when trying to get acros in a new tank.

 

[ryshark]

I also just decided to get back into the hobby after a long break.
The things acropora can get you to do is amazing. lol

Hopefully the mbXLM arrives soon.
If your impatient like me, i would just dump a bunch of bidigest in, I have really come to like the stuff.

You might also want to check out the reef moonshiners method as I think it gives you a leg up when trying to get acros in a new tank.

No joke about the things acropora can do! Without previous success with acros, I would be out of the hobby for good, but I’m chasing my old glory.
I used to use BioDigest as maintenance, but never to cycle. I’ll look into moonshiners method, I’m not familiar with that. Thanks.

 

[X-37B]

Following. I have always used live rock. On my 120 build I used 50/50 live caribsea dry.
I had corals in within a month.
I did use turbo start and mb7 and had no cycle.
On my upgrade I have been thinking a dead rock start.
I am following for info.
Looking forward to your success.

 

[ryshark]

Following. I have always used live rock. On my 120 build I used 50/50 live caribsea dry.
I had corals in within a month.
I did use turbo start and mb7 and had no cycle.
On my upgrade I have been thinking a dead rock start.
I am following for info.
Looking forward to your success.

My first tank back in 2007 was 100% live rock and pretty much an instant cycle since the LFS I got the rocks from wasn’t too far away.

Before my reboot my tank was about 60/40 live rock/dry and also had a bunch of mud from IPSF in there, so lots of bio-diversity. My acros were just hitting their stride when that algae/bacteria came out of nowhere and snuffed them out. I think this issue was from my neglect. I was very bad about exporting detritus in this tank and I won’t make that mistake again. Aside from starting with 100% dry rock, I’m going back to how I used to run my sps tank.
Thanks for the follow and well wishes. I wish you success in your upcoming upgrade.

 

[ScottB]

You are no noob and ur setting this up as a personal challenge which is cool and I look forward to following. I just don't think this method should be promoted to new reefers. After 8 months of uglies and casualties, too many of them bail. <rant over>

I know you are not a noob!

 

[ryshark]

I know you are not a noob!

Haha. My apologies! I thought you said, “you are a noob”

 

[ScottB]

Haha. My apologies! I thought you said, “you are a noob”

And you gave that post a like anyway.

Class.

 

[ryshark]

And you gave that post a like anyway.

Class.

That was for the 1st and 3rd paragraphs

 

[ScottB]

That was for the 1st and 3rd paragraphs

Flexible thinking I do admire. At church, they call it discernment despite noise. More of that might be helpful more broadly. Nice demonstration.

Here to learn so keep us posted -- and best wishes. Constant picture please!

 

[ryshark]

Day 12-and still no changes in Ammonia or Nitirte. Brightwell shipped out a new, much larger sized, bottle of XLM on 11/10 which will take about a week to get to me.
But, I'm getting a bit impatient so I also got another new small bottle of XLM and dosed 2-more capfuls today. 2-caps is a little more than 50% of recommended dose for my volume of water. Let's see how tomorrow's testing looks with the new bottle.
Here's to lower Ammonia and higher Nitrite.

 

[JCOLE]

Glad to see the build. Following along. I started with all dry rock as well and had Acro's in the tank within 1.5 months. I used Instant Ocean Biospira and Dr Tim's One and Only.

Brightwell has some good stuff though. The uglies will be here before you know it.

 

[Smite]

I had a small issue with mixing a bucket of salt and got a similar call. Excellent customer service and just about every other additive to my system is brightwell.

Hope the new bottle works better and doesn't take too long to show up.

 

[ryshark]

Glad to see the build. Following along. I started with all dry rock as well and had Acro's in the tank within 1.5 months. I used Instant Ocean Biospira and Dr Tim's One and Only.

Brightwell has some good stuff though. The uglies will be here before you know it.

Nice! Did the acros do well for you with the tank being so young?

 

[ryshark]

I had a small issue with mixing a bucket of salt and got a similar call. Excellent customer service and just about every other additive to my system is brightwell.

Hope the new bottle works better and doesn't take too long to show up.

Yeah, very cool that the CEO of the company took action to make things right. I've always used some Brightwell products, but will look to using even more now.

The new bottle is working!!! 24-hours later and my Ammonia is around .75ppm - .5ppm and I'm reading Nitrites at about .25, so I added the 2nd half of the dose tonight which is another 2-capfuls which should bring me up to 1x the recommended dosage, with the new bottle. I'm confident now that my ammonia will be even lower tomorrow and my nitrite will be quite a bit higher.
I wish I would have got this particular kit the first time! It even came from the same place; I suspect my first dry rock starter kit was somebody's return. I lost about 12-days, but in the grand scheme of things, that's nothing.

 

[JWsticks]

I do agree with adding acros to a new system is not a good idea.

I have new dry rock BB system and introduced sps after completing 30 day cycle with a shrimp.

Then introduced 15 acro frags and all completely suffered stn.

Since then I've been dosing biodigest and vodka to increase the bacteria counts and will endeavor with some easy Montis next month.