So it begins! My 33 gallon nano adventure

[jk_s124]

I'm out of town on a business trip but wanted to update this..

Before I left, I had been fighting off a Cyano outbreak, while trying to get my nutrients balanced. I'm hoping to avoid using Chemiclean for now because this tank is sumpless and my skimmer is a HOB. I'd have to take it offline and get an air pump if I went that route. Treating it like a learning experience in trying to get things under control without what I call a "shortcut" like Chemiclean.

Anyway, here are a few coral shots. (edit: I'm not sure why but the R2R image link seems to have changed the pics sideways, even though they're not in google drive)

Wow those are some beautiful pictures! Great setup. The rockscape and coral placement is really well done.

 

[Sidius]

Seems like one newbie mistake after another has lead me to one issue/outbreak after another. The corals are doing well and still showing growth but I've dealt with Bubble Algae, then cyano, then dinos (still fighting this). In all cases it was due to my own mistakes of overdosing various bacteria methods to deal with each outbreak and followed by dinos from overly aggressive water changes on top of it. My nitrates bottomed out and I'm fighting to bring those back up (this time slowly). Hopefully next weeks update will show some improvement.

 

[Sidius]

So I do have some improvements since my last update. I've been dosing nitrates and feeding Reef Roids daily in an effort to raise both my nitrates and phosphates back up (they had bottomed out as well, at least on a Salifert test kit). So far it seems to be working and it's slowly risen up to around 5ppm NO3 and 0.03 PO4. I'd like to see both rise a little bit more but I've seen the growth of dino's start to slow down. Hopefully this trend continues and I see more updates by next week's update.

 

[Sidius]

It seems as though my efforts are paying off slowly. The dino's seem to be slowing down and the cyano is slowly growing and covering where the dino's were. It sounds weird to say this but... "Yay?!"

I'm still dosing nitrates twice daily (Seachem Flourish Nitrogen) and reefroids, Vitalis pellets and a cube of frozen all daily as well. it's keeping the no3 around 5-10 and po4 around 0.1 . I'd actually like to see the nitrates rise a bit more to be safe but I don't want to overdose so I'll continue at this pace and monitor.

I've debated taking some pics and posting them in here just for documentation sake but it's so *****, that I just can't. We'll see, maybe later in the week.

 

[Sidius]

The dino's seem to have been beaten back to the point that I only saw tiny amounts on my powerheads. The cyano however, completely took it's place and was out of control. I let it be for a couple weeks and noticed that the Cyano was starting to lift off the rocks and sand in spots and decided to do an aggressive clean, removing almost all of it. I'm now in a 3 day blackout to hopefully kill back any remaining cyano and dinos. I've monitored my no3/po4 closely over the last couple weeks and stopped dosing nitrates/extra feeding when they were sitting around 20+ no3 and 0.1 po4. I plan to do a large water change after the blackout, vacuuming the sand bed pretty thoroughly. Hopefully my next update will be that this battle is mostly over...

 

[Sidius]

Tank update: I seem to have won the battle with Dino's and the resulting Cyano. After not seeing any signs of new dinos for several days and what looked like some of the Cyano dying off, I decided to do a 3 day blackout to finish them off. So far it has worked. I'm going keep a close eye on my nutrient levels and a close eye for any reoccurring nasties. Total losses to date are basically all my acro's aside from the Green Slimer. My Dragon Soul favia was on the brink of death it seemed and I thought he was a total loss but I've been putting him in a tupperware with tank water and a mixture of Reefroids + Acropower for the amino's every other day and it seems to possibly be coming back. Everything else is unscathed. Acan's both have a few new heads that are showing growth and the Euphyllia seems to barely notice all the ups and downs and mistakes over the last couple months >.<

 

[Sidius]

I am now 2.5 weeks post dino/cyano outbreak and everything is looking great. No signs of it returning and my corals all seem happy. I actually picked up a few new LPS on boxing day and will be posting some photos later this week. It feels good to have seemingly won the battle. It was a hard fight and a good learning experience.

My losses total 9 corals. 8 of which were Acro's and one purple stylo.

 

[Peach02]

Sorry to hear about your losses. Do you have a updated FTS and future plans?

 

[Sidius]

Here's a FTS from today as well as a side view and a closeup of some of my new LPS...

 

[Sidius]

I'm not sure why certain pictures are turned sideways when linked from google drive and others aren't....

In regards to future plans... this tank likely won't be around in a couple months. I have everything I need to start building a 110 gallon 60" long tank and everything from this tank will be moved over once it's up. I've had the new rock cycling in a brute garbage can for a year now as I've slowly acquired the pieces. The new tank will have two different tanks for a sump... a 50 gallon Oceanic sump used for filter socks, skimmer, media reactors, etc. and a 75 gallon tank used for a refugium with a flex space I may use for frags down the road or extra live rock, brightwell bricks, etc. (as needed). Both will be plumbed together with an external return pump pulling water from both and feeding it back up to my main tank.

 

[Sidius]

I can't say I've ever been happier with how my tank is doing than I am these days. Still bummed about losing the corals during the dino >> cyano plague but the tank has never looked better. The remaining + new corals are all very happy and my alk intake has shot up (could be coraline taking off again as well).

Little change to update other than I moved the new war coral a bit higher up in the rocks to see how it responds to a bit more light. Speaking of lights, I am still loving these K7 pro II's and can't wait to see my new tank lit up with 4 or 5 of these babies along with the Aquatic Life hybrid.