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How big a gap can be on the top of an aquarium? Well it cold be always smaller. This month didn’t start well as my dragonet managed to jump out trough a less than 6mm gap between the side wall and the glass cover.
It is really a pity; I had great success with this fish. I have managed to train it to catch food mid water so feeding was less hassle. It was hiding a lot in the beginning but it had a great personality and was really a beautiful fish. I plan to buy some more coral first than add it back again.

I have decided to add more automation too. Although haven’t decided on the final route but my eyes set on reef-pi. I have ordered a few sensors a Raspberry PI 4 with a case and touch screen. I also have a few Arduino laying around so options are open for more than just the reef-pi.

I am about to order some more corals. So fare LPS is doing well in my tank so I would stick to it. I also have set my eyes on some of the mushrooms.
 
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attiland

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Today I have gone to my LFS and got a 4 for 3 deal.
I have got a War coral a Goniastrea White Eyes a Favia of some sort and one I am not 100% of its name. They are small as yet but I have time...
 

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just a quick update

2 of my new frags don’t really do well so fare. I can see some tissue loss on them. I have moved them to a more shady area but I have a feeling they might be goners.

last night I have gone to the living room while was having some water. I have seen some giant bristle worms I didn’t even know I have at all. The beast was at least 15cm long stretching over between 2of my rocks.
If you have read about my rock work you know I don’t need a pod hotel as all my rocks are like a metropolis for them. Finding “big beast” in there feels like as impossible as finding God Father in New Yourk in 1945. You know he is there but you won’t even get close.
I am thinking of putting a trap out but these city mobs will likely just laugh at me ;)
 
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Yesterday I have picked up a Yellow Coris Wrasse for pest control. He headed straight to the sand and disappeared for the rest of the afternoon. This morning he came out and have had a few bites of food which is a good sign. Well let’s see how it goes.
 
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I wasn’t really successful with the last few inhabitants in my tank.
Let’s start with the new corals. Out of 4 frags only 1 seems to like it in there. The one is happy is in the below picture the rest seems to be either rather shocked by the new conditions (light or water parameters) or I do something really wrong with the feeding.
I suspect this is light but I have no proof as just yet. So I have decided to order some goodies to identify the issue. I have picked up on eBay some Hanna testers (phosphate Ultra low/ Nitrate and Copper) as a side gift I got a Hanna PH pen and Red Sea test kit all for £150 which is not much more than price of 2 Hanna tester’s price so I consider the rest as a gift :)
Also a Seneye Reef + web server on its way. The web server was free so it was a bargain too. I am hoping to use it as a PAR meter. I won’t use the web server so that will be sold soon.
Unfortunately the Canary (yellow) wrasse found the a gap to jump out too. This is the 2nd fish within 2 month so I have been told I have to sort it out before any new fish. Well I have found a solution. I have glued a peace of airline on the edge of the glass top and now the gap is only about 2mm so safe enough. And of course the replacement wrasse has arrived too. He is fine and now swimming all around the place.
The other good news is the last brown patch of Dinos are less than a 5cm diameter circle and keep reducing slowly. I am quite happy about this as it was about 7 months progress to get to this point.

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My fight with dinos

The Start

As I mentioned before I have started with dry rocks and it comes with a price. Lack of biodiversity. The buzzword even new reefers are aware of and no doubt it is paying a big part of the Dino problems we hear about a lot in R2R.

I have had (sill till a certain degree have) my fair share of dinos . I would love to know what has triggered it but I only have assumption as I was doing a lot of things at the time of it has started.

The first signs a naive aquarists easily ignore. I had only light dusting on the glass and the edge of the sand. Watching BRS videos I assumed this was diatoms and expected for a new reef. Not to mention I have used tap water for the first few weeks. My RO unit has just arrived at the time so I have ignored it.

It was June and the problem hasn’t yet escalated too much or at least didn’t show that much as one of the thing Dinos really like is light and light was not present in high the volume than since the lighting unit I have ordered was delayed. The freshwater lights came with the tank were not enough for a full bloom. I didn’t know what kind of surprise is lurking in the shallow waters. It didn’t have JAWS but it has bit hard later in August.

In August I have decided it is time for more biodiversity so introduced Rotifers and Copepods not knowing it could feed Dinos when there is a die off of the population. And there was die offs as I wasn’t feeding them and the available algae would not able to keep up the amount introduced.
I have also dosed vibrant thinking more bacteria is the better.

Then at the end of the month the lights arrived and few days later the bloom started in full force the sand turned brown. Nitrate soon hit 0 and. Phosphate fallowed it soon. It has happened in the matter of days. Sill naively choose to ignore it as it may go away itself. Well it didn’t.

I only had a suspicion that it might be the “you know what” because it was looking better in the morning than at the end of the light peak.

I have started go trough the Dino tread’s 600 pages and soon realised it is not the question if I have Dinos but which type I have. And to my first post on the tread got a short answer: get a microscope! Now I think it was one of the best advise I have ever got. It is more important equipment than a fishnet.

So I have ordered one which turned out to be useless and than an another one was good enough for taking a picture trough my phone to ID it.

I have found out I not only have to deal with the “D” word but with the “A” too. Later stands for Amphidinium and I had small and large cell ones. Yay.

The main problem with these ones that they don’t tend to swim much staying on and under the sand mainly and resistant to Dino X and other chemicals.

This one seems to be so tricky to get rid of it had its own tread in R2R with people expecting with different techniques to get rid of them.

The plan
.
Since it is long winded to explain all the whys I will just list what my plan was below;
- increase nitrates (food grade Saltpetre)
- Increase phosphates (KH2PO4)
- Stop water changes
- Get a UV
- Dose silicates (Brightwell Sponge Excel)
- Do manual removal as much as possible (filter floss and vacuuming)
- Increase biodiversity (add adding live rock and mod)

It meant to order a bunch of stuff, wait for deliveries and tell my wife you have to be patient. Now that’s not in her nature. She is a do it now type of woman.

It took more than a month by the time everything were together so I have started to do the things as they arrived.

Started to dose phosphate and nitrate. In the beginning it was gone almost instantly. The amount of 20-40ppm of nitrate gone in less than 24 hours in the first few days. Phosphate was dosed to 2ppm daily and gone by next day. In the fist few days I started to question my maths but than without significant transition I could stop dosing these. After in next 2 months I had to top up maybe twice the nitrates.

Nitrate seemed to be out of control and sometimes hit over 40-50ppm than disappeared soon after. Probably more was going on in the microscopic level than what I could understand.

The UV has been plumbed from and to the display fashion (required for more efficient operation) I could see an affect within a week. This was targeting the small cell Amphidinium

I have bought from the LFS some Miracle Mud® and 2 fist size live rock and put it in the tank. Apart from some sponges and Coraline Algae growing on them not much visible happened at first but nitrates started to stabilise and maybe the water seemed to be cleaner. I say maybe because at this point I was desperate to find something positive.

I have also employed some chaeto in the display over the worst affected areas. I didn’t see real positive affect of this but thought it worth a shot as some people had success with it. My Scopas tang was eating most of it and it started to disappear soon. What it did do though it introduced some critters namely micro brittle stars.

I had a filter floss hanging in high flow areas to manual collection of dinos. Worked really well to export Dinos but my wife wasn’t impressed with it. I had to go into long uncomfortable conversations on how soon I will remove it.

Started to siphon the top of the sand without really disturbing it trough a 5 micron filter sock. This gave the illusion of clean sand for about a day or two.

The beak trough

All above made a difference in its on way but the battle seemed to be never ending and clean sand to be just a dream. Due to the conditions in cyano started to appear too.
But than finally the silicates have arrived. The product I was going for wasn’t easy to get hold of in the UK. Everywhere the stock was back ordered.

Measuring silicates is hard and tests are unreliable so I decided not to order yet another test kit but calculate the dosage by simply doing the mats. 2ppm was the target to achieve diatoms to bloom. So I have just dumped it in in 2 days. Diatom meant to kill my large cell Amphidinium.
Within 3 days I had the diatoms bloom and within a week I couldn’t found dinos.

2 weeks later cemyclean got rid of the cyano and after months I had clear sand and rocks.

The fight is not over though. I had a small relapse of dinos in some small patches so as of today I have to started dosing silicates again. I possibly won’t go as high with the dose this time but we will see how it goes in a week or two.

I have restarted water changes.

Ever since I try to tell everyone to get a microscope and use it to ID their algae as part of their routine. I feel it is more important than have low level nitrate and phosphate.
My corals by the way really enjoyed the elevated nitrate and phosphate levels and the silicates made the water so crisp that for days I was just couldn’t talk about anything else but that.

I have also came across a video I want to share with you. So much to learn from it;



The 2 dino tread are a must to read


https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/dinoflagellates-–-are-you-tired-of-battling-altogether.293318/

Finally I want to say special thank you for those people helped me the most in this fight. @ScottB @taricha


The worst state of the tank can be seen in the attached picture for your amusement and hoping this will give hope for those think their brown uglies are bad.

931EFD01-19F9-4A6E-9E2E-D24E9001772A.jpeg 5E495129-CA17-47D7-B550-66B6E0444792.jpeg E98D7F83-F402-4B16-AF6B-6056D9497009.jpeg

Thanks for the video suggestion. I’m brand new to reefing and there is so much to learn! your tank is really coming together. Sorry about your Copperband. That is my dream fish but I’m not In a position to try one for a very long time.
 
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There are two words for red in the Hungarian language. “Vörös” in used when referring to animated objects (for example: a red dog) and “piros” is used when describing inanimate objects (for example: a red ball). I just don’t know why none of these came to my mind when I was reading my water parameters.

So I have been told off. Rightly so. My water parameters are way off from ideal. I must have been hoping for an angel or something to sort this out for me.

It started with with a disaster for my very first coral which has suddenly form looking happy lost 2 heads and later in that week I have actually noticed that another 3 has been particularly off already.

I have started to scream and posted in the LPS forum for help and luckily @Shirak found it and gave an eye opening advice. In short; before I sort out my phosphate/nitrate/alkalinity levels I will walk on eggshells.

Ok I thought, stop shouting I’ve got it. Got into shopping mode on and started to collect what I need for 2 part dosing (tests/ magnesium alkalinity/calcium solutions) and for phosphate/nitrate removal.

I have ordered a Tunze Macro Algae Reactor 3181 from H2O Aquatics. They were cheeky with their stock levels (understatement) by saying they have stock but they in fact had none, just an order somewhere on the go. They blame BREXIT but it is totally their fault as they were not dishonest about their stock. Meanwhile my chaeto have arrived and I am worried it will die before it gets to the reactor and my phosphate levels are slowly rising...

Enough of moaning so I also have ordered some Tropic Martin All For Reef to maintain the levels once they are set and have ordered all the three parts of the “2 part” solution.

As it stands now I will have to dose manual as dosing solution is still in the works in a very early stage.

Also ordered reliable test kits for calcium and magnesium testing from ReadSea.

My alkalinity was at 7.5dkh and the aim is 9dkh so I have used some soda bicarbonate solutions to increase. The plan was to get to 8dkh in a week but my other Duncan clearly doesn’t like the change. Every time I dose it looks like the child bit into a lemon for the first time for a day or two. I have reached 8 so fare in almost two weeks but looks like I have to go even slower than I have expected.

Alongside of this I use the minimal amount of All For Reef every day as I really want all levels to be at least maintained a bit better than before.

There are few things like the change already or at least don’t care. These are the hammer and GSPs , Zoas and unfortunately some Dinos and cyano too. Latter have popped up in some places. Not too bad though so I have just turned the UV back up for now as changes usually triggered these things anyway in the past.

So this is how fare I’ve got so fare with this.


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On an another note we are moving to a bigger house for sure which is means an upgrade opportunity to a bigger tank but of corse there is still no timeline on this just yet.
 
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I have started to work on my magnesium levels. I haven’t had magnesium testing equipment before and had no idea this would be required in the level where I am at.
The magnesium measurements show depleted levels it has gone down to 1100ppm which is well below recommend so I have started to dose. At the moment I used small corrections only. I want to increase it really slow, slower than the steps reefers say I can do this. In 3 days it have gone up 1150 and today’s dosing should put it around 1170. Since I use All for reef too I think I will able to reach the recommended 1250-1350 ppm levels by early next week.
I think it is a side affect but my alkalinity is rising too now at 8.5dkh. This is a really good news however the last measurements done different time of the day so I may just see some swings I haven’t seen before. Since my salt should mix to only 8dkh from now on one more thing to watch out for when I do water changes.
The Duncan I had trouble with is down to one had. Really sad about it. Interesting though that the remaining head developed some sort of tentacles holding it to the side of the skeleton. Time will they’ll if that one will survive.
 
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Meanwhile in the Duncan....
IMG_4162.JPG
IMG_4164.JPG

He is completely taking the P.... Duncan is not so happy, but opened almost fully by midday...
 
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The algae reactor is working its wonders already. I have put in action on Friday night and today there is a significant drop already. On Friday I will have to put on timer as it is already approaching my target.
225A96A6-2EAE-4E7E-AE7F-54F7D5535309.png
I am really pleased with it :)
 
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Doser is being tested. Before I put in the final place I will just test it for a few days so sorry about the mess :)
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Did you just run the dosing line through the top of the voss bottle or did you use a fitting?
 
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The dosing and the algae reactor slowly getting all parameters to where I want it to be.
bit worried about nitrate as dropping to fast so may end up dosing that too.
72D3C1F7-BF65-4121-A783-273D0A06AFBB.png
 
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I have done the first proper harvest of my chaeto. Impressive amount has come out of the algae reactor.
BA3A34E7-BDD3-4856-81B0-5C024979A217.jpeg

Last time I have put it on timer and had it only running for 12 hours but it seems to be not enough so I have upped the hours to 15 as phosphate started to climb up a little (0.05) and at the moment I still want to go down.

also have done some fin tuning of the doser to maintain the parameters. It is really little adjustments were required and hopefully soon it can be left to do its own thing for a while.
 
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Today finally I can report that my parameters are more or less in line with what is wanted to achieve. Nitrate is on the low end to my liking but all seems to be happy. @Shirak thanks again for the heads up.

8FF70F5B-21CC-4027-BD16-023194FC0745.png


I also happy owner of a RedSea DIY mesh top replacing the glass top I had. The reason I have decided to do this is I had now 4 carpet surfer and I could save only one. The new top is giving me grater overall cover and therefore protection for the jumpers.
I think it is now time for some new LPS and maybe some fish too. The hunting is on :) .
 

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Somebody is happy this morning already. Just 1 hour after the lights are on.
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Looking good! Hammer seems happy:) Careful of overdoing the algae reactor. It can pull quite a bit of nutrients out and your nitrates are getting on the low end. Do you feed frozen food? I have heard that frozen is more nitrate than phosphate vs dry pellets and flakes. Not sure how true that is.
 

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