TheWB’s IM Lagoon 50

[TheWB]

Nice haul!

I can't do any more zoas in my tank. I don't have anywhere to put them that I can think of.

I told you, it’s time to upgrade. You‘re sticking magnet frag rocks on the back wall, you just ordered two battle boxes and had to put in a new rock to accommodate the new corals. You‘re out of room . 180 to 240 gallons at least. You know you’re going to do it.

 

[Dj City]

I told you, it’s time to upgrade. Your sticking magnet frag rocks on the back wall, you just ordered two battle boxes and had to put in a new rock to accommodate the new corals. You‘re out of room . 180 to 240 gallons at least. You know you’re going to do it.

Nope...
I'm going to stuff my 180 to I get it the way I want it.
Lol

 

[TheWB]

Basic tank maintenance day today. Cleaned a bunch of aiptasia out of the sand bed and gave it a good vacuuming. I also received a delivery from BRS which shocked me since it’s Easter Sunday. A bought a Tropic Marin High Precision Hydrometer to use as a reference for my apex salinity probe. I was tired of trying to calibrate the Hanna checker and my Refractometer so I just went old school. Surprisingly the hydrometer and the salinity probe were reading practically the same after I compensated for temp with the hydrometer. It’s nice to know the number is real. Last weekend I calibrated the Refractometer to 35ppt with calibration solution, cleaned it off carefully, and then put some more calibration fluid on to doublecheck. It was off by 2ppt within 1 minute of calibration. No I didn’t leave any ro water on it. It’s just not reliable. I’m glad to now have something to use as a reference that I can trust.

 

[TheWB]

Unbelievable, a snail just managed to dislodge my new scrambled eggs Zoa frag from its plug and it floated off underneath the rock work. 3 small polyps. Not really the end of the world or anything but I just bought it. Not worth taking the tank apart to try and find. Maybe one day I’ll have a nice scrambled eggs colony sprout up out of nowhere.

 

[Dj City]

I have zoas and poclipora and other random sps in places I did not put them.
Pieces that broke off that I did not know about and zoas that floated around unknown to me.

Don't be surprised at all to see scrambled eggs pop up somewhere in the future.

 

[TheWB]

Rearranged some corals so here’s a new FTS and some closeups. Excuse the algae and the aiptasia, they are both still ongoing issues.

Nem in its spot. Has not moved since it was placed there near the clowns Zoa patch. Terrible picture, my iPad just doesn’t do well when zoomed in all.

New Purple Cristata Torch

New Green Torch

Frogspawn still doing well.

New Favia. Had a little tissue recession, hopefully stabilized now.

Old Blasto with Trumpet Coral in background. Both look great, neither one grows at all.

New branching Cyphastrea. I really like this one a lot, hoping it will start encrusting this rock and grow well.

Older red Acan. Started with two heads and has slowly but steadily grown. Looking a little weird today, usually it’s much puffier.

The Duncan is the best growing LPS I’ve had. It’s gone from 5 to 20 heads.

New FTS.

 

[Dj City]

Looking really good.

 

[TheWB]

I have not seen my tank under anything but blue light in a long time. Turned on the maintenance mode on the UNO’s today just to see what it was and this is what the tank looks like. Look at all that algae.

its pretty ugly in there in spots. I’ll be manually removing a lot of it tomorrow. I added 7 scarlet hermits from Salty Underground today to hopefully help with keeping it in check. Also added 4 very small Berghia Nudibranchs from there as well. They were tough to get out of the cup they came in. They didn’t want to let go and they were so small I was afraid of hurting them. Finally got them out and three of the four I think ended up on the rock where I placed them. The first one I put in floated away and I couldn’t get it back. Hopefully it settled somewhere safe. I’m hoping they can eventually start to eradicate some of my aiptasia problems but they are so small I’m not sure they will survive long enough. In hindsight I should have picked an aiptasia out of the sand bed and let them eat it in the container before I put them in the tank. At least then I’d feel like they would have a better chance. I’ll remember that next time.

 

[Dj City]

Please let me know how the Berghia Nudibranchs work out for you.

I tried to keep aptasia at bay but they are slowly gaining ground.
I'm almost at the point where Berghia Nudibranchs might be helpful.

I'm concerned about getting some because of my wrasses and coral banded shrimp. I would hate for them to become expensive lunch.

 

[TheWB]

Please let me know how the Berghia Nudibranchs work out for you.

I tried to keep aptasia at bay but they are slowly gaining ground.
I'm almost at the point where Berghia Nudibranchs might be helpful.

I'm concerned about getting some because of my wrasses and coral banded shrimp. I would hate for them to become expensive lunch.

Will do. You might be better off with some peppermint shrimp instead of berghia with those wrasses you have. You could always temporarily rehome the coral banded shrimp to the other tank.

 

[TheWB]

Well the bryopsis has finally annoyed me enough to order some Flux Rx. Should be here tomorrow so I’ll follow the directions and see about wiping out this infestation. I was able to manage it by hand for a while but it’s getting a little more out of control on some of my Zoa frags. It’s time for something a little stronger. We’ll see how it goes.

 

[Calm Blue Ocean]

Well the bryopsis has finally annoyed me enough to order some Reef Flux. Should be here tomorrow so I’ll follow the directions and see about wiping out this infestation. I was able to manage it by hand for a while but it’s getting a little more out of control on some of my Zoa frags. It’s time for something a little stronger. We’ll see how it goes.

I've done the Reef Flux thing before but didn't have the dramatic results some people see. While it possibly helped prevent it from coming back I still ended up doing a lot of manual removal. Bryopsis is no fun. Good luck.

 

[Dj City]

Good luck my friend.
I've never had that problem but I've read where others have and I don't envy the struggle.

 

[Dj City]

How the Berghia Nudibranchs working out for you?

Got any scrambled eggs popping up in strange new places yet?

 

[TheWB]

How the Berghia Nudibranchs working out for you?

Got any scrambled eggs popping up in strange new places yet?

The Berghia Nudibranchs are probably a sunk cost but it’s really too soon to tell. They were very small and I had trouble getting them into the tank. I also should have fed them in the cup before I released them. Lessons learned for next time. I have not seen one since I put them in and if they are still alive and eating anything it’s not obvious. Time will tell.

The Zoa frag I broke turned out to be a Green Bay Packers, not a Scrambled Eggs. I managed to rescue the piece I knocked off a couple of days later and mounted it on a piece of rubble.

 

[TheWB]

It’s been a week since the Flux Rx was dosed and so far so good. There is marked improvement in the Zoas that were infested and overall just less bryopsis overall. It’s working differently than I’d expected. I thought the bryopsis would start turning white as it dies but there’s been no sign of that, there’s just less of it. That’s ok though, I’ll take the die off in whatever form it takes. On the downside some of the Zoas, including the Devil’s Armor patch where the clowns live, are completely closed up. Same with the Pink Zippers. The rest of the Zoas and all of the lps look great. Now if only the Berghia Nudibranchs would pop up and do their job.....

 

[Calm Blue Ocean]

It’s been a week since the Flux Rx was dosed and so far so good. There is marked improvement in the Zoas that were infested and overall just less bryopsis overall. It’s working differently than I’d expected. I thought the bryopsis would start turning white as it dies but there’s been no sign of that, there’s just less of it. That’s ok though, I’ll take the die off in whatever form it takes. On the downside some of the Zoas, including the Devil’s Armor patch where the clowns live, are completely closed up. Same with the Pink Zippers. The rest of the Zoas and all of the lps look great. Now if only the Berghia Nudibranchs would pop up and do their job.....

This was similar to my experience with bryopsis treatment. I thought I'd get to watch the sea of evil wither and die but the result was more that it stopped growing and if I pulled it out it didn't come back. Still effective just more labor intensive than I wanted!

How is your diy algae scrubber going? Lately my parameters have been reaching uncomfortable levels but having battled dinos in the past more aggressive approaches are a little scary!

 

[TheWB]

This was similar to my experience with bryopsis treatment. I thought I'd get to watch the sea of evil wither and die but the result was more that it stopped growing and if I pulled it out it didn't come back. Still effective just more labor intensive than I wanted!

How is your diy algae scrubber going? Lately my parameters have been reaching uncomfortable levels but having battled dinos in the past more aggressive approaches are a little scary!

I have not actually lifted a finger to get rid of the bryopsis, it’s just gone. I thought I’d be watching it wither and then I’d start pulling it out but that hasn’t been the case at all. Not that I’m complaining .

The algae scrubber works but I don’t really know how much impact it has. Every 2 or 3 weeks I pull it out and scrape off some really slimy algae. It’s a pretty good amount. I would call it a success since I couldn’t keep Chaeto alive and all I did was add less than a $1.00 worth of plastic knitting mesh to hang off the bottom of an InTank floss holder. Already had the light. No air stone or anything else running, it’s just getting fed by the light and whatever gets past the filter pad in the floss holder. I’d recommend rigging up something cheap just to give it a try. I doubt it could bottom out your nutrients because it won’t be that big.

 

[Calm Blue Ocean]

I have not actually lifted a finger to get rid of the bryopsis, it’s just gone. I thought I’d be watching it wither and then I’d start pulling it out but that hasn’t been the case at all. Not that I’m complaining .

The algae scrubber works but I don’t really know how much impact it has. Every 2 or 3 weeks I pull it out and scrape off some really slimy algae. It’s a pretty good amount. I would call it a success since I couldn’t keep Chaeto alive and all I did was add less than a $1.00 worth of plastic knitting mesh to hang off the bottom of an InTank floss holder. Already had the light. No air stone or anything else running, it’s just getting fed by the light and whatever gets past the filter pad in the floss holder. I’d recommend rigging up something cheap just to give it a try. I doubt it could bottom out your nutrients because it won’t be that big.

That's great news on the bryopsis! Definitely nothing to complain about.

Your algae scrubber sounds too simple to not try! When the Hanna checker stops being able to report PO4 it's time to get creative lol.

 

[TheWB]

Flux RX is supposed to run 2-3 weeks and then do a 30% water change. I turned the skimmer on after 3 days and turned the fuge light and uv back on after a week. I have not put chemipure elite or anything else back in. Tested yesterday after two weeks and NO3 was 5 on Nyos and PO4 was .07 on the Hanna Checker. No visible signs of any bryopsis or any other kind of algae. I am using some Phosphat-e to try and lower PO4 back down to .05 or .04 and then I’ll do the 30% water change next Saturday. I think this will land me where I want to be and can resume normal operations at that point. If I can keep PO4 around .02 or .03 and Nitrate between 5-10 that should be good.
So far I’m happy with the performance of Flux RX.