SPS dominant WB frag 55.2 & 40gal soon to be 120gallons!

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Tonycass12

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So been fighting with the dinos last couple weeks. Bottomed out nitrates and phosphate and kaboom! Its been a serious headache. Tried manual removal, turned off the skimmer, feeding heavier to get some nutrients back into the water, heavy zooplankton doses to increase competition, lights out, h2o2, and not much has seamed to slow them down. Im back to running filter socks and cleaning daily to get out what I can. After loosing 2 of my frags and seeing the flesh start to pull back on some others i finally caved today and got a UV filter coming that will hopefully put this all in the past. Luckily the only losses so far are 2 birdsnest frags that have seen tissue loss over 70% of the skeleton. Hopefully i won't have to loose much else in this fight.
 

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Tonycass12

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Got a UV filter up and running on the tank! Also got a blue light filter so I can start getting some better photos. I have my fingers crossed that we may start seeing a light at the end of the tunnel soon. Im down about 5 frags rn and as you can see in the pics my pinkbirdsnest has tissue receding. Lights are only running at 25% intensity to keep the dinos at a minimum for now.
 

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Tonycass12

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Massive reduction in dinos today! The uv is doing the trick. The corals aren't coated in them anymore but I still don't have high hopes for our biggest colony to pull through this. Learning lesson i guess I wish I had gotten the uv the second they showed up.
 

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Massive reduction in dinos today! The uv is doing the trick. The corals aren't coated in them anymore but I still don't have high hopes for our biggest colony to pull through this. Learning lesson i guess I wish I had gotten the uv the second they showed up.
Glad to see that this is helping your situation, Tony. May I ask how exactly you installed the sterilizer? Did you plumb it between your return pump and tank return? Can you please snap a quick picture, if so?

I too am running a UV sterilizer (Coralife) on my tank. It is installed on a separate loop and has become a slight annoyance when I am down working in the sump…always knocking it over. I am considering plumbing it as stated above to clean things up a little.
 
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Glad to see that this is helping your situation, Tony. May I ask how exactly you installed the sterilizer? Did you plumb it between your return pump and tank return? Can you please snap a quick picture, if so?

I too am running a UV sterilizer (Coralife) on my tank. It is installed on a separate loop and has become a slight annoyance when I am down working in the sump…always knocking it over. I am considering plumbing it as stated above to clean things up
Thanks! Mine is a hang on style, I have it hanging on the back left corner rn so the treated water goes down into the tank above my Nero and gets blown into the rest of the water. The uptake is coming from a little sicce micraplus pump in the same section of my sump that the returns from the tank are plummed too. Eventually I would like to get the proper size for the fitting from WB and I can run the uv off my return pump via the return line port for reactors. That currently has a plug in it.

Only took a little playing with the gate valve to get the flow right again once I started up the UV and supply pump.
 

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Update. We finally won the battle against dinos. Uv was the cure all and im finally not seeing them at all in the tank. As you can see in the pics it wasn't without some losses.

Added 4 orange line chromis yesterday and the tank is finally looking happy again.
 

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Finally got enough time to do a few things! Its been a super busy summer started building furniture on the side and didn't realize how much time it was going to take up.

Finally got the uv pump and filter moved down into the sump

Got cables for the Nero 3s a little more neat so the weren't just hanging around. The display looks a lot cleaner now.

Skimmer has been offline for a few weeks. It was working to well and keeping nitrates and phosphate completly bottomed out. Im sure it contributed to the dino problem I was having.

Slowed down on my waterchanges and watching the tank chemistry and letting that dictate water changes. Trying to keep nitrates between 1.5ppm and 2ppm when they start to go over 2 I'll do a waterchange.

Now that dinos have passed and things seam to have stabilized again im starting to see things growing again seamed like growth had completly stalled when the dinos started.

Recent additions
-4" derasa clam.
-1 fighting conch
- Acan frags

Temp 78*
Salinity 1.026
Nitrates 1.5ppm
Phosphates 0
Mg 1400
Kh 8.5dkh
Ca 420
 

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Tonycass12

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Had to wait a couple extra days for another RMS mount to arrive but here ya go. Finally not having to worry about not having enough light and way less shadows. The diffusers are doing a great job at eliminating the little bit of disco ball red/green light i was getting on the sand bed. Ill be renting a par meter from the local shop in traverse city tomorrow and seeing where the numbers fall so I can adjust settings on the light accordingly.

Cheers to the weekend!
 

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PAR READINGS!
so as suspected 1 radion xr15 fixture can't really get in the 200-300 range for most of the tank that I was looking for. Ive got both lights running the AB+ schedule at 95% intensity and the point intensity set to 100%. Lights turn on at 10am and reach max by 1130am they run that way until 730pm then ramp down to sunset at 9pm. Blues, violet and uv at 100% and the rest of the channels at 24% during the peak hrs. Almost all areas of the tank are 200+par now only the back corners fall down around 150-175. Under the surface im lookin at 400-460 the rest of the measurements i wrote on the glass for the points on the rock scape that I measured. Im excited to see how my sps do with the added light, going to be acclimating from 80% over the next few weeks.

I'll probably good around with some more settings since I have the meter until Tuesday.
 

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Tonycass12

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Hey, how's it going? How's the tank doing?
Up and down, 5hings have been so busy lately the tank has been seeing a fair bit of neglect. Notable happenings since last post....
-Added 6 berghia nudis to take on the aptasia and already seeing them slowly dissappear. They turn up in the filter socks now and then and get put back into the display.
-Had another brief dino outbreak that almost immediately claimed my dersea clam. Were still at the tail end of it right now. This time it seamed to be set off when I started running a refugium light and macro algae in the sump.
-Our flame hawk somehow got spooked enough to go carpet surfing this last week, I have been getting to relaxed not having my cover on the tank. we can add a shrimp now if we want I guess.
-falling behind on my biweekly water changes maybe only getting to it once a month or so the last couple months.
-still getting good growth and progress with some of our birdsnest, ausie gold acro and montis
-removed a big rock from the bottom of my scape. Started to notice a ton of crap building up under and around it. Now that its gone things are looking much better
-recently added a torch to the tank


We also just got a new baset hound puppy a couple weeks ago and named her peaches. That makes 4 dogs for us lol.

As we get more into the fall things progressively start to slow down for me and I can focus on the tank a little more again. Planning on getting a big acro order togeather sometime in November. I will try and get some shots of the tank posted up this afternoon.
 

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Hey, how's it going? How's the tank doing?
As promised some pictures. I saw you inquiring about how stable your floor is, already looking at an upgrade?
 

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Nice picture, looking good. Yes, I was thinking about a WB 100.3.
I keep rolling the idea around for a few yrs down the road but I think ill go with glass cages and have them build me something with the same depth and height but between 6/7ft long.
 

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