wilsonline
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Any feedback on the tank?
Watch me kill SPS...
- Thread starter Skep18
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Skep18
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Good to know. At this point, the only thing consuming ALK/CAL would be coralline. I have not tested that very much lately. I have been doing daily PO4 tests and most every day I do a NO3 test. My NO3 doesn't change much but my PO4 certainly seems to be being consumed/absorbed by something as my tests seem to react dramatically to dosing changes only to be depleted when I back the dosing down a bit. But I figure, at this point, I am knowingly keeping PO4 in the tank for now. Hopefully that is worth something.
Once all this settles down I will for sure be sending in for an ICP test. I just don't know how much value it would add right now (or a week ago maybe) as I have been adjusting things pretty significantly.
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Skep18
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I thought the exact same thing. Idk how much value ALK/CAL monitoring has. Perhaps its invaluable to tanks filled with stoney corals to monitor alarm signs of issues before they happen via consumption decreasing. But for me, a 4 times daily monitoring of PO4 would be AMAZING!
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Skep18
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Yea. I finished the lights out period and it did a great job and knocking back the dinos. I want to say I can't find them at this point. Some white stringy remnants of what maybe die off? But I have been watching the frag rack for that brown slime webbing that was more apparent before. That, at this point, has not returned. I have been dosing BioSpira and just got MicroBacter7 in and will replace BioSpira with that according to the bottle's dosing instructions.
Now for the bad... lol. The 3 day darkness seems to have reset the pecking order of my tangs. If been a free for all of aggression to reestablish dominance and my poor Scopas tang has been banished to a corner of the tank. He looks really bad. After a couple of days, the war-like aggression has stopped. The Scopas will hopefully make a full recovery. He is eating periodically and his fins are showing signs of healing. That was a side effect I did not anticipate in all of this. For that reason, I would have a hard time endorsing another blackout. I think, if needed again, I will maintain very low light settings to allow the fish to maintain some of their routine but still try and starve out the algae.
The frags I had just went belly up. The 3 days of darkness was too much for them. All but one are completely skeleton. The only acro in there has some flesh left but looks pretty bad. I know it maybe premature to think my tank is at all stable and I should give it time to settle out before adding more frags. However, in my experience thus far, waiting for the sake of waiting (which I did for nearly a year) is not of any real value. In my case, it just resulted in me losing a year in which I could have been working on reading changes and making adjustments. So, in order to look for some meaningful closed loop feedback, I am reaching out to Adam at Battle Corals to see if he can arrange another frag pack for me. I don't expect them to live necessarily but I am interested in monitoring what these do to see if anything has improved or gotten worse. For the price, I will find more value in that than saving the money in not doing it.
All that said, the rocks are pretty clean at this point (maybe not a good thing). But I am seeing tufts of green algae occupying some parts of the rocks, mainly in the high light. I think that is supposed to be a good sign in having that occupy my nutrient consumption role as opposed to dinos.
I'll try and get a pic up just for everyone's veiwing pleasure. Thanks to all who have followed thus far! I'm discouraged and down but far from out. This thing WILL grow SPS...
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Skep18
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Forgot to add, my cyano has definitely gotten more established. However, thus far, it seems even successful tanks experience cyano so as long as its not aggressively taking over, I am not going to worry about it too much.
Also, my zoas seem consistently open and happy now days. I think that change correlated with the NO3/PO4 dosing. I'm hopeful that will have a big impact on things.
As mentioned, here are some photos. Please forgive the color. The tank is on blues at this point. I took one FTS with no filter but used an orange lens filter for the rest. Keep that in mind when the colors look "off".
FTS on blues:
FTS with filter:
RIP frags (w/ filter):
Here's the algae growing on the rocks now in the higher lit areas (w/ filter):
And I took this to show the purple coralline I do have throughout the tank. In photos, it seems to not be evident. Its far from the full coverage and glass flooding coralline others see as well. It only seems to grow in the shaded areas. This coralline is not the sexy plating kind that I see in many tanks and am trying to grow. The plating kind is on the dead stylo frag. It is showing white edges of growth so I will be leaving that plug in there in hopes that stuff will come off and grow in my tank.
Coralline (w/ filter):
Also, my zoas seem consistently open and happy now days. I think that change correlated with the NO3/PO4 dosing. I'm hopeful that will have a big impact on things.
As mentioned, here are some photos. Please forgive the color. The tank is on blues at this point. I took one FTS with no filter but used an orange lens filter for the rest. Keep that in mind when the colors look "off".
FTS on blues:
FTS with filter:
RIP frags (w/ filter):
Here's the algae growing on the rocks now in the higher lit areas (w/ filter):
And I took this to show the purple coralline I do have throughout the tank. In photos, it seems to not be evident. Its far from the full coverage and glass flooding coralline others see as well. It only seems to grow in the shaded areas. This coralline is not the sexy plating kind that I see in many tanks and am trying to grow. The plating kind is on the dead stylo frag. It is showing white edges of growth so I will be leaving that plug in there in hopes that stuff will come off and grow in my tank.
Coralline (w/ filter):
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Skep18
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In other news, my frag tank has yet to lose a frag! lol. I have a green slimer in there that reacted pretty negatively to a pretty sudden increase in NO3 and/or the 25% WC that followed. However, since then it has begun to recover. That with the other acro are browning out a bit but the flesh still looks pretty healthy. Overall though, not a single frag in that tank seems to be dying in any convincing manner, at least visually.
TY for the FTS. Made me go all the way back to page one looking for a start date. For whatever reason, that rock does not look two years old. 2 year old rock should look aged and mature like me. Pink and brown. Old. Perhaps under a certain filter I would look younger but this looks so young. Did you have a restart along the way? I am clearly missing something.
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Skep18
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No restarts whatsoever. I've been hearing this a lot. I'm guessing my clean glass gives the visual of clean rocks? Idk. My rocks about 3 months in developed the "chicken pox" look with the green/brown spots of what I understood to be non-purple coralline. The rock started bleach white and is not all completely covered in that green/brown and has been for well over a year I'd say. I'm not sure what else should be on rock aside from more purple coralline.
I will add I can only guess my QT practices have contributed to this maybe? I have QT'ed everything wet aside from skin covered corals at this point. This does not leave much opportunity to let in the various hitchhikers (good or bad) along the way. I have added cultured coralline from a bottle, Purple Helix, to my tank maybe a year ago? That, I assume, is the strain of purple I do have. They grow their coralline in a fish free environment to prevent transmission of fish effecting parasites.
I'm not sure what you maybe missing but if you have specific questions, please feel free to ask. I am kinda surprised so many are surprised by my tank, lol. I really did figure more people out there practice strict QT regiments than it seems do.
Hi Skep
Hopefully you will soon solve this issue. Currently going trough something similar, although I'm half convinced that in my case the tank is limited by one of the trace elements. I will try dosing it and then report back if there are improvements.
Regarding your phosphate consumption, take a look at this thread:
www.reef2reef.com
While your rocks have been in the tank for what I would assume to be more than long enough for all of them to be fully established, by our description it does not seem to be the case. Around page for 3 and 4 of the thread there are some interesting numbers.
Cheers
Hopefully you will soon solve this issue. Currently going trough something similar, although I'm half convinced that in my case the tank is limited by one of the trace elements. I will try dosing it and then report back if there are improvements.
Regarding your phosphate consumption, take a look at this thread:
Phosphate Absorption Rates in Aragonite
I was chatting with @mcarroll the other day about phosphate binding to aragonite. I have seen many instances where phosphate bound live rock and sand requires massive amounts of media and water changes to remove all of the phosphate. Two instances: 1). Local purchased 120lbs of Pukani live...
www.reef2reef.com
While your rocks have been in the tank for what I would assume to be more than long enough for all of them to be fully established, by our description it does not seem to be the case. Around page for 3 and 4 of the thread there are some interesting numbers.
Cheers
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Skep18
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Hi Skep
Hopefully you will soon solve this issue. Currently going trough something similar, although I'm half convinced that in my case the tank is limited by one of the trace elements. I will try dosing it and then report back if there are improvements.
Regarding your phosphate consumption, take a look at this thread:
Phosphate Absorption Rates in Aragonite
I was chatting with @mcarroll the other day about phosphate binding to aragonite. I have seen many instances where phosphate bound live rock and sand requires massive amounts of media and water changes to remove all of the phosphate. Two instances: 1). Local purchased 120lbs of Pukani live...
While your rocks have been in the tank for what I would assume to be more than long enough for all of them to be fully established, by our description it does not seem to be the case. Around page for 3 and 4 of the thread there are some interesting numbers.
Cheers
Thanks for the link. I have been aware of the discussion surrounding dry rock and PO4 absorption. However, I will read through that thread as there always could be something specific that could be revealing.
I hope you figure your situation out. I am always sad to hear others are having issues but also a little relieved to see not everyone has it figured out, lol. If you read through the various reef tank media sites, they'd have you convinced everyone has it figured out perfectly.
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Skep18
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Perhaps this helps. This is the rock work when the tank was still new. Perhaps this better shows the white it once was. I'm not going to claim to be a marine biologist and catalog the biological growth in the rock work but I can say it's stoney in nature and not just plant flesh. The encrusting covers old spiroid worms regularly.
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Skep18
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Thanks for following along! Nothing new since Monday's update. So far as I can tell, still no signs of dinos and other algae seems to be settling in. Still waiting on a response from Adam with Battle Corals about another frag pack. If I don't hear from him after a week, I'll send a follow-up message. I know hes pretty busy lately.
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Skep18
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Small update sorta. The QT tank tested @ ~6dKH ALK yesterday. The frags in there have been looking much happier the past week or two. The drop in ALK prompted me to look back at some old photos of the frags in there thinking that should indicate growth. Its always hard to tell in such a short period as a month but there is indeed some growth on some of the frags. The spongode tips appear to have made some new bumps and stuff. But needless to say I am now trying to figure out how to best dose PO4 and ALK along with the random NO3 and CAL when needed. At the moment, I am adding Sodium Bicarbonate and Trisodium Phosphate dosing liquids to my ATO reservior and continuing to test to "calibrate" how much to add each fill up. Obviously this is far from ideal so I have gone ahead and ordered a Jebao 3.4 dosing pump online. I understand its a far cry from the Apex DOS or a GHL but it will have to do for the QT. Once that gets in, I'll be able to dial in a real dosing regiment. All this, the little QT is kinda turning into a "second tank"... But all in the name of experiments and experience with it all. I'm just glad I am able to keep something alive somewhere. I know its possible now and not some crazy issue like bad water from the tap, etc.
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Skep18
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TLDR Update: Doser came in for QT tank. I lost a green acro in QT but it had been looking not great for a bit. It was starting to look better but something made it finally shed tissue. Everything else is OK. I have gotten 4 new frags from BattleCorals. An acro, a stylo, a digi and a anacropora. The wife loves the forest fire digi so I put that in QT. The other 3 are in the DT. Also, from the first frag pack, the plating coralline on the dead stylo's frag plug is growing very well. Funny evidence against the adage, "if you can grow coralline, you can grow SPS."
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Skep18
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Slow and steady I guess. The frag tank is still chugging along. HI had to increase my ALK dose on it again today. I can see growth at he base of my euphylia in the form of fresh white bone/stone. The anacropora is growing like nuts. The maricultured acro is coloring up pretty well. Turning a kinda purple on top and red on the shaded areas. It maintains pretty good polyp extension the whole time. I am struggling a bit with algae in there. The frags dont seem to mind though, which is good. Debating on solutions for that though. Don't want to add fish as to promote a potential parasite lifecycle as I add frags to it. There are 2 snails in there but they don't do much, lol.
The DT is OK. The zoas look as good as they ever have now. Always open and more fluffy looking than they used to. The acro frag from BC is looking great. Basing out over the super glue i put all over the incoming exposed plug. The BC anacropora kinda went downhill a bit. It stopped showing polyps within a couple of days. I feel maybe its losing a bit of color but not sure. I went ahead and moved it to the sand bed for now, thinking maybe it was getting too much light? Idk. And the purple stylo looks pretty good. The polyps at the top are plump and showing but the thick stalk attached to the plug isn't showing as pronounced polyp extension. Not sure if its a light thing or what. But I am mostly happy about the acro growth. That's pretty much all I really care about at this point anyways, lol.
As one update, I decided to try and tune my system to be a bit more in-line with BRS recommendations. I slowly increased my ALK from ~8dKH to 9dKH over a week or so. Just got it there today. Also, in response to starting to wonder if my lack of coralline maybe too much light along with some frags seemingly to tend to pale out a bit more, I got out my Seneye again and pulled back on the LED's a bit. Now the highest PAR in the tank is ~350 with most of the rock being in the BRS recommended 200-350 range. For reference, I did take some measurements and mark them on a picture of the tank. I'll upload that when I get on my desktop PC. I cut back mostly on the whites as I see the best polyp extension it seems in the AM (common I believe after night time) and also at "dusk" on my schedule when the whites are out for a few hours. My fixture is pretty high off the water but my LED's were at 95%/20% for blues/whites. They're now at 75%/10%. Much more blue look. I miss the daylight feel a bit but at this point, I'm doing everything in the name of growth, responding to what it seems the frags are favoring.
Thanks for asking and keeping up though! I am still hopeful. I think I am going to buy a regular battlebox and get a pack of only acropora and millepora. I appreciate why Adam sent the various types of SPS but not only am I finding the acros seem to do best compare to others, I mainly want those anyhow.
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