Waterbox 130.4 SPS Dominant Build

MAB Reef · May 24, 2023

Excited to report the halichoeres iridis finally came out of the acclimation box! I thought I messed up because I scared her by using a turkey baster to shoot food her way while she was swimming in the box. It prompted her to go back in the sand. I found her come out after maybe 30 minutes and this time finally made her way out of the acclimation box. She even found the bipartitus and copied her eating all the pods she was finding in the sand and rocks. I carefully fed the tank a mix of flakes and brine shrimp and she actually ate both!

Gumbies R Us · May 25, 2023

MAB Reef said:
Excited to report the halichoeres iridis finally came out of the acclimation box! I thought I messed up because I scared her by using a turkey baster to shoot food her way while she was swimming in the box. It prompted her to go back in the sand. I found her come out after maybe 30 minutes and this time finally made her way out of the acclimation box. She even found the bipartitus and copied her eating all the pods she was finding in the sand and rocks. I carefully fed the tank a mix of flakes and brine shrimp and she actually ate both!

Nice looking fish!

MAB Reef · May 30, 2023

Unfortunately I somehow ended up getting dinoflaggelates. I posted this May 25, 2023:

I need help figuring out what to do here. I have this tenuis that's been growing this film/string substance. I'm able to blow some of it off everyday but it quickly grows back overnight. This has started probably for the past 5-6 days and only on this one acro. I haven't noticed anything on the sand or rocks similar to this. I haven't seen this on any other coral in the tank.

Some things I've started in the last few weeks:

Around May 5th - Installed a used UV Filter: I'm afraid I may have made a mistake with this not cleaning it inside before starting it up. Not sure if there was some bad bacteria growing in this while it was sitting.
May 11 - Setup new light bars to supplement my lights. I have it hung high and been slowly acclimating the tank to the new lights since then
May 18 - Added 2 new wrasse into an acclimation box with a few handfuls of new special grade caribsea live sand inside
May 21 - Started dosing phytofeast (I've stopped this as 2 days ago)

My parameters:

Alk: 8.59
Ca: 425
Mg: 1430
P04: .05
N03: 11.5

I was able to get a microscope 2 days later and confirmed it is dinos. I also got help identifying it to be ostreopsis.

I have 3 options after some research.

Since this particular strain goes into the water column when lights are out they can be hit by UV. I have a 25 watt UV but I don't believe it is large enough to be effective for my size tank. It is suggested to have 1 watt for every 3 gallons. I estimate about 120 gallons after all the rock, sand and equipment.
There is a microbubbling technique along with creating a bacteria bloom to outcompete the dinos. There seemed to be positive results with this but there are a lot of steps.
DinoX

I was just about to start option 2 but read some good testimonials about Jebao UV sterilizers and getting good results with 1-3 days. Ultimately, I liked the simplicity of using a UV sterilizer method more so I ordered a 55watt sterilizer that should be here tomorrow. I have all the ingredients for option 2 if the UV sterilizer doesn't work.

The dinos are multiplying and getting worse but not so fast that I'm losing anything. I'm noticing that my filter floss is clogging much faster so I'm changing that more often. I've also read that ostreopsis is the most toxic so I will need to change my activated carbon more frequently, possibly every 3-4 days.

Unfortunately I did lose the very tip of my SC Orange Passion so I cut it off to try and save the rest. The rest of the tank is not looking great but is surviving. I'm running the 25 watt UV sterilizer in the mean time while cutting down on the lights to slow down dino growth until I get the bigger sterilizer tomorrow. I've also dosed phyto and pods. Lastly, I'm broadcasting dosing hydrogen peroxide after lights out.

MAB Reef · Jun 2, 2023

Installed the Jebao 55w UV yesterday so we'll see this goes.

I found out this morning that I made a big mistake. I usually have it go on from 5am-7am. Since I read that water changes were bad for dinos I've stopped it, or so I thought. I heard it running this morning and found that after I had reprogrammed the time for the AWCs it got rid of my programming and my switch didn't turn it off. I've been feeding the dinos this whole time I've been trying to fight it.

Anyways, I'll vacuum the tank of as much of the dinos I can into a filter sock to help speed up the process.

MAB Reef · Jun 3, 2023

June 3rd update:

Woke up today after a full night of UV without any water changes. It looks like I'm finally making some progress with the dinos. Yesterday I cleaned the back wall and side glass finally thinking if there's anything on there it would get sucked up by the UV. Also took a baster and blew off all the rocks and coral if there was anything. Lastly, I siphoned anything I could see into a filter sock. From what I could tell, I don't see any more new stringy slime growing. Previously, this stuff would grow back after only a few hours of blowing them off. UV works at least for ostreopsis!

Below is a picture of the SC OP. There is a little die off at the rear tip though that I may have to cut off. It has dinos that I can't see to blow off.

The bad news... I have no idea what caused it but I seemed to have had a big alk drop. I wasn't sure if it was testing error because I had to refill my trident testing reagent. Whatever the case is, I started getting STN/RTN on my acros. Really frustrating...

Never seen STN happen in the middle of a coral but you can see spots on this one

Difficult to see but the base of this one is peeling. If it gets worse I may try to cut the rest of it off to save what I can.

Couldn't get a really good pic of this colony but this was the worst. I ended up chopping this up to try and save what I could.

Today is definitely one of those days where I completely understand why people quit.

MAB Reef · Jun 7, 2023

Dinos update as of June 7, 2023:

Sunburst plating monti: decided this wasn't worth saving because I could see the dinos were hanging on to this no matter what.

My other WWC grafted monti had some on it as well. With this piece I considered cutting off the pieces that visually had some on it but decided to try and brush it off instead. So far it looks better but we'll wait and see

My Walt Disney has bleached and may have RTN'd. It's hard to tell but I'll give it some time to see if it started growing algae on it. I think I'm giving up on Walt Disney at least for the near future. I haven't been able to get good results with this.

I've changed my UV from 24 hours to only during lights out. I've also extended my lighting today to my regular time from 8:00AM to about 9:30. I'll slowly start including my light bars back in.

My coral colors are looking horrible right now. I'm afraid because I've stopped water changes to avoid feeding the dinos that I've also not been able to feed trace elements to the coral. I'm going to start water changes again starting out with 2 gallons per day on the auto water change schedule. I'm still dosing phyto to help the pod population. I've also ordered Dr. Tim's eco balance to try and fill the gap and out compete the dinos. I can see little bits still hanging on to the tips of some acros which is annoying. Not sure why they like to hang on to the tips but it does make it easier to cut off if it gets worse.

Lastly, I've ordered an ICP test so I'll get that done to see what has been stripped out of the tank with everything that's been going on.

I have a feeling this might be an up and down experience but we'll see.

MAB Reef · Jun 9, 2023

2 Steps forward, 1 step back...

It didn't look like new growth was coming so I started water changes again. I was premature with that so I'll have to stop water changes and run UV more. I know it'll take time for the other bacteria to outcompete the dinos so I'm trying to be patient. I dosed half dose of Dr. Tim's Eco Balance. I'll give it a couple days before I dose Dr. Tim's Waste Away as well to add to the good bacteria to take up space. I also read somewhere here that I shouldn't clean the glass so I'll stop that.

I really don't get why they go for tips of acros but you can see the brown layer on the tips of this frag.

I'm also noticing my alkalinity uptake has gone way down so the tank is definitely not happy yet. I've been having to turn down my calcium reactor a lot just to make sure I don't get too high on the alkalinity.

My readings for nutrients currently are at a good spot I think:

Phosphates: .04
Nitrates: 9.4

I checked the microscope and did find ostreopsis still but it was a lot more difficult to find them than before. Progress!

Outside of the dinos, I did upgrade my skimmer to a Reef Octopus Regal 150 Int. I LOVE this thing. Compared to my Reef Octopus Classic 150sss, this this is sooooo silent. It also allows me to connect to the skimmate locker that I got as a freebie locally. Worth it!