Will's JBJ 28 Nano Cube Reboot

[Emptyness]

This article by Randy Holmes-Farley contains great amount of information about pH and possible solutions to low pH:
http://www.reefedition.com/ph-and-the-reef-aquarium/ - give it a try if you didn't already :)

Maybe the blenny is nipping some algae, growing on the skeleton of your chalice and monti?

GL and keep us updated :)

 

[jwwoodjr]

I'm going to start taking monthly pictures to document changes and post them here for history. I started playing with Photoshop Express on my phone. Hopefully I'm going to get time to start playing with our DSLR and maybe get some better pictures.

 

[jwwoodjr]

I came home the other day and one of my favias looked like it was dead. It was a green and red no name piece that I got for $10 but it's still disappointing. There was another favia close to it that had all of it's tentacles out so I'm assuming there was a fight. Everything else is still fine so I'm chalking this loss up to coral warfare. I've still got the one that was stung in the tank because the mouths still have color but I don't have much faith in it recovering. I'll take this as a pretty inexpensive life lesson. A picture of the champion is below.

In better news my chalice that lost a fight with some zoas seems to be recovering nicely. A week or two ago I could see skeleton but now it seems to be growing new flesh and coloring up. My hammer is putting on a new head and my zoas seem to be putting on babies every few days. I'm not sure what the cause is, may just be time, but I'm happy with it.

 

[jwwoodjr]

Everything continues to be going well. Growth is still slow or nonexistent except on the zoas. I've picked up two different rhodactis the last few weeks. They're nothing fancy but seem to be doing well. I also picked up a cyphastrea last weekend and it has good polyp extension. It's not in it's final home yet but it seems happy. My chalice that decided to fight a zoa has fully regrown all of the flesh it lost. It appears to be trying to grow onto the rockwork in one location but I'm not sure yet. I added a Superman Monti a while back and it does not have what I would consider good polyp extension. It's alive but not thriving in a way I would like.

I changed out my old Jaebo RW-4 for a AI Nero 3. I wanted it because it was smaller and had more controllability. I'm also wanting to rent a PAR meter from BRS and get my lights dialed in. I have no idea what my PAR levels are and that bothers me.

 

[jwwoodjr]

Nothing has really changed since my last post. I've added some new corals and they're hanging on and see to be alright. I've noticed some algae growing on the rocks and have ordered an official cleanup crew from Reef Cleaners. Up until this point my clean up crew has been nothing more than a few snails and hermits purchased from the LFS. It's not growing too fast and I'm not even sure what kind of algae it is but hopefully a full attack with snails and crabs will take care of it.

I rented the BRS PAR meter and decided to up my light output. I was maxing out at 70% but based on the reading I got I'm going to up them to 85% over time. I'll be increasing it 5% every 4 weeks to ensure the corals stay happy and the algae doesn't go crazy.

 

[jwwoodjr]

After not posting for a while I figured I should update my thread. I essentially put the tank on cruise control starting at the end of January. I almost went too far because I was skipping water changes but I think things were better when I wasn’t tinkering.
Everything seems to be growing with a few exceptions. My tank will not support acans and favia. I add one and it melts. I had a favia die, or so I thought, that appears to be coming back. my chalice died back for an unknown reason but after a week it started coming back and is almost healed. I ran a Triton test hoping that would tell me what’s wrong but it didn’t show anything major. I’ve linked to it below.
Going forward I want to add fill in the right side with something but haven’t decided on what. I’m also switching from Reef Crystals to regular IO. It’s a little cheaper and I don’t need to elevated levels. The cost difference isn’t as big a driving force compared to the ability to get smaller size containers off Amazon. Purchasing a 200 gallon box that, even if sealed in a bucket, will soak up humidity doesn’t make sense for my situation.


https://www.triton-lab.de/en/showroom/icp-oes/136390

 

[jwwoodjr]

After several weeks of denial I decided my bicolor blenny was nipping my corals. I set up a qt tank and moved him out. After about three days my corals have are coming back and have better polyp extension. The blenny has been moved into a Waterbox Cube 20 we recently bought to be an anenome tank. I’m going to give everything time to heal and then post some more pictures.

 

[jwwoodjr]

Everything is healing up and seems to be doing well. I lost my diamond goby and I’m sad to say he starved to death. I could spot feed him but he would take a piece of food and not come back for more. To replace my bicolor blenny I picked up a tailspot blenny. I’m upgrading my light to an AI Prime 16HD that I purchased off here in the next few months. Other than that I’ll just letting things cruise.

 

[jwwoodjr]

I got my new light put on last week. It would’ve been on sooner but I had to wait on my lid from Kraken Reef to arrive. My montipora seemed less than happy with the change so I got worried. Luckily it was my turn with the club par meter so I was able to rule out excessive amounts of light. It may also be that I ran some gfo and dropped my phosphates from 0.1 ppm to 0.03 ppm. I dropped the phosphates down across a month and didn’t see any problems until I changed the light. Since everything is starting to perk back up I’m going to assume it was a combination of the both changes.

I sent off my second triton test Monday and got the results back this morning. The only parameter that stood out was zinc. When I pulled the samples Monday I found a small screw in the sand bed that wasn’t there Sunday night when I did the water change. It had not started to rust so I don’t think it has been in long. How it got there or what it was from is a mystery. I’ll do my normal weekly 5 gallon water changes and hopefully that takes care of it. The link to the results are below if anybody is curious and for my future reference.

https://www.triton-lab.de/en/showroom/icp-oes/117611
I need to take some pictures and scrape the coralline off the acrylic. I will never have another acrylic tank, especially with rounded corners, again.

 

[jwwoodjr]

I came home today and found my cleaner shrimp acting like he was struggling to swim. Thirty minutes later he was being consumed by my emerald crab. I haven’t had to do any water tests but I’ll be checking parameters tonight. I just checked parameters Sunday so I don’t expect but we’ll see. If anyone has suggestions on what to look for I’m open to ideas.

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

Sorry about the cleaner. How long had you had him?

 

[jwwoodjr]

Sorry about the cleaner. How long had you had him?

Thanks. I had him eight months. All my parameters that I can test are stable so I’m writing it off to bad luck. If nothing else dies in the next few months I’ll try again after my next icp test.

 

[jwwoodjr]

Time for more bad cellphone pictures. I’ve got to figure out the glare but never think about it until I’m ready to post the picture.
Nothing much has changed other than I’ve added some new SPS. I don’t know what’s going on with my zoas but they’re losing color. Nutrients aren’t zero and aren’t sky high so I don’t know. If they melt I’ll be disappointed but try something different. Right now they’re fine but just not what they should be.

 

[jwwoodjr]

Earlier this month I cut back water changes to 5 gallons every week to every other week and started dosing with All-For-Reef. The water changes alone were not keeping alkalinity above an 8.0. I'm having trouble dialing in the dose but I'm getting there. The other thing I did was standardize when to add Brightwell CoralAmino. Instead of adding it anywhere for zero to three times a week I know add 10 drop every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. I don't know if it's helping but my nutrients are stable and consistency seems like a good thing. Things seem to be growing so hopefully things stay stable. The pictures below are from the first of this month but I'm just now getting around to posting them.

 

[jwwoodjr]

After failing to post for almost 6 months it’s time for an update. Things are going well but the days for this tank are numbered. I’ll be upgrading to a 150 gallon 6 ft tank soon. It’s an up and running system and being picked up tomorrow. I’ll be tearing it down and starting from scratch.

 

[jwwoodjr]

Last weekend I moved everything into my new 150. After almost two years and learning a lot the JBJ is back in storage. I’ll be starting a new build thread for the 150 when I get time.