Zoey's Reef is Growing Up . . .

[Maritimer]

Thanks, Daniel!

This is a good place to be - and the best place to gather information in an effort to solve aquaristic issues.

Speaking of which, and for the benefit of any future readers ... My "Instant Ocean" swing-arm hydrometer (I know - swing-arm hydrometers - but there are times that I just don't want to go through the rigamarole of pulling out the refractometer to get a ballpark on salinity, and this one had always been pretty accurate...) got so busted up that I decided to replace it. The most-local shop (Petco) was out of the Instant Ocean version, so I grabbed a "Fluval Sea" swing-arm off the peg.

Don't do what I did. Just ... don't.

The Fluval Sea swing-arm hydrometer has two readings. In fresh water, the needle rests on the bottom of the hydrometer. If there's any salt at all in the water, the needle will rise to the surface of the water within the unit. It's about as useful as throwing a rock at a chart. This model has a suction cup to attach it to the front glass of the aquarium, which puzzles me for two reasons. 1 - Why would I want to look at my tank through a permanently mounted hydrometer? and 2 - Algae.

~Bruce

 

[Bleigh]

Thanks, Daniel!

This is a good place to be - and the best place to gather information in an effort to solve aquaristic issues.

Speaking of which, and for the benefit of any future readers ... My "Instant Ocean" swing-arm hydrometer (I know - swing-arm hydrometers - but there are times that I just don't want to go through the rigamarole of pulling out the refractometer to get a ballpark on salinity, and this one had always been pretty accurate...) got so busted up that I decided to replace it. The most-local shop (Petco) was out of the Instant Ocean version, so I grabbed a "Fluval Sea" swing-arm off the peg.

Don't do what I did. Just ... don't.

The Fluval Sea swing-arm hydrometer has two readings. In fresh water, the needle rests on the bottom of the hydrometer. If there's any salt at all in the water, the needle will rise to the surface of the water within the unit. It's about as useful as throwing a rock at a chart. This model has a suction cup to attach it to the front glass of the aquarium, which puzzles me for two reasons. 1 - Why would I want to look at my tank through a permanently mounted hydrometer? and 2 - Algae.

~Bruce

Lol.... features sale?

I suspect a new aquarist doesn't think about the fact that algae will grow on it AND on the arm, causing it to be highly inaccurate. It's more the idea of having a cheap constant reading of salinity, the poor man's version of the APEX probes, which still can grow things on them as well. lol

 

[Maritimer]

Well ... adding a couple of Acanthurus tangs has confirmed something that I previously suspected - that I've been running an ich management system. Fortunately, I've got a 75 gallon set up, established bacteria and all, for QT, and can transfer all of the fish to it. (Need to find my bag of extra sand for the wrasses and bella goby...) I've got one and a half bottles of Copper Power, and pretty much going to have to go 30 days in that - have I mentioned that I really hate protozoan diseases?

Will have to remove all of the liverock - at least the stacked liverock - and the corals from the display, catch up probably three dozen plus fish out of the 225, transfer the fish, temperature acclimate, confirm that I've got _everybody_, and re-scape the rock and corals.

Today's going to be fun.

~Bruce

Edit: After some consideration, possibly ich, rather than velvet - still mightily annoyed. Still have to locate at least one fish ... it's bright red, but it's a half-inch long Trimma goby. In a 225 that's currently very cloudy.

 

[Maritimer]

All the fish are in QT - save one. After taking all of the rock out, netting out all the fish, replacing and re-positioning the rocks, the smallest fish in the tank made an appearance . . . a Trimma goby just over a half-inch long. <sigh> There's a baited bottle-trap in the area where the little bugger hangs out.

With all the fish out of the tank, nitrates are beginning to drop, and algae is making its presence known. What to do, what to do . . . ReefCleaners! My first-ever ReefCleaners order just showed up in the mail, and they're acclimating now. Other than one red Mithrax crab who's looking a bit shaky, every little bag out of a couple-hundred-dollar order looks great. Each of ten trochus, along with several other species, were packaged in their own bag - I'm impressed!

The other day, one half of the blues in my older MarsAqua 300 light went dark. Having seen BRS' Black-Box-Battle video, I decided it would better be replaced with a ViparSpectra than with another MarsAqua - and given the difference in LED components between the two MarsAqua units I have (less diversity in the blue LEDs in the newer unit), it wouldn't be a terrible idea to replace both MarsAquas with ViparSpectras at the same time. They're on the way.

Never rains but it pours, eh? And just for fun, the ragged remnants of Hurricane Zeta are dragging themselves through the region like a shambling zombie. Woohoo.

~Bruce

 

[Maritimer]

Cleanup crew from ReefCleaners is in the tank and busily cleaning up. Some creatures (a red mithrax, some Trochus and Astrea snails) sadly didn't make the journey, but ReefCleaners was quick to refund those animals. If and when I order from them again, I will probably make room in my budget for faster shipping, rather than free shipping.

The Viparspectra lights arrived on the day before the 2020 election, and are above the tank - reading around, it seemed that most folks were using the white channel at 50% of their blue channel or less, so I've set mine at 60% blue / 30% white to begin - and I don't hate it. I've gotta say, I sure do love the ability to free up so much space on my power-bars - from two plugs and two timers on each side to one plug / no timers required. Could wish that the cords supplied were longer, but have been given direction on where to find longer cords - I'm told they're the same as basic computer power-cords, so will have a peek at electronics shops. Corals are looking pretty sharp, and mushrooms are expanding to much larger sizes than previous - this may have something to do with slowly falling nitrates as much as, if not more than, lighting. (A shiny new API Nitrate kit shows the nitrates have fallen from off-the-charts to around 80ppm, administering 4ml of vodka twice daily, and with several 20% + water changes and all fish in QT.) Photos of the tank under blues and blues+whites:

The inverts in general have been fascinating to watch, crabs shrimp and snails out and exploring, anemones and corals unfurling. Along with the inverts, several plants have come out of hiding - what appears to be lyngbya, feather caulerpa, bubble algae, red fuzzy algae, Ulva, and even a bit of Bryopsis. (Okay ... I'll admit ... I dropped the coral skeleton with the Bryopsis into hot tap water several times over a few days, then dried it out pretty thoroughly ... I've had a run with that stuff, and don't really desire another, thanks.) The ugly brown majano anemones are continuing their bid for world domination, so I took the risky step of adding a couple of fish to QT that might help slow their march - and at the same time, might have an adverse effect on my few and tiny corals; a Klein's butterflyfish and a bicolor angel. Coming from one of the local Petcos ... they needed a full QT anyway. So far - knock wood - every fish that was alive when I took them out of the display back on the 19th is still alive today.Photos of my "rose / rainbow" BTA under a MarsAqua (first photo) with the blue channel non-functional, and under the new ViparSpectra. This 'nem seems to fold itself up every evening before the white channel goes off, and has bleached - only in one patch - since coming to live here. You can see that bleached patch in the lower left quarter of the 'nem, although my poor phone camera doesn't really capture any of its colors well.

~Bruce

 

[Maritimer]

The 'nem still looks bleached over part of its body, but it inflates every day and deflates every evening, and appears to be just as happy as it can be.
Nitrates / phosphates have dropped significantly, and mushrooms, blastos, and one out of two candy-canes were doing very well indeed, so when the LFS hosted a sale event several weeks back, I decided I'd give some hardier SPS a try again. Milka stylo is actively growing, Green Goblin is ... chuggin' along, but the red Monti digitata lost most of its polyps fairly quickly.

Videos: Talbott's Damsels spawning, sunshine and glitter lines on Milka stylo...





And then this happened this evening . . .



The clownfish have been in the tank a couple of years, the 'nem for several months, and all of a sudden . . .

~Bruce

 

[jsker]

Looking good!!

 

[Maritimer]

Thanks!

Feels like it's coming around ... though perhaps more slowly than a ship in the Suez Canal . . .

~B.

 

[Maritimer]

Just a quickie ... Zoey & Kingston's Reef still exists, but has had more problems than successes of late.

Lost a lot of corals when I had to catch out all the fish again - and a lot of fish during quarantine, more by attrition after they were returned to the tank - most recently, the starry blenny, who just became wafer-thin and faded away.

I'm not gone though - wish me luck getting the reef back under control!

 

[Maritimer]

Changing filter socks just now, and wiped some salt creep from the top of a pipe under the tank.

Why is this pipe _rotating_ ... this pipe is not supposed to _rotate_ . . .

Yeah. After something like seven years (Seven years?!!), the PVC glue has come loose, and the thing's leaking. No, of _course_ it's not leaking over the sump! It's leaking near some electrical outlets!

Water is dripping from the larger valve in the photo below:

Return is shut off, and there's tupperware under the leak. Will have to score some cleaner, purple primer and cement - gotta figure a way to get it dry enough to glue.

Wish me luck.

~B.

 

[Maritimer]

Once again unto the breach . . .

The last time I went fallow (which is, like three times now?!), as with the time before, I never was able to catch up the Trimma goby. As a result, I still see the occasional dot of Cryptocaryon. Thinking back, I've saved a lot of fish with QT - but I've lost a lot, too. Parrotfish, regal angelfish, copperbands, flame angelfish - fish that ought to have made it, and might have, in a less "sterile" environment.

Cleaned out the skimmer, she's running like a top. Dropped the Gyre pumps into a vinegar solution to clean them as well, as one of them was barely turning ... and now I see why. After seven or eight years, it's just . . . toast. Burnt, blackened, carbonized toast. I'm sure the rust wasn't helping my system . . . So...

I've just installed a 40-watt Aqua-UV unit (because I somehow never noticed the 54-watt units right next to it on the BRS page ... what's up with that?) and a pair of the new Maxspect Cloud Edition Gyre pumps, which I'm working on tuning for maximum multidirectional water movement. (As with the old Gyres, the manual offers safety information in a _lot_ of languages, but very little information on how to actually run the powerheads - and there isn't a handy instructional video up on YouTube yet.) One of the two was pretty whiny on a forward-reverse setting, but tonight I've got them on forward-pulses, and they're not too obtrusive.

The UV unit doesn't come with any actual mounting hardware, so it's between the tank and the ATO reservoir. It's a vinyl-hose version, not PVC hard-plumbed, so it's wobbly enough to make me a bit nervous, though should be stable between reservoir and stand.

I'm kind of at a point where I really ought to be doing this _right_ ... or putting it into my rearview mirror.

~B.

 

[Maritimer]

It's been . . . an ugly summer.

There are times I've been too busy, there are times I've been unwell, but Kingston & Zoey's Reef doesn't look as pretty today as it does in the video immediately above. I know the temperature must've gone too high at some point over the summer; the LTA, which had done well for over a year, bleached and has been shrinking. (The circuit it's on can't take a chiller, so that solution's not going to work.) So have the mushrooms, and there aren't as many as there were at the beginning of the year.

I've never experienced this with a freshwater tank - this "reef" has broken my heart repeatedly. The fish all seem healthy and hearty, but I can't seem to manage even the most basic corals.

Think I'm going to order one of those fancy tests, and try to figure out what I can do about this near-tragedy.

I could probably afford to rebuild much of the infrastructure, but . . . I think I may be losing the edge that it takes to keep something like this up.

~Bruce

 

[drawman]

Sorry to hear it Bruce! Hopefully life levels out and the tank can rebound for you!

 

[RJT]

I had a high temperature issue this summer as well. I used multiple fans but that didn't work. Had to get a portable AC for about $300 and got an electrician to install a dedicated outlet for it. It is a nice system, it dehumidifies and heats too.