Jimbo's CDA 250 Build

[Jimbo327]

Check out all of the small/baby Trochus snails I have just on my front glass. I started out with 15 adults. Luckily, the yellow wrasse doesn’t seem to go after them because they have pretty strong grip/suction.

 

[Jimbo327]

I made some DIY coral snow with cheap calcium carbonate based on this thread:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/diy-kz-coral-snow-with-97-purity.211722/

I turned off the skimmer and return pumps. And I scrubbed the rocks and powerhead, and dosed DIY coral snow into the tank. Whoa, it got cloudy real quick.

All of the fish went into hiding, and I’m going to let it settle for a couple hours before turning everything back on. I’m trying to encourage more coralline spread…basically a Purple-Up substitute.

 

[JoJosReef]

That's some serious CUC!

 

[Jimbo327]

LOL. Yeah, there isn't a single strand of hair algae or spot of turf algae in my tank. The only algae I have is bubble algae, and I'm going to add a few pitho crabs when I find some at the LFS. The downside is there is nothing for my tangs to graze on. So I feed 1-2 sheets of nori per day.

My CUC game is strong. My coral growing game, not so much.

If you want some baby trochus snails, I can definitely hook you up. But your wrasses may make a quick snack of them though.

 

[JoJosReef]

They haven't been successful with Astraeas and trochus so far, knock on wood. I think the trochus are too strong. Ceriths are toast as soon as they go anywhere that they can be knocked around, like the glass, and only the biggest nerites are able to avoid get knocked off and killed

My pitho crab has eradicated most of the bubble algae and what's still there is simply in places he can't reach. I sometimes grab a bubble algae covered snail and place it right in front of him. Afterwards, clean shell.

 

[Jimbo327]

Went to LFS for some salt, and I didn’t realize how expensive salt has become. $95 for a bucket of Nyos salt. Enough to only make 135 gallons. Crazy.

 

[Jimbo327]

Since it’s time to dump the full skimmate locker and clean the cup. Took the opportunity to make some more modifications to my skimmer.

I added a port on the top of my skimmer lid. This will allow me to drip LC directly into the skimmer (if I need to lower phosphates in the future). The Home Depot bucket lids are my previous mod to hold a bag of carbon and keep the smell/ozone down.




Skimmer cup drains out the skimmate to the DIY skimmate locker (empty 5gal salt bucket) outside. (Yellow frog tape container holds the carbon)

 

[Jimbo327]

I've been having random STN/RTN and bleaching on my SPS frags, and none of my corals have been growing well. My green slimer has basically just been sitting there, and this is one of the easier SPS to grow. Even 1 of my zoas closed up, and that's when I really started thinking there is something wrong with my tank. The ICP looks fine without any crazy high metals or contaminants. My big parameters (Alk, Ca, Mag, Nitrate, Phosphates) all checked within range and verified on my Hanna/Salifert tests.

Without any obvious issues, I've been doing water changes in the past week to possibly reduce any contaminants. I've also been tweaking my lights since I thought why would the corals bleach. Basically, I've been pulling my hair out and chasing my own tail.

Nothing really worked. So I've just chalked it up to being a newer 6 months old reef, and the system was too immature to be adding so much corals, especially SPS. But the zoas closing really bothered me, as I've lost a few GMK zoas and now my red hornets zoas are closed up for most of the day. This is very strange as zoas should be easy and lighting shouldn't be a problem.

 

[JoJosReef]

What are parameters at right now? You've got a new tank with dry rocks (although some of them looked like real reef rocks and not man-made rocks), so corals can act a bit funny until the environment is more reef-like. When my corals start acting weird, I usually start dosing some microbial diversity in the form of Fiji Mud--may be a placebo effect, who knows. If your SPS and zoas crash, I can help you restock with some extra frags here and there.

 

[Jimbo327]

Luckily, most of my corals are hanging in there. It’s just a few that might be more delicate and need more time to adjust.

I’m going back to the old school method: More water changes, reduce light intensity, decrease nitrate/phosphates, and run carbon. That’s always worked in the past, so that’s what I’m going to rely on.

 

[JoJosReef]

Might try an ornamental macroalgae or two to help with nitrates? I've got pom pom gracilaria and codium currently. Two thumbs up on the carbon.

 

[Jimbo327]

For Nitrates, I'm actually dosing vodka into my refugium (no macroalgae yet) to control my nitrates. Works really well (Nitrates @ ~10 ppm). The bacteria does have a funky smell and looks like snot, so I may change it to macroalgae if I can't tolerate it.

For Phosphates, I'm close to 0.6 ppm phosphates as I tend to overfeed my fishes. So I definitely need to bring that down. I've mixed up a DIY Lanthanum Chloride (AR Grade) solution, and will use the DOS doser to drip directly into my skimmer body (through the tubing I added on top of the skimmer lid). I'm targeting a drop of 0.1 ppm phosphates per day.

Pro-Tip: Phosphorus is not the same as Phosphate. Conversion Table

DIY LC Solution Recipe: 37.5 grams Lanthanum Chloride Heptahydrate powder into 10L RODI. This is to drop 0.01 ppm phosphates per 10ml DIY LC solution in 250 gallon tank.