Its about time for a little update. Since July on the 220 ive on and off been battling each problem that arises as it goes through its ugly stages on its way to stability. Algae blooms have been expected a bit of a fun time working through. A few lessons taken away from the algae blooms. Algae clean out by Fritz will get you past an algae bloom but will brown out your SPS heavily and some LPS like acans will begin to do very poorly. Ive used this product in the past but back when I was just starting out with success but had way less coral. Algae Clean out I would suggest use if you do not have coral yet and you are just looking to get through a bloom in the early stages of your tank. Matrix carbon I have found works much better than normal carbon in helping clean up the water in this whole process and improving clarity. It is more porous than your normal carbon to my understanding. Algae blooms in the water column I have found the best way to clean it up has been UltraLife Liquid Phosphate remover in use with Seachem Clarity used in conjunction with a layer of filter floss above my filter socks. Filter floss definitely helps pull out a ton of the small stuff that has been coagulated and passes through the sump which the filter socks would normally miss due to size and some spaces water can get through since its a custom build. After a quick hair algae bloom that sprung up, I overcame it with some Bluelife Flux RX and improving the numbers of my CUC over time. Also dinos were a hugeeee pain in the butt. Best solution I found, rotifers. Bomb your tank with rotifers and they will take care of dinos. Fritz also helps clear out dinos, but again you may brown out sps and hurt acans with fritz. I have a culture of rotifers that I keep on standby and use to help feed corals and get rid of dino blooms when I see them pop up. Oh and red slime remover for red slime =)
All of this was daunting in comparison to my worst nightmare that came true. AEFW. Dun dun dunnnnnn! But in all honesty i was devistated when i first discovered aefw back on September 11th. With the lights out in the tank that morning, as I was mulling around the kitchen I glanced into the tank to do some of my daily inspection on things. AKA i just like drooling over my tank. But as I looked at my tricolored valida I noticed some tiny white spots. As I inspected more with a flashlight i found more spots. I already had an idea what I was looking at. I began looking around the tank at other sps and As I began to look closer i noticed a small smudge on the skin of one of my BattleCorals frags with the skin looking quite poorly around it. Immediately I pulled and dipped the frag to find a nice 7mm long AEFW fall off after about 30 seconds. My heart sank. Immediately I began inspecting all my sps with a flashlight and pulling anything I thought could be infected. The tricolored valida was immediately dipped, scraped for eggs, and re dipped again as well as a nice chunky shortcake frag. The shortcake frag I found too many eggs to scrape so i chopped up and dipped what I could and threw away the rest.
At this point I began looking for a solution. As a short term immediate action I pulled any and all infected corals i found. Inspected, scraped, and dipped what I did think was infected. For a long term solution I had to research much more. Pulling all the sps from the tank was not really an option for me. I felt like I would risk stressing the corals way too much with a dipping regiment. After pouring through research on here, I Finally settled on a treatment of KZ Flatworm stop used at a double dose paired with a regiment of basting the sps. From my understanding the KZ flatworm stop cause SPS to slime more than normal. This makes the SPS yuck to the AEFW and has an effect in breaking up the lifecycle of AEFW. The basting helps blow any AEFW off the coral into the water column to be easy picking for wrasses, anthias, damsels, and other fish in your tank. I also put in a 6 line and green corris wrasse to help out my female leppard wrasse as well as a springeri damsel to help patrol the coral and pick off what they find. The only downside to this treatment is its kinda expensive. BUT I will say, I just finished my treatment to account for the entire lifecycle and then some for good measure of AEFW which is 42 days and I have not seen any signs of AEFW in over a month! Any and all bite marks I saw are now healed, sps polyp extension has been increasing and color has come back! I will keep you posted as time goes on but as of now I have seen success after following this method put out by others of reef2reef that have had success in the same way. I have slowly brought down my dosing of KZ flatworm stop to a normal level and will continue to use it till the end of the bottle. The only thig I can say negative about the flatworm stop is that if you do not shake the bottle up before dosing, it will have an effect on some of your sps causing stn. Did this for a few weeks before realizing, starting shaking the bottle before dosing and saw no more issues.
All of this was daunting in comparison to my worst nightmare that came true. AEFW. Dun dun dunnnnnn! But in all honesty i was devistated when i first discovered aefw back on September 11th. With the lights out in the tank that morning, as I was mulling around the kitchen I glanced into the tank to do some of my daily inspection on things. AKA i just like drooling over my tank. But as I looked at my tricolored valida I noticed some tiny white spots. As I inspected more with a flashlight i found more spots. I already had an idea what I was looking at. I began looking around the tank at other sps and As I began to look closer i noticed a small smudge on the skin of one of my BattleCorals frags with the skin looking quite poorly around it. Immediately I pulled and dipped the frag to find a nice 7mm long AEFW fall off after about 30 seconds. My heart sank. Immediately I began inspecting all my sps with a flashlight and pulling anything I thought could be infected. The tricolored valida was immediately dipped, scraped for eggs, and re dipped again as well as a nice chunky shortcake frag. The shortcake frag I found too many eggs to scrape so i chopped up and dipped what I could and threw away the rest.
At this point I began looking for a solution. As a short term immediate action I pulled any and all infected corals i found. Inspected, scraped, and dipped what I did think was infected. For a long term solution I had to research much more. Pulling all the sps from the tank was not really an option for me. I felt like I would risk stressing the corals way too much with a dipping regiment. After pouring through research on here, I Finally settled on a treatment of KZ Flatworm stop used at a double dose paired with a regiment of basting the sps. From my understanding the KZ flatworm stop cause SPS to slime more than normal. This makes the SPS yuck to the AEFW and has an effect in breaking up the lifecycle of AEFW. The basting helps blow any AEFW off the coral into the water column to be easy picking for wrasses, anthias, damsels, and other fish in your tank. I also put in a 6 line and green corris wrasse to help out my female leppard wrasse as well as a springeri damsel to help patrol the coral and pick off what they find. The only downside to this treatment is its kinda expensive. BUT I will say, I just finished my treatment to account for the entire lifecycle and then some for good measure of AEFW which is 42 days and I have not seen any signs of AEFW in over a month! Any and all bite marks I saw are now healed, sps polyp extension has been increasing and color has come back! I will keep you posted as time goes on but as of now I have seen success after following this method put out by others of reef2reef that have had success in the same way. I have slowly brought down my dosing of KZ flatworm stop to a normal level and will continue to use it till the end of the bottle. The only thig I can say negative about the flatworm stop is that if you do not shake the bottle up before dosing, it will have an effect on some of your sps causing stn. Did this for a few weeks before realizing, starting shaking the bottle before dosing and saw no more issues.
