Turtle's Sushi Dream

[SashimiTurtle]

Everything had been going well for several days in the Sushi Dream. The fish were happy, the corals were happy, I was happy. Then we got it. The bacterial bloom cloud that turned the water into milk and placed a green film on the glass so thick you'd think it was painted on.

I knew it was coming. It was only a matter of time. Converting all those old, dried up rocks into once again living rock put off a bunch of nutrients and the fast growing heterotrophic bacteria and green film algae feasted on it.

The corals seemed to not be bothered, and the fish were fine but stayed out of sight mostly. I checked on ammonia and it was safely at 0ppm without use of Prime(which will actually give a false high reading)

I couldn't just wait out the bloom. That takes forever. Water changes aren't really effective on bacterial blooms and I'm close to 200 gallons of water volume... enter the UV sterilizer. I had planned on using UV on the tank for water clarity, I just hadn't hooked it up yet.

I 3D printed up some mounts(only 2 required, other 2 for a friend) to hold the body of the sterilizer on the back wall of the sump and plumbed it up to my old return pump from the Reefer 250. It's pulling water out of the skimmer chamber and placing it into the return chamber. There's no recirculation of water,(all water going in has gone thru the display first and all water exiting goes back into the display) and I checked with the return off and there is no chance of a flood either.

Within 2 days, we are back to a 90% clear aquarium with happy fish and happy coral, and even better, a happy Turtle.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Now to bring y'all up to the present...

The LFS I bought the tank from went live on Facebook Friday for their weekly update for fish and corals as well as some new dry goods they started carrying. One of the fish they had in stock was the fish I've been eyeballing for one of my showpiece size fish, and potentially the largest fish. It was the perfect size also, right at the same size as all the rest of my fish so nobody has a big size advantage until they are all friends. I shot a text as soon as the live was over and asked them to hold until Sunday.

You're all probably wishing I'd just say what it is by now. Well, it's a Zebrasoma desjardinii

While I was there, I couldn't leave without picking up this quartet of Pseudanthias squamipinnis. It's a male and three females. Getting all four in frame is tricky. Here's the male, and one of the females.

I also grabbed a small longspine urchin. I've always thought these guys looked cool.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Coral pics? Coral pics.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

My Eheim auto feeder I ordered came in today. I set it up to feed at 8am and 12 noon. It's sitting right in the flow of the return nozzle too, so the food gets swept into the flow and circulates around the aquarium.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Fish pics at the nori clip... the tangs, angel, trigger and leopard wrasse all eat from the clip.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Anubis says hello.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Having some green film build up on the glass. Nothing horrible, just enough to need to be cleaned daily tho. Decided to check on nutrients just so I have a number instead of going off how the corals look.

Looks low enough to not encourage massive agae growth to me. Seems the tank just needs to mature some more. Everything is looking good so I'll just keep on as I've been doing. Eheim feeder does pellets at 8am and noon, and I've been feeding frozen at 4 and 8pm.

Refugium is growing, some GHA on the walls and I've noticed a small size change in the chaeto as well. I cleaned the GHA up with a magic eraser and I'm most likely going to look into iron dosing to give the chaeto a leg up on the hair algae.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Sushi time!

The tank is going thru its ugly phases. Well, the sand had some diatoms growing but they are starting to die off now. Chaeto is growing well and the water is still clear. The glass keeps growing film that needs daily cleaning.

I'm still manually topping off. This tank evaporates a ton of water. I have plans to set up a mixing station in the garage, and run my ATO off of that using an Avast diaphragm pump. I'm also going to be setting up an AWC off of the mixing station using a GHL Doser Maxi I picked up that was already converted to use RO tubing.

Overall the tank and corals look great, given I've had a few salinity swings... the fish are fat and I swear the angel has grown 1/4" already. Anubis the sailfin has put on a lot of weight, I guessing from pigging out at the nori clip.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Made a trip to the LFS this weekend. I went looking for some specialized CUC for the sand bed. Particularly a sand sifting starfish. They didn't have any, but I picked up one of the newer fl!pper max that floats. My old fl!pper magnet scraper was worn out and didnt hold well on the 3/4" glass. They also had a nice looking chocolate tang I brought home.

Sadly, I lost my niger trigger. He jumped sometime on Sunday. I was in the living room with the tank all day but never saw or heard him jump. I went to the kitchen to get a drink and saw him on the floor. Still sort of damp but had passed on.

Mrs. Turtle was eager to replace him by ordering one online. I told her we would just wait until we can see one before buying.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

First new sushi roll in the Sushi Dream. I picked up this beautiful baby blue goniopora and glued it on my rock I have designated as the goni garden.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Better picture with orange filter.

 

[Sean Clark]

I had a niger trigger jump on me once. Sad, they are great fish. Nice build.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

I had a niger trigger jump on me once. Sad, they are great fish. Nice build.

Thanks for the likes and welcome to the Sushi Dream. I hope you stick around and follow along.

I really do miss him. He was probably my favorite fish. They have so much personality and he would have taken food from my hand if I would have offered. I should probably look into a screen top.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Hey, so I haven't really paid that much attention to my refugium. Kinda out of sight out of mind. Well... its working. Chaeto is growing well, it's outgrowing the dragons breath but that seems to still be healthy as well. I have a ton of sponge growth on the rocks down there as well. There's pineapple sponge, spirorbids, and another sponge I saw that grows in a mat over the rock.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Tested water parameters today. First time going thru everything. Most everything was pretty well where I expected it.

Ca 415 ppm
Alk 6.0 dKh
Mg 1130 ppm
K 360 ppm
NO₃ 0.0 ppm
PO₄ 0.07 ppm

I dosed up Alk, Mg and K. Moved alk to 6.5 dKh, confirmed by Hanna. Added enough Mg for 100 ppm, and I think 20 ppm of K.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Well, I had a very eventful weekend. The Mrs. and I successfully grafted ourselves a little Turtle frag! Little man entered the world on March 24th at 6:22pm weighing 7lbs 9oz. Don't worry, I've already got him hooked on reefing.

The tank was on its own for a few days while we were away at the hospital. The ATO and auto feeder kept everything healthy. Other than a thick film on the glass everything looked great.

A friend brought two zoa frags I gave him a few years ago and I no longer had. One Radioactive Dragon Eye and one Nirvana. They will each get a small rock in the sand to grow out. I'm not going to place any zoas on my main rockwork, at least for now, because of how quickly they can take up real estate.

Out of the four anthias I originally got, only two remain. Anthias are always a hard fish to judge how healthy they are and two of them died within days after I got them. The remaining two, are doing very well tho and one is changing to male already. I'll pick up some more females later to round out the school.

 

[fishguy242]

CONGRATS... ;Happy

 

[Fudsey]

Congrats Turtle ! ! !

 

[SashimiTurtle]

My trachy was completely deflated last night... so I decided to check nutrients.

What I thought. The GFO took my phosphate down all the way. Instead of removing the GFO, I reduced my refugium lighting from 18 hours to 6 hours. I added the gfo because nitrate was at 0 but phosphates were rising. Hopefully dropping the fuge photo period will allow both to rise naturally.

I also fed double the amount of LRS Reef and Fish Frenzy and 1tsp of Reef Roids broadcast with the return off. Still searching for a ballance of nutrients in and nutrients out, but it'll get there.

Alk was at 7.5dKh also, I dosed 50ml of alk solution which should have bumped it up to 8.0dKh. I did not get a chance to retest and verify. Hopefully this weekend I'll find the time to get my KH Director set back up. I've decided to switch up from the Tropic Marin All For Reef and go back to the ATI Essentials Pro I used with great success on a previous tank. That will allow me to adjust my Ca and Alk separately while maintaining trace elements with only 2 parts. I'll have to pick up a second GHL doser at a later date, until then I can hand dose the Ca part.

With the second doser, I'll have 3 empty heads to dose other foods or carbon. Thinking of setting up Red Sea AB+ and NoPox on two of the three heads.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Took the family for a trip to the LFS today. Little man's first trip. I was looking for another fish to add so I can increase my bioload and keep some nutrients in this tank. I was looking for a wrasse or a few more lyretail anthias females. No luck on finding a fish, but we ordered a black backed wrasse that will be in next week.

I did pick up two sand stars (that immediately started to burrow) to help me keep this truck load of sand turned over, and we got two coral frags. Nice chunky size frags too. One purple stylophora and I was told a birds of paradise seriatopora altho I think its just a green variety. I'll have to see when it grows.