Headline: "Relative noob puts big tank in office"

[Gumbies R Us]

It's been a couple of weeks since I did an update! Time flies around the holidays...

Here is a pic from late last week:

It doesn't look much different than the last one, but the tank has been through a lot in a couple of weeks. I've been posting in this thread how my nitrates have been steadily dropping since I started the tank. I had dialed back the filtration, and increased feeding by 400% but the nitrates still hit zero on 11-28-23.

I was struggling with whether or not to dose nitrates in such a young tank as the opinions vary greatly on that. Within 2 days I had a brown slime starting to cover everything so I started dosing.

I mixed up my own solution of sodium nitrate and dosed a couple ppm worth every day and got the nitrate level up to about 10 over the course of a week. The brown slime started to recede quickly once I got measurable nitrates in the system. Correlation? Causation? Who knows?

I've stopped dosing for now, but I'm anticipating that my nitrates will slowly fall again. If so I'll dose every now and then to keep them around 10ppm.

Tank looks like it is progressing nicely!

 

[rhitee93]

Hi All, time for another update.

Here is the tank this morning:

I've been running with the white lights turned way down for the last few weeks because of some sort of photosynthetic bloom. My nitrates hit zero around Thanksgiving, and that was followed quickly by what I'm concerned might be dinos, but haven't identified yet. I dosed some sodium nitrate, and scrubbed stuff for a while. The bulk of the growth seems to be gone, and it does not seem to be growing anymore, but I haven't turned the white lights backup yet.

I did get some microscope pics, but haven't identified the stuff yet. I know the little tubes with "wires" on each end are diatoms, but I don't know what the big blobs, or little circles are yet. The big blobs don't move much if at all, but the little circles jitter around quickly.

I had more back luck with fish ordered online. Again they (mostly) arrived fine, but died within a week of going into my smaller observation tank. I decided not to mess with shipping fish again for a while and make due with what I can get locally, or in a big city about 90 minutes away.

My LFS doesn't usually have much exciting. However, I walked in last week and there was a snowflake eel. I had been dreaming about one of these long before I even had water in the tank and have spent a lot of time reading up on their care. I guess it was meant to be.

It has been eating rather greedily every 2 or 3 days. I've got it in my observation tank for now where it will stay for a few more weeks.

 

[ryanrick]

Yep you definitely have dinos. My novice opinion is that it looks like osteoporosis (pointy shape) these should be easy to get under control with UV because they go into the water column at night. The r2r link below has some helpful information on identifying and treating dinos. There's also a Facebook group called 'Mack's dinoflagelate support group' that has helped me get over some promecium dinos that stay on the rocks and sandbed.

I wish that I had started with more live rock in my build. I had about 10% by mass from an established tank nearby, but that just wasn't enough to help combat all of the nasties at the microbial level. Buying another couple pounds of live rock now might help stabilize other problems (in addition to dinos) down the road.

Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

I don't know what percentage of folks had luck battling dinos with any of the methods in the old Dino thread but it's obviously a very low percentage, so I'd like refresh folks on the natural alternatives and lay out three areas of info: some of the factors that contribute to a dino outbreak...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[rhitee93]

The tank is looking pretty good today. The dino growth seems to have slowed down greatly. I bumped up the white lights 5% today. I'm planning to ease back to the levels I had to see if I can get back to some green alga growth to feed the cuc.

I am seeing pink coraline take off in a couple of different spots. It is all on plastic parts right now except for what was on the live rock when I put it in the tank.

 

[rhitee93]

Another week of reefing has gone by. The dino growth seems to have stopped. Not sure why or what that means.

Nitrates were at 10ppm today and the Phosphates were at 0.18ppm. My nitrates have been dropping 4ppm/week without any dosing. The phosphates have been hovering around the current value for quite a while. I only changed out 5 gal of water today instead of my usual 10. I may dose a couple of ppm worth of nitrate early this week just to see if that would keep the value at 10ppm. I'm not worried about the actual value, but I don't want to end up back at zero in a couple of weeks.

The snowflake eel is doing well in the observation tank. It has learned that it is feeding time when I come to the tank with a bamboo skewer, and eats readilly. I've been feeding it bits shrimp, scallop, salmon and tuna from the seafood counter.

I saw a bit of head twitching this week, and decided to start a round of PraziPro treatments. The twitching seem to have all but stopped, but that doesn't mean it was flukes or that the Prazi did anything as the behavior isn't one that the experts would normally associate with flukes, but parazi is pretty safe to use prophylactically so I'll proceed with the 2nd dose at the 8-day mark.

Here is a short clip of the little monster

 

[rhitee93]

I spent some time with a magic eraser cleaning the corners of the tank where the magnetic scrubber doesn't get. That has made things look much neater. I'm still getting some of the reddish brown algae growing in some places, but nothing on the rocks or sand. I'm assuming it is still the dinos, but I haven't looked under the microscope to confirm. There has been a significant increase in the coraline spots that are growing. These are primarily on the plastic parts where the dinos are growing. I'm hoping if I just keep things stable that the coraline will win out.

Nitrates were at 9.4ppm today and phosphates were at 0.15ppm. I decided to not do a water change this week and will see what they are at next week.

Here is this weeks fts:

 

[rhitee93]

Hi all, time for another weekly update. My nitrates dropped to 4.2ppm over the week, and phosphates measured at 0.18 today. I dosed 20ml of a 1M sodium nitrate solution today which should be about the equivalent of 3ppm of nitrates in my system.

Today's pic:

I'm getting ready to move the snowflake eel from observation into the display tank. Based on what that little monster does to the nitrates in observation, I don't think I'll need to dose again for a while

Speaking of the snowflake, I spent some time last weekend eel-proofing my DT cover. The big concern was the overflow area which is also where I have routed all the wires out of the tanks. I came up with this cover:

It fits down just inside the weir of the overflow and seals it off pretty well. I'm going to 3d print a ring to go around the emergency drain to hold a piece of 1/4" mesh over it just in case the eel does find its way into the overflow.

This allowed me to use simple rectangles for the screen covers. I'll need to redo the screens at some point. I've repaired a lot of window screens in my life, but this white stuff for aquariums is a real pain to get to lay flat when you spline it into the frame. I'll get it right eventually.

I also had to evict a couple of tank inhabitants this week in prep for the eel. I have an emerald crab that came in as part of my original CUC. It had gotten huge. The carapace is easily an inch across, and it is 3" from tip to tip when it stretches out its claws. I didn't want it to get eaten so I took advantage of a moment when it was out in the open and netted it into the sump. I did the same for a decorator crab. They will both go into a system I am building for my mother in a few weeks. Now I have to feed my sump too

Not much else to report this week...

 

[rhitee93]

Grrr...

...at least it was on a small rock that was easy to pull out of the tank. It was a rock I didn't like, so all is better in the end.

The rock was one of the "live" rocks I got from the LFS to help seed the tank.

 

[rhitee93]

Not much to report this week. Here is the tank today:

Nitrates were 9.1ppm today, and that is after dosing some last week. I'm a little surprised by this as the Snowflake Eel is now in the display tank and it was quite the nitrate generator when it was in the little observation tank. I expected to find them higher today.

Phosphates were up quite a bit today at 0.33ppm. They've been at around half that for the last several weeks. Not sure if that is eel related, or it may be because I have started feeding some Algae Max pellets to the tang and foxface the last couple of weeks. I did my customary 10gal water change today. We'll see where things are next week.

The eel has been doing fine in the tank, and has continued to feed from a skewer after moving tanks.

 

[rhitee93]

Another week has gone by. Nitrates were 7.7ppm today and phosphates were 0.38ppm. I need to figure out what has caused my phosphates to start climbing the last two weeks. The eel would be the obvious answer, but I the rate of nitrate accumulation hasn't seemed to go up that much so I'm thinking it is something else.

I ordered a couple of LPS coral frags from someone on this forum, and expect them to arrive next week. So, I finally got motivated to use the seneye to measure the light levels at various points in the tank. When my lights are at the daily peak, I'm getting around 120par on the sand, and around 250 on the top of my rockwork. I have duncan and frogspawn frags coming, so I think that lighting will work for where I would like to place them.

Here is the tank today:

I've had a GSP colony in the tank since late September. It had more than tripled in size; maybe even 4x or 5x the size of when I got it.

I decided to cut it up before it spread to the neighboring rockwork. Now it is a sad looking little fluff...

I ended up with 3 other pieces that are this size or bigger. They are in my observation tank right now, but I guess I'll see if my LFS wants them.

 

[rhitee93]

Here is the FTS for this week's update:

I just scraped some algae off the back wall and did a water change before this pic, so the foxface and new corals are a bit agitated.

Yep I said new coral. I finally put in the first LPS critters, a nice Frogspawn and Duncan frag from @Luke Schnabel on this forum. I'd recommend his for sale post in the livestock forum, and hope to buy more critters form him soon.

They haven't even been in my DT for 12 hours yet, but were pretty happy looking this morning and I should have taken a pic then. They're irritated with me disturbing the tank so these pics are not so good:

I haven't been monitoring calcium and alk since I didn't have anything in the tank that really cared, but now I'll have to start doing that as well. My alk was only 7.8dkh yesterday which is lower than I expected. I'm using reef crystals, and it was 9.0dkh in the first two 55 gallon batches I mixed.

I haven't measured Ca yet, but will do that here in a bit.

My only trouble this week is my phosphates keep going up. They measured 0.43ppm today . I have to dose nitrates at the rate of about 3ppm per week to stay steady, byt my Phosphates have been rising at around 0.05ppm/week for the last few weeks. We'll see how the new coral do, but my understanding is that I'm well above where most people try to stay.

I knew the coral were coming, so I put a few spoonfuls of GFO in a mesh bag and placed that in overflow into my sump return pump chamber earlier this week. I know that this isn't going to be efficient, but I've heard so many horror stories about GFO bottoming out phosphates quickly that I wanted to go slow. I was disappointed this morning to see my levels had actually risen over last week.

I don't know where the phosphate is coming from. I had been feeding exclusively frozen foods from San Francisco Bay brand for several months now. I have several types of their cubes that I mix up each day. However, a few weeks ago I started adding a pinch of New Life Spectrum Algae Max pellets to give the tang and foxface some variety over nori.

I don't rinse the frozen food which I have read can be an issue. However, I'm not sure how to rinse what is effectively mush? I generally use 2 cubes a day, although sometimes I'll do an additional feeding.

The eel eats raw frozen shrimp, scallops, and skin on salmon about 3 times a week. I buy these at the seafood counter. Obviously the eel is a big polluter, but the phosphate issue timing doesn't align with it going into the tank, and the nitrates are still not going up.

I hear a lot about phosphate binding in dry rock, which I used a lot of. However, I haven't seen an opinion on this that was explained in a way that made sense to me.

I do a ~10% water change every week, but I've skipped a few weeks when my nitrates were bottomed out. My ATO water and salt water are all mixed with RO/DI I make with an 8-stage system.

 

[Luke Schnabel]

Thank you for the plug in your update post. I’m glad everything worked out for you.

I would say I would be super jealous of having a tank in your office if I had a normal job, but, I tend to roughly 15,000 gallons of farm tanks every day for work .

Looking forward to more updates in the future and possibly getting it stocked up a bit more for you!

 

[rhitee93]

The duncans are really pretty now that they've opened back up

I'm going to have to start bringing the DSLR into the office for pics. My phone does not like to focus through the glass.

 

[rhitee93]

Another week has gone by without too much in the way of issues. I decided to dose some lanthanum chloride to arrest the slow climb I have seen in my phosphates. I'm using the PhosBand-L product. By the time it had arrived, my phosphates were down to 0.34ppm from the >0.4ppm I had measured a few times at the end of the previous week. I assume that was the little bag of GFO finally taking effect.

I removed the GFO, and diluted the PhosBan-L to 1 part product to 2 parts RO/DI water per the instructions. This gave me a container of working solution. Then based on the instructions I calculated that 2.7ml of the working solution would drop my phosphate level 0.1ppm, so I dosed that on Friday morning. This morning my phosphates were at 0.25ppm. I dosed another 1.5ml of the working solution this morning which should get me around 0.2ppm. I'll let it sit there for a while and see what happens.

The big surprise of the week was my nitrates had shot up to 18.7ppm. After struggling for the last couple of months to keep them from bottoming out I was surprised to see them actually rise. This probably explains the increase in algae growth on the back wall of the tank. (The tank and foxface have been happy about that) My only concern is that I haven't made any changes to husbandry this week, so I don't have any idea what has caused the change. I suppose time will tell.

I did my usual 10-gallon water change today. I can do that in about 10 minutes now.

Here is what the tank looks like today:

The duncan and frogspawn I added last week seem happy for now. Both seem to be puffed up more than last week. It's fun to watch the duncan pull food particles out of the water when I feed the fish.

I'm eager to add some more coral, but will wait a bit to make sure the nitrates stop bouncing around.

I'm leaving on vacation for a week next Friday. I have premade parcels of food that one of my coworkers will give the tank every day. Another coworker is going to look after the mechanicals for me. Other than toping up the ATO container, and maybe dumping the skimmer cup, I don't think they'll need to do much. I put a new reef mat roll in today, and everything else just seems to be ticking along on auto-pilot. (Knock on wood)

 

[rhitee93]

Today is a big day. It is the first time I am leaving my tank for more than a couple of days. I'll be heading to Hawaii tomorrow morning for a week, and the tank will be in the hands of a couple of trusted, but inexperienced co-workers.

Here it is today:

We'll see how it is doing when I come back. I haven't made any changes to the mechanical systems for a few weeks, so things should be stable. I have food for each day prepackaged that they just need to thaw each day and dump in. We've even had a couple of eel feeding training sessions

I'm starting to pay attention to parameters other than nitrate and phosphate now that I am adding corals. This is where things were at today:

Nitrate = 16.7ppm
Phosphate = 0.13ppm
Ca = 554ppm
Mg = 1200ppm
Alk = 7.9dkh

I'm relieved that the nitrates have not increased over last week. Something has changed since a couple of months ago when I was struggling to keep them above zero. We'll see what that trend looks like after a few more weeks of observation.

I caught this pic of my duncan frag today. It's looking happy...

I'll do a 10% water change after work today and then head to the airport hotel

 

[rhitee93]

It's been a bit since I have done an update. I'm happy to report that the tank did fine while I was on vacation. Everything seemed happy and healthy when I got back.

The weekend after I got back was the annual frag swap in my region. I missed this last year as it happened shortly after I had started planning my reentry into the hobby, and I didn't hear about it until the week after the event. I've been chomping at the bit all year to go.

This was the first time I had been to anything like that, and I was a bit of a kid in a candy store. I completely over-did it. Needless to say I won't be adding anything for a while to see how the new corals take to the tank, and to see what they do to my parameters. Almost two weeks in and everything seems OK so far.

Yesterday, I acquired the last two fish I intend to add, a filefish and a redtooth/niger/odonus triggerfish. The triggerfish is a stretch, but it is tiny for now. If it becomes a coral chomper it can go to my Mom's fowler, and I'll have to give it to someone else it when it gets too big. I know I'll have to move my tank in about 2.5 years, maybe I can get an eight-footer then They are in a QT tank for now, and should get to go in the display in about 6 weeks.

Here is the tank today:

 

[rhitee93]

My tank is 30 weeks old this week

Things have pretty well lately with the tank. I went crazy at the frag swap a few weeks ago, and added way too many critters at one time, but so far most things seems to be doing well, and several of the pieces are showing new growth. Here is the tank this morning. I stirred up the tank a bit during the water change, so it is a bit hazy in the pic.

The one piece I'm worried about is the clam. I know it was way too early to add one, but it has been a dream of mine since when I had my first tank 20 years ago. I never see them locally for sale and when I saw this one at the swap temptation got the better of me.

The clam I got is a Maxima, so I wisley started off with one of the hardest to keep. It had a large (>1/8" wide) growth band when I bought it which is why I chose this particular clam. However, in the month I've had it, it hasn't added any new growth.

My parameters today are:
Nitrate = 18.6ppm
Phosphate = 0.18ppm
Alk = 8.4dkh
Ca = 478ppm
PH = 8.0
The maxima is presently sitting under 400par at the peak of the day.

My nitrates and phosphates are high compared to what both Knop and Fatherree recommend, so a 3 weeks ago I decided to start carbon dosing using the Tropic Marin products. I started out using the NP-Balance product because my levels aren't terrible for a general reef tank and I didn't want to go too far with things. Over a 3-week period I went from a 0.25ml daily dose to 1ml. Before this I was seeing a steady rise in phosphates each week that I had started using lanthanum chloride to control. Now my phosphates are steady at around 0.18ppm without dosing the LC. That would seem to indicate the carbon dosing is a positive change.

However, I'd like to bump both levels down just a bit so I decide to try the Elimi-NP product this week to see what happens. Again, I started with a 0.25ml dose which is about half the recommended stating dose and 1/8th the recommended max dose. We'll see what things look like next weekend. (Am I doing this right @Lou Ekus ?)

Other than that, I have been holding all things steady. The two fish I have in QT are doing well, and they will be the last additions to the tank for a while. I want to see some steady growth and understand what the current critter load is going to do to my need for alk, Ca, and Mg before I add anything else.

 

[Lou Ekus]

My tank is 30 weeks old this week

Things have pretty well lately with the tank. I went crazy at the frag swap a few weeks ago, and added way too many critters at one time, but so far most things seems to be doing well, and several of the pieces are showing new growth. Here is the tank this morning. I stirred up the tank a bit during the water change, so it is a bit hazy in the pic.

The one piece I'm worried about is the clam. I know it was way too early to add one, but it has been a dream of mine since when I had my first tank 20 years ago. I never see them locally for sale and when I saw this one at the swap temptation got the better of me.

The clam I got is a Maxima, so I wisley started off with one of the hardest to keep. It had a large (>1/8" wide) growth band when I bought it which is why I chose this particular clam. However, in the month I've had it, it hasn't added any new growth.

My parameters today are:
Nitrate = 18.6ppm
Phosphate = 0.18ppm
Alk = 8.4dkh
Ca = 478ppm
PH = 8.0
The maxima is presently sitting under 400par at the peak of the day.

My nitrates and phosphates are high compared to what both Knop and Fatherree recommend, so a 3 weeks ago I decided to start carbon dosing using the Tropic Marin products. I started out using the NP-Balance product because my levels aren't terrible for a general reef tank and I didn't want to go too far with things. Over a 3-week period I went from a 0.25ml daily dose to 1ml. Before this I was seeing a steady rise in phosphates each week that I had started using lanthanum chloride to control. Now my phosphates are steady at around 0.18ppm without dosing the LC. That would seem to indicate the carbon dosing is a positive change.

However, I'd like to bump both levels down just a bit so I decide to try the Elimi-NP product this week to see what happens. Again, I started with a 0.25ml dose which is about half the recommended stating dose and 1/8th the recommended max dose. We'll see what things look like next weekend. (Am I doing this right @Lou Ekus ?)

Other than that, I have been holding all things steady. The two fish I have in QT are doing well, and they will be the last additions to the tank for a while. I want to see some steady growth and understand what the current critter load is going to do to my need for alk, Ca, and Mg before I add anything else.

Seems like you are introducing the ELIMI NP correctly. see how it goes and reach out to me if you have other questions. But for now, looks liek you are on the right track!

 

[rhitee93]

Wow, it's been a month since I have done an update

Things have been going pretty smoothly lately. The corals I have seem to be growing well, and even the maxima clam has been putting on a lot of new shell the last few weeks.

I don't have anything I plan to add in the near future other than I will probably take the big lump of GSP out of the tank entirely and replace it with a derasa clam soon. My LFS will happily rehome the GSP for me.

My nitrates have been running in the single digits the last few weeks and my phosphates have been in the 0.1-0.15ppm range. I'd like to get the phosphates a little lower, but I'm not making any major adjustments at this point since things seem pretty happy.

The only bad news I've had for a while is that I'm finding small aptaisa in the tank every week. Usually I find 2 or 3 the size of a pea each week. I've been hitting them with 2M NaOH when I see them, and they die, but I don't know if that is allowing them to spread.

I got a filefish from my LFS, but it never looked real healthy in QT, and died. I may try another one if they get one.

Here is where I am at today:

 

[rhitee93]

Another weekly FTS:

I found quite a few small aiptasia (maybe a dozen) this week It is possible that I am just getting better at spotting them as a lot of these were small and well hidden, but I have a feeling my NaOH approach isn't going to be sustainable. I think I'm going to try another filefish.