Jahmic's Tasty Cubed Reef Recipe
- Thread starter jahmic
- Start date
Trying to. Did a couple water changes over the past few days, and will probably continue to change out 5-10% at least twice a week. I'm on day 2 of lights out...hoping it helps but I've honestly seen little to no difference. The cyano certainly isn't spreading with the lights off, but it isn't going anywhere either. I also messed with the skimmer a little to get it to pull a little wetter. I'm not all that worried about it, just don't want it to get out of hand. I expected a cyano bloom at some point, but it spread pretty quickly after getting blasted with light earlier this week.
It may be time to refresh my CUC. All that's in there now is a large turbo snail that mainly sticks to the sides of the tank, a few hermits, and some dwarf ceriths. The larger ceriths and astreas either died off or became food for the hermits. A tiger or fighting conch will probably solve the problem with the sandbed, and I'd like to find a few trochus snails for the rocks.
It may be time to refresh my CUC. All that's in there now is a large turbo snail that mainly sticks to the sides of the tank, a few hermits, and some dwarf ceriths. The larger ceriths and astreas either died off or became food for the hermits. A tiger or fighting conch will probably solve the problem with the sandbed, and I'd like to find a few trochus snails for the rocks.
Don't know why I overlooked this option. I actually have some ZeoBak in the fridge...started dosing this morning. It usually takes a couple weeks before the cyano gets knocked out, but it's definitely helped in the past. Thanks for the reminder!
Yea my last one cleaned the tank up my old cube extremely well...and was passed along to another to knock out issues in their tank. I'll be adding one this week. Only downside is that it won't climb the rocks, so hopefully I can find some trochus snails locally...haven't had much luck with that for several months though.
Yea my last one cleaned the tank up my old cube extremely well...and was passed along to another to knock out issues in their tank. I'll be adding one this week. Only downside is that it won't climb the rocks, so hopefully I can find some trochus snails locally...haven't had much luck with that for several months though.
2 months without an update??? Shame on me. I'll try to get some pics soon...here's what's been going on with the tank:
The initial attempt to rid the tank of cyano via lights out + zeobak dosing worked. So I did what every impatient reefer would do, and added more fish.
After the cyano disappeared I started seeing small tufts of hair algae, so I added a starry blenny...who wouldn't eat it.
Tank still looked good a couple weeks later, so I added a small pair of clowns... cyano came back, with a vengeance.
Aside from stocking too quickly, I found that sunlight had been hitting my tank in the morning and late afternoon...I still haven't addressed that issue. I'm also sure I was overfeeding...I feed maybe 1/3 of what I was feeding, and the starry blenny now grazes on the algae throughout the day. Pretty sure the dry pellets I was feeding in the morning are dirtier than my frozen foods....so I've been trying to keep that to a minimum as well.
The other changes I made involved re-routing the plumbing for the UV...it used to pull water from the return chamber and dump it back in there and right into the tank. I now have the out going to the first chamber with the skimmer and have seen a HUGE difference in the amount of skimmate I'm getting with just that change. I also started vacuuming out the return and skimmer compartments of my sump with a shop vac...the amount of crud in there probably contributed to the problem.
Lastly...I used chemiclean :/ Didn't want to, but it was getting out of control. I have a couple small spots of cyano left, and will focus on siphoning those areas weekly. I also plan on adding another mp10 so that I can run a pair on wave mode and keep the third independent and run it on reefcrest.
Hopefully that does the trick. The good news is that I have a few happy BTAs in there now, one large rbta and a pair of small rainbows...I had a single rainbow that had a rough acclimation, it split and seems to be coloring up slowly.
The initial attempt to rid the tank of cyano via lights out + zeobak dosing worked. So I did what every impatient reefer would do, and added more fish.
After the cyano disappeared I started seeing small tufts of hair algae, so I added a starry blenny...who wouldn't eat it.
Tank still looked good a couple weeks later, so I added a small pair of clowns... cyano came back, with a vengeance.
Aside from stocking too quickly, I found that sunlight had been hitting my tank in the morning and late afternoon...I still haven't addressed that issue. I'm also sure I was overfeeding...I feed maybe 1/3 of what I was feeding, and the starry blenny now grazes on the algae throughout the day. Pretty sure the dry pellets I was feeding in the morning are dirtier than my frozen foods....so I've been trying to keep that to a minimum as well.
The other changes I made involved re-routing the plumbing for the UV...it used to pull water from the return chamber and dump it back in there and right into the tank. I now have the out going to the first chamber with the skimmer and have seen a HUGE difference in the amount of skimmate I'm getting with just that change. I also started vacuuming out the return and skimmer compartments of my sump with a shop vac...the amount of crud in there probably contributed to the problem.
Lastly...I used chemiclean :/ Didn't want to, but it was getting out of control. I have a couple small spots of cyano left, and will focus on siphoning those areas weekly. I also plan on adding another mp10 so that I can run a pair on wave mode and keep the third independent and run it on reefcrest.
Hopefully that does the trick. The good news is that I have a few happy BTAs in there now, one large rbta and a pair of small rainbows...I had a single rainbow that had a rough acclimation, it split and seems to be coloring up slowly.
Oh...I've also abandoned the thought that I can get away with 5% weekly changes. I tried to do them biweekly, but for the most part it was happening once a week. I'm now changing 15-20 gal a week (~20%), and it seems to be helping. This means dragging the 55gal drum into my kitchen for a weekly fill, pulling some out for RO storage, then mixing in salt and literally dragging the rest of it down a couple small steps so it sits next to the tank for a water change. A royal pain in the arse. I'm contemplating going through my wall and plumbing in for easy changes; I have a storage closet that would work, but it's not insulated so I'm a bit concerned.
Got home yesterday and found my pair of clowns swimming happily in the RBTA I picked up a couple weeks ago. Earlier in the week I caught the male playfully swimming into it and only grazing a couple tentacles here and there. But every time he went to the nem, the female got aggressive and started chasing him. I was worried that they might not pair since they slept in opposite corners of the tank (although they hung out together most of the day)...but they seem to be getting along really well now that they have a nem to share.
The cyano that came back after the chemi-clean took hold for a few days and started spreading. Luckily, I had added a few sticks from the DBTC that I've owned in the past, so after placing them in the tank I was able to give them a few weeks and see how they progressed. The acro towards the top as well as the bicolor birdsnest below the middle of the tank started to bleach a little. I decided to cut an hour off my light cycle, and when I went to program the radion, I noticed that I had screwed up and was running them at 100% !!! I have to post my old PAR values here soon...but suffice to say I was giving the tank way too much light. Although the whites, reds, and greens were dialed back and they all weren't at 100%, I think the tank was getting close to double what my original target was after testing the PAR values. I have them running at about 65% now...the cyano is receding, my bicolor birdsnest is taking on some nice color, and my 2 (previously suspected) rainbow nems moved out of the cave they were hiding/struggling in and have opened up nicely. Looks like I solved my prolem.
I have to get pics of the little nems that split. The original one was a rusty red when I got it, then browned out in my tank when I started feeding it to get it to heal up. After the split it lost most of it's color and looked tan...it now has a bright green base with yellow tentacles.
The cyano that came back after the chemi-clean took hold for a few days and started spreading. Luckily, I had added a few sticks from the DBTC that I've owned in the past, so after placing them in the tank I was able to give them a few weeks and see how they progressed. The acro towards the top as well as the bicolor birdsnest below the middle of the tank started to bleach a little. I decided to cut an hour off my light cycle, and when I went to program the radion, I noticed that I had screwed up and was running them at 100% !!! I have to post my old PAR values here soon...but suffice to say I was giving the tank way too much light. Although the whites, reds, and greens were dialed back and they all weren't at 100%, I think the tank was getting close to double what my original target was after testing the PAR values. I have them running at about 65% now...the cyano is receding, my bicolor birdsnest is taking on some nice color, and my 2 (previously suspected) rainbow nems moved out of the cave they were hiding/struggling in and have opened up nicely. Looks like I solved my prolem.
I have to get pics of the little nems that split. The original one was a rusty red when I got it, then browned out in my tank when I started feeding it to get it to heal up. After the split it lost most of it's color and looked tan...it now has a bright green base with yellow tentacles.
Parameters have been nice and stable for me. Magnesium is a little high, but it's definitely the salt (Kent) since I'm not dosing:
Alk -8.0
Ca - 425-350
Mg - 1550
Nitrates ~ 2.0
Phosphates - (no idea)
Here are a few pics worth sharing. I'm still having issues shooting under the blue LEDs. Since Lightroom likes to ignore the in-camera WB adjustment, I can't edit the photos...so these are just uploaded straight from the camera. I'll try to get some pics one weekend when the radion is running at 14k; by the time I get home from work it's running all blues so I haven't had too many opportunities to get better shots.
Here are the little nems from that split a while back
Rock nem #1
...and #2
Finally you guys get an updated FTS
That green algae on the sand was forming a nasty mat a few weeks back. It was too thick to suck up with the vacuum, and I was getting a lot of sand sucked up if I just used 1/2" tubing to remove it. End up just using the gravel vac to stir it up, and the starry blenny did a great job cleaning off the sand after that
Alk -8.0
Ca - 425-350
Mg - 1550
Nitrates ~ 2.0
Phosphates - (no idea)
Here are a few pics worth sharing. I'm still having issues shooting under the blue LEDs. Since Lightroom likes to ignore the in-camera WB adjustment, I can't edit the photos...so these are just uploaded straight from the camera. I'll try to get some pics one weekend when the radion is running at 14k; by the time I get home from work it's running all blues so I haven't had too many opportunities to get better shots.
Here are the little nems from that split a while back
Rock nem #1
...and #2
Finally you guys get an updated FTS
That green algae on the sand was forming a nasty mat a few weeks back. It was too thick to suck up with the vacuum, and I was getting a lot of sand sucked up if I just used 1/2" tubing to remove it. End up just using the gravel vac to stir it up, and the starry blenny did a great job cleaning off the sand after that
