Jahmic's JBJ 28, first reef build

[jahmic]

I dunno what's causing the cyano to bounce back immediately after a water change...but growth definitely takes off for a few days after, then levels off. Whatever I siphon out doesn't grow back until I do another water change. My tds reads 0....I checked it with an inline meter on my RO and with a handheld. I did get a reading of 6 in one of my buckets...so I plan on cleaning them all with vinegar and putting them in the sun for a few days just in case.

Seems like the tank did better after going a couple weeks without a water change. Some algae did come back...but not a noticeable amount...basically you'd have to have your nose on the glass to see it. Same with the cyano...it's there, but not bad at all. In any case, I plan on doing less frequent water changes in hopes that things settle in and I can have enough nutrients to allow the beneficial bacteria to out-compete the cyano. If that doesn't work...I may give zeo-bak a try, but I really want to figure this out before adding another factor into the equation.

Changed my water on Saturday, today (Wednesday) my parameters are:

Nitrate- 2.0
Phosphate- 0.0 (down from .06 before adding the reactor)
Calcium- 450
Alkalinity- 8.6
Magnesium- 1425
Salinity- 1.025

I'm going to give it another 2 weeks and check the nutrients again. I'd like to see if there's any significant change by then, and if not I will probably try to change my water every 2-3 weeks...as long as there are no visible negative effects to coral health.

 

[CRW Reef]

Do you have cheato in the mix somewhere?

 

[jahmic]

I did at one point, but removed it. I have macro in the display, but that's it. The chaeto that was in the fuge stopped thriving at one point, and that's actually where the cyano first appeared.

 

[CRW Reef]

So am I reading properly in that maybe trying cheato again might help? If so I got plenty for you, with a little caulerpa mixed in if you would like some.

 

[Ghosty]

Ok...here's a couple better progression FTSs

Beautiful little coral garden!

 

[jahmic]

Took some PAR readings last week; they're a bit lower than what they were when the bulb was new, so it may be time for a replacement. Still getting enough light to support growth, but the color looks like it's beginning to shift a little. The tank is visibly less "blue" lately...also noticed I've had to adjust my white balance much less in Lightroom, even with pictures taken from the same position with the same camera settings.

Anyway, for anybody curious, here are the current readings:

150W Phoenix 14k bulb (7 months old), (2) 18W PC-R Actinic bulbs

 

[jahmic]

Recently pulled the ric yuma rock out of my tank and put it in my 20 long to make room for this guy:

Not the best cell-phone pic...and it was taken immediately after acclimating and adding the nem to the tank. I'll try to get a better pic up soon; it's definitely opened more since adding it a couple days ago. ****ed off some nearby zoas, but no real damage done. Looks like it's happy in that spot too, as it hasn't moved its foot at all.

 

[jahmic]

The other new addition of the week:

He's kind of displaced my Chalk Basslet...as he claimed essentially the right side of my rockwork against the back wall, as well as the upper cave. The basslet used to sleep under an overhang on the top right just next to that cave. No real aggression...the angel just likes to chase him away when he sees him there. It took a couple days, but the basslet is now content in his new home on the lower left side of the rockwork...about as far away from the angel as he can get.

As far as potential nipping goes, he hasn't paid any attention to my sps or lps...including an acan and that blue hammer. He grazes on the rocks all day, and on occasion will pull algae and detritus clinging to the base/underside of my zoas. No coral damage to speak of though...and he's been taking small bites of my dragon's breath macro...which is actually welcome considering how ridiculously fast it's been growing in my tank:

My nutrient levels are stable and in check. Phosphates are undetectable, and Nitrates have been a stead 2.0ppm for the past month. I was worried that the GFO reactor would end up outcompeting the macro...but that ended up being a non-issue.

So, what's the big "secret" on the crazy growth? As far as I can tell, having that algae underneath the MP10 is definitely the key. The current in the tank sweeps across the sand from right to left, and the undertow of the MP10 (on the left wall of my tank) pulls all the detritus and debris up towards it...and it all gets caught in the macro. Kinda gross...because I can give the macro a shake and the amount of detritus that comes loose looks like I just rinsed a filter sock in the tank, but at least the macro is using it up and growing like crazy.

I'd be interested in hearing if anybody else has tried this, or has any input on it. Right now I have it just looped through one of those suction cup rings that you get with a heater; it stays in place pretty well. If anybody else has a powerhead creating and undertow that tends to recirculate detritus, and wants to give this a try, get in touch. First come first serve. My only rule is you can't take it and sell it...I've been DBTCing this out as Gabe was kind enough to give me some a while back, so you can consider this a "hidden" DBTC in my build thread.

 

[2sweet]

You might have to clip some of that dragon's breath for my tank

 

[SteveT]

My new tank keeping mantra is to treat my algae like my SPS. lots of light, lots of flow makes them grow like crazy and more growth means more nutrient export.

 

[jahmic]

You might have to clip some of that dragon's breath for my tank

You know where to find me

Just lemme know when you wanna stop by and I'd be happy to give you some.

 

[jahmic]

Time for a lengthy post...ready?

I promised myself I'd share progress on this tank for better or for worse. Don't worry, things aren't quite as bad as they look here:

That was my tank on Monday. I got home and finally figured out why my ORA red planet had been looking so dull over the past week. At first I thought it was lighting issues...as my MH bulb was found to have a cracked ceramic end cap, which kept triggering the thermal switch in the hood and shutting the light off. Cris was nice enough to loan me an old bulb until he got one in at the shop, so over a weeks time I had 3 different bulbs over the tank. They were all phoenix 14k bulbs...but definitely had different spectrums due to my bulb overheating and new bulb vs old bulb, etc.

Anyway...Monday it all made sense when I caught my African Flameback going to town on the polyps of the red planet...and 2 of my wild milli colonies. I suspect he had been lightly nipping at them through the week since PE on all 3 colonies hadn't been looking great...the red planet in particular was starting to lose the green base and go tan. By the time Monday rolled around though, it looked like s***. I sat there for about 30 seconds and watched him just make his rounds picking at the base of each frag. He wasn't doing any damage to the coral skeleton...but the tissue damage was definitely noticeable, and he was pretty relentless with it while I got everything ready to try to catch him.

I have this thing with new fish...where I usually force them to eat out of my hand after introducing them to the tank. That way, if I ever need to catch them, the job is about 100x easier since they swim right up to my hand. Unfortunately for me the angel was just getting to the point where he'd hover around my hand but wouldn't eat from it...so he didn't get quite close enough to scoop him up. I'm usually more of a stickler and will starve them a little to ensure that they eventually give in, but with this guy I'd been afraid that starving him would only encourage him to nip...so I only trained him to take food from my hand once out of the 2-3 times per day that I'd been feeding the tank. While trying to catch him my yellow wrasse swam right into the palm of my hand where I had cupped some food, and my lubbocks fairy swam into the cup that I use for a trap, lol. The flameback got close enough once...but I missed the scoop and that was that...he hid in the rocks. I thought about just waiting it out to try to "stun" him later with a flashlight after turning off all the lights in the hood and in the room...but decided to just get it over with.

Luckily the scape was stacked in a way that made it fairly easy to break down, and in putting things back together I was able to address a few issues. I moved the left side of the wall forward a little bit and got a lot more flow in that corner of the tank, and was also able to open up the cave a little more so that my fish have some swimming room. Overall things look essentially the same, I'll get more pics up later. Then again, a few days prior to all this I did also pulled all my zoas and put them in the new 20 long...so I guess it does look a bit different. The end result is more open space on the sandbed for my skinny diamond goby to graze, and better flow overall.

So far so good with all my SPS...they seemed to take things surprisingly well. No real loss of color or any casualties, although I did break off some more birdsnest so that I could rearrange things without them being in the way. I also did make a few accidental frags of some other SPS...they're on my rack growing out for the next DBTC, lol. I did a water change yesterday to be safe...skimmer is going crazy...added a fresh bag of carbon. Hopefully I didn't miss anything and all my coral pulls through.

The only thing that looks questionable right now is the tricolor validia that I picked up at the DBTC. It had looked pretty bad when I got it in the tank on Saturday, as I found out there was a hole in the bag and it was refilled with water from 2 different tanks by the time I got it home. I think moving it around in the tank Monday was a little too much for it...there's also a chance that when it fell off the plug it grazed my hammer coral; I found it laying in the sand next to it at one point.

My red planet was the worst hit by the angel, and it looks to be getting color back already, and the polyps are starting to grow back out. My millis look a little annoyed still, but PE is still there so I'm hoping they recover too. The flameback angel is now in my 20 long zoa garden with plenty algae to graze on throughout the day.

So yea...never again.

 

[jahmic]

In case things don't fair well...here are some pics (posted in another thread) that I took over the weekend before all this went down. Gotta end on a happy note.

 

[jahmic]

So, a post tear-down update.

So far I've lost one coral...an acropora prostrata that was admittedly not doing well before the pulling the rock. My cali tort looked a little stressed for a while; no recession but it's not showing much polyp extension. It does have some new growth tips on it though, and it's mesenterial filaments come out as soon as food hits the tank...so I'm left scratching my head on that one. One birdsnest colony started to STN a little at the base, and another looks like it's a bit stressed and I had to cut off some tips that were receding, but it seems to be bouncing back.

I'm pretty sure all that was caused by my Alk swings after getting everything back in the tank. There was a combination of issues going on...for one the corals were obviously a bit shocked by the ordeal and their consumption of Alk and Ca decreased...so I was overdosing with my pumps. Additionally...the dosing rate on one of my pumps had increased, and it went unnoticed. I guess I got lucky and as the pump went through a "break-in" period and started dosing more, my tank was taking off and consuming more Alk at about the same rate...but after the tear down it ended up being WAY too much Alk going into the system daily and my levels went from about 9.3 to 10.6 over a 2 week period. Not a serious swing, but judging by the "burned" tips and STN from the base I'm thinking that's the culprit. My Ca had also gone up a little too, but I know that's not as big of a concern...it went from about 440 to 470 over that timeframe. Anyway...I had let things settle and watched the tank before doing anything...I could've been more on top of it, but didn't really take action right away because I didn't wanna stress the tank. By the time I started to figure out what was going on my Ca was at 470 and Alk was at 10.6

I stopped dosing for a few days to get my Alk back down, measure the consumption, and reprogram my pumps. So far so good, Alk = 9.5 and Ca = 430...and has been sitting there for a couple days. The Alk had actually dropped faster over the week that I stopped dosing and got down to about 8.3 before I turned the pump back on...meanwhile the Ca level was sitting at 470 and not budging. Once I started dosing Alk, the Ca slowly started coming down and it hit about 430...Alk slowly went up to about 9.3 before things leveled off. I'm hoping I don't lose more colonies...but the majority of my SPS are looking unphased; my yellow mille and blue mille are looking "hairy" as ever and have new growth tips, and my acropora insignis has been exploding in spite of all the issues...all of my montiporas are still looking great as well, although my undata's polyps randomly were retracted yesterday, but I think that was mostly due to a sandstorm caused by me blowing cyano off my rocks.

That's probably my only other headache right now...cyano came back I pulled my macro and decided to be more diligent about changing my GFO to keep things other control. I think I was walking a tight-rope trying to keep nutrients low enough to keep the SPS happy...but prevalent enough to keep my macro happy. I pulled all my zoas and softies from this tank, and am going to just keep LPS and SPS (and a nem) in here. Hopefully I can get everything to recover.


Forgot I had taken this picture a while back too, figured I'd share it.

 

[jahmic]

Moved my MP10 a bit and the undata's polyps opened up overnight. I also think both of my birdsnest colonies were upset due to getting more flow and light prior to relocation the mp10, as I had moved the rocks on the left side forward about 3" after the tear down to get more flow behind my rockwork. When I moved the mp10 earlier this week, one of them was getting blasted and started looking bad again...moved it down and it seemed to look better overnight as well. I'm going to try to move the other one down and back as well and see what happens.

Hope to have new pics up soon; I took some a few weeks back immediately after the rescape just waiting to be uploaded. Probably wouldn't hurt to take some more to track the tank's progress.

 

[static reef]

lets see a ful tank shot to track the progress

 

[jahmic]

lets see a ful tank shot to track the progress

I should have a fairly large picture update soon...I've been taking intermittent FTS through the past few weeks, as well as some coral pics.

Unfortunately, I ended up tossing all my birdsnest...it just kept declining after the tear down. Flesh would literally peel away, and polyps would float around the tank, land on other corals, and cause them to close up or injure them.

I also lost my staghorn acro frag; it had never looked all that good although it was slowly encrusting on the rock. It STNd slowly for about a week, seemed to come back, then was gone shortly after that. I took the frag out of the tank, dipped it in about 5x concentration of CoralRx and found red bugs scurrying around in the cup.

I overlooked the fact that CoralRx isn't the best preventative treatment for red bugs, and ended up with them in my tank. Can't say for sure that's why I lost my 2 acros recently, but I think it was at least a factor combined with my Alk swings that made them susceptible to a bad infestation.

I started treatment with Interceptor this past Saturday; I have before pics and will be taking some "after" shots later this week just prior to treatment #2, and will do the same before and after the 3rd and final treatment. So far I'm getting much better polyp extension out of my red planet, acropora insignis, and both of the milleporas. The other acro left in the tank, a Cali tort, was looking really rough prior to treatment. It had ZERO polyp extension for about a month, but it would release mesenterial filaments at feeding. I'm pretty sure the red bugs were responsible for the retracted polyps, as it was showing signs of stress before the tear down and resulting Alk swing. It was also growing before and after the tear down in spite of looking a little stressed. Unfortunately...after the tear down, some opportunistic cyano attached itself to the white growth tips and stressed the coral out more, I stopped seeing even the mesenterial filaments, and a small amount of STN started at the base. After the interceptor treatment the mesenterial filaments are back out (hadn't seen them since the tear down), and it looks like some small polyps might be starting to poke through. I'm going to wait until after the treatment is over to frag it off of the base...unless things continue to decline with it. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to save this one though.

Sorry for the delay on pics...not having a computer at home sucks.

 

[jahmic]

Re: Jahmic's JBJ 28, first reef build

I have a couple FTSs to post, as well as some "before" pics of my acros prior to treatment for red bugs...but in the meantime.

I've been using this hammer as a "reference" for adjusting my camera settings prior to shooting, and getting things dialed in for this tank...starting to get good

I recently pulled my birdsnest out of my tank since it wasn't doing well...also removed the macro since pieces were being broken off and decaying behind my rockwork or in my rear sump. Here's the culprit...hanging from the birdsnest while chowing down. I'll miss the antics...but it did get a little hairy since he was dangling right above my nem and had fallen in the past lol

Wait for it....

Bam

Really hope this thing takes off...I can see it starting to form the 2nd mouth.

 

[Cherub]

wow great shot of the crab! That angel favia is so hot... I'll trade you a frag of my event horizon once they're both ready lol

 

[jahmic]

wow great shot of the crab! That angel favia is so hot... I'll trade you a frag of my event horizon once they're both ready lol

Deal!