jlanger's Reef Build: Episode II - The 120gal Strikes Back (1 Viewer)

[DarkSky]

So you dosed Vibrant and continued to use the ATS? I would think the Vibrant would affect the scrubber's algae just as well as what's in the display.

No, I wasn't running any macros while I was dosing vibrant.

 

[ArcKatana]

Maybe pull all kinds of chemical removers/cleaners and see what happens with a big 25-33% h20 change.

Is the ATS working normally?

Also just a hunch, but pull the carbon out and don't put it back in for a bit. You might be constantly stripping the water so much that this is the only stuff that can grow. Again, just a hunch, but your tank looks like it is lacking any kind of green algae at all. The ATS is pulling nutrients out as well.

Get some Caluerpa, let it grow (and maybe your tangs will eat it) and turn off the ATS. I'll bet you a nickel in a week if it growing that is the problem. If the caluerpa won't grow, then there are bigger issues.

 

[ArcKatana]

So some google foo just now, it's easy to treat!

Just add copper to your reef tank

https://www.platinumlakemanagement.com/blog/the-solution-for-lyngbya-algae

 

[VikingsCrazy]

Use all the friends you have to babysit the corals that are still alive and maybe run your tank as dark as possible as much as you can while doing minimum 25% water changes twice/week. Manually turn the blues on for an hour every time you feed. Just a thought.

 

[jlanger]

Maybe pull all kinds of chemical removers/cleaners and see what happens with a big 25-33% h20 change.

Is the ATS working normally?

Also just a hunch, but pull the carbon out and don't put it back in for a bit. You might be constantly stripping the water so much that this is the only stuff that can grow. Again, just a hunch, but your tank looks like it is lacking any kind of green algae at all. The ATS is pulling nutrients out as well.

Get some Caluerpa, let it grow (and maybe your tangs will eat it) and turn off the ATS. I'll bet you a nickel in a week if it growing that is the problem. If the caluerpa won't grow, then there are bigger issues.

One of the threads recommended still using carbon while treating the tank with the RSR, so that's in there for now.

The ATS was running along well.
Here's a pic from the last harvest with about three weeks worth of growth.

I was quite surprised to see the scrubber growing that much algae with a relatively new system.
I'll be monitoring the scrubber during this treatment. I'm inclined to shutting it down and cleaning it out so that when things do turn around and I need to implement the ATS, it'll be ready to go.

As far as caulerpa goes, it's one of the handful of banned substances in my tanks. Growing up a young reefer in the 90's, we added caulerpa to our tanks as a decorative macro algae that complemented our soft corals. Little did I know how invasive and resilient it would become that it soon became something that I vowed to never willingly add to another system.

 

[jlanger]

Use all the friends you have to babysit the corals that are still alive and maybe run your tank as dark as possible as much as you can while doing minimum 25% water changes twice/week. Manually turn the blues on for an hour every time you feed. Just a thought.

I've thought about it for a quick minute, but...
I wouldn't want to introduce this malady on anyone else's system. As of now, there's just a handful of the LPS still hanging on and I'm hoping that they'll do okay over the next few weeks. If I decide to dismantle the 120gal , I'll set up a temporary tank to house the LPS corals and the fishes here.
I'm only running one of the Radion XR15 fixtures now, so there's not a lot of light but enough to hopefully keep the LPS corals happy.

 

[jlanger]

Update...

After a few weeks of various treatments, the tank looks much better!

I started by dropping the lighting down to just the one Radion XR15 fixture and that's been the constant the whole process; very low light.
I took the algae scrubber unit offline and removed it to clean to out and to use it for an upcoming reveal.
I dosed the red slime remover (RSR) twice in 48 hours to combat the bacteria. After the second dose, I didn't notice the drastic improvement that is common with cyanobacteria. The substrate started to look better, but I was beginning to wonder if that was due to the lower light intensity.
Last weekend, I decide to add a dose of Vibrant. Why not? After a few days, I noticed that the substrate and the rocks started to look much better. By Thursday night, there were only a few small batches of the brown nastiness left on the rocks. By Friday night, those patches disappeared and the tank looks much better. I don't see any visible traces of the filamentous hairs on anything. The rock and substrate are now "dirty" colored as opposed to the bright white of bleached rock; covered in light browns, greens and purple.
As to what treatment cured the problem, I'm sure it's a combination of the three. I'm satisfied that I didn't have to tear it down and begin again. The loss of the corals is still a huge bummer. (The LPS corals that survived are in my 32gal system and they're doing well.)

So to get back on track, this morning I decided to turn on the remaining two Radion fixtures and let the tank get more light. I probably won't turn on the T5 bulbs for a while. I want to monitor the rocks to make sure the extra light doesn't spawn another algae bloom.
A large water change is planned for some time this weekend. I'll vacuum the sump and the substrate, replace the carbon and all filter mediums.
I'll reinstate the algae scrubber and seed it with new algae when the time comes.
And this will be a good time to install the calcium reactor. I now have all of the pieces; including the new dosing pump. Since I don't have any corals in the tank, it will be a good time to figure this out without affecting any corals.
And I also need to reboot my Apex controller. I have two outlets that are missing on one of the energy bars and the remedy for that is to reboot the system. And since I haven't been connected to the WIFi for about three weeks, maybe I can get that fixed at the same time.

The fish have been doing great!
The two tangs have no issues with one another; both are eating well.
The Eight Line Flasher Wrasse is still coloring up nicely since being in the tank; and flashes every night!
The Harlequin Tuskfish is doing very well. Although it's timid and will hide when I first approach the tank, it does have a habit of moving around a lot of the rubble from around the rocks; possibly OCD like myself.

 

[acharpenter]

Good to hear!

 

[jlanger]

Good to hear!

Good to hear. Sad to see. (No corals, that is.)

I have given much consideration to going with a montipora dominated reef; along with some LPS for movement and "fluffiness". There are plenty of new encrusting varieties that I haven't kept that should work well with the plating and branching corals that I've kept in the past. So when it comes time to add corals again, I'll be looking around for some frags or pieces of the corals that I've passed along to others.

 

[jlanger]

So here's a quick peak at what the tank looks like now after three weeks of treatments.

I've placed an additional piece of rock onto the two larger rocks to create an overhang for the fish to use as cover; thus the bright white reflection. There's not much refuge available from just the two larger pieces where the fish can feel more comfortable. The wrasse and tangs don't seem to be as skittish as much as the tuskfish. Hopefully, I don't have to keep that piece in the display long term, but it doesn't really look too bad in there at the moment; it just takes away from the simplicity of the two large pieces.

Here's an updated photo of the tuskfish.
Not much to say here, but the fish continues to dig burrows under the main rocks. It does seem to be uninterested in the trochus snails; that's good. Once I start filling the tank in with corals, I'll try adding some Scarlet Reef Hermit Crabs again; the original batch have "disappeared".

And here's the two little tangs...
They have definitely taken a liking to one another as they're usually not too far from one another.

If my tank is truly back on track, I'll probably start looking for some starter cultures for copepods, amphipods and coralline algae soon.
I'll probably track my water parameters for a couple of weeks to make sure it's stable enough for coral additions. Two weeks ago, my nitrates tested at 0.5ppm and the phosphates at 0.02ppm. With a thorough cleaning of my sump and the substrate this weekend, I hope to see those numbers stay down. I'll start tracking calcium and alkalinity as I implement the calcium reactor soon.

 

[Justin715]

It looks so much better, you have to be relieved. The fish look good, healthy and happy.

 

[Mordim]

Where did you get your tangs? They look great.

 

[jlanger]

Where did you get your tangs? They look great.

Kole Tang; LiveAquaria's Diver's Den.
Yellow Tang; AcanLord.

 

[Fishfoo]

What return pump did you end up going with, Jason?

 

[jlanger]

What return pump did you end up going with, Jason?

Neptune Systems' Cor-20.

 

[abhishek]

How do you like the Cor 20 ? My friend had 2 Cor 20 pumps fail in last 5 months .
I wanted to try it but after hearing first hand horror stories went with Royal Exclusive .

 

[jlanger]

How do you like the Cor 20 ? My friend had 2 Cor 20 pumps fail in last 5 months .
I wanted to try it but after hearing first hand horror stories went with Royal Exclusive .

So far, so good.
I have yet to start playing around with any of the controllability features; i.e. feed modes. I believe that to maximize the features of the Cor pumps is to also have the flow meters. I'd really like to know what the pump is pushing through my system to maximize any benefits, but I couldn't justify adding flow meters to just a 120gal system.
One thing that I have noticed is that when the pumps are restarted, I sometimes have to readjust the valve on the full siphon drain. I'm not sure if the pump is consistent with restarts or not. It's something that I have been meaning to look up in the Neptune forums, but I've been concerned with other "issues" lately.

 

[jlanger]

Although not much has changed over the past two weeks, I feel like a lot of progress has been made.

Foremost, the system is continuing to recover.
The rocks have started to color up with the "good" algae; even some coralline algae is popping up in places.
The substrate continues to look better as I clean it up. I have been thoroughly vacuuming the media with each water change as much of the detritus easily gets caught in the large "pores" of the bed. Vacuuming the media is quite easy as the "grains" don't get sucked up very far into the gravel tube.
The water quality has been great thus far. Granted, there's a limited supply of nutrients but the levels are still very low.

Today's FTS; post water change.

The progress that I'm most pleased with is happening inside the stand.

My Apex controller has been "offline" for a number of weeks.
Last week, Tim [and I] tried to figure out what was going on and in doing so, I performed a factory reset on the controller. (Lesson learned: When doing a factory reset, make sure all pumps are disconnected otherwise you could have a water fountain inside the stand!). Nothing changed.
So I scheduled a tech service call for Friday with Neptune Systems' customer service tech to get the controller back online. It took him about forty minutes to get the controller back online. It took quite a number of sequences of connecting/disconnecting an ethernet cable, turning WiFi on, turning WiFi off, troubleshooting router information and ultimately creating a new profile. As of now, it's working; somewhat. There are moments when the Apex still disconnects from Fusion; for the record, 121 times during the last 24 hours. Is that normal???
Since all of the outlets were reset last week, I spent today reprogramming the outlets back to my prior settings. I was smart enough to print out all of the outlets and programs prior to messing around with the controller, so I had a blueprint to guide my way.
I still have a couple modules that need to get finished up; the WXM module for the Vortech pumps and the ALD module for leak detection.

While working inside my stand, I also worked on getting my calcium reactor hooked up. I calibrated a new pH probe for the sump so I can use the older probe with the reactor. I tested the CarbonDoser regulator and it passed. I calibrated the Kamoer FX-STP pump and installed a small shelf to place the pump for easy access. So I thought everything was ready to fill it with water and get it operational, so I thought. I need two small fittings to connect the Kamoer pump to the reactor and sump!!! Two tiny fittings, that's it!!! Of course, they're not common fittings that the hardware store would carry, so I'll be placing an order to BRS so I can get those fittings next week. (Now I understand why @Jonty kept a fully stocked plumbing supply warehouse in his basement!)

I also reinstalled the algae turf scrubber. Since I dosed Vibrant last month, the algae would've crashed so I disconnected the ATS unit to clean it out and use it for some reference on another model. I still need to get some algae to seed the screen, but for now I will just let the unit run and condition itself for when I acquire some new algae.
Speaking of the ATS unit, I think that I'm going to pick up a Cor-15 pump to feed the ATS. I using the Cor-20 pump now, but I have it on the lowest setting; which is fine. But I think that if I used the smaller pump, I would have more control over the flow going through the unit.

Here's the obligatory fish pics...

The Harlequin Tuskfish.
Still doing very well; calm demeanor and somewhat shy when humans are present.

And here's a fuzzy pic showing the little tusks coming in...

The Eight Lined Flasher Wrasse is definitely the showman of the tank.
The coloration continues to improve and his flashing behavior has slowed down a bit lately; not sure if the loss of the pintail has an effect on that.

And the two mini-tangs.
What else is there to say.

 

[Davy Jones]

There are moments when the Apex still disconnects from Fusion; for the record, 121 times during the last 24 hours. Is that normal???

Is your Apex connected via Ethernet or wifi? I had this issue recently and had to have Comcast reset some of my settings. Was using Ethernet as well

 

[jlanger]

Is your Apex connected via Ethernet or wifi? I had this issue recently and had to have Comcast reset some of my settings. Was using Ethernet as well

WiFi.
The tech left my support tag open just in case I have any issues, so I’ll be calling back on Monday.
Ethernet connection may be the way to go, but I’ll need to pick up a 50’ cable first.