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Innovative Marine Nuvo Int 200 (1 Viewer)

I have a few turbo snails and conch snails in my tank. I think the turbo snails are end of life but not really sure what to do with them. They are mostly really slow, never climb on rocks anymore, and one just flips over all the time. Do I leave them in there or what should I do?

I also have/had 3 conchs. One just sits still now, other two I almost never see anymore and not sure where they went (under sand I am sure). The one that sits still, I moved the other day. It just moved about 6 inches and buried itself and hasn't moved again. I can tell my sand needs as it is started to get diatoms all over the place. Those I probably need to get fairly soon. Do I leave the one or remove it anyway?
 
Yeah turbos don’t have a great lifespan and need a ton of algae to stay busy and active.

Wouldn’t be surprised if you find them just flipped over with bristle worms eating them at some point.
 
I personally find the only ones that will most likely stay alive in long term are the nassarius snails. The rest will help cleaning the tank in a short term and they will eventually flip over and die. The conch snails will also die. Usually I would add too many of them to count, so I don't pay attention to each to flip them over when they fall off. Sometimes I do but I expect them to flip over and die sooner or later anyway. So, maybe once a year, I add a number of them in when I feel the tank needs them, but it's more like a reoccurring cost to me.
 
Over the last few weeks I have changed my lighting schedule. I have noticed some of the SPS corals that I have added have never shown much growth. I never changed my lighting schedule in the year plus it has been running. I originally had it start at about 2:30 with a 30 minute ramp, then at 9 do a 30 minute ramp down. For the longest time I never had any problems with algae any my LPS corals would do just fine. Over the last couple of months my CUC started to die off. It was likely understaffed for this tank and most survived one or two tank upgrades. This led to algae growing so I have been adding snails and hermits a few at a time so that is beginning to be fixed. Since the original light schedule was mainly do limit algae growth, and was less of a factor, I decided to start increasing my lighting on time to see if I could get better growth from corals.

For about three weeks I increased the lighting to start at 1 with an hour ramp, then hour ramp down starting at 8:30.

I am slowly trying to get to a 12 hour light schedule. Right now I have it start at noon with 90 minute ramp up, then 90 minute ramp down starting at 8. The SPS corals have actually started to respond a bit. It may just be that they are settling into the tank. Some of my LPS are not happy. I have tried moving a couple of things around but I am not sure if it will make much difference. Now that I am done tinkering with the new tank, I will try and focus more on the water parameters and address a few things I have been putting off.
 
Are you adding time at your full spectrum lighting? Or also adding some blues only at the bookends of the day? I don’t know if that helps or if people just do it because they like the look. But it might be a more gentle way to add some light? Like start with blues. Then change it to full spectrum over time as the corals adjust?

I know I’ve heard that whites can drive algae growth, so maybe even reduce your whites over the day slightly while you get the algae under control?

I’m not an expert. These are musings. Curious for your thoughts.
 
I have four Redsea 160s. I stick with a predominately blue light spectrum to try and limit algae. I noticed too much white on previous tanks would cause unmanageable growth or so I thought. Still trying to get through the learning curve with everything. I picked from a default program and edited it with expectations to length time and/or increase intensity down the road. Here is the default example. It really only has three spectrums to adjust, blue, white and moon.
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This is the schedule I went with.
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At the high end it runs at 60% blue and 25% white. I set the moon schedule to be on after the blue and white go off, then come on again in the mornings. I like seeing things when I am home.

I could try and do some additional ramps of intensity for a short period of time. They also have some cloud intervals I could add in. To be honest, I have no idea what I should try.
 
Got it. Sort of nice that it doesn’t have 10000 levers to pull. Did BRS do any spectrum analysis on those lights? Seems like the ratio of blue/white that mimics the AB+ T5 has been a tried and true starting point?

I can say that with the sage advice of our own @spsick , adding whites back into my coral QT tank dramatically improved the health of my acros. I was running a very blue spectrum to limit algae growth and prevent a reoccurrence of dinos. But as I transitioned the AI Prime16 from more or less full blues to the brs ratio to give AB+ I saw a huge improvement in color/health. Realizing it’s only one data point, might be food for thought?
 
I hate tinkering with things. I am 90% sure I am nuking a hammer coral and a goni colony. The goni I moved to the sand and gave it some shade. Not sure if that will recover or continue to digress. That started a couple of months ago when I moved it to the other side of the tank, but about the same depth. Flow was certainly different though. Pretty confident the hammer is losing its newest head (of three total) but it may be unrelated to the light change.
 
Skimmer question.

I have the Reef Octopus Regal 200-S skimmer. Has the DC pump and the adjustment valve.

Is it better to run the pump around 40% with valve open more or the pump at about 80% with valve closed more.

I have been running with pump around 40%. It makes skim buy a there is a very narrow bubble line. It often overflows so much that the skim cup is mostly clear, or just barely skims but is super dark. That is rare. It also falls below the skim cup and doesn't skim at all, just aerates the water. I am just wondering if it it is worth messing with it or what other people do. Maybe people don't find a big difference. Thanks for any help in advance.
 
MistakesWereMade said:
Skimmer question.

I have the Reef Octopus Regal 200-S skimmer. Has the DC pump and the adjustment valve.

Is it better to run the pump around 40% with valve open more or the pump at about 80% with valve closed more.

I have been running with pump around 40%. It makes skim buy a there is a very narrow bubble line. It often overflows so much that the skim cup is mostly clear, or just barely skims but is super dark. That is rare. It also falls below the skim cup and doesn't skim at all, just aerates the water. I am just wondering if it it is worth messing with it or what other people do. Maybe people don't find a big difference. Thanks for any help in advance.
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To me those sound like 2 vastly different settings. I would think of running at 40% you would need the output valve closed more to get the head as high as if you had the pump at 80% with the exit valve more open.

I would guess 80% pulls more air. More air is good.

I try to run my skimmer to maintain nutrient levels. So if nitrates are high I’d run it harder and if they are low I run it as dry as possible.
 
Ok, so maybe I had the valve idea backwards. Not sure what I want it set to anyway.
 
Jjdurrant said:
Looks great! What is the PAR where you have the clam? Is that Maximus?
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I forget the clams I have. Neither are a maxima. I think the blue one is a derasa clam. The brown one may also be a derasa. That one us not as noticeable in the picture because the fish is right over it. I have never measured my par so I am unsure. Sits pretty high on the rockwork though.
 
Ok.. yeah I was told that they require lots of light.. Mine is only getting about 200par though and seems fine. But I was reading they may require more than SPS. LOL.
 
It feels as though I have been just fighting things in my tank trying to get it back to having the display looking nice. First, I started with an algae outbreak that I was mildly handling. Then I started battling cyanobactia. I didn't really know what that was until I stumbled across a BRS video. That was easy to treat but then it was back to fighting algae. During the expo I loaded up on snails and hermit crabs. They have been putting in a lot of work slowly taking care of it. Had quite a few die, but trying to be diligent on keeping an eye on them so they are not upside-down. Unfortunately, they uncovered another problem... Aptasia. Uggg... So, I tried killing off a few of them but then others would just appear somewhere else. I couldn't figure out how they were spreading so fast. Then my reefmat roll needed to be replaced.
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Found this huge guy along with maybe a dozen smaller ones. I had a bunch of live rock and bio-balls in the sump. Today I decided it was time for a massive sump clean out day. Took everything out and cleaned it as best as I could.
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I knew I had a couple aptasia in my refugium which is on the back side of the wall. I got a few nudibranchs from the expo so I figured that would take care of that tank. I had not seen anything in my sump before but now I am just going to dry out the rock and bioballs and hold on to them until things clear up. Still weighing options to get the aptasia out of my display. I didn't even bother taking pictures of the display out of frustration.
 
This hobby is such a roller coaster. Sorry it’s been rough man, but I really appreciate you sharing. In this age of instagram tanks, it helps us mere mortals to know we’re not alone. Hopefully it will turn around soon. I’ve heard those nudis can work miracles. Fingers crossed for you.
 
Varig said:
I’ve heard those nudis can work miracles.
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I have now watched a few videos on breading nudis. Looks super easy. One little 10-gallon tank for nudis and another 10-gallon to grow aiptasia. Then I think to myself that I already have 3 tanks and it sounds awful to try and maintain anything beyond that. And if I set up a tank to grow aiptasia, it probably wouldn't!
 
This weekend was busy, and the tank needs a good cleaning so no pictures at this time. Wanting to do a larger water change over my typical AWC of ~3 gallons a day. Mainly to really clean up the sand bed that I can reach but time will tell when I get to that. Also want to get a few things glued in place as my sand is getting covered with items that should get more light.

I did however take some time to run through my testers. Everything gave me numbers that were more in line with something I can expect. Maybe people can chime in a bit and give some suggestions as where to start.

Magnesium: 1455 ppm
Alkalinity: 7.1 dKH
Calcium: 491 ppm
Phosphate: 0.19 ppm
Nitrate: I messed it up and decided not to retry.
Salinity: 1.025
Temp: ~78 F
pH: Using Apex
Screenshot_20240520_093852_APEXFusion.jpg
Lighting schedule:
Screenshot_20240520_094939_ReefBeat.jpg
Blue and Whites turn on at noon with 90-minute ramp. Blues go to 60% and White to 30%.
8PM they go into a 90-minute ramp down and off at 9:30.
Moon lights turn on at 8:30PM off at 11:30PM, on again at 3:30AM off at 7:30AM.
Never measured PAR so just playing a guessing game.

Feeding:
Primary frozen, 3 cubes twice daily. One of each of the following: PE Mysis flatpack, Spirulina Brine Shrimp flatpack, Brine Shrimp cube. Cubes from the flatpacks are fairly generous size but try and keep them pretty similar to what the blister packs are. It may be closer to 4 cubes, but they tend to vary in size. Occasionally I will feed some Omega pellets by hand. I set up auto feeder when I go on vacation with these. I feed corals maybe 1-2 times a month. I will turkey baste goniopower (zooplankton) directly on them. Maybe 1 to 2 times weekly I will do 50-60 ml of phytoplankton.

I do not really do any consistent dosing. I will add 60ml of All-for-Reef by hand. I might do this 2-3 times a week. I have been using caution since I have not been constant with testing. I see my alk is low so I should maybe just focus on bringing that up. Suggestions?

Current Livestock:
Yellow Tang (x2)
Powder Brown Tang (x1)
Blue Hippo Tang (x1)
One Spot Foxface (x1)
Marine Betta (x1)
Lyretail Anthias (x5)
Royal Gramma (x1)
Banggai Cardinalfish (x1)
Lamarck's Angelfish (x1)
Solar Wrasse (x1)
Ocellaris Clownfish (x2)

Fire Shrimp (x1)
Coral Banded Shrimp (x1)
Tuxedo Urchin (x3)
Halloween Hermit Crab (x1)
Various Hermits and snails
 
I measured just my Alkalinity today to see where it is at. It came it at 7.4 dKH. I suppose with my last measurement coming in at 7.1 a few days ago that I would be consistent in that low/mid 7 range. I think I dosed All-For-Reef one time, maybe twice. The online calculator suggests about 50ml/day. I am not sure what the expected range is for that though. Do I just start doing daily dose and keep it going until it falls within a desired range? Should I spread the dosing out over the course of the day, or do I just add it at one time? Currently I have just done all at once by hand. Any help would be appreciated. Should I be using something different? I currently just have the powder form of the AFR, with some premixed.
 
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