Reef #2 - The Unplanned Upgrade (1 Viewer)

[Varig]

I planted all the rest of the coral I had in QT (asterisk to follow). Polyps were out nicely today.

Mostly blues in the AM:



And under more full light in the afternoon:


Now that all the coral is in I’m going to start ramping up the lights further. Top of rocks is in the 150 range, with all the acros I’m going to get that closer to 250-300.

Fingers crossed.

Now the asterisk. I broke off part of the growth from the green montipora hirsuta. I also have a Kenya tree that fragged itself and is now 2-3” tall. So, if anyone is interested in either for free let me know. I’ll also get them posted on FIF.

 

[Varig]

Wow, I’ve very much slacked off on updates for a while. Time to set that record straight. Given the time of year and that the tank is now just over a year old, I think a “year in review.” Makes sense. But since I get wordy….here is the TLDR.


I made some mistakes. I did some stuff better. Here is a current picture of the tank:



Here is a little video of the tank:



Now, for the details.

In the last post I had added a bunch of SPS and things seemed good. Well…that lasted about 2 days (not quite). When I added all the coral my nitrate/phosphate were still a little higher than a wanted, but it was coming down. The ATS seemed to finally be taking off, all good. NOPE. I think between the extra uptake from the corals and the ATS taking off, my nutrients took a dive and before I knew it they were 0, 0. And then…yes campers, you know what’s next. Dino time……. The sand started to get brown and crappy. I knew that it almost definitely wasn’t diatoms since the tank was ~10 months old. So I took a microscope slide and sure enough, it was LCA Dino’s.

Thankfully (I must be a masochist…) I had dealt with a similar type of Dino’s before in my last tank, so I knew I could beat them. I also knew it would take awhile. I started dosing silica (to induce a diatom bloom and outcompete the Dino’s) and I worked on getting my nutrients up. At first I thought I could do that with added feeding. Then I reduced the photoperiod a little on the ATS. Well…long story short I didn’t listen to @spsick soon enough and I messed around for 4-5 weeks trying to get phosphates off of zero. Clearly one of the mistakes. Finally I got properly serious, I totally removed the ATS and dosed NeoPhos MUCH heavier, multiple times per day, to finally get them to come off zero.

In that time I definitely suffered some coral setbacks. I was running carbon so I don’t think the Dino toxins did it. But I do think the SPS was NOT happy with the zero phosphate levels. I lost 3-4 acro frags and several others were looking pretty bad (no PE, etc.). But, after I got the phosphate to start reading on the test kit again, the remaining acros started to turn around. I started seeing polyps again. And another month or so later saw even some new growth. VERY exciting.

But not the end of the Dino battle. In this time I also finally installed my Ozotech ozone generator (BRS had some anecdotal evidence that it might help with Dino’s, and I had it anyway, figured I may was well use it for water quality and to remove Dino toxins). And I also finally setup my Avast Plank Autofeeder. I’m still trying to dial in the autofeeder, but I’m excited to have something to help with consistency of feeding (as I try to balance my nutrients). And it works great for melting frozen food. Spoiler...the Ozone didn't just eradicate the dinos...sad.

Regarding Ozone, I do think the water clarity is improving. That being said, the one thing I’m less certain about is whether it is impacting my hammers and LPS in general. After adding the ozone it seems like my LPS is SUPER puffy. Like almost engorged? @BlindSwordsman thought it looked a little off at my meeting, and I can’t disagree. But they’ve been still seeming to grow these past ~2 months since it’s been online…so maybe the two aren’t related? If someone has thoughts let me know.




Also in this time period, since I was adding acros, I was looking again at my PAR/lighting levels. Talking again with Ben, we decided my PAR levels were too low with the old settings, so I worked on ramping my T5s up to 100% as well as increasing my LED output to try to get the mid/top of rock up in the 275-300PAR range. I may still go a little higher but this is better than where I was. Here is the current PAR map.



As I mentioned, things were more or less seeming to go “ok,” but I definitely wasn’t seeing anything that could be described as fast growth. I’d see a little growth on my monti cap, a little on a leptoseris, etc. But a thing that continued to vex me was my monti digi and purple stylo. I thought those were supposed to be “easy” SPS, “grows like a weed”, etc. etc. I had great color and PE on both frags, but they NEVER grew. No white tips, Just totally stagnant. I guess in some respects I’m glad I had those frags, because it was these that led to one of the big findings for the year.

In discussing PAR/intensity with @spsick he asked the million dollar question, “What’s your lighting schedule again?” I’m honestly not sure how it happened, or if I did it for some purpose that I can’t describe, but I was running my T5s for only ~5 hrs per day at max intensity (with a ramp up and down) and then my LEDs for 3-4 hrs per day at a stair step intensity (like David Saxby). Long story short, I was testing all these PAR levels at the “max max” intensity, but my tank was actually seeing that much light for a VERY short period of time. And overall the amount of time the light was staying at any significant intensity was way too short. Ben made me promise that I when I got home from Ken’s meeting I would increase the T5 period to 8 hrs of max intensity, then further increase it to 10 hrs 2 weeks later. I did as I was told and boy oh boy, I can't believe the difference it made. Within 2 days I had to increase my kalkwasser dose by ~50%. Now I'm at 70% higher from when I increased the photoperiod (about 2 weeks later). I just turned the lights up to 10 hrs today actually...so I'll be keeping an eye on it incase it goes up even further. But...yowza. And...yea, the purple stylo is growing...already:



I still can't quite believe it, but all the tips are very obviously white, and I can see new translucent polyps. So I'm pretty sure (very?) that it's not a bleaching thing. I'm also seeing growth tips on the monti digi, and some clear new growth on some of the acro frags. So....woot? Thanks Ben... I'm clearly super excited about the growth, but also super annoyed that I didn't know to do it sooner. I'm convincing myself that the good news is that the lower light allowed the tank to get more established, rocks covered in coralline, etc., so now I'll have less algae problems than if the lights were full blast from the start? Here's hoping.

One downside...the extra growth tanked my nitrate/phosphate to zero again....BLECH. But I immediately upped the dosing on that to get that back in control within days, instead of weeks.

I "think" that's the main stuff for the display. Overall I'm really happy that we found some smoking guns, and the tank seems to be doing okay.

I know this is getting extra long, so I'll just make a few additional comments. First, there are a few changes coming for the coral QT tank. Primarily, I'm getting it out of the corner where it was buried to make maintenance etc. easier. I took some time on Christmas break here to build a new stand for the tank.



I've got space underneath for the ATO bucket, kalk, etc. and the area on the left is where I'm going to build some shelves for the controller. I also added the extra countertop area so I have a nice spot for dipping/inspecting frags. I was able to pickup that piece of corian countertop cheap on FB Marketplace, I think the overall thing turned out great. I also acquired a few new frags from @spsick and @BlindSwordsman




Okay, last thing, I promise. And this is more for me, some goals for 2025.

1) Finish the dino battle (fingers crossed)
2) Try out dosing ammonium bicarbonate (instead of NeoNitro) to boost Nitrates (when needed)
3) Try out dosing Tropic Marin Phos Feed (instead of NeoPhos) to directly add organic phosphate (instead of inorganic) to help with phosphate levels/coral feeding
4) Fully stabilize the nutrients in the display tank (hopefully the end of dinos for David...)
5) NOT kill the 5x acro frags I purchased from R2R which should be arriving in early January. BUT, I'll make a post later when those arrive so I can share some pictures.
6) Get 1 or 2 more fish (still need to decide what I want)

Merry Christmas to all my reefing nerds. And Happy New Year!

 

[spsick]

but I do at least know how much T5 light sps need haha

 

[Varig]

Yes indeed. That you do my friend.

 

[Varig]

Forgot to post a picture, but got the QT tank moved to the new stand:



As part of the transfer I finally setup the Ranco temp controller (instead of an inkbird). Both were set at 78degF with a 1 degree allowable temp swing. But the difference in control is pretty shocking:

Inkbird:


Ranco:


I am feeling like the 75watt heater is oversized, since it’s only a 2 hour peak to peak cycle. So might need to do something there. But I’m much happier with the 1 degree temp swing.


Beyond that, I did try dosing some phos-feed in my display tank, but it “seems” like it fed the Dino’s. So I’ve gone back to neophos and will use that until the Dino battle is over.

I did an ICP on the display tank, and things look really good now. Major and minor elements seem good, and my phosphate is officially not zero. So I’ll keep up my neophos dosing.

It’s so strange to me how different our tanks can be. Some folks (myself included on my first tank) struggle so much to keep phosphate down. Whereas on this tank I’m dosing phosphate daily and nitrate every few days to keep them from bottoming out. I guess whatever. I’m just happy to have the nutrients settled for now. Hopefully we can get those Dino’s killed sooner than later.

 

[Varig]

The weather warmed up enough that the corals I bought before Christmas were able to be shipped. Got these from a guy on R2R.



Front left - Blue Hoeksemai
Back one row - Copps calacali stag
Next front - BC Bonsai Humilis,
Middle - BC Skinny Love V2
Next to the right - UC Strawberry Shortcake
Far right - BC Ultimate table

There are some others in there, namely a heartbreaker and orange passion from @spsick, a birdsnest and green leptoseris from @BlindSwordsman, and a green monti hirsuta (a frag broke off the main one when I moved it to the display, so if someone was interested we could work something out).

There are a couple more smaller frags of the BC Ultimate table down the left side. The guy was super honest about the frags, saying he noticed a little recession, so he wanted to include a second frag incase the first was not doing well. Which I appreciated.

Anyway, let the QT period begin! Should be ready by the expo….

 

[reef junkie]

Looks nice a nice haul.

 

[Varig]

I'm pretty jazzed. And super happy with the size of frags from Tim. None of these "nubs" that seem to be so common these days.

 

[spsick]

Those brown turds in the back are from me?? What did you do to them??

 

[Varig]

Eek. Hopefully it’s just a bad picture. I feel like the heartbreaker has some color. Less so on the orange passion. I think it’s possible the light intensity is too low in that tank still. As we had discussed. That could lead some Browning, right? Probably time to get that par meter sooner than later.

 

[BlindSwordsman]

@Varig: I think you and I can not compare to the master of SPS. You are browning out your stuff. I myself is whitening/bleaching out mines right now. So, I think I have come up with the solution: We can join force and you can throw your browned out stuff into my tank, and I throw my bleached out stuff into yours, and that would probably even things out .. Or maybe it will completely kill them but that will definitely resolve the issues!!!

 

[Varig]

hahah, nice. We should consider this Ken.

In terms of PAR, the last time I measured this tank it was ~200 in the center, but that was when my racks were 3-4” lower. Hence the need to measure again. But also why I wasn’t SUPER concerned. But I know I’m somewhere between 200-300. Or at least I think I am. Again…hence the need to test.

I’m also currently using a little AI Prime 16HD but picked up a GHL Mitras LX7. Totally overkill for my qt tank….but I have it. So the plan will be to swap the lights, reset up the intensity, and try to un-ruin Ben’s frags

 

[spsick]

200 is totally fine and really you want a bit lower PAR for a QT tank. The concern is a prime is such a point source light that could be more like 50mmol in parts of the tank.

A blanket of light from that Mitras set low would be infinitely better.

 

[Varig]

100% agree. The spread seemed okay with the par test, but for sure it’s easy for the coral to shadow itself. So the mitras will be way better.

Coming soon to a qt tank near me

 

[Varig]

It was hard for me to get a picture of it, but this made me laugh last night:



My urchin has 100% bedazzled himself with a little broken off chunk of Mr. Freeze leptoseris. I was looking in the tank and couldn’t understand why the “rock” on the urchin’s back was swaying in the flow. Yea…

I guess now it’s the question of do I be a big meanie and steal his hat? Or wonder where I’ll have a new colony of leptoseris planted without my knowledge…

 

[asifiqbal2]

Hat looks good on him

 

[Varig]

Quick update from me. The Dino battle continues…hooray. Several months back it seemed like I was only weeks away from winning, then I don’t know what happened, but they came back with a vengeance. The only thing I did different was to try replacing my neophos dosing with tropic Marin phosfeed. I do NOT know that was the cause, but the timing was similar. I went back to neophos (now diy trisodium phosphate). Will try phosfeed again well after the Dino’s are gone.

I did end up purchasing 3x Dispar anthias from Jeff at The Fishotel. I was a bit nervous at first if some bullying by the tomini tang. But that seems to have subsided and everyone appears to more or less get along. They’re out everyday, aggressively feeding, so that’s good. Those first few weeks they sort of stayed out of the fray at feeding times, but now they jump in. Fingers crossed for a long, happy life.



The only other big change is that I finally replaced my Inkbird with an IM Helio temp controller. The Inkbird just had too many “weird” things happen. Like randomly not updating temperature for 8-10 hrs, then when it did update it would have changed 2 degrees. Sometimes the only way to get it going again was a power cycle. Etc. It wasn’t worth worrying about more, so I took the recommendation of folks here and got the Helio. I set it to control to the same temperature and well, I guess see if you can tell the difference from the Inkbird to the Helio:



Those have the same temperature set points and range (0.5degrees). Technically I only set the inkbird that tight because it was the only way to even maintain that 2 degree swing. But the Helio is so good that I actually would prefer to open up the range some, but from what I see it’s not an option. The other point, in full disclosure, is with the Inkbird I had the inkbird probe before the heater chamber, but the ghl temp probe (data above) was in the same chamber as the heater. I moved all the probes as part of the swap to be upstream of the heaters. So I do expect that was at least part of the “tops” of those temp swings, since that chamber may have been getting hotter before the inkbird saw those temps. But for sure it doesn’t account for the full swing.

Beyond that, I have some frags that are just finishing up QT, so I hope to plant those in the display this week. Primary goals are just to get the stupid Dino’s under control, then enjoy the tank.

 

[spsick]

Fish and tank look great! Much less snotty looking dinos than I envisioned.

 

[Varig]

Ha, that was probably right after a water change or something .

In fairness, these Dino’s aren’t crazy snotty. They’re just ugly on the sand. This might show it better.



Still not horrifying. And it’s only really only the sand. So for sure could be worse.

Baby steps.

 

[asifiqbal2]

Lookin good David.
Question, how do you cross reference/calibrate the temp.