Reef #2 - The Unplanned Upgrade (1 Viewer)

[spsick]

FWIW it looks like the brown diatom phase to me. Dinos look more like snot usually.

If it’s dinos omg you poor guy! Time to take the ATS offline and get some real live rock of it is sheesh!!

Are you vacuuming the sand during water changes?

 

[Varig]

I haven’t been doing sand vacuums during water changes because I thought I read to let things be undisturbed for several months as the biome gets established. Then start vacuuming. So I’ve actually being doing water changes from the manifold. Last time I sand vacuumed from week 1 and you know the issues I had…so I’m trying new things. But perhaps disturbing some is the right path. I’ll vacuum a section tonight on weekly maintenance night and see what happens.

Also, on a lighter note, I had my daughter watch the other side of the tank when I fed some frozen tonight and we have a confirmed sighting of the dottyback! It came out and got several pieces of mysis before retreating to her rock structure cave. A good sign for sure.

 

[Varig]

It’s very fast, but living proof.



It was great to see him/her getting comfortable enough to actually come and swim around in the display today. Still skittish, but a huge step from never seeing it/hiding under a rock the duration of QT.

It’s also awesome how much the extra fish have really livened up the movement in the tank. The tangs are always cruising around, the two colorful wrasses (and hopefully the dottyback more and more) and then the two “funny” swimmers in the long nose hawk and the starry blenny. I still think fish stress me out, but these guys are adding fun for the moment. (Realizing I just jinxed myself).

 

[Varig]

One more small step on the build done, hood painted and installed.



I’m really happy with the look. And the light spill reduction is great.

No other major updates. The fish all seem to be getting along. Coral seems to be growing. I am concerned that 2 months in I still have brown on the sand. Doesn’t seem like the “here and then gone” of diatoms. I suppose it’s time for a microscope sample instead of living in denial for 6 months like last time.

I am noticing coralline growth on the rocks though, that’s a really great feeling that things are moving forward at least. Take the wins where I can.

 

[reef junkie]

It all looks very nice.

 

[spsick]

David we need an update, I’m on the edge of my seat here!

Are they dinos??

Is the Slimer frag doing better??

Find out next week on This Old Reef!

 

[Varig]

Haha. Well, I actually am having a pretty sad day on the reef. I got back from Ben’s meeting and didn’t see my McKoskers wrasse, which was strange. He’s been so out and about and active. Well…





I’m doubly annoyed with myself because I actually looked at him and made the conscious decision that he was larger than the mesh size. And I’m triply mad at myself because I have a brand new Red Sea screen mesh kit (with 1/4” mesh) that I just haven’t gotten around to building yet. Despite having had it for a couple months. I hate killing things. Especially such a beautiful fish. So…yea.

Beyond that, I actually didn’t get around to taking a microscope image this week. I have been vacuuming the sand these past 2-3 weeks and it helps for a time, but the area does get covered again. And looks a little slimey. This week I’ll try to take a slide.

On a positive note, the slimer frag is actually looking pretty great. The skin is back green, even in areas that had gone more or less totally white. The PE is good. And I might even convince myself it has started to base out a little onto the rock I glued it to. So clearly I’m excited about that. But the fish loss is tough. Again…I really don’t like killing stuff. Especially when it was totally preventable. Blarg.

 

[spsick]

Gahhh bummer man!

I‘d have made the same judgement call on his size so don’t beat yourself up too much.

 

[Varig]

A picture to confirm the health of the slimer (you saw the earlier state, I hope you agree with my assessment.



And a few new pretties from my man @nox.rupaw

 

[Varig]

Do you concur? I need a positive vibe

 

[spsick]

Do you concur? I need a positive vibe

Yes unquestionably improved!!

 

[Varig]

Thanks for your sage advice. For those that are curious, I found the picture from a month ago:



The qt tank had all blues (no cool white) as a holdover from when I had Dino’s in that tank. It hadn’t been an issue with other corals, but Ben thought it might be part of the reason the green slimer was unhappy. I have been slowly turning up the whites over the past 3.5 weeks to get back to an AB+ sort of spectrum. Super glad the coral is doing better. At least it won’t jump out of the tank

 

[Varig]

Well friends, it's official. I'm the proud owner of.....dinos.
View attachment IMG_3929.MOV


Hooray. I'm thinking they're SCA, which means carbon and UV, but I posted over on Mack's Reef to get a firm identification. If it is SCA this will be a new one for me (have dealt with ostreopsis and prorocentrum in the past), so I don't know how bad they will be to get rid of. I know the ostreopsis was WAAAAY easier to clear up than prorocentrum because they go into the water column at night. And allegedly SCA does similar. So I"m cautiously optimistic that perhaps by turning on my UV I will be able to kill them off. We shall see.


Beyond that though, I'm still really happy with the new tank, coral is growing, fish are eating, the yellow tang is really starting to color up (it was a biota tang, so pretty translucent when I got him). And the acros in the QT tank are looking MUCH better. I'm also seeing coralline growing all over the rock in the DT. So, take the wins where you can I guess.

 

[spsick]

Gahh dinos LOVE you David :-/

Guess checking a couple weeks ago would have gave you confirmation but at least things haven’t gone downhill.

It sounds like the tank is doing well otherwise so that’s a plus. I thought you were already running the UV so hopefully that knocks them right out!

 

[Varig]

Meh, it is what it is. I don’t think the couple weeks made any difference. They aren’t really any worse than 2 weeks ago, if anything the sand is cleaner with the siphoning in weekly water changes and the conch is out and about more (hopefully the Dino’s don’t poison him). But it wasn’t getting substantially better, so I figured I should check.

Re: UV, I decided to leave it off as the bacteria got established so as to not scrub the water clean. Whelp, now it turns on .

 

[Varig]

Still lots to do, but minor update for the tank, I finally setup my kalkwasser on a doser. I wasn't necessarily too annoyed with the daily 2part dosing to keep things in line, but we're going on vacation for a week over spring break, so it's time to get some of that base level automation setup .

Got a few more things to get done before I will feel comfortable leaving, but it's still coming along nicely I think.

Regarding the dinos, I haven't started the proper treatment yet (which is sodium silicate dosing). Maybe just typing this will be enough push to actually just suck it up and do it.....I'll brb

 

[Varig]

Okay, I finally got brave enough (this weekend, in the daytime, when I had plenty of time to fix it if I broke it worse, after getting the new overflow box in hand ), to clean off the salt creep from the emergency overflow outlet to see if I could see what was going on. Here it was mostly cleaned up:



You can maybe see there is a small seam or mold line on this part. Well, I waited 4-5 hours and saw this:



And then now ~2 days later this:



So I'm happy to see that it is NOT coming from further up, where I expected. I will admit that a leak here is a little vexing to me since this is the emergency overflow, there isn't any water in there continuously. So I don't know how water is consistently getting that far down the fitting such that it can be dripping. But it must be a pretty darn small leak. Any advice from you guys on the best fix? I still think a little acrylic solvent weld/glue might be a good option. But curious if you have other thoughts?

 

[MistakesWereMade]

Judging by the pictures you posted on Jan 17th, it looks like this pipe is not supported in any way. This means every time it gets bumped you are adding stress at the overflow box. Looks like it resulted in cracking the overflow box, unless that is a bulkhead. It is hard to tell how far up the crack goes but the salt creep managed to make it all the way to the box.

Without replacing the overflow box, you may be able to use a fiberglass mesh and epoxy. While epoxy may be enough to stop it from leaking, the fiberglass would provide some extra strength to the epoxy. Is it possible to add some support piece to hold the pipe in place to prevent future issues?

 

[Varig]

Good thought. Yes, it's 100% possible to support it. I will admit that my original plan was to fully support all 3 pipes (I actually bought the brackets for it). But when I first was setting it up, it was holding the overflow away from the back of the tank and causing a minor leak. So then I frankly got lazy. I was the third owner of the tank and neither previous owner had attached them, so I figured it was fine. Alas for my lazyiness. OR maybe I'm just too rough under the tank .

I like the mesh/epoxy idea. I will look into that. I'm also going to figure out a way to put those brackets on there to support them. At this point, it's silly not to.

 

[Mathew0]

I can't see the crack, but if it's in the acrylic you might be able to just use acrylic glue. It wicks it's way into cracks and such. You'd have to make sure it's empty and dry first, tho.