Cook's 105 Planet Aquariums Crystaline Reef
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Some new images. Definitely some growth from my last update about 6 weeks ago. The candy canes are splitting unevenly, not sure why at this point. The Pink Floyd frag has lightened up considerably and encrusted the plug somewhat, I lowered it a little in the tank, I was afraid it was bleaching out. I was also given some Bicolor hammer coral. I need different frag plugs, the hermits keep knocking the frags over. I got a couple of unintentional frags of the WWC Slimeball, and I am letting those green back up now that they are upright again. With the large frag is laying on it's side, the entire underside is gray. I'm not going to do anything with the rest until my other system is ready. 
Candy, Dduncan and toadie look really happy! I like taking pictures every few weeks to compare and document growth. I have an urchin, picks up, carries around and knocks over things if they are not glued down really well. 
"And bad mistakes, I've made a few...." It's been a while since I updated this tanks progress. I have been struggling with a collection of algae's for the last two months. This stuff popped up in April and I was able to control it with the chaeto and Chemi Pure Elite. Some of this stuff came in on the rock from my Craigslist purchase of this tank. My main nemesis now is Green Hair Algae which also eventually overtook my chaeto in the sump.
Steps I have taken: I unplugged my T5's, did a 3 day black out, and set the Kessil and the AI Fuge lights to 50% power when I turned them back on. I added BRS high capacity GFO in place of the chaeto. My nitrates and phosphates are consistently 0. I feed pretty light. My protein skimmer is running 24/7. I'm using filter socks and changing 3 times a week. 20% weekly water changes which is what I have been doing since April. My RODI unit is new. I tried a reef cleaner pack online and I now have a roving gang of hermit crabs that attack and eat snails at will which is pretty amazing to witness. I have been doing a lot of scrubbing, sometimes using hydrogen peroxide for the stuff I am willing to remove from the tank. Since these images, I have cleaned the pumps, added a sea hare to the main tank, and a couple of emeralds in the refugium. I have a Tomini in the quarantine tank with a royal gramma for company.
Steps I have taken: I unplugged my T5's, did a 3 day black out, and set the Kessil and the AI Fuge lights to 50% power when I turned them back on. I added BRS high capacity GFO in place of the chaeto. My nitrates and phosphates are consistently 0. I feed pretty light. My protein skimmer is running 24/7. I'm using filter socks and changing 3 times a week. 20% weekly water changes which is what I have been doing since April. My RODI unit is new. I tried a reef cleaner pack online and I now have a roving gang of hermit crabs that attack and eat snails at will which is pretty amazing to witness. I have been doing a lot of scrubbing, sometimes using hydrogen peroxide for the stuff I am willing to remove from the tank. Since these images, I have cleaned the pumps, added a sea hare to the main tank, and a couple of emeralds in the refugium. I have a Tomini in the quarantine tank with a royal gramma for company.
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Wow! What a battle. Sounds like you've done a lot of work to combat it. I have only ever had a few small outbreaks of hair algea and cutting it short was all I needed to do to make it easier for my snails and hermits and urchin, to be able to handle it..and cut back on feeding and lowered lights. Over time ,with faithful maintainace, it was defeated. But I never had it in masses as you discribe.The sea hair, I hear, should really help. Hang in there. I'm sure others will have some good advice to help. As I see this alot on hear posted as an issue.
How much longer before you can toss that tang in the main display? He should help control your algae. Just don't give him any seaweed for a while, so he's forced to eat algae on the rocks.
I am only 12 days in on the quarantine. So far he's fine and eating.
Eric_n_Ga
Well-Known Member
Algae is the devil . I've been doing this same stuff for months . It's exhausting. I too have hermit crab street gang problems . I've had to excile a few of the over aggressive ones. I started spot treating with peroxide in the tank and scrubbing with a tooth brush . Finally winning the battle.
Here is a full tank shot. Things are looking pretty good, the GHA is mostly contained within my refugium and overflow. I've been spot scrubbing the in tank clumps that pop up. The Tomini and royal gramma are all settled in and the Tomini is definitely helping. I still can't rid myself of the Kenya tree that came in on a rock almost a year ago. I keep removing it and it keeps coming right back. I did have one casualty while I was out of town. The royal gramma displaced my fire fish causing some angst. I came home to a dried out firefish stuck in the netting of my screen top. If you notice also, the tops of my slimeball frags are white. I'm pretty sure this is the work of the Valentini. The slimeball frags in my RS 170 are not like this.
So, 8 months since the last update. I now have 6 rainbow bubble tips I need to do something about. Pretty much everything has grown. There are a few additions here and there. I didn't realize how lucky I was with our lawnmower blenny until he disappeared and I tried to replace him. The first one was an omnivore. The other two from what I can tell starved to death. They just wouldn't eat. I'm losing the algae war it's a short turflike variety. I have Flux Rx up next for that one. I've removed all adsorption media and still barely registering nitrate and phosphate. I'm sure that will change soon.
That torch looks awesome and those bubble tips are like aiptasia, keep multiplying. Thanks for updates, looks great !
I feel ya on the bubble tips. I have spent the last 3 months removing 6 of em from my 9p0 bowfront. Only 4 more to go :angery:
I've been battling algae for a long time and I'm losing. It's time for a reset. So...this is either going to go just how I intend it to or a giant I told you so and everyone will get some sweet tank and equipment deals from me shortly. We have some new furniture coming in about two weeks which provides an opportunity to treat this like a move and pull everything out and put it back in a better state. I'm not going to try to get every strand of algae there is, just the majority of it and then I'll give flux RX another shot to try to really minimize it once I'm sure the tank has stabilized again.
I also want a chance for a redo on planning for my snowflake eel, so I have put together a PVC tunnel system that the existing live rock will sit on top of. I need a couple of 3D printed supports, but otherwise it should hold everything well. I completely drained and cleaned my sump a month ago to prepare for this so that it would have time to recover before I take the next step.
I'll cut to the chase, I was successful. A complete tank teardown and rebuild with no issues, just a great deal of personal pain. Not a moment too soon either as our new furniture arrives Saturday. I've been following and reading the rip clean threads on R2R, so that's what I will document here. I'm going to start with two images of where the tank was on Sunday before I got started. Keep in mind that I wanted to deal with several issues, not just the GHA problem, but unwanted green zoas, RBTA's all over the place, and the eel without a home problem.
I separated the fish, live rock, and corals. I have to say that all the rock was pretty clean with not much detritus until I got to the bottom. The rocks were spot treated with hydrogen peroxide and a toothbrush. Rather than trying to use kalk paste on the zoas, I split the rock in half. Nature will always find a way, there was a polyp also on the underside of a flat rock that was on the bottom.
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I needed to supplement the existing sand, so I was able to rinse the new bag ahead of time which made me over confident. The sand when new is relatively easy to rinse. However, no matter how much I rinsed, I was never able to make the water run perfectly clear, just a slight haze remaining with each rinse that stopped diminishing. However, the substrate granules dropped without any clouding as described in the instruction thread. I did about 1/3 of a 20 pound bag at a time. Within the tank, once I got down to the sand, it was pretty filthy. I did not plan enough time for this step, so I was outside still rinsing sand at 2am. I used two buckets and rinsed approximately 2-3 pounds at a time using a hose to really stir the sand up. While one bucket was draining, I was rinsing the other one.
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