Thinking of a reboot

[joeyprice]

Tank has been up for about 2 years now, but never quite got to where I want it. It has gotten to the point where it irritates me, definately not what I was going for. All my rock has sort of a 'fuzz' growing on it and the vermetids and spirobids are driving me crazy. Somehow I have managed to stay in front of the Aiptasia but this is for sure not the direction I want to be going. I have been pretty good about water changes but there was a point where I my house was being worked on I was unable to do basic maintenance for quite a while.
I have been thinking about rebooting it, but there is a bit of livestock in there I'd like to keep and I'm afraid it will all die off if I do anything too drastic. Should I go in stages, like removing a little of the sand bed at a time, I'm afraid its just generating nitrates.

 

[AWarnick]

Joey, I think I know where your mind is at but I think you might lose a ton of beneficial stuff that you did get in that two years. This reminds me of the times when I feel there should be a home "Call the tank doctor" service where some ARC volunteers coming in and do some analysis of water quality, water flow, filtration, par, visual observation and write a "prescription" to a get you on a better path to reefing happiness. Without those things I will give you my thumb in the air recommendations for now.

1) You seem to hint that you think the sand might be a problem, is that based on it looking dirty or difficulty controlling nitrates and phosphates? If this seems like a giant muck trap I can of course suggest some corrective vacuuming of the sand bed. Not sure what your water volume is but doing 10 gallons vacuuming out detritius every 3 days would get you in a better state in a couple of weeks. I also thin your idea of thinning the sand bed a little can lessen the trap and reduce your maintenance load, especially if you have a 2 year old tank. I would just say go slow on that for the sake of all the good bacteria in that sand bed that might be holding off a lot worse water quality issues.

2) I can definitely sympathize with your spirorbid worm complaints. While everyone says these are ok I am finding they may be causing problems for my zoas. Scraping can get a few but if yours are like mine it seems like a losing battle. I am contemplating getting a smaller wrasse to keep the population down. I love my wrasses in my basement aquarium and don't seem to have many if any worms in that tank. My only concerns are all my snails, Harlequin shrimp, peppermint shrimp, and having to put a net on the top of the tank.

3) For the Vermedids bumblebee snails apparently work along with some manual removal. I would suspect a wrasse would have quite a bit to say to these snails when they put out their nets.

4) As for the 'fuzz' you might consider some more and different algae eaters, what do you have today?

I hope this helps but happy to support whatever direction you go in. I know the maintenance on a tank that doesn't look like you hoped becomes a real chore. Good luck

 

[joeyprice]

I could definately use a tank doctor.

The sand is black, so its hard to tell if it looks dirty or not. I vacuum it when I do water changes, but there are areas I just can't get to. My PO4 came back at ,03 on my last Hanna test, didn't seem crazy, and Nitrates where around 10, but that was after a water change.
I put some bumble bee snails in there not long ago, but haven't seen them in foreve. They were tiny, so I can't evel tell if thye're still in there.. At one time I had a ton of snails of different kinds but they had a mass die off and I was never able to figure out why, they never did anything for the white/gray fuzz on the rock anyway. Could it be bacteria?

I want to drop a wrasse in because after lights out it looks like I'm running a bristle worm habitat, but my previous 2 jumped as I don't have a lid. Not sure where these damn worms came from, I religiously dipped EVERYTHING I put in there with CoralRx.

Its all very depressing, and things get to this point its hard to find motivation to do anything to the tank.

 

[SaltwaterGardening]

I could definately use a tank doctor.

The sand is black, so its hard to tell if it looks dirty or not. I vacuum it when I do water changes, but there are areas I just can't get to. My PO4 came back at ,03 on my last Hanna test, didn't seem crazy, and Nitrates where around 10, but that was after a water change.
I put some bumble bee snails in there not long ago, but haven't seen them in foreve. They were tiny, so I can't evel tell if thye're still in there.. At one time I had a ton of snails of different kinds but they had a mass die off and I was never able to figure out why, they never did anything for the white/gray fuzz on the rock anyway. Could it be bacteria?

I want to drop a wrasse in because after lights out it looks like I'm running a bristle worm habitat, but my previous 2 jumped as I don't have a lid. Not sure where these damn worms came from, I religiously dipped EVERYTHING I put in there with CoralRx.

Its all very depressing, and things get to this point its hard to find motivation to do anything to the tank.

I know we started in this hobby at the same time. I too have similar situation, so maybe there is seasonality involved (or age). Maybe it doesn’t bother me as much as my husband if that’s a common element.

My melanarus wrasse doesn’t touch my vermetid snails I manually controlled originally, but picked up a light/white variety that is hard to see! I do see my bumblebee snails around the tank, but I don’t know if they eat anything. I had a banded shrimp in the tank and arrow crab in the sump, but both eat bristleworms well. I occasionally lift rocks during maintenance and remove with gigantic tweezers any bristles I see.

As for the fuzz, I have something growing too. It’s not hair algae based on what I’ve seen, but not sure what it is. Relatively light/clear in color and doesn’t have leaf structure as I can tell. I have plenty of hermits of varying sizes, but feel my snail population has died off as well. Need to add a few more if anyone has banded trochus snails!

You’re welcome to stop by and compare tanks, or Joe and I can come visit you too!

 

[Cook]

Here's the question, are you willing to start another tank and quarantine everything from your existing tank to resolve the issues that are keeping you from fully enjoying the one you have? Not only that, but strictly quarantine everything from that point forward?

I'm dealing with vermitids in my frag tank and I can't undo it short of starting over. I cured some new rocks in a trash can for a few months and swapped out all my vermitid covered rocks and cleaned every frag I could find to try to eliminate them, but still they persist. It only takes one of any of these pests to wreak havoc even when you are careful, so let's say you start over, it's a long haul to get back to where you are where you are only one small unseen pest away from having a similar result.

I have GHA in my display and I can beat it back, but it returns about once a year and I do not feed aggressively. I have vermitids in that tank too, but they have died back so there is hope that something similar will happen to the frag system. These challenges are unfortunately part of the hobby and there is a steep learning curve.

Also, I would not recommend removing the sandbed from an exiting tank. BRS did that on one of theirs and ultimately posted a video detailing the issues they had afterwards that caused them to regret it.

 

[joeyprice]

I know we started in this hobby at the same time. I too have similar situation, so maybe there is seasonality involved (or age). Maybe it doesn’t bother me as much as my husband if that’s a common element.

My melanarus wrasse doesn’t touch my vermetid snails I manually controlled originally, but picked up a light/white variety that is hard to see! I do see my bumblebee snails around the tank, but I don’t know if they eat anything. I had a banded shrimp in the tank and arrow crab in the sump, but both eat bristleworms well. I occasionally lift rocks during maintenance and remove with gigantic tweezers any bristles I see.

As for the fuzz, I have something growing too. It’s not hair algae based on what I’ve seen, but not sure what it is. Relatively light/clear in color and doesn’t have leaf structure as I can tell. I have plenty of hermits of varying sizes, but feel my snail population has died off as well. Need to add a few more if anyone has banded trochus snails!

You’re welcome to stop by and compare tanks, or Joe and I can come visit you too!

Does your fuzz look like this? Its not my pic, but mine looks just like this. It doesn't seem to be getting any better or worse, just always there. I had a period where I was unable to do any maintenance on the tank, it was barricaded by a huge pile of furniture from another room while we were having some work done and I lost a few frags as a result.

I can't get these worms out with tweezers, they are EVERYWHERE after the lights go out, pressed up against the glass in the sand. I really need to get something in there to start eating some of them and the vermetids are all over the place. I guess I'll just have to start breaking them off because I'm not ready or willing to start over. Cooks post mentioned everything I was thinking about as potential problems, but was kind of hoping wouldn't be as bad as I was imagining.

I have moved to a day shift job, so I'm not asleep every waking hour of every day, we will have to get you and Joe up here some time soon!

 

[york1]

 

[SaltwaterGardening]

Does your fuzz look like this? Its not my pic, but mine looks just like this. It doesn't seem to be getting any better or worse, just always there. I had a period where I was unable to do any maintenance on the tank, it was barricaded by a huge pile of furniture from another room while we were having some work done and I lost a few frags as a result.

I can't get these worms out with tweezers, they are EVERYWHERE after the lights go out, pressed up against the glass in the sand. I really need to get something in there to start eating some of them and the vermetids are all over the place. I guess I'll just have to start breaking them off because I'm not ready or willing to start over. Cooks post mentioned everything I was thinking about as potential problems, but was kind of hoping wouldn't be as bad as I was imagining.

I have moved to a day shift job, so I'm not asleep every waking hour of every day, we will have to get you and Joe up here some time soon!

Definitely not like the photo for my tank, and I’m no expert, but I usually consider water changes, black outs, or dosing bacteria. Your water parameters might suggest some obvious needs.

I would try a black out and UV light. If you haven’t changed your bulb recently, do that during the 3 day black out. If blackout works, then you know it relies on the light. It hopefully will enter water column and get zapped by UV. If not that, we can explore other things like bacteria dosing before you get your hands in the tank.

 

[joeyprice]

I have a UV, it IS due for a new bulb, but this stuff was there when it was new. I have not tried a blackout, I guess that is next on the list. I've been down the bacteria dosing road, it didn't seem to have an effect.

 

[joeyprice]

A guy that has a similar problem to mine put his under a microscope. I know its a bad idea to not use samples from MY tank, but just out of curiosity, can anybody ID this?
Maybe one of you sciencey types from Tech.

 

[joeyprice]

Showed it around at work and everybody says fungus, but that was about all they could tell me. Going to try for a more detailed ID and see if maybe fluconazole will help. Off to pathology