Yachaq

Awesome. Thanks!

Thanks! Already have one in the mail . Also reading about rotifer culture. I have been culturing phyto, copepods and brine shrimp for a few months now. I am expecting that rotifers should not be that much more difficult.

Just walked by the tank to see the male being very protective of an area in the overflow corner. There are hundreds of tiny orange eggs attached to the substrate and the wall. This hobby.....Once you think you have a grasp of it, it throws you a curve ball. Now I need to read about clownfish breeding!!! Any suggestions WAMAS?

Looks great!! I have a Willow Leather and it is very temperamental. Being a beginner, I did not know what the "debris" I found from time to time at the base of the coral were, but your post made me realize that Mr. Willow was doing this from time to time. Borneman's book on Corals has an interesting description of this behavior.

+1

Three emerald crabs worked for my bubble algae issues.

I am currently using it to get rid of hair algae. It took 5 weeks at twice a week dose as recommended by the manufacturer, but the algae (and the cheato in the reactor ) disappeared. As others have mentioned, there is a cyano after-effect for some tanks which I am currently going through, trying not to use chemiclean...we'll see. Overall happy with the results as the hair algae had overtaken the tank and the urchins, lawnmower blenny and foxface were not doing much to reduce it.

I am not aware of carbon producing such a drastic change in corals. How are the other corals doing? Did anything else change? Have you checked the water parameters?

Only zonas? I don’t have any

Found this little fella on the back wall of my DT. No idea how it came from but most have been a tiny tiny starfish in one frag that was missed by the dip. It is now around 3/4". Any idea if good or bad?

Welcome to WAMAS!!! This is a fantastic group of people with lots of advice.

Yes. As @fellterrier has mentioned, diatoms will go away when the silicates in the system are depleted and can not sustain the diatom population. People do it both ways. I personally left the lights on to go through the "uglies" face as soon as possible. Since you have some CUC now, I would leave them on to not mess their day/night cycle IMO.

What a beautiful mature display. Amazing colonies and beautiful fish. Congratulations!!

What are your goals for the system? Are you aiming to keep SPS corals at some point? and above all, what is your budget? Here are 3 powerheads I have experience with: 1. I used to have the Nero 5s and liked them a lot. Great power heads and simple to work with. Good compromise and overall good value for the money. 2. I have the Jebao OW-25 in my NUVO10G. It does the work although not as controllable and easy to clean as the Nero. Cheapest of the 3. Had it for about 6 months so far with no problems. 3. Vortech MP-10 (I have the MP-40s). Great pumps, you can grow with them and good resell value. Fantastic control and very quiet. If you get an extra wet side, you can swap them and take your time cleaning the dirty one. Very expensive though. Hope this helps.

The Hanna measures conductivity and needs to be calibrated monthly using their proprietary fluid (~$2.50 each). Milwaukee on the other hand is a digital refractometer that should be calibrated with distilled water. In my short experience they are both reliable although remembering to re-calibrate the Hanna is sometimes a problem for me.

You can drop them a little bit of fish food from time to time. A little goes a long way.

Thanks for sharing. I have the Hanna salinity checker and have found it reliable so far (around 3 months or so). I am careful to calibrate it monthly and rinse with RO after using it. I have also used a manual refractometer which I calibrate every time with 35ppt solution. It was interesting (and annoying) to see the swing in calibration from use to use. Sometimes the refractometer will be ~4ppt off the mark. I have never used an hydrometer, but I read about their variability. I also don't rely on the Apex probe for fine tuning salinity, as it is off the mark no matter how I calibrate it. For me its mostly and alarm indicator for something going sideways. An option you could try is the Milwaukee digital refractometer. It requires a calibration with distilled water before each use, but it takes less than 10 secs to do it. Hope your system regains stability soon.

You have already discovered the recipe to success in this hobby: going slow with a pinch of patience.

Welcome to WAMAS!!! Nice setup and cute pair of clowns. +1 on the Seachem ammonia badge. It can tell you when things are really bad. If you are not doing it already, monitor Nitrite and Nitrate. It will inform you on the progress of your cycle.

Is the seam intended to support significant water pressure? It seems that is probably a frag tank from the picture or a very shallow one but I may be interpreting the perspective incorrectly. Since it is new, any change to contact the manufacturer for a fix?

Nice tank! Are those AI Hydras?

Sounds ok. You should calibrate the internal thermostat in the Jagers and if the Ranco can be calibrated (no experience with it), do this too. I had finnex before with the digital attached controller and they could not be calibrated. One of them was off by > 5 degrees. I use a NIST certified thermometer for the calibration.

Seems that there may be not enough ammonia for the bacteria you seeded. What are you using as the bacteria food (hardy fish, ammonium chloride, raw shrimp)? The manufacturer has a few restrictions in what substrate you can use for the product. They don't seem to like "live sand" or "seeded dry rock" (https://brightwellaquatics.com/products/microbacter-start-xlm.php). I would add some source of ammonia and wait to see if your cycle moves forward.

Hi there. Welcome to WAMAS!! Can you tell us how did you start your cycle? Have you done any water changes? I would have expected to see some Nitrates if your cycle was done

Regardless of the brand you choose, consider adding a redundancy layer in case the controller fails. If you are planning to change every year, Jagers should do fine. As @molcott said, they tend to be on the larger side when compared with Finnex but they are hard to beat for the price.