Kathryn Lawson

Welcome! I'd suggest also joining PVAS, the Potomac Valley Aquarium Society, which focuses on freshwater. They have monthly meetings with small auctions, as well as two all-day auctions each year - a good way to rehome any extra fish!

Hey folks, my ICP test results are back!! Results here: https://www.triton-lab.de/en/showroom/icp-oes/210778 Interestingly, just about everything is in a good range, with the notable exceptions of phosphorus (which we knew) and... tin. While it's possible it's a false positive, the level is high enough to seem relatively unlikely. A quick search has informed me that along with other standard heavy metal sources like malfunctioning equipment, tin can come from plasticizers in flexible tubing... I am using vinyl tubing for my drains and return line, and have gone through two sets because I had to increase the tubing size to decrease head pressure on my return pump and enable higher drainage rates to accommodate higher flow rates! Also, float glass is apparently made by pouring molten glass onto molten tin. If a manufacturer isn't careful to track which side was touching the tin, it can end up on the inside of the tank instead of the outside like normal. My tank is an Aqueon, so I wouldn't be terribly surprised if this was the case for my tank. As a bit of history, my system was running (totally fine) for 6+ months before moving into the current tank (started small and upgraded, and then had a leak). I also didn't use a sump (or flexible tubing) at all until this fall, which was right after I started having issues with algae growth (I'd previously used a simple HOB and added the sump so I could have a refugium and extra filtration). So both of these potential causes of tin didn't start out with my system, and might explain why things were going well for quite a while before taking a downturn. Also interesting is that SPS are particularly sensitive to tin. Before the tank crash that I've been associating with the major cyano bloom and alk swing, I was having some odd issues with SPS dying back. The alk swing was almost certainly from me starting to dose kalk in an attempt to help the struggling SPS. Looking into potential options for tin removal, it seems cuprisorb is often recommended, and luckily I actually even have some already (had for a freshwater tank that had been having issues with shrimp and I'd wanted to rule out heavy metals). I'm thinking I'll be adding some to my system today!

Is the show on both 3/23 and 3/24? Asking because your post says 3/23 and Saturday, but the flyer only says 3/24 (Sunday).

Super cool, thanks for sharing!!

A good update finally!!! Chemiclean seems to have taken care of almost all the cyano! My fish and inverts have thankfully been totally fine (my firefish seem pretty terrified of all the air bubbles, but they have made a few short appearances), and excitingly, every coral that remains alive has shown marked improvement, better than they have in weeks! Zoas are open, lobo has puffed back up some, leathers and pulsing sinularia are showing polyp extension, etc. The only one still struggling is my toadstool leather, which I now realize must have something other than cyano going on, and is still melting away as the red-brown patchy growths on its surface spread. Can softies get brown jelly or something like it? I'm going to try to see if I can cut a clean frag tomorrow, maybe dip the remainder in iodine. Given the remarkable improvement in coral health, I want to make sure the cyano is knocked back pretty hard for now. I left the first dose for 72 hours instead of 48 (since I still saw small amounts of cyano in the sand, overflow box, etc. at 48 hrs). Since I still see a few remaining traces of cyano tonight at the 72-hour mark (and thinking along the same line as how for human/animal health we use a longer course of antibiotics than needed to simply alleviate symptoms, to avoid development of resistant strains) I decided to run one more round of chemiclean, and added the dose tonight (second round as needed is recommended by Marc Levinson and some others). I'll let that go for 48, maybe 72 hours again, then do a big water change and add carbon to remove any remnants of the chemiclean. Nutrients are doing reasonably well, especially since I'd figured the chemiclean killing off the cyano would result in a nutrient spike, but it seems that it didn't release too much. Phosphates are up a bit but nitrates have reached the point where I absolutely need to start dosing now to avoid hitting 0 (also why I'm going with a second round of chemiclean, since nitrate dosing really stimulated cyano growth last time). Nitrate: 0.1 Phosphate: 0.22 Alk: 9.6 Calc: 411 Mag: 1120 Anyway, I'm so relieved that something finally seems to be going right! Now I just need to make sure I keep pushing things in the right direction and don't let the cyano rebound. I'm going to slightly increase the dose of Microbacter7 after the second round of chemiclean is done, and perhaps resume dosing of live phyto. Anything else I should consider? Should I start daily water changes again after chemiclean round 2 is done? Thanks for all the support, everyone - it's really been helpful to get feedback throughout this struggle!

For ICP, I tried to upgrade a free sample I had (free version is just 5 elements, mostly what I've already been measuring). The packaging indicates I can pay a bit and upgrade it to a full test but I can't seem to do it on the company's app or on their website. I sent a message to their customer service days ago with no response. Just ordered a kit from a different vendor. I saved a sample from before I added the chemiclean, so will probably use that.

Hey, everybody. I have switched over to Instant Ocean salt for the daily water changes now, and the tank move during window installation went surprisingly well. I decided to not stress about doing a major water change with everything else going on, so I just drained the tank down and filled it right back up again with the same water once moved. It's now back in its original spot, just with a new window right behind it. Unfortunately, over a week of H2O2 dosing hasn't seemed to have much of, if any, effect and coral health still keeps going downhill. Water quality parameters have improved somewhat, though nitrate is almost gone and I'll need to do something about that in the next few days. Current parameters: Nitrate 0.6 Phosphate 0.18 Alk 9.8 Calc 940 Mag 411 Given that the main part of my crash seemed to happen right around when I started trying to raise my nitrate levels in an unsuccessful attempt to counter the cyano, starting nitrate dosing again with everything but the cyano in even worse shape than before didn't seem like a good idea. I finally decided to use the cyano treatment option I'd been holding off on: following a major round of algae and cyano removal tonight, I dosed chemiclean. I don't seem to have nearly the tank diversity I had pre-algae/cyano, and I'm feeling perilously close to giving up on the whole tank. I have an extra air pump set up in the main tank with tons of small bubbles, and have an additional fine bubble air stone in the sump, along with my skimmer cup removed so the foam overflows back into the tank, and my tank drain line opened up so it gurgles and constantly pulls in air (annoying, but worth it for the extra aeration). I also added back in all the macroalgae I removed before starting H2O2 dosing, and removed the carbon in my sump to prevent premature removal of the chemiclean. I think I've done just about all I can do right now, though please let me know if there's anything I missed! Going to wait 48 hours, then do a 20% water change, add carbon, and put the skimmer cup back on. Here's hoping everything goes ok...

A question for you helpful folks: I'm going to have to temporarily move my reef tank on Wednesday for window installation. The current plan is to drain the display at least halfway and "slide" it over to the middle of my desk for the day (it's currently on the end of my metal-framed desk, in front of the window). The desk and the sump underneath can stay in place, thankfully! I'm picking up Instant Ocean salt tonight, and am wondering if this might be a good time to do one larger water change with the new salt to really boost calc and mag levels and drop phosphate, but also worry about shocking my system with the sudden change. Any idea what might be a safe amount of water to change out? My display is a 29 gallon tank, with a 10 gallon sump (but the sump is not filled all the way - there's some extra space even when the return pump is off and the pipes have drained). My current daily change volume is 3 gallons. I actually have an empty spare 29 gallon tank, so I technically could do even a 100% water change. (I learned when my first 29 gallon sprung a leak a few months in that I always want to have a backup option to hold all the tank contents!)

Thanks everyone! My nutrients are definitely headed in the right direction now, though I think I'm probably going to have to start dosing nitrate tomorrow. Parameters after tonight's water change and cyano/algae removal are: Nitrate 3.0 Phosphate 0.22 Alk 10.8 Calc 405 Mag 1020 Calc and mag are still low, but I haven't switched salt yet (partner was going to get some while running errands near Petco today but the store was closed by the time they got there, so I'll probably go myself tomorrow). Aesthetically, I do like having sand in my aquarium, and more importantly, my next planned livestock addition has been a pistol shrimp and goby pair (obviously now I'm going to wait until my system is stable), so I do really want to keep some sand. That said, there is a lot of detritus building up in corners and low-flow zones, which I doubt is helping the nutrient situation. I had a bunch of frags on the sand also, further hindering flow. I moved them up onto the rocks tonight, and plan to stir up/siphon a bit of the sand bed every other day or so during the water change. Hopefully that will let me get the junk out while minimizing nutrient spikes and overall disturbance of sand bed life. Regarding cleanup crew, I've had a really tough time getting snails. Earlier in the thread I described specifically picking out 5 actively-climbing snails (3 trochus, 2 turbo) from a reputable local store, but once in my tank they would extend from their shells but seemed unable to grab onto a surface or climb. This lasted for a number of days (I tried a number of different surfaces, etc) until they eventually died and further spiked my nutrient levels. I'd had the same thing happen in the past, getting an active snail from a different reputable local store, and once in my tank it would extend from the shell but not actually grab anything. I know @ReefdUp said not to worry too much about CC losses, but this pattern of immediate incapacitation with originally active snails seems very suspicious to me. I was talking about this with folks at the last WAMAS meeting and I think it was @nburg who mentioned he'd seen similar behavior followed by death when moving a snail he'd had for a while from a tank with low phosphate to a tank with high phosphate. I didn't drip acclimate the snails (I'm coming from freshwater where snails are practically as hardy as rocks, so although I'm used to using drip acclimation for shrimp, it didn't occur to me to do it for snails), so I think I'll try some snails again once my phosphates are lower (sub 0.1?) with drip acclimation this time. For other CUC, my remaining tuxedo urchin (had 1 rock boring and 2 tuxedo initially, but the rock boring one died at the same time as those 5 big snails, and I haven't seen the other tuxedo since then) has been doing a really good job clearing even the really strongly "rooted" algae from the areas it covers. So once the tank is stable for a while, I'll probably get a few more tuxedo urchins as well, along with hermits and snails, and ideally some money cowries.

Last night (Tuesday) I spent 4 hours siphoning cyano (and algae) and trying to clean it off of corals. This is after I spent multiple hours on Saturday siphoning out all I could get then. I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle against cyano - it's growing back so fast, and my livestock health just keeps going downhill. My bubble tip nem was fully detached and shriveled up on the sand bed, my Kenya tree completely dissolved into goo (ended up removing it entirely), and cyano grew on my toadstool leather since Saturday (update, regrew overnight also), worsening the erosion of flesh that started with previous cyano growth on it. Flesh has entirely peeled off the chalice and bowerbanki I got recently from @ReefdUp, and I've also lost multiple heads of a blasto that got covered in cyano between Saturday and now. On top of everything, my pump seems to be having issues, whining really loudly and changing flow rates around which makes my overflow gurgle really annoyingly (and yes, I cleaned the pump). Not going to go into this issue here, but it is a resurgence of a previous problem I thought I'd resolved, so I was feeling extra frustrated Tues night. I know that when things go wrong in a reef tank it's really easy to overreact, change too many things all at once, and totally crash the system. But I also don't think the livestock in my system is going to last much longer unless I do something other than the daily water changes. I typed most of the above text last night (Tuesday), but decided to hold off on posting and see how much cyano grew back in a single day. A surprising amount of cyano grew back just over the course of 24 hours (and livestock health further declined), enough that I decided I really did need to do something about it other than just repeated siphoning. Current tank parameters (Wed night before daily water change. Haven't switched salt yet so calc/mag are still low. I plan to buy some new salt this week): Nitrate 7.4 Phosphate 0.29 Alk 10.7 Calc 382 Mag 940 In reading about cyano in the reef aquarium, it seems that there's actually multiple microbes that have similar growth and are commonly labeled "cyano". Cyano is sensitive to H2O2 but sometimes not ChemiClean, and spirulina is not sensitive to H2O2 but will be killed by ChemiClean. I tested and the cyano in my system seems to be sensitive to H2O2, so I'm going to start there. Recommended dosing is 1ml of standard pharmacy 3% H2O2 per 10 gallons of saltwater, every 12 hours. Few side effects have been reported other than slightly negative impacts on algae, including desirable macroalgae (so I pulled mine and am keeping in a separate container for now), and possible sensitivity with Lysmata shrimp (which I don't have). So I added the first 4ml dose tonight, right into an area of high flow, and will see how things go! Since phosphate is so much higher than nitrate, I also decided to add two small cubes of "phosphate removing media" that I'd gotten for free a while back. I don't want to drop phosphate too fast, and I certainly don't want to bottom it out, but I do want to get it lowering slightly faster than it is currently, especially since my nitrate is now right about where I want it. I'll keep monitoring closely. One final update - I finally set up automated phyto dosing with a lit, aerated setup next to my sump! I've been culturing it elsewhere in my house for a while now, but kept using it to culture pods, and continually forgot to actually bring it upstairs and dose my tank! I know the H2O2 dosing may counteract the phyto dosing in the short term, but I'm timing the doses to have minimal overlap, and more importantly, now it's in place end ready to keep going once I'm done with H2O2 dosing. Sorry for such a long update, and sorry for going against some of your advice to wait it out! I'm hoping my decisions make some amount of sense, especially in light of my struggling livestock. If it was just an aesthetic issue, I'd happily wait it out, but I don't think I have the time for that in this case.

The main reason I'm considering IO over RC is that RC has more elevated alk, calc, and mag. I've read a number of forum posts with people commenting that they prefer IO because they don't have to worry as much about alk etc. swings when doing water changes like they experienced with RC. Yes, my skimmer has been on and skimming very wet - I've been dumping it when doing the daily water change. I wasn't able to measure phos every day last week - the measurements I have are 0.48 on 2/23 (at the end of the blackout, before starting daily water changes), 0.37 on 2/28, and 0.31 on 3/3. (Nitrate levels for those dates were 16.7, 12.4, and 10.8, respectively). So definitely heading in the right direction, at least! I just hope my struggling corals can hold out long enough to get nutrients balanced and cyano controlled

The salt I've been using is Crystal Sea Marinemix, Bioassay formula. Mixes up as Nitrate 0 Phosphate 0.02 (was from RODI, but replaced filters last night so should be addressed now) Alk 10.0 Calcium 388 Mag 940 It looks like this salt is low in calcium and magnesium compared to what is desirable. Since I've been using this salt for a year now, I'm not inclined to think this is the direct cause of the sudden/major issues I've been dealing with, though it is quite probably an underlying factor destabilizing coral health. I'm thinking I'll use up my current salt with these daily water changes, then once those are done (or sooner if I run out of salt), switch (probably more slowly than with daily changes, to avoid shock?) to a different salt - perhaps regular Instant Ocean (not reef crystals). Does this sound good, or should I consider an alternative salt or doing the switch during the daily changes? An ICP test isn't a bad idea. Any recommendations for brand, likely prioritizing response time? I'm also wondering about careful use of a phosphate reducer to help balance my nutrients slightly faster than water changes/biological growth can do alone, now that nitrates are right around where we want them. Thoughts?

Hi all. After a bit over a week of daily water changes (3 gallons a day on my 29+maybe 6 gallon system), my parameters are: Nitrate 10.8 Phosphate 0.31 Alk 10.8 Calc 389 Mag 980 Cyano is still super thriving and corals are still looking pretty unhappy (as is my bubbletip nem, which is super shrunken to the point of almost being unrecognizable, and moving around). Even my softies are looking bad - among other things, some mushrooms have had their mesenterial filaments spilling out their mouths pretty much all the time, and a Kenya tree looks like part of it is dissolving into goo. Some of the corals that had been seemingly stable during the previous weeks have had cyano on them this past week and are now showing tissue loss/recession, so I'm getting pretty worried about the cyano, which I think is probably my main issue right now (I know my water parameters aren't great, but they also don't seem bad enough to match the impact I'm seeing on my corals). I have heard some pretty good things about using coral snow (calcium carbonate) as a flocculent and to help against cyano, though it seems to be more recommended for prevention or light cases of cyano (which mine certainly isn't - the whole tank was covered in red before I siphoned it for multiple hours yesterday). Anyone have experience using coral snow for bigger cyano problems? Besides considering coral snow, I'm feeling pretty close to pulling the trigger on using chemiclean, with the plan to siphon out the cyano I can beforehand, remove carbon, remove the skimmer cup, and add air stones in the tank during dosing. Anything else I should be aware of/do? Oh, the one bit of good news is that my fish are fully switched over to pellets now - I moved up a size with TDO, and the current pellets seem to have a pretty good floating/slow sinking rate. I've been finally seeing every fish eating every feeding, which is a relief! As always, thanks for your feedback!

I should have clarified, the phosphate is coming from my source water (results a few posts back). I have new filters on the way! However, I think it's probably a pretty minor contributor of overall phosphate in my tank, compared to the food.

Thank you all for the input! I did an initial 20% water change on Saturday and have been doing daily 10% water changes since then. Skimmer is on constantly and skimming wet, and I added a filter sock to the flow coming into my sump. I stopped dosing nitrate/vinegar/Microbacter7. Carbon is still in though, since the disintegrating spot on the one leather is still there, though the rest of the leather is finally showing a bit of polyp extension again. The other surviving corals have been looking a bit better also, though cyano has been coming back in full force. I've been working on convincing my fish to eat pellets. My smallest fish have struggled to fit New Life Spectrum Thera+A pellets into their mouths, and the pellets sink pretty immediately so most end up falling to the bottom (far more uneaten mass than with flakes, so I wonder if at least for now, switching to pellets may result in higher water nutrient levels). I tried some much smaller pellets also, Reef Nutrition's TDO ChromaBoost. These granules seem to stay floating longer in the feeding ring and fall more slowly so the fish have more time to realize they're there, though I'm not sure that these tiny pellets are really much different from pieces of flakes. Hopefully over time my fish will learn to eat the pellets faster, or figure out that they can eat fallen food from the rocks/sand! I might try some pellets in an auger-based autofeeder (supposedly more precise than rotating ones), maybe using super tiny amounts more frequently, since right now my firefish hide as soon as I move the tank lid to put pellets in, and by the time they come back out most of the food is gone/fallen. My water parameters are as follows: 2/28 reef tank Nitrate 12.4 Phosphate 0.37 Alk 11.2 Calcium 388 Mag 980 (slightly higher than fresh salt water, maybe due to slight test/water variability?) Fresh salt water Nitrate 0 Phosphate 0.02 Alk 10.0 Calcium 388 Mag 940 It looks like my fresh salt water is a bit high in alk and low in calcium and magnesium compared to what is desirable. I guess either I could make dosing calc/mag a standard practice or change salt brands, but am leaning towards a brand change for simplicity. I'm thinking I'll work on using up my current salt with these daily water changes, then once those are done, switch (more slowly) to a different salt - perhaps regular Instant Ocean (not reef crystals). Does this sound good, or should I consider an alternative salt or doing the switch during the daily changes? I'm guessing I should keep up the water changes and testing. Not sure if I should consider Chemiclean or H2O2 for the cyano, or hold off for now - thoughts?