Mike’s 120

[YHSublime]

It’s coming along!

[BowieReefer84]

Growth is starting to come as well:

Untitled by mteske1, on Flickr

[BowieReefer84]

TSA Bali Blue Slimer progress:

Untitled by mteske1, on Flickr

Untitled by mteske1, on Flickr

[BowieReefer84]

My Ph was only capping at about 8.0 during the day on this tank. I ran the skimmer line outside, and that resulted in about 8.2. I hooked up the outside airline through a C02 scrubber and I am now achieving a high Ph of 8.4 and low is only around 8.2/8.3.

 

Untitled by mteske1, on Flickr

 

Hoping the corals really take off now. I have another order of monitpora coming from Top Shelf in early January.

 

Here is my fav coral and one of my fav fish:

Untitled by mteske1, on Flickr

 

I also was fighting nitrates at 0.0 on hannah checker despite phosphate reading 0.04 on hannah checker. I have started slowly dosing neonitro and also dosing aminos like acropower. I have them around 5 now which is good for me.

 

I have added a foxface as well as a royal gramma. Very happy with how the tank is doing. 

 

Corraline algae is really taking off now. 

[BowieReefer84]

new corals:

Untitled by mteske1, on Flickr

Untitled by mteske1, on Flickr

Untitled by mteske1, on Flickr

Untitled by mteske1, on Flickr

 

[BowieReefer84]

JF superman stylo

Reeftech starburst monti

Bubblegum digi

Oregon tort

TSA appleberry monti

TSA kaboom monti

Sunset monti

Mystic sunset monti

Jedi mind trick monti

 

you can see I like montipora...

[BowieReefer84]

All fish died except my tang. Zero symptoms. Overnight deaths. 3 one week overnight. Then 4 overnight a couple days ago. Crappy update to make. Assuming velvet that acted so fast there were no outward displays like spots or fuzz or anything. Water parameters are all literally perfect. Sending water for an icp to confirm. 

[Aquastudent]

That's terrible! I'm sorry that happened.

 

Hope you're able to figure out what it was. 

 

Were there any new arrivals other than the corals?

[YHSublime]

hate to hear it. I thought you were QT'ing everything? Interested to see what the reason is/was, if you find it. 

[BowieReefer84]

4 hours ago, YHSublime said:

hate to hear it. I thought you were QT'ing everything? Interested to see what the reason is/was, if you find it. 

I didn't QT clean up crew, which was a couple orders. The snails in one order the urchins in another. And corals were just dipped, not QT.

 

Who knows. I am sending water for ICP. I saw zero symptons on fish, so whatever it was acted fast.

 

The tang is still alive and eating fine. Picking glass algae, eating all foods. Swimming fine. I do plan to catch and QT tang and leave tank empty of fish for 6+ weeks. I am NOT adding anymore corals or cleaners.

 

Funny thing is, corals doing well. Urchins are fine. All the "sensitive" things are ok. I even have UV, albeit a 25w. Based on some research it may be slightly undersized, but should be helping. 

[AlanM]

Good grief.  This is too bad.  I guess it must be velvet, but no outward signs on the fish is really troubling.  Maybe someone who knows more about fish disease possibilities can chime in here.  I'd think the tang would be first to go, not the others.

[BowieReefer84]

8 hours ago, AlanM said:

Good grief.  This is too bad.  I guess it must be velvet, but no outward signs on the fish is really troubling.  Maybe someone who knows more about fish disease possibilities can chime in here.  I'd think the tang would be first to go, not the others.

Yea. Not a single dead fish had a single sign of velvet. 
 

I just tested for stray voltage and highest rating with everything running was 19.5 which Google tells me is fine. 

[howaboutme]

Sorry to hear! Something similar happened to me a few years ago. Although one can't know for sure but I attributed the issue from a hitchhiker disease on a snail from a LFS that doesn't separate fish from inverts. Because of that, I generally don't buy inverts unless I know they are from a fishless system.

[monkiboy]

20 minutes ago, howaboutme said:

Sorry to hear! Something similar happened to me a few years ago. Although one can't know for sure but I attributed the issue from a hitchhiker disease on a snail from a LFS that doesn't separate fish from inverts. Because of that, I generally don't buy inverts unless I know they are from a fishless system.

And even inverts from a fishless system is not safe taking aerosol contamination/spread into account. Even without fish, how long have the inverts been quarantined from fish?

I get calls/emails/text like this once a week, at least. It is unfortunate but does allow an opportunity to learn a valuable lesson that most of us all have had to learn at some point and hopefully only once. 

Even with all that being said, most of the shops doing invert quarantine, when one asks the right questions and digs, are not running their protocols properly for their intended and advertised goal/mission.  

 

[cpeguero]

Really sorry to hear this. Yeah, learned this the hard way years ago. Now, I quarantine all inverts for 76 days (some things shorter, based on guidance on humble fish’s site). QT is not as far from the sump as I’d like, but I’m not so worried about aerosol spread because my exhaust fan from the room is right above the QT. 

[BowieReefer84]

I checked stray voltage. It was 19.5 a the max and usually around 6. I read on google 20-30 is ok, and won't hurt anything.

 

With this in mind I am assuming it was something super fast acting like Velvet, and somehow there were no symptoms. Most of the fish died overnight. I did notice one night one fish breathing heavy on the bottom of the tank, but again no spots or anything out of the ordinary to see on the fish even with a flashlight. It acted to fast for me to really do anything at all. I do have a QT tank and meds and a copper checker. 

 

My snails are now breeding in the tank. They are dwaf ceriths and there must be millions of them. My plan is to not add anything else other than new fish once this tank goes fishless for at least 6 weeks. Maybe once I do the fishless period and know my tank is clean I can start selling off some of these dwarf ceriths. The start out the size of a pentip and max out around 1/2"

 

In the meantime the corals are looking wonderful, so at least I got that going. 

[YHSublime]

Corals are looking nice! 
 

i had a similar issue almost a decade ago, and pulled all surviving fish through a QT. The corals were wonderful to watch and thrive, now I run a 10 gallon with 1 small goby with a ton of softies for fun. My pod population also boomed, and snails started actually hatching. 
 

This could be great! 

[BowieReefer84]

On 1/31/2024 at 9:59 AM, YHSublime said:

Corals are looking nice! 
 

i had a similar issue almost a decade ago, and pulled all surviving fish through a QT. The corals were wonderful to watch and thrive, now I run a 10 gallon with 1 small goby with a ton of softies for fun. My pod population also boomed, and snails started actually hatching. 
 

This could be great! 

I have millions of cerith snails now. The mini ones. They are reproducing like crazy.

 

Of course I have bubble algae and some aptasia now. I added some emerald crabs and peppermint shrimp today hoping they will take care of that. 

 

The one fish that made it through (my tang) is still kicking just fine. I never pulled the fish to QT it, and I am very hesitant to add any new fish at this time. I really should pull the tang into QT for 12 weeks or whatever before adding more fish, but I have very little desire to go through all that effort right now.

[BowieReefer84]

Things are going pretty well for last few months. Nutrient levels and alk are dialed in nicely and some of the frags are starting to take off. 
 

 

[YHSublime]

Looking great. Tons of coraline!

[BowieReefer84]

PAR NUMBER POST:

 

I have 4 blue XHO strips (6 settings, 6 is the brightest) and 2 Radion G5 blues.

 

Preferred setting up front:

Blue XHO strips at setting 5 out of 6

Radions at 48% with the individual colors at the following:

UV 100%

Violet 100%

Royal 5% (I put this really low to offset the XHO strips being on setting 5 for good coverage)

Blue 50%

Cyan 50%

Lime 100%

Red 100%

Cool white 100%

 

The settings above give PAR of 260 at orange acro (top right), 240 at blue slimier and bubblegum mili (middle/top), and 200 at setosa dropping off to 175ish at the edges along the sand bed. If I notice things looking too pale I will dial the radions back to 40-45%, and as things adjust I can go to 49%, 50%, etc slowly over time with the same %'s listed above. 

 

---------------------------------------------------------------

 

Now for some other information on the blue strips alone, which put out a surprising amount of PAR. If I were going LPS I would prob only use 4 XHO over a 120gal tank with 2 of the royal blue actinic and one of the 50/50 with dimmers hooked up and NO radions at all. Especially since the radion app is trash and on/off with regular dimmers is so simple with the XHO strips:

 

2 blue strips at the following settings (PAR readings top/middle/bottom)

1 out of 6 - 0/0/0

2 out of 6 - 5/5/0

3 out of 6 - 20/15/10

4 out of 6 - 40/40/30

5 out of 6 - 70/70/50

6 out of 6 - 95/80/65

 

4 blue strips at the following settings

1 out of 6 - 5/3/1

2 out of 6 - 15/15/10

3 out of 6 - 40/40/30

4 out of 6 - 90/80/60

5 out of 6 - 160/140/110

6 out of 6 - 200/180/140

[BowieReefer84]

in addition to part numbers above here are a few recent pics

 

 

Untitled by mteske1, on Flickr

Untitled by mteske1, on Flickr

Untitled by mteske1, on Flickr

Untitled by mteske1, on Flickr

Untitled by mteske1, on Flickr

 

[YHSublime]

Everything is looking good and happy!

[BowieReefer84]

10 hours ago, YHSublime said:

Everything is looking good and happy!

Yes, as long as at least half the corals are looking good and growing well I am happy. One day I may end up with 3-5 big colonies of the things that do well in my tank, and I would be fine with that.

[BowieReefer84]