DaJMasta's 45G AIO Cube Mixed Reef

[DaJMasta]

Got some deals from the marinedepot liquidation sale and substantially upgraded my RODI into this monstrosity:

But now I can check input pressure, TDS at input, membrane output, and output line, and get around 140GPD with less waste water than before, well worth the price of the upgrade bits.

Also found a pump from SR Aquaristatik to replace the DCAIR-200 pump the K1-50 came with, and while it didn't come with a venturi attachment, they sent one along after asking and I hooked it up yesterday.  Almost a full 24h of break in, but the bubbles I'm seeing are much, much more numerous (even at 40% output), the pump is fully variable, and it's been pretty quiet so far.  Looking forward to darker skimmate and more gas exchange as my pH has been a hair below 8 recently and I think it's related to the previous skimmer pump's air performance.  Grafting the pump on the bottom sure looks goofy, but suspended in the back chamber it fits all the same.

 

Noticed a little bump that looked very slightly like a parasite on one of the firefish today, so I pulled out the camera to get a better shot:

 

...then I noticed a bit of the same on the other firefish, both swimming and eating fine just before, and gave it a google... that's just some mysis working its way through their system.  For fish with tiny little mouths, they certainly go for big chunks of food.

 

 

But the tank is going on, things seem a bit unhappy and there is more cyanoalgae than before, but I'm attributing it both to the heavy feeding to get the dragonet to eat, the slightly decreased vodka dosing (down to 6mL a day), and the skimmer performance issues.  Nitrates are at 5ppm and phosphate is at 0.03ppm and both are plenty low, so the plan is to keep the current dosing and dial it back if it drops any farther, but I suspect it will take some time yet to settle.

 

Otherwise, got some fun related projects in the works to expand the addiction a bit, but the goal in the short term is to get this tank fully happy again.  I've actually dialed back my kalkwasser dosing slightly as the alkalinity was slowly increasing, and I think this is because the corals are a bit pissed, though at least the fish and inverts seem to be pigging out happily.

[DaJMasta]

An update!  Basically, I haven't been taking many pictures or making updates as cyano has gradually become more of a nuisance, and after a couple weeks of adjusting carbon dosing and dialing in skimming and returning to a normal feeding schedule and whatnot without much improvement... I realized I could just siphon some out and see what happened.  Well I did a few days back, then a small amount the next day, and while I plan on using Red Cyano Rx to clear up the problem fully, it looks a heck of a lot more normal and I'm seeing some positive turnaround already.

Partly because of the instability and partly because of the cyano, I think, the coral growth has been pretty limited this month.  A couple corals seem unphased, like the spongodes monti on the front rock, the mushrooms, the stylophora, and some of the gonis, but I can't say there's dramatic growth on any of them even if their polyp extension and color has been pretty constant.  The acros and zoas, oddly, have both seemed a little bothered but basically stable, and the one coral that seems to have been unhappy the whole time has been a sunset month that came as a decent sized chunk.  Haven't seen polyps extended on that one for weeks, and there is some skeleton showing.  The rate it seems to be looking worse is going down, but it almost started closer to when I started carbon dosing (or maybe shortly after when the nutrients started to drop), so the plan for now is to try to be stable, get rid of the cyano, and see if it decides to come back.  Other montis seem basically unaffected.

My vodka dosing is now a constant 5mL daily, but I've moved to dosing near or after lights out instead of first thing in the morning - I think the timing of the dosing contributed somewhat to the cyano, but I had been adding then with the hopes that it would deplete the tank oxygen less.  Though nitrate and phosphate have stayed low and detectable, I'm also seeing more green algae on the rocks and on the back again - something the carbon dosing originally took care of.  The urchins are hard at work and with the cyano I am hesitant to do anything yet, but I will do some more manual removal as needed and then maybe tweak up the carbon dosing in the coming weeks if it persists.  Since the skimmer will be off for a few days for the cyano treatment, I'm hoping the algae scrubber will take up some of the slack - it's had moments of seeing growth, but it seems like changes in the carbon dosing has also depleted it somewhat.

 

I cleaned the powerheads around a week ago and the return pump a couple days ago and while there was some expected flow increase (and a lot of grime removed), the temperature is also down about one degree F.  I think the extra friction of the gunk was requiring more power or generating more heat (or both) and since my tank has been thermally limited by the equipment running with the heaters mostly off recently, the change was noticeable.

Otherwise, the fish seem happy and healthy - the mandarin is starting to fill out again and really goes for the frozen foods (least reliably the fish eggs, for some reason, I think because he doesn't recognize them visually as food yet), and as another thread I started a few days back, my cardinals have spawned for the first time and the male has a mouthful of eggs (and hasn't eaten anything since).  I've acquired MTS since the last update and have a small tank made for the intention of rearing fry and larvae, so I look forward to the hatching and trying to get some tiny baby cardinals.

The tank earlier today, and the day before the cyano treatment, hopefully in a week or so a bunch of the red will be gone and the polyps will be more extended (the acans especially, I don't think they like the cyano).

 

Edited July 27, 2021 by DaJMasta

[DaJMasta]

Something is suddenly wrong.  Everything seemed fine this morning and I dosed the red cyano Rx as expected around 11am to the tank, just below recommended concentration.  Everything seemed fine.  A couple hours in, the zoas were slightly closed and the polyp extension on the montis was slightly less, but again, otherwise fine.

Fast forward to around 3:30, and the fish seem to be acting strange - the ones that usually hang out in the front because of the flame angel are dispersed in the tank... so I look for the flame angel.  She's nose first in the sand under a rock in the center of the tank.

It takes a couple minutes to get her out and I stir up some sand, she has already died.  As I'm trying to make sure I'm not seeing any movement at all with the flame angel, the mandarin hasn't moved for a bit and has his dorsal fin raised (usually perks up when he's defending his territory or is scared), one of the firefish isn't seen, one comes out and dashes back under, but they don't come out in the usual amount of time.  The male cardinal seems to be breathing very heavily.

 

I quickly check ammonia - nothing - temperature is fine, water is very slightly cloudy (stirred up sand from earlier), the invertebrates all seem fine (the cleaner shrimp even tried to clean me as I was getting the flame angel out).  Not knowing what was going on I start a new bucket of RODI for a water change, I drop an airstone in the back chamber since the skimmer is off for the treatment, and I add almost a capful of seachem prime to make sure it's not toxic stuff in the water.

About 15 minutes later and the mandarin has moved only a little and is still panting (the dorsal fin slightly down).  I saw a firefish looking around but neither has come out, the cardinal is still panting, and I think I see some tissue loss on the monti cap at the top - suddenly the frontmost portion is bleached white.  What the H-E-double hockey sticks is going on?

[DaJMasta]

The cardinals are out in the tank and swimming together again, the firefish are still hiding but I see both and their tails move in and out as they reposition in their hole, the mandarin has gone back to hunting in the tank, the orange spot goby seems to be one of the more normal acting ones of the bunch, and the basslet has been hiding under a ledge the whole time, but seems to be breathing slower.

I had noticed prior to the last event that one of the rock flower anemones had moved a bit, but they're all a bit shrunk now.  I don't see any new coral damage and no progress on the white patch on the monti cap.  I've got 10g of saltwater mixing up but I don't think I need it imminently.  I checked the tank for 'stray voltage' but measured none and saw no spikes turning on and off equipment.

I think it was a dissolved oxygen level crash.  I can't think of something else and with the skimmer off and the red cyano rx added, I think whatever it does just started going and used up oxygen quickly enough that the bubbler in the algae scrubber, the turbulent flow at the top of the tank, and the plethora of green algae on the rocks wasn't enough production.  Disadvantage of an AIO design I guess unless you run your back chamber low enough that you get a waterfall out of the overflow.


In any case, I think the worst has past, nearly as quickly as it started.  That poor flame angel, she had been a bit of a bully but never nipped at any coral.

[DaJMasta]

And it may not yet be over...

Things looked like they were improving and one of the firefish popped out of the den a couple of times to take a look around, but the other never did, then the mandarin stopped hunting and the cardinals started acting a little erratic.  I've got the skimmer on now, but at a lower level (15% then, now 25%) for oxygenation rather than skimming.  The whole back chamber is full of coarse foam and there are microbubbles everywhere (hopefully a positive for oxygenation?), but I tried another dose of prime because I had thought overall oxygenation had been improving.

I've done a 5G water change (>10%) and will see if any difference comes along with it, the second bucket is mixing up now and the fish behavior of the ones who are out seems to be normal.

I hadn't caught it before, but the blastos really did not like whatever happened, but they are slowly extending slightly and while the rock anemones aren't full size, they certainly look more open than the low point.

I've got to keep my eyes on this until I go to sleep tonight, I think, I still don't really know what happened and I don't have a means to check the dissolved oxygen levels.

[howaboutme]

Sorry to hear. I think those cyano killers work partly by limiting oxygen so that would be my guess too. Try to increase oxygenation with an air stone if you have one or any other means. I'd prioritize large water changes over prime use. Good luck!

[DaJMasta]

Yeah, air stone has been in the rear chamber since I pulled the flame angel.  Left for about 30 mins to get dinner and despite higher oxygenation rate and the water change, the basslet looked like she was having more trouble than before and the gobies still aren't venturing out.  Corals look a bit better.

Second 5G water change, 10 more gallons are going through the RODI so I can be around 45% changed at the end of the night.  Also, skimmer is on normal level with a drier setting.  Don't care if it pulls the stuff that should be doing the work, that's probably actually a good thing given my results and the extra bubbles are welcome.

These water changes are bringing down the tank temp a bit each time as they're not sitting in the buckets long enough to get to temperature fully...

[DaJMasta]

Lost the basslet.  She was having trouble keeping upright so I got her into a breeder net to be more out of the flow and higher in the tank, but it was too late even if it would have been effective.

 

The gobies are breathing slower when they peek out, but it's dark enough that I don't expect to see them until tomorrow in any case.

 

10 more gallons of water change, so a total of 20G since the red cyano rx, skimming wet at full strength for aeration and to remove this crud from the tank, still have the bubbler going and will for the next couple of days, for sure.  No carbon dosing today or tomorrow at least, didn't feed anything today either.  The new water was cooler than the water in the tank, so I'm down 0.7C or so from normal temperature.  I'm sure it's not helping, but I figured it was better to do the water change now (and before everything's asleep) than wait a couple hours for the temperature and risk whatever in the water killing something else.

I really hope that it's done, but I just have to keep watch.  I can't believe this stuff seems to be widely considered safe, definitely the worst thing to happen to the tank so far, and if I wasn't as quick in reacting as I was, it easily could have nuked the whole thing.  I hope it doesn't still do that.

Edited July 28, 2021 by DaJMasta

[DaJMasta]

A follow up and literal post-mortem of using this cyano removal treatment.  I used Blue Life's Red Cyano Rx, but as I understand, Chemiclean and other treatments are probably exactly the same stuff, so I think this should generally apply.

 

I didn't loose any further fish, thankfully.  The male cardinal went back to eating a couple days after the accident, so I presume the eggs were lost in the low oxygen environment.  The corals took a little damage in specific cases, but are basically back to normal, and the treatment did remove the cyanobacteria, there is very little remaining.

 

First off, my own recommendations for using this product or similar ones to be safer than it was following the directions on the package:

Use a smaller dosage initially.  Even with a 50% water change within 12 hours of my initial full strength dose, it had the desired effect.  This should help keep oxygen levels higher and lower the overall risk of treatment.

 

Leave your skimmer on instead of turning it off.  The extra bubbles go a long way, but it will overflow, so turn the water level all the way down (not air) and remove the cup if it's still overflowing, but keep it on to oxygenate.  If for some reason you decide you need to have the skimmer off, make sure there is AT LEAST one airstone dropped in the tank to keep oxygenation up in addition to whatever is normally in there (the bubbler running through my algae scrubber was not sufficient aeration in my tank for the treatment)

Unless you have a full macroalgae tank during the height of your photoperiod, it's unlikely any algae in your tank will make much of a difference in oxygen levels.  It is still worth adding aeration for the dark period as the reduced oxygen environment should be expected through the treatment's duration.

Aiming your powerheads at the surface does very, very little to increase oxygenation unless you have very slow flow in your tank.  In any tank with moderate to high flow and normal surface agitation, it would take pumps making the surface of the water break and generate bubbles to get any notable improvement in oxygenation, and it's not a huge amount in any case.

You want to be especially careful in systems without a sump or back chamber waterfall, as the lower noise, shorter falling water means less air ingestion and less oxygenation.  My AIO is an example of tanks where the return pump does very little overall for oxygenation on its own.

 

I did not carbon dose during the treatment, as I knew it reduced oxygen levels when the bacterial count rises, but residual from that could have exacerbated the problem.  If you carbon dose, it's probably good to dial down the dosage in the days prior to treatment and make absolutely certain you're doing extra to aerate during the treatment.


It's also worth describing some of the behaviors I saw in the low oxygen environment.  They were different from what I would have thought to expect, and they were more subtle than I had expected as well, but there are some telling ones that could be critically important to spotting it quickly if it happens in your tank.

For the fish, I basically didn't get to see the flame angel's behavior before it died, as it died first.  I found it face down in the sand under the rockwork where it normally slept, so presumably it went into hiding in the lower oxygen environment and the lower flow, larger fish size, and relatively high metabolism meant that it was the first to go.

 

The basslet went under an overhang where it hung out regularly and sort of laid against the rock, panting.  Later on, even as the oxygen level was increasing and had been for hours, it started having trouble staying upright.  For what is normally a perky and active fish, it was a characteristically bad sign, but I think some damage done from the initial event probably made it more difficult to get oxygen when it was more available.  Extra bubblers or other methods may have been able to save it, but as things were improving and it was still seeming alright, I didn't take additional action that maybe could have saved it.

The firefish gobies responded to the low oxygen by hiding.  They're normally skittish and go and hide when working on the tank or other things, but they both just went into their hole and stayed there, panting.  Not being chased around and not being out during the day was atypical behavior, and they hid the remainder of the day with few exceptions, and then took longer to emerge the next morning than usual.

The orange spot goby seemed generally the least effected, and I think it was mostly his metabolism being slower so he didn't need as much oxygen.  I did see him out in spots I don't usually see as much, with lower activity (not as quick to back away when I walk by the tank), and panting, but he seemed to act the most normally and was one of the first fish to act back to normal when oxygen levels started increasing again.

The mandarin also was less effected, though at one point he stopped hunting and started panting, and then eventually raised his dorsal fin an kept it up.  The dorsal fin usually only comes up when he's frightened or when it's trying to fight his reflection for territory, so him just sitting in one place with the fin up was certainly an unusual sight.

The two cardinals were harder to tell a difference with, apart from the panting.  They were in different parts of the tank than usual, but this also could have been that the fish keeping them in the front, the flame angel, was no longer chasing them out of more covered spots.  They did seem to stay apart more than usual in the lowest oxygen periods, but not exclusively, and they were low activity, but this isn't uncommon for them during the day.

None of the inverts seemed to care, at all.  One of the cleaner shrimp was trying to clean my arm when I was trying to get the flame angel out of the rockwork to see if she was still alive, and they really didn't seem to act differently the entire time.  The rock anemones shrunk slightly, but never completely closed up or anything.

Most of the corals seemed pretty unaffected, but with a couple exceptions.  The blasto frag had both polyps completely retract into the skeleton, the only time I've seen it like that.  The bright green monti cap near the top had a small chunk of it totally bleach in a very short time period, and in the aftermath some of the bleached tissue on the underside of some of the acro frags seems to be gone rather than just pale.  Some other polyps may have retracted slightly - the mushrooms, the birdsnest polyps, the acans.... but then some were unaffected, the gorgonians looked same as always.  I suppose the leptoseris had pale dots on the top of it and slightly different coloration, but not much change overall.


One of the things I would have expected to see was fish coming to the surface and gasping... but after not seeing it and thinking through it, I don't think that's a thing marine fish do.  Basically, if your flow is enough, even though the gas exchange is happening at the surface, there's virtually no oxygen differential in the tank because of how quickly it gets mixed.  There would be less in low flow areas (like those holes some fish fled to), but between not really having more oxygen near the surface and probably not having much access to the surface in nature, marine animals don't seem to go up when low on oxygen.

Anyways, Tuesday wasn't a good day for the tank, but it has been ok since and shows signs of recovering well.  I'm starting to get back into the normal rhythm of things again and hope I can avoid similar issues going forward - I'll certainly be more sensitive to them, and I'm trying to get a proper dissolved oxygen meter to get a better read on things.  For now, enjoy this adorable picture of the two firefish sleeping in their cave for the night.

[tpallas]

Any updates? That's really unfortunate. I'm really wary of most algae control products like that.

 

Edit; there's the update

Edited July 31, 2021 by tpallas

[DaJMasta]

Apologies for the lack of updates, and while this is a bit of a teaser, I'm happy to say it's not because of further problems.  For as much trouble as the cyanobacteria treatment caused, it definitely needed it, I've been running a few weeks of record kalkwasser dosing for the tank to maintain my alkalinity and visible growth and encrusting of most of the corals I've got.  Some new additions, some rearranging, a lot of manual hair algae removal, but things are overall good.

 

Fish stuff is mostly good too, my two firefish being the exception as they started acting aggressive, needed to be separated, and it appears to not have ended after a new reintroduction.  The cardinals, though, have spawned again and the male is approaching a week since spawning and looks good, and I got a second mandarin and trained it to eat frozen foods, and while there was a tad bit of chasing the first two days, they're getting on great (the faded look of the skin is the early stages of them going to sleep).

 

 

 

I'm now 3 for 3 in training mandarins to eat frozen foods, and I took video of my feedings for the new introduction (the redhead on the left), so while it's probably still a few weeks out, I intend to have the method and process documented to encourage people to train them, especially in smaller tanks.

Oh and my phytoplankton cultures are online enough that I'm dosing phyto every morning - saw enough sponge growth in two weeks to have sponge rocks stick to each other whereas the same rocks didn't stick to each other in the first months they were in the tank and I've got a few feather dusters which evidently that polyclad worm didn't eat, so they're starting to come back out.

[DaJMasta]

The tank is 5 months old!

Having a bit of a hair algae issue at the moment, but there's nice things and all in all, the tank is going well right now.

 

And while my phone's focus did not cooperate, I got a couple decent pictures of some growth/nice looking stuff in the tank:

 

I ended up adding a few smaller pieces of rock to the tank, a few of those then used as bases for the acans which were on plugs in the sand.  You can see a couple of the little assembled gardens here, and some of the smaller new polyps, but they haven't grown in enough to not look like plugs glued to rock yet.

 

The little softie section of the tank (with that green ricordea sort of dripping off, I think it will drop a new one soon), as well as some montis and encrusting things around.  The yellow in the sand bed is out of focus, but is a mustard yellow flower anemone that's probably twice the diameter as when I got it, and in the bottom and on the bottom left there are two other color variants.  They wander around but generally haven't bothered things too much, and a few actually stay still.

 

A bit of green leptastrea that you can really see the growth on - not the only stony coral fully encrusting beyond the plug, but unfortunately the only somewhat in focus one of the pictures I took....

 

Despite the hair algae and the tiny bit of cyano in that back softie corner, things are going well.  I'm seeing reasonable growth out of most things (slower in some), and I'm dosing 300mL of kalkwasser solution a day to maintain alkalinity and calcium, which reflects the continuing growth.  I've got a couple of acros which are brown and a couple which are not quite the color they're supposed to be, but I think this is a couple things - one being light.  I've got a single XR-15 over the tank and was running fairly high settings - I had thought - but never measured the PAR, and after a while of things not gaining their normal color, I bumped it up maybe 10%... and within a week I think I saw some improvements/coloration that wasn't there before.  I gave it another 10% and it's probably about as high as it can get for the photoperiod, but that was about two weeks ago, so I'll have to see how things like it in the coming weeks.  At least some of the delayed growth is also just new frags in a new system and the issues I've run into previously.

The fish get along with the exception of the firefish - but after trying to catch the one being bullied for several days, I'm just going to wait and see.  He's clearly the one being bullied, but he also comes out most of the day (and hides in a corner or near a powerhead), and eats every day and even fights back against the other one somewhat.  I don't think it can go on indefinitely, but I think he's wary enough about my net that I will wait for him to get tired and try to catch him then.  The two mandarins are getting along well, though the new one still likes to go up the back wall and on top of a powerhead in search for food when I turn them off and feed the tank, so she could probably be eating more than she is now.  The male Banggai cardinal is in the last stages of them spawning - no eyes in his mouth yet, but he's 19 days post spawn and the jaws are getting wider and his mouth is less able to fully close, so I think he'll have baby fish in there in the next couple of days.

My plan for algae going forward is to try to do a bit more regular manual removal to keep the overall growth rate down so that the urchins can take care of it mostly on their own - they eat plenty, but not enough to keep up with it yet.  I also feed a lot and will continue too, but I think I can cut back on the pellet food, since the fish seem least interested in that in any case and it's probably the most nutrient dense.

Other than that, I keep feeding and things keep growing.  I have a few critters I've got my eyes on for additions (a fromia tile star, a tridacna clam, a possum wrasse), but I'll see when I can find good ones and try to confirm that they'll actually work in the tank.  Outside of the tank, I'm up to 6 gallons of phytoplankton culture of three strains, and two gallons of apocyclops pods with some parvocalanus and hopefully some pseudodioptomus cultures started in the next week, and while I feed the tank phyto every day now and dump in some extras of the pods, they're going for the purpose of raising babies, so while the new Banggai cardinals shouldn't need a lot of it, I hope I can get other spawns and try to raise other things.  I collected some cerith eggs that appeared one day and put them in a jug with some phyto - not sure if any of the parameters are ideal, but apparently they are easy to raise (they can be invasive in other hatcheries), so I'll give it a shot.  It would be neat to be able to farm some clean up crew types of critters and it can probably be done with very small vessels, so I will collect what I can find (have seen some cortez cerith eggs too, haven't gathered any, though).

[tpallas]

I also have Florida live rock in my tank and have similar algae - some sort of turf algae? I did a test of it with Flucanzole and it did take care of it. I haven't dosed the tank but I have noticed the algae is receding (I have chaeto in the fuge so it may be outcompeting it). I have noticed it does grow strongly in low nutrients so it is a bit of a pain.

[DaJMasta]

I've been manually removing and sort of waiting for the CUC to take care of it, but I'm thinking of some extra snails - it seems like they may be easy to raise as well, so an added bonus that justifies the bit of expense.

For now, manual removal to get the overall quantity lower, some planted into the algae scrubber (which still only has fledgling coverage, but seems to be growing the stuff), and then just trying to keep it back enough that the urchins can actually eat a good chunk of it.  I've got six urchins starting at penny or so size, and the best part is that they were all hitchikers that came in smaller than the size of a pea on the original rock!

[DaJMasta]

It's past time for an update but I'm not really ready to.  In the last couple months I've come across a couple things I wanted to do to change things (hopefully for the better), but have seen largely stagnant or negative growth, which is quite disappointing.  That said, the inverts and fish have been quite happy, and with the limited actually success, I do think I'm still moving in a good direction.  Some updates, but not a full update:

 

I found out in September that my light output was WAY lower than I expected.  Apparently the light had been set to stay at 50% output, and after several increases in light in the month prior having very limited results, I eventually found that the dotted line on the Radion's control panel showed where I had set it too, and the filled in line at the half way point was the actual output.  Over the next few weeks I raised it up a bit, then a bit more - saw some coloration in one acro that had been brown for a while - then things started showing some signs of being overlit, so I've backed it down slightly, but par could be up 25% since August right now.

I've been battling green algae for most of the tank and in September bought a half dozen trochus snails to help.  They seemed to make a difference, and made a clearer spot behind where they ate, but didn't seem to be enough.... so I did a second round.  Definitely making a difference but still requiring some manual removal, I went for a third round, and that was maybe three weeks back.  There's definitely less hair algae, but it's also still there and I still remove it.  I won't be adding more snails for a bit, at least, to see how things even out and if the snails and urchins can really keep up if I'm not doing much.  I had been going with an approximate 1-2 things per gallon worth of clean up crew, but I think those numbers can really only work if you either use big snails (not regular ceriths or small nassrius or whatever), if you have herbivores for fish, or both.  An upside of the lower amount in the tank and the extra snails, I've seen some hair algae growth (finally) in the scrubber, and removed a couple of golf ball sized portions from it since the last update.

I got a beautiful little crocea clam in September, excited to keep them and expecting good results with my daily live phyto feedings.  A couple days in, at night, I found a tongan nassarius stuck to it, mantle fully retracted.  I pulled it off and got the clam into a breeder box for protection, but it didn't make it through the next day.  Looking around online and seeing its mantle happily extended just hours before.... I'm pretty sure it was predation.  I pulled out the remaining nassarius since, and recently got and added a derasa and while only in for a few days, it seems happy and unattacked!  Interestingly, this derasa looks way better under white light than blue, the golds come out much better, but the patterning and blue rim look nicer than I expected, so I look forward to it growing in.

Late September, I decided to check potassium levels (after melev's issues and the relatively slow growth and limited coloration of my corals), and ended up adding a bit of potassium and a capful of iron/manganese supplement to try and overcome the consumption from the algae and help the goniopora out.  The next day the millepora near the top was half the size and pissed off (brown not green), but everything else seemed at least mostly happy.  I don't think the manganese helped the goniopora, and I think the solution for them was ultimately target feeding the particulate food.  I feed the tank some particulate food and the phyto every day, but it seems they much prefer getting it directly, and they probably get a fair bit more that way.  I'll keep an eye on potassium, but I'm not dosing any iron/manganese anymore... I suspect it caused some issues with other corals as well, though perhaps tough to attribute with the lighting adjustments going on.

Also realized that I had just sort of not done regular water changes really in the history of the tank - it just getting them when new livestock was added and the occasional one when I realized it.  I'm on a more regular schedule now, not much of a difference so far, but probably better than worrying about trace supplementation.  I also think the phyto dosing (a few hundred mL of seawater a day being added) sort of serves as a small scale daily water change, as I have to take some out a couple times a week to keep the salinity in check.

All in all, some corals are still pissed, some algae still remains, and a couple new things are still settling in, but I can't justify an updated post without a pictures, so how about this:

That pistol shrimp and that urchin, two of the hitchhikers that came in with that first live rock six and a half months ago.... now look like this:

I think that shrimp's bigger claw is as big has his body was then, and he's quite the little noisemaker.

[roni]

Sorry you've been going through so much.  I do think that in smaller systems sometimes upping the volume and frequency of water changes and double checking things you take for granted like salinity can help correct the problem.  I had a miscalibrated salinity probe lead to an slow but steady crash that I couldn't figure out.  Hope you continue to make progress

[DaJMasta]

Thanks, it's maybe not as bad as I make it out to be, growth has been slower than hoped and I've had a few pieces I liked slowly decline for reasons unknown.

That all said, I am really happy with the fish situation now, even though it's overstocked and those two firefish are still bickering.  Got a couple of new wrasses who have brought a lot of color and activity to the tank and everyone seems to generally get along.

I'm trying to sort of track down the source of the issues, and the salinity creep has been a more recent one and probably isn't helping, but I don't think is ultimately the source.  I have a hunch that my elevated alkalinity may actually be a problem with the relatively low nutrient levels - I had been targeting about 9.5dKH for accelerated growth, and it's currently around 10dKH because I didn't catch the dosing adjustments at the last point that angried up the coral, but I'm getting the impression that it's just too high for the <10ppm nitrate and <0.25ppm phosphate that seem to generally be going on (thanks to the carbon dosing).  I think the better growth has all happened around 9dKH in this tank, and I know alkalinity burns (not seen, and I think usually at higher levels) are a thing, so maybe this is a bit of a precursor to it.

Other things I'm looking into:
"stray voltage" - sort of a weird way to talk about voltage, but through my multimeter I read about 45VAC (at 160Hz, interestingly), and have measured as much as 400uA to ground with it.  I know the level goes down when I turn off stuff, and I've never been shocked while working in it at all, but 400uA seems like a lot, and I do have a number of things submerged.  I've got a ground line with a piece of stainless wire in place as of today and will see if it helps - I assume not, but I've got the stuff to do it and the understanding of how it works to at least try.  Not as long term solution as a titanium probe or similar, but I'm also not really convinced that it should be a solution to anything, as I think if the tank got to a dangerous potential or could source a fair bit of current when something touched it, it would trip the GFCI and zap you when you stuck your hand in, and neither of those has happened.

And potentially, the vodka I'm dosing.  I'm using Gilbey's (the cheapest fifth I could find at the local shop) and am almost done with the bottle (~750mL in 6 months or so), but I ramped up the dosage a bit in the last couple months (around the same timeline as the more recent decline in coral growth, to 8mL/day now back to 7mL), and if there's some unknown impurity in there, that certainly could contribute.  I looked at other brands and a few of the cheap ones advertise "natural flavors" or a secondary distilled alcohol, but I bought a different brand that again advertised just plain vodka, and in the next week or two when the Gilbey's runs out, I'll swap brands and see if anything is happy.


Otherwise..... who knows.  I don't think there has been anything that could potentially leech into the system from things in there that was dangerous and don't think anything's getting in as an aerosol, so maybe if the alkalinity, the stray voltage, and the vodka brand aren't the cause, I just order up some ICP testing and check the trace element levels.

[DaJMasta]

It's not all doom and gloom, and while things aren't really quite on track, I think they are moving in a good direction.  As for the three things last time, it wasn't stray voltage (the grounded probe did nothing over a few days and made no difference when removed), and it probably wasn't the vodka because the tank started improving before I ran out, though it has since been finished.

I think the biggest problem for growth has actually been light.  While there have been some corals that have shown signs of stress or bleaching when the light was increased, almost everything seemed to not like having less, and the stress of turning up the lights always goes away with time.  I'm still on the increase because I have to be gradual - from prior testing, raising my middle-of-the-day setpoints by 1% a day or more is too fast for things and they will get pissed off, so I've been doing a maybe 5% step up a little less than once a week.  Just today I decided to increase the photoperiod a bit - I had been running on the assumption that mine was long, but because of fairly long ramp up and down times on the ends, I think it was actually a bit short, and since a single XR15 on high power really doesn't constitute moderate to high lighting for the whole tank (which I didn't really remember/realize initially), I think everything has just been growing slow by getting used to the low light and trying to do its thing.  I've got some frags that are looking better, some that are new and haven't lost coloration, and some that are showing sure signs of growth/recovery, so I think in another week's time I'll either slightly extend the photoperiod or slightly increase the output of the two high points of the day (to low 90s%).

The more interesting things and the reason for this update is actually non-coral stuff happening in the tank.  The female mandarin got much fatter in the last two weeks - a noticeable bulge behind her head on the bottom side of her body - and I don't think she's pigging out, I think she's carrying eggs.  I haven't seen any spawning behavior from the pair of them, which is supposedly supposed to happen around sunset, but it's a good sign that they're healthy and happy and while it sounds like quite a difficult task, I would absolutely try to catch and raise their eggs.  The photo isn't great, but you can see the bulge on her underside:

 

Also in that picture, that monti that's been pretty well encrusting top left is a great canary for lighting increase.  More than 1% a day in weekly or so steps and a bit of it will bleach out about 3 days after the first increase, then recover later, but around like 0.8% a day it seems to tolerate.


The other neat thing I found today was some little, reddish shrimp in the rear chamber that were just running around on the skimmer.  They're maybe 3-5mm, and I don't know if juveniles of any of the shrimp in my tank are a match, so they could be some different species.  The closest look to what's in here is a peppermint shrimp, but there's only one, so if they're somehow that, they came in as eggs on the shrimp and managed to survive out of the larval stage despite the mouths and flow.... which would be surprising.

 

Also worth mentioning: I've confirmed that my skunk cleaners are spawning.  They start with a greenish mass under their body that turns yellow, gets bigger, and then turns a light tan color.  I've seen it happen a couple of times, but definitely saw eggs this last time, saw the shrimp at the top of the tank acting differently a little before 3am one night earlier this week, and then it didn't have any eggs (and there was a fresh molt) in the tank the next morning.  I think in the past the releases of eggs were very late at night, so I haven't seen the newly hatched eggs yet, but I will try to devise something to catch the larvae.  Again a species I know that would be very challenging to raise (150 day larval stage), but now that I have some small tanks setup and continuous phyto/zooplankton production of some amount, I can at least reasonably attempt it.

[roni]

That's fantastic.  I think the microlife gets overlooked a lot in terms of what makes a system successful and definitely slowly increasing light is the way to go.   

 

Lots of different shrimp spawn and reproduce and while it's unlikely anything survives without heroic efforts, the fact that you are regularly feeding phyto likely increases the odds.

 

Plus at the least it's great food for everyone else!

[DaJMasta]

Yeah, I asked in nano-reef if anyone could ID and one said they thought it was a mysid shrimp of some sort.  Far from a genus and species, but I think that's the most likely guess so far.

 

With that in mind.... I sucked up a dozen or two more from the back chamber and transferred them into my fry tanks.  If they are mysis, I'd love to have some supply of them, and they are known for being difficult to culture because they are so cannibalistic, so spreading them out to other tanks will give some more space to maintain a population.  We'll see if they grow into something else or stay small (and surprisingly fast).

 

 

[roni]

That is awesome!  I'm really impressed by your breeding efforts.  My kids got a pair of bangaiis and we're slowly conditioning them to hopefully get some breeding as well

[DaJMasta]

Well, I've been trying to slowly raise the lighting, and will continue for another week or so I think, but I ran into something today which really makes me the question the whole process.

 

I had been seeing the signs of more light helping - a bit of coloration and polyp extension, a little bleaching in one spot on a monti that recovers days later, etc.  I had seen the light (XR15 G5 through the mobius app) live update with the new settings, but apparently they aren't always or aren't completely saving.

Today I went to raise the lighting to near 100% point intensity at the peak of the day, but found that the setting it was at half an hour ago was way below the like 5% increase I made on the channel.  Now from the very beginning, I had been getting a bluetooth communication error every time I saved the settings, but the live updating worked and the light always reset to the current schedule immediately after saving, so I had assumed it worked.... but it hasn't been.

 

Since corals are still showing signs of higher lighting, I think what's been happening is that only the single currently edited point is being saved when you click save, so if you edit several and save, only the last one saves.  That means, though, that likely my photoperiod hasn't been extended (even though the graph loads to show it in the app), and until today, my mostly-whites early stage of the day was probably down at like 75-80% instead of the 94% it was 'set' to.

Needless to say, this is about as bad of a failure of the software as possible, since I don't even have a way to actually read the settings out of it.  I may uninstall the app and reinstall just to see if I can delete whatever cached profile is on the phone and actually load the settings from the light and be sure that at least the starting point is what's being used, but this may well extend my lighting increasing period by a lot since I suddenly don't even know what point I'm at.

 

 

Oof.

[DaJMasta]

Lighting was definitely the answer.

Since the last post, I decided the best way to make sure the app and the light agreed was to save every point in the schedule.  Since then I've expanded the brightest lit part of the day by 45 minutes, expanded the total photoperiod by half an hour, and raised the levels from ~90% to 100% point intensity (about 90% of total output of the fixture, it seems to say).

No bleaching, and in the last week especially, I feel like I can actually see growth day over day.  It's slight, but it's such a contrast to not even being able to notice a difference week over week before on relatively small frags, it's maybe an order of magnitude faster growth.  I'm seeing coloring up of some acro frags, I'm seeing polyp extension when there was minimal before for literal months, and I'm actually having to dose alkalinity again, at long last.

Similar shot to the picture above, almost all of the growth on the bubblegum digi happened in the last week:

 

 

And while I don't really have a before picture, this acro had fully encrusted the plug but hugged it completely, all of the '3d' growth around the plug and the projection upwards is from this last week:

 

 

The battle with algae isn't over, but I'm starting to use Phosphate Rx to drop the phosphate level in the tank - I saw it spike after a fish went missing (not nitrate, though, probably because of the carbon dosing), and I do think it's very slightly on the decline.  I'm hoping coral growth, lowering phosphates, and maybe a few more snails will do the trick in the long run.

Oddly, the two firefish are getting along better too.  While there's still a more dominant one and the other spends a chunk of time over near one of the powerheads, I'm seeing less actual aggression, and there are times of the day where they swim together in the front of the tank, plus they seem to be sleeping in the same hole at night.  Not sure what happened, but while I wasn't happy they were fighting, I hadn't been able to easily catch either one, so I'm glad they at least appear to be getting along better.


I also, just earlier in the week, took a chance on Red Cyano Rx again, despite the crash the last time I used it.  This time around, the dosage was lower (if I remember right) at 2 scoops for the whole tank (should be the right amount for 20G), and I used Salifert's dissolved oxygen test kit to check on it quite a bit - something like 10 tests in 24 hours.  This time around, no such problem, and I didn't see dissolved oxygen drop below 7.0 mg/L, which is a good level.  That's with the skimmer off, with carbon dosing the night before, and with the rear chamber pump turned up a bit just to make sure there was a little extra agitation.  The treatment is completed, the cyano is gone, and nothing seemed to be stressed by it.  Since the mechanism should be the same, and there may have actually been more cyano present after manual removal this time, I can only conclude that the last treatment's crash wasn't actually Red Cyano Rx.

 

Then what caused the loss of my flame angel and peppermint basslet back in the summer?  My best guess is that around the same time, I stopped seeing my yellow sea cucumber.  I see my brown knobby cuke nightly now, so it didn't effect that one, but perhaps the Red Cyano Rx had a negative effect on the yellow filter feeding cuke and it died, causing the crash.  Not that there's any conclusive evidence, but at least in this second treatment where I was trying to be even more careful, I didn't even see a drop in dissolved oxygen that would be significant given the accuracy of the test I was using, let alone something below nominal levels.

In any case, it's been a bunch to do and it's got a ways to go, but I'm hoping December is a good month for growth so I can finally get some proper coverage and color.

[YHSublime]

Sound like you’ve nipped lighting problem. I sometimes wonder the same thing with my tank, but I get pretty good growth, so start to wonder.

[DaJMasta]

I turned on a flashlight and had a look around the tank late last night (as I often do) at about 1am, and I heard a faint scratching noise.  Not clicking like the pistol shrimp, but like something hard rubbing on something else hard.  Within a few seconds I saw my flame scallop flap into view of the flashlight from the top corner of the tank.  While I had seen it appear in other parts of the tank in days past, it seems to move more frequently than the other bivalves, I had never really seen how it moved, I had just assumed that it stuck out a foot and sort of moved its anchor point.

Well apparently these scallops swim by flapping their shell open and closed and sort of jetting around with it, and it looks as hilarious as it sounds.  I didn't get any video of the maybe 10-15 second swim and today it's back jammed in a dark corner as usual, but there are some videos out there.  Looking at some of the youtube ones, I also found out that the electric flame scallop, which I thought just had a metallic blue sheen to the inside, actually flickers the blue color.  I think I may have to get a few electric flame scallops as a result of this realization, though with all the moving I'm not 100% sure my current scallop is completely happy (though it's been in there maybe 6 months).

Edited December 12, 2021 by DaJMasta