Timfish

I've got fish that are older than their wild counterparts using the Ehiem autofeeders with Spectrum pellets. I have great success with Lyretail, Disbar, Pinksquare and Tricolor anthias by including ZoPlan along with the pellets. I have nothing against feeding fish a quality flake food but I have found it much easier to feed a consistant amount of food with each cycle using only pellets or pellets with powdered food mixed in.

Just siphon them out with a water change. They reproduce by splitting and it takes a couple months before they are ready to split again so siphoning them periodicly is an easy way to keep thier numbers down. I'm curious why you want to remove them? I've found them to be harmless scavengers.

My guess, correct me if I'm wrong, is this is a new set up. If so this is normal and expected. A lot has been made about cycling a tank but maturing a tank is less talked about. This algae you're seeing now is just the initial step in the maturing process which will include at least several different cycles of different algae. While it might be tempting to try to use shortcuts I would discourage using any products as they will impact your maturing ecosystem in some way. I would also encourage you to start adding easy to keep coral species as soon as possible to speed up the maturing process. If you haven't gotten some quality wild or maricultured live rock I would encourage you to get at least a few pounds, either is an excellent source for cryptic sponges which are also essential for a healthy reef ecosystem.

It looks to me like the beginnings of Head and Lateral Line Erosion Syndrome or HLLE. Are you using GAC? Nutrition issues have always been considered one of the causitive agents but dust from Granulated Activated Carbon, GAC, has been shown to be a factor. I use GAC without issues but I use a good quality brand and besides rinsing it well I back it with fine filter pads and make sure it can't tumple, I won't use it in a reactor where it might be able to move around and form small particles.

Right, stable alkalinity is more important than calcium and magnesium as it's what corals use to build their skeletons and it's being used by all algae in a system so there's a much heavier demand for it. Calcium and magnesium need to be kept above certain numbers (I use 360 mg/l calcium and 1200 mg/l magnesium as minimums). This discussion does highlight the issue with inacurate or aging test kits and I replace my test kits at least yearly and always compare the new and old test kits to make sure there's no difference.

This is the most reliable timer I've come across: https://www.amazon.com/Intermatic-TN311-Heavy-Grounded-Timer/dp/B00LAI1O1U/ref=sr_1_2?s=appliances&ie=UTF8&qid=1531741898&sr=1-2&keywords=intermatic+timer But there's also wifi timers like this one you can program with your cell phone: https://www.amazon.com/Socket-Outlets-Compatible-Google-Assistant/dp/B07CMNH8F9/ref=sr_1_1?s=appliances&ie=UTF8&qid=1531742067&sr=1-1&keywords=wifi+outlet+timer

You've stripped out too many nutrients especially phosphates. You're supplementing nitrogen adding amino acids but running phosguard, dosing vinegar and using macroalgae you've created a phosphate defeciency. (Adding nitrogen sources like amino acids can create or excerbate a PO4 deficiency issue.) Carefully increase PO4 to >.03 mg/l and I would suggest around .1 mg/l. Keep in mind photobiology is not only species unique but also will vary at the genotype level and by species of simbionts of each colony. Don't be surprised by varying responses in your corals. Long term research done in Southampton University with coral maintained on a closed system found phosphate deficiency can severely upset the photobiology of corals making them very sensitive to light and temperature changes. Adding nitrogen to a system that is phosphate deficient may only exacerbate the problem. Their research found a minimum threshold level for PO4 of .03 mg/l. Other research has shown increasing phosphate increases corals growth and nitrogen uptake by corals is phosphate limited. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022098111004588 http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/file/Nutrient%20enrichment.pdf https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2015.00103/full https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X17301601?via%3Dihub http://jeb.biologists.org/content/214/16/2749.full https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRIKW-9d2xI

If this helps, keep in mind every time a corals is moved it has to make changes to it's photobiology and it takes weeks to months, depending on species, for these changes to be done (and as pointed out in the paper Stoneroller posted and I mentioned some may never adjust). And for future reference if you get more Xenia here's a video showing water and lighting conditions it tolerates: Lighting varies from low to bright, ~25 to ~230 PAR. Estimated color temperature is around 13000K. Flow varies from nonexistant to very high in front of the return line.

Your comment about keeping Xenia caught my attention. I have the generic, Silver and Pom Pom and none of them are too particular about water flow. The generic, from my experience could really care less, it's much more a light intensity (not so much spectrum) to get good pulsing but they do fine in lower light levels if pulsing isn't much of an issue. Exactly what are your water parameters? What is your lighting?

Sorry to hear about it's demise. 🙁 I do have a few thoughts. One fascinating thing I'v elearned that has helped me understand why stuff doesn't do well even though everything "should be" right is corals have been shown to have a decadal memery, they actually learn and memorize the conditions they grew in and changes that one specimen of given species/genotype may be indifferent to, another specimen of same species/genotype may find it unacceptable and it may never thrive. (This decadal memory is at the polyp level and polyps in different locations in the same colony can react differently.) Each species we keep also has many different genotypes and each genotype has different simbionts and different degrees of adaptability and tolerance to bacterial infections. Did your torch ever split? If it never split in the year and half you had it that would be a very good indicator it was never happy with your system in the first place. So short answer is what Stoneroller said, get local corals that are doing well under similar conditions to your system.

Woohoo! I was moving some stuff around and found another baby clam in this system. It looks to be a couple years old based on what I've seen with the others in this system over the last 12 years when the first two showed up.

I'm a bit confused also but it sounds like you have soemthing like a Red Sea system that has a filter built into the back of the system. If so it should work fine but there are advantages to having a sump in the future if you ever move or upgrade. I wouldn't use the canister filter though, IMO they require more work than they are worth and I certainly haven't needed them on any of my systems I've run.

I rarely test more than monthly but I'm curious if you tested at the same time each day. Have you tried testing in the morning and evening to see if there's a change? In this thread I had the magnesium climp over 2000 without adding anything and after 2 years it's still staying fairly high, ~1800 last time I checked. It also was not the source RO as I did not have this problem with other system using the same water. Aproxamately two months prior to posting the thread I had a timer fail in the on position and the lights were on for several days before it was noticed. Most of the corals did not "appear" to have any ill effect except for the bubble coral in the middle which kept declining over several more months before I gave up and removed it.

I hate to say it but in all my years of keeping corals I've never known anyone to be successfull keeping christmas tree worms for any length of time.

You said you turned off your dosing pump, I'm assuming it was dosing magnesium? Did you change your alkalinity and/or calcium dosing? Did you make a big change to your lights or lighting schedule? Endoliths are dissolving the sand and rock in your system but not all organisms that use bicarbonate are also going to use magnesium like corals. If something disrupted your corals calcification process you might still see bicarbonate being used but magnesium might not be.

Because they're not trying to kill each other. 😁 First of all none of the tang pairs in my tanks have ever been observed breeding so I can't say any of them are proven pairs like I can say with clowns. For all practical purposes you're right about hobbiests being not being able to determine males from females as most of the tangs we deal with when we purchase them are still juviniles. Strictly speaking though, many surgeon/tangs species do show sexual dimorphisim in size. With Powder Blues females can be twice the size of males. With Yellow Tangs the males can be larger than females but the size difference is much smaller than with PBs and there is more overlap between the sexes. Many surgeon/tang species form pairs in the wild and it's reasonable we should be able to establish pairs in our aquariums and Powder Blues are one of those species. Additionally, I've seen pairs form with yellow tangs in my tanks over the years which raises some questions as in the wild they do not. The most exasperating example of a pair forming in one of my systems was when I added 3 yellow tangs to a 350 gallon system with a Purple Tang and a Sailfin Tang. The Purple almost immediatly started swimming peacefully with one of the Yellow Tangs and kept chasing off the other two Yellow Tangs. At about 6 months it decided it had enough and spent about 4 hours one afternoon killing the two yellows it didn't like and lived peacefully with the remaining Yellow Tang for another twelve years. Based on what I've seen over the years a significant problem with keeping multiple tangs, is groups of the same size juviniles are put together at roughly the same time. By quarantining tangs together to see who likes who, extending the quarantine time to be sure everyone is eating and gaining weight and by get disparite sizes I have very few issues compared to 20 years ago. And individual personality can always trump anything I do. 😕

I pinch it or fold it partially with one hand while my other hand holds it, in most cases, roughly 6" from the end that's siphoning out algae. I also use stainless steel straws with a bend in them or striaght pieces of 1/2" CPVC pipe of various lengths as a nozzles if needed. As far at TDS causing cyano this reef system was started in 1994 and since it was rehomed in 2007 it has had water changes with tapwater. Does it look like it has a cyano issue?

What diameter tubing are you using? I always use 9/16 so I'm not standing over a bucket forever.

You're Welcome!

Pair of captive raised Ocillaris clowns purchased in 2004 with thier eggs and Rose Bubble Tip Anemone. The initial Rose BTA was acquired from a friend in 2010, in this system it only splits about every 18 - 24 months. In contrast the Brown BTAs split about every 6 months and their clone line traces back to a wild BTA purchased in 1997. https://youtu.be/N3znQbciX48

Sorry to hear it's loss! 😞 If the goby is still alive it probably has developed a resisitance against parasites. Unfortunately this means it might be a carrier so removing it and putting it in a QT means you should start treating for parasites right away before adding more fish to the QT. FYI the cysts can remain viable for as long as 72 days so you should leave your display tank fishless for that length of time, not 8 weeks.

If it blows off easily I would just siphon it out but if you use a filter sock leaving it in for more than a few hours algae is going to be breaking down releasing stuff back into the water, I would suggest a really fine micron sock so it catches a lot more and clogs up fast so you have to swap it out (FWI I stopped using filter socks many years ago). Don't worry about trying to get all of it, being obsessive compulsive isn't going to shift the equilibrium of the ecosystem any faster. Most algae has a slightly negative bouyancy so if you turn all circulation off after 20-30 minutes a lot of it will settle to the bottom and it can be siphoned out. When I get rid of nuisance algae most of the time I'm only doing 5% to 10% water changes weekly. My first thread when I corrected the equilibrium in Mike's tank was an exception with roughly 15% water changes roughly 3-4 weeks apart. My 2nd thread was typical with just 5% water changes weekly: because of the 4' height I was using a long handle dish scrubbing brush stuck in a piece of PVC so I could reach to the bottom of the tank, like I just mentioned, pumps were shut off before I started scrubbing then the algae along with sand was siphoned out and just some of the surface sand was rinsed in fresh water and returned to the tank.

What I realized and the main reason I stopped using stuff to kill off nuisance algae 12-14 years ago and focused on just manual removal is the stuff doesn't really get rid of the main problem. It only corrects a secondary and mostly aesthetic issue. Using an antibiotic or what ever it is in chemiclean or some algacide just dumps all those stuff that had been bound up in whatever nuisance algae available for everything else in the system. And one thing I've learned some other nuisance algae is most likely going to step in and out compete corals, especially if whatever product is used also impacts corals ability to compete. Just because a product says it won't kill corals doesn't mean it won't affect it's metabolism. There's plenty of research showing corals impacted by disruptions or stress events can look fine but thier internal biology can take months to recover. So another way to think of it is like this; If a tank is treated all the stuff bound up in the nuisance algae is now back in the system. Doing a 20% or 30% water change leaves 70% to 80% of the stuff available for some other nuisance algae to use. But manual removal may take out 60%, 70% to 80% of the nuisance algae and the suff it's bound up. Sure there's still 20%, 30% or 40% of the nuisance algae left but the stuff it's pulled out of the system is still bound up and not available for other nuisance algae. Since nothing has been added that would interfere or disrupt corals ability to compete and shift the ecosystems equilibrium to one that favors corals over algae. Here's links to my two threads on nuisance algae. One important takeaway is nitrates and phosphate INCREASED as the nuisance algae disappeared. I think this demonstrates there is a lot more going on with our systems than just nitrogen and phosphate and whether the equilibrium of an ecosystem favors corals or algae than what our tests are currently able to show us. http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/34556-hair-algae-a-case-study/?tab=comments#comment-275433 http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/39043-hair-algae-a-second-case-study/?tab=comments#comment-325744

You didn't mention if you had quarantined it first, if not I would strongly encourage you to set up a QT system. It's not a good sign if it was eating then disappeared but I've had Royal Grammas disappear for months then show up. With the info you've given you're probably better off waiting a few weeks before adding another fish. As far as the snail it's almost certainly unrelated to the Royal Gramma's disappearance. Be careful not to add too many snails, some are great at dealing with an algae issue but quickly start dying off when it's gone. Better choices in for algae are Royal and/or Tuxedo urchins, Sally Lightfoot Crabs and Hermit Crabs. Also keep in mind algae is a part of a marine ecosystem and in my experience the nuisance types will disappear on thier own as an ecosystem matures or are a problem caused by secondary issues and one the primary issue is resolved will disappear as the ecosystem repairs itself. See my two threads on nuisance algae: http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/34556-hair-algae-a-case-study/?tab=comments#comment-275433 http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/39043-hair-algae-a-second-case-study/?tab=comments#comment-325744

I think it will work great! Some sponges will like higher or lower flow so I would expect to see a range of species over time.