jestep

Just got back in town from a few week vacation. Not a big deal, just wanted to see if anyone finalized the judging or if this is just going to go out quietly.

AAA. I was very disappointed in home brew the last 2 times I went, and not for under-filling. Apart from that it's easily 3x more expensive compared to AAA. Airgas wont fill for non-industrial use at all last time I tried.

Do you have a way of isolating all the zoas? You could do a peroxide or bayer dip. If you have the ability to keep them separate, you may just need to watch and manually remove any nudi's if they pop up again. I'd be worried about eggs being elsewhere in the tank at this point.

Forgot about that one, great graphic. The sharkwater documentary is a huge eye opener.

Humans...? Worldwide shark populations are 10% of what they were about 20 years ago. Not sure how Hawaii's regional numbers are doing.

Best practice is to QT everything for about 6 weeks. This will allow you to rule out almost any disease, specifically ones that have a dormant period. However, if you don't have an adequate and existing QT setup, or at the very least pre-seeded filtration, you're often dooming a healthy new fish by trying to hack a QT together in a hurry. Stress allows for opportunistic infections and pathogens that would not normally occur if the fish was in a comfortable environment. If you can do it right, do it every time. If not, be obsessively picky when purchasing a new fish.

I've heard the clown's can become extremely aggressive. In the top 3 tangs as far as looks go IMO.

Does the fan/compressor come on at all? Relay was my first guess based on the description.

This is going straight into a 90 for more open space, currently in a 50.

This happened about a week ago. I took the filter covers off my vortech pumps to replace them and forgot to put one of the new ones back on. My yellow tang was wrapped around one when I looked at the tank in the morning. He must have been on it a long time, probably all night, because his whole body was curved for about 48 hours after I found him. His mouth was badly gouged and fins shredded. He had indentations from the vortech grill, and he basically sat on the bottom of the tank not moving for a full day. No idea how he made it, but minus an eye, he looks like he'll pull through. Really sad and gruesome. Still hoping he doesn't get an infection or anything. His depth perception is completely shot. I watched him unsuccessfully try to eat sinking pellets several times but he's been chowing on nori.

I'd just go with the raw shrimp method.

Agreed. The feathery look is pretty hard to remove from my memory. I've never seen it with quite that growth pattern, but there are supposedly something like 100 subspecies.

Nitrates were getting extremely high due to die off which prompted the water changes. I don't think it was 100% per week but it was a lot. Don't want to completely hijack the thread but in the end the actual cause was a massive nutrient problem from unusable rock. I don't think there was any way to win without cooking the rock completely. Especially in a large tank, small water changes are much less of a problem since you'd be reducing a much smaller amount of Mg per change.

Big Al's sells Tech M by the gallon @ ~$35 and the reef calculator says it would take about 124 oz. to bring 150 gal from 1350 to 1800ppm should it really doesn't costs $$$ hunfrdreds, as one 128 oz / 1 gal should about do it.. I agree but that's assuming you aren't going to do a water change for 3 months. I had a really bad outbreak in my 28. I had to get Mg up to 2100ppm for more than 3 months. Took about 4 gallons of tech-M with routine water changes. Bryopsis then came back a few months after I stopped. The problem with a ton of dying algae is that it's not removing whatever nutrients are in the tank and is releasing what it has stored back into the tank. Sort of a double whammy for water quality in a small tank.

Also, hydrogen peroxide can get rid of it in a hurry. If you can remove the rock soak or spray in 3% H2O2. It may take 2 dips, but this method is probably the easiest way of getting rid of it. There's a huge thread on nano reef about it. The tech-m method in that size tank will cost several hundred dollars so it's not really a viable option IMO.

Sounds like it's bryopsis to me by that description. Hard to tell by the picture since it's moving. It's a pretty distinct algae group so I don't think it's likely you're wrong in identifying it. I'll be interested to see if it goes away. I've heard of a random emerald crab or turbo eating it but never to the point of getting rid of it.

Caulastrea definitely benefit. Acans grow a little better. Duncans and euphyllia's all grow substantially faster when target feeding. Mine typically get about 25% of the pellets I feed just by chance, and a few have grown drastically in a few years. My purple hammer went from a couple heads to about 50 in 2 years. Mysis are another good one as suggested that everything likes. If you're having any nutrient problems, I would just skip it. If some food lands on them when feeding the fish, that's great, but not worth off balancing your chemistry for it.

I wonder if ocean acidification and warming, which is also well observed, and thus accelerated growth of algae is also a contributor.

This will probably be the last picture update on this tank. Upgrade finalizing in the next week or two. Bought the 90 rimless from Bio3 and in the final stages of moving over to it. Fish are all getting along very well, but obviously not appropriate once grown for this size tank. Have added a few new corals like the yellow/green table and the acro on the back wall. Really want the extra landscape so I can trim down to a cleaner look as originally planned. Will probably sell my chalices and lower light coral in the sandbed that have been hiding from the light under my overflow.

They don't have any right now unless they got a shipment since yesterday afternoon. Probably less than 10 saltwater fish in the whole store right now. RCA may have one, but I'm sure that either aqua dome or aquatek has one.

How big is this tank? Is the bryopsis on the rock or is it isolated somewhere? Foxface are the only fish, or really only animal, I've seen eat it regularly.