Chad and Jen May

Hows your fish?

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Ha! I remember your vid on catching your evil six line! Funny.....

Ric...use this stuff for your cyano issue. 100% natural, won't drive your skimmer crazy other than you'll pull out nasty skimmate.

I use it on my tank weekly just as a way to help keep things super clean.

I've had countless viewers use it to clean out even the nastiest of tanks with great results

Definitely looking into this! Thanks Mark!

I just used Chemi clean on my tank less than a week ago and my skimmer also went nuts. What I did was do a 20% water change.. then sat with a 5 gallon bucket on the floor next to the skimmer on the closed position. Every time the skimmer cup filled up, I unplugged it and emptied it into the bucket. It took about twenty minutes and three gallons of water to finally stabilize the skimmer enough that it stopped overflowing. I replaced the 3 gallons with new salt water and I left the skimmer in the almost closed position overnight and by morning (I did this in the evening around 7) it had not overflowed and I could finally open it up. Hope that helps.

Siphoning sand with a hose into a bucket, not reusing the water.. so Im doing frequent water changes, about 10-15 gallons every third day. I added carbon to my sump last night per the advice of LFS... going to keep up water changes and siphoning, and will very slowly raise PH and Alk.. hoping I can beat this soon, its ugly and annoying! I will stop the dried food, but that will be rough, my powder blue LOVES pellets.

The skimmer is PM Redline 225.

http://www.precisionmarine.com/storefront/productdetail.aspx?idproduct=898

Beautiful!

Hey ARC!

This is in my 180 gallon tank... setup almost 2months ago. I used all my live rock and water from my 90g tank (which was up for 7 months without problems) and used 100lbs new Caribsea Aragonite substrate. Have 3X150w (14,000K Phoenix) MH's, 4X96w 460nm Actinic PC's. Running 55g sump with Skimmer, UV. Total gallons of water 210 gallons.

Today's Params as follows:

Temp - 78 - 80 (currently 80)

Salinity - 1.025

Amm - 0

NitrI - 0

NitrA - 20ppm

Phos - 0 or <0.25

Calc - 480

PH - 7.8

KH - 7

Livestock

2 Tomato Clowns

2 BlueGreen Chromis

2 Bartletts Anthias

2 Yellow Tangs

1 Powder Blue Tang

1 Regal Tang

1 Foxface Rabbitfish

1 Blue Mandarin Goby

1 Gold headed sleeper Goby

2 RBTA

1 Emerald Crab

1 Pink/Green Cucumber

1 Coral banded shrimp

1 Cleaner shrimp

Cleanup crew consists of Longspine Urchin, 1 Conch snail, multiple Turbos and assorted snails and hermits.

Assorted soft corals, mushroom, zoas, GSP.

A few LPS, Blasto, Torch, Candy Cane.

A few SPS frags.

Feeding

1/2 cube plankton mixed with 1/2 cube mysis.. soaked in garlic/Zoe daily.

A pinch of Formula 2 flakes in am and pm, its eaten right away.

Go through 1 sheet of Nori daily between 4 tangs.

Twice a week Cyclopeeze Marine Plankton and Pellets.

The tank looked great for about 4 weeks then noticed a predictable diatom bloom. I waited that out, however... the tank never cleared and I am now dealing with what I believe to be Cyanobacteria, but fear it could be dinos. It looks brownish/red (more brown than red) looks slightly stringy and has attached air bubbles. It is mostly on the sand but it is also on the rocks. There are tons of trapped air bubbles under the sand, anytime my goby digs the bubbles rise to the surface. It cleans off very easily... when I scrub it from the rocks it comes off without ANY effort and looks "powdery" when released to the water.

I had been siphoning this stuff off and refilling with new salt water, cut back on my MH light cycle from 8 hrs to 6, and redirected power heads trying to maximize flow across the sand (where its worse). I believe my flow is adequate with large return pumping to two corner returns, and 4 Koralia power heads. After no improvement I decided to treat the tank with Chemi Clean, as follows:

Did a 30g water change/sand sift after scrubbing algae off rocks, followed by Chemi-clean dose-20 level scoops, accommodating for water volume loss from live rock/sand in tank and sump. I unplugged skimmer, UV and let the chemiclean work for two days. I did not see any reduction of the ?cyano besides initial decrease from siphoning the sand. At the end of the 2 days, I did a 35 water change, got the skimmer back online and waited a day before I decided to treat with an identical dose of chemi-clean again. The reason for the second treatment was that I did not see ANY reduction of this algae, in fact in came back during the first 2 day treatment just as bad as before I dosed. During this second treatment I turned off my MH's and ran Actinic PC's only. With MH's off the algae doesnt grow as quickly, but its still there. With MH on the stuff spreads like crazy. I waited another 2 days, did a 45gallon water change, siphoning out more gunk, got my skimmer and UV back on line and added PhosGuard and Purigen to the sump. That was three days ago and my sand bed is literally covered, and the rocks are covering up quickly now too.

I know my Alk and PH are low, I have Kent Pro Buffer dKH and Seachem Carbonate that I can start dosing, but which one of those should I use? Would those two things being off contribute to this problem?

Fish and corals all appear to be fine, they are eating, swimming, etc...

Also, does this look like Cyano or something else? Advice is much appreciated!

THANKS!!!!

Yes, thats the stuff.

Ill take it. When can I pick it up? PM'd also.

Also, depending on how low your salinity is... you can always top off with salt water instead of ro/di. Whats your salinity right now?

Thanks!

Welcome to ARC! I am also somewhat of a noobie. We started our first reef in March and have recently upgraded to a bigger tank (already)... this website has been invaluable to me as a learning resource, as well as a great place to find good condition used equipment. Everyone is super nice and very helpful... Advice you will hear again and again, but is truly fact... Patience is key!! Take your time, learn a lot, and do things right the first time! Hope you thoroughly enjoy this wonderful hobby!

Some algae growth is normal when starting up a tank, especially diatoms. They should dwindle as your tank cycles. However, if it were me, and my tank parameters were checking out (especially ammonia and niTRITE), Id go ahead and add a small CUC. Leave your lights off or cut the time they are on while your tank finishes its full cycle. I don't have a problem with my Turbo snails, they are work horses...I have about 15 of them in our 180, but yeah, if they fall over, they get stuck and need help getting back up or they will die.

Also, I used Stability when cycling my tank, and still use it after big water changes to help my nitrifying bacteria flourish. It works great, and Ive read that Dr. Tim's is great stuff as well, just haven't been able to find it in any LFS around here. RCA sells Stability. I highly recommend it for a smooth, quick cycle. Good Luck!

Thanks guys! The JBJ looks perfect

I would like to upgrade the stock lighting on my Biocube8 to MH. Currently have zoas, palys, GSP, mushrooms, one adorably tiny RBTA, and two juvenile clownfish that are close to being big enough that Ill need to trade them for smaller fish. I found a clamp-on fixture on CL that houses one 150w MH with a 20k bulb (I can change this out if too much) and Im wondering if it would be too much light?

You will find that as the sand settles and moves around that the heavier pieces of rock/substrate are exposed as the finer pieces move down. They arent a problem, so long as you dont mind the look of them.

The more water volume in your sump, the better. We have a 60 gallon custom sump under our 180... has room for skimmer, refugium, UV sterilizer pump, and return pump, with room to spare.

Definitely watch on Craigslist and here on ARC. We got our 180, custom sump, skimmer (we didnt use it tho) return pump, about 80lbs of live rock, stand, canopy, and 2 - 5 gallon buckets of sand on Craigslist for $600.

Green turf algae?

Thanks! It was nice meeting you, good luck with the new tank!

I don't have any advice but thats one nice brain!

Everything SOLD.

So this question is for people who already have or have once had a Powder Blue Tang (I already know they are aggressive ich-magnets). Just wondering if any of you have had success keeping a PB with other tangs. I also have a Blue Hippo and two yellow tangs in my 180g. The Hippo was the first tang in the tank, months later the powder blue, and a week after that, I added the two yellows. The PB and the Hippo get along fine, mostly ignoring each other. The yellow tangs are a different story. The PB pesters the yellows pretty frequently, and it (PB) has broken out in ich because of this. The yellows look fine, no ich, no injury and everyone is eating like crazy (have to force myself to not overfeed them, they are such pigs) but Im wondering if this behavior will continue, or will he eventually settle down and accept the yellows. They have been together in the tank for two weeks. Before I added the yellows, the PB looked great, I felt really lucky, he ate on day one, no signs of ich, etc.. A week after adding the yellows is when I first saw ich. Any advice is appreciated.

I have a 90g acrylic RR listed in hardware. Comes with stand, canopy, sump. Im willing to come down in price (a bit) as Ive had it in my garage for the last 2 weeks. Its clean and ready to go.