bgautrea

What size UV did you go with?

I had a fairly long and multi faceted approach. It definitely took time, and I monitored the results from each step for several weeks before trying something new. First, I confirmed the dinos with a microscope (see the attached pics). I tried siphoning into a filter sock. This was a real PITA. It left the tank looking good... for about 24 hours. I added UV. The UV was admittedly undersized by probably close to 100 gallons, but it is what I could afford. I began dosing silicates using SpongExcel. The thought was diatoms need silicates to grow and the increase of diatom population would out compete the dinos. I think the biggest impact was dosing NO3 and PO4. Both were very near 0 all along. I went with the NeoPhos and NeoNitro and it still took several weeks to find the increased but stable dose. Got NO3 up to 15ppm and PO4 at 0.1ppm. Both seemed relatively high to me, but that's where I'm hanging out now, and have been for about 2 months with good success. I will probably begin dialing those back soon, but until I increase the livestock, I likely will continue to some degree. A couple of side effects I've noted: The sponges in the tank have probably doubled or tripled in size. They aren't huge by any means and I'm not sure that they are very beneficial but I do look at them as adding diversity to the tank. The increased NO3/PO4 resulted in improved chaeto growth. I had tried stopping my fuge light to leave more NO3/PO4 in the tank but this caused my pH to barely crack 8.0 during the day. Now, with the improved chaeto growth the pH overnight stays higher and the pH during the day is also higher. I've noticed that my lawnmower blenny is feeding on algae more during the day. And finally, I've also noticed that snail and pod populations are increasing which I'm attributing to the overall improved algae growth. Lots of things have gone on during this, but I do feel like I've gotten the tank to a little better place that it was before.

Your tank looks great @BBMarlin. Reading your update is almost like looking in a mirror. I started my 180 a couple of weeks before you and have had stability issues throughout the year too... dinos in particular here but I feel like I'm finally turning the corner.

A little over a week ago I wrapped up the QT of a pair of Threadfin Cardinals, Lawnmower Blenny, and the Rainford's Goby and got them in the DT... I was sure hopeful that the clowns would see more fish swimming and be enticed to explore the tank a little more. But it didn't happen. So yea, for whatever reason they picked that spot, they don't seem to be going anywhere.

Thanks @Timfish. That's a great idea to try to hang something over there to try to get them into it. They picked probably the worst spot in the tank, in terms of reflection of light from outside windows, to call home. The tank is in my office and while I'm sitting at my desk, all i see over in that area is the flag flying outside or the tree in my front yard. GAHHH!

Not sure if I'm in the right forum but anyone have thoughts about how these clownfish swim... normal, abnormal, anything? They've had this behavior for the 4 months they've been in the 180. They went through QT with prazi, furan, metro and kana but did the same thing in QT. They otherwise look healthy. Is this just a case of "clowns being clowns" or is there something else I should look into? Seems like they are fighting the current but there are other fish, smaller even (cardinals and Rainford's Goby), that seem to manage just fine in the tank's current. They've rarely been near the bottom of the tank. Maybe they are just hosting that top corner for now. They never swim past the left 1/3 of the tank and never lower than the top 1/3 or so. VID_20200711_121313.mp4 VID_20200711_121209.mp4

It's selling faster than a Ferrari! ;-)

I am pretty amazed they caught it. I guessing it was just munching on some bait that they reeled back in. However they caught it its a nasty looking bugger. Much worse than the everyday bristleworms I have in my tank.

How'd you like to have one of these in your tank??? https://www.foxnews.com/great-outdoors/texas-pier-fishing-strange-creature-fireworm Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

Just a little update: I've moved a few pieces of hardware from the old 40B to the 180 now. Kessil A350, Hydra26hd, 2 jaebo powerheads, and the Axium Skimmer. The skimmer will eventually be undersized, but it's doing alright for now. I added a Reef Octopus Calcium reactor not long ago. Still trying to get it dialed in, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. Not sure if it's this reactor or what, but it does tend to make noise as the CO2 is sucked through the pump. I get a decent build-up of CO2 at the top of the reactor every week or so also that I need to purge out. The reactor has a recirculating loop, but that just seems to make more noise of CO2 going through the pump. Still not 100% certain that I don't have an air leak into the intake of the pump somehow. Also need to figure out how to best route all the tubing. It looks terrible after all the other work I've done 😐 I also added a Kessil H160 for a fuge light. Cheato I got from algae barn isnt growing yet, but there really arent many nutrients to feed it yet either. That's about it for the hardware. Sadly I ended up losing all the anthias and the snowflake I had gotten back in December. I must have done something really bad during that QT. I am really disappointed in myself over that. I really liked those fish and now I'm gun shy using an aggressive QT protocol. I did get a couple of new fish from Marine Collectors though. MC does all of the QT and ship directly to you. Got a nice melarnus wrasse and a kole eye. Also have the blonde naso coming from them too. Elliot over there has been great to work with. I also picked up some small Picaso's from @benroman The clowns are being "monitored" in the old 40B. I should have a nice little set of fishes to get going with after I'm satisfied they are free of anything that would hurt my other fishes. I've also turned that 40 into a frag tank for now until I'm happy with the maturity of the 180 and feel comfortable moving my larger coral colonies.

You got that right. But the fish and the DT are safer... unless I kill them in QT for some reason or another. 🙍‍♂️

@victoly I read before hand that Chlorquine Phosphate (CP) isn't safe with Anthias which is why I went with the Chelated Copper this go around. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/fish-and-treatment-guidelines-with-chart.283450/ Last time I got new fish I used the TTM, which I assume worked to eliminate any Ich that may have been present, but I think it's super stressful for the fish to be caught every 72 hours. HAH... for me and the fish. But TTM only works for Ich and not the other parasites. not to mention that I now have a 180 in my office, a 20 QT in my dining room, the old 40 in my laundry room (until i can frag everything and QT my inverts and fat gramma). and i'd still need one one more tank for TTM. My wife is going to kill me! As for Prime, I have it on hand, but it cant be used with Copper AFAIK. It un-bonds the Amines from the Copper which instantly makes the Copper toxic. I agree that it may not have been any infection or parasite that ended up killing the fish, which is why I feel like I failed them.

@jolt I suppose it could be related to ammonia. The Seachem ammonia alert disc never indicated ammonia, but really i take it with a grain of salt because i've never seen any color besides somewhere between the OK yellow and the light blue alert. My primary method of removing ammonia has been to do a w/c. I had no sponges or anything else in, but I did dose the 20G QT with bio-spira before adding the fish. However now that I'm thinking about it, I never did that to the 10G sterile tank i moved them to after the formalin... and that's the tank they died in. @Timfish 100% agree with the data you posted (even though i've only anecdotally seen it).Fully stocked my plan is to have the The Anthias, The clown, a bristletooth tang (kole or white tail maybe), blonde naso, wrasse (melaranus or similar), something else, and Fat Gramma (my overweight 5 year old Royal Gramma) My biggest obstacle to getting all these fish into the DT is the QT. I seem to lose fish in QT every time I do this. I know it's the best process for maintaining a health DT, but i sure do miss the days when i didn't know any better and just drip acclimated then dropped the fish in the DT. 🙄

The 180 has been running for almost 3 months now. No fish in it yet (have some in QT, more on that in a minute), but I do have lots of snails. I started with about 20 trochus snails from algae barn when I was curing the dry rock then added another 10 when I first setup the tank. About two weeks later I noticed I had some tiny snails. Those tiny snails have turned into somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 green pea sized trochus snails now. 👍 Now my fish in QT are another story. I ordered 5 Dispar Anthias and one Snowflake clown. They arrived and went into a 20g QT with matching parameters. Two of the anthias looked like juveniles and the others were quite a bit larger with two of the larger maybe being males. When I put them in, one of the juveniles and one that looked to be male were breathing very heavily and wedging themselves under the PVC elbows immediately. I later put a few frozen brine in and all fish but those two began eating. The next day those two were looking worse so i began medication - furan2, metro, and kanaplex. Things started looking better over the next several days and everyone began swimming and eating. There was a little shyness here and there but all seemed to be doing OK. I ran through the whole treatment for kana, metro, and furan, ran carbon for a couple of days did a water change, and everything was looking good. Next I began Prazi. Got through that over the next 5 days and all was looking well. Did another w/c and went on to start the copper. Started Copper Power - 3ml AM and 3ml PM. This is where things turned bad. The next morning, the clown is laying on its side, and one of those juveniles is not looking well. Everyone seemed lethargic, but the clown was in the worst shape. The clown's tail and fins started to really shred, its face is starting to lose some of the white and looking slimy. I thought it looked like it might have brook. So I paused the copper, did about a 50% w/c and began with quick cure to try to save the clown. Ran through that treatment for 3 days then moved all fish to a sterile QT. The clown is now much better but... the anthias... not so much. The two juveniles are looking really bad as is one of the other larger ones. Over the next 3 days, I lost those three, one per day. The two juveniles first, then the larger one. I only had a chance to save the larger one since the others died overnight. I tried giving it a Ruby Reef bath, but it still died. The last two anthias and the clown have now been through a ruby reef bath, and back into another sterile QT. I really feel like I failed these fish. I'm not sure what else I could've done. Anyone have any thoughts in hind-sight?

I've finally gotten some fish in the water... VID_20191031_173040.mp4

Holy Zooxanthellae Batman! That's a lot of frags!

You're looking good here too. Did I see your tank at RCA this past weekend when I was picking mine up?

Thanks... I plumbed a bean animal overflow with a close channel (full siphon), open channel, and emergency drain into the overflow box. The drains were a real PITA though and the tideline external overflow needs some improvements. The biggest problem was squeezing the 90s into the external box. I had to trim the 90s to get them to fit inside. it was a lot of trial and error. This is it behind the tank right now. You can see that the 90s barely fit in there and you can almost see how much I had to cut off (the logo stamped on the 90 is halfway missing on the open channel) of the 90 to get it to fit.

So I finally broke down and built a 180. I've had a 40B for about the last 5 years and have wanted to go to a large tank for about the last 4 years and 10 months. I got a PA 180 with the stand and canopy. Ordered it a few weeks back from Jake and Francis over at RCA and it came in last week. Got my 40B moved to a temporary home in my laundry room this past Friday and the new tank in the house on Saturday and plumbed by Sunday. I plan on re-using my lights (Kessil A350 and AI Hydra 26HD), return and skimmer Axium X120... At least until the skimmer wont suit me anymore. Over the last several months I have been collecting a lot of what I needed like rock, sand, a big fat gyre powerhead and plumbing parts. I also ordered baffles from Melev's reef for a new 40B sump that I picked up during a dollar a gallon sale a couple of years ago. I was given a set of hand-me-down 4' T5HOs with Coral Plus bulbs and 48 DIY CREE LEDs, heatsinks, and dimmable power supplies. I've had rock in an old 46 bow front for the last 2.5 months. Started adding microbacter7 bacteria and snails to it about 1.5 months ago then a bottle of 5280 Pods and phytoplankton from algae barn a few weeks back. I got the sand and rock into the tank after getting water flowing through (using a 20Long as a temporary sump) and have an old Remora HOB skimmer running in it for the very interim as well. All my snails are roaming around the tank now and I've also started to see the pods that I added on the glass. I've also added another does of Dr. Tims One and Only to kick more bacteria in. Now to wait it out before adding any fish and getting coral moved from the old 40B. My plan is also to frag all the coral from the old 40B so i can get rid of the rock and the pests I managed to get in the 40 over the last 5 years (mostly little brown flatworms and these green tentacled coralimorphs that i cant figure out for the life of me how to get rid of). Speaking of fish, my thoughts on fish are: Royal Gramma (my only fish in the 40b) 4x Lyretail Anthias Snowflake Clown Kole Tang Maybe a Nasso Tang Wrasse (not sure what type yet) and maybe a Bicolor Angel or Venestus Angel Below are pics I've taken so far. VID_20191007_103528.mp4

I hear ya... I once had a turbo snail decide to go up my utube on a hob. Luckily I had 2 pipes on the same overflow and I was home when the tank started overflowing....Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk That bit about the turbo sounds suspiciously like a movie I saw about a clownfish. [emoji6] Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk