Gig 'em @ NDstructible

Good luck man! I always hate leaving town for extended periods of time. Most of the time I come back and there’s minimal loss, so I’m sure you’ll be just fine. Enjoy the break!

Well it seemed like my red dragon was on the mend, and as soon as I got back from Chicago it started RTNing. Did a water change, but that hasn’t changed anything apparently. Very random pattern of RTN too. 2018 has hibernation a frustrating year for my tank and acros [emoji58]

It was. It did a great job of killing off what was there, but I guess it didn’t completely eradicate it

So I dosed Fluconazole back in May, around 7 months ago. It 100% annihilated my annoying Bryopsis problem. I woke up this morning to big tufts of Bryopsis in 4 different sections of my tank. I'd say 7 months of not having to worry about this terrible crap is pretty good.
Now the debate is whether or not I should re-dose. The last time I did it, it also killed my hair algae. Now that I'm using an algae scrubber as a source of nutrient export, it's not so clear what the appropriate course of action is.

As the calcium carbonate in the coralline algae is dissolved by the vinegar, it's "acid power" diminishes. How much it diminishes is a function of the strengh of the acid (vinegar is a weak acid) and the solubility of the CaCO3 in the coralline algae. It doesn't take a lot of carbonate to totally deaden the dissolution power. 

 I'm not a chemist but I did get a graduate degree with chemistry partially in the title.

Strong acids are a different story. I used to clean out groundwater remediation systems with straight up hydrochloric acid (aka muriatic acid for pool work and concrete etching), which was in retrospect pretty dangerous/stupid, and to stabilize the water we were making we would add boxes of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). It would really only fiz after the first box, which is the production of CO2 from breaking down the NaHCO3 by HCl. However the pH was low until we added many, many boxes. 

We're leaving back to South Florida for two weeks for Christmas and I'm dreading the potential issues. 
The corals other than the Red Dragon and SSC look really good.  You've had a lot of issues thrown at that tank in the last six months: power outage, alk problems, lighting changes, algae outbreak and treatment. . .seems like it could use a couple months of stability and a chance for everything to just catch a breather.  All things considered, probably could have been much worse.  I bet a lot of tanks would not have made it through all that without a complete crash.

My tank continues to not make up its mind wether it’s happy or struggling. I had some RTN this past week losing 90% of my SSC and nearly a whole large branch of my red dragon.


I can’t really explain the SSC, but the red dragon RTN coincided with my CaRX flow stopping while I was out of state and my alk dropped below 6. The RTN has slowed and maybe stopped now that the CaRX flow has restarted.

On the other hand, coral colors continue to slowly improve. They haven’t returned to optimal coloration, but a slow and steady improvement is better than none or reversal.

Congrats!  Nice to hear you feeling positive about the tank.  So much room to work with now compared to the last time I had seen it - going to be a rebirth: Maroon Lagoon  Version 3.0.
 
Now, if someone would just finally buy that setosa/red dragon piece. . .    [emoji2]

Nice, that stuff totally works man.


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I’ve felt hopeful about my tank for the first time this week in a long long time. The GHA is mostly gone now thanks to the Fluco treatment, and what a difference that has made on the health of my corals! I performed a large water change this week and it seemed like the next days the colors of my corals was noticeably better. Sponge growth is definitely starting to come back, my feather dusters are starting to pop back up again, and I’m starting to see mysid shrimp in the sump again. I’m hopeful the recovery will continue and corals that have laid dormant for half a year will start growing again. Fingers crossed!

New sponge growth peaking through the dead sponge.


A couple FTS:

Like Jolt and Ty said, I bet you there are some in the display, just doing a good job of hiding. If you want to completely rid the tank, dose the entire system. I've had better luck over dosing according to the directions and then blasting the rocks with flow to get them into the water column to suck out.

I had to edit it a lot to kill the over saturation, but not bad.

Don't you have like 4 Lemondrop aiptasias in your tank too? I'll be a good pal and remove them for you... No charge.

For an iPhone, that’s pretty good! The clarity is so good I could distinguish a pest in your tank. It looks like you have some aiptasia on the left side of the tank in the middle of the rock work. I hear lasers can help, but power heads are just as effective.

That flucon works man. Imagine all the people who could have save so much money and corals and rock had this been found earlier!


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I don’t want to be too optimistic and jinx myself, but it seems like things are starting to turn around for the better. The hair algae is getting more thin, hasn’t been growing back where it usually does, and may be disappearing slowly.


My sponge might also be starting to recover too. You can tell the dead sponge that is more washed out and transparent and what might be new sponge growth that is more tan color in the shadows there. Hopefully that’s a sign that the tank ecosystem is returning to normal


And here are a couple of tank shots just for the heck of it

Urchins are the best thing for GHA, not only will they eat and scour the rock, but they constantly disturb it so that you can remove it easily.
 
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Mexican turbos, and lots of tangs and a Fox face.


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Watch for a phosphate spike following the flucon.  Mine jumped from 0.05 up to 0.12 within 36 hours

What I observed is that it stopped it from growing which allowed the cuc to kill/eat it. I don’t think it literally dissolved. But that’s me.


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So I’ve hit a rough patch with the tank ever since I left town for a few weeks on vacation in May and lost a bunch of corals. Still never was able to definitively nail down the cause, and honestly it doesn’t seem like the issue has been resolved yet... ~6 months later. I’m still having issues with some SPS. Growth seems to have slowed, colors have slowly been coming back, but I lost my two largest plating colonies and some very expensive “high end” acros.

As a result of the weakened health of my corals and the subsequent coral deaths, I have now been struggling with a GHA outbreak. The stuff is everywhere in my tank now and I pulled out over two full pitchers worth of algae from my tank in October. On top of this, all of my sponge growth died back last month, I assume because GHA exploded and starved my sponges to death. Needless to say I have become discouraged with half a year of struggles and unsolved health mysteries.

I couldn’t take the GHA any longer and thought maybe it was compounding my coral health issues by outcompeting them and smothering them. I bought Vibrant and dosed the entire bottle to no avail. Then last week I gave up on hoping Vibrant would work and dosed Fluco 200. The GHA is still there, but I’m starting to think it is at least stunted, if not starting to die. The pH in my tank took a sudden drop and, even with windows open last night, is lower than it has been. This tells me that some big CO2 scrubbers in the tank are taking a hit and microbial activity is starting to break the algae down and drive pH even lower. I assume (and hope) this trend will continue and is indeed indicative of dying GHA. Here’s a snap of my pH trends this week:

Do you have anything left

You want me to fuse a $60 nem with a $1400 nem and you're calling me mad? [emoji4][emoji44]

Man I wish I could get that much orange out of mine! I bought it from Dan & Meg at the last C4 a couple of years ago. They’re still in the hobby I believe, just not as active on the forums anymore.

So last night I noticed that there was some salt creep coming down from one of the return bulkheads of my tank. The bulkheads Marineland included with the tank are spigot style so I had hose clamped the return lines to them. I guess the wiggle of the manifold cracked the bulkhead and when I went to check the tubing this happened...


I didn’t even pull that hard! I guess I’m lucky it happened while I had the return pump off, but it still made a mess and was not how I wanted to spend my Friday evening as I was winding down to relax with a drink. Two separate trips to HD and Lowe’s and I got it repaired with a new bulkhead, reducers, and unions to get it back up and running.

I was a little shocked at how much detritus and junk had built up in my overflow. I had to completely drain it and dry it to get the new bulkhead in. Here’s the cup of gunk I drained out of the overflow

I definitely never want to have a bottom drilled tank or deep overflows like this EVER again. Any future build will be drilled in the back utilizing solid bulkheads and plumbing. I should have bought my own bulkheads instead of using the cheap ones that Marineland provided with the tank. Hindsight is always 20/20... [emoji20]

49 minutes ago, Sierra Bravo said:

I say let's go console ourselves over a nice bottle of bourbon!  😀

Sounds like a plan to me!