azcummins' Blog

[+mcallahan]

Princer7 hooked me up with some nice frags on Monday night after I traded my urchin to her. I'm addicted now!

I keep wondering how it can be so relaxing to watch corals which don't move...

Red Mushrooms. I moved the small piece of LR that they are stuck to up onto the rock behind them. Super glue works great!

Mushroom frags that I'm trying to get to attached to the LR in the container. I have to keep reminding myself to be patient.

Bird's nest. I don't think it is getting enough light under my PC's (that probably need to be replaced). If it doesn't improve in a week or two, i'll probably trade it back to princer7 since she has metal halides.

Nice purple Zoo colony. They look better when my 10k light is off.

My phosphates are still a little high = .6 so I'm looking into a phosphate reactor. I have a media bag with a phosphate sponge in the tank, but I don't think it is as effective as the reactor.

[+mcallahan]

Well, the old adage, "everything in moderation" might apply here.

After adding a bubble tip anemone last weekend, and watching my tomato clown go completely bonkers, I began to worry if all the lovin' would stress out the new anemone. I felt encouraged after the 'nem found a home and attached itself to some LR. I was feeling even better after it was taking some bits of shrimp from my fingers, but for the past 2 days, it has acted very...exhausted.

Today most of its tentacles are deflated and retracted. It is still responsive to food, but not as much as earlier in the week. Even my clown is wondering what is up as she mainly just sits outside the 'nem and stares at it vs. trying to dive into it like she did a couple of days ago. She's even gone back to spending a lot of her time underneath the outcropping of LR that used to be her "nest" before the 'nem showed up.

I'm not giving up faith yet, as anemones can be picky, but compare the pics below to see why I'm concerned.

Anemone earlier in the week. Notice the big, full tentacles

Anemone today. Tentacles are mainly deflated and retracted

I'll keep everyone posted!

[+mcallahan]

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a Kole tang from Aquatek and my wife named him "007". 007 always seemed happy and healthy as he would cruise the tank and pick at the live rock eating algae. He never took to any solid food, but nonetheless, he seemed happy.

007

Fast forward to last night when I came home from a 5 day vacation and 007 is nowhere to be found. I called the lady who kept my tank while I was gone and she reported that she saw him earlier in the day, but my wife and I both couldn't locate the guy @ 8pm that evening. I figured he had to be dead and I started looking around the tank for his rotting remains, but still nothing. Then, I saw it. 3 small fish bones sitting on the back of the tank. BONES though...no flesh and bones, just BONES.

007 must have passed away earlier that day and by 8pm that night, he was disposed completely except for a couple of stray bones.

My cleanup crew is pretty normal - 2 stars, 8 hermit crabs, 5 nassarius snails, 2 turbos, 1 emerald crab, 4 bumble snails, 3 star snails, 1 cleaner shrimp and 1 peppermint shrimp. I can't believe these guys devoured a whole Kole tang in less than 12 hrs, but they did. I suspect that my larger hermit crab is kin to Beefytang's "Torque" crab who is a certified monster. Survival of the fittest huh?

My next thought was that the levels in my tank must be sky high, but I checked them and everything was normal. Nitrates were slightly elevated to 15 ppm, but that was it. Great cleanup crew - check, great DSP and refugium - check.

So I guess I should feel good to know that my cleanup crew members are certified experts, but I think more than anything, I miss my tang!

[+mcallahan]

Since my tank keeps changes, so does the blog!

Yesterday I hopped on craigslist and found a couple of people in the ATX area who were selling some good lookin' frags so I took advantage of the long weekend to go pickup some additions to my tank. Below are my additions and how the tank looks now.

Orange Zoos. This pic was taken right after I added them to the tank so they are still emerging.

Leather Coral. I added this piece to the top of the tank so it could get more light

Pink Zoos. This small frag fit nicely in a hole in the LR so it looks like it is protruding from the hole.

Another Pink Zoo colony that I nestled in some LR to get the effect that it is emerging from the rock

Green Ricordia

Tank today. I moved some pieces around to try to get the balanced look.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how the tank is coming along. My phosphates are still a little high =.5, but I've added a bag of Phosgard to the refugium with hopes that it will bring it down.

The only thing I'm hoping for now is some new lights, but for now I'm just going to replace the PC bulbs and perhaps around christmas Santa Claus will bring me some new light. Oh, and I hope my anemone recovers and starts to do better. He still eats from my hand, but he spends most the day hiding and with his tentacles deflated.

[FishyCat]

Nice score on the corals!

[+mcallahan]

thanks...craigslist.org can be really useful!

[+mcallahan]

"You can be cheap, or good, but not both"

I've been using Aquarium Pharamceutical Inc test kits for my water testing needs and I started with the basics - Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, pH, but then added their "Reef master kit" with gives you tests for Phosphates, Calcium, KH and Nitrates.

My nitrate results were always 15-30ppm with the basic API kit. I decided I'd test out the nitrate test from the "reef master kit" to see what results I got.

The below picture tells it all. The basic kit had the nitrates at 35ppm (orange vial). The reef kit - 0ppm (yellow vial).

Being not too impressed, I headed to Aquatek to see what their test kits had to say. They use the Tetra test kits, so it was not a true apple to apple comparison, but I at least wanted to see which of my kits were off.

Their nitrate test kit said my nitrates were at about 20ppm. So I know my reef kit yield low results.

I decided to continue my experiment and have them test KH, calcium, and phosphates. Below are the comparisons.

My test kit:

• Phosphate =.5ppm
  
• KH = 12
  
• calcium =480
  

Aquatek results:

• Phosphate =.5ppm
  
• KH = 10
  
• calcium =420
  

Conclusion:

Invest in a better test kit. API seem to have a reputation for having high variances among test kits. For now, my reef tank seems happy and I'll just top it off everyday and do a 10% water change once a month. Periodically I'll have Aquatek test my water until I use up all my API kits at which time I'll need to do some serious research into a better - and probably more expensive - kit.

Or I can always just do the eyeball test - everything look good...yes. Ok, all is good then!

[+mcallahan]

I've always heard that if you really want the most of our your corals and your reef tank experience, then metal halide lights are the way to go. The downside of these lights are that they are more expensive and can create enough heat that some people need chillers to cool their tanks down to acceptable levels.

During my usual evening ritual of cruising craigslist.org and ARC for any "hot" deals out there, I happened across mdavis375 who was unloading his Coralife hood that had 2x175W 12K halides and 2x96W combo actinic and violet PC lights. I wrote to him to see if I could perhaps borrow the lights for the weekend to see if they heated up my tank before committing to purchasing them.

Lights

This is where I made mistake #1. I'm not a father, but I know better than to give a kid a piece of candy, let them have a taste, then take it away from them and hope that the child will forget the sweetness of the candy. Transposing this story onto my own life, I knew better than to put a really, really nice light setup on my tank and hope that I wouldn't be interested in it by the end of the weekend.

Within the first 15 minutes, I knew I had to keep it. Even mdavis375 was laughing at me. Everytime I'd go, "Whoa, look at those!", meaning how good the coral looked under the lights, he'd just laugh some more.

Luckily the lights only raise my tank about 2 degrees - from 78 to 80 - so I don't need a chiller! Better yet, my corals are multiplying and they look great!

Pre-halide mushrooms

Post-halide mushrooms

Notice that they are larger and while they are larger, they retain their greenish color. Before, under my PC lights, they got big and brown (Boo!)

[Robb in Austin]

What did you have on there before? Looks like a nice improvement though!

Robb

[Robb in Austin]

What are the dates on the tests? Apparently, the API go bad quick when old. I suspect your reef master kit is older. Makes some sense really, more people buying individual kits vs buying reef kits.

[+mcallahan]

240Wish of PC's. Cost effective...yes. Good growing lights...not so much.

[+mcallahan]

Well the Orange vial is from a "basic Saltwater" kit that included nitrates, ammonia, etc. That kit I bought back in March.

The "reef master" kit I bought from Marinedepot.com in July.

Both nitrate tests came from kits..not individual tests.

[Robb in Austin]

Hmm. Interesting.

I have the reef master kit too. I don't use the nitrate test though.

[+mcallahan]

Ever look at something every day, and nothing seems to change until that one day when it hits you that something has changed in a big, BIG way?

Well, that happened to me on Sunday. I was spending another countless hour staring at my tank marveling about how far the tank has come, then staring me back in the face, was some red, velvety stuff on my rocks. This, is when time stood still. Without a doubt, Cyano had found its way into my tank. It wasn't bad, just some small patches on some LR, but after reading about major tanks being taken down by a Cyano outbreak, I decided this meant war.

I did some research into what causes Cyano outbreaks and I discovered a couple of main facts that were relevant in my situation:

- Cyano often shows up when your pH is too low. Mine was about 7.8 or 7.9. Above 8.1 seems to Cyano away.

- Cyano often shows up when phosphates are high. Mine are .5ppm and I can't get them lower.

- Cyano often shows up in low flow areas. This one doesn't apply to me as I have plenty of flow in my tank, but nonetheless, it did show up in my tank so I guess I could increase the flow.

My next bit of research brought me upon an interesting, yet effective way to fight Cyano - turn the lights out. Yep. 3 days of darkness in your tank. No actinics, no moonlights, nothing. Cyano seems to have a short lifespan without light and several people online put their tanks through 3 days of darkness a couple of times of year as they report that their corals come back stronger and their sand beds are whiter after the cycle. Basically the idea is that not every reef out there gets 365 days of full sunlight, so why should be blast our tanks with full sunlight every day of the year?

I'm on day 1.25 of the 3 day cycle and while it sucks not to be able to see your hard work in its full spendor, sometimes short term sacrifices must be made.

I'll report back on if the Cyano has been erraticated by the 3 days of darkness and if anyone else has ever tried this approach, I'd love to hear your experience with the darkness cycle.

[cmanning]

You should have posted a before pic. and then update w/pic. after. By the way, I'll be fragging the candycane that I have posted in the "Trade Forum". If still interested let me know, after the days of darkness.

[+mcallahan]

You should have posted a before pic. and then update w/pic. after. By the way, I'll be fragging the candycane that I have posted in the "Trade Forum". If still interested let me know, after the days of darkness.

Yeah...I should have done that. Unfortunately, the darkness cycle doesn't seem to be working. I checked the tank again this am with a flashlight and the Cyano seems to be spreading. I've been adding pH upper to try to attack it that way, but I can't get my pH above 7.9.

I have been able to get my phosphates to drop to around .2ppm so I'm winning that battle, but not the big battle.

I'll be in touch about the candy cane...I am for sure interested.

[+mcallahan]

Well, it seems that my 3 days of darkness has been in vain. I'm on hr 50 of the 72 hr cycle and the Cyano is still growing. It isn't taking over, but it for sure not retreating.

I checked my water parameters and things ok:

pH: 7.9 (can't get this thing to rise)

KH: 10

phosphates >.2ppm

Tonight I'll do 1 final rotation with the phosphate sponge (this will be rotation #4), and I'll add in carbon to try to soak up some of the organics. I also removed my HOB fuge and scraped out all the Cyano and brown hair algae growth that was in there. I probably stirred up the sand bed a bit too much, but I wanted to try to get all the crap algae out of there that I could.

I'm planning on doing a 20% water change Friday am before the lights kick on to try to suck out the remaining nutrients and to lower my nitrates as much as possible. Then, I'll kick on the actinics for a day, before I kick on my MH on Saturday so that I'm not shocking everything.

At this point, I'm trying to determine how to best keep the Cyano under control. I'm not too worried if I have some in my tank, but I don't want it to take over my corals. It might just be present as my tank matures, but I'd rather keep it under control.

On the bright side, I'll get to see my tank again in full color! Viewing a dark tank stinks.

[cmanning]

Are you running your skimmer? How much fish load do you have? Have you increased/decreased the feeding? How frequent do you do water changes and what %? IMO, It might of help if you siphon the cyno before the 3 days without lights. Just keep at it, you'll eventually will win the war.

[+mcallahan]

Skimmer? Yes, had 2 Tunze nanos on the tank, but I dropped back to one as the one of them was covered in Cyano. Even though I dropped to 1 skimmer, it has picked up the load as it is skimming 2x as much as it used to.

Fish Load? 1 Maroon clown, 1 pink spot goby, 1 coral beauty angel

Feeding? 1x a day, frozen mysis chunk the size of a male thumbnail. A capful of Kent CoralVite or other reef supplement 2x a week.

Water changes...10% every 2 weeks. Doing a 20% once I kick on the lights.

Perhaps I'm over reacting as the Cyano isn't big enough to skim off. Right now its very small (1mm) patches on some pieces of my LR. The worse Cyano was in my sump, which I cleaned tonight and on 1 of my protein skimmers that I cleaned and removed.

Thanks the encouragement. I'll see if my attempts to raise pH and drop nutrients (less coral feeding) get me anywhere. Plus I added some new snails that should help clean things up.

[+dapettit]

What are you using for top off? Have you checked the hH?

[+mcallahan]

top off in the past has been R/O water. Since the lights have been off, I haven't had to top off, but going forward I will make sure the R/O water gets its pH raised to 8.3. Previously it was just 7.0 which probably didn't help!

[+mcallahan]

Today was the last day of lights out for my tank. I shined the flashlight in there again today and the Cyano has finally retreated. I wouldn't say it has taken a beating, but it has for sure retreated from even where it was last night.

The only downside I've seen of doing the 3 day dark cycle is that 2 of my mushrooms decided they would go looking for the light and they are moving themselves across a piece of LR. No big deal, but it is the only large change I've seen in my tank so I thought I'd note it.

Tonight I did a 20% water change and pulled the Phosphate sponge and carbon so my tank should be ready to see the sun again.

Tomorrow I'll flip on the actinics for their usual 12 hr cycle. Saturday I'll click on the MH for about 3 hrs, and Sunday I'll leave them on for their full 7 hr cycle.

I'll report back how everything fared once I get the lights back on and I can see my tank again!

[+mcallahan]

Its been 3 full days of 100% lighting cycle (12 hr actinic, 7 hr MH) after my 3 days of tank darkness and here are my observations:

1. Cyano seems to be retreating. Why the heck is it retreating when the lights have come back? I don't know. All I can guess is that the post darkness 20% water change got my pH above 8 (I tested it as 8.0) so that is hurting the Cyano. In addition, I treated my R/O top off water to be pH 8.3, KH = 8-9, calcium=400. Before I was just putting in straight R/O water which I'm convinced was hurting my pH, KH and overall tank health.

2. Corals all seems to be have grown/gotten bigger. Zoos have expanded noticeably, SPS seems brighter and perhaps have laid down some new growth. My frog spawn had a small (size of a dime) new head last week and now the head is easily the size of a quarter or better. Sorry I don't have any pics to document, but all I have is a point and shoot so you couldn't see much anyways.

3. Fish seem more lively. Coral beauty seems interested in cruising the tank again looking for algae (NOT SPS!) to pick at. She's still harassing the clown though. My clown is also checking out new areas of tank that he never paid any attention to before. Of course, it could be that the fish are so dumb that once the lights kicked back on, they thought they were somewhere new....

4. Red algae growth in sand bed has receded. Perhaps better water quality, but perhaps the lights too.

5. Skimmer seem to be pulling out more gunk out of the water. Perhaps due to a Cyano die off!

Overall, I'd recommend everyone give the 3 days of darkness a shot. It can't hurt anything, but it will test your patience to have to NOT turn on your tank lights for 3 day. That part was the hardest part of the whole exercise!

[+mcallahan]

Since I don't have a reef ready tank (yet), and I don't want to use a HOB overflow box, I've been forced to go with HOB accessories. My first addition was a CPR HOB refugium which works great. (check my earlier blog entry to hear about the refugium). The refugium dropped my nitrates, but my next hurdle was phosphates.

I don't overfeed my tank and I've got an ample cleanup crew, but I could never get my phosphates under .5ppm. I knew a phosphate sponge would do the trick, so I tried a HOB aquaclear box filter, but I couldn't get the water to go THROUGH the media, I could only get the water to go around it. Therefore my attempts to drop my phosphate levels were largely unproductive.

I knew a phosphate reactor would be best, but I didn't have a sump to put it in and I didn't want a huge pump sitting in my tank to drive the reactor. After doing some searching online, I found a nice HOB phosphate reactor that was only $44! At that price, I could screw up and not be out a lot of $$.

Fast forward a couple of days and sitting on my doorstep (thanks UPS!) is my reactor. I decide that given the small footprint of the intake pump, I could set the intake pump in the outflow tray of the HOB refugium and let the outflow from the reactor flow back near the intake of the refugium.

top shot of the refugium with the reactor:

I admit I'm recycling water that just came out of the reactor back into the reactor somewhat, but not all the water in the refugium goes into the reactor so I decided to give it a shot.

reactor full of media

The end result is a HOB phosphate reactor that is a HOB to my HOB refugium. Therefore looking at the tank, you'd never see the reactor! Success!

My only compliant is that I don't think I packed the reactor tight enough with media as the water current through the reactor is churning the media a little bit so my tank is a little cloudy. I think once I take out the phosphate sponge media and switch to straight phosguard, I'll be ok. Phosguard media has the media beads intact, while the phosphate sponge media features cracked beads which can lead to more dust as the media moves past each other.

cloudy tank! OOPS!

i'll let everyone know if the cloudiness subsides as well as if my phosphate levels drop. Hopefully the dust doesn't nuke my corals...

[beefytang]

How's this working out? BTW do you use the Tunze nano skimmers? If so, how well do they work? I'm curious if one would be overkill for my softie/LPS 20g.