KimP's in-wall room divider build

[Bpb]

Perhaps onto the other common methods. If you've already got them I wouldn't push my luck lol. What about a copperband butterfly, or peppermint shrimp?

[+KimP]

Victoly mentioned a cbb to me earlier today. My impression is they're really hard to keep alive. Seems like my tank is big enough though. I need to read up on it more. Then there's peppermint shrimp but I swore them off a couple years ago after they started ripping the mouths out of my lps, they sure did the trick though with the aiptasia. Perhaps I'll get some berghia nudis. I appreciate the ideas.

[FarmerTy]

CBB seems to be really effective as long as it can reach all areas that there are aiptasia. I didn't really have an infestation, but the 3 that were there were immediately swallowed up. The CBB does have an abysmal survival rate. It's a very sensitive fish, hard to get it to eat prepared foods, and if it's delicate mouth is any way damaged during transportation, it will typically die.

[Bpb]

What about clownfish. Don't they eat aiptasia.

[+KimP]

Way overdue for an update. So far things had been going fantastic since the transfer. Everything moved over well and was growing. I haven't had a problem keeping my alk steady and except for a few days of a salinity spike things have been running smoothly. About a week ago I noticed my biggest acan colony had brown jelly disease. I syphoned it off and gave it an iodine dip and it ended up a completely bare skeleton a day later. Bummer but not too big of a deal. It had fallen off of the frag rack I had it on and was sitting in the sand on it's side for at least a week, so I figured it may have gotten damaged. At the same time I noticed a spot develop on the green toadstool I have from Richard L. The toadstool closed up for a couple days, shed some tissue and I thought would recover fully but it's actually continuing to develop spots. We'll see how that turns out. I'm not worried about that one either because I can just frag it. Some of my chalices are recently starting to bleach a little so it's definitely time to get the lighting set up with a par meter. I took measurements just prior to the transfer, so that should help. I do need to figure out if there's anything I should be doing though besides getting the lights set up better. I've only been watching salinity and alk. I'll hopefully get a chance to check some other parameters tonight. I don't have a way to test phos or nitrates at home. I'm thinking of buying test kits but in the meantime I'll try to get water to the lfs for testing tomorrow.

So that's what's been going on over here. I had very mild diatoms on the sandbed and new rock and that seems to be subsiding. I still have coral all over the sandbed and nothing is really in it's final place yet. The snails keep knocking stuff over and the wrasses keep throwing sand on the corals, so that's been annoying! I need to get things glued down into their places. That'll happen when I get a par meter here and see what the lights are putting out. I used to have the 4 narrow kessils over my 90 and I transferred them plus 1 wide angle kessil over the new tank. I'm interested to see if I generally get more light with 5, or less because the footprint is larger.

If anyone has ideas about the chalices starting to fade, I'm happy to read them! For now I've just moved them to the shade but I'm wondering if the fresh new system may be too clean and I need to increase feedings? I don't know for sure yet.

[jolt]

It's quite possible you are bleaching the chalices, depending on your Kessil settings. Reburn and I just spent saturday measuring PAR of our Kessil A360WEs in each of our tanks. We identified a sweet spot in his tank where some acros seemed to be doing well. This spot surprisingly measured at 87 PAR using SAMs meter. It's no wonder I was bleaching things as I was trying to get mine up to a PAR of 300-400. The meters just really don't seem to read the Kessils well at all. I'm currently at 43% intensity and 60% color at the peak of a 10 hour parabolic curve. I'm 7" over the water and it's about 22.5" to the sandbed from there. This gives me about 100 PAR by the meter at about top dead center in the water.

[Timfish]

First thing I would check is magnesium. If you've been reading Victoly's phosphate thread Ty and I have very different views on phosphate but it would be good to have a benchmark and I prefer Elos Proffesional for low range. I wouldn't bother Richards leather any more than neccessary, Sarcophyton leather corals can look bad for a while and bounce back with surprising speed. What corals besides the chalices are fading or is it just the chalices?

[+KimP]

I'm not going to mess with the leather at all at this point, just watch it. It's just a couple chalices I'm pretty sure. The few sps I have are whitish at the tips but they've been growing fast since the move so I think that's just growth. Everything else is looking really good still. If there's a problem though I want to catch it before anything else starts going downhill. Thanks for the ideas guys!

[FarmerTy]

Ha, no kidding Timfish. We do also keep entirely different systems and corals for the most part so it makes sense.

Kim, are your chalices fading color or is it more of a bleaching of color? Are they getting more dull and light or are they going almost completely white/clear? Chalices are very sensitive to being exposed to too much light. I agree with Timfish on the leather... they always looked ticked until boom... they are happy again.

Remind me how the transition took place? Was the first tank fully cycled prior to moving corals/fish over? Were you ghost feeding to keep the bacteria level higher in the new tank? Did you use new sand? What type of sand?

How long were things in the system before you started noticing things not looking happy? Did you keep the kessils at the same strength or increase/decrease them from your prior tank? Are your husbandry practices still the same in both tanks (i.e. water change frequency, feeding frequency)? What media or technology are you currently using? GFO, activated carbon, biopellets, skimmer, macro?

Sorry for the twenty questions but just wanted to make sure I had the whole picture. If you're ever in the area, be happy to test your water for you. Plus, it'll give me an excuse to catch up with you! If I ever venture down south, I'll hit you up and see if you're around.

[+KimP]

My magnesium was 1200 on Nov 2nd, tested at the lfs. I'm going to test it again now...

I just got 1260 with my salifert test.

[+KimP]

Ha, no kidding Timfish. We do also keep entirely different systems and corals for the most part so it makes sense.

Kim, are your chalices fading color or is it more of a bleaching of color? Are they getting more dull and light or are they going almost completely white/clear? Chalices are very sensitive to being exposed to too much light. I agree with Timfish on the leather... they always looked ticked until boom... they are happy again.

Remind me how the transition took place? Was the first tank fully cycled prior to moving corals/fish over? Were you ghost feeding to keep the bacteria level higher in the new tank? Did you use new sand? What type of sand?

How long were things in the system before you started noticing things not looking happy? Did you keep the kessils at the same strength or increase/decrease them from your prior tank? Are your husbandry practices still the same in both tanks (i.e. water change frequency, feeding frequency)? What media or technology are you currently using? GFO, activated carbon, biopellets, skimmer, macro?

Sorry for the twenty questions but just wanted to make sure I had the whole picture. If you're ever in the area, be happy to test your water for you. Plus, it'll give me an excuse to catch up with you! If I ever venture down south, I'll hit you up and see if you're around.

Thanks for helping me think through this, I appreciate it.

I have one chalice that's almost clear and another 2 that are lightening up. All the rest look good so far. I have many frags that are currently all together on the frag rack. I agree they are probably getting too much light.

The tank was cycled, I used new fiji pink sand mostly dry except for one bag of live sand. I did feed a little before everything got moved over but it mostly just happened all in one day. All of my old rock was moved over though, along with all the coral and fish. I didn't catch any ammonia spikes. Every coral looked fantastic until about a week ago. Crazy good growth on my sps and a few lps.

Everything was moved over Oct 25th, so a little over 3 weeks. No water changes yet because my phos is 0 and nitrates 5, tested at the lfs. Everything looked great for a couple weeks then I noticed that acan and leather and chalices almost a week ago. The lights are all over the place. My apex isn't hooked up yet so I manually turn them on and off whenever I can manage. They've been moved around a lot too. I try to run them less time and lower intensity since I'm not consistent at all. I'm trying to address this asap. I'm only running carbon and just started that about a week ago. I have been using a skimmer all along. I've been feeding a lot less than I used to, mostly just thinking that the tank needs time to adjust to all those nutrients getting dumped in. I'm usually a very heavy feeder.

Wow, that was a lot of questions Thanks for the help Ty.

[+KimP]

I'm trying to get pictures posted...

[+KimP]

I woke everything up to get these pics so they're a little rough.

In the shade is this mostly clear chalice

This chalice is getting pale at the edges and losing some color overall

Those 2 chalices in the front are the same and the left one is bleaching out

Overall they're looking really good though

[FarmerTy]

I wasn't trying to help. I was just testing how you handle the heat Kim! [emoji12]

[FarmerTy]

Well from the pictures, it doesn't look as worst as it sounded. I'm sure the par meter will help you tune the tank and you can just shade the chalices that are bleaching out until they recover.

Sent via Tapatalk

[+KimP]

Much overdue for an update again. Now that the holidays are over things should pick up with the tank and I plan on updating more frequently.

So in general the tank has been running fine, fish happy, corals mostly adjusting and growing well. I haven't had my Apex hooked up at all because the display stopped working after pulling it from my 90gal and I had to send it in for maintenance. Even though I'm out of warranty, the crew at Neptune were very helpful and responsive. I sent in the head unit and display before leaving for the holidays and it was already at the house before we got back. $35 was the damage to ship and fix the display. Much better than $150 for a new one!! The tank runs pretty cold, so that was one drawback to not having my controller. I didn't want to risk running a heater without backup to cut it off if needed. That and having to set my lights up with a plain ol timer was a pain too. I really missed the sunrise/sunset of the kessils with the Apex.

So we returned from our trip over Christmas and things were clearly not good in the tank. I had a friend and her family staying at the house while we were gone and they just had to feed the tank. I also had someone come by to do a water change and test the water. All was well at that visit. Since I had no idea what had happened while we were gone, I just got everything stable and watched it for a week or so. All of my acans looked almost like they do with brown jelly disease, all zoas/palys were completely browned out and some were staying closed, and my scoly was just about all gone. In the days to follow, a toadstool stopped opening and any other softy polyps I had stayed closed. So strange. SPS look fine, just not growing, all chalices fine, blastos look great, mushrooms fine, other LPS look fine. Doesn't make much sense to me. In the end I noticed all of my Rod's Food predator mix is gone!! I bet they fed that the whole time instead of any of the other food Problem with that is it has huge chunks of food that mostly don't get eaten. I only use it to feed the eel. So with that entire flat-pack gone, I can only guess how much food rotted away uneaten. Bummer. But, things are okay. Nothing got worse in the weeks to follow and things are turning around. There's some gha growth on the rocks but not much has gotten by the foxface. I've been siphoning out the little bit I see. The glass needs scraping daily and if I miss a day or two I can't see into the tank at all. It's that bad. It could be way worse though!! I'm glad for not having any dinos or cyano, so I can't complain too much. Any maintenance has been done really slowly because I didn't want to jump in and change a bunch of stuff and make whatever the problem was, worse. I've also been testing the water and things are fine there too. The phosphates have been around 0.05 tested with the low range Elos kit. That just doesn't seem too high to me, but who knows!

I got the Apex hooked up right away when we returned. I can't express how happy I am to have that controller back!! I've been enjoying my tank so much more with it. The lighting is so much more enjoyable, I have the temp stabilized finally, I know what the pH is, I have a feed cycle now to cut off the return pumps so I don't lose half (or all) the food down the overflow, etc etc. It's really really awesome! I'm looking forward to getting the closed loop dc pump hooked up to the Apex so I can make the flow in the tank variable throughout the day. That should be fun! I want to have it turn way up once in a while to really kick up the detritus that settles on the rocks, but I can't leave it running that high all the time.

The maintenance I've slowly done since getting back:

Remove most of each of the macros in the sump

Swap out GFO

Clean the closed loop intake screen

Change the nozzles on the closed loop output for better flow throughout the tank

Water changes

Moved a few rocks around to clean up the sandbed some

Got the heater up and running

Set up the Apex

I plan on swapping out the carbon in the next week and continuing to clean up the sandbed. I need to start trying to save the scoly, if that's even possible, and I have a lobo that needs to be moved and the sand kept off of it. I'm going to continue frequent water changes as well. Hopefully I'll get things turned around and growing again! I'm looking forward to adding some corals eventually. It's been a long long time since I've added anything! It's been hard to restrain, knowing the tank move was coming up and things needing to settle afterwards. The tank is all cloudy at the moment but I'll try to get some pics posted later.

[victoly]

soooo.... where are the pictures?!

[+KimP]

Still cloudy...

[victoly]

OhhHhHhhh

[FarmerTy]

Sorry for the rotten luck KimP! It sounds like a lot survived the overfeeding over the break.

I think you're doing all the right things to getting it back on track.

If I had to send in my Apex, I think my head would explode with all the manual tasks I had to do from that point!

[+KimP]

Sorry for the rotten luck KimP! It sounds like a lot survived the overfeeding over the break.

I think you're doing all the right things to getting it back on track.

If I had to send in my Apex, I think my head would explode with all the manual tasks I had to do from that point!

Thanks. I think it's doing considerably well if that's really what happened. I can't complain.

I think whoever had the idea to have an extra apex around for the club in emergencies, had a great idea (Mitch?).

[FarmerTy]

Yeah, it was Mitch. Good call for sure as I knock on wood!

[ckyuv]

It's always hard going out of town, the apex was the one thing that made it easier on me since it would make temp and light consistent! Hope the eel isnt to fat to move now since he got plenty of grub. Funny how all your corals get mad but your sps stay fine, your obviously a pro!

[Nano Reefer Ky]

Oh man what a nightmare...

[+KimP]

This past week I swapped out the carbon and did another water change. There are more spots with gha growth, so I syphoned that out too. I've slowly gotten everything off the sandbed and into potential permanent spots. It's amazing the difference cleaning up the sandbed can make in the overall appearance of the tank! The damaged corals are looking the same unfortunately, but nothing looks worse except some bleaching on a chalice. The acans are all half pulled into their skeleton, but not any more than they were when I returned. The scoly looks horrible, but still hanging on to the thread of tissue left. Lobo looks the same and that's about it. I guess the zoas/palys are doing better now that I think of it. Not as drab and all opening up. And my blastos haven't been affected at all, they still look fantastic as always. Weird. I'm assuming at this point that whatever happened is just going to take time to heal. I'll be bummed if I can't keep any meaty LPS anymore, that's for sure. My SPS are all doing fine so I'm planning on adding my first pieces in a really long time soon. That's exciting! I have some great spots ready.

I just picked up another Kessil (thanks Jimbo!). I know, 6 over this tank seems excessive, but when we compared par values in this tank to what I was getting in the 90gal, 5 actually doesn't quite cut it. 6 should do it! I'll also be able to not run them at 100% for so long during the day, I hope. Plus I'm getting an annoying shadow so adding one more should get rid of that. Soon I'll get this other light hooked up and finally finish staining the stand and canopy. That's been a long time coming and I think we've finally found a great stain match. I'll also be hooking the closed loop DC pump to the apex and playing around with some variable flow throughout the day. Continue with water changes and trying to get the acans back to health too.

Finally some pics...

The damage

I've moved the scoly up to a shady spot on the rock because my wrasses keep getting sand on it. This way it's not having to deal with sediments. If anyone has other ideas to help it along please share.

The FTS