btmedic's nuvo 20 build thread

Hey folks, so it turns out those hitchikers were bryopsis algae that must of came in on the piece of live rock and survived the cycle and lights off. It is spreading on my rock work but I have some fluconazole en route. Hopefully its here Saturday on time and I can begin treatment before this stuff explodes. Wish me luck!

in happier news, I have added 2 juvenile black snowflake clowns who seem really happy at the moment.

Im also debating the merits of picking up a nuvo 10 and beginning to cycle it in case I need to move my clowns so I can tear down the 20 and restart it if the fluconazole doesn't work. Thoughts on this?

Heres a few shots of my clowns and Forest inspecting the new roomates
 

Attachments

  • 20181128_151411.thumb.jpg.fe47c8ca95056763e088e4e578be6868.jpg
    20181128_151411.thumb.jpg.fe47c8ca95056763e088e4e578be6868.jpg
    51.3 KB · Views: 2
  • 20181128_151413.thumb.jpg.21e21cadd3e5bd5e360a6b5c94c57db6.jpg
    20181128_151413.thumb.jpg.21e21cadd3e5bd5e360a6b5c94c57db6.jpg
    48.2 KB · Views: 0
  • 20181128_185742.thumb.jpg.d0a03975abb42a7a89744102ed8dd8b0.jpg
    20181128_185742.thumb.jpg.d0a03975abb42a7a89744102ed8dd8b0.jpg
    39.7 KB · Views: 1
  • 20181128_195135.thumb.jpg.c2f70465b19809e021ce5d4b3ddccb22.jpg
    20181128_195135.thumb.jpg.c2f70465b19809e021ce5d4b3ddccb22.jpg
    45.1 KB · Views: 0
Just finished weekly maintenance and rewarded myself with a diffuser for my Radion XR15. The visual quality improvement is quite pronounced! Like I think the diffuser should be included in the package right from the factory. Here are my aquariums chemistry readings post water change

Phosphate: 0 (undetectable on red sea pro kit. maybe time to invest in ULR Hannah checker)
Nitrate: 3 (color was between 2 and 4)
PH: 8.2
Calcium: 430
Alkalinity: 8.1
Magnesium: 1360

Fluconazole arrived today and will be going in tonight after lights out. I had to keep telling myself this at my LFS because they had a very nice piece of rock with rasta zoa's and a bit of a green lepto on it as well
 
I used fluconazole in my tanks a few months ago at twice the dose and it got rid of my bryopsis algae. I had bubble algae but the med didn't kill the bubbles. Yeah, zero phosphate seems impossible. I use the Hannah checker, I like it.
 
I used fluconazole in my tanks a few months ago at twice the dose and it got rid of my bryopsis algae. I had bubble algae but the med didn't kill the bubbles. Yeah, zero phosphate seems impossible. I use the Hannah checker, I like it.

did you see any ill effects from doing twice the dose? I dosed 300mg for my 14 gallons of total water volume yesterday which totals ~21mg per gallon
 
I had some macro algae which didn't make it after the treatment.

I see. Well I don't have much in my aquarium yet. Just 2 trochus snails, 2 black snowflake clownfish and a small 10-15 head zoa colony. Its day 2 and I don't see any difference yet with the bryopsis. If I see no improvement by day 7, I'll add another 300mg
 
Today is day 3 of fluconazole being in my system. So far no effects on my clownfish, trochus snails, zoa frag or even my pod population. Now the bryopsis population is a different story. Theres already some die off and recession, but a few other areas that are still pretty deep green. Hopefully those spots start dying off soon. I'll probably pick up a few more snails and maybe some hermits this week. Also I am getting very nice green coraline algae forming on my rockwork and specks of purple showing up as well
 
The bryopsis is really dying back today on day 4, so I put my skimmer cup back on and set it to dry skim. I figure it cant hurt to pull some of that out now since I have 10 days to go until my next water change. I also added 4 dwarf blue legged hermits today who immediately started going to town on the bryopsis wreckage. My LFS is having a coral sale this month too. 10% off of all corals and buy one get one in their $30,$20,$10 frag tanks. I may have picked up a rasta frag and an unknown zoa frag (its got a neon green center and purple skirt) I also toyed around with my phones camera setting a bit. Let me know if these look better to you guys
 

Attachments

  • 47394731_10157062193128699_1735191582430199808_n.jpg
    47394731_10157062193128699_1735191582430199808_n.jpg
    61.8 KB · Views: 2
  • 47499552_10157062193163699_420260166206750720_n.jpg
    47499552_10157062193163699_420260166206750720_n.jpg
    62.1 KB · Views: 0
  • 47574499_10157062193098699_9121204879530917888_n.jpg
    47574499_10157062193098699_9121204879530917888_n.jpg
    68.5 KB · Views: 2
How's the Bryopsis situation?

I have one tiny little patch left on a large piece of substrate and that is it :eek2: Im going to continue the full 14 day treatment just to be on the safe side though! I used Thomas Labs Fish Flucon 100mg tablets and they have worked great. No impact on livestock either. I even added 4 blue legged hermits to help clean up
 
Current pictures of the start of my zoa garden and a FTS during my dusk cycle
 

Attachments

  • 20181207_203827.jpg
    20181207_203827.jpg
    83.5 KB · Views: 1
  • 20181207_203957.jpg
    20181207_203957.jpg
    42.8 KB · Views: 1
Its been a little while since my last update, so I though I'd post some good news and bad news.

The good news is I picked up a purple hammer frag and it is looking nice and happy as are most of my zoas. The rastas zoas dont stay open all day so I'm not sure whats going on there, but I'm seeing a few baby zoas popping up on the other frags. My trochus snails are still cruising around the tank and I added a couple of nassarius snails. I have only seen one pop out of the sand one time since I put them in though. The hermits have started changing to different shells that I have added to the aquarium. Not sure if i saw one that expired or a molt last night though. my numbers are still looking great as far as calcium, alk, mag, ph. phosphates and nitrates are still undetectable with my red sea kit.

Now on to the bad. I noticed my smaller black snowflake clown had a single white dot on his fin a week ago. well it was a bit concerning but it went away on its own. a couple days later I noticed a few more spots were back so I decided to quarantine both of them even though the female hadn't shown any signs and both were eating like pigs and active. From what I've read, brook kills super fast so I decided to treat this as ich. Set up a 10 gallon petsmart


tank with a seachem ammonia badge, hob, heater, lid, a 3" pvc elbow and about a third of my marine pure gems in the hob and over a 2 day period dosed cupramine up to a 0.5 concentration as per my salifert copper test. their 30 day copper treatment ends on January 17th. My nuvo 20 cannot have fish in it until March 2nd. So it looks like I lost this gamble and will not be making that mistake again!

Lessons Learned:
even though the LFS may run their livestock through copper treatments, it may or may not be at therapeutic levels.
Quarantine! Quarantine! Quarantine!
a $40 topfin 10 gallon kit from petsmart and a $3.26 pvc elbow and $7 ammonia badge is well worth the investment for nano sized fish

Now to end on a more positive note, this has prompted me to begin my bedroom nano I have ordered the following parts

Nuvo 10
Cobalt MJ 1200 (wanted to try something new this time around. I am going to swap it with a Sicce 0.5 as the MJ is too loud for a bedroom tank. The flow is really nice though)
IM spinstream
75w cobalt neotherm heater
Micmol Aqua Mini Light
10lbs carribsea special grade
Intank floss holder
Intank refugium basket
IM Chaetomax refugium light
Autoaqua Smart ATO
2 quart Marinepure 1.5" spheres
Some left over dry rock that I didnt use in my nuvo 20
100ml biospira
 
Back
Top