DivingTheWorld's Custom Leemar 80g Rimless Reef

[saul831]

My tank dimensions are 36x20x21, yes, i have dual XR15s that i can't seem to figure out the light schedule for. i have more softies then hard corals. I would like to keep a little of everything.

That's the light schedule i got when i plugged the codes you posted in to apex fusion, i though it was too low as well.

If you have time can you log into fusion, select your radions, and switch to basic view(its the button next right of the Outputs button) there you should be able to select and copy the code. thank you.

 

[DivingTheWorld]

My tank dimensions are 36x20x21, yes, i have dual XR15s that i can't seem to figure out the light schedule for. i have more softies then hard corals. I would like to keep a little of everything.

That's the light schedule i got when i plugged the codes you posted in to apex fusion, i though it was too low as well.

If you have time can you log into fusion, select your radions, and switch to basic view(its the button next right of the Outputs button) there you should be able to select and copy the code. thank you.

I think the setting you missed was intensity. Here's the basic code:

Fallback OFF
tdata 06:00:00,0,0,0,0,0,0,35,35,0,0,0,0,0
tdata 07:00:00,0,0,5,0,0,0,35,35,0,0,0,0,0
tdata 09:00:00,0,0,15,0,0,0,100,100,0,0,0,0,0
tdata 09:30:00,0,0,60,0,0,49,70,100,0,0,0,0,0
tdata 10:00:00,0,0,85,0,0,60,80,100,25,0,0,0,0
tdata 10:45:00,0,0,90,35,20,65,80,100,45,0,0,0,0
tdata 12:00:00,0,0,100,30,25,100,100,100,50,0,0,0,0
tdata 13:00:00,0,0,100,35,30,100,100,100,60,0,0,0,0
tdata 15:00:00,0,0,100,30,25,100,100,100,50,0,0,0,0
tdata 16:00:00,0,0,100,25,20,100,100,100,40,0,0,0,0
tdata 17:15:00,0,0,85,25,10,65,80,75,15,0,0,0,0
tdata 18:00:00,0,0,70,0,0,60,80,100,0,0,0,0,0
tdata 18:30:00,0,0,45,0,0,35,90,100,0,0,0,0,0
tdata 19:00:00,0,0,15,0,0,0,100,100,0,0,0,0,0
tdata 21:00:00,0,0,5,0,0,0,35,35,0,0,0,0,0
tdata 22:00:00,0,0,0,0,0,0,35,35,0,0,0,0,0
If Outlet Party_Light = ON Then PF1
If Outlet Store_Light = ON Then PF2
If Outlet Test_Light = ON Then PF3

 

[africangrey]

With Fusion do you still have write codes, I thought Fusion eliminates all those.

 

[DivingTheWorld]

With Fusion do you still have write codes, I thought Fusion eliminates all those.

Fusion allows both ways.

 

[saul831]

Any updates?

 

[DivingTheWorld]

Hey Saul,

Wow, my last update was in June! Where does the time go?? I've been posting around in the forums but haven't updated my own thread. So what's happened to my tank in the last few months...

The good, the bad and the ugly.

So far my lighting has been good. I think I finally have that dialed. I'm running the same schedule, just with my max intensity at 90%.

Bryopsis basically took over my tank. In the early stages of my build, I bought a couple frags from a guy out of Hayward. The frags had some algae growing on them but at the time I had no idea what Bryopsis was or what danger I was in. I think someone advised me to toss the frags quick in this thread somewhere, but I was ignorant and kept a few. Fast forward to September and I was infested. So I tried a few things:

I first went the natural route. I bought a tang. It avoided the Bryopsis completely and ended up dying. The only fish I've had which actually died in my tank. I felt like a jerk! Anyways, next I bought more Turbo snails and picked up a bunch of Banded Trochus snails. No snail would touch the stuff. So I bought Sea Hare. He committed suicide in my MP40 in less than 12 hours. Again, jerk... So I went and picked up another (still alive today). He does great with hair and other algaes, but won't touch Bryopsis.

The Bryopsis was getting worse and worse and choking out my sps. I lost several. So I pulled the trigger on my first chemical treatment, Dino-X. I will note that Scuzy advised me that it wouldn't work, but I had already ordered one crazy expensive bottle, so figured what could go wrong, right? Lots of stuff could go wrong. I dosed exactly as specified. Within 2 weeks, both cleaner shrimp died and one of my paired up Bangaii went carpet surfing. The bryopsis was actually growing faster. I lost a couple more of my nice sps corals and several more stn'd. DO NOT USE Dino-X (also called Algae-x)!!

At this point I was around the first of October and my tank looked like this. Not great photos, but it gives you an idea what Bryopsis can do... These photos were taken after I spent 30 minutes picking out as much as I could.

Notice how ugly my Jedi Mind Trick looks and the stn on my priced Cali Tort!

 

[DivingTheWorld]

So I turned on my Carbon reactor, added my Polyfilters back and did two big water changes a week apart. That at least got the Dino-x out and back to square one.

Next chemical attempt (and really the only thing left) is raising the Mag with Kent Tech-M Magnesium. So I ordered up a gallon (it takes a lot!) and started dosing and testing. Before I go further, here are a few observations I found dosing Tech-M that you should be aware of before you dose it yourself:

1. Make sure you calculate your dosage correctly and only raise your Mag by 100ppm max per day.
2. Don't raise it too high. There were varying suggestions, so I decided to go with 2000ppm as my end/running ppm (started at 1450ppm).
3. When I hit about 1600ppm, my corals stopped consuming Alk altogether. I turned off my Alk dosing completely because it started to spike. When you start dosing, check your Alk daily. They started consuming again around day 6-7.
4. Run GFO and Carbon while dosing. I removed Polyfilters because there are reports that the benefit in Tech-M might be some random heavy metal and chemical filtration like Polyfilters could remove it. Some people say remove GFO and/or Carbon as well. My theory is that as the Bryopsis dies, your Nitrates and Phosphates spike. If you're running GFO and Carbon, you can keep those in check and keep your corals safe.
5. My fish and Sea Hare show no sign of being affected at all. I have not re-added shrimp so can't speak to those. Snails DO NOT like it. All my snails are running super slow and I've lost a bunch. They will fall off any rock and if you don't notice within a few hours, they die. The good news is that snails are cheap and easily replaced.
6. As the Bryopsis dies, other algaes (like hair) will grow. My sea hare is doing a good job keeping the others in check though.
7. Tech-M has A LOT of salt in it. I'm used to BRS Mag which doesn't cause any noticeable change in Salinity. Once I reached 2000ppm I was doing a random salinity check and found that I jumped from 1.0264 to 1.028! It took several sessions of removing a couple gallons, re-dosing, re-checking etc. to get me back to 2000ppm and a salinity of 1.0264. Check salinity every day when doing initial dosing.
8. One theory on Tech-M is that whatever impurity helps with the Bryopsis is consumed in the tank and not active for a long period. So one thing I did was when I did my monthly water change about 3 weeks after I started dosing, I dosed up my water change water to 2000ppm Mag with Tech-M. So when I did my water change, I essentially re-infused the tank with Tech-M.

Ok, so back to the nitty gritty. Did it work. I can't say with 100% certainty since I'm still running at 2000ppm, however, I will say that my Bryopsis was about 90% gone by day 4 and within 2 weeks seems completely gone. I say "seems" because I still see some stuff which could be stems and I'm a little afraid it could grow back once I drop my Mag.

One other side affect I noticed running Tech-M at 2000ppm, is my sps have started growing like crazy. I don't know if it's the Tech-M or the lack of Bryopsis, but my sps are growing faster than they ever have in my tank. I've had to raise both my Alk and Cal dosing as a result. The only thing I've really noticed fade in color is my Meteor Shower Cyphastrea. My sps corals have the deepest colors I've ever had.

So this Saturday I will do my first non-spiked water change in which I will slowly begin to reduce my Mag. Basically I'll do a IO water change without dosing up the Mag first. Saturday will be day 51 of my Tech-M dosing. I plan to slowly bring the mag back down through my water changes and just letting the corals consume it.

I'll try to take a couple updated photos of what the tank looks like now post Kent Tech-M treatment. Those photos above were taken on October 4th right before I started the dosing.

 

[maddhugan]

any thoughts of increasing magnesium after removing corals?

any thoughts of increasing magnesium after removing corals?

Hey Saul,

Wow, my last update was in June! Where does the time go?? I've been posting around in the forums but haven't updated my own thread. So what's happened to my tank in the last few months...

The good, the bad and the ugly.

So far my lighting has been good. I think I finally have that dialed. I'm running the same schedule, just with my max intensity at 90%.

Bryopsis basically took over my tank. In the early stages of my build, I bought a couple frags from a guy out of Hayward. The frags had some algae growing on them but at the time I had no idea what Bryopsis was or what danger I was in. I think someone advised me to toss the frags quick in this thread somewhere, but I was ignorant and kept a few. Fast forward to September and I was infested. So I tried a few things:

I first went the natural route. I bought a tang. It avoided the Bryopsis completely and ended up dying. The only fish I've had which actually died in my tank. I felt like a jerk! Anyways, next I bought more Turbo snails and picked up a bunch of Banded Trochus snails. No snail would touch the stuff. So I bought Sea Hare. He committed suicide in my MP40 in less than 12 hours. Again, jerk... So I went and picked up another (still alive today). He does great with hair and other algaes, but won't touch Bryopsis.

The Bryopsis was getting worse and worse and choking out my sps. I lost several. So I pulled the trigger on my first chemical treatment, Dino-X. I will note that Scuzy advised me that it wouldn't work, but I had already ordered one crazy expensive bottle, so figured what could go wrong, right? Lots of stuff could go wrong. I dosed exactly as specified. Within 2 weeks, both cleaner shrimp died and one of my paired up Bangaii went carpet surfing. The bryopsis was actually growing faster. I lost a couple more of my nice sps corals and several more stn'd. DO NOT USE Dino-X (also called Algae-x)!!

At this point I was around the first of October and my tank looked like this. Not great photos, but it gives you an idea what Bryopsis can do...

Notice how ugly my Jedi Mind Trick looks and the stn on my priced Cali Tort!

Please don't thing this as an advice since I myself is a novice to this hobby. But one of my friend wiped out bryopsis by increasing magnesium after removing his corals to the other tank.
that's just what I saw and I don't know whether it will be suitable for your set up or not. Thanks for sharing.

I recently added marinepure biomedia balls and my water seems clean after that and just a suggestion again. Because I know how much work you put into this and I want you to succeed in this build. I have had all sorts of algae in the past but never the bryopsis and I don't even know what it is. I have had my share of bad water parameters for a while though. I think you need a small seed to spread it and I never had that seed luckily, and not due to my expertise or anything like that.
good luck in solving this problem.
your friend
Madhu

 

[maddhugan]

sorry didn't read your previous post

sorry didn't read your previous post

I realized that you are already trying the mag method. cool

 

[DivingTheWorld]

Please don't thing this as an advice since I myself is a novice to this hobby. But one of my friend wiped out bryopsis by increasing magnesium after removing his corals to the other tank.
that's just what I saw and I don't know whether it will be suitable for your set up or not. Thanks for sharing.

I recently added marinepure biomedia balls and my water seems clean after that and just a suggestion again. Because I know how much work you put into this and I want you to succeed in this build. I have had all sorts of algae in the past but never the bryopsis and I don't even know what it is. I have had my share of bad water parameters for a while though. I think you need a small seed to spread it and I never had that seed luckily, and not due to my expertise or anything like that.
good luck in solving this problem.
your friend
Madhu

Moving the corals won't help unless the corals don't have a thread of the Bryopsis. Also in my case, many of my corals are attached to my main rock formations. Oh, and I only have one tank. lol

As for the water quality, I have always run low Nitrates (around 2.5ppm) and low Phosphates (around 0.03ppm). From what I've read and seen myself, Bryopsis can survive just fine in very clean water. It's unlike any other algae.

 

[scuzy]

hey how did that tech-m work out for you ? my tech-m didn't do anything to my bryopsis problem. I think i need to bring my mag back down and redo it one last time.

 

[DivingTheWorld]

hey how did that tech-m work out for you ? my tech-m didn't do anything to my bryopsis problem. I think i need to bring my mag back down and redo it one last time.

It "seems" to have worked. I'll know in the next month or so as I drop my Mag back down to normal and see if it grows back.

 

[650-IS350]

Yep High Mag best to combat Bryopsis. Thats great news that you are now on the winning side of it.

 

[DivingTheWorld]

Ok, here's two photos taken with the same camera from approx. the same angle as above. I just took these a few minutes ago to show that he Bryopsis is gone. You'll notice that there is hair algae, but I'm not nearly as worried about that. Also the sps have grown considerably.

 

[scuzy]

you're lucky my bryopsis is still going like wildfire

 

[DivingTheWorld]

Ok, here's some decent top down photos I just took of some of my corals which are doing very well right now:

 

[scuzy]

i'll update you on mine once i lower the mg level and will retry tech-M again

 

[scuzy]

any updates on your tank ?

 

[DivingTheWorld]

any updates on your tank ?

Good question! I was thinking about posting some pics.

I've been dropping my Mag down to normal levels over the past couple months using normal water changes. I'm down to around 1600 now. The Bryopsis seems to be coming back though... So I'm planning to probably dose it back up to 2000 soon.

Honestly, my tank did really well at 2000. I had no Bryopsis and all my SPS were looking good with lots of color and growth. I may run the Mag high like that for a while and see what happens.

I have some new corals coming in for the first time in almost a year so I'm getting excited for those. Picking some up from Tim (tfp) and I ordered my first batch online from Divers Den. Lots of high end stuff so I can't wait to see how it does. My corals have been doing really well so I'm very hopeful.

Besides the Bryopsis (which really isn't an issue yet) the tank seem to be dialed and firing on all cylinders. I think the main thing was age. Everything really started to do well at about the 1 year mark with my tank.

 

[scuzy]

Cool I really hope you get that bryopsis under control. There was a guy in macro algae that he said true Mexican turbos eat bryopsis.