Going Slooooow... LQT's Oceanic BC29 Build

How has the six line wrasse been behaving?

In the midst of doing some water testing, my sixline wrasse jumped and tried to off himself. Over the past several weeks he has become more and more aggressive and territorial, nipping at my clowns. So back to the LFS he went. Saved me the trouble of having to try to trap him. I thought by adding him last, the clowns would keep him in his place, apparently not. Now I've got to figure out some new, more peaceful additions moving forward. I need more fish poop to feed my SPS!
 
I keep my primary lights on for 9 hours. 3 hour midday peak of 75% royal blue, 25% white/lime, 70% cyan and 75% violet. There is a three hour ramp for morning and evening where the values are half of my midday settings. Then I have my moonlight channel on at 1% for 2 hours before lights on and 2 hours after lights off.
 
LQT I wanted to thank you for the in depth information you've provided in this thread. It's helped me immensely with starting my LED BC 32.

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LQT I wanted to thank you for the in depth information you've provided in this thread. It's helped me immensely with starting my LED BC 32.

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It's my pleasure. I'm glad I could help pay it forward. When I got back into this hobby after a long break, I learned a lot from reading threads from Soulpatch, Homer1475 and ReefWreak. I was even fortunate enough to meet ReefWreak when he helped me with some soldering for my LEDs. We are fortunate to be able to draw on everyone's collective wisdom and I am really happy to be able to help the cause.

Looking forward to seeing how you guys tweak and modify the new BC32s. Be patient and enjoy the ride! :D
 
You 6 line is like my pair of clowns, i can't get my hands in the tank without being attacked.

Yeah, with the sixline, it was more like fish on fish crime... but with the more dominant clown, she or soon to be she has nipped me a bunch of times too.
 
Growth is going quite well. I've increased the BRS 2 part to 23ml per day. All the frags have totally encrusted their plug disks. Color is slowly getting better. Picked up a bottle of TLF Acropower. Haven't used it yet as I am a bit wary of overdoing it and causing some nuisance algae. With the sixline gone, I'd like to pick up some more fish so they can produce waste and in turn, feed my corals.
 
Sounds good. Thanks for the update.

23mL is quite a bit, that's good! Lots of growth. I think with BRS, I maxed out around 24mL per day. I've since got rid of a large colony, and switched to ESV, which is twice the concentration, so I'm down quite a bit, closer to 12-16mL per day (I forget which).

Acropower is good. Try it out for a while, but go slow. Are you dosing carbon yet? It sounded like you were interested but didn't commit. How are you exporting nutrients if not dosing carbon and skimming? I can't imagine needing supplemental feeding if not dosing carbon sources and skimming heavily, but maybe?
 
Nitrates are still 0 and phosphates are .02 -.03. I actually dosed vodka exactly one time. The very next day, I got a bunch of slime buildup (I'm assuming it was the bacterial bloom) all over my floss and media bags and my skimmer went a little nuts and filled with water. So I rinsed everything out and didn't continue it. I figured my nitrates are 0 anyway so at this point, why bother? For nutrient export, I have the AL115 skimmer, Purigen, 1 tbs GFO and 3 tbs ROX carbon mixed together in a media bag (changed every 2 weeks). I also run chaeto in a fuge basket and get decent growth. I religiously do a 5 gallon water change once a week as well.
 
LQT, how did you calibrate your temp probe on your Apex? I watched BRStv video series on it and was just curious as to how you did yours. Thanks in advance
 
LQT, how did you calibrate your temp probe on your Apex? I watched BRStv video series on it and was just curious as to how you did yours. Thanks in advance


I really didn't need to on mine. I compared the Apex temperature reading with two very accurate digital cooking thermometers that I have, my Thermapen and my Maverick ET-732 and it was close enough for me... :D
 
Found an aiptasia on my pink birdsnest plug disk last week, so I took the birdsnest off the disk and remounted it on another... then yesterday, I found another aiptasia on the rock in front of my purple stylo, on a totally different rock from the birdsnest. Killed it with a syringe of boiling water... I really hope this doesn't become a trend. I've tried really hard in this build to try to not introduce pests using dry rock, dry sand and dipping all frags in Bayer and TTM and quarantining all new fish additions. Yet in the last 3 weeks, I've found a few aiptasia in different areas and bubble algae on two different frags... Ugh!!! :angryfire:
 
Experience

Experience

I have recently started working at a coral farm in Ohio. One of the tanks there is a display clam tank, it is 220 gallons. When I started there around a month ago this tank was completely infested with aiptasia. The owner added a copperbanded butterfly fish and four peppermint shrimp. four weeks the tank is aiptasia free as far as we can see. With green bubble algae the owner has a few tanks with foxface rabbit fish that destroy bubble algae. whenever someone orders a coral online, the coral that is purchased spends a few minutes in that tank for a bubble algae cleaning haha. I'm sorry I didn't offer too much help about these pest but I just thought id share my experiences
 
Yea those are all good answers, but the sad part about any of these pests is that once you have them, you have them forever. The aiptasia get in your plumbing and live in there, and bubble algae always finds cracks and crannies to live in where fish or emerald crabs can't get them.

I've got bubble algae as well. It came in on a plug that didn't have any algae when I bought it. Totally blank, just the coral on a clean plug. After a week in my tank, it sprouted up with bubbles everywhere. Even after removing them, they grew on the plug, and eventually spread.

Aiptasia if you quickly nuke them with kalk they won't spread, but once they do spread, or if you are careful with their removal and not scorched earth, they'll spread.

That's one of the hard parts of a mature nano tank, you can't use the biological controls of large tanks for bubble algae or even aiptasia long term.

In my old 120g tank, my sailfin tang ate the bubble algae, and peppermint shrimp ate aiptasia. But in a nano, it's a lot harder.

I think the only way to really avoid those algae and aiptasia pests are to remove frags from plugs entirely, as well as any dead flesh that could harbor either. Too late now, sorry, and also still nothing is guaranteed.

At least you don't also have this stupid gsp problem I have growing everywhere (again).

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Yea those are all good answers, but the sad part about any of these pests is that once you have them, you have them forever. The aiptasia get in your plumbing and live in there, and bubble algae always finds cracks and crannies to live in where fish or emerald crabs can't get them.

I've got bubble algae as well. It came in on a plug that didn't have any algae when I bought it. Totally blank, just the coral on a clean plug. After a week in my tank, it sprouted up with bubbles everywhere. Even after removing them, they grew on the plug, and eventually spread.

Aiptasia if you quickly nuke them with kalk they won't spread, but once they do spread, or if you are careful with their removal and not scorched earth, they'll spread.

That's one of the hard parts of a mature nano tank, you can't use the biological controls of large tanks for bubble algae or even aiptasia long term.

In my old 120g tank, my sailfin tang ate the bubble algae, and peppermint shrimp ate aiptasia. But in a nano, it's a lot harder.

I think the only way to really avoid those algae and aiptasia pests are to remove frags from plugs entirely, as well as any dead flesh that could harbor either. Too late now, sorry, and also still nothing is guaranteed.

At least you don't also have this stupid gsp problem I have growing everywhere (again).

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Yeah that's one thing I have learned from working there. Yes the aiptasia and bubble algae looks gone but once you have it, you have to deal with it. sadly it is a lot easier to deal with it in large systems but in nano systems like mine, I guess a peppermint shrimp will do haha.
 
I'll keep an eye out moving forward for any spreading pests. I covered up the offending spot with aiptasia with some super glue gel, hopefully that will help. On the frags with bubble algae, I've quickly removed the algae outside of the tank and once done, thoroughly scrubbed the offending spots with hydrogen peroxide. Only time will tell how quickly they come back.
 
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