JCole's box of rocks

Well, is there a new build thread coming? Sometimes just downsizing helps.

No. Same tank. I still have the system for sale, but I understand that it's a large chunk of change and it will more than likely not sell. If someone is serious about it down the road, then it is what it is, but until then, I am back in business.

Plus, my wife isn't too happy about the new things I am receiving in the mail for the tank, so it's safe to say I am keeping it for now. :D
 
If anyone is interested in (4) 400w metal halide Hamilton pendants with 5 years worth of Radium bulb changes then let me know. I might be selling those off. I am installing two more T5 fixtures down the middle this weekend. Going all T5s. I feel the 400's are just too much light for the 24" tank. If the T5s do a good job over the next month then I'll remove the halides and look to sell them. They are a little over a year old and like new.
 
I am in a thread over on R2R discussing Ivermectin for the treatment of Spinoid worms. I did a very CRAZY thing on Saturday and figured I should document everything here, as there is really not much I can find on the subject.

I was going to hold off on posting here until I could finish going through everything with my system. I will do a later post after a couple of weeks and try to document it a little better.

I went nuclear on my system, and what I did, I do NOT recommend to anyone, and right now, I do not feel good about my decisions. Besides spinioids and a massive microbrittle star infestation, I found what appears to be white bugs on some of my acro's. I decided to treat my system with Interceptor and ordered 48 of the large Interceptor pills, which I am currently waiting on to come in.

Due to the cost of Interceptor and me being impatient, I decided to treat my system with Dylox(Trichlorfon) which is essentially Bayer(DO NOT DO THIS WITHOUT RESEARCH AND YOU'RE CRAZY LIKE ME). I figured if I could kill the white bugs that way, then I could cancel the order of Interceptor, which wasn't cheap.

On Saturday 02/17, I removed all snails and hermits that I could find before treatment. I turned the return pumps off and turned all the power heads up to 100%. I dosed 2x the recommended dosage of Dylox to the system. Within 30 minutes, flat worms started floating around the tank(I will send videos and pictures later on). I don't know if they were AEFW or ghost flat worms. Either way, it seemed to eliminate them very effectively. I left the power heads running and the return pumps off for two hours. After two hours, I turned the return pumps back on and left the treatment going for about seven hours.

Seven hours of Dylox in the tank killed flatworms, and copepods. It did not phase the snails, crabs, worms, spinoids, or fish. I say the Dylox seemed to be a good in tank treatment.

Now, the crazy! After seven hours on Saturday, which at the that time was around 7:30pm I dosed my 500 gallon acropora DT with Ivermectin. I dosed the whole 50ml bottle, which comes out to 1ml per 12-14 gallons of system water.

Within 10 minutes after dosing the Ivermectin, the snails that were still in the tank fell off the rocks and appeared dead. Within 30 minutes, all the brittle stars and bristle worms were dead(Stunned - I'll explain more). What I can say is that the spinoid worms do appear dead. It did not kill any of the hermits, emerald crabs, or vermitid snails. Within an hour or so, most of the fish started acting weird. It was almost as if they were drunk.

The skimmer went NUTS! I have a recirculating external Reef Octopus 8000XP skimmer and could not run it at the lowest setting with the gate valve all the way open. I had the cup return the overflow back into the tank. However, the medication was coating the water so much that the bubbles were pushing the lid off the cup at the lowest setting, and this skimmer is a BEAST. I had no choice but to shut the skimmer down during treatment.

I left the skimmer off overnight. Sunday morning, I turned the skimmer on and started doing water changes via the skim mate to pull the medication out. I also set up two of the Aquamaxx large reactors with GAC. Skimmer started returning to normal after an hour or so. Unfortunately, one of my Foxfaces and a Sailfin Tang lost their color and were black. They were not doing well, and I ended up losing them Sunday evening.

Monday, the glass was DIRTY! I could not see through the glass. All the rock work had diatoms, or worse, what looked like dino's, from all the die off. I tested nutrients, and both NO3 and PO4 tested extremely low. NO3 tested around 0.02 and PO4 tested at 0. I imagine this is from all of the new algae growth consuming the nutrients.

Monday and Tuesday, I spent the evenings blowing off the rocks and sucking up dead brittle stars and bristle worms. Some of the worms and brittle stars are starting to move again. This is why I said stunned, instead of died. It seems to neurologically stun them like cyanide does to fish. It appears that when it wears off, they might come back if not removed? Only time will tell on this.

Things seem to be stable and looking okay. Fish are starting to eat again and look to pull through. My Gorgs, stylophora, pocillopora , and a couple stylocoeniella are stressed but look ok. I lost a tiny frag similar to Red Dragon. This was expected, as it was finiky in my system to begin with before all of this. Other than that, all Acropora look normal with PE. There are no signs of stress so far.

What I did wrong and regret is that I used 50ml instead of the planned 25ml. Also, I forgot to put some form of aeration in the tank after shutting the skimmer down. I had a large air pump with a large air stone that I planned on running but didn't turn on. I think this is the reason some of the fish didn't do well.

I also did not have enough RODI to make up for the number of water changes I needed. I ended up pulling the RO membranes off and running water through the sediment filter and two stages of carbon to speed up the process of getting the water i needed. I imagine this could have contributed to coral stress, diatoms, etc as my TDS measures around 60-65ppm after the carbon filters.

I also ran the treatment at night, which I would not recommend. This treatment needs to be done in the morning and supervised in case of an issue. I also treated the tank the same day as a pesticide, essentially, which wasn't a smart idea. In reality, I should have waited a couple of weeks before dosing the two in case the Dylox caused a major issue.

The question is, would I run this again? So far with the stress, no. However, if done correctly and planned out better, then I think it would be an option, but only for experienced hobbyists, as you have to be able to know how to correct things quickly if there are problems.

If anyone decides to try this as an in tank treatment, then I would recommend the following:

1. 1ml for every 25 Gallons.
2. Run treatment in the morning and perform water changes via the skimmer after two hours.
2. Remove fish before treatment, if possible.
3. Make sure you have enough aeration during treatment
4. Make sure you have enough make up for water changes
5. DON'T BE LIKE ME AND DOSE THIS THE SAME DAY AS A PESTICIDE!

I will update this thread with pictures later and try to clean up the timeline of events, etc. I will update as the process continues.
 
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I am in a thread over on R2R discussing Ivermectin for the treatment of Spinoid worms. I did a very CRAZY thing on Saturday and figured I should document everything here, as there is really not much I can find on the subject.

I was going to hold off on posting here until I could finish going through everything with my system. I will do a later post after a couple of weeks and try to document it a little better.

I went nuclear on my system, and what I did, I do NOT recommend to anyone, and right now, I do not feel good about my decisions. Besides spinioids and a massive microbrittle star infestation, I found what appears to be white bugs on some of my acro's. I decided to treat my system with Interceptor and ordered 48 of the large Interceptor pills, which I am currently waiting on to come in.

Due to the cost of Interceptor and me being impatient, I decided to treat my system with Dylox(Trichlorfon) which is essentially Bayer(DO NOT DO THIS WITHOUT RESEARCH AND YOU'RE CRAZY LIKE ME). I figured if I could kill the white bugs that way, then I could cancel the order of Interceptor, which wasn't cheap.

On Saturday 02/17, I removed all snails and hermits that I could find before treatment. I turned the return pumps off and turned all the power heads up to 100%. I dosed 2x the recommended dosage of Dylox to the system. Within 30 minutes, flat worms started floating around the tank(I will send videos and pictures later on). I don't know if they were AEFW or ghost flat worms. Either way, it seemed to eliminate them very effectively. I left the power heads running and the return pumps off for two hours. After two hours, I turned the return pumps back on and left the treatment going for about seven hours.

Seven hours of Dylox in the tank killed flatworms, and copepods. It did not phase the snails, crabs, worms, spinoids, or fish. I say the Dylox seemed to be a good in tank treatment.

Now, the crazy! After seven hours on Saturday, which at the that time was around 7:30pm I dosed my 500 gallon acropora DT with Ivermectin. I dosed the whole 50ml bottle, which comes out to 1ml per 12-14 gallons of system water.

Within 10 minutes after dosing the Ivermectin, the snails that were still in the tank fell off the rocks and appeared dead. Within 30 minutes, all the brittle stars and bristle worms were dead(Stunned - I'll explain more). What I can say is that the spinoid worms do appear dead. It did not kill any of the hermits, emerald crabs, or vermitid snails. Within an hour or so, most of the fish started acting weird. It was almost as if they were drunk.

The skimmer went NUTS! I have a recirculating external Reef Octopus 8000XP skimmer and could not run it at the lowest setting with the gate valve all the way open. I had the cup return the overflow back into the tank. However, the medication was coating the water so much that the bubbles were pushing the lid off the cup at the lowest setting, and this skimmer is a BEAST. I had no choice but to shut the skimmer down during treatment.

I left the skimmer off overnight. Sunday morning, I turned the skimmer on and started doing water changes via the skim mate to pull the medication out. I also set up two of the Aquamaxx large reactors with GAC. Skimmer started returning to normal after an hour or so. Unfortunately, one of my Foxfaces and a Sailfin Tang lost their color and were black. They were not doing well, and I ended up losing them Sunday evening.

Monday, the glass was DIRTY! I could not see through the glass. All the rock work had diatoms, or worse, what looked like dino's, from all the die off. I tested nutrients, and both NO3 and PO4 tested extremely low. NO3 tested around 0.02 and PO4 tested at 0. I imagine this is from all of the new algae growth consuming the nutrients.

Monday and Tuesday, I spent the evenings blowing off the rocks and sucking up dead brittle stars and bristle worms. Some of the worms and brittle stars are starting to move again. This is why I said stunned, instead of died. It seems to neurologically stun them like cyanide does to fish. It appears that when it wears off, they might come back if not removed? Only time will tell on this.

Things seem to be stable and looking okay. Fish are starting to eat again and look to pull through. My Gorgs, stylophora, pocillopora , and a couple stylocoeniella are stressed but look ok. I lost a tiny frag similar to Red Dragon. This was expected, as it was finiky in my system to begin with before all of this. Other than that, all Acropora look normal with PE. There are no signs of stress so far.

What I did wrong and regret is that I used 50ml instead of the planned 25ml. Also, I forgot to put some form of aeration in the tank after shutting the skimmer down. I had a large air pump with a large air stone that I planned on running but didn't turn on. I think this is the reason some of the fish didn't do well.

I also did not have enough RODI to make up for the number of water changes I needed. I ended up pulling the RO membranes off and running water through the sediment filter and two stages of carbon to speed up the process of getting the water i needed. I imagine this could have contributed to coral stress, diatoms, etc as my TDS measures around 60-65ppm after the carbon filters.

I also ran the treatment at night, which I would not recommend. This treatment needs to be done in the morning and supervised in case of an issue. I also treated the tank the same day as a pesticide, essentially, which wasn't a smart idea. In reality, I should have waited a couple of weeks before dosing the two in case the Dylox caused a major issue.

The question is, would I run this again? So far with the stress, no. However, if done correctly and planned out better, then I think it would be an option, but only for experienced hobbyists, as you have to be able to know how to correct things quickly if there are problems.

If anyone decides to try this as an in tank treatment, then I would recommend the following:

1. 1ml for every 25 Gallons.
2. Run treatment in the morning and perform water changes via the skimmer after two hours.
2. Remove fish before treatment, if possible.
3. Make sure you have enough aeration during treatment
4. Make sure you have enough make up for water changes
5. DON'T BE LIKE ME AND DOSE THIS THE SAME DAY AS A PESTICIDE!

I will update this thread with pictures later and try to clean up the timeline of events, etc. I will update as the process continues.
So what happened yo?
 
So what happened yo?

Not good! The corals did not fair well. Some died and the rest have lost their color. I moved what I could from the tank to a frag tank in the garage. I will keep them there for a couple of months in the hopes they recover.

I am planning on doing a reset on the system. Either keep the system I have and rework it as I have things I want to change anyway. Or, setting something else up. I have some ideas. Either way, this current system is over and its time to move on. It will be a slow process but I will get back into the swing of things soon.

I will try to update the thread as much as possible as I go along.
 
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