My 65 Gallon Mixed Reef

[biggles]

Biggles, have you considered a penguin in the tank?? Hahahahahahaha . I'd think a nice cool ice rink would help out, psychologically, with the Melbourne heat

Things are looking far better now biggles :thumbsup:, PE looks great. While coloration may not be upto your standards, I does make for a darn good show :thumbsup:

Hmmm, you ready to come out yet, with your sneakiness? There's no way you'd be quiet for soo long without being sneaky, so out with it

Things are definitely better now but i still see next to no growth anywhere on anything at the tips or the base. All the acros have algae covering dead areas which looks bloody awful but as of yet none of the acros are attempting to heal over the dead spots. Colors are much better overall so i'm just keeping things stable atm and waiting a month or two. Did another 20% water change today so that's a regular fortnightly ritual from now on. The acros always look perkier the following day after a water change so it's not hurting. I can't believe i waited this long to try artificial salt - kills humping drums of NSW from the LFS lol.

You can see the bleached cream colored acro in the last FTS that i got with the milli and the echi - the echi is dying again so i'm super impressed with that thing. The bleached thing could be anything but the LFS guy swore it definitely wasn't green when it came in weeks earlier, he thought it may be red or pink - the mere mention of pink was enough for me to say 'BAG IT'
It's pale tan and i hate it right now, time will tell if it gets with the program.......

Penguins, LOL

Marty

Nothing funny about penguins Marty, they're vile creatures.......

Ooooooh now i am offended! Very offended! :angryfire:

But happy you are back on track! Cheers!

Lol sorry Ormet, as usual bloody Bello has gotten me into trouble.........

Purple with fluoro green polyps starting to smile again.

 

[Bello]

Geez biggles, that's a stunner.....hmmm, don't remember seeing that before :lol:.

Unfortunately, my tank is in a bit of a mess right now , hopefully I'll get things back up :thumbsup:

 

[biggles]

Geez biggles, that's a stunner.....hmmm, don't remember seeing that before :lol:.

Unfortunately, my tank is in a bit of a mess right now , hopefully I'll get things back up :thumbsup:

Had that acro for about 10 months and it's in about 4 spots Bello, i threw two little colonies of it out when i did the rescape as it grows like a weed in low to medium light. Sorry to hear your tanks had a dummy spit mate, i decided that you and i are bloody hopeless when it comes to reef keeping lol......... :deadhorse1: I reckon if i spent ten grand and bought all the best whiz bang gear to make my system totally computer controlled and bullet proof a piano would fall out of a passing cargo plane and land on the acros...... you and i must accept that we are SPS idiots Bello and we will always have 'Days of Our Lives' reef saga tanks.....

The tank is looking lots better and the acros are all starting to smile back at me with colorful grins. Another month or two and things will be crackalackin i think. My sump is clean but also alive with filter feeders which for me is a big positive indicator of the water heading in the right direction.

Was trying to get a closeup of a pink sponge on the wall but couldn't get the focus at such an angle. I did capture a mysis swimming by, you can see him just under the sponge with glowing eyes from the flash. I struggled to find any of these guys when things were bad a month or two back but now i have hundreds again along with ridiculous numbers of pods.

I radium nuked one of the pieces of that pinky red milli i bought a few weeks back and had to drop it down after it went deathly pale (wimpy acro) - check out the yellow tips it's developing while it colors back up lol - the low light pieces don't have it at all.
The milli on the left has been a grey blue blob with brown polyps for 6 months and in the last two weeks it's decided to suddenly show me why the collector picked it - i think it's going to be a cool milli if i don't kill it....... colors are somewhere between the two pics, i desaturated the hell out of the second pic so you don't think i'm an online acro vendor posting WYSIWYG pics.............. :rolleye1:
That's more of that acro you like in the background on the left Bello and middle foreground is SSC tips wearing brown algae beards lol. The orange pav has a bald spot and he better fix it soon or he'll get an acro toupee of my choosing......

I tried everything to get things back under control with the water and every time i thought things were getting a bit better i would see a new acro suddenly start losing tissue for no reason. After reading what Joe said about bacteria a few things started making sense, the one that really clicked for me was the fact that my skimmate no longer smelled bad even though it looked foul. I'm pretty sure i nuked all me good bacteria with salinity swings and nothing was breaking down the crap into the normal stinky skimmate smell. No idea really but i've never experienced non smelly skimmate before, it just smelled like stagnant water from a puddle.

So what i did weeks back was remove everything but the skimmer and rock from the sump and drop the water temp to 23C or 74F. It rises to just under 24C or 75F at the end of the 7 hour radium period. I normally keep it at 26C or about 79F but since dropping it right down the weird outbreaks of tissue loss have completely stopped and colors are returning better than they were before everything went to hell. Bad things multiply quicker in warmer water so putting the brakes on the systems metabolism allowed the corals to overcome whatever it was in the water that was annoying them enough to cause death.
Anyway that's all i did - removed a cup of passive run carbon and dropped the temp over 3 days and within 3-4 days i saw a dramatic shift in the display's health. My skimmate once again smells like Bello's socks - pretty bloody disgusting from what Sahin tells me.......... :lol2:

 

[Bello]

Sorry to hear your tanks had a dummy spit mate, i decided that you and i are bloody hopeless when it comes to reef keeping lol......... :deadhorse1: I reckon if i spent ten grand and bought all the best whiz bang gear to make my system totally computer controlled and bullet proof a piano would fall out of a passing cargo plane and land on the acros...... you and i must accept that we are SPS idiots Bello and we will always have 'Days of Our Lives' reef saga tanks.....

Amen!..........but we shall arise and return!!!

The tank is looking lots better and the acros are all starting to smile back at me with colorful grins. Another month or two and things will be crackalackin i think. My sump is clean but also alive with filter feeders which for me is a big positive indicator of the water heading in the right direction.

I struggled to find any of these guys when things were bad a month or two back but now i have hundreds again along with ridiculous numbers of pods.

Sweet pics of the sump, mine's erm rather clean, because I'm a neat freak .. Time to mess it up a bit

I radium nuked one of the pieces of that pinky red milli i bought a few weeks back and had to drop it down after it went deathly pale (wimpy acro) - check out the yellow tips it's developing while it colors back up lol - the low light pieces don't have it at all.

That's more of that acro you like in the background on the left Bello and middle foreground is SSC tips wearing brown algae beards lol. The orange pav has a bald spot and he better fix it soon or he'll get an acro toupee of my choosing......

Interestingly, I have a similar pinkish millie thats doing the same thing in high light, I'm leaving him there, I quite like the yellow . Colours look pretty darn good on most of them, there's still plenty for me to be jealous of . You guys are just spoilt for choice in bloody Oz :hammer:

I tried everything to get things back under control with the water and every time i thought things were getting a bit better i would see a new acro suddenly start losing tissue for no reason. After reading what Joe said about bacteria a few things started making sense, the one that really clicked for me was the fact that my skimmate no longer smelled bad even though it looked foul. I'm pretty sure i nuked all me good bacteria with salinity swings and nothing was breaking down the crap into the normal stinky skimmate smell. No idea really but i've never experienced non smelly skimmate before, it just smelled like stagnant water from a puddle.

So what i did weeks back was remove everything but the skimmer and rock from the sump and drop the water temp to 23C or 74F. It rises to just under 24C or 75F at the end of the 7 hour radium period. I normally keep it at 26C or about 79F but since dropping it right down the weird outbreaks of tissue loss have completely stopped and colors are returning better than they were before everything went to hell. Bad things multiply quicker in warmer water so putting the brakes on the systems metabolism allowed the corals to overcome whatever it was in the water that was annoying them enough to cause death.
Anyway that's all i did - removed a cup of passive run carbon and dropped the temp over 3 days and within 3-4 days i saw a dramatic shift in the display's health. My skimmate once again smells like Bello's socks - pretty bloody disgusting from what Sahin tells me.......... :lol2:

Very interesting!!!!! It's very possible that the lower temps have helped :thumbsup:. Never tried it though, but thanks for sharing the experience... Geez, I've become too polite....somethings wrong!!!!! Too tired to think of insults

 

[biggles]

No dramas to report for a change, everything is coloring back up very nicely but still not much in the way of growth.

I tried using the flash with all the tank lights on and even though it looks a bit weird the colors are pretty bloody close to spot on without the overpowering blue washout from the radium.

Since i'm only using a skimmer now i thought i'd show you what it looks like in the cup.

I cleaned the skimmer cup 10 days ago. The inch of skimmate is 3 days worth in this pic. The skimmate is the color you see in the pic. I won't clean the cup for another 4-5 weeks by which time the gunk will be a good 1/4" thick inside the neck.

I noticed the red shrooms in the sump were looking very happy and open and there was a small amount of slime film on the water surface in between the baffles. Sieved the water with a folded tissue and smelled it - acro slime stink which is a giveaway that something is annoying the acros even though i can't actually see any sliming at all. Placed a cup of rowacarbon in a mesh bag in the sump baffles and 5 days later the water surface is clear again.
I really must get rid of the shrooms as they're SPS poison generators imo.......

I keep the following parameters lately and the acros seem to be very happy so the low temp is staying. I'll take cool saturated colors over growth any day of the week.

Alk is 7.8-8.0
Calcium is 410
Mg is 1380
Salinity is 1.0250
Temp is 74

Nitrates and Phos are undetectable on Sailfert and Hanna.

I think i'm going to let this journal die the natural death it's been heading towards and make a new one about my little sump nano SPS tank that i want to create. Btw now that i have 6x24W T5's over the 20x20x10" sump i can safely say that T5 only lighting is very drab and boring looking when compared to the shimmering crispness of halide/T5/LED lighting. The fact that the sump has 144W and the display has about 640W of lighting probably makes a difference to the look too lol.........

 

[Bello]

Glad to see there's no more drama, biggles . Since I'm going through my share of drama, I suggest a ceasefire in Tank War hostilities, till the first acro spawn on the GBR this year .

Love the tank pic with the flash :thumbsup:. The colors look pretty darn good and solid. However the frags on the bottom are looking ugly, send them to me . What's in the sump, btw? Moving the frags down there, or is it already packed with more sneaky additions?

I'm a bit confused about the skimmer, why would you want to leave it uncleaned for a bit? TBH, I have no idea how people manage shrooms and acros in the same tank, long term. I've moved all my shrooms to my external standalone frag tanks .

Before my recent alk dip, my params were,
Alk : 7.5dkh
Cal : 450ppm
Mg : 1260ppm

I'd like to see some top-downs of all those Purples that you've sneakily added, when you get the time

 

[martinphillip03]

Very nice. I noticed Potatohead wasn't in the pic, Did Kevin tie him up and hide hime behind an acro?

Marty

 

[1000_smiles]

No dramas to report for a change, everything is coloring back up very nicely but still not much in the way of growth.

I think i'm going to let this journal die the natural death it's been heading towards and make a new one about my little sump nano SPS tank that i want to create. Btw now that i have 6x24W T5's over the 20x20x10" sump i can safely say that T5 only lighting is very drab and boring looking when compared to the shimmering crispness of halide/T5/LED lighting. The fact that the sump has 144W and the display has about 640W of lighting probably makes a difference to the look too lol.........

And so ends the story of Potatohead, Kevin, boxboy and biggles' reef. It's been a great ride, thanks for sharing. I'm glad everything is doing better and recovering. But to tell you the truth, I was hoping for a better ending. Maybe ninjas, or space aliens, or at least a fiery car chase...maybe a flubber invasion.
I am looking forward to the sequel.
Cheers
:beer:

 

[biggles]

Glad to see there's no more drama, biggles. Since I'm going through my share of drama, I suggest a ceasefire in Tank War hostilities, till the first acro spawn on the GBR this year.

Love the tank pic with the flash. The colors look pretty darn good and solid. However the frags on the bottom are looking ugly, send them to me. What's in the sump, btw? Moving the frags down there, or is it already packed with more sneaky additions?

I'm a bit confused about the skimmer, why would you want to leave it uncleaned for a bit? TBH, I have no idea how people manage shrooms and acros in the same tank, long term. I've moved all my shrooms to my external standalone frag tanks .

Before my recent alk dip, my params were,
Alk : 7.5dkh
Cal : 450ppm
Mg : 1260ppm

I'd like to see some top-downs of all those Purples that you've sneakily added, when you get the time

Nothing but rock and a couple of flubbery things down in the sump atm mate.
I leave the skimmer cup uncleaned as i think it produces better once the neck is covered with a gunk paste. I allow it to get to 1/4" thick in the skimmer neck because that's when i start to see a drop in production. I swipe a vertical finger swipe in the neck occasionally to make a viewing window so i can see what the bubbles are up to in the neck. I have the art of low maintenance skimmer upkeep down to a fine art Bello..........
Sneakily added purples ? Here's a saturated end shot which would show up anything very saturated with purple i'm sure. The tabling looking thing above the yellow tang's head is an optical illusion created by radium spectral light bounce, a well known phenomenon........ no way would i hide a new acro until it colored up, shame on you Bello.........

Btw i've got a bone to pick with you mister......... you'll see what you're responsible for shortly Bello but i'm not happy mate.......

Very nice. I noticed Potatohead wasn't in the pic, Did Kevin tie him up and hide him behind an acro?

Marty

Potatohead is molting at the moment Marty, as soon as he comes out of his cave i'll hand feed him cyclop-eeze for a few days in a row just to give him a boost.

Important note:

I go to great lengths to avoid disturbing the natural feeding behaviors of my livestock so as to observe them just as i would see them feeding on the GBR. It's of paramount importance that the fish don't even know you exist let alone be aware that you are the food god.
In the pic below you can see the correct way to feed a clown cyclop-eeze so as to preserve it's natural feeding behavior, the stupid thing has no idea i even exist........

And so ends the story of Potatohead, Kevin, boxboy and biggles' reef. It's been a great ride, thanks for sharing. I'm glad everything is doing better and recovering. But to tell you the truth, I was hoping for a better ending. Maybe ninjas, or space aliens, or at least a fiery car chase...maybe a flubber invasion.
I am looking forward to the sequel.
Cheers
:beer:

Hey mate, i have a flubber invasion as we speak and it's all down to Bello and his dodgy advice. I have a trained pointer snail that helps me in these situations so as to avoid the need to do any graphics work on the image. The creatures number at least 10 and are under the acro but also climbing up on the back side of the colony and killing the base of the acro in the process.
On the right side under the blue and fluoro polyped acro you can see a little patch of hydroids that needs destroying so they stop stinging my acro.

Closeup of one of the nasty stinging things.

I have one isolated in the sump, it attacked a stylo frag without warning and now refuses to let go. When the lights go off and it's dark it moves around killing more of the stylo......... there are at least 8-10 of these things hanging upside down in the shade like bats from the underside of my acro colony. These are Ricordea Vampira's and the only way to sort them out is to somehow remove the entire colony from the tip and cut them away.

I distinctly remember Bello telling me ages ago that ric's were cool and safe with acros, Sahin was ok with the idea too when i think back so both of you are responsible for the trauma my acro will now have to go through. The hydroids probably came as hitchhikers with the ric so they're your fault too boys - well done. :facepalm:

 

[Andyf30]

That sucks :/ I've always been under the impression rics were fine with acros too. I think most dont move around at night though they stay attached down on the sandbed somewhere. I feel like this is a very unusual case of bad luck. Good luck with the removal man ive been following this tank since it started

 

[martinphillip03]

I think we should have a contest naming your next thread. Sahin and Bello will be the judges. in case of a tie, Bello gets the deciding vote.
My idea is,
I am a LED master, Biggles Nano pico tank, with a 100 liter refugium

Marty

I think i'm going to let this journal die the natural death it's been heading towards and make a new one about my little sump nano SPS tank that i want to create. Btw now that i have 6x24W T5's over the 20x20x10" sump i can safely say that T5 only lighting is very drab and boring looking when compared to the shimmering crispness of halide/T5/LED lighting. The fact that the sump has 144W and the display has about 640W of lighting probably makes a difference to the look too lol.........

 

[martinphillip03]

Or Hydroids or Hemorrhoids; whats worse?

Marty

 

[biggles]

That sucks :/ I've always been under the impression rics were fine with acros too. I think most dont move around at night though they stay attached down on the sandbed somewhere. I feel like this is a very unusual case of bad luck. Good luck with the removal man ive been following this tank since it started

Hi mate, thanks for following along. The plan today is to do the following:

Put sand under the acro so it drops onto a soft bottom when i cut it.
Place the colony in the sump for ric infestation appraisal.
Use the dremel to operate on the acro and remove all traces of the pests.
Re attach the acro colony to the tip of the arch rock a bit higher off the bottom and pointing forwards more.

I think we all know that things aren't just going to go as simply as my list infers......... for a start i think the humilis is stuck down on top of this acro so it'll probably fall too.

I'm going to follow the whole process with pics but i'm not spending ages color correcting as i'm going to be stressed and busy so you get weekend saturated pics with very little work done on the phone images.

Or Hydroids or Hemorrhoids; whats worse?

Marty

Had both and can i tell you Marty - when you wake after the op and the nurse tells you to make sure you let her know when you need to go to the loo so she can give you a shot of morph first well........ let's just say that after that experience i firmly believe they use a chainsaw to remove them and the morph shot whilst enjoyable does nothing to ease what i'd liken to sitting in a bucket of sulfuric acid whilst passing a couple of dozen razor blades at the same time..........


Sand is in and the fish know something is up.......... i actually smashed a few tips just getting the sand under the colony so that's not a good sign of what's to come really..........

 

[biggles]

The good old rusty bonsai cutters made short work of the job. Smashed all the tips on the underside in the process :deadhorse1: At least the humilis stayed put thank goodness.

 

[biggles]

So upon close examination i discovered two baby ric's still on the rock work in the display. The one on the right was snipped off attached to a bit of putty but the left one retreated into a depression as soon as i went for it. I filled the hole with super glue gel.

The acro has about 8-10 ric's covering its bum and side and worse yet the 'colony' is actually the three original frags all stuck together with rubble and lots of putty. No choice but to chop it up as it's going to fall apart after i cut the base away to remove the ric's. You can see i've smashed it around a lot already even though i'm trying to be very careful lol.

I decided on the fly to create a new solid one piece ledge to replace the acro with. I'll attach the two good branches being saved from the acro back onto the new ledge amongst other things.........

I asked for volunteers in the sump and an old half dead monti plate put his hand up to become the new ledge tip - good on you monti !

After slicing the shape i wanted off with the dremel i used the cutters to knaw the smooth cut side into something more ragged and much less obvious to the eye - these are the little things i do that make a big difference with SPS scaping. With SPS it's very hard to hide your work unlike flubber which comes out and covers the skeleton with its guts or whatever that stuff is a cataphylia spews out..... take the time to go that little bit extra so you're not waiting two years for the corals to cover up some of your obvious handiwork. The more attention you pay to detail that you see plainly with your naked eye the faster your display will look realistic. Even young reefs can look quite natural if you take the time to orient frags in a pleasing manner. Anyway i'm rambling but you know what i'm talking about.

I'm going to cut up the acro now with the dremel to save as much base tissue as i can on the two branches i want. Cutters leave you just a small branch stump so i always use the dremel when i have a chance to keep encrusted base tissue.

A dremel is the best thing since sliced bread when you're into SPS and once you try one you'll wonder how you ever got by without it. I expect free dremels for everyone on RC from dremel inc since i just gave you dremel guys a big plug ! Look how many times i said your name for pete's sake.

 

[biggles]

Okay that didn't take long, it was pretty obvious what had to happen. You can clearly see the original three frags in this pic, unfortunately i basically piggy backed each one onto the other so the putty and rubble the ric's are on are holding the whole mess together lol.

I cut two channels either side of the acro base with the dremel and then used a butter knife to slide between the channel and gently pop apart the putty base and acro where the dremel cuts didn't go deep enough. I then cut the two branches i liked into separate pieces.

Notice the little acro crab claws just above my thumb, he's holding for dear life and ain't letting go of that acro lol. I always take care to look out for my acro crabs when messing about with acros and will catch them if need be and drop them into the display if i think i might hurt one chopping something up. I'd say i have about thirty or so in my SPS atm.

I chucked the whole lot in the sump to soak and sulk for a while, the acro is having a major snotty tantrum lol.

The plan btw is to attach all the stuff i want to the monti prior to attaching the shelf back on the rock where the acro was originally. It's much easier to glue stuff out of the water and use the sump for things to set underwater so the acros suffer the least trauma, easy access to the corals in the sump makes the whole process much less daunting if you're not familiar with glue and putty work.
Once the acro frags are attached to the monti shelf it will be a matter of attaching the whole lot to the rock in the display - that's the bit that doesn't always go as planned but i always get it done in the end lol. I'll also give you a few tips on avoiding goofs when using supports under acros while glue and putty set - on more than one occasion i've had to remove the branch i just glued because i couldn't get the support out from under the branch. :debi:

 

[markalot]

Those rics sure do look like anemones of some sort.

Thanks for the updates, always a fun read in the morning.

 

[BrentH]

Do u still have Charlie and the other 2 hitchhikerz that came in on your live rock a couple years ago?

 

[Fishy 1]

Hey Biggles did you catch/kill the super acro crab?

 

[BrentH]

I'm trying to read trough your thread to catch up on what's been going on in your tank ? Look like you had some issues let me read for a hour or 2 here