My 65G Shallow Reef Tank

[DiscusHeckel]

Update time:

I have been having a crisis for the past few weeks. My four-year old Acropora digitifera started to have STN towards the end of September, which coincided with tube changes. As if this is not enough, towards the end of last month, some of my Acroporas started to sulk one after another within 48 hours. When I woke up one morning, Acropora aspera looked really pale (though it had great polyp extension), A. lokani looked light brown, A. tenuis started to strip its tissue from its base (RTN), and Montipora setosa looked really pale bright orange (but with good polyp extension). I found it very confusing when I saw different corals exhibiting such diverse and unexpected external symptoms though I felt that they were clearly crying out for help. Strangely, all my other corals looked normal, including my canary coral A. yongei, which was always the first coral to exhibit STN before any other coral in the past when water conditions deteriorated. I really feared the worst and expected a major STN/RTN event to start any moment, and therefore had to act very quickly.

Because I have a log book and record everything I do and dose meticulously , I produced a list of eleven items that could have caused this unexpected turn of events. I fragged my A. tenuis to start off with, raised the light unit about 2 inches, started to use 1/2 (UK) cup of GAC in a filter sock passively, ordered poly-filter (though I have not yet used it) and carried out up to 50% water change (4 X 12.5%) within 24 hours. The affected corals reacted positively. Within 72 hours, Acropora lokani, which looked like milk chocolate started to look purple again. A. aspera and M. setosa followed suit. Acropora digitifera stopped stripping its skin. Sadly, all but one large frag from A. tenuis continued to strip their skins. I had to bin them, along with a sps frag I bought online recently. What a nightmare!

The corals seem to have settled for the time being, but I do not feel that they are out of danger yet.

Latest water parameters:

KH: 8.45 dKH I am in the process of dropping it down to 6.85 dKH. Alkalinity rose gradually as coral growth came to a halt.

Mg: 1310 ppm
Ca: 410 ppm
NO3: 2.5 ppm
PO4: 0.015-0.03 mg/l
SG: 52.5 mS ~34.5 ppt

It is not all bad news. There are three positive developments: First, I bought another small female resplendent anthias. I now have eight of them. I also ordered another female Genicanthus watanabei.

Second, the largest female anthias has started to turn to a male. Her (or should I say his?) colour is changing. This is something I have not experienced before. S/he has already started to exhibit courtship behaviour towards females (dive bombing towards a female and doing a quick circle around her- what a fascinating scene!). S/he is not showing any aggression whatsoever towards females. So far so good.

Third, I purchased a tank screen last Wednesday to protect my fish, but have not set it up yet. I have a behavioural problem (some may call it psychological disorder), which is procrastination. I need to get my acts together before I lose another fish :headwalls:.

Finally, here are a few pictures I took today.

 

[shubunk]

Thank you for sharing!!

 

[seamonster124]

Great looking tank

 

[DiscusHeckel]

You're welcome.
I'd be very curious to know what the zeo people say. I'd love a little insight into what coral snow actually is..
I do like to use it from time to time. Does tend to clear the water nicely, the next morning..

I raised the issue in the Zeovit forum. G. Alexander's reply was as follows:

"Coral Snow does contain very small particles which can settle down on surfaces if there is no water movement. From the biological view this should not have a impact."

Although there is no hint of what Coral snow contains, the sentence is reassuring enough. I do not think it was a good idea to pour coral snow mixture directly over my siporax box due to the density of the mixture (I am currently verifying this assumption with G. Alexander), but I will continue to use coral snow providing that I pour it in the main display.

Thank you for sharing!!

Great looking tank

Thank you very much.

 

[reefmutt]

I would think that regardless of where you pour your mixture, the bacteria will settle and repopulate throughout the system..
Sorry to hear about the coral issues.. I can't believe he light raising should have caused
Any stress but perhaps the carbon and big wc may have caused stress..
I'm sure each coral reacts differently to changes in it's s environment.. Clearly, some liked the change and others did not..
Bulent how did you kh get higher than where you like to keep it?

 

[DiscusHeckel]

Hi Matt,

I think you misread my earlier post. Raising the light unit, starting to use GAC and carrying out large water changes were some of the measures I took to address the issues. I did not want to list the possible causes I shortlisted because they are just speculation on my part even though one of them is universally accepted cardinal sin (i.e. putting 1 litre of limewater directly into the display tank in one go to raise KH, which dropped as a result of the failure of timer that drives my kalkwasser stirrer). I should have known better. This is embarrassing ....

Fortunately, the aforementioned measures I took worked quite quickly. For example, the colour of my Acropora lokani shown below (its picture was taken last night) was like milk chocolate a few days ago:

 

[reefmutt]

Oh!! Yes indeed.. Misread. Sorry.
With your extraordinary capabilities to stock pile products, I'm surprised you don't have some Seachem Reef Builder on hand. It is my go to product for alk interventions. With no corresponding ph effects like the kalk..

 

[DiscusHeckel]

Oh!! Yes indeed.. Misread. Sorry.
With your extraordinary capabilities to stock pile products, I'm surprised you don't have some Seachem Reef Builder on hand. It is my go to product for alk interventions. With no corresponding ph effects like the kalk..

You are right. Sadly, I have Seachem Reef Advantage Calcium but not Reef Builder, which is now on my list. Having said that I could have dosed RHF's bicarbonate of soda solution, which I am already using along with limewater. I must have had a brain seizure and did not think straight.

My suspicion is that limewater, which I used, had some solids in it. I think I dumped quite a bit of that stuff in to my display tank too :headwally:.

 

[markalot]

Sorry about the fish and now the coral issues but hopefully everything has settled down. Such a dramatic hobby sometimes!

 

[DiscusHeckel]

Sorry about the fish and now the coral issues but hopefully everything has settled down. Such a dramatic hobby sometimes!

Thank you for your message. Everything has settled down. Corals look as healthy as they did before the crisis. In fact, after raising the light unit, some corals started to exhibit even deeper coloration. An example is my Acropora lokani, which never looked as deep purple before as it is now.

On the fish front, I received a phone call from my lfs earlier this afternoon. He notified me that another Genicanthus watanabei female was reserved for me. This one is apparently smaller than the one I lost, which is what I prefer.

 

[Eastone]

I raised the issue in the Zeovit forum. G. Alexander's reply was as follows:

"Coral Snow does contain very small particles which can settle down on surfaces if there is no water movement. From the biological view this should not have a impact."

Although there is no hint of what Coral snow contains, the sentence is reassuring enough. I do not think it was a good idea to pour coral snow mixture directly over my siporax box due to the density of the mixture (I am currently verifying this assumption with G. Alexander), but I will continue to use coral snow providing that I pour it in the main display.





Thank you very much.

Coral snow is a mixture of CaCO3 and water from research someone did at their university lab, so basically just really tightly particle-sized chalk suspension, I read a study once that showed it's ability to adhere to polar simple organisms causes a reduction in viability of the cell - basically it kills things as certain bacteria and causes flocculation in the water which smothers other unwanted pests and allows the skimmer to remove other organics flocs it creates.

I didn't read through your thread in detail but the reason it's so effective when mixed with ZeoBAK and used as a cyano treatment is because the bacteria adheres to individual particles which smother and suffocate the cyano, so I suspect similar could have happened to your siphorax.

 

[DiscusHeckel]

Coral snow is a mixture of CaCO3 and water from research someone did at their university lab, so basically just really tightly particle-sized chalk suspension, I read a study once that showed it's ability to adhere to polar simple organisms causes a reduction in viability of the cell - basically it kills things as certain bacteria and causes flocculation in the water which smothers other unwanted pests and allows the skimmer to remove other organics flocs it creates.

I didn't read through your thread in detail but the reason it's so effective when mixed with ZeoBAK and used as a cyano treatment is because the bacteria adheres to individual particles which smother and suffocate the cyano, so I suspect similar could have happened to your siphorax.

Thanks. I really want ZEObak to smother the surfaces of Siporax, so that the bacteria will quickly colonise on the media.

I approached G. Alexander again and asked the following question:

"What I did on one occasion was that I prepared a Coral snow mixture with ZEObak and poured this mixture directly over my siporax media instead of pouring it over an area with strong flow as per the instructions. It took more than ten minutes for the mixture to find its way to the display tank. This worried me because the siporax media was exposed to a lot denser mixture than would normally be the case. Under this circumstance, should I rinse my media and leave it as is?"

His reply was: "I have no experience with the Siporax material but basically I would leave it as it is and continue as usual. CoralSnow does not contain any kind of substances which do harm bacteria or the biology in any way. G.Alexander"

 

[joshky]

Hey Bulent, glad you got things back under control so quickly. That A. Lokani is looking beautiful. Also congrats on sourcing another G. watanabei female!

 

[Eastone]

Thanks. I really want ZEObak to smother the surfaces of Siporax, so that the bacteria will quickly colonise on the media.

I approached G. Alexander again and asked the following question:

"What I did on one occasion was that I prepared a Coral snow mixture with ZEObak and poured this mixture directly over my siporax media instead of pouring it over an area with strong flow as per the instructions. It took more than ten minutes for the mixture to find its way to the display tank. This worried me because the siporax media was exposed to a lot denser mixture than would normally be the case. Under this circumstance, should I rinse my media and leave it as is?"

His reply was: "I have no experience with the Siporax material but basically I would leave it as it is and continue as usual. CoralSnow does not contain any kind of substances which do harm bacteria or the biology in any way. G.Alexander"

Personally, I don't think it was the chemical composition of the coral snow, but just that it clogged up the siphorax, probably only temporary though. I'd advise just dosing zeobak straight into the filter next time, with some carbon

 

[reefmutt]

If coral snow is mainly calcium carbonate, the residue should just dissolve, eventually.... I assume....

 

[bps619]

Nice. Digging the shallow reef

 

[DiscusHeckel]

I didn't read through your thread in detail but the reason it's so effective when mixed with ZeoBAK and used as a cyano treatment is because the bacteria adheres to individual particles which smother and suffocate the cyano, so I suspect similar could have happened to your siphorax.

Sadly in my case, ZEObak/Cyanoclean and Coral snow mixture did not work to get rid of cyano. This mixture seems to work in some set ups and do not in others.

If coral snow is mainly calcium carbonate, the residue should just dissolve, eventually.... I assume....

I am no longer worried about this issue. If coral snow smothered surfaces, most reef system would have collapsed by now as some people use coral snow daily.

Nice. Digging the shallow reef

Cheers.

Hey Bulent, glad you got things back under control so quickly. That A. Lokani is looking beautiful. Also congrats on sourcing another G. watanabei female!

Thanks Josh. The new G. watanabei is now in my tank. She received a hostile reception from all the other Genicanthus sp. including the yellow tang. Fortunately, this did not last very long. I am going to set up my tank cover later this morning. There is an awkward corner to negotiate around the return pipe. I could not make the frame before since I did not have enough additional corners for the extended frame. I managed to get four additional corners today to fully cover almost every gap. This has now become even more urgent since I also bought a small silver belly wrasse at the same time. I realised that this was probably a big mistake because I forgot the fact that I have some giant feather dusters and two coco worms in my tank. I hope that it will not touch them. Otherwise, I will have to remove it while sleeping in the sand bed.

Including my eight anthias, I have got 16 fishes altogether now. I think even Andrew (@Biggles) would say that I have too many. His bfc indicator has shot through the roof. Having said that I like the movement in the tank.

 

[DiscusHeckel]

Update:

I assembled my tank cover yesterday. I think I did a good job in the end after trying different configurations. There are 5 mm gaps between glass and the frame due to cables at each end of the tank, but by leaving extra mesh and rolling it inside the tank I further reduced that gap. Hopefully, I will not need to count my fish every morning or after coming back home from work fearing the worst. The only scenario in which I may lose fish is if they jump on the brace bars and do not manage to jump back into the tank. However, historically I never lost fish under this scenario. The other scenario is if a fish jumps into weir, but this is a manageable scenario.

Moreover, after seeing a nice looking Genicanthus semifasciatus in Scotty's tank thread, I have decided to order one through my lfs. The males look stunning, but I can probably only afford a female. As you can see as my tank has fully matured and I cannot squeeze any more Acroporas. I am keeping myself occupied with fish. Having said that replacing one or more mature colonies with new more colourful frags may be on the cards next year.

Finally, cyanobacteria is almost completely gone. I can see that the nutrient and bacterial balance are shifting towards a direction which does not favour cyanobacteria. An early indication was the appearance of some green algae (and some byropsis) in isolated spots in my overflow box.

Thanks for reading.

Bulent

PS. Note to Matt (@reefmutt): I have read a conversation between you and @mhucasey in his tank thread about Salifert amino acids and Acropower. Adding amino acids will keep cyanobacteria happy in your tank. Just saying. According to Herr Hans-Werner Balling, cyanobacteria appear to have preference for amino acids among all the other the nitrogen sources available to them.

 

[reefmutt]

Nice cover, Bulent.
The only way a fish is getting out of there is if a secret octopus happens to live in your reef and he organizes a full tank escape!
Nice job!
Thanks for the info on the aminos... Yes.. I know.. But I just don't want to stop doing what I'm doing to make the corals happy..
I'm leaning closer to doing a big siphon of the cyano and then a red slime remover treatment..

 

[biggles]

The new fish is beautiful Bulent

I have cyano lately but like Matt i don't change things to get rid of cyano when the acros are looking happy with things just the way they are. As you said it's just an imbalance and over time the good bacteria numbers will take care of the cyano.