New-ish tank: rip it apart and start fresh or go the long haul?

[Squibege]

Tank has been up since late Feb/ early March. 90G display tank with 20ish in the sump. Parameters are stable. The few fish and corals I have are doing great and growing well... The problem is all the newbie mistakes I've made along the way.

Started with dry rock and added some LR to get some diversity going. Between that and the LR I got with my corals I've been graced with an invasion of vermetid snails, aptasia, and bubble algae. I also put caluerpa instead of cheato in the sump and have heard lots of awesome horror stories about that.

Got a beautiful piece of GSP and knew enough to isolate it on the sand bed so it wouldn't take over the rock... But the sneaky thing grew faster than I thought it would and snuck up behind the rock work without me noticing. Can't for the life of me get it off.

Only fish are a Bangaii Cardinal, purple firefish, and two clowns. Would it be worth it to move things into my QT tank and bust up the 'scape, kill the invaders, clean everything out, and start over? Or should I keep with what I'm doing- trying to kalk paste the apastia, manually remove the algae, and idk what to do about the GSP.

If I'm going to tear down I should probably do it before I get more critters for simplicity... Thoughts?

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[gone fishin]

Personally I think I would just stay the course. Unless your just getting totally over run. IMO with persistence you can overcome these issues. Good luck just my 2 cents.

 

[Squibege]

Thanks! I just hate how there are things I 'should have' done better and I don't want it to be too late to fix properly [emoji53]


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[neiltus]

That does not look that bad...I would not tear it down. Maybe throw in a couple peppermint shrimp and give them daily motivational talks about how delicious the apastia is?

If the GSP bug you, just pull them.

 

[nmotz]

yeah don't break it down, these type of issues are what this hobby is about sometimes. You haven't made any grievous mistakes. Everyone has bubble algae or pests from time to time. No reason to break a tank down at all. Looks like you have an encrusting montipora on the back wall, i really like that.

Peppermint shrimp will really help with that aiptasia problem IMO.

 

[Squibege]

I did have three peppermint shrimp for the apastia... The apastia came from ONE LR that my dad (who is almost as obsessed with the tank as I am) insisted he buy me since he liked the shape of the rock and the coraline colours on it. Since we were digging around in the LR tank all the apastia hid and I didnt notice how bad it as covered. Once I got it home I saw the 50+ that were on there and the chunks of bubble algea -_-

After a few weeks of looking up what to do about the pests I decided to move the rock into a QT tank and throw some peppermints in there so they only had apastia to eat. It semi-worked, the bullk of the apastia got eaten, but one shrimp somehow died in the QT tank, one died as soon as I moved them to the big tank, and the third died three days after being in the big tank...


The thing growing up the back is the GSP. Its very vivid and I like it a lot, I just didn't want it getting all over my rocks. So I isolated it on the sand bed. Now that its on the rocks idk what to do about it. The only way to remove the rocks would be to remove almost everything on the left side of the tank since its the bottom rocks that got it. Its a large (ish) area to Kalk paste and I don't want to shock the tank, I do have some epoxy that I could try?

 

[BigEZ77]

Agreed with above, doesn't look bad. I use Aiptasia X to remove them, pull a piece of rock when necessary and scrape off any bubbles I see. Don't have any helpful advice for the other issues since I've never had them.

 

[Sk8r]

If you happen to LIKE the fish, a matted filefish will (good bet, at least) eat them. And has the virtue of being the easiest fish in the world to catch if he turns rogue with your corals.

 

[kmbyrnes]

Stick it out. You haven't made any fatal mistakes.
One of the most rewarding parts of this hobby for me is learning to overcome issues, especially those caused by my lack of knowledge ( or worse ).
Your tank looks fine and with a little hard work on your part it can once again become something you are proud of.

 

[agiacosa]

I would suggest that you stick it out as well. Your tank will be more mature and better able to support life once you overcome this phase.


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[cincyjim]

I say stick it out. You have a very nice looking tank. As others have suggested, get a couple of peppermint shrimp and you can try to use super glue on the Vermetid snails.

 

[Squibege]

Okay. Long haul it is! Now to find a way to get the GSP off the rocks. Any awesome ideas? Or just a firm toothbrush, elbowgreese, and lots of carbon lol?


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[ReefsandGeeks]

My first focus would be the vermentid snails. IMO, they are the hardest to get rid of. If I were in your position, I'd take out one rock at a time, and take a good look all over, top to bottom for vermentid snails and getting rid of each one. My tank started off like yours, but the dang snails too koff, and since then my rocks have looked like a cactus. The algea seems easy enough to take care of in comparison, again IMO.

 

[Reeferman1019]

run carbon and GFO then get a blue spot puffer for snails. I would sell GSP rock or just manually remove it


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