Litter Box
New member
I have had this Hippo tang for probably 10 years or more. I bought him when I was in college and first started keeping saltwater tanks. He was acutually one of the first fish I ever kept. He was the size of a quarter when I bought him and he started out in a 20gallon long until he got big enough to fend for himself, he went into my main 55gallon display and over the course of time has been in and out of every tank set up I have had. Each of my early tanks were lit by PCs, T5's, metal hallides and combinations thereof. Unfortunately, he got Head and Lateral Line Erosion (HLLE) and it got progressively worse over the years. Early on, I was gung ho on trying to find a cure because he was such a beautiful fish and I felt horrible this happened to him in captivity under my care, but I eventually gave up after numerous failed attempts and quite honestly I stopped doing any research on it. His current home is a 180gallon SPS reef tank that is lightly stocked (watchman goby, six line wrasse, clark clown and blue mandarine.
By chance recently, I read about activated carbon being an issue, so I pulled that out of my tank just to see what might happen. That was probably a good 6 months ago and I haven't noticed any improvement in him.
About three months ago, my hallides needed changing and I was hoping the hype on the Radiums was all that it was cracked up to be because my SPS just didn't have the color pop everyone elses seem to have. I have 250W IceCap ballasts, which aren't apparently the optimum ballasts for these bulbs, but I figured what the hell and installed the Radium bulbs anyway. Prior to that, I was running Ice Cap bulbs, then CoralVue Reeflux.
Over the past month, the maintenance on the tank has taken a back seat to everything as I have started taking classes to get into Pharmacy school, coupled with work and projects that need to get done around the house in preparation for winter. Needless to say I haven't done squat to the tank in quite a while and it is looking a little rough to say the least. My RO filters are in need of a change and I have since noticed a huge spike in algae on the glass and hair algae on the rocks due to this. I haven't even cleaned the glass off in over a week, so I couldn't see what was going on inside. Talk about neglect. At any rate, this afternoon I took the magfloat to the glass to at least show some interest in maintaining the tank. The colors on my SPS are amazing! I have never in all my years had colors like this. I was pretty excited until my Hippo swam by the glass and I almost cr@pped myself. His HLLE is getting better. His freakin' scales are growing back and they're really colorful too. (I'll attach pics, don' worry). I'm not saying he is cured, but he looks 100% better than he has in 5+ years.
So, the three things that have changed are, less frequent maintenance/poorer water quality, removal of activated carbon, and Radiums installed in place of Reeflux. I'm not saying the bulbs are the answer because I did pull the carbon too, but my corals look amazing and the fish appears to be improving colorwise too. Hopefully me stumbling onto this could get someone on the right track in curing HLLE. See for yourself:
Before:
After:
By chance recently, I read about activated carbon being an issue, so I pulled that out of my tank just to see what might happen. That was probably a good 6 months ago and I haven't noticed any improvement in him.
About three months ago, my hallides needed changing and I was hoping the hype on the Radiums was all that it was cracked up to be because my SPS just didn't have the color pop everyone elses seem to have. I have 250W IceCap ballasts, which aren't apparently the optimum ballasts for these bulbs, but I figured what the hell and installed the Radium bulbs anyway. Prior to that, I was running Ice Cap bulbs, then CoralVue Reeflux.
Over the past month, the maintenance on the tank has taken a back seat to everything as I have started taking classes to get into Pharmacy school, coupled with work and projects that need to get done around the house in preparation for winter. Needless to say I haven't done squat to the tank in quite a while and it is looking a little rough to say the least. My RO filters are in need of a change and I have since noticed a huge spike in algae on the glass and hair algae on the rocks due to this. I haven't even cleaned the glass off in over a week, so I couldn't see what was going on inside. Talk about neglect. At any rate, this afternoon I took the magfloat to the glass to at least show some interest in maintaining the tank. The colors on my SPS are amazing! I have never in all my years had colors like this. I was pretty excited until my Hippo swam by the glass and I almost cr@pped myself. His HLLE is getting better. His freakin' scales are growing back and they're really colorful too. (I'll attach pics, don' worry). I'm not saying he is cured, but he looks 100% better than he has in 5+ years.
So, the three things that have changed are, less frequent maintenance/poorer water quality, removal of activated carbon, and Radiums installed in place of Reeflux. I'm not saying the bulbs are the answer because I did pull the carbon too, but my corals look amazing and the fish appears to be improving colorwise too. Hopefully me stumbling onto this could get someone on the right track in curing HLLE. See for yourself:
Before:
After:
