Rebuild and recovery of a dead tank

[jason2459]

Added some more supplements to help reduce my alk and a little Mg. This is my third dose of stony corals.

 

[jason2459]

I noticed that along with the purple tips on my GBTA there's this cool looking purple line going up and down on the tentacles as well. Looks blue in the pic.

The little frogspawn frag is looking good. I moved it down lower a bit.

And I always forget about that little minimax. It's still hanging around.

 

[jason2459]

The bicolor is probably my favorite dwarf angel and happy its been doing good with my other two (flame and coral beauty) along with staying away from my corals so far. Colors are so vibrant and like the coral beauty has this neon bright blue outline along the rim of the blue area. At least mine does. And like the coral beauty doesn't show up in pictures.

Just love that blue crown too

 

[vbhmh]

How bout a pic of the new house? Those floods were amazing, hope it was the 100 year flood and it won't happen again for a long time.

 

[jason2459]

Thanks for checking in Mr Bot. Our house wasn't in a flood zone at all. One thing I checked before buying the house was the 100/500 year flood maps. Our house wasn't in either of those zones. So, no it wasn't a 100 year flood. It was much much worse.

 

[jason2459]

I got my Triton test results in. Faster then I thought I would. Also Unique coral is pretty awesome. They refunded a shipping charge they charged me for because I failed to read the Note: that if only ordering the triton test to choose local pickup/Triton only shipping option for free shipping.

Here's the results.

 

[jason2459]

My bicolor angel has taken to nipping at the little tastles coming off the body of my male matted file fish. It's ****ing him off. But for some reason I find it funny to watch. The bicolor isn't doing any damage and the angry push back is brief.

I also think I see a few new polyps already on that red goniopora.

 

[jason2459]

Time for a other frag dose

 

[jason2459]

This hammer has an amazing glow to it. With the white LEDs on or just the blues. The picture above was with the white LEDs on.

Right now just the blues are on and it just radiates.

Compared to my Duncan and new frogspawn by it.

 

[Giants13]

So earlier tonight a couple hours after cleaning the ATS screen my wife yells out to me saying there's a magot on the counter!



Looks like I missed getting this little fellow while cleaning up.

lol this is a copepod u want them, everything eats them. I just grew them for a year so i can house a pair of mandarin gobys (wife said i can have a tank but she has to have those). Also i think those are amphipods to be exact.

 

[jason2459]

[emoji1]

Yes, its an amphipod. I know this, you know this, but my wife does not. She freaked. I laughed.

It must have scrambled off the paper towel I was cleaning the Turbo ATS screen on earlier.

 

[jason2459]

One of the two starfish from KP Aquatics finally came out. First time seeing either of them since putting them in.

 

[jason2459]

Have a couple things going on and both pretty cool. My ORP has been going down the past week. I wasn't expecting much at all from the Turbo ATS. Or find something wrong.

My PO4 levels have been maintaining below .09. So, again I wasn't expecting much from the screen cleaning this round.

I was totally wrong and knew it immediately when I felt the weight of the screen while pulling it out. Heaviest I've felt yet and thickest.

Front

Back

Most I've scraped off yet

Had some nice bacteria through out the pile

Now for the ORP drop for the time while having stellar algae growth on the screen. Something I've experienced in the past has finally worked its way into a nice little bloom on a couple rocks. I've been expecting it and thought I would have had it a lot sooner. And that's Dinos. I've had them in the past after going thought cycles of various algaes, diatoms, and Cyano.

I don't expect it to spread. I also don't plan to do anything special or drastic. Basically just like what I did for that last cyano bloom and every other bloom. Stay the course and let it take care of itself.

I'm of course fully theorizing here but I believe that the dino blooming over the past couple weeks has driven the ORP down. Again, will find out once the Dinos go away and see if the ORP climbs back up.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

That's a load of algae! Interesting that the ORP has disconnected from growth.

You have the same philosophy on dinos as I do - stay the course. Except I will suck it out & blow off/filter sock, etc, but I don't freak out and black out the tank

 

[jason2459]

I think the dino growth cancelled out the algae growth in regards to ORP and drove it down.

 

[jason2459]

I've gone through waves of crap that normal people would brake everything down and start over again or quit. Only time I ever stuck my hands in my tank to pull stuff out was when I first started out and my first wave of issues related to leaching phosphates out of pukani dry rock. I was figuring out what export methods to use and already was using ozone, skimmers, algae harvesting out of a refugium, and standard water changes. It was at that time I got into growing bacteria with bio pellets then eventually got into using vinegar.

The shapelock bio pellet adventure
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1830864

I was pulling out GHA and Bryopsis at that time.

[emoji1]

 

[jason2459]

Did a comparison between several PO4 kits tonight and this one didn't change my mind on what I'll continue using.

Other parameters checked.
Temp: 78.1F
Salinity: 35ppt
pH: 8.12
Nitrates: 1
Alk:10
Calc: 440
Mg: 1440

PO4.....

Just going to upload a bunch of pictures here and will split it out and write up my thoughts on each

 

[jason2459]

 

[jason2459]

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

That's an awesome set of comparison pictures, now I need the text to go with it all. Has the makings of a nice write-up