Trade Offs During a Transfer

[skyrne_isk]

A question I can't quite wrap my head around:

I am getting ready to transfer everything from a 110G standard to a 120G rimless. (There will be a "build" thread, even though the building is almost done!)

Due to SPS growth, overstocking, and getting out of balance dosing carbon over time - I have had some cyano pop up, followed by some little patches of caulerpa, bubble algae, and some other undesirable algae here and there on my live rock. I never had algae problems until dosing carbon and running a reactor, but the growth and colors I get are worth it for sure.

I am trying to get some input about how exactly I should deal with this undesirable algae growth with the move to the new tank. Part of me thinks with more room (almost 50% more volume), bigger skimmer, less livestock (I have gotten rid of some corals and fish), and more comprehensive carbon dosing (less vodka, more sugar and bac) will help me eventually get rid of these little patches here and there.

A majority of my SPS are mounted and have really encrusted (maybe I'll attach pics if it would be helpful) so to clean the rock off, I will either need to remove most of the pieces to scrub the patches off or work around them - which I am sure will result with some getting accidentally broken during the process.

Given the scaping will be different in the new tank, should I just pull all the colonies/frags out of their current spaces, rescape, and then re-mount everything?

I really am not sure how to proceed here.

 

[flyyyguy]

my philosophy on the subject is that since you are going to be moving everything and stressing it anyway, might aw well take advantage of having the stuff out of the tank and in your hands.


possible tools wanted-
-cordless dremel and extra stregth cutting wheel
-bone cutters
-lots of epoxy
-double duty razor
-plastic grout brush(if you have algae issues...scrub that crap off)

-if you happen to have any aiptasia- get rid of those things once and for all. get a tiny butane torch and hit every one of them till they stop smoking and be done with them once and for all in the new tank.

cut out, scrape off anything you dont want in there, build new pedistals and remount anything you dont think is perfect, epoxy in all of those little holes near the base of corals that take forever to grow out of as well as in some cases can create spots for possible infection and other undesirble growths......remount coral onto new and better mounting surfaces in order to achieve your desired aquascaping

consider whacking in half or cutting up some of your current rocks in order to create new more interesting rocks out of them. acryklci rods to get them roughly to shape and then epoxy to seal the deal works great for this. You are planning on living with the new system for a while, take you r time in setting it up so once it is...you can leave the thing be and be pleased with what you built.

figure out a way to use the two tanks you have to your advantage. leaving both running for a while(even uif you have to tie them together for equipment conservation) can allow you the luxury of time to do this thing right

as far as the corals...a 5 gallon bucket(or bigger depedning on the size of your rocks) full of good tankwater and some bracing can allow you to safely work on rocks with corals for however long it takes to do whatever it is you might want to be doing to that rock

just some thoughts to consider. take out of it anything that may help you.

 

[kovuu86]

Very good info from flyyyguy.

 

[skyrne_isk]

flyyguy-

thanks a bunch for the input. this is pretty much what i had figured i need to do. following many of the threads out there you pretty much find some consensus that you need to control EVERY life form that gets put into a tank to the extent humanly possible. some of the stuff can hardly be prevented, like the little surprises we see coming in on rock/corals/etc. one of the issues on my mind is that since carbon dosing, i have some REALLY cool sponges starting to grow on the backside of my rocks, won't exposing them to air kill them all off? I had the coolest stag rtn a month or so ago after working on it out of the water for too long. all i have now is one frag...but at least it's not all gone.

here's a pic of what I have going on:

 

[skyrne_isk]

and the two tank aspect seems to be a worthy pursuit. i am going to treat for red bugs with interceptor (since I have seen some of the buggers). i imagine i will probably cycle the new tank independently.......but i think i can treat with interceptor, do the w/c, and then work over one rock a day. It will easily take an hour+ to get each rock good and clean. i think i am going to grab one of the biggest colonies, pick of the commensal crabs, treat the colony with interceptor and move it to another tank I have. then after giving it a day (i have heard some remark the mucous remains toxic hours afterward) move ALL the acro crabs to the one treated colony once it is isolated in a system that has never ran SPS. then the whole old tank will get treated.

never had any aiptasia problems.....always went after them with kalk and a syringe. but this razor caulerpa is the devil. when THIS tank was set up, I removed all the caulerpa I could find (which wasn't much). but the CO2 in the calcium reactor really fuels algae growth, at least in my tanks.

keep the info coming.

 

[skyrne_isk]

here's a shot where you can see some of the red stuff that grows on the rock and has been fading with higher sugar dosings. it is NOT the cotton candy fluffy cyano stuff.

i'll post an update pic of this shot after adding sugar to by carbon dosing regimen. the algae is still there, but it has faded and flaked off MAJOR. but it is still there.

 

[flyyyguy]

the only sponges that die when exposed to air are the ones you pay money for

little known scientific FACT

Tank looks good. I would maybe suggest getting that rock aquascaped a littel more openly in the new one to provide better flow throughout. the sponges wont like this extra flow either, but you are trying to build your system around keeping acros...not sponges

you will also find that less rock, stacked and built with the goal in mind of more places to put acros, will give you more places to put acros than a wall or even a couple of walls + of course better tank flow and personality

many ways to do it, but the key to working on rock with corals on it without risking the coral is to keep them submerged in water, and if for extended periods of time changing the water in your bucket/container so it stays roughly to temp. They can take a lot, but when putting them under stress to begin with, every little thing you do all adds up. Be real careful with thinner branching stuff as well. The core cools much faster. Keeping the ambient room temp to close what your tank is can help a bunch too. I remember a time I killed everything but the core of a 12x12 birdsnest by not thinking about the thin branch thing and dropping the core temp of all the branches to the point of rtn.

cutting all of he corals off and completel starting over is kind of my style and what I would suggest to get it right, but I am kind of psychotic when it comes to aquascaping so you might not want to listen to me. I have been working on my 240 sps tank for 6 months now. lol Still not ready to show anybody as I keep ending up going back and rebuilding part of it as the last rock I built makes the first ones look bad.

Put some thought into it, but dont bite off more than you want to chew on at the same time

 

[skyrne_isk]

good to know about the sponges. And you are right on with the rockwork suggestion. I am thinking about keeping the same "stacks", but just spreading them out with the additional real estate i will have.....which will be almost 2X. I am wanting to go with more of a 2 bommie setup - which would incorporate much more open space in the middle.

At the top of this shot you can see the stag and the fading cyano and other algaes.

The very brown pieces seen here were all rescued from a huge wild piece STN'ing at Premium Aquatics I got for free. )

They have been turning greena and blue at the base so i am excited what they'll do in the new system.

The razor caulerpa was about to choke out STAR POLYPS before intervening. As can be seen here:

And just for fun, my favorites:

 

[Znut Reefer]

Good advice from flyyguy. I think you will need to cook the rock to get rid of all that algae. If you scrub it off, it will be back.

 

[skyrne_isk]

Well, that's what I am trying to see if people think. If cooking is needed, then I will lose all the encrusting growth I have. Bummer if that's the case. This is what it looked like fall of 2008. Sterile.

And though it may not look it, the rock structure is still the EXACT same. Some colonies have been added, and their bases contribute to the wall effect, but no new liverock has been added since the original FTS.

So i am going to lay things out keeping in mind that i thought i kept enough space when i laid things out the first time. wrong. And keeping in mind i though i scrubed the rocks clean. wrong again.

 

[flyyyguy]

after seeing some closer pics I would highly suggest cutting the corals off of the rock and going to town on that stuff. You wont lose the encrustment....you will just start some new frags.

Cooking is the way to do it, but it will take at least a few months to put even put a dent in that apparent P laden rock.

Out of curiousity, what have you changed from the old set up to the new set up to fix that nutrient export issue that created the issue in the first place?

If you havent really thought about this or made some signifigant changes, I would suggest doing that first and foremost as if you havent made drastic changes in your system and/or husbandry habits it will just return regardless of whether you cook your rock or not.

 

[skyrne_isk]

The three major changes driving the nutrient problem are that there was a juvenile emperor angel that eventually got too big (overstocking), dosing vodka only as carbon (started the cotton candy red cyano) and adding a CO2 reactor (the single stage GEO 612). The emperor went to a new home, vodka dosing has been really reduced, but really the problem is one of too much CO2. I sometimes see drops in the night of the pH down to 7.67. This is my first time running a tank with a reactor and it's my best tank thus far with respect to sheer growth but not of cleanliness nor of coloration. So I am trying to figure out what caused all these problems in the first place since I have never ran into anything this persistent. Yes I have had caulerpa patches pop up every so often, but this stuff has got to be going nuts due to the CO2 from the reactor.

Oh, and on the new tank I have a significantly better skimmer than the Octo NW200 modded - I will be running the Vertex 250.....which is running like a champ on a QT tank. So I think (hope) most of the issues getting me to this spot are resolved. I just want to do what needs to be done to make sure they don't follow me to the new tank.

I am starting to thing I will remove the encrusted pieces. If I recall, I have done it before when selling old pieces in the past and seem to recall if you are careful - they just pop out. Since I did peg all the pieces now encrusted, I should be able to just pop them back in place when cooking/cleaning is done....especially considering I am not likely to get too much growth in the first weeks in the new tank.

Make sense?