January 2017 Update: Back on path to being a reef tank
January 2017 Update: Back on path to being a reef tank
Hi Everyone,
Well, I finally seem to be back on path to establishing an actual reef tank, massive thanks due to
Farmer Ty.
Since the last update:
- Coral QT reset, more coral death, mystery solved
- Skimmer leak
- Fish QT Graduations
- New corals in QT, thriving
- First fish health issues in DT
- Resumed vodka dosing, DT nitrates down, filters clogging
- UV sterilizer failure
- DT glass scratches
Coral QT Restart
Shortly after my last post, I drained the QT tank and sump completely, refilled both tanks with pure vinegar to about 3/4" depth, and soaked all equipment in vinegar for multiple days. Refilled with 70% new salt water and 30% DT water, and added one cermedia block from the DT sump. Then added back in the clown tang who had been living in the coral QT for the previous 6 weeks. I also added a generous dosing of ROX 0.8 carbon to strip out any chemical nasties from the DT, and turned off the auto water exchange from DT.
Even with all of this prep, I was still demoralized enough from the most recent failure that I wasn't really planning on trying corals again, just to use the tank as a 5th fish QT.
In the meantime,
Farmer Ty reached out to me via PM to offer his help and encourage me to continue trying with the corals. I took a look at his beautiful tank and it reminded me of why I got into this hobby in the first place.
Ty and 2 other local reefers with thriving tanks came over to take a look at my system and see if they could find anything amiss. Nothing jumped out as problematic to them other than the lack of nitrate control and, from one of them, a concern about my use of bleach in cleaning the filter socks. Ty also noted that I was running a _lot_ of carbon even given the system size (about 1/2 of a 5 gallon BRS bucket in a 7"x30" filter bag).
Ty graciously offered me a couple of hardy frags from his system to try in mine. I gave the coral QT a month to stabilize even though there shouldn't have been a cycle given the large percentage of DT water and the cermedia block transplant. After the additional month and all parameters testing perfectly, I took the 2 frags from Ty. Both died within 10 days. Now I was well and truly ready to throw in the towel, chalking the repeated failures up to some unidentified toxin in my system.
Then Ty offered to double check my water test results. Alk, Ca, Nitrates, Phosphates were all perfect just as I had shown with my tests. But Salinity came back at 1.034!!
What the heck? My pinpoint salinity monitor had been so stable for so long, that I essentially stopped calibrating. First, monthly calibrations showed no drift for 6 months, then I switched to quarterly calibrations and observed no drift for over a year before moving to a year-ish calibration schedule. As long as nothing changed radically in salt consumption, this seemed safe. And I still think it probably would have been had it not coincided with. . .
Skimmer Leak
You may recall that the MRC commercial skimmer had several slow leaks around the manifold box when I first received it. MRC suggested I try additional adhesive around the join points, but this was only partially effective, slowing the leaks down from thread-thin strands of water to being just a heavy salt creep. MRC did offer to replace the skimmer body, but I decided this wasn't worth the hassle over a salt creep issue.
Unfortunately, in October, the skimmer body developed a new, much more significant leak around the base of the reaction chamber, to the tune of multiple gallons per day. At this point, I decided I was going to have to replace the skimmer body as there is no adhesive which truly bonds to the polyethylene skimmer body. Here, I was fortunately misinformed, or at least out of date, and MRC support let me know that there is in fact a somewhat new adhesive--
TAP Polyweld-- that could fully bond to the chamber (and also starboard, by the way).
So how does this relate to the coral deaths and salinity issue? Resolving the leak took a few weeks, between backorder on the adhesive and finding time to make the repair. In the meanwhile, I was replacing the gallons of leakage each day through extra top-off, resulting in steady decrease of salinity. To compensate, I started adding bags of salt mix directly to the sump to bring things back in line. Also, around this time, I replaced the batteries on the pinpoint salinity monitor.
Looking back, my best theory is that during the battery replacement I moved the calibration screw on the monitor, throwing it wildly out of whack. Since this coincided with the skimmer leak and lots of excess fresh water top-off, it wasn't obvious to me that the sudden need to add bags of salt mix to the sump was a problem.
Bottom line: I killed the corals and derasa clam with hyper-salinity. Lesson learned:
always calibrate your monitors!. Making this all the more ridiculous, I had a salinity spectrometer the whole time. And if you've used one before, you know it takes all of about 5 seconds to test salinity. Needless to say, I now check multiple times per week using the spectrometer.
Fish QT Graduations
Amongst all the coral struggles, fish QT has continued to go well. Since last update, the following have graduated: Clown Tang, Achilles Tang, Orange Shoulder Tang, 3 small hippo tangs, more anthias. I was quite nervous about the Achilles as the Purple Tang introduced before him was hounded relentlessly for almost a week before being accepted. I debated using an in-tank pseudo QT constructed of lighting egg crate, but ultimately decided it would be more stressful given the high flow. To my great relief, he was completely ignored by everyone other than the Chocolate Tang, who offered only desultory protests, when convenient. The Orange Shoulder actually had the roughest intro, attracting a lot of harassment from the yellow tangs 1/3 his size. But they all settled down within 3 days.
New Corals in QT, thriving
With the salinity issue resolved and after six weeks of stabilization, I purchased a new batch of large frags from
Farmer Ty in early December. When these were still looking good after 3 weeks, I also took a large monti "Strawberry Fields" colony off Ty's hands shortly after the new year. Everything is looking good so far. 2 weeks ago I resumed auto water exchanges with the DT, starting at 2 liters per day. This weekend, I upped the exchange to 4 liters, and next week will double to 8. By mid February, the coral QT should be effectively 100% DT water. If the corals are still thriving then, it will be time to introduce the first batch to the Display!
First fish health issues in DT
Starting in November, one of the yellow tangs developed rather serious lateral line erosion. Several other yellow tangs developed signs of bacterial infection, with orange splotches and/or fraying and darkening of fin edges. None of the other tangs or other fish have shown any issues. I'm hoping, fingers crossed, that the yellow tangs are just unusually sensitive to carbon and/or the higher bacteria population fostered by my resumed vodka dosing. For now, I am just monitoring, and hoping dearly that this doesn't spread. While the LLE hasn't changed, the bacterial infection symptoms have significantly lessened since mid December.
Resumed Vodka Dosing
With nitrates being so high, I resumed vodka dosing, in earnest this time. I've been steadily increasing the quantity dosed trying to get nitrates under 5. Dosing is currently up to 280mL/day, and nitrates have been somewhat stuck at around 8ppm since 200mL.
One side effect of the higher-volume vodka dosing is frustrating: the sump filter socks are developing a clear, jelly-like bacterial coating that completely clogs them within 36 hours. I've gone from filter sock washing once per week, to replacing 3 of the 6 socks every day. This is not sustainable, so I've ordered a commercial bio-pellet reactor rated for a 2500gal system that should be here in May. I hope to heck that the 'jelly' bacteria will go away once I phase out the vodka.
Another change, perhaps related to vodka, perhaps not, is that detritus is starting to accumulate. For the past 2 years, detritus accumulation has been close to zero. The I-like-to-think-clever vacuum system I implemented has seen almost no use. In September, I fired it up for the first time since 2014 and the total amount of detritus pulled from the tank was less than 1 cup. Since September and vodka dosing resumption, it appears that another full cup has already accumulated.
UV Sterlizer Failure
This one was a surprise. I've always considered Emperor Aquatics the premium name in UV systems, and 5 of the 6 I've owned over the years have been bullet proof. The 25W Smart UV on the coral QT was an exception. Starting late Summer, I noticed that the reaction tube on the coral QT UV started to become translucent in the middle, allowing a blue-green glow to show through. By October, the chamber was soft to the touch in the area where the light was bleeding through. By December, it was tissue-thin and sprung a pinhole leak. It would seem that the reaction chambers require some sort of UV-resistant coating, and that the coating was not applied uniformly on this unit. Being a little over 2 years old, I didn't attempt a warranty claim and simply ordered a new unit. This one, I'll note, is about 50% larger diameter, and made of much thicker material.
Display Tank Glass Scratches
This is the hardest part of the update for me to write, both because I'm embarrassed and because, unlike my other failings with this system, there is nothing that can be done to recover from the problem. You may recall that in an early post about choosing Starphire glass, I laid out a rule to use only acrylic-safe cleaning tools on the glass due to starphire being softer than regular glass. I broke this rule.
In the fall, around the time of the salinity and nitrate problems, the DT developed a type of viewing surface algae I've not seen before. Green, but harder than any purple calcareous, completely impervious to the "Algae Dozer" magnet attachment that is so effective against purple coraline. In prepping for a holiday party for 80 co-workers, I undertook an extra thorough cleaning, determined to eradicate the new surface algae. This requires brute force, probably about 30 pounds of pressure on the blade to get the algae off. About a quarter of the way into the cleaning, the last of my plastic scraper blades broke. With the party looming, I broke out a metal scraper blade to finish the job. The tank looked great for the party that night.
After the party, with the window shades open, backlit by bright sunlight, I could see that I had introduced dozens of scratches to the glass, many 5 and 6" long. My heart sunk. There is nothing that can be done short of replacing the tank. The tank is no longer enjoyable to view with the window blinds open due to the scratches. Fortunately, they are not noticeable with the blinds closed and only tank lights to illuminate, but nonetheless I feel sick to my stomach about ruining a $60k tank. Definitely one of the hardest lessons of this whole process: no matter the circumstance,
do not use metal implements on low-iron glass.
DT Pics
A few shots of the display tank as of today. If you look closely you can see the nasty viewing surface algae that made me break out the metal scrapers. Any given patch of about 2"x2" requires about 10 minutes of _extremely_ forceful use of the acrylic scraper blades to remove. I'm very much hoping that this will go away or at least grow more slowly now that salinity is stabilized.
Next Up
Next up, is to observe the coral QT for another 4-6 weeks as it approaches 100% DT water. If it remains healthy, then I will finally introduce the first live coral to the DT! The plan as of now is to drain down about 24" of water, then wade in the tank with snorkel gear and lots of epoxy to glue the corals in place. Should be fun
