Zach's 120 Gallon Reef Resurgence

[zachxlutz]

Quick FTS 04/07/2017:

Left Island:

See the chalices mounted on their shiny new start white rubble homes? Me too. Hopefully the rubble darkens up quickly, it's quite an eyesore now. The green psammocora refuses to look good under the full 8 bulbs, it just looks brown... Under the 2 bulbs of actinic and purple at sunrise and sunset it looks great though. :/ The Montipora spongodes is still regaining its color from when it bleached/browned out but it's well on it's way to recovery. The montipora setosa isn't looking great, to be honest. It's pale and has some STN. Not sure what's going on there.

Right Island:

Things look fairly good over here on this side, save for the Cyphastrea issues I've got going on. It's still showing great polyp extension but the blue/green base is bleaching a bit and the polyps don't have the color they once had. The chameleon acro, red planet and red digi are all showing great encrusting.

I'm hoping the tank is just going through some new tank swings still and things will continue to improve as I control the parameters and keep them stable.

Sorry the pictures aren't great. I'll need to bust out the DSLR for some better shots. That'll wait until I get the rest of the frags mounted up. Now I just need to decide where to put them.

 

[Michael Hoaster]

Looks great!

I look forward to watching your corals grow. You've picked great specimens and great fish too. Imagine how it will look in a year or two!

 

[zachxlutz]

I haven't updated lately and I apologize for that... The tank just isn't performing to the high level of standard I am holding it too. I'm still struggling with coral coloration and to some extent growth. I'm really struggling with some nuisance algae right now that I'm trying to ID.

I'm hoping you kind folks can help point me in the right direction to ID this.

Description:

• Blows off coral/rock/sand easily but returns quickly
• Stringy brownish color
• Doesn't appear to create it's own bubbles within but will catch them occasionally
• Appears to diminish with lights out and increase within the photoperiod
• Covers some coral, lots of the rock and lots of the sand bed

Tank:
120 Gallon Display
55 Gallon Sump
Total water volume 140 gallons
ATI Sunpower 8x54 watt T5 lights

Parameters:
Temp: 78* F
Salinity: 35 ppt
Ph: 7.82-8.14 (daily swing)
Alk: 8.5
Ca: 435-440
NO3: 3-5 ppm
PO4: .01-.03
Mg: 1380
(all parameters are very stable, I test very often)

Dosing (through dosing pumps):
BRS Alk/Cal: 20 ml daily each (.2 dkh Alk/1.39 ppm Cal daily consumption rate)
Red Sea Coral Colors ABCD: .3ml daily each

Dosing (manual):
Nitrate: KNO3 - as needed, usually 10-20ml (28g/150ml solution) weekly
Vibrant: Weekly
Water Changes: 20% Monthly

Feeding:
Dry: Hikari Marine S Pellets, 4x daily through auto feeder
Frozen: Mysis, daily or every other day

 

[BigDave]

Not sure what it is, but I get it off and on too. Mine usually shows up where there's less water movement.

I get it quite a bit in my sump where the macro algae grows.

 

[Michael Hoaster]

I'm not sure, but it looks bacterial. Chemiclean or antibiotics may help, possibly combined with a 3 day blackout. You feed your fish well, and I see you have detectable phosphate. Have you tried any phosphate removing products? Your calcium levels are excellent. Why don't you have coralline algae covering everything? Maybe a coralline algae booster product is indicated?

How's your fuge? The plants growing? Fast growers like ulva, chaeto and caulerpa are great algae competitors.

This makes me wonder about your use of vibrant. You avoided the dreaded algae phase, but maybe some is inevitable, and possibly good. I wonder if it short-circuited the natural maturation process, and you're left with this stuff, which may be the only thing that can grow, that vibrant doesn't kill.

It's amazing to me that reefers are able to keep algae at bay so well! Look at a real reef. Every millimeter not covered with coral is covered in algae. Now look at your tank. You've got a lot of corals but there's a lot of bare rock, ready to be colonized. Yet we aquarists expect bare rock to remain bare? In our tiny, closed systems?

Maybe discontinuing the use of vibrant would allow natural development of a DIVERSE population of algae, which would add stability. With your excellent control of parameters, I doubt it would get out of hand. You just may need to beef up your crew, to match what grows. And how's your sand bed? Is it crawling with worms and pods? Those guys at the bottom of the food chain are very helpful. Gulf Coast Ecosystems' refugium pack has excellent live sand, plus macros.

I'm just throwing out a bunch of ideas. Maybe something in there will help!

 

[zachxlutz]

I'm not sure, but it looks bacterial. Chemiclean or antibiotics may help, possibly combined with a 3 day blackout. You feed your fish well, and I see you have detectable phosphate. Have you tried any phosphate removing products? Your calcium levels are excellent. Why don't you have coralline algae covering everything? Maybe a coralline algae booster product is indicated? You know, I do seem to struggle with growth of coralline algae and I've been suspicious something's been a tad off in the system since the beginning. I've been keeping the phosphate and nitrates very consistent for quite a while now and I feel like they are well within the range of where lots of very successful reefers are keeping their tanks. I've run GFO in the past and have a reactor I could easily fill up but I'm not sure I want to strip out the phosphates. I found success in restoring some color to some of the coral when I stopped stripping the water bare. I'm not sure. I'm really not. All my parameters consistently fall within the target levels.

How's your fuge? The plants growing? Fast growers like ulva, chaeto and caulerpa are great algae competitors. The refugium refuses to grow. The chaetomorpha mass has grown some since it was placed in the refugium but I've never pulled more than two handfuls out the entire time the tank has been running. It grew for a bit and then just stalled. I wonder if stopping the Vibrant dosing will allow the chaeto to grow.

This makes me wonder about your use of vibrant. You avoided the dreaded algae phase, but maybe some is inevitable, and possibly good. I wonder if it short-circuited the natural maturation process, and you're left with this stuff, which may be the only thing that can grow, that vibrant doesn't kill. It's sort of looking like that isn't it.

It's amazing to me that reefers are able to keep algae at bay so well! Look at a real reef. Every millimeter not covered with coral is covered in algae. Now look at your tank. You've got a lot of corals but there's a lot of bare rock, ready to be colonized. Yet we aquarists expect bare rock to remain bare? In our tiny, closed systems? We certainly have higher expectations that Mother Earth!

Maybe discontinuing the use of vibrant would allow natural development of a DIVERSE population of algae, which would add stability. With your excellent control of parameters, I doubt it would get out of hand. You just may need to beef up your crew, to match what grows. And how's your sand bed? Is it crawling with worms and pods? Those guys at the bottom of the food chain are very helpful. Gulf Coast Ecosystems' refugium pack has excellent live sand, plus macros. I've made a cross reference to another thread below to help keep this one up to date as well where I discuss discontinuing the use of Vibrant further. The sand bed has the usual small and larger copepods and I've seen one small brittle starfish in the rockwork.
I do think the diversity is a little bit lacking in the tank. I've only ever seeded it with the ball of chaeto and one of the starter pod packs you can buy online.
The refugium is full of copepods of all sizes and pineapple sponges but that's about the only life I've seen in there. Not any many worms in my system, as near as I can tell. I'll take a look at that refugium pack. More diversity is almost always a benefit to our systems.

I'm just throwing out a bunch of ideas. Maybe something in there will help!

Crossposted from another thread below:

Stopping Vibrant dosing seems to be the consensus. I'd been having great experience with the Vibrant until just recently when this popped up. It's appearing to get worse. I can't seem to positively ID it though. I'm unsure of whether it's cyano, diatoms, or dinoflagellates. I will be stopping the Vibrant dosing as of last dose. If GHA pops up again I'll look at adding some more clean up crew. I only added a sparse clean-up crew at the initial set-up of the tank 9 months ago. I'm sure it could use some more as I'm sure there was some die-off due to lack of algae for grazing. The tank has never really had a lot of algae. I certainly don't see too many snails out and about anymore... I'll pick up some next time I'm at the LFS.

The symptoms appear to be worsening. I'm seeing more and more of the stringy brown slimy substance on every surface of the aquarium, corals included.

This picture pretty well illustrates the growth patterns. It's matting a bit where flow is low, but definitely stringy in high flow. It attaches to everything. Tips of hard coral included. IT SHOWS NO MERCY. It does trap some bubbles, but, I don't see the bubbles at the tips of the strings that I see mentioned when discussing dinoflagellates.

The color is best described as rust. It's not red or purple like most of the cyanobacteria I see discussed. I've dealt with cyano once before in an old tank and had good luck with Chemi-Clean. I've got some Chemi-Clean on hand and I'm going to consider dosing it if I don't see a decrease in this nastiness after I try manual removal, blowing it off the rocks and discontinuing the use of Vibrant.

Hmmmmm...

 

[zachxlutz]

All that being said...

I picked up a PMK (Par Monitoring Kit) from Neptune and tossed it in the tank just now before the lights dimmed and it was showing a PAR of around 390 in this location with all 8 bulbs on 100%. The lights just dimmed to 2 bulbs and it's showing a PAR of around 80. I'll move the sensor around to some other locations and see what kind of PAR I'm getting all over the tank and then make one of those fancy photos with the PAR numbers overlaid. Sorry about the rubbish picture.

The PAR sensor is located in the "live rock" on the right island, if it didn't pop right out at you.

 

[Michael Hoaster]

I'm with you on the not wanting to strip your water bare. And you're happy with your levels. The lack of coralline is puzzling. Maybe you need to seed it. A bonus of GCE's live sand is their lovely rubble, which is covered in coralline. I don't know if coralline algae would have prevented this stuff, but I think it does limit encrustations of others.

It's not really surprising that your fuge plants don't grow, with your excellent control of parameters. No biggee. I might suggest you crop it way back, to reduce its bio mass. Your nutrient levels don't support a big plant, but they might a small one.

It would help to get an ID. The color looks diatom-ish. Is it coating the glass? I agree the color doesn't look like any cyano I've seen either, but I seem to remember that it comes in lots of colors. And the gauzy texture looks bacterial. Or it's just some brown, vibrant-resistant algae. How does vibrant work chemically?

Beefing up your detrivore community couldn't hurt. A more complete and diverse ecosystem takes care of itself, looks very natural, and makes your job easier.

Jeez, I sound like Yoda! Conquer your algae you will…

 

[reefmutt]

Hey Zach, just read through your thread. Nice build and nice scape!
I've been watching your use of vibrant to try to reduce algae as you have been dosing kno3 to boost n..
I also noticed a strontium test kit tucked away in your last (impressive!) shopping spree..
have you tested sr? I'm curious to know your levels... low strontium can be a strong cause of low corralline algae growth.. but so can low nutrients.
But back to Vibrant and kno3 dosing.. It struck me just now, Michael Haoster' tag line by Walter Adey.. I'm wondering if maybe the recent "uglies" you have been experiencing may have to do with dosing of those two things.
On one hand you are trying to reduce nutrients and control algae by dosing the vibrant and then on the other hand, you are trying to raise nutrients by dosing kno3.. all while trying to get fuge algae to grow..
It seems, to me, to be somewhat counterintuitive to do this.. you are sort of pushing and pulling at the same time.. to me..
You are adding a carbon source, nutrients and bacterial strains- sort of trying to do two opposites at once..this seems like a recipe for nuisance weirdness..
Now that you have more fish in the tank creating more nutrients, have you considered just stopping both the vibrant and the kno3? maybe the tank will find a new equilibrium- one that is not forced by you, but found naturally in the tank.. by good ol' Mother Nature
maybe you'll get some nuisance algae growing but, like michael mentioned, a few pages back, it does grow everywhere in the ocean.. you shouldn't be too scared of it.. keep an eye on it yes and try to mitigate it with herbivores.. algae blenny is a good one as are snails, sea hares and urchins.. but ultimately, let go of the reigns a bit and see what happens..
Maybe the tank is now ready for a tang?
Also, do you test potassium? I haven't seen test results for it in your results list.
Just wondering if it might be getting high with all the kno3 dosing..granted you have slowed down of late but still..
Anyways good luck, that brown algae can be a real pain! Like cyano or dinos, it can really suck the nutrients out of a system creating confusingly low n and p results..

 

[zachxlutz]

I'm with you on the not wanting to strip your water bare. And you're happy with your levels. The lack of coralline is puzzling. right? Maybe you need to seed it. A bonus of GCE's live sand is their lovely rubble, which is covered in coralline. I don't know if coralline algae would have prevented this stuff, but I think it does limit encrustations of others. I went ahead and ordered a refugium starter pack this morning. I'm sure any diversity I add to the tank will be a help.

It's not really surprising that your fuge plants don't grow, with your excellent control of parameters. No biggee. I might suggest you crop it way back, to reduce its bio mass. Your nutrient levels don't support a big plant, but they might a small one. I pulled all of the chaetomorpha from the sump this weekend, leaving just a small ball. It looked relatively healthy but I noticed quite a bit of small pieces coming off of it while i shook it out in the water and lots of the harder outer portion of the chaeto with no coloaration inside. I'm thinking I had a situation where the mass of the chaeto was too large to sustain and it was dying off and releasing nutrients back into the tank. I'm hoping I've stopped that now.

It would help to get an ID. The color looks diatom-ish. Is it coating the glass? It doesn't coat the glass like the green haze that often does.I agree the color doesn't look like any cyano I've seen either, but I seem to remember that it comes in lots of colors. And the gauzy texture looks bacterial. Or it's just some brown, vibrant-resistant algae. How does vibrant work chemically? I'm of the understanding the Vibrant works in two ways. First and foremost it has a formulation of bacteria which "targets" nusisence algae and secondly it works by reducing NO3 in the tank.

Beefing up your detrivore community couldn't hurt. A more complete and diverse ecosystem takes care of itself, looks very natural, and makes your job easier. I'm going to give it a shot!

Jeez, I sound like Yoda! Conquer your algae you will"¦I really hope I can get a handle on this soon... When the strands of the nusicence algae stay on tips of coral for too long it bleaches them out. I'm dealing with lots of dead tips on my hard coral currently and my zoas have stopped opening up. I need to get this under control!

Hey Zach, just read through your thread. Nice build and nice scape! Thanks!

I've been watching your use of vibrant to try to reduce algae as you have been dosing kno3 to boost n.. It's been a balancing act for sure and up until recently I've been really happy with it.

I also noticed a strontium test kit tucked away in your last (impressive!) shopping spree.. I can't help myself... I love new equipment!

have you tested sr? I'm curious to know your levels... low strontium can be a strong cause of low corralline algae growth.. but so can low nutrients.Sr came back low at 3.5 last time I did the test but after doing some research and reading an article by Randy Holmes-Farley I feel like I determined that it wasn't worth dosing and I should just keep up with my water change routine... I just did a quick google search and I think I may have been mistaken. Maybe it's worth dosing it up to more acceptable levels.

But back to Vibrant and kno3 dosing.. It struck me just now, Michael Haoster' tag line by Walter Adey.. I'm wondering if maybe the recent "uglies" you have been experiencing may have to do with dosing of those two things.
On one hand you are trying to reduce nutrients and control algae by dosing the vibrant and then on the other hand, you are trying to raise nutrients by dosing kno3.. all while trying to get fuge algae to grow..
It seems, to me, to be somewhat counterintuitive to do this.. you are sort of pushing and pulling at the same time.. to me..
You are adding a carbon source, nutrients and bacterial strains- sort of trying to do two opposites at once..this seems like a recipe for nuisance weirdness..
Now that you have more fish in the tank creating more nutrients, have you considered just stopping both the vibrant and the kno3? maybe the tank will find a new equilibrium- one that is not forced by you, but found naturally in the tank.. by good ol' Mother Nature
maybe you'll get some nuisance algae growing but, like michael mentioned, a few pages back, it does grow everywhere in the ocean.. you shouldn't be too scared of it.. keep an eye on it yes and try to mitigate it with herbivores.. algae blenny is a good one as are snails, sea hares and urchins.. but ultimately, let go of the reigns a bit and see what happens.. I wholeheartedly agree. I'm going to let things run their course and increase the population of snails as needed.

Maybe the tank is now ready for a tang? It might be!
I want to be smart with the addition of a tang. I know they can be quite the jerks sometime and I've really grown to love the fishes currently calling the tank home.

Also, do you test potassium? I haven't seen test results for it in your results list. Just wondering if it might be getting high with all the kno3 dosing..granted you have slowed down of late but still.. I don't test it often as the test is difficult, time consuming, and hard to differentiate the test results. I've tested twice and both times were early on in the KNO3 dosing and it came up at somewhere between 400 and 450.
This seems to be the recommended level from Red Sea. Thinking about it further... I've been dosing K in two forms. KNO3 and from the Red Sea Trace elements. I'll check again tonight and see if it's through the roof.

Anyways good luck, that brown algae can be a real pain! Like cyano or dinos, it can really suck the nutrients out of a system creating confusingly low n and p results..Here's hoping we get it sorted out!

 

[reefmutt]

Which potassium kit do you use?
I went through many and hated them all until I found the salifert kit. Very easy to see the results and not too complicated, once you've done it a couple times..

 

[zachxlutz]

Which potassium kit do you use?
I went through many and hated them all until I found the salifert kit. Very easy to see the results and not too complicated, once you've done it a couple times..

I have the red sea Potassium kit. I'll give it another go and if I'm still struggling with the results I'll look into the Salifert one. Does it filter the milky solution and then use a titration or does it stop at the milky step?

 

[reefmutt]

Salifert is waaay easier. It ignores the milkyness.
It's a titration test. Drop drops until the milky solution turns blue.. done!

 

[zachxlutz]

Salifert is waaay easier. It ignores the milkyness.
It's a titration test. Drop drops until the milky solution turns blue.. done!

Interesting. I'll give it a shot.

New updates:

Phosphates are between 0 and 0.003 checking with the Hanna ULR phosphorus checker and have been reading 0-ish since 5/7/17. I took the first test on the 7th as a error and did a check with the Red Sea kit and it always comes up barely noticeable in the color range. I usually call it 0.03 or so... I made a note of this in my tracking log and just used the value from the Red Sea titration kit. I'm thinking my phosphates have bottomed out leading to a dinoflagellate bloom. Looking at the trend, the phosphates dropping and the rise in dinos seems to correlate.

I'm thinking about dosing up the phosphorus in the tank. I've perused through the Dinoflagellate threads on the forums and a common theme is low phosphates causing dino outbreaks and increasing phosphate levels seems to be the cure. It's natural, like dosing KNO3 has been and I think i'm going to give it a shot. I'll be picking up some SeaChem Flourish Phosphorus and bringing the levels up to around .03 ppm.

Thoughts?

 

[zachxlutz]

Furthermore, I've noticed a drop in calcium and alkalinity uptake since the phosphate levels have been dropping. Further reviewing my logs, I see that the phosphates began to drop around the middle of march, which is when I noticed the alkalinity rising and subsequent 5% drops week after week in my dosing schedule. I think this might have something to do with this bloom. I have been unhappy with the growth and coloration in the last few months and I really think I'm just seeing systemic effects of having an ULNS. The Vibrant dosing was masking some problems, I think. The tank looked clean and clear but it's really been struggling.

Plan of action:

• Vibrant is off the menu.
• Trimmed back the mass of chaeto in the refugium.
• Feeding the fish a little heavier handed.
• Acropower. I've been wanting to try this and I've seen Randy Holmes-Farley mention in some threads that aminos do help ULNS. I've already got this on hand and will start tonight.
• Tuning the skimmer to produce less skimmate.
• Possibly dosing some phosphorous product to jumpstart the process.

 

[BigDave]

Just a thought, but what about stop dosing completely.

You still need Ca and Alk, but what about just letting the tank run for a week or two without touching it. Let the tank do it's own thing and just monitor the parameters. Do a water change or two and let things settle. Then see where you're at with all your measurements and start over from there.

I just have a weird feeling that you're saturating your tank with things that it may or may not need.

 

[zachxlutz]

Just a thought, but what about stop dosing completely.

You still need Ca and Alk, but what about just letting the tank run for a week or two without touching it. Let the tank do it's own thing and just monitor the parameters. Do a water change or two and let things settle. Then see where you're at with all your measurements and start over from there.

I just have a weird feeling that you're saturating your tank with things that it may or may not need.

I'm in 100% agreement. I think I've let the nutrients in the tank get way out of whack and now we're paying for it.

I've actually got my cal/alk dosing turned off as the levels just aren't dropping at the moment, which I'm assuming is a byproduct of the coral being smothered by this bloom.

I've not added anything to the tank since Monday May 8th and the situation doesn't appear to be getting better or worse... I guess this is a good thing. I did dose a tiny amount of Acropower last night as I'm fearing my corals are really starting to struggle.

I'm planning on doing two 20% water changes this week and I'm hoping that will help get things pointed in the right direction.

 

[Michael Hoaster]

Sorry about your troubles, zachxlutz. I was so psyched that you were able to avoid a big algae bloom, in the earlier phase of your tank. With this outbreak, I'm now wondering if it was a mistake to suppress algae during the formative stage. The maturation process may need to progress 'unchecked', so Mother Nature can do her thing, with bacteria and algae. The use of Vibrant may have just kicked the can down the road.

Have you confirmed dinoflagellates?

One thing that puzzles me is your contention that phosphate has declined in your tank. You feed your fish well and you weren't running phosphate media, so how can it be that your tank is doing the opposite of everyone else's? Could it be that this brown stuff is the CAUSE of declining levels, rather than the RESULT? It's quite normal for phosphate levels to be near zero during an algae bloom. The phosphate is IN the algae.

This brings to mind an old point I made about the challenges of testing. I was in the middle of a three month cyano battle, and I didn't bother testing, to a lot of guys' consternation. My point was that I could test my water and it very well could show very low phosphate, so from testing alone, I would conclude that I needed to dose phosphate. Two years later and here you are in exactly that situation!

I seriously doubt you need to dose phosphate, unless you are trying to establish a diverse algae population, which may be a good idea, come to think of it. But your liberal feeding should do the trick. The only thing out of whack is the algae-feeding nutrients, I think. Ironic that your excellent control of parameters could hurt you-not cool! What a bummer if Vibrant is the cause. Maybe it's better for a mature tank that gets a bloom, rather than a young tank, still maturing.

I think you've got the right strategy to step back and see what nature wants to do for a while. Bring in some new crew members to fill out your ecosystem and things should settle down.

Best of luck, Buddy!

 

[reefmutt]

Just a thought, but what about stop dosing completely.

You still need Ca and Alk, but what about just letting the tank run for a week or two without touching it. Let the tank do it's own thing and just monitor the parameters. Do a water change or two and let things settle. Then see where you're at with all your measurements and start over from there.

I just have a weird feeling that you're saturating your tank with things that it may or may not need.

Agreed..

Glad to hear you've stepped back a bit and will let things settle down on heir own..
Careful with the acropower right now.. it'll probably do more for the nuisance algae than the corals.
This is a tricky time for the corals because they are stressed (drop in ca/alk demand) and the algea is happy. Happy things will consume the food more readily than the stressed things..
Be prepared to have some unhappy corals.
I hope the non-intervention intervention helps!

 

[goldnlovr]

You have a beautiful tank