Tank Journal Archive

holly

Member
Jul 10, 2013
1,806
832
Melbourne
Any ideas what caused the cut?
This particular fish tends to harass the new scribbled rabbitfish. Might be from its splines? Alternatively could be just from catching on a bit of dead coral or rock in the tank. I don't believe the peppermint shrimp or pistol shrimp are capable of that kind of cut.
 

holly

Member
Jul 10, 2013
1,806
832
Melbourne
21/9/2014
Male clownfish has healed perfectly and is aok.

Biopellet reactor was clogging last week and so the tank appeared to have some sort of cloudy episode. Nitrates were at 40ppm so did a emergency 40% water change. Did another change 2 days later and cloudiness has subsided. Changed the biopellets into a reactor that keeps them tumbling. After water change calcium was on 300ppm. Added a heap of caulerpa back in as I had taken it out to seed the propagation tanks. This may have contributed to the nitrate increase as well.

Yesterday: noticed very lower part of clam was retracted in. Not a good sign. Completely lost my yellow millepora that I have had for a year with no issue. tissue sheared right off the skeleton. No other signs of stress on the other SPS but some of the acro has browned out (including a dallas frag!)


Today: checked calcium again and down to 275. Added 1/3 of randy's needed to adjust; will add rest tomorrow after re-testing. Nitrates down to 5-10ppm (api). Woke up this morning to see clam has fully retracted and is not looking good. No signs of pests (snails etc) but there were some bristle worms underneath it possibly eating dead tissue. Doesn't smell when pulled out of the tank so I've put it on the sand for now. I don't like my chances of it coming good. Will be completing another 40% change today to hopefully help rebalance lost elements.

Clam this week:
DSC00265.JPG


Today:
20140921_084844.jpg
20140921_084856.jpg


I'm not feeling like a good hobbyist right now. Happy to take suggestions on what I could do. I'll be testing phosphate again today to make sure I haven't gone down too low with the GFO.
 

RobbieMVFC

Member
Feb 25, 2013
1,232
610
Hi Holly. Sorry to hear about your losses. I had similar problems and almost crashed my tank. The cause was the bio pellets & water changes were stripping all the nutrients and I wasn't feeding enough .in essence I was starving all my corals. I took my reactor off line and within a week it started to recover. (Around 2 months to fully recover).
Hope you dont in counter the length of pain I did but if your problems continue it might be worth considering removing the reactor or start feeding a lot more.
good luck and keep us posted.
 

holly

Member
Jul 10, 2013
1,806
832
Melbourne
Hi Holly. Sorry to hear about your losses. I had similar problems and almost crashed my tank. The cause was the bio pellets & water changes were stripping all the nutrients and I wasn't feeding enough .in essence I was starving all my corals. I took my reactor off line and within a week it started to recover. (Around 2 months to fully recover).
Hope you dont in counter the length of pain I did but if your problems continue it might be worth considering removing the reactor or start feeding a lot more.
good luck and keep us posted.
I was wondering about this. I'll feed up the tank today and turn the reactor off. I had 1/2 the recommended amount running in the reactor but I don't have a recirculating one yet so am unable to slow down the nutrient absorption. Will get onto that now!
 

holly

Member
Jul 10, 2013
1,806
832
Melbourne
did you also have cyanobacteria issues? I recall you did but wasn't sure. What did you start feeding with more regularly?
 

RobbieMVFC

Member
Feb 25, 2013
1,232
610
To be honest at the time I had no idea what was causing my corals to RTN/STN.. I started removing things like the titanium heater ect ect. It wasn't till I removed the reactor that things improved. Thats when the penny dropped for me.
now all I have is a skimmer 10% water change every week. Ohhh and a dosing pump for the critical 3.

And I feed the fish and the corals once a day and dose amino acids 3 times a week
 

holly

Member
Jul 10, 2013
1,806
832
Melbourne
Bio pellets attack again :(
Definitely. Because I haven't got them on a recirculating unit I can't reduce the outflow and thus the amount of nitrates taken out of the water. I'll monitor things and see how they go over the next few weeks. The clam is looking more and more shit (tissue coming off). this is why I have never bought one before. Shows I'm not ready for the harder to keep things yet I guess.
 

Sam Parker

Moderator
May 6, 2013
4,802
2,397
Geelong
:(

Heard too many bad stories about bio pellets of late. Heard some good ones too, don't get me wrong - but seems very heavily weighted to the bad stories.
 

holly

Member
Jul 10, 2013
1,806
832
Melbourne
Update: 4/oct/2014

Lost my blue acroal frag I've had with great success from @chimaera :cry:cry:cry:cry Overnight it went from full blue to white skeleton. I've kept it in the tank incase it has just bleached :( other acro in the tank is looking completely fine. Have been feeding twice a week with phytoplan, nutrients, aminos and reef roids.

All inhabitants otherwise looking better since removing the reactor. I will need to get around to making a recirculating reactor for future use.
 

holly

Member
Jul 10, 2013
1,806
832
Melbourne
I know how you feel Holly.
not sure if this helps but this is what happened to me.
http://thereefuge.com/threads/3rd-birthday-update.11338/

Don't give up just try and find the cause of the problem and address that.
Thanks Robbie, I've held off doing a water change for a few weeks to let things get back to 'normal' a little. The damn zoas and morphs don't seem to mind one bit. I've had some swings recently (high nitrates, high nutrients, low nutrients, low Ph, low calcium) so there is something I'm not doing right.

I suspect it was perhaps reducing phos down too far before the biopellet reactor caught up, thus nitrates were not removed from the water, but nutrients were. Perhaps this threw off the balance of everything else. Something like that. Tank was also tearing through calcium like I've never seen before and had gotten super low. there's something to be said for less blunt approaches to nutrient and other parameter control.
 

RobbieMVFC

Member
Feb 25, 2013
1,232
610
How are you controlling Alk if you're using Randy recipes are you baking the baking soda?
If your not thats what could be lowering your PH.
Are you using a dosing pump?
 

holly

Member
Jul 10, 2013
1,806
832
Melbourne
How are you controlling Alk if you're using Randy recipes are you baking the baking soda?
If your not thats what could be lowering your PH.
Are you using a dosing pump?
I'm using baked baking soda, just straight into the skimmer section when it gets low. I've found it consistently gets low and I'm having to add a bit to keep up. I'm not using a dosing pump, it's next on the list of things to add but it will be dependant on money.
 

RobbieMVFC

Member
Feb 25, 2013
1,232
610
That maybe why you ph is dropping. Read up on Randy recipe. Ifyou have a low ph <8.1 you should bake the baking sida for an hour .
P.s a dosing pump once dialed in will make your life a easier.
 

holly

Member
Jul 10, 2013
1,806
832
Melbourne
That maybe why you ph is dropping. Read up on Randy recipe. Ifyou have a low ph <8.1 you should bake the baking sida for an hour .
P.s a dosing pump once dialed in will make your life a easier.
I am baking the baking soda for an hour :P
 

ReeferRob

Solidarité
Oct 22, 2014
2,661
931
Bel Air
GFO is a NO GO when you have a clam, it's been implicated in pinched mantle syndrome on several occasions Holly. I run it very sparingly on my tanks at about 1/4 of what's recommended. I've never run bio pellets either, only caulerpa and chaeto in a refugium that sits on my sump.