Tank Journal Archive

gigglypig

Member
Feb 15, 2016
24
10
New Corals, Chiller And Cyano War
Another update on the tanks progress. So far it is alot easier to maintain then my previous 80L tank. Nitrates are sitting around constantly 5ppm with the Deltec. Skimmate looks almost black. I do feed brine and mysis which is why nitrates probably never reached 0, but I think the corals dont mind the slight above nitrates.

Battling the cyano problem is a pain! Phosphates are lowish but doesnt coincide with why there has been lots of cyano appearing on the sand bed. I decided the other day to do some vacuuming of the sand bed and try rid of some of the cyano and stir the sand. This was my first time vaccing as with previous tanks I never bothered. To my surprise there was some spots that were very dirty and those spots had the most growth. I vacced the entire tank without lifting too much so everything was sucked up. Did about 100L water change. Now Im trying to nail down the source of cyano and I have 2
- not enough flow and stirring
- the nori sheets Im feeding. 1/4 nori sheet each day.
Solution
- Feeding nori sheet less to 2 times a week., with each feeding 1/8 of the sheet.
- Increase flow. I increased flow of the side vortech to blow across and around the edges.
- Decrease the lighting period.
- Add a PO4 reactor. But reading reviews, it seams this would make it worse. So leaving that aside for now.
- Add a biopellet reactor. Probably would be the same results as above, but would help decrease nitrates to 0 and reduce phophates.
- run both PO4 and biopellet. unsure as I will be taking too much nutrients and starving the tank.

My last solution would be siphon out the cyano. But this would disturb the cyano and possible spread it. All in all not a guaranteed result. For now I will increase flow and reduce feedings and see if there is a reduction.

Summer Lovin, but certainly not for the aquarium! During mid March Sydney went through a week of intense heat, the tank hit 29.9 degrees!!!! corals looked rather sad with the temperature fluctuations, but all survived. My solution was to use the aircon above the tank to decrease temperatures, but as effective as it was, it was not practical and would require someone to be home all the time. I searched around and found a resun chiller for less then $200 with a STC1000 to maintain temperatures (plus the thermostat in the chiller was not working). In addition I decided to plumb the chiller and use the same pump to run extra lines if I ever needed the reactor and produce flow in the sump area with the chaeto. All in an hrs work.
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On the positive, I came across a guy selling some corals from his tank shutdown and finally got some more morphs, a bed of star polyps, lobo and huge cushions. In time Ill find some more coral pieces to add. Still looking for a large toxic green sinularia, more fancy large polyp zoas and bright morphs.

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Last edited:

Savage Henry

Member
Feb 2, 2015
653
254
I can see you are doing a lot to overcome this cyano problem, but I'd probably take a more relaxed approach. I would let the tank settle in and just accept that you are going to have all different types of algae come and go for atleast the next six months until all your live rock and sand becomes populated with bacteria and does it's job. It may not always look pretty, but in the end when the tank is matures it's going to look really nice. Btw, when I look at your pics I'm not focusing on the substrate.