sublunary's RSR 250

[sublunary]

I haven't felt like updating much because I've been struggling a lot with the tank. A lot. Like, ready to ditch it and go back to a 12 gallon. I don't care what everyone says, nano tanks are way easier.

It started with the brown jelly in August. Then my purple and green torch bailed out. Then one of my filefish disappeared. I cried.

Then in September, this rusty reddish-brown gunk sprung up to cover the sand, rock, algae, and some of the coral. Manual removal helped some, but it felt like it grew back faster than I could siphon it out.







I had been thinking lyngbya cyano, but the strands in the photo above look dino-y to me. Tried the jar test, but did not get anything forming clumps. Nitrate is perpetually high (around 25, best as I can read those tests), phosphate usually around 0.05 - which generally contraindicates dinos. I should have a microscope arriving today that might take some of the guess work out of diagnosis.

I turned off the lights for about 3 days, which made a huge impact on the brown gunk. My sandbed is almost completely clear, and it's gotten way better on other surfaces. The downside is I lost a big chunk of my LPS - including all of the torches except the purple cristata. The walking denrdo is now a shambling zombie dendro (which is really disturbing, people). Most of my zoas are shrinking away. Even sadder, my second filefish is nowhere to be found. I'm just gutted.

But not giving up. Microscope first, then make a plan of attack. I added an extra carbon stage to my RODI, because the water report indicated one of the 4 sources my town gets its water from uses chloramines, and I want to be extra sure nothing is getting through. I've ordered an ICP test, that will hopefully tell me if there's anything else going on the water I'm not aware of. Continuing to address the nitrates, though really plenty of people run in that range with no issue.

I am half thinking I should just embrace my fate and fill the tank with softies. I skipped over the GSP and xenia phase as a newbie. They might take over everything, but at least they won't break my heart with polyp bailouts and leave empty skeletons to stare at me accusingly.

 

[sublunary]

I am overdue for a less doom-and-gloom thread. Some things are going well, I promise!

The blackout worked wonders for the mysterious brown stuff. It worked well enough that I haven't managed to get enough of a sample to put under a microscope. I haven't had any more losses and some of the zoas are starting to bounce back. Right now, my biggest problem is GHA that grows faster than I can siphon it out. I've decided to go the fun route for dealing with it and have ordered an ORA tuxedo urchin. It will force me to actually make commitments and glue down frags (blasphemy), but that will be a small price to pay for the ability to force guests to look at my new spiky friend and all of its tube feet. And if it helps keep the GHA in check, that will be nice too.

So some pictures of what's doing ok.

The blennys are continuing to spawn every two weeks or so. This is the Official Egg Tending Barnacle and the Official Egg Tender.


I've had an absolute explosion of colonitsa snails, which I love, since they are tiny and therefore adorable. I suppose it is too much to hope for that they will stay in my display and out of my pumps forever...


My toadstools have been sludge-free since the blackout, and seem to appreciate it.


The cabbage leather seems equally happy. And I finally moved stuff out of the way so it is visible.


The fat head dendro has quickly become one of my favorite corals. It take serious restraint not to overfeed it because it is so pretty and deserves all of the snacks.


I got talked into putting aside my mistrust of emerald crabs long enough to put one in my tank. I still feel like this is a terrible idea, but he entertains me too much to get thrown in the sump - yet. He was kind enough to take care of some bubble algae, but instead of helping keep the GHA in check, he spends his time time shoveling sand into his mouth and spitting it out. Weirdo.


Jerkface disapproves.

 

[sublunary]

Wow I've been in major algae cleaning mode for like two months. Things are getting slightly better, but there's still a lot to go. I'm trying to be patient, but a lot of my frags have been overwhelmed, so I've toothbrush-cleaned a few rocks, peroxide dipped a lot of frags, and crossed my fingers that the corals will be strong enough to bounce back.

Messy does not make me super enthusiastic about picture taking. But I haven't completely given up!

Emerald crab is helping.. somewhat. He goes nuts for the GHA that grows in my copepod culture, and mostly ignores the stuff that grows in the display.


The tuxedo urchin has been helping more aggressively. He hasn't picked any particularly entertaining hats, but is very fond of this piece of gracilaria hayi


About a month ago I also added an ORA Rainford goby. I love him. He's such a brave and curious fish. He'll keep doing his rounds of the tank whether I'm taking pictures or shoving my arms in the tank moving things around. He just will not be phased. The assessor seems to like him - they spend a lot of the day swimming within a few inches of eachother, and whenever I feed the assessor, the goby starts aggressively biting algae, like he wants to share dinner time. So far he'll get excited by the addition of prepared foods, but doesn't seem to want to taste them.



The shrooms in this picture I bought from Mark as a single shroom maybe 2 months ago. I suspect they split so quick because they were trying to escape their original placement, but they seem happier now.


Assessor still doesn't like the camera.


The blennies are still doing their thing. The female (I think) is so chonky.


The male guards the egg barnacle all day, making silly faces.


Pistol shrimp is still making rare appearances. He's really slacked off on the yardwork lately though.


I think I might have lost one of the pom pom crabs. I haven't noticed any eggs lately, and I haven't gotten a good enough view to check sexes and see for sure if I'm seeing two different crabs or just one.


Dendro continues to makes me happy


But what makes me most happy is that I finally once again own two of my favorite fish, Discordipinna grissengeri. They arrived right before everything seemed to go wonky, so I wanted to see how things go. I was pretty confident I'd get to see them in the tank, but was not at all sure I'd ever get pictures. They mostly appear at dusk, when everything is blue, so not the best for pictures. But occasionally they cooperate.


I love them. So much. They are the cheekiest little fish. They will pop out and stare at me while flashing their fins, then hop away once they decide I'm not interesting enough.


I seem to have used up my allowable pictures. So tune in next time for more algae cleaning, more blurry pictures, a lighting upgrade, and maybe even a full tank shot!

 

[sublunary]

Happy New Year!

For the holiday I got myself a lighting upgrade and ditched my AI Primes for ReefLED90s. I've finished up my acclimation period, so they're at full strength now and I can let myself have an opinion on them. I chose the 20k setting, which runs 100% blues and 50% whites. I honestly prefer a much whiter tank, but picked a bluer setting to hopefully favor the corals a bit more than the algae. The tank looks pretty purple, which I don't love, but don't entirely hate.

I'm down to a manageable amount of GHA and haven't had to do any manual removal in quite a while. The corals seem to be liking it. Some of the zoas I had nearly given up on are opening now. I find it really interesting that 2 clumps of sympodium getting different amounts of shadow have noticeably different colors now.


The lights were advertised as being designed to focus more light into the tank, creating less shadowing in the tank and less lightspill into the room. Compared to the Primes (which were admittedly a few inches closer to the water surface) there is sooooo much more light spill. Light everywhere. And yet some of the shadowing inside the tank is a bit worse. Oh well. I can deal with both.

I'm really liking the moonlight setting. With the primes, I could set moonlight, but kind of had to guess at what color channels and intensities to use, and never found one I liked. The automatic moonlight channel on the ReefLEDs is a great gentle light that looks fairly natural to me. I can't say it's related for sure, but a week after I switch lights, one of my gorgonians spawned. It was MAGICAL. The tank turned into a gentle snow globe of coral eggs.

The one thing I really don't like about the lights is that they SUCK for photography. The AI Prime app had a nice big button for "All On" so that with one click I could make the lights a good mostly-white blend that was pretty easy to take photos under. No such button from Red Sea. I really wish lighting apps would include an option to schedule a photography mode that would last for a set time, the way pumps have a feed mode. I should set up a custom schedule that's just 24hrs of mostly white that I can switch to for pictures. I don't know why I didn't think of that before.

Look at all this purple. It's awful. You can't even tell there's a yellow fish right there.


And in shadows there might as well not even be a fish...



As you may be able to see if you ignore the purple, my brown slime is still an issue, and is getting a bit more pernicious. I finally got a decent enough sample under the microscope and it's definitely dinos. They look slightly different from all of the common species, so I'm still not sure yet which method to try to beat them into submission.

Video of the little a-holes dancing around: Login • Instagram

I stopped doing water changes once I started suspecting dinos. Nitrates are, as always, over 25; phosphate still low but detectible. So I'm siphoning them into a filter every day or two to remove some without removing water. I'm kind of hoping I have a type that I don't need to buy a UV for, mostly because I know I'll get so nervous about hooking it up that I'll procrastinate on it... Wish me luck!

 

[Mark_C]

NIce update. Tank looks great. I'm in a 30g atm and battling the red slime and gha, no different than the larger tanks, just a heck of a lot easier to do a 20% water change.
Panamic Barnacle Blennies, where did you find them? I've been looking for about 6 months now and zippo on the luck.
Per pom-poms, I had one in the nano and haven't seen it, in a nano, in months. Last weekend I caught him wandering about at 3am and he still had his anemones. Your's might be taking a publicity break as well.
For photos, thow a piece of yellow or orange cellophane over your lens or download a RAW picture app. If you're on an iPhone, try 'Aquarium Cam', designed by a reefer to take shots and apply filters under blue lights.

 

[sublunary]

Thanks Mark! I certain miss how easy large percentage water changes were in smaller tanks.

The barnacle blennies were from Live Aquaria. I was looking everywhere for a twin spot blenny mid-lock down, with no luck, and ended up falling in love with these.

I have yellow and orange gel filters that work ok for my cell phone, I don't remember if the super purple shot was with them, or if that was just with pro mode on my phone. I hadn't thought of trying cellophane with the fancy camera, but that might help.

 

[sublunary]

I haven't posted much lately, because the dinos are completely kicking my ass. Dinos everywhere! Rocks, sand, floating along the top of the water. Everywhere.

Even so, I think it's getting a bit better. The sand doesn't get as completely covered as it had been. There are several spots of some weird looking gunk that the dinos won't grow on. Not sure if it's a bacterial mat of some kind, or something else. But it's interesting. I'm getting green hair algae on the power heads and return nozzles. I never thought I'd be quite this happy to see GHA. I'm less happy to see all the bubble algae (green and red). That will be my next battle if I ever kick the dinos...

I've succeeded in getting the phosphate up enough that it's been between .07 and .11 for the past three weeks. I'm still dosing phosphates twice a day, but I've been able to cut the amount by about 2/3. I started adding silicate. My nitrates are the lowest they've ever been - between 2.5 and 5. So I'm debating whether I need to dose those up a bit as well.

Something is making the water slightly cloudy. I'm not sure exactly what, Just something else to make things less than pretty. This is about 24 hours after a thorough siphoning. It grows back so fast.


I've been seeing a pom pom crab and porcelain crab pretty frequently lately. I'm pretty sure the emerald crab died a while ago.


Fish continue to do well. The rainfords continues to eat everything in sight, except nori. The yellow assessor disappeared for about a week, but reappeared today like nothing happened. The little jerk. Yellow rose goby has been more skittish, and I haven't seen the pistol shrimp in a while, so I'm a bit worried the pistol is gone. Flaming prawn gobies are still making occasional appearances to flash disapprovingly at me.

I feel your pain, little fish.

What I'm most happy about right now is the microfauna. Copepods have always been good, as well as these other shield-shaped tiny bugs I haven't ID'd yet. I finally, finally have amphipods again. My tanaids are multiplying. Collinistas are still an army. I've picked up a handful of baby snails that might be nassarius or marginellas. I even saw a sphaeromatid isopod, and I thought they all died out like 6 months ago. That gives me a lot of hope.

And because I am a glutton for punishment, I decided it would be a good idea to start up a 5 gallon AIO pico. I got some free live rock from a local reefer, and a couple pieces from an LFS. Using one of the AI Primes that's no longer over the main tank. I figure it will help keep me engaged in the hobby if I have something that's not drowning in dinos. I'm also debating using it as a refuge for a couple of corals that are not doing well in the main tank. The snake polyps cannot stay dino-free for more than an hour and are really looking rough. But I'm not sure how to do it without ending up with 2 dino tanks. So it's just hypothetical right now. I sold it to B as a temporary tank for that purpose. But I'm kind of tempted to get some RFAs and try my hand at nems. But who knows. This was a couple weeks ago already. It'***** the diatom phase now (and you know I put it under the scope to make sure lol).

 

[Rossim2i2]

Keep at it! I'm still battling cyano after going fallow. Its a slow process, but it'll turn around with time and care!

 

[diana a]

The Dinos tank looks so painful. Hope you win that soon. You smaller tank looks awesome. Love the rock work. Nice job!

 

[sublunary]

The Dinos tank looks so painful. Hope you win that soon. You smaller tank looks awesome. Love the rock work. Nice job!

Thanks! I'm starting to see white spots on the sandbed, so I have hope there are better times around the corner. But man it's depressing sometimes. Amphidinium is the worst.