Acropora Help Please

gherewolf · Jan 25, 2019

dwest said:
Do you think the flame angel could be nipping?

ShadowR55 said:
what fish do you have? I hade a flame angel for a few months before I started adding more and more coral. New coral would show polyp extension for a few days and then stop. Wellsophyllia would be nice and plump for a few days and then shrivel up. Nothing would die and everything was growing slowly but nothing looked happy other than my Zoa’s and shrooms. Then I read a post on here about the flame angel took it to my local LFS for a trade. A few days later everything came to life again, great polyp extension on my SPS and awesome inflation on my LPS.

I watched my tank like a hawk, as a matter of fact, I don’t think I ever saw the flame angel nip at my corals but it must have been doing it at night when polyps come out to feed.

Check for pests and watch your fish to make sure nothing is ******* off your coral to the point of RTN.

Intentionally sat down and watched the flame angel today. Saw him nip. He has got to go!

ShadowR55 · Jan 25, 2019

gherewolf said:
Intentionally sat down and watched the flame angel today. Saw him nip. He has got to go!

Good call, the other fish in your list look fine.

gherewolf · Jan 26, 2019

I just tested my phosphates again yesterday and they came out to be 0.16. I added 5 tablspoons of high capacity GFO. the recommendation was to add 1 tablespoon per every 8 gallons. Very small dose for my water volume, about 1/7th if my math is correct. Tested again right now and I'm at 0.13. I will be doing a ~25 gallon water change today as well and will test again tomorrow.

PAR is getting tested today and I am also setting the fish trap for the flame angel. Good stuff happening here from all your great suggestions. Thank you!

Daniel 123 · Jan 26, 2019

What is a fish trap and how do you pin point the flame angel?

My dad usually gets fish by not feeding for a while then taking a restaurant salad bin like th0se you would find at the buffet, clear so as the fish can not see it, he would put the bin in the tank at a diagonal like below, but not too deep than feed the back of it with mysis or something, wait for the fish to come and eat, likely right away, and scoop up real quick. Hopefully theres your fish. Ill take a quick pic, the not feeding and food in the back is key. You also only get one or two shots every once an a while with this method as they get smart to it.

Goodluck any way your successful with the catch, what a pain in the butt it is I know.

Acroporaaddict · Jan 26, 2019

Following for icp results. By the way, it was nice to meet you today.

gherewolf · Jan 28, 2019

Daniel 123 said:
What is a fish trap and how do you pin point the flame angel?

My dad usually gets fish by not feeding for a while then taking a restaurant salad bin like th0se you would find at the buffet, clear so as the fish can not see it, he would put the bin in the tank at a diagonal like below, but not too deep than feed the back of it with mysis or something, wait for the fish to come and eat, likely right away, and scoop up real quick. Hopefully theres your fish. Ill take a quick pic, the not feeding and food in the back is key. You also only get one or two shots every once an a while with this method as they get smart to it.

Goodluck any way your successful with the catch, what a pain in the butt it is I know.

Thanks for the advice! Luckily a fellow Reefer let me borrow his fish trap. Threw some food in there and waited patiently for the flame angel to swim in. Took me 4 tries of releasing the trap door but only 30-40 min so not too bad.

gherewolf · Jan 28, 2019

Acroporaaddict said:
Following for icp results. By the way, it was nice to meet you today.

Pleasure meeting you as well and thank you so much for the use of your par meter! Results were very revealing and here they are...

Frag tank was not getting enough light as the fixture was too high. We lowered the fixture to get the par in the middle of the tank between 250 and 300. With this change of lowering the fixture I also decreased the photoperiod from 10 hours to 8 hours.

The DT was 470 at the high spots towards the back where the rock slopes up and progressively made its way down to 150 on the sand bed near the front. It is suggested that this is still a little high for par so the first thing I did was decrease the photoperiod of my daylight 6 bulbs from 9 hours to 7 hours. I may raise the lighting fixture by a couple inches as well.

My reefbrites were running for 12 hours a day. Instead of 12 hours the suggestion was to do a split 8 hours where they come on in the morning, turn off mid day, then come back on later in the evening. I think I will really like this not only for increasing the lifespan of the LED but also the increased viewing times on either end of the day.

gherewolf · Jan 28, 2019

I am also setup to do a water change. The new salt water (25 gallons or 10% of total system water volume)has an alk of 10. My system alk is at 8.6 and I am worried that this water change will cause a rapid increase Jan alk. Should I be worried about this?

Ashish Patel · Jan 28, 2019

gherewolf said:
I am also setup to do a water change. The new salt water (25 gallons or 10% of total system water volume)has an alk of 10. My system alk is at 8.6 and I am worried that this water change will cause a rapid increase Jan alk. Should I be worried about this?

No. You won't even be able to test the differnce. I've done 25% at 10DKH with same alk you mentioned and it goes up .2 dkh..

Ashish Patel · Jan 28, 2019

If your alk is floating few dkh around your target it won't cause no issues.. I test my Alk at least 10-15 times a month and adjust doser as needed. Overtime you just know how much 2 part will bring it back up to certain dkh. For example I know 10ml will bring my dkh up .1 and last week it dropped to 7.1 and I added 40ML of 2 part and it brought it back up to around 7.5dkh. This happened on the rare occasion that I did not test alk for 7 days. Keys to my success have been to make sure nutrients are not going to undetectable and dose some trace element such as iodine, iron, and SR have proven to be very beneficial to SPS health.

dwest · Jan 28, 2019

gherewolf said:
I am also setup to do a water change. The new salt water (25 gallons or 10% of total system water volume)has an alk of 10. My system alk is at 8.6 and I am worried that this water change will cause a rapid increase Jan alk. Should I be worried about this?

I think you should do what you’ve always done. You caught the problem.

Daniel 123 · Jan 28, 2019

gherewolf said:
Thanks for the advice! Luckily a fellow Reefer let me borrow his fish trap. Threw some food in there and waited patiently for the flame angel to swim in. Took me 4 tries of releasing the trap door but only 30-40 min so not too bad.

Very cool, is the door spring loaded to shut quickly or something?

Backreefing · Jan 28, 2019

gherewolf said:
Thanks for the advice! Luckily a fellow Reefer let me borrow his fish trap. Threw some food in there and waited patiently for the flame angel to swim in. Took me 4 tries of releasing the trap door but only 30-40 min so not too bad.

Man once years ago I was trying to catch a demsel ( mouse in a room full of junk ) I had to drain the entire aquarium then pick him up sheesh

gherewolf · Jan 29, 2019

Ashish Patel said:
No. You won't even be able to test the differnce. I've done 25% at 10DKH with same alk you mentioned and it goes up .2 dkh..

Ashish Patel said:
If your alk is floating few dkh around your target it won't cause no issues.. I test my Alk at least 10-15 times a month and adjust doser as needed. Overtime you just know how much 2 part will bring it back up to certain dkh. For example I know 10ml will bring my dkh up .1 and last week it dropped to 7.1 and I added 40ML of 2 part and it brought it back up to around 7.5dkh. This happened on the rare occasion that I did not test alk for 7 days. Keys to my success have been to make sure nutrients are not going to undetectable and dose some trace element such as iodine, iron, and SR have proven to be very beneficial to SPS health.

I went ahead and did the water change and after testing my alk was at 8.2...weird because last time I tested before the water change it was 8.6. I siphoned out a bunch of gunk from the frag tank during the water change and scraped off some coraline algae from the DT glass. So weird that it went down because I would expect it to go up. I am going to scrape all of the coraline from the back of the DT today for a cleaner look and test again when finished.

dwest said:
I think you should do what you’ve always done. You caught the problem.

I sure hope so! Nothing noticeably changed yet but will keep the updates coming.

Daniel 123 said:
Very cool, is the door spring loaded to shut quickly or something?

Its just the weight of the door, which is why it took me a few tries. I have attached a magnet to the door before which adds some weight and speed to the closure. Just a magnet cleaner.

Backreefing said:
Man once years ago I was trying to catch a demsel ( mouse in a room full of junk ) I had to drain the entire aquarium then pick him up sheesh

I dread catching fish....

Ashish Patel · Jan 29, 2019

Nice - now you know you can do larger waterchanges, I prefer larger 25% waterchange primary because I know I will be turning over 58% of my system after 3 X 25% waterchange. If I would do 10% then it would take over 8 waterchanges to reach 58%. Food for thought?

gherewolf · Jan 29, 2019

Ashish Patel said:
Nice - now you know you can do larger waterchanges, I prefer larger 25% waterchange primary because I know I will be turning over 58% of my system after 3 X 25% waterchange. If I would do 10% then it would take over 8 waterchanges to reach 58%. Food for thought?

Makes sense. I may just increase my frequency to once a week which will help me in my overall husbandry skills when scheduled to look at all aspects of the tank during that water change.

gherewolf · Jan 29, 2019

ICP is in! Arsenic is high and iodine is low. Can't wait to hear your thoughts.

Also raised the display tank lights up by roughly an inch. Now about 12" above water level....maybe a little more give 1/2".

Scdell · Jan 29, 2019

gherewolf said:
ICP is in! Arsenic is high and iodine is low. Can't wait to hear your thoughts.

Also raised the display tank lights up by roughly an inch. Now about 12" above water level....maybe a little more give 1/2".

Hmmm, now I have to re think where my metals are coming from. I was hoping yours would show similar.

goodefx · Jan 29, 2019

gherewolf said:
ICP is in! Arsenic is high and iodine is low. Can't wait to hear your thoughts.

Also raised the display tank lights up by roughly an inch. Now about 12" above water level....maybe a little more give 1/2".

So where is the Arsenic coming from? Also, I dose manganese, 20ml/day in a 180 gal, not sure why but my lfs recommends it. Think this test just creates more questions [emoji30]

dwest · Jan 29, 2019

gherewolf said:
ICP is in! Arsenic is high and iodine is low. Can't wait to hear your thoughts.

Also raised the display tank lights up by roughly an inch. Now about 12" above water level....maybe a little more give 1/2".