Alan's 350gallon

[tj w]

Spectacular Sea Stars

Anything not safe to keep with the nardoa? I.e. That the nardoa would consider as food? Do they mainly stay on the glass or also crawl over the live rock and disrupt it?

https://www.reef2reef.com/index.php?posts/3308316/

 

[tj w]

Here's that thread about nardoa star fish that eat the asterinas. Apparently they are quite hardy as well. I'll probably try to source one or two soon to see if it helps in my tank.

 

[cmcoker]

Used a flashlight last night to show a small section of rocks

That's impressive, have you considered running a siphon into a filter sock in the sump and removing what you can see at night? Maybe help the harlequin get ahead...

 

[alanbetiger]

You know me and "work" cmcoker!
I'm just as bad as I was with my other tank. I don't have filter socks or mechanical filtration. Seriously though even if I wanted to siphon I can effectively get to half maybe 2/3 of the rock. Only the front glass not the other three. Unless I get a crew together. Unplug all the lights and lift off a 8ft x 30 inches solid wood canopy with my suspended lights. That alone would take awhile.
I'll keep with slow and steady route. Aka lazy route!

 

[cmcoker]

You know me and "work" cmcoker!
I'm just as bad as I was with my other tank. I don't have filter socks or mechanical filtration. Seriously though even if I wanted to siphon I can effectively get to half maybe 2/3 of the rock. Only the front glass not the other three. Unless I get a crew together. Unplug all the lights and lift off a 8ft x 30 inches solid wood canopy with my suspended lights. That alone would take awhile.
I'll keep with slow and steady route. Aka lazy route!

Haha, I know! I was just thinking a run of some 1/2 vinyl tubing and a sock clamped on the bottom to get what's Easy to reach. No major break downs. I did find a fish net on the glass worked well and was easy, just held the edge against the glass and scooped them off, into the net.
I had the same proliferation of asterina (and algae) before we moved, luckily non coral eating type.
When I broke down the 120 I dried all the rock and started the new tank dry. The algae is coming back now, but no stars yet... Gonna do the Fluconazole dosing this weekend on the display, worked on the gha in the tank that's holding what's left of the corals (after we moved and had a major crash in the temporary tank) [emoji20]

 

[alanbetiger]

I've got quite a few frags you can have once you're ready

 

[cmcoker]

I've got quite a few frags you can have once you're ready

I'll take you up on that!

 

[alanbetiger]

Alright I've been horrible with updates. The baby and job changes took over. Let's see. It took about 1 month for all the asterinas to be eaten. In the end two harlequins lived and are kept alive by me harvesting them from the sump.
Next I found three aptasia so bought a pair of matted filefish. One immediately died while the other decided SPS were tasty so took a few weeks to catch and remove him. His still in my sump if anyone wants a free fish in the DFW area.
Then went on vacation and got the dreaded vacation curse with cyano and dinoflagellate bloom. Water changes and adding some snails took care of that. For the past few weeks everything has been looking great

 

[alanbetiger]

My harlequin pair. Also about 6-7 months ago I found a pair of watchman gobies with a single shrimp at the store. After a week I hadn't seen the shrimp or second watchman then about 6 months later all of a sudden. All three were out!
Lastly I was looking for a Regal and happened on this one for free at the store because of the fin damage. The caudal fin is slowly healing but the dorsal fin is nearly done.

 

[alanbetiger]

The tank when I got home from vacation

 

[alanbetiger]

The tank this week. Some of the SPS is a little ticked off still but overall good

 

[cmcoker]

Looking good! Did that filefish eat any aiptasia before going for the sps... cause I gotta problem. Been debating buying some berghia nudibranches..

 

[alanbetiger]

Ate one out of the three then killed an Acan and two SPS before I could catch it. I can't physically get to the aptasia so there's still two in there. Trying to decide myself. Supposedly I'd need quite a few so pretty expensive so haven't yet.

 

[cmcoker]

Yeah, The shipping is what's killing me about it. Reeftown has them on sale, ~12 for medium and 5 for small ones, but $50 for the overnight shipping. I don't know that I would cough it up for 2 aiptasia, but I have a proliferative strain that gets huge... There's probably around 50 aiptasia in my tank right now. [emoji20]

 

[alanbetiger]

Full tank video and the watchmen gobies

Trim.10F530D0-C0B2-4139-8543-5E7D60858EAA

• alanbetiger
• Jul 16, 2017

Pair of Watchmen gobies and pistol shrimp

Trim.D388F6B9-8368-4C8C-8AE7-0595F82C9767

• alanbetiger
• Jul 16, 2017

350 gallon

 

[alanbetiger]

Had an issue about three weeks ago that set off a snowball of problems. These three corals (birdsnest, afterburner, and green acropora) we’re getting close. I️ thought it would be interesting which would win. Bad experiment since it ended up killing all 3. Then parameters went out of wack. My LPS got green slime disease. The few Aiptasia went nuts so I️ have about 30 now. All at the same time some life events happened so I️ didn’t keep up with water changes boo so GHA is now over run. Boo.

I’m back on schedule and nothing has died in the past few weeks. So now I️ have a culture of Aiptasia going in the garage to hopefully grow out some Berghia. And I️ have a Sea Hare on duty

 

[alanbetiger]

So here we are 4 months later. Surprising most of the corals I had survived the plague. The sea hare lived for about a month. Next I got a Lawnmower Blenny to help and the combination of that and getting back on a water change schedule and my algae issues are gone!
I’m still trying to get a breeding population of Berghia to combat the Aiptasia so here’s crossing my finger!