Blackizzz shallow zeovit tank

[blackizzz]

What a difference a few days can make! Decided that I was done with the cyano, and gave the red slime remover a try. This is what it looked like directly after dosing:

Then a couple of hours after (micro bubbles due to skimmer going crazy)

And finally after 24 hours:
(shot with filter, excuse the greenish tint)

After 48h, everything is even better, so now hopefully it stays like this! (I promise I have since cleaned most of the glass )

 

[Sleeping Giant]

Looks great, are you supposed to keep the skimmer on?

 

[blackizzz]

Looks great, are you supposed to keep the skimmer on?

On the packaging it says to keep the skimmer on, but that "adjustment may be necessary"
I suppose it has with aeration to do, as people have reported O2 levels dropping pretty radically after dosing the treatment.
About 60h after the dose skimmer finally calmed down and is now acting like normal

 

[blackizzz]

A brief update since it's been a while. I'll try to post a couple of photos soon, might have a few usable ones on my phone

Tank is doing good, almost on the verge of doing great!

No Cyano, no dino. Sand is whiter than I've ever had in my tanks I think!
The last months I've added a couple new corals, and an anemone. All seems to have adapted really well. Hope my clowns decide to host the anemone instead of my goniopora soon, as it's clearly disturbed by their hosting.

I've been quite sloppy with testing parameters, which is something I'll have to change soon. Doing WC's every week has definitely lessened any damage, but I've realized that if I want things to grow quicker, keeping parameters more stable will help. Even though they're not fluctuating rapidly, going slowly slowly from 7.5 alk to 5.7 alk and then slowly up again isn't optimal

I've recently upgraded all my Ecotech equipment to make them Mobius compatible, and I must say it's working a lot better than it did before with reeflink. Still some "baby-issues" with the software/firmware in my opinion, but hopefully they'll figure that out soon.

Have been trying to get rid of corals on the frag-rack, as it's unsightly, but the selling scene here isn't the best so it's shown difficult to get rid of them. Hopefully someone wants some SPS soon ;Hilarious

That's about it! Will try to post some pics tomorrow if I can remember ;Shamefullyembarrased
Hope everyone has a spooky halloween!

 

[blackizzz]

I have long days apparently...

Got hold of a porttube a couple of days ago, and gave it a first try today. Still some learning needed, but turned out alright for a first attempt!

A couple of random photos

 

[blackizzz]

And maybe it's appropriate with a brief update on what's happened since post #184

I've replaced some equipment, some due to upgrades, others due to failures;
Lighting wise, I now use two radion G4 pro's and 4 orphek OR3 bars. I find this being a good combination, with loads of spread.
I've gone down to 2 MP40's and 1 MP10, as the other MP10 fell to the ground, damaging the dry side. I've yet to replace that, but will probably at some point in the future.
My Kore 5th dosing pump went haywire, and after spending around 40-50 hours trying to figure out how to fix it, speaking with support and resetting, updating, erasing data and trying older firmwares, I finally gave up and ordered a GHL Doser instead. Best decision in a long time. Now, if I only can get the dosing lines to not release from the pump heads, I'd be all set!
I started to use P04 remover in an Nyos Torq reactor, and now about 2 months in I feel confident that coloration has "stabilized" since then. Most acros seem to enjoy the slightly lower P04.

Corals are growing, and I suppose you do get "home-blind" seeing as many corals has grown quite a lot looking at the FTS I posted before. I still consider my growth as slow, and I hope that it'll increase soon if I can keep the tank nice and stable.

I've lost some corals, and added quite a few new. I'm now at the (tragic) point where it's getting hard to find good spots for new additions. Hopefully I can fit a few more pieces in, at some point

I'll try to be better with updates, now when I can have a little more fun with the camera!

 

[blackizzz]

A couple of daylight photos

Growth is kind of noticeable, but could be way better. Not doing much at the moment, feeding, WC:s and fragging some.

need to start being more on top of testing, as I think that parameters, although not “swinging” might be more stable if I try a bit more.

 

[blackizzz]

Long time no post (again). Been busy with a move!

So 5 weeks ago I moved into a new apartment, and have now finally got the tank into place and back somewhat to normality. Last week I added sand and now it looks kinda like a reef again!

Seeing as the tank is going through kind of a small cycle with the sand, I'm experiencing a bit mroe algae growth than usual. Hopefully that goes away soon, as I'm cleaning the glass twice or thrice a day at the moment ;Hilarious

I thought I'd share some of the process, and some pictures, though I didn't really remember to snap enough during the move (or before for that matter)!

So it basically all started with planning a couple of weeks before, I bought buckets, a large tub for temporary holding, extra heaters and some other small stuff to aid the move.

The move wasn't that far (about 45m drive either way), so my plan was pretty simple - dismantle the tank on saturday, then move the empty tank to the new place saturday night and start setting it up. After that, on sunday, move all live rock and live stock to the new place and pray for no losses.

The D-day, Saturday, came and I got started with draining the tank and moving the livestock over to the temporary tub. It was a tight fit! Even had to sacrifice some branches and break some encrusting corals apart in order for it all to fit without stacking corals on top of corals.

After emptying out all corals, and placing them in the tub, I caught the fish and moved them over too. All in all, went way smoother than I had feared, although, at this stage the time was around 2 PM, and I had around 30 minutes of daylight to play with (perks of living up north, huh!)

Time to clean the tank!

Sand has more dirt in it than one might think, but after a couple of minutes of rinsing the tank out and scraping the glass, the tank was (practically) as good as new!

Drove everything dry, in one go, with a fully packed car and trailer. Once at the apartment, the setup went pretty smoothly. I opted to add 9 adjustable feet to the stand, as the wooden flooring isn't as perfectly flat as my old floor.

After this I picture I spent around 5 hours routing cables and setting up equipment. Wish I would have had 10 more just for the cable management, but it's acceptable at the moment at least.

Well ... enough about saturday and onto the really exciting / stressfull day - livestock moving day!

 

[blackizzz]

So, after a couple of hours of sleep, I went "home" to start the livestock transfer.

I must admit, super duper scared when I opened the door to check on the livestock, fearing that anything (or everything) had died. But, to my surprise and relief, I was met with this:

Slightly cool water, but not a single stressed coral or fish in sight! I'm sure I was the most stressed being around!

So, the plan - move rocks, corals and fish in individual plastic containers, buckets or bags filled with water. Do 1 trip and then place everything in the tank before nightfall. Sounds simple enough!

The whole process of packing the animals took around 2 hours, only slight downfall was running out of containers with one kinda huge piece of rock still in the tub. Found another container and we were back up and running.

All in all I think we had around 75 gallons of water, in different containers, in the back of the car. Splashing and splashing all 45 (ok maybe 60 minutes due to slow driving). But, once we reached the apartment, and carried all the water upp a couple of stairs, it felt like a victory! Seeing as I was reusing all water, I thought the best solution was to get all animals into the tank (with the heater and circulation) ASAP.

So I started lifting and pouring

And a few hours later, I could relax, but no light on so I waited until the next day to aquascape and take a photo... Around 2 hours of aquascaping and a beer later, and this was the result!

I will take some new photos now when there's sand in place, and I'll try to do that tomorrow when the light has come on.

Anyways, all in all: Only one loss - a cleaner shrimp. The rest seems to have recovered well enough from the "stress" of moving over a weekend.

But that was that! Glad to have it done and hopefully won't have to do it again anytime soon

 

[iLMaRiO]

Hi. Awesome pics.
Could you please redo a small recap ? Are you still using zeovit ? full zeovit or a "custom" one ?
I saw you had issue with cyano, do you know why ? You had dinos ?

I'm planning to start zeovit in a couple of week and i'm looking for some tips and real experiences

 

[blackizzz]

Hi. Awesome pics.
Could you please redo a small recap ? Are you still using zeovit ? full zeovit or a "custom" one ?
I saw you had issue with cyano, do you know why ? You had dinos ?

I'm planning to start zeovit in a couple of week and i'm looking for some tips and real experiences

Hi! Thank you

Absolutely, I'm no longer using zeovit as a system. I do however occasionally dose their products.

My system is setup fairly simple at the moment - oversized skimmer, a filter roll on the overflow and a reactor filled with carbon and phosphate remover (fauna marin 0.04 phos). Daily dosing of Aqua forests components pro and this week I resumed dosing a small amount of acropower.

I did have both cyano and dinos (ostreopsis) in the past. The specific reason for each I couldn't even guess other than overall instability. I cannot blame zeovit, although I believe that the low nutrient levels might have been a big contributor to starting the issues.

The cyano, funnily enough, basically disappeared immediately once I changed lights. Could be a coincidence, could have been that the specific cyano species didn't like the radions as much as T5, who knows.

The problem, for me, with zeovit was that I couldn't keep to the dosing schedule as diligently as I probably would have to to succeed. So, I opted for a more "easy to keep" solution (although I wish I could succeed with zeo as the coloration can be incredible!)

 

[iLMaRiO]

thank you

 

[blackizzz]

A quick snapshot, unfortunately the water clears up slower than the algae grows on the glass at the moment.