Custom 230 Peninsula Build

[TimSc2013]

Here's the growth of two of my favorite corals over the last 1 1/2 years, the Aussie Prism "Dragon Soul" Favia and the Aussie Green "Goblin" Favia:

Purchased as frags on Ebay in October of 2012

Current size. At one point the green favia waged war on the prism favia almost taking it out. Now they seem to be content as neighbors...

 

[TimSc2013]

Here is the growth of my Tr-Colored Acro purchased in November of 2012:

The color was brown at the LFS

It's amazing how different lighting brings out different colors! I NEED to get a better camera! LOL :cell:

 

[prsnlty]

Nice Acro! Looks like you have some nice pieces to start off tge 230 with

 

[prsnlty]

Did the tank arrive at your LFS today ? If so, did you set the install date?

Jackie

 

[TimSc2013]

Did the tank arrive at your LFS today ? If so, did you set the install date?

Jackie

Have not heard a thing so I don't know where it's at...

 

[prsnlty]

Still nothing?

Jackie

 

[TimSc2013]

Still nothing?

The tank arrived at the installers shop yesterday around 2 p.m. I am now waiting for them to coordinate with the moving company to get a firm date for the install. You would think I would be more excited at this point but I guess with the delay at over a month and a half from the original install date the excitement won't come until it actually arrives at my house!:yawn:

 

[prsnlty]

I can understand that. At least it is finally at the LFS, a step in the right direction. Hopefully now that it's there everything else will go without a hitch

 

[TimSc2013]

Since I have some time and am in the mood to write (which can be infrequent) while drinking my coffee :tea:, I will fill some time with my recent issues plaguing my current system as with each struggle hopefully brings a lesson learned!

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Do it!

 

[prsnlty]

I'm listening!

 

[TimSc2013]

As discussed in one of my previous posts, I was doing the daily water change routine in late 2013 to keep my parameters stable and to try and reduce my nutrient levels to near negligible amounts as I did not have dosing pumps and was struggling with the “pink†cotton candy algae.

Oh sorry, "wrong" pink... Much sweeter though!

This method worked well for me in both keeping my parameters stable (on average: Ca = 430, dKH = 8.9 & Mg = 1430) and nutrient levels low (NO₃ = 0.25 & PO₄ = 0.04). All coral were doing fine and I had yet to experience any RTN/STN with my SPS since adding them to my system. Achieving any significant color in most acropora, besides my tri-color, was however still eluding me.

With my family trip to Florida in March of 2014, I didn’t want to go over a week of suddenly no water changes and no dosing. Thus I bought a dosing system and stop the daily water changes on Feb. 2, 2014 to give me time to get the dosing set up correctly (107 5-gallon changes in 123 days). :crazy:

 

[prsnlty]

Adorable pink however! Lol

That's a lot of water changes!

 

[TimSc2013]

At this point, I also changed salt mix from Red Sea Coral Pro to the regular Red Sea, primarily so I could target a specific dKH near NSW or around a dKH of 7 as some reading of ULNS suggested that SPS did better atlower alk levels (not that my system was anywhere near an ULNS) and when I did my weekly change the fresh saltwater of the Coral Pro with a dKH of around 12 didn’t throw things off a little.

I was also reading a lot of opinions that some “dirty†water was good for SPS and was going to see how the weekly water changes would affect my nutrient amounts and in turn what the higher levels did to my coral, particularly with the color in the acropora.

Anyway, I got things dialed in on my dosing pumps and went on vacation with the tank left to my APEX controller and my automatic fish feeders with great success (no losses) and at a huge risk as I had no back-up plan/person if things went a south. I did check my Apex status obsessively so my wife would argue that it was a not asuccess, at least in regards of the true meaning of vacationing as I could not relax about the tank!

My parameters upon return were stable:

Ca = 410
dKH = 7.2
Mg = 1420
NO₃= 2.0
PO₄= 0.06


The only issue I was seeing was green hair algae re-establishing its presence in the tanks. As I wanted “dirtier†water, I thus planned on continuing with the current dosing and maintenance schedule accepting the growth of some nuisance algae until my new tank upgrade was installed. My luck, however, was about to change…

 

[TimSc2013]

On March 27^th, only four days after returning from vacation, I get a call at work from my wife saying “something is wrong with your tankâ€! :scared:


I immediately begin to interrogate her asking “What do you mean, what is wrong with my tank?†and a dozen other questions, all of which are answered by “I don’t know, it just isn’t making soundâ€! :argue: Needless to say she wasn’t interested in problem solving and she felt she did her “spousal†duty by notifying me and went on about her day!


That was one long afternoon at work wondering what was wrong as I could only surmise that something blew a fuse as my Apex was not available online. Come to find out that one of my MP40 pumps got some saltwater in the cable adapter/plug interfase that was hanging carelessly next to/below the tank which threw the GFCI taking out power to the entire system about 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. when I could figure out the issue. Other than the water temperature dropping 4 degrees, all livestock seemed to be okay. I immediately thought how lucky I was that this didn’t happen a week earlier while I was on vacation!



It was only ten days after that incident that I found my Mandarin Goby dead after having him for a little over a year. He was always “fat and happyâ€. Furthermore, I noticed that a couple of my acro frags were starting to recede at their bases. My system still contained a significant amount of pods and my parameters were still stable so I was at a loss.

 

[prsnlty]

I'm sorry

 

[TimSc2013]

The same day my Mandarin Goby died, I went to bed around 10:00 P.M but couldn’t sleep, likely because I was thinking about what could be the issue that caused the recent livestock problems. I ended up getting back out of bed to watch the late night talk shows while medicating myself with a little liquid sleeping aid, alcohol! The next morning I got up and went to work without checking my system as I didn’t have a habit of it unless I needed some work clothes from the laundry room.


Once again I get the “dreaded†call at work from my wife saying the tank isn’t working! As I had improved my wire management a bit to avoid my previous event, and knew I likely had only one question she would investigate, I immediately had her check the breaker to see if it was tripped to which the answer was “noâ€. My Apex was offline so I knew something had tripped an individual GFCI outlet. Another long and unproductive day at work pursued wondering what the issue was and how my livestock was fairing.

Come to find out after some investigation of unplugging and systematically plugging equipment back in that some salt creep got into my sump light which threw the GFCI and took the whole tank out. What is worse is that it happened around 10:30 p.m. the previous night when I couldn’t get to sleep! Power was out for a little over 8 hours killing my Flame Angel that I had for three and a half years. :sad:

I also noticed that flesh was “peeling†off the acro frags that had started receding the day before. The tank temp had dropped seven degrees and my pH had dropped from 8.1 to 7.8.

At this point I had attributed my losses were due to my recent power interruption events and decided to continue on with the same dosing and weekly maintenance schedule as all my other livestock seemed healthy. I even noted that some of my acros, particularly two of my ‘Purple Tip’ frags had deeper and richer color to them making them look more like a ‘Purple Bonsai Garden’ acro.

The next set of parameter tests were taken about one week later which showed everything was still stable except that my nutrients had climbed a bit to 8.0 (NO₃) and 0.08 (PO₄). I was not too concerned as I had read that people were having success with SPS with nitrates up to around 10 and phosphates up around 1.0.

 

[TimSc2013]

Although the Purple Tip acro frags were looking the best I had seen since getting them, on April 20^th, I was cleaning some hair algae around the base of one of them and noticed a couple small areas starting to recede at the base. I originally thought that this may have been due to the algae not allowing light through, it was only a couple days later that two bare spots started to show on the main “trunkâ€...

Top down - before and after of Purple Tip (upper left in the cluster of three)

 

[TimSc2013]

Additional frags also began to show recession at theirbases, including the ORA Verde and my beloved Tri-color acro…

ORA Verde before and after showing the beginning of STN. An additional frag of my maricultured Bali.

It's hard to see the STN but the base is in the lower left of the picture as the colony is growing into the picture hiding most of the trunk.

 

[TimSc2013]

Now I was unsure whether the RTN/STN was due to the power outages, the higher nutrient levels or a combination of both. Knowing that stability is key and being fed up with weekly cleaning of the establish green hair algae, I decided to get my nutrient levels back down to levels once achieved by daily water changes. During this time, I fragged some branches above the dead areas of one of the Purple Tips and the ORA Verde.

Although the frags of the purple tips were above the dead areas, all those frags continued to STN.

The frags of the ORA Verde appear to be holding steady and not showing any signs of continued STN.