Ento-Reefer's 180g Build Thread

[Ento-Reefer]

I do this all the time with my mysis or brine shrimp. I put them in the tank water , feed some and save the leftover in the fridge for feeding 2 days later

Really? I honestly didn't know this was something people do. I have been keeping fish for 33 years and I have never heard of people saving defrosted frozen food like this.

 

[cycled123]

Sorry about your losses I have saved food defrosted in the fridge for 1-2 days when first started out and didn't have a lot of fish. I wonder if it absorbed some kind of contaminant? I would watch for other underlying diseases though. I have doubts that food would kill that fast.

 

[Ento-Reefer]

Sorry about your losses I have saved food defrosted in the fridge for 1-2 days when first started out and didn't have a lot of fish. I wonder if it absorbed some kind of contaminant? I would watch for other underlying diseases though. I have doubts that food would kill that fast.

I didn’t notice anything and keep looking. This happened back around the second week in October. The only things I had added to the tank were 3 coral frags I got from our club frag swap the last weekend in September. I really just don’t know, but the handing of the food was the only thing that was different so I thought it could have been that it went bad. My son showed me videos on YouTube where people do this so maybe it was fine. I will probably never know for sure what happened.

 

[Aimulator64]

I know this thread has been idle for a bit, but I read through everything from start until now. I am sorry for the loss of your fish I was devastated when I lost the 3 critters in my nano, which were two fiji skunks and a cleaner shrimp. I never knew what happened to them, as they died overnight. My only speculations were that either I disturbed the sand bed when moving the rock work and opened up a gas pocket, or I had cologne on my wrists or didn't rinse my soap well enough and never caught it when dipping in the tank. Which, in a 180 gallon, should be way more insignificant than my 13.5. I wish I knew. I'm trying things a little bit differently this time around.

 

[Ento-Reefer]

It has been a while since I posted an update on this tank. It hit the one year mark back in January.

I have been battling dinoflagellates for the past 3 weeks. I think I might finally be making a little progress. The tank is definitely starting to grow other algae since I stopped water changes and GFO. The video shows the tank at its worst. I hope this might help some of the newer members of the hobby see that we all deal with ups and downs with our reefs..

I decided to use the dirty tank approach to try and eliminate them. I have stopped water changes and am just running the skimmer wet and changing out the socks every 2 days. I am putting fresh carbon in every 3 days or so to help keep the toxins down. Trying to siphon the dinos off the sand several times a week along with blowing them off the rocks and coral. I have been removing a couple of cups of sand every time I siphon. I am debating removing all of the sand, but I will reduce it quite a bit either way.

I am out of p04 reagent at the moment, but it had dropped to 3 ppb on my Hanna which is .009ppm. I am not sure why they dropped so low as I haven't changed anything about the way I maintain the tank in a long time. My nitrates have been in the 5-10 range for the last 6 months. My sand sifting goby died so I am guessing he ate too many and the toxin was fatal. My other fish seem fine. I have lost some snails and my zoa colonies are not opening very much. My anemones seem perfect so I will just keep up with what I am doing and hope I win this battle soon. I moved most of my sps to my 29g frag/qt tank for now.

Thank you @Aimulator64 for the kind words on the loss of my fish.

 

[Ento-Reefer]

Shortly after my post earlier today I was inspecting the tank and I noticed my magnifica anemone is splitting!

I don't know if it is because the anemone is stressed due to the dino outbreak or if it is just natural. This anemone has grown quite a bit lately.

I think this is super cool to witness and I am hopeful that both halves will do well. I will post some updates when the split is finished.

 

[Ento-Reefer]

It has been a long while since I have posted an update on Ento Reef. the past six months have been challenging to say the least. The tank was stuck in a nasty cycle of Dino’s then cyano then Dino’s again. I think it is finally settling down some now and finding the balance. I had to move many corals out as the Dino’s were taking there toll. I ended up selling the magnificent anemone back to the LFS because it started wandering during all this and I didn’t want to risk it. My fish are growing and the remaining corals are growing again also. I have some tester acropora back in the tank and so far so good.
I made a little video yesterday.