Novahobbies 110g Reef Aquarium Reset

[novahobbies]

I have three fish acclimating to the new water right now. I waited for the white lights to turn off the rest of the fish start calming down.

Not much else to report. Added another 2.25 cups of Kent, so by now I should be at 1500ppm. I'll test tomorrow before the FMAS meeting.

 

[novahobbies]

Well, the bryopsis is definitely on the ropes. I have the Meg up to 1620ppm, and I'm almost out of Kent so I ordered more. The Bryopsis is definitely looking pale and wispy, and much of it has sloughed off and into the filters. I've had to change filter pads 3 times this week already. The protein skimmer is going nuts. I'm going to do a 15g water change this weekend on Sunday when I get back into town and siphon some of the loose algae. I have JUST enough Kent to bring the water change seawater up to 1600, and then I hope my new bottle will be here on Monday.

So, what's next? Well, after the next water change, I'm going to go spend a few bucks and re-seed my clean-up crew. I need a few new snails across the board.....Nassarius, Turbos, and Atlantic turbans. I also need a dozen or so blue-legs, and most importantly, I need some Tisbe pods. My refugium looks sparse, and I see NO copepods whatsoever on the glass of the display tank. I'm picking up 2 packs of the Tisbes today, but I'm going to wait on the rest of the CUC until after the water change.

In the meantime, I added my three quarantine inmates this week. Here's a couple shots. They're rough but they'll have to hold over until they calm down a bit:

 

[AquamanE]

Awesome Richard- I got a jawfish at Marine net last Saturday. Put him right in from bag. I love him, eating mysis and pellets right off the bat.

Issue is he is tearing apart the sand and moving corals, and zoas all over the place. Moves from one place to the other DAILY. He has chosen the from right side of my tank, totally away from LR for some reason. LOL. While this is cute behavior i dont care to have to resettle things on a daily basis. I will continue to monitor, but I might eventually find this behavior unacceptable and trade it. Hopefully yours will behave.

Glad elevated Mg has helped you out. I have been blessed never having to deal with that algae.

 

[novahobbies]

Getting ready for the WC, but the Suberb Owl is going to take precedence. As it should. ;-)

 

[novahobbies]

Quick update. 15g WC and filter pad change is done, and I had JUST enough Kent to get the new seawater up to 1600ppm to match what's in the tank now. The new bottle should be here tomorrow, so I'll continue to raise it a little more. I removed a lot of very bright green cyano-like algae, which seems to have taken over as the main algae in the tank since the Bryopsis and regular HA is dying back. Not much else to report for now.....I will change out my GFO and AC tomorrow most likely, and then test PO4, Mag, Alk & Ca levels to see where we're at. The tank is at least starting to LOOK better, I can say that much for certain.

 

[novahobbies]

Kent has been delivered, and I'm sitting at my desk at work with a brown paper bag containing 12 Atlantic grazers, 12 blue-leg hermits, and a few smallish Mexican turbo snails. I think I'll try for a picture after I change the GFO and carbon so you can see where we're at.

 

[novahobbies]

I'm feeling a little crappy tonight, and after all the evening chores, I don't think the GFO or carbon are getting changed tonight. But my CUC has been acclimated and added, and tonight's dose of Kent is done (along with the standard carbon dosing and 2-part dosing) so I think I'm done for the night.

Here's a pic of the tank as of this evening. I hope you see the progress from earlier.....otherwise it's all in my head! ;-)

 

[AquamanE]

Not in your head. Definate improvement. Keep it up. .

 

[novahobbies]

Thanks. I have been fighting a very minor cold these past couple days, so the only thing I've done is basic dosing.....and sitting back to watch the fish. We should always remember that this is supposed to be a RELAXING hobby! As of this afternoon, I still need to swap my GFO and carbon out. Probably need to change the filter pads again as well, just to be safe. The new snails seem to have acclimated well.

I spotted a nice find at Barrier Reef today. They have had a small group of "assorted flasher wrasse" for sale for a couple weeks now for $20 each. A couple of them are pretty obvious McCosker's hybrids which had some great coloration, so I snagged one of them to replace the little beauty I lost.

As heartbreaking as the coral loss was, I think the fish loss hit me harder. I lost a McCosker's, a Midas blenny, and a leopard wrasse. The Leopard was probably the hardest loss, because it was a gift from a friend. But I hope to replace the Midas soon, and the new Flasher wrasse will make the wife pretty happy here. The main fish I'm in the market for now is the Midas and a Desjardini, then I think we'll be done for a while.

 

[novahobbies]

It's been 10 days since my last post, so I thought I'd update. I swapped out my GFO and Carbon this morning while doing my filter floss change. Also set up the Aquarimate app to set monthly reminders for media replacement as well as a few other things. I like that app so far. I wish I could download the data onto an excel sheet or something, but I haven't dug into the app yet to see how much it really does.

Bad news....I lost my little female Mandarin a few days ago. I still feel like something is attacking fish at night....she was old, yes (got her in 2008 I believe) but not really "old age" old. And she didn't seem thin either. I have two items that I know of that might be doing it, but I'm not sure if there's something lurking in the rock if you know what I mean. The two known suspects are a purple tube anemone and a red serpent star. Honestly would feel surprised if either of them are the true killers, but remember I HAVE lost a number of cryptic fish in the past few months, including a leopard wrasse, Midas blenny, and McCosker's wrasse. All three of these tend to hide in the rock or sand at night, and don't seem like the kind of fish to accidentally drift into the waiting tentacles of the Tube 'nem.

In any case. Might have to try camping out by the tank with a red light again. Am tempted to get a new moonlight from Steve'sLEDs....he has one that has a color change capability. You can do the usual blue moonlights...or switch to red for stealth mode...or any number of other colors to suite your mood. The other fish are all pretty well settled in. Most of my algae issues are much less pronounced now, but I've noticed that I'm getting a lot of pubble algae cropping up. Definitely need to get a Desjardini tang. Does anyone know if Lavender tangs or Atlantic Blue tangs eat bubble algae?? And no, I have no desire to get an emerald crab...those buggers just look weird to me.

I'm going to do a small 10% WC and scrape the coralline off the front panel tonight, then I'll take some pictures to show the progress.

 

[novahobbies]

As threatened, here's a current picture after a good glass-scraping.
Current Parameters: Amm and 'Trites 0,
'Trates between 0 and 5 (barely registered, might not even be there),
2 PO4 tests, one at 0.00, the other at 0.04, so I'm calling this 0.02,
pH 8.2
Ca 480ppm
KH 200 mg/L or 11.2dKH
Mag 1720
Salinity 1.027
Temp 78.

The salinity might be up because I've been dosing the Mag way up there. The Ca and KH are high but the ranges match, so apparently it's time for me to quit dosing 2-part until I start adding a few corals! My Kalk reactor is probably enough for now, but I've been dosing 2.5mL of 2-part nightly. Everything else looks pretty good!

I recently took my second Jebao WP-40 offline and removed it (see the clean spot on the left side of the tank?). I think for my 4-foot tank, a single Jebao on W1 mode is more than sufficient.

 

[joshporksandwich]

Are your rocks glued together? Looks unstable!

 

[novahobbies]

Are your rocks glued together? Looks unstable!

They're actually quite stable. This is dry rock that has been foamed onto hollow PVC frames. Here's a pic of the columns back during the construction process. I had put the frames on the stand just to start getting a "feel" of the tank space:

 

[joshporksandwich]

They're actually quite stable. This is dry rock that has been foamed onto hollow PVC frames. Here's a pic of the columns back during the construction process. I had put the frames on the stand just to start getting a "feel" of the tank space:

wow awesome