Reefnjunkies 400 gallon inwall

[Reefnjunkie]

I assume you have high flow in the frag tanks. How do you keep the corals from moving around before they encrust the glass?

Tanks are roughly 24"x44" vary in height 10"-14" and I try to get as much flow as possible but its the shallowness that makes that a challenge. 2 tanks have 25-QD40s but I can only run them about 35-40 percent before they blow the corals everywhere. Most corals are mounted on 2" disks or larger which keeps them pretty stationary. the other 2 tanks have 4 QD10s at full power.

I don't want them encrusting but it happens often. There is a LOT of time spent in keeping everything clean. I probably spent 5 hours total scraping discs and cleaning on Weds- The struggle is real LOL

very very nice!

Do you dose Sr at all? I am starting to realize a lot of the very nice SPS tanks are dosing it directly or dosing some other trace elements that have Sr in it

I don't dose SR. I do sporadically dose coral vite, oyster feast, strontium/molybdenum but its common to forget or get busy and not do it, its been about 3 weeks since I dosed anything.

Calcium reactor and fish waste is what's working for the most part.

Thanks for looking!

 

[BigJohnny]

Not the best pics but this is what I ended up with for the large blue piece that I believe is some type of tort. I went with the lower placement vs the taller one. The past placement had the tips growing out of the water. I'm hoping that once I fill in the gaps it wont appear to "block" out the back rock/pieces.

The back of the tank needs to be scraped too, I will remove all that coralline so its all black, its a much nicer look staring into the abyss

very nice, where did you get the red tail tamarin wrasse?

 

[CoralWealth]

any updates at all?

Hope everything is going great

 

[Reefnjunkie]

very nice, where did you get the red tail tamarin wrasse?

Picked it up from Cuttlefish and Corals- Best local shop around- I grab a male too (psych head) but the male turned female and much later died

any updates at all?

Hope everything is going great

Im in need of an update for sure especially seeing my last post was Jan.

Its been a rough couple months, actually the last couple months have been good, the 4 months before that horrible. Not sure what the exact problem was but acros started RTNn something bad. Whatever it was it really hit my tenius collection bad-of coarse that was all the expensive unique pieces. I just went through something similar 16-18 months ago but that hit anything acro, it wasn't selective

I mean come on, gimme a break ;Rage

Ive always done very infrequent water changes, ~ 20% every 2-3 months (maybe longer) and I had been doing it that way for YEARS, close to 9. Ive also used Kent salt all those years, but I made the switch to Fritz because Kent changed their recipe awhile back and alk mixes at 12.5. I dont personally run my alk that high and have no desire to, (and honestly dont know a single reefer who does) but Im sure there are those who do- at least for Kents sake I hope there is LOL

Its impossible to say what exactly it was since I really dont know but Ive made the switch to the Red Sea Blue buckets and I do a 50 gallon water weekly. Its been at least 2 months since Ive thrown any substantial pieces away were it was a daily occurrence. Id literally get home and do the walk of "what died last night"

Well that's behind me now and looking forward to good times and rebuilding my addicition

 

[Reefnjunkie]

I'll get some pics of the tanks Sunday (my 1st day off)

I picked up 4- G4 XR30 pros for the frag tanks and am thinking ordering more and switching to them for the display, I just need to sell all the HD52s first ;Blackeye

 

[bubbaque]

Do you think it was something in the fritz?

 

[Reefnjunkie]

Do you think it was something in the fritz?

I think it was the lack of water changes while using Fritz. My routine hadn't changed over the years outside of the salt switch from Kent to Fritz.

Ive always dabbled with aminos and oyster feast and dosing other products ie coral vite, strontium/molybdenum etc etc but I feel Fritz lacked something Kent didnt.

Its speculation of course but I maintain a friends tank which is all SPS and I use the same water from my house for his top off and had used the same salt mix (Fritz) his tank never missed a beat and looks stunning while my stuff suffered and died.

Only real difference I was changing 10% weekly for him and no water changes for me.

This of course is an after thought and I say that for anyone who may read this and ask "why didn't you just do water changes"

Ive always heard great stuff about red sea blue (not pro) and switching was a no brainer- had Kent not made the stupidest move in my opinion changing a formula that now produces a mixed level of 12.5 I would not have made the switch and MAYBE non of this would have happened.


MAYBE.... that is

Off topic but you should hear the response from Kent regarding why they changed the recipe- LOL

Makes me think whoever wrote it has never ran a successful reef. Ill see if I still have the email

 

[bubbaque]

I agree with you on the fritz salt. I tried it out probably a year ago, maybe longer. It had potassium at 360 and calc 500. I felt I could never trust the salt after that. I did reach out to them about the potassium and he said he knew but was something they were going to fix. I know lots of people use it and don't have issues. Those two elements being out of wack made me think what else was out of wack.

 

[BigJohnny]

Pics?

 

[CoralWealth]

anything new?

 

[Reefnjunkie]

anything new?

Man that's a loaded question LOL

its been nearly a year, and what a year its been. My collection has been devastated but I am no longer hemorrhaging death from Tn and its been a humbling experience. In the course of trouble shooting Ive totally redone my display and have basically chopped everything I own. This pic is a thing of the past, I bet out of all those pictured I have 5-6 of those pieces and that doesnt even take into account the 6 24x48x10 grow out tanks which is where I really kept all the nice stuff.

Anyway, Im in for life so I'll prevail its just gonna be a bit for all those frags I had to re-acquire are photo worthy. I still have the left side of the tank to redo, that cup coral should be fun to remove, its over 2 feet across right now and when I grabbed a 14" pair of channel locks to try and break some of it off all it did was lift the 60 boulder its encrusted LOL

 

[oldnsalty]

did you ever find out what your issues were that caused all your losses? I have a buddy that is now going through problems that he can not explain. He has lost a lot of his sps corals and most of his other corals are being affected. He is having to change out 50% of his water every 3-4 weeks to keep everything alive.
thanks

 

[Reefnjunkie]

did you ever find out what your issues were that caused all your losses? I have a buddy that is now going through problems that he can not explain. He has lost a lot of his sps corals and most of his other corals are being affected. He is having to change out 50% of his water every 3-4 weeks to keep everything alive.
thanks

I can’t say that I did, a I can go down the list of things that didn’t cause it - the list is basically everything “commonly” known.

My best guess is something bacterial that compromised the coral immune system. The one issue with that is I was running a large UV (pond pro 110 by American aquarium products) that was easily capable of level 2 sterilization, now whether I was actually obtained level 2 is in question being I didn’t have a flow meter to test the actual rate of flow but did a pretty educated guess based on how fast I’d fill a 5 gallon bucket and then did the math.

I did however remove my UV approximately 3 months after things started going south. I had no idea Inwouod be fighting some unknown for another 7-10 months.

I performed massive water changes 60-70 percent) making sure all params were the same (Alk, Ca, PH, temp etc) and did that 3x (300-325 gallons water change) with approx 6-7 days between changes.
I never did anything “fast” I wanted to be sure what (if anything) was the cure.

I don’t have the Tn issues like I had but will get an occasional Tn on pieces that went through the ordeal, newer pieces have been fine but I still feel there are trace issues if “whatever” it was.

I’m actually going to be treating with Brightwells Koral Recover starting next week. It was something I read about when following a thread on FB were Andre Mueller was discussing how he used “Witch Hazel” to dip frags that suffered Tn and then went on to do an intank treatment with the WH with no I’ll effects. The Witch Hazel (I bought mine at rite aid but wallmart also carries it- I think it’s in the beauty section LOL) was curing the same symptoms I have and then another posted in that thread about Brightwells product (Thank you Mark Davis).

Anyway short answer I didn’t find the cause but can tell many things that didn’t help. I spent countless hours researching and asking any stick head I knew with not really anything that helped.

I’ll even tried the Koolaid being pushed by the Doc who claims all Tn is a result of Philaster Lucinda and Euplodes (not sure on that spelling) anyway I would not recommend anyone going down that road if a cure or solution is the end game- His product did slow the hemorrhaging tho

I wish I had the magical answer

 

[Braves Fan]

Why did you pull the UV ,, asking because I have never used one before ,, but I installed one on my new build ?

 

[Reefnjunkie]

Why did you pull the UV ,, asking because I have never used one before ,, but I installed one on my new build ?

Man my phone is a piece of junk- notifications are set but it never notifies me grrrrr

I believe I removed it since I was going to add a 1hp chiller and use a hammerhead to feed both which allowed me to eliminate my mag24 which pulled near as many amp/watts as the Hammer Hybrid.
I went years without ever using a UV and frankly can’t remember why I got it- It May have been when my Tinker Butterfly came down with ich but that was awhile ago and my memory is horrible.

 

[Reefnjunkie]

So I’ve decided to stop doing water changes and utilize Andre’s Reefer moonshine which is basically the triton method I believe

I sent my water in last week and will see what it shows. It’ll be interesting to see what comes back vs last year’s sample. I ordered most of the needed elements which will arrive Thursday.

I used to do water changes very infrequently maybe 3-4 a year but never really tested for depleted trace etc. Its hard to believe I was merely “lucky” for 7-8 years and acros just grew phenomenally in my system (and I can say that without arrogance) but after what I went thru it’s pretty humbling know how little “WE” actually know about what to do when stuff goes downhill.

What happened could have been karma to f you believe in that (I don’t LOl) it was probably a couple months after I made the comment to a friend of how I should post in our local forum’s emergency section a thread titled

“HELP MY ACROS ARE GROWING TO FAST”

But they were hahaha


Well that isn’t a problem anymore

Oh well, time to step down off the soap box and reboot which I have done so already

The colonies I did have I’ve cut down so they are more proportional with other pieces. It looked funny having a 16” colony with frags growing all around it. I also removed my cup coral that I grew to be about 22” in diameter since that really looked out of place-

Looking forward to the “new tank”

 

[Reefnjunkie]

Well I figured Id share my newest FTS....

Notice anything missing???? Its fairly obvious if you look below my user name, you see my addiction isnt present ;Wideyed

 

[Reefnjunkie]

Time to throw in the towel and tear this once beautiful tank down ;Wideyed

Since last year around March/April I started to experience sporadic necrosis with my acros. At first it wasn't bad but as the months progressed it started to get worse. It was so random I hadn't really thought to much about it but did take steps to try to determine what the issue was. Basically I tried everything known and a few things that were not "proven" but I was hemorrhaging death ( while other pieces continued thriving and growing which made trouble shooting that much more difficult as to what was going on).

Im not going ot try and recap the last year and a half but can say thru deductive reasoning (and counting out all I tried) that I got some bad **** bacterial/pathogen that attacked just the acros, attacking/eating zooxanthellae to the point the acro got so compromised it just died

So fast forward to were I am now, as I posted last month the tank is void of all acros, I think I lost nearly 150 different pieces and what was a steller collection had been reduced to maybe 40 or so pieces, many of which were once large thriving colonies reduced to a frag. I think the worst part was watching colonies I grew from 1 inch frags to some being 2" across reduced to a peanut sized frag. I shouldnt have waited so long but its tough finding someone to house your acros that would require a 48 square foot footprint- So I knocked it down to 9-10 sq/ft ;Hurting

Huge shout out to Cuttlefish and Corals, MattV, SBB Corals, and a few other locals who were able to hold what I had left while I tear it all down and do a 100 percent full reboot. I am keeping the rock but its getting a bleach bath and once the tanks drained I will refill it with fresh water and run vinegar ( plenty to KILL everything left) through all plumbing for about a week.

I'll start a new build thread and plan on letting the tank cycle slowly and probably not re-introduce acros until early next year.

Yee Haw ;Facepalm

This was a fun ride tho

 

[Reefnjunkie]

duplicate gut punch

 

[SneakyTortuga]

Time to throw in the towel and tear this once beautiful tank down ;Wideyed

Since last year around March/April I started to experience sporadic necrosis with my acros. At first it wasn't bad but as the months progressed it started to get worse. It was so random I hadn't really thought to much about it but did take steps to try to determine what the issue was. Basically I tried everything known and a few things that were not "proven" but I was hemorrhaging death ( while other pieces continued thriving and growing which made trouble shooting that much more difficult as to what was going on).

Im not going ot try and recap the last year and a half but can say thru deductive reasoning (and counting out all I tried) that I got some bad **** bacterial/pathogen that attacked just the acros, attacking/eating zooxanthellae to the point the acro got so compromised it just died

So fast forward to were I am now, as I posted last month the tank is void of all acros, I think I lost nearly 150 different pieces and what was a steller collection had been reduced to maybe 40 or so pieces, many of which were once large thriving colonies reduced to a frag. I think the worst part was watching colonies I grew from 1 inch frags to some being 2" across reduced to a peanut sized frag. I shouldnt have waited so long but its tough finding someone to house your acros that would require a 48 square foot footprint- So I knocked it down to 9-10 sq/ft ;Hurting

Huge shout out to Cuttlefish and Corals, MattV, SBB Corals, and a few other locals who were able to hold what I had left while I tear it all down and do a 100 percent full reboot. I am keeping the rock but its getting a bleach bath and once the tanks drained I will refill it with fresh water and run vinegar ( plenty to KILL everything left) through all plumbing for about a week.

I'll start a new build thread and plan on letting the tank cycle slowly and probably not re-introduce acros until early next year.

Yee Haw ;Facepalm

This was a fun ride tho

i refuse to like that post! im glad your just rebooting and not completely calling it quits! good luck with the new-ish build

 

[bubbaque]

Brad, your thread was one of my all time favorites. I would read through it multiple times aspiring to have a tank and collection as nice as yours. It makes me sad to see it come to an end but excited to see your reboot. I wish you all the luck on the redo and look forward to seeing it rise to it’s former glory.