The Return. 14G NPS/SPS Reef

[Ezreal]

I have some of those snails, when I had tanks with coral sand they like to bury

I always do sand in my tanks, this time the bed is thin to avoid issues but I love the aesthetic. I always employ at least 2 nassarius, they work hard and keep the sand bed clean and detritus free by turning it over with their digging. Love those guys. Them and turbos. Turbos are awesome and they can flip themselves.

 

[Ezreal]

It was time for some of my favourite easy softies to test the waters.

Clam hitchhiker still alive, snails alive, fish is good. Everything good nitrates still 0.

Really hope the xenia takes over those rocks. Love xenia so much

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Nice, thanks for sharing

 

[Rjukan]

I'm sorry but I'm going to be a bit of a downer here....

I dont see how your tank is cycled. You mentioned you used established water... unfortunately that doesnt help much. The bacteria you want would be on the rocks, and you said you used dry. That old fungia plate helps, but not much. You're testing for nitrate, but how about ammonia?

That last pic looks pretty cloudy, I would test for ammonia asap and slow down on adding anything for at least another week or 2. From what I see the tank was started on 1/15? It's only a few weeks old, way too soon for coral imo. Goodluck though, and I hope I'm wrong and it all goes smoothly for you.

 

[Ezreal]

I'm sorry but I'm going to be a bit of a downer here....

I dont see how your tank is cycled. You mentioned you used established water... unfortunately that doesnt help much. The bacteria you want would be on the rocks, and you said you used dry. That old fungia plate helps, but not much. You're testing for nitrate, but how about ammonia?

That last pic looks pretty cloudy, I would test for ammonia asap and slow down on adding anything for at least another week or 2. From what I see the tank was started on 1/15? It's only a few weeks old, way too soon for coral imo. Goodluck though, and I hope I'm wrong and it all goes smoothly for you.

The established water helped ease the cycle but I also added 10 pounds of live sand and daily dosing microbacter 7 live bacteria, plus the dead fungia plate is just a nice touch for some sump bacteria. The water does look cloudy for 2 reasons, 1 I have no filter socks so a lot of dust gets in along with the daily feedings of phyto and reef chilli. I have added some 150 micron mesh on the "sump" overflow and it's helped. However the majority of that cloudy look is actually just the blue light. The camera gets oversaturated, doesn't do it justice. It's mostly quite clear in person.

 

[Ezreal]

The ceramic media still has a lot of the silt from the live sand so when I clean it or move it around it lets that silt go too. I had a bubbler down there to tumble the chaeto and help push out detritus but I moved it to put in the micron mesh. When I get my filter socks it will help a good deal and I'll put it back but for now I just manually stir it up and then siphon from that chamber for water changes.

 

[Ezreal]

This is a picture of the sump area that is all water, you can barely tell it's there aside from the bubbles.

Nice and crystal clear. Also a terrible angle but I had to wedge my camera between a light to snap it.

This was taken with the light from my flash.

 

[Ezreal]

Here are some night time pics with just the flash.

You can see the clam open in that fungia.

 

[Rjukan]

Ok, I'm just saying that you didn't follow the standard route of cycling a tank, which is probably why you haven't seen any diatoms/algae yet.

I'm sure most will agree you should spike the ammonia to 2ppm to kick start the cycle. Having the bottled bacteria in there at that point helps establish a colony of bacteria to multiply and thrive off the ammonia. Your nitrites will rise as ammonia drops, then nitrates will rise as nitrites drop.

Again, I hope I'm wrong but I feel as though you didn't have a full cycle and will have ammonia spikes as a result. I'm not going to bother you with it further since it seems as though you are set in your ways, but do yourself a favor and test for ammonia over the next couple days.

 

[Ezreal]

Ok, I'm just saying that you didn't follow the standard route of cycling a tank, which is probably why you haven't seen any diatoms/algae yet.

I'm sure most will agree you should spike the ammonia to 2ppm to kick start the cycle. Having the bottled bacteria in there at that point helps establish a colony of bacteria to multiply and thrive off the ammonia. Your nitrites will rise as ammonia drops, then nitrates will rise as nitrites drop.

Again, I hope I'm wrong but I feel as though you didn't have a full cycle and will have ammonia spikes as a result. I'm not going to bother you with it further since it seems as though you are set in your ways, but do yourself a favor and test for ammonia over the next couple days.

I've done this method a few times, it works nicely with nanos. No idea of it would fly in anything over 40 gallons.
When I started it I had no sand just the dry rock peice of live rock and then I added chilli and phyto to break down and start building nitrite/nitrate then the sand and bacter was added after about 5 days.

I'll agree it's definitely rushing the cycle but it worked nicely for me in the past so I don't see too much issue with it. Couple that with weekly water changes and it should do fine.

The tank was started on 1/15/19 btw.

 

[Ezreal]

I had the brilliant Idea to get behind the display clean all the crushed ceramic get the detritus out of everything..... without a filter sock. RIP

 

[Ezreal]

Filter sock has been installed and did a nice job getting all the dust and detritus out along with some well placed water siphons.

The amount of pods is really quite insane. After shutting off the pumps the sump glass turns white with pods around the light. The display glass is spackled with pods, the black back of the display is also spackled white with pods.

It's pretty amazing to look at under a 60x jewellers loupe. So many different kinds of fauna.

The corals are doing well, these green zoa frags were in such horrible shape at the LFS that they gave em to me for free, some of the polyps fell off the rock just in the bag on the way home. Some still are pooping but the rest have recovered a bit and now are opening up. The xenias attached to the rocks super quickly too but now they look annoyed. Xenias are so weird.

Also I gave my hermit the option for a few shells someone had collected from the beach. Out of all of them it picked a conch shell and now it has become a hermit crab bulldozer. Feels like an emerald crab all over again.

 

[Ezreal]

I tested with flash and a filter so it should look less saturated now I hope.

 

[Ezreal]

Here's a closeup of the GSP.

Very lovely piece but takes a little bit to open up all the way after the light goes on.

 

[Ezreal]

I really want my GSP Xenia Island. If I can achieve that I will be happy as a pig in ****

 

[Ezreal]

Alright so small update. I finally hit the tank balance. Got my carbon setup nicely got my filter sock to stop restricting flow, it was choking the flow and I was getting a lot of microbubbles and scum was building on the surface. Also had a mini outbreak of cyano. Literally bloomed in one low flow spot the size of a dime then the snail ate it. Nitrate tested at a lovely neon tick yellow (which is zero on the API kit).

So the cycle is done. Originally I had a nice handful of chaeto in the sump but the chaeto started dying and disintegrating and getting detritus in spots of the back chambers so I pulled it apart a few weeks back and I was left with about a chunk the size of about 3 quarters. Kept the CFLs on an opposite cycle and now it has grown back to about the size of my hand. Also the tank is still PACKED with pods. Crazy amounts of pods.

The Xenia is still unhappy, it was happier when the cyano started up but now it is going back to being *****. I always suspected they liked dirtier water, the constant water changes keep the tank so clean though. The Zoas are happy but the GSP got annoyed, the snail got on it and munched on a spot and now the polyps wont come out in that area. I guess the rasping annoyed the skin. must have been detritus stuck there. But the rest is fine.

 

[Ezreal]

 

[Ezreal]

Just got done doing this week's water change. Nothing new to report really. The Xenia are very ticked and just about dying, Im going to try a slightly warmer temp in the tank and see how they like that if that doesnt work then I got nothing.

The chaeto is growing nicely which tells me Nitrates/Phosphates build up pretty darn fast in there. I threw away a handful on the 23rd and threw away another handful away today.

 

[Ezreal]

Big update:

A week or 2 ago the chaeto ball got very large and got stuck between the glass and the wall and the water level dropped from the filter sock clogging up and so it turned in to lime green and spewed snot in to my tank. I throw out 90% of the chaeto saving on tiny quarter sized ball that still was a dark shade and I'm happy to report it grew back in to a bigger ball and is still growing back! However the snot got everywhere and made a big mess but after adding a very hard working new crew of 10 Dwarf Ceriths 1 Florida Cerith 1 very adventurous Nerite (more on that later) and some ZigZag Periwinkles (they don't do much I just like them) and a few siphons we managed to get rid of the snot and made a clean tank. But tragedy did not end there, My lovely mat of Green Star Polyps started coming apart the flesh was whitening and ripping off in spots and I had no idea why the polyps refused to come out. My refractometer was off and I was reading the tank as 1.025-7 but actually it was 1.031. But the story has a happy ending as I did a fresh water top off and the GSP is open again and recovering wonderfully. It is encrusted on the rock and growing stronger every day. But this should be a word of caution always calibrate your refractometer!!!

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

It's coming together, comrade