Neo's 180g tank and build thread

[lazylivin]

Does anyone know what sparks a cyano outbreak?  I would like to fix that problem before I have to keep dumping chemicals into my tank to take care of it.

Yes, first it is good to understand what it is and what it feeds on. Cynao as you know is bacteria. There are litteraly billions upon billions of cultures of bacteria in your tank. Some good some bad. The good bacteria such as  Paracoccus or Pseudomonas feed on organics (nutrients) and break them down to nitrates. The bad such as cynao is photosynthetic and can thrive in ultra low nutrient systems. Becasue of this they can early on especially in new systems or carbon dosed system propagate extremly fast and before the good stuff gets hold. Or in established systems when the good bacteria is crashing or unable to keep up with the bioload. Once cynao is established it can reek havoc on other bacteria and due to it's toxicity make you and your coral/fish sick. Boyd Chemiclean is formulated to only target Cyanobacteria and will not affect the other bacteria strains in your tank like algacides or erythromycin does. If used in accordance with the instructions it is very effective. The quicker you get it out of there the better.

[Neogenesis]

Looks I need to order up some ChemiClean then.  Do you know if any place local near the swap carries it?  I know for sure I won't find it around this area.

[lazylivin]

Your local Jacks may have it or will order it. I don't know of any reef stores close to Urbana.
You can also get it from here Premimum here

[rosebud161616]

That nem is really awesome and massive! Now where are the clowns to host in it!

I agree with Lazy on this one. Chemiclean is awesome, but I have always seemed to need to do double dosing in the past making it a 6 day treatment. Each tank is different, so just a heads up that that may be in order. If you end up ordering it, I would order enough to be able to dose twice just in case.

I also like to dose quite a bit of bacteria after I'm done with the chemiclean to try to out compete the cyano and stop it from coming back. I'm a huge fan of Prodibio BioDigest. They package the bacteria in small glass vials with nitrogen gas so the bacteria have something to feed on while bottled. If you do end up ordering the chemiclean from premium, they also sell the biodigest. You should be an overnight ship from Premium with normal UPS ground shipping, also!

[Reefpete]

That nem is really awesome and massive! Now where are the clowns to host in it!

I agree with Lazy on this one. Chemiclean is awesome, but I have always seemed to need to do double dosing in the past making it a 6 day treatment. Each tank is different, so just a heads up that that may be in order. If you end up ordering it, I would order enough to be able to dose twice just in case.

I also like to dose quite a bit of bacteria after I'm done with the chemiclean to try to out compete the cyano and stop it from coming back. I'm a huge fan of Prodibio BioDigest. They package the bacteria in small glass vials with nitrogen gas so the bacteria have something to feed on while bottled. If you do end up ordering the chemiclean from premium, they also sell the biodigest. You should be an overnight ship from Premium with normal UPS ground shipping, also!

Great information! Thank you!

[Neogenesis]

I have a set of picassos in a grow out tank.....however a local LFS gave me some bad information on some chromis.....and I've got a pair of killers in the tank.  I'm having trouble catching them.....but as soon as they are out.......my clown get to play in the carpet. 

[slandis3]

Are you saying the chromis are killers? I have 3 in my tank (started with 10 ) and they are well behaved.

[HUNGER]

ya i never had a bad chromis

[Neogenesis]

Wow.....it's way too often that this hobby leaves me scratching my head.  So...the tank has been growing algae on the glass so rapidly it's not even funny and I've been trying to figure out what was causing my cyano outbreak.  I finally spend a hour last night and cleaned all the glass, which was horrible BTW. Tank was looking good again except for the cyano. I wake up this morning, glance at the tank and can't see any nasties on the sand.  I flipped on the lights and to my surprise very little to no cyano.  WTF?  I have no idea what could have caused this.  There have been a few changes in the last 2 days....but I can't see any of them being drastic enough to cause this.

#1 Furnace is finally up and running again.  Can't see this as the cause as I've been fighting this for a few weeks now, basically since the weather changed.  It started when I had a functioning furnace.
#2 Cleaned the skimmer, it's not producing any more than it ever has...so can't see anything here causing it.
#3 Cleaned the glass....yes it was nasty and I threw a lot of green stuff into the water, but can't see that being responsible for clearing my cyano.


Thoughts?

[HUNGER]

it could just have been a cycle

[Neogenesis]

possibly....but what would have triggered a cycle I don't know.   I've been holding back buying or changing things, unless it was from the nem moving and disturbing the sand bed.  Plus I never saw anything in the water chemistry that would point to a cycle.  It's left me scratching my head for sure.

[rosebud161616]

What's this tank's birthday? I know we went through something very similar. We're normally so carefully to keep the nutrients as close to 0 as possible when starting a tank build to avoid as many of the algae cycles as possible. Our tank build ended up being a bit more rushed than usual and we ended up with a pretty nasty cyano outbreak. We did many water changes and ruled just about everything out. Finally we went to the store and bought chemi-clean. We had yet to dose, woke up a couple of days later and the cyano was gone.

The only thing we can think of is that we started dosing purple up. I'm not normally a huge fan of the stuff but got a free bottle in a give a way at a local swap meet. So maybe our calc/alk params were slightly off, or maybe the increased coraline growth some how starved the cyano? Or maybe it was just a cycle that finished up.

It's weird how stuff like this happens in our hobby. Just be happy that it's gone!

[Neogenesis]

The tank is just under a year, however 1/2 of the rock is about 2 years old.

[rosebud161616]

That's pretty old for it to be just a cycle...

How about your RO filters? When was the last time you changed them? It's possible that the water quality in your area has changed with the changing seasons and maybe the RO filters are producing better water even with older filters ?

[Neogenesis]

changed first two filters, 10 micron and 5 micron a few months ago and the dual carbon blocks are still good.  TDS is showing between 0 and 2.

Last set of tests....if the hanna checkers are reliable, showed my alk being a little low and calcium a little high,  but regular tests showed no ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate.

[Ashlar]

Sometimes there are 'cycles' in your tank that aren't related to something you test.

Dinoflagellates, green algae, cyano, coraline.. all seem to come and go in the first year of a tank for a lot of people.. it's like a stop light.. green (algae), yellow (dino's), red (cyano)..

Sometimes it's waves of critters that swell and recede- bristleworms, collonista snails, vermetid snails, spirbotid worms, astrea stars, stomatella snails, ball anemones, scypha sponges..

Doesn't necessarily mean that you need to do something to fix it- a lot of times it's just a natural cycle of one thing taking advantage of conditions, and it resolves itself over time. As long as you're keeping up with maintenance- good water change size / frequency, carbon/gfo changing, enough flow in the tank, harvesting macroalgae (if you have a fuge).. it'll usually go away on its own.

There's a lot more that we don't know about this hobby than what we do.

[Neogenesis]

Very true.   I'm happy to see it leave and hopefully not return!!!!!  If things stay good I need to decide whether to keep the carpet or find it a new home.  I'm getting tired of dealing with it.

[Ashlar]

That's a tough one. I love anemones, but without building a separate 'island' for them to *hopefully* stay on, I won't do it again.

[Neogenesis]

Wow....it's been a long time since I've updated this thread....I think it's time to liven it back up.  A lot has happened since I last posted....I'll just shoot off the top of my head everything I can think of.

Added a second carpet nem.....6 months later removed both of them.  Decided they were not for me.  It was cool to watch the clowns live in them, but a dedicated tank would be needed next time.

Started acquiring coral to stock the tank....wife was complaining it looked empty. 

I always enjoy frag swaps......till then.  Some $#%^&@#^@%# seller though they would include bryopsis on their frags as a freebie.

That is the story of the next 6 months.  My battle to rid my system of bryopsis.

I was lucky and it was contained to my 2 frag tanks, but in the end lost a good deal of frags as they could not be save.  Also killed a handfull due to high Mag which didn't seem to work for me.

Ended up tearing down both frag tanks, sterilizing them, and rebooting them for a fresh start.  I am now luckily 100% bryopsis free!!!!

Then my sister decides to tear down her 180g system, and gave me whatever I wanted out of the system.  Frag tanks packed to the max, DT packed to the max, wow it got full fast.  I also took in her Niger Trigger, Blue Jaw trigger, Yellow Tang, Blue Hippo Tang, and Bullseye Mandarin.  That was added to my pair of Bellus Angels, Starry Blenny, Maldives Lyretail Anthias 1M 2 F. 

I of course saw a small bloom as my bio load shot through the roof, but things returned to normal quickly and kept in check for a month or so but then started downhill.

I fought this for a month or 2, couldn't figure out what the cause was.  I lost the Niger Trigger, Female Bellus and the 2 Female Anthias.  Trigger and Anthias just disappeared, and the Female Bellus jumped.  Water specs were perfect, couldn't find anything wrong.  I was desperate as the snotty stuff in my tank was smothering coral, diatoms were heavy, and cyano was setting in.  I tried chemi-clean, didn't help a thing, so I started looking further. Started running GFO....no help.  Argh.  Water of the RO/DI was reading about 7, which isn't perfect but I didn't expect to cause these types of issues.  Again out of desperation I changed all filters and DI to see what happens.  Amazingly things starting looking better in within 3 weeks nearly all the crud in my tank was gone.  It was all tied to my RO/DI system.  Now the tank is crystal clean...nothing growing on the rocks.

So that bring me to today.  I just fragged up a TON of stuff as the local LFS was looking for some nicer coral, and got a fair amount of store credit......which quickly burned a hole in my pocket.  So I brought home the following stock.

Purple Tang - Check!!!!
Sunburst Anthias - Check!!!!
Copperband which already eats mysis - Check!!!
Pink wall Hammer - Check!!!!
Funcky read and blue chalice - Check!!!
Hawaiian Palys - Check!!!!

Very soon I be fragging up most of my chalices and offering them up for sale.

As of tonight, I decided it was time to take action as I haven't bought the dosing pumps for my Reef Angel yet.  I wouldn't have the time to mod the code as I want it anyway.  So I made a quick and dirty 5 gallon dripper.  I've got some brightwell ALK 8.3 buffer I'm using to drip.  Starting off at 8 drips per minute to see what happens.  I really had no idea where to start as the instructions only had a recipe in 8 oz increments....and if I matched those I got some unreal numbers.  10 teaspoons in 4 gallons, 8 drips per minute, lets see what happens.

And now some pics:  which are being randomly picked

[Neogenesis]

and I now just realized how cruddy that FTS was.  I'll get a better one soon.

[Twizted1]

Looks good.

[chromiumlux]

Looks great Neo! I am down for a frag of that Mars Man chalice when you cut it.

[Neogenesis]

I will be cutting everything hopefully this week......if my schedule work out.  We are moving right from youth football into your hockey.  Never been down this path with the kids.....should be fun!!!  Your marked for one of those frags Andy.  I've got a handful of others as well.....most which came from you.  I need to get pics of all of them as I forget the names of a lot of them.

[Neogenesis]

A little bad news....the purple tang doesn't seem to be welcome in the tank.  He came up with 3 big nips out of his dorsal fin, so I fished him out last night after the lights went out.  He's now living comfortable in my 40g frag tank.  He's still healthy and eating....so he'll be just fine.

On another note, I had yet another frag fest tonight.  Created a little over 50 new frags, containing leptastria, montipora, and chalices.  They will be healed and ready for sale/trade soon.

[Twizted1]

Sorry to hear that he didn't fit in.