GOFOR'S 52" x 36" x 26" CDA Peninsula & SoCal Tank Room Build

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NOT-SO-GREAT UPDATES

As for the not-so-great updates… I’ve lost a few fish. First up was my Firefish, who somehow found his way through my mesh top and I found laying on top of the euro-bracing of the tank (this happened before the Tangs were introduced). Then I lost my Yellow Longnose Butterflyfish to what I suspect was bullying by the Moorish Idol. I noticed it mostly at feeding, where the MI would essentially charge the YLB if they were going after the same food and would sometimes even nip at him. I didn’t think anything of it and thought it would settle down after a while (especially since I feed so much), but then I noticed what looked to be a slight discoloration (a darker spot) on the YLB, and his appetite being suppressed, then ultimately him passing. Finally, I lost my McCosker’s Flasher wrasse, which is a bit more of a mystery, although I think it may have been due largely to the addition of all of the tangs, because it seemed shortly after they were introduced, he simply went into hiding (along with my Royal Gramma) and did not want to come out. It’s odd since I don’t see the tangs ever interact with any of the other fish except for the Starry Blenny (as noted before). Some of these deaths could also be explained by my other update below, but I inspected the bodies very thoroughly and did not see ANY signs of disease/parasites before or after they passed.

The other not-so-great update… something may have gotten through my QT (or could have been introduced by the two fish I had someone else QT for me – not placing blame on anyone, just saying that it was either my oversight in QT protocol, or the one other source I received the fish from). I don’t know what the parasite/illness is yet, but I first noticed a few spots with no flashing or behavioral signs on my Moorish Idol. My first thought was that it very likely was lymphocystis since I know that my YLB had this during quarantine, and while it is not curable, it also is not deadly. Then, I figured that if anything was in the tank, it would show up on the tangs, so I figured they would be my “canaries” of the tank. After about a 10 days in the DT, I did notice a few spots on the Purple Tang’s body (none on the fins) but no behavioral signs, and then those slowly went away (again was thinking lympho here). Then the Powder Blue Tang had 2 or 3 spots on the body (none on the fins) with no behavioral signs, which also slowly went away. Having said that, since the spots have gone away, I have seen the Powder Blue Tang flash here and there. So, I decided, before I even entertain the thought of taking all of my fish out and placing them into quarantine, I would try dosing Hydrogen Peroxide for about 2 months to see if that would address whatever is in the tank. I’m about 2 weeks into this and still don’t see any spots on the fish, have seen some flashing here and there by the PBT but everyone is eating great and behaving. So, we’ll see what happens, but I wanted to give you guys the GOOD and the BAD of this build… and this is the first roadblock that I will have to navigate.
 

Mrmr

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NOT-SO-GREAT UPDATES

As for the not-so-great updates… I’ve lost a few fish. First up was my Firefish, who somehow found his way through my mesh top and I found laying on top of the euro-bracing of the tank (this happened before the Tangs were introduced). Then I lost my Yellow Longnose Butterflyfish to what I suspect was bullying by the Moorish Idol. I noticed it mostly at feeding, where the MI would essentially charge the YLB if they were going after the same food and would sometimes even nip at him. I didn’t think anything of it and thought it would settle down after a while (especially since I feed so much), but then I noticed what looked to be a slight discoloration (a darker spot) on the YLB, and his appetite being suppressed, then ultimately him passing. Finally, I lost my McCosker’s Flasher wrasse, which is a bit more of a mystery, although I think it may have been due largely to the addition of all of the tangs, because it seemed shortly after they were introduced, he simply went into hiding (along with my Royal Gramma) and did not want to come out. It’s odd since I don’t see the tangs ever interact with any of the other fish except for the Starry Blenny (as noted before). Some of these deaths could also be explained by my other update below, but I inspected the bodies very thoroughly and did not see ANY signs of disease/parasites before or after they passed.

The other not-so-great update… something may have gotten through my QT (or could have been introduced by the two fish I had someone else QT for me – not placing blame on anyone, just saying that it was either my oversight in QT protocol, or the one other source I received the fish from). I don’t know what the parasite/illness is yet, but I first noticed a few spots with no flashing or behavioral signs on my Moorish Idol. My first thought was that it very likely was lymphocystis since I know that my YLB had this during quarantine, and while it is not curable, it also is not deadly. Then, I figured that if anything was in the tank, it would show up on the tangs, so I figured they would be my “canaries” of the tank. After about a 10 days in the DT, I did notice a few spots on the Purple Tang’s body (none on the fins) but no behavioral signs, and then those slowly went away (again was thinking lympho here). Then the Powder Blue Tang had 2 or 3 spots on the body (none on the fins) with no behavioral signs, which also slowly went away. Having said that, since the spots have gone away, I have seen the Powder Blue Tang flash here and there. So, I decided, before I even entertain the thought of taking all of my fish out and placing them into quarantine, I would try dosing Hydrogen Peroxide for about 2 months to see if that would address whatever is in the tank. I’m about 2 weeks into this and still don’t see any spots on the fish, have seen some flashing here and there by the PBT but everyone is eating great and behaving. So, we’ll see what happens, but I wanted to give you guys the GOOD and the BAD of this build… and this is the first roadblock that I will have to navigate.
Sorry to hear about this! We’ve all been there. It’s always rough go in the early days of the tank. That said, a lot of accomplishments to outshine these dark spots. I used a “peroxide salt” product recently claiming to be a cure-all for marine ich and other afflictions likewise to avoid placing my tangs in QT. While I can’t rule out the fish’s own tenacity, it did correlate to a reduction in visible ich spots and now the fish has been in my tank for several months, fat and healthy (blue tang and white tail tang). I think it’s worth the preventive measures to attempt it as it doesn’t have a negative affect on other tank inhabitants inverts or corals. Been loving the updates and thanks for keeping it real!


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Sorry to hear about this! We’ve all been there. It’s always rough go in the early days of the tank. That said, a lot of accomplishments to outshine these dark spots. I used a “peroxide salt” product recently claiming to be a cure-all for marine ich and other afflictions likewise to avoid placing my tangs in QT. While I can’t rule out the fish’s own tenacity, it did correlate to a reduction in visible ich spots and now the fish has been in my tank for several months, fat and healthy (blue tang and white tail tang). I think it’s worth the preventive measures to attempt it as it doesn’t have a negative affect on other tank inhabitants inverts or corals. Been loving the updates and thanks for keeping it real!


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Thanks! I definitely try to look at the bright side of things (especially in this hobby). Not gonna lie though... I lost some sleep over several nights hoping that whatever was in the tank wasn't serious enough to take out all of my fish. Still holding my breath a bit, but hoping my Hydrogen Peroxide dosing addresses whatever it is. Do you know if the "Peroxide salt" is supposed to be any different/better than standard 3% Hydrogen Peroxide? If so, what is the dosing regimen?

Thanks again,

Chad
 

Smite

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I swear, my fish struggles have far outweighed any coral struggles! Mysterious/unknown deahts are the worst too, just left to wonder and observe. I lost an awesome lawnmower blenny not long ago, he was such a character and I witnessed him eating GHA and nipping at bryopsis so a real loss. I've since replaced him but this ones a dud, ha!

At what level are you dosing the 3% hydrogen peroxide? I'm having a heck of a time with GHA and have been tempted to try some h202 dosing so curious where your at for therapeutic levels for fish?

If one's easy to catch and you're real worried a freshwater dip will rule out flukes and only take 5 minutes.
 
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I swear, my fish struggles have far outweighed any coral struggles! Mysterious/unknown deahts are the worst too, just left to wonder and observe. I lost an awesome lawnmower blenny not long ago, he was such a character and I witnessed him eating GHA and nipping at bryopsis so a real loss. I've since replaced him but this ones a dud, ha!

At what level are you dosing the 3% hydrogen peroxide? I'm having a heck of a time with GHA and have been tempted to try some h202 dosing so curious where your at for therapeutic levels for fish?

If one's easy to catch and you're real worried a freshwater dip will rule out flukes and only take 5 minutes.
No joke... fish are a wild card sometimes!

I'm following a dosing regimen I found on the Humble.fish forum:

> Week 1: 1 ml/8 gallons every 12 hours
> Week 2: 1 ml/8 gallons every 8 hours
> Week 4: 1 ml/5 gallons every 12 hours (and then I'll keep it at this level for a full month)

I'm only in week 2 of this at the moment, so I'm guessing if it will work, it won't be until after a full life cycle of whatever is bothering the fish has completed (usually over a month). As for treating GHA, I've heard people have more luck spot/blasting the GHA with a syringe full of H2O2, but I've never tried this myself.
 

Mrmr

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It’s the Medic product from Polyp Lab. I can’t recall offhand but when I get home I’ll look it up.


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Smite

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No joke... fish are a wild card sometimes!

I'm following a dosing regimen I found on the Humble.fish forum:

> Week 1: 1 ml/8 gallons every 12 hours
> Week 2: 1 ml/8 gallons every 8 hours
> Week 4: 1 ml/5 gallons every 12 hours (and then I'll keep it at this level for a full month)

I'm only in week 2 of this at the moment, so I'm guessing if it will work, it won't be until after a full life cycle of whatever is bothering the fish has completed (usually over a month). As for treating GHA, I've heard people have more luck spot/blasting the GHA with a syringe full of H2O2, but I've never tried this myself.
Awesome thanks I’ll have to go check it out, didn’t know he had a forum. Are you adding strains of bacteria while dosing or is there no real effec?
 
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Awesome thanks I’ll have to go check it out, didn’t know he had a forum. Are you adding strains of bacteria while dosing or is there no real effec?
I haven't been (since I'm not doing it for algae), but I was thinking of starting to dose Microbacter7 soon.
 
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I swear, my fish struggles have far outweighed any coral struggles! Mysterious/unknown deahts are the worst too, just left to wonder and observe. I lost an awesome lawnmower blenny not long ago, he was such a character and I witnessed him eating GHA and nipping at bryopsis so a real loss. I've since replaced him but this ones a dud, ha!

At what level are you dosing the 3% hydrogen peroxide? I'm having a heck of a time with GHA and have been tempted to try some h202 dosing so curious where your at for therapeutic levels for fish?

If one's easy to catch and you're real worried a freshwater dip will rule out flukes and only take 5 minutes.
man, i had a Sea Hare that would have gone through your GHA. but i donated him to my local Petco a couple of weeks ago.
 
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that sucks man, i hope it's something benign or at least h2o2 works for you

the random deaths are the worst as it gets me super worried. did something sneak through? are they healthy? was it something else?

you could toss in some black mollies and see if anything pops up on them. but idk how much i buy into them as canaries since they seem absurdly hardy and/or easily defeated by small powerheads..
 
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that sucks man, i hope it's something benign or at least h2o2 works for you

the random deaths are the worst as it gets me super worried. did something sneak through? are they healthy? was it something else?

you could toss in some black mollies and see if anything pops up on them. but idk how much i buy into them as canaries since they seem absurdly hardy and/or easily defeated by small powerheads..
Yeah, I thought about the mollies, but I figured if anyone was going to break out in ich/velvet, it would be the Powder Blue Tang since they don't have much mucous/coating to protect them. Still holding out hope that this is just a small bump in the road, and that I can soon concentrate on filling the tank with corals.
 
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yeah that's probably the best canary in the coal mine

right after that post i wandered into my gym room to look at half of my fish and found my azure damsel dead. seemed fine recently, 1 month post copper, no signs on any fish. gonna do a gill scrape i guess and see what i can find

gotta love the hobby sometimes. i didn't even know damsels could die :unsure:
 
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yeah that's probably the best canary in the coal mine

right after that post i wandered into my gym room to look at half of my fish and found my azure damsel dead. seemed fine recently, 1 month post copper, no signs on any fish. gonna do a gill scrape i guess and see what i can find

gotta love the hobby sometimes. i didn't even know damsels could die :unsure:
That sucks! Sorry to hear that man. I'm always hesitant to talk about my fish being healthy/sick, because I feel like every time I do, something $h!tty happens.
 
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Sorry to hear, but I agree, fish always wild card, corals sometimes easier. If you don’t mind, which LFS do you usually buy your fish from?
I usually get my fish from either Tongs or Seaside Tropical Fish. There's not that many great places in South Orange County, so I trek a little up north to get most of my stuff.
 
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GETTING READY FOR CORALS PART II- ACCUMULATING CORALS IN QT

One good part of having a coral QT is that it is a pretty good excuse to have another aquarium. As I had mentioned before, I bought a Waterbox 20 Cube to act as my coral/invert QT, and so far, so good! My plan was to always go a little cheaper with the equipment on this tank, but to not skimp on quality. With that said, I’m running two AI Prime 16HDs, which are more than capable of providing the spread and PAR that I need for whatever type of coral I have in there. I also just recently upgraded my flow, from a really small Korallia pump (I already had one on hand), to the AI Nero 3.



Also, to keep up with the calcium/alkalinity uptake, I had been just doing 25% weekly water changes along with topping off with Kalkwasser. This has been working fine, but was always going to be temporary, since I don’t really like the inconsistency dosing kalk in your auto top-off brings, and when I start QT’ing the more difficult corals like Acros, I’ll need more stability. So, I bought a Kamoer X1 Bluetooth Micropump to separately dose my kalk.



And all the while, I’ve been picking up some corals (and a clam) here and there for the first wave of corals to be introduced to the DT.





Here is the list so far:
  • Blue Maxima Clam
  • JF Beach Bum Montipora
  • ASD Rainbow Phoenix Montipora?
  • Bubblegum Digitata
  • Space Invader Pectina
  • Firework Clove Polyps
  • Mint Green Duncan
  • Green/Purple/Orange Lobo
  • Koji Wada Pink Nepthea Leather
  • WWC AOI Zoas
  • Bowzer Zoas
  • Rainbow Lord
  • Red/Green Blasto
  • Red Blasto
  • Hammer Garden (orange tip, bi-color, green stem/purple tip)
  • Mia’s Pot of Gold Favia
  • Baby’s Breath Favia
  • Jawbreaker Mushroom
  • WWC Fruit Loop Goni
And the good news is that all of the corals are doing great. I just have a few Nassarius snails in the sand bed along with a few Trochus snails to eat any algae that pops up, and I feed the Nassarius snails some pellets here and there, and the corals get a couple of broadcast feedings a week with Phytoplankton and/or some Polyp Lab Reef Roids.

The only pests that have popped up so far is some bubble algae (which is isolated right now to the clam shell and I’ll likely treat the tank with Vibrant to eradicate), and a few aiptasia that I think I’ve eliminated with some F-Aiptasia.

Now onto the continued prepping of the DT...
 
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GETTING READY FOR CORALS PART III- NUTRIENTS & SUPPLEMENTATION IN THE DT

Hey Guys, it has definitely been a while, so I’ll catch you up on the progress of the tank.

The tank went through a decent ugly phase (despite my best efforts to avoid this). To help move things along though, I used Brightwell’s Microbacter Clean to rid the rocks and sand-bed of some sort of algae that was building up, and it just so happens that this stuff really worked. I unfortunately don’t have any “before-and-after” pictures, but went pretty aggressive with my approach for about one month, where I added the product daily at the recommended dosage, and then I would do one weekly manual water change (in addition to my automated water changes) where I would scrub the rock and siphon as much of the algae out as I could. I say the product works because, despite my manual removal of algae, I did notice that, not only did the algae’s growth slow after about a week to 10 days of use, but I also noticed that the algae came off the rocks MUCH easier as the weeks passed. From my understanding, the product is intended to make it easier to remove nuisance film/algae from surfaces, rather than be relied upon to remove those items by itself, so a little elbow grease is necessary for the product to work its magic (I also went through a few rolls of my fleece filter roller during this time). After about a month of dosing Microbacter Clean, I switched over to Microbacter 7 since I saw some cyano on the sandbed and spots of filamentous algae popping up. After two weeks of dosing Microbacter 7, the sandbed and rocks are all looking pretty good. In fact, I can actually see a ton of coralline algae spots growing, so it looks like the tank is finally ready for the first phase of corals. Here is where the tank stands now:






Major Element/Ion Supplementation:

Now that my nutrient levels are on par and I’m not growing a forest of algae, I’ve started the process of getting the major elements/ions in optimal ranges and testing this on a regular basis. My approach with supplementing the major elements (Ca/Alk/Mg) is somewhat gradual.

  • DAY 1: At first, with only coralline algae and elemental needs, I’ll just try to get away with dosing kalkwasser, which I have been dosing separately from my ATO using the Ecotech Versa continuous duty peristaltic pump. My limitation here is that I will only be dosing a maximum of 5 gallons of kalkwasser per week so that I only have to mix it up in a 5 gallon bucket and swap it out (easy maintenance). I might just get a bigger bucket or a Kalk reactor if I find I’m going through kalkwasser faster than this.
  • DAY 2: Eventually, I will add on dosing using a modified version of the Balling Method (dosing 2-part using the BRS Calcium/Alkalinity, and using the Tropic Marin Part C). The reason I’ve decided, at least initially, to go with the Balling Method is purely to maintain stability among the major ions as much as possible (since the Part C is dosing all of the elements EXCEPT for sodium chloride so as to achieve ionic balance and avoid instability in salinity), and to try and keep my pH up.
  • DAY 3: Ultimately, I may add on a Calcium Reactor for the long-term. Having said that, like I said before, I’m not sure I will ever completely move away from dosing kalkwasser due to its benefits in increasing pH, and I also really like the “tunability” of the 2-part dosing, where I can dose to my tanks needs (not sure if Alkalinity and Calcium will be consumed at different rates). I might even go with a 3-in-1 approach eventually, dosing Kalkwasser for the pH benefits, run a Ca Reactor to provide the main Ca/Alk supplementation, then use the 2-part dosing to account for any uneven consumption rates between Ca/Alk or elevate any one element.



And how will I make sure I am within these optimal ranges? Well, I do have a few test kits on hand, but I actually bit the bullet and took advantage of the Black Friday deals several months ago (plus a decent amount of store credit I had built up) and got the Neptune Trident. I’ll continue to test Alk/Ca/Mag on a somewhat regular basis (to make sure the Trident is doing its job), but my testing schedule just got A LOT easier.



pH Goals:

Something that I didn’t really concern myself with on my last tank was trying to keep my pH up. I don’t plan on taking any extreme measures at this point, but I’ll use this time to see where my pH is at with my Ca/Alk/Mg at optimal levels and with the lights on, and determine what, if anything, I need to do in order to get it as close to 8.3 as possible. More of a Day 2 item (or in my case, Day 202 or so).
 

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