I started with dry rock in July 2021, so we’re at 9 months. Added coral within the first month. I have a skimmer, if it's on 24/7 I zero out my nutrients pretty quick - possibly it's oversized (Nyos 120.) So I turn it off for ~4-6 hours a day. I feed twice a day, pellets in the morning and a half frozen cube plus different pellets in the evening. 4 fish. It's really difficult to maintain non-zero nutrients. When I raised my nutes to 5-10nitrates and .1 phophates (via liquid dosing), my dinos were all but gone, but the GHA was the worst its ever been. There's also a non-trivial amount of turf/sand algae, and some cyano. I siphon out as much as I can during bi-weekly water changes (I also did a bout of no water changes for a month back in February when I really started fighting dinos.)
There are three main issues with the tank. Persistent and rampant hair algae, dinos (I've run a UV for nearly two months since finding dinos) and inability to grow acropora. I understand the acro troubles seem to be correlated with the maturity of the tank, and there may be nothing to be done about that other than waiting. As for hair algae and dinos - I'm constantly scrubbing the rocks or turkey basting dinos off them. I've tried removing the rocks and brushing them, but within a week or so the algae is back. The algae scrubbing is exhausting and the corals hate it because they inevitably get bumped, accidentally brushed or GHA stuck to them as it floats around the tank before getting sucked in the overflow (I sometimes also siphon out directly.)
Many corals are doing well in my system: LPS (torches, hammer, lobo, duncan, favia), softies (zoas and mushrooms), and SPS (two digitatas, pavona) and a bubble tip anemone. I have a somewhat sizable clean up crew: nassarius, astraea, nerites, conch, bristleworms, and bumblebee snails. Tangently related - any CUC I add, a large percentage will eventually perish. For example, on two separate occasions during the past two months I’ve added zebra turbo snails, smooth shell snails, two conchs, two emerald crabs - and all have died, some quickly and others taking ~1-2 weeks. 25 asterea snails were added and ~15 have survived. I run G.A.C in my overflow and have a small reactor on order (so I can utilize the sump for GAC instead of one side overflow.) My last ICP test about a month ago shows no metals or toxins.
Par at top of rocks is 250. I reduced my lighting significantly for about 2 months with a slow ramp back up to 250 par. Whites were at 20% for half the day and 0% for the rest. Whites today after the slow 2mo acclimation are now at 40% and 20% respectively,
I’m a bit at my wits end and curious what approach people would suggest taking.
A) Stay the course, continue the scrubbing, regular water changes, also try to maintain a detectable level of nutrients to ‘beat’ dinos.
B) A few over at R2R recommend a rip-clean where you take EVERYTHING out of the tank and scrub with hydrogen peroxide. Also clean/wash the sand.
C) reboot, move everything out of the tank to a temporary, buy some live rock, cycle, move it all back in.
Suggestions/questions/comments appreciated.
There are three main issues with the tank. Persistent and rampant hair algae, dinos (I've run a UV for nearly two months since finding dinos) and inability to grow acropora. I understand the acro troubles seem to be correlated with the maturity of the tank, and there may be nothing to be done about that other than waiting. As for hair algae and dinos - I'm constantly scrubbing the rocks or turkey basting dinos off them. I've tried removing the rocks and brushing them, but within a week or so the algae is back. The algae scrubbing is exhausting and the corals hate it because they inevitably get bumped, accidentally brushed or GHA stuck to them as it floats around the tank before getting sucked in the overflow (I sometimes also siphon out directly.)
Many corals are doing well in my system: LPS (torches, hammer, lobo, duncan, favia), softies (zoas and mushrooms), and SPS (two digitatas, pavona) and a bubble tip anemone. I have a somewhat sizable clean up crew: nassarius, astraea, nerites, conch, bristleworms, and bumblebee snails. Tangently related - any CUC I add, a large percentage will eventually perish. For example, on two separate occasions during the past two months I’ve added zebra turbo snails, smooth shell snails, two conchs, two emerald crabs - and all have died, some quickly and others taking ~1-2 weeks. 25 asterea snails were added and ~15 have survived. I run G.A.C in my overflow and have a small reactor on order (so I can utilize the sump for GAC instead of one side overflow.) My last ICP test about a month ago shows no metals or toxins.
Par at top of rocks is 250. I reduced my lighting significantly for about 2 months with a slow ramp back up to 250 par. Whites were at 20% for half the day and 0% for the rest. Whites today after the slow 2mo acclimation are now at 40% and 20% respectively,
I’m a bit at my wits end and curious what approach people would suggest taking.
A) Stay the course, continue the scrubbing, regular water changes, also try to maintain a detectable level of nutrients to ‘beat’ dinos.
B) A few over at R2R recommend a rip-clean where you take EVERYTHING out of the tank and scrub with hydrogen peroxide. Also clean/wash the sand.
C) reboot, move everything out of the tank to a temporary, buy some live rock, cycle, move it all back in.
Suggestions/questions/comments appreciated.
