Reef nutrition

Hornberson Reef - DSA 90 gallon mixed reef

Awesome pictures winfield. Your tank is looking very full :)

Kinda funny how fast the sump cabinet gets full of wires dangling all over the place, jars of calcium and all sorts equipment.

My next tank will have a huge sump cabinet!
 
Acans from last night:

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Well, I'm happy to say our tank survived 16 days of vacation time without major problems. Big thanks to @Nav for some help doing maintenance in the middle of that time. The dosing pumps seem to have kept the alk/calc level without any intervention and the ATO kept the water stable.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of nuisance algae and cyano growth over this time - I believe due to over feeding by our fish sitter and lack of water changes, combined with the skimmer overflowing sometime during week 2. There is bubble algae popping up all over the tank as well :-/

I'll be doing water changes this week to export some nutrients, bringing feeding levels back to normal, and adding some cleanup crew. I picked up an emerald crab and 10 more black foot trochus snails from CA Reef Co last night. I was avoiding having any crabs in our display tank, but nothing else eats the bubble algae.
 
I've been fighting back some cyano and nuisance algae that sprung up while we were gone on vacation. We added 10x black foot trochus snails a week ago and I just got some more snails from Reef Cleaners on Thursday:

  • 30x dwarf ceriths
  • 12x Florida ceriths
  • 10x Nassarius
  • 10x Nerites
This should do well to fill in our cleanup crew from the initial snails we added when we set the tank up a year ago.
 
Any turbos? I have to say with a nano I was initially VERY reluctant to get one but Ive personally found them to be the best algae eaters.
 
Starfish friends, from earlier this weekend:

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We're hosting an orange Linkia for @jonmos75 and recently added a small red fromia. In the washed out blues from the Kessil's they look the same, but the linkia is more orange and the fromia is a bit darker red, with black tips at the end of the arms and some black details.
 
Nav said:
What are you feeding the stars?
Click to expand...

There doesn't seem to be good documentation on the exact diet of the Linkia or Fromia, but both appear to be scavenging omnivores feeding off the surface of the glass and rockwork. Over the long term, it might be tough to keep two of them, but they seem to be doing well together for now. The new red fromia is only about 1-2", while Jon's orange Linkia is about 5". They are both quite active for slow moving invertebrates, moving all over the tank.

The Fromia was in an LFS tank with salinity that was unusually low at 1.022, so I did a slower drip acclimation than usual for almost two hours to get up to 1.025 in our tank.

If folks have experience target feeding them, I'd be open to that but haven't seen any conclusive advice on it. They have a reputation for being somewhat difficult to keep long term, but I suspect much of this is due to shipping stress and acclimation shock. They are as sensitive or more sensitive to salinity changes and water parameters as sea urchins.
 
Big thanks to @Enderturtle and everyone who made the frag swap happen today. I brought 8 frags from our tank and took 4 home:
It's a logistical challenge to drip acclimate corals who all have different water params, but we got through them all before dinner and had them dipped and in the tank. Thanks guys, looking forward to growing these out.

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wpeterson said:
There doesn't seem to be good documentation on the exact diet of the Linkia or Fromia, but both appear to be scavenging omnivores feeding off the surface of the glass and rockwork. Over the long term, it might be tough to keep two of them, but they seem to be doing well together for now. The new red fromia is only about 1-2", while Jon's orange Linkia is about 5". They are both quite active for slow moving invertebrates, moving all over the tank.

The Fromia was in an LFS tank with salinity that was unusually low at 1.022, so I did a slower drip acclimation than usual for almost two hours to get up to 1.025 in our tank.

If folks have experience target feeding them, I'd be open to that but haven't seen any conclusive advice on it. They have a reputation for being somewhat difficult to keep long term, but I suspect much of this is due to shipping stress and acclimation shock. They are as sensitive or more sensitive to salinity changes and water parameters as sea urchins.
Click to expand...
I had a blue linkia in my old 140g. I never did know what to feed it. It did well for a long while, but an ozone overdose killed off a lot of my microfauna and the linkia slowly died off after that. So I would imagine if you've got a lot of bio diversity in your tank it should perhaps do well.

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This has been one of those weekends that reminds you why this hobby is so difficult - always something going wrong and surprises in the tank unless you're constantly doing preventative maintenance. Our UV Filter's ballast exploded due to salt water leakage.

I upgraded our Jebao DC-9000 return pump to the brand new DCS-12000 series of pumps, which are supposed to be quieter and more efficient. I'm running dual 3/4" return lines through a single 1" return line, which creates more head pressure. I'm hoping this pump will be quieter while providing more flow.

I decided to replace the bulb in my UV filter (Coralife 36w TurboTwist). We've had a lot more cyano and bubble algae since we left the tank on it's own for 16 days in August. There was a slow leak in the quartz sleeve of the UV filter, which had allowed saltwater to build up - the salt creep blocked most of the UV and when I moved it, it sloshed into the ballast fixture and shorted it out - blowing a hole in the fixture. No one wants to smell electrical smoke when you open up a filter. So the UV was dieing and is now totally dead. Replacement ballast is $100, I paid $100 for the whole filter. New one is $160. Tough call. I found that Jebao makes a 36w UV selling for $75, so I'll give that a try. If anyone wants some free Coralife 36w UV bulbs, let me know.

The tank is doing well other than encroaching cyano now that the UV is totally dead. I gave in and dosed Boyd Chemiclean today, which I've been reluctant to do - having read some good and some bad experiences from folks with mixed reefs. I dosed 60 gallons worth of product, guessing our actual water volume is about 80 gal in display/sump (120 - rocks/coral/etc) and rounding down for safety. I turned off the carbon/GFO reactors and the UV is toast. I removed the skimmer cup and opened the wastegate fully, but left it on - hoping to aerate the water as much as possible.

Everything looks good so far, other than some microbubbles from the skimmer going crazy. It's overflowing even on the lowest setting, but just over the neck without a collection cup. Everything in the tank seems OK so far, even the acros have polyp extension. I'm cautiously optimistic. Instructions say to let it go for 48 hours, but I may only do 24 and do a water change tomorrow.

I currently run two MP10s from my original two nano tanks in this tank. I bought an MP40 for cheap a while back and I'm planning to get a second one and replace the two MP10s with two MP40s - since I run the MP10s at full power and the glass is thicker than recommended for them. Hoping to run the MP40s at 50% or less and get more out of them.
 
Too bad about the UV dieing on you like that. Goes to show how hazardous saltwater and electronics can be. Good thing it popped when you were nearby. Nothing would be worse than having it fail while you are out, tripping a breaker or worse starting a fire.

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Chemiclean treatment has gone well. I dosed less than full amount, kept my skimmer running with no collection cup (which foamed 10x normal) and turned off the filtration for 24 hours. I turned the carbon/GFO reactors back on after 24 hours (yesterday). Today I did a 25 gallon water change.

No obvious signs of stress to corals, inverts, or fish. I manually removed a lot of cyano and the rest of it seems 90% gone but not totally gone.

The skimmer was still over-foaming even with the waste gate 100% open after the water change. I added an air restrictor to the air intake and got it skimming at a reasonable level. Planning to baby sit it for the next few days and skim wet.

I think root causes for cyano were 1) overfeeding during vacation 2) too much light on our refugium. We've cut our feeding way back since we got home. I cut the photo period back to 8 hours on the refugium and may switch out some refugium LEDs in place of our high output CFL grow light. Unfortunately, anything that grows chaeto like mad tends to grow nuisance algae and cyano as well.
 
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