Ryan’s 40G first reef

[rdriggett]

Paul the possum wrasse lives! He’s starting to eat frozen and I bumped up my pod subscription to 64oz/month.
Aptasia, Bryopsis, Dinos and bubble algae continue to take over. No ideas on how to knock them back.

 

[rdriggett]

I dipped half my rocks in tap them RO water to kill algae and aptasia. The other half is still not looking good. Today I moved my flow pumps from the back wall to the filter wall and bumped up flow to 60%. Im hoping for less detritus and a higher ph.

 

[rdriggett]

Welp, tap water soaks didnt kill a single aptasia on my rock work. How do they survive no salinity and chloramines LOL?
Some good news: my dinos have gone away and so has most of my hair algae after adding a handful of additional snails.
All I do is check alk once a month and change 20G out of 45G every 1-2 months. @Srt4eric was right, hands off does work better.

 

[Coral reefer]

Welp, tap water soaks didnt kill a single aptasia on my rock work. How do they survive no salinity and chloramines LOL?
Some good news: my dinos have gone away and so has most of my hair algae after adding a handful of additional snails.
All I do is check alk once a month and change 20G out of 45G every 1-2 months. @Srt4eric was right, hands off does work better.

Dry the rock out and they will die. I’d let it go a couple weeks tho

 

[RandyC]

Bleach it for an hour in 9:1 bleach:water solution, will be dead in under 10 minutes.

 

[rdriggett]

Thanks all for the suggestions! I will bleach and dry my rocks if todays purchase doesn't work.
I picked up a filefish for aptasia and an orange spot shrimp goby for my tiger pistol shrimp. Goby and shrimp instantly paired so I'm just waiting on my aptasia eating filefish to do as its name suggests. My main tank is now fully stocked other than possibly a replacement bi-color blenny.
The current list is:

Frozen frostbite clownfish (2x)	Pom pom crab
Orange spotted shrimp goby	Tiger pistrol shrimp
Aptasia eating filefish	Skunk cleaner shrimp
Royal gramma	Halloween urchin
Exquisite firefish	Fighting conch
Yellow banded possum wrasse	Various species of snails
Geometric perchlet

 

[rdriggett]

Everything is still coming along fairly well with my tank. My exquisite firefish that I've had for a while unfortunately passed and my aptasia eating filefish continues to not eat aptasia. I ordered an orange tail spot blenny and a helfrichi firefish from Ed and I think I'm going to re-home my filefish.
Other than an alk swing from running out of All for Reef without knowing, my pistol shrimp and urchin rearranging and burying corals, and some stinging, my corals continue to grow and look healthier than ever.
I swapped out my three Nero style jebaos for two oversized gyres. The sheets of water combined with my random flow return nozzle cranked up to 100% means that I'm getting much more distributed flow instead of blasts in a few areas.
I also upgraded my ATO container to 4 gallons so that I can make it through the workweek in the summer without needing to top off.
I've only been water changing every few months, I just check salinity and alkalinity to make sure my ATO and dosers are still dialed in.
I'm still dealing with a moderate amount of aptasia, a little bit of cyanobacteria and a little bit of bubble algae but overall the tank has stabilized a lot.

 

[RbThree]

If you’re having really bad aiptasia infestation, get a copperband or burgess butterfly. Unfortunately I can’t keep copperband from dying during quarantine but my burgess decimated all aiptasia within a month.