Tank Journal: What I have learned in the past 6 months
Wouldn't have progressed this far without the guidance and generosity from the BAR. thanks!
Viewpoint
· Novice, 6 months of learning and experience is very limited. My viewpoint should be taken as such, but this is what currently works for me.
Most important thing that I have learned
· Read this from an article: “Your reef tank needs to revolve around your lifestyle.”
Time consuming activities – Do I really have the time?
The time that you spend on your tank needs to be calculated. After all, it does need to fit your schedule. If you are finding that the time you spend on your tank is too much, you probably would need to adjust.
· Clean the sand bed, almost every day, 5-10 minutes. I usually skip days but I like to keep to the routing regularly.
· Cleaning the glass – at least once a week, possibly 2x a week or when guests stop by. 15 minutes
· Water testing - Once every two weeks (Alkalinity, Calcium, Salinity) 15 minutes
· Water change and sump cleaning – Once a month. (30 gallons) and scrub of the sump. 3 hours.
· Fish Feeding. Auto feeder 4X a day, dried pellets. Frozen Food and Reef Roids, 3x a week. 15 minutes.
The list above is my routine. This doesn’t include if something goes wrong. Overall, I think it’s very manageable for my lifestyle and the reason why I’m still enjoying my “piece of the ocean”.
Pests
I really believe that pests are unavoidable, unless you have a quarantine system for coral and fish. I selectively chose online vendors where people have stated “I never had any pests with these vendors”. Even though the pest may not be visible when you receive them, there may be eggs or seeds that would either hatch or spawn weeks later. I personally choose to not have a quarantine system, since it would affect my lifestyle. So I do take the risk of introducing pests.
· Aiptasia: In total, I had about 5 of them spread all around the tank. Mostly hidden in zoa colonies or the base of a coral frag.
· Solution: I would use Aipastasia-X on when first noticed. I don’t let them linger.
· Vermetid snails: In total, I had about 5 of these as well. Mostly hidden on the rockwork of colonies or at a base of a frag.
· When I stir up my sand bed, the web comes out from these. As soon as I see the web, I use a blade to remove them.
· Asternina Starfish: I have seen two of these. Once crawling on the back wall, and one on the rock work.
· I manually remove these with my hands as soon as I see them.
· Red Planaria: When I first saw these flatworms in my sump, I thought they were snail eggs. It seems like they multiply pretty fast.
· Solution – Flatworm Exit. This was a long process and a bit on the expensive side. I’ve watched countless videos and read quite a bit on how to eradicate them. Below will be a solution that worked for me after watching and reading all this stuff.
1. Depending on your size tank will determine how many boxes you would need. Each box will cost about $28. For myself, the treatment took 2.5 boxes.
2. Remove all the visible flatworms, since they will release toxins once killed by the Flatworm Exit.
3. You can follow the instructions in the manual next on the quantity and time.
4. Once the flatworms are dead, you can add the carbon to remove the toxins.
5. I also did a 40% water change at this point.
6. This was the 1st dosage.
7. After a few days, I was surprised the flatworms were back. In less quantity, but I knew they would multiply again.
8. Started 2nd dosage, same thing. This time I let the flatworm exit stay longer in the tank (2hrs) before adding carbon. I also did a double dose (2x the amount suggested for a 100 gallon tank). This time I did not do a water change.
9. After a few days, I notice a few of them again!!!
10. 3rd dosage, using double the quantity. I left the Flatworm Exit in the tank for 24 hrs. At this point I ran out of carbon, so couldn’t make it to the store in time to purchase more. I also knew that the carbon was suppose to remove the toxins from the flatworm once killed, and I had very few left.
11. 4th dosage, same thing as above but this time I had carbon ready. Allowed the Flatworm Exit in the tank for a few hours before adding carbon.
12. The reason why I dosed many times is that I read Red Planaria have eggs and the eggs are not affected by the medicine. I had no idea of what the hatch cycle is, so I would monitor the sump for Red Planaria everyday and dosed once I saw them.
13. It’s been about 7 days since I saw a Rd Planaria flatworm. I’m hoping they have been eradicated. Unless the egg spawn cycle is more than 7 days, I think they are gone. (crossing fingers).
I would like to say that my tank is Pest Free as of today. I have not seen Red Planaria in 7 days, and have not seen any other mentioned pests for a couple of months. As a routine, I always dip frags in Coral Rx and remove them from their frag plugs if possible.
Algae
It’s ugly, I don’t like it. I initially always thought that a well maintained tank will have zero algae, I no longer believe this is true. Every tank will have Algae, you are just trying to avoid the nuisance variety. Every tank that you look at, even the most amazing ones; if you look closely there will be signs of it. Listed below are Algae that I dealt with.
· Diatoms – this ugly brown Algae started when I first started cycling my tank. Diatoms need silicates to survive, if there are no silicates then Diatoms would eventually die off. Silicates are introduced by the sand, rocks, or possibly saltwater that you add. For my tank, it took about 4 weeks for Diatoms to be removed. I also experienced a second Diatom bloom, when I added a huge piece of Tonga Branch which was equal to 25% of my rock work.
o Solution – If you are experiencing Diatoms in your tank, you are introducing it into your tank.
· Cyano – ugly red algae that looks like a blanket of goo over your rock work, glass , or sand bed. I’ve never experienced Cyano during my cycle or even afterwards. One day I noticed they were there and started to wonder why and how. Whenever I experience something new that I don’t understand, I would try to take a few steps back and see what I did.
o Solution – The last thing I did to my tank before the Cyano outbreak was the introduction of Acropower. I used the recommended dosage of 21 ML a week for a 100 gallon tank. I reduced the Acropower to 7 ML a week, and the Cyano disappeared. My thinking was this, if alkalinity and calcium consumption was based on the coral usage in the tank, shouldn’t Acropower be as well? Since most of my corals were frags, it wouldn’t consume as much Acropower hence leaving an abundance in the tank.
· CUC – Algae started growing all over my rocks when my CUC became dinner for my Harlequin Tusk. The past week, I added some snails back into the tank after removing the HT. After a few days, the rocks are pretty much clean of algae which I’m not sure is a good thing.
· Algae vs. Chaeto – For my tank, there seems to be direct correlation between Algae in the Display tank and Chaeto in the sump. When I had an algae outbreak in the display tank, the Chaeto doesn’t do well. When the Chaeto is growing super well, doubling in size every other week, there seems to be less algae in the display. There seems to be a balance between the two, and it is still something that I’m trying to observe and learn.
I haven’t experienced the other crazy types of nuisance algae yet, and I’m hoping that it never happens. If you are getting nuisance algae, you are somehow introducing it or the perfect conditions have changed. Changing light spectrum, intensity and photo period are common causes from my experience.
Reef Tank After 6 months
I would say my “piece of the ocean” is in a happy place. Corals and coralline Algae are growing, algae is at a very minimum, fishes are happy, and maintenance time has been very low.
Next things I would like to talk about, stay tuned J
· Stability
· Corals
· Aquascape
· Flow
