Update 7-14-24
Coral QT tank has had flatworms for a few weeks now; I've been religiously dipping the corals with potassium chloride every other day for the last week, but I'm still getting a few off every dipping. My suspicion is that these are the harmless red planaria making their way onto the coral. However, since I'm pretty sure a few coral had euphyllia eating flatworms at some point (given how irritated they were with flatworms on their flesh), I don't want to risk it. So today I bit the bullet and used Flatworm eXit. Given there were enough flatworms I could see them on the glass, I was very careful and did the following:
- Removed all snails from the tank, rinsed them in fresh saltwater, and put them into my display tank (since they'd been in the tank for the full QT period)
- Removed all the coral from the tank, dipped in potassium chloride, and placed them in a bucket of fresh saltwater as a holding tank
- Treated the tank with Flatworm eXit following manufacturer's instructions
- After 30 minutes and seeing flatworms floating around the tank, performed a ~90% water change
- Ran activated carbon for 30 minutes on the tank to clear out any traces of toxin
- Put the coral back in the tank
- Monitored closely for any signs of corals being pissed off
So far so good; I'll be treating the tank twice more (once Tuesday, once Thursday) before adding the corals to the DT.
Next steps/plans for the tank
The big one is I'll be swapping the tank over from Neptune Apex to CoralVue Hydros. I currently have an X4 running on the QT/frag tank and have really liked it, as well as trusting the components to be a bit more robust/water-resilient than Apex. My planned setup for the display will be:
- Monitoring: Hydros X4 (1x pH probe for tank, 1x pH probe for calcium reactor)
- Control: Hydros XP8 energy bar
- Testing: Hydros Maven
- Dosing: Hydros Sole
After a lot of thought, I've opted to go for the Maven over the X10. This was largely due to reduced maintenance and multi-parameter testing (though I admit both of these are hypotheticals), specifically:
- The X10 is based on pH and acid titration (similar to KH Guardian and KH Director), while the Maven will is based on colorimetric readings (similar to the Trident). pH & acid titration is cheaper in the long run and you can DIY your reagent; however, a lot of the reports I read indicated bubbles in the dosing lines could throw off readings. While this isn't a huge deal (I think it was usually in the range of 0.3-0.4 dKH flux), minimal maintenance is absolutely a priority to me.
- Calcium testing on the Maven; since I run a calcium reactor, calcium creeps up over time and I'd like to automatically keep an eye on it, rather than testing manually.
Additionally, I'm opting to swap out my FX-STP2 when the Sole launches because 1) easier/more seamless wireless control, and 2) it can be wall-mounted, while the FX-STP2 is built like a tank (meant as a compliment) but is a giant hunk of metal that's awkward to position. Given the layout and configuration of my tank, I think this will make things a lot tidier and help with cord management and aesthetics too.