Build and Progress of my RSM Nano Tank

[Reefmack]

mikellini - I guess the laughing gas would either 1) do nothing 2) kill the life in the tank or 3) have all the critters in the tank laughing. You try it first and let us know!

Laurent - thanks for not being upset. I wish you a safe and Merry Christmas, and/or Happy Holidays, and the best in 2008! Looking forward to your future updates!

[LaurentSeattle]

Month 6 - Week 26 - Day 177 - Saturday December 22nd - Around Noon

- Again did a lot Bryopsis hunting this morning: Not so much in the tank but mostly cutting those growing in the Green Star Polyps. I think I am getting closer to finally win the war against Pest Algae...

- Did the usual stuff... Glass, filters,...

I am leaving for the weekend and will return on Christmas Day. Therefore, I prepared the tank as I usually do:

- Made an additional 3 gallon water change.
- Removed all mechanical filters
- Adjusted the gate a bit lower
- Cleaned the skimmer box and the top of the skimmer
- Fed the fishes twice

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Wow! Now 600+ contributions on this thread and almost 30,000 visits!!!

Thanks all and Happy Holidays!

[DFL18]

Im on vacation so havent had much to do, just read through 25 pages of your thread. tank looks great, seems like you had to deal with a lot of nuisances like a lot of us do when we first started out, apparently everything has worked out well, looking forward to more progression and updates

[reefman13]

Any new pics?

[LaurentSeattle]

DFL: Thanks!

I think I could have avoided the massive initial algae blooms with better curing of my live rocks and using a phosphate remover much earlier during the cycle.

I also introduced my zoas too early and lost three colonies: two small ones were overwhelmed by pest algae and one lager colony died of zoa pox. I still have the feeling that I could have avoided that with optimal water quality.

ReefMan: I am currently away from my tank. Pictures will come after Christmas...

Happy holidays to all!

[LaurentSeattle]

Month 6 - Week 26 - Day 180 - Tuesday December 25th - Around 6pm

Back from the weekend: Everything in good order! All animals healthy and happy.

- First, fed the tank with cyclop-eeze,
- Topped off
- Restored mechanical filtration and gate level
- Glass cleaning
- Emptied and cleaned the skimmer collection cup. Not a lot in there. Surprising because there was no mechanical filtration operating during the extended weekend.

Moderate pest algae growth during my absence. Some Caulerpa is growing.

[LaurentSeattle]

Month 6 - Week 26 - Day 181 - Wednesday December 26th - Around 8pm

- Xenia is expanding fast: it has colonized two more rocks.

- Removed a stolon of Caulerpa: I do not want Caulerpa to grow in the Zoanthids!

- Cut some more bryopsis. Not a lot: These ones are now almost gone! What's left is a little of green hairy algae and a number of spots of Red Hairy Algae.

- And done the usual stuff: White pad, top-off, ....

I am happy tonight to be able to say that the victory against pest algae is now in sight and therefore I will post some pictures tomorrow night.

[martinphillip03]

Yeah! and congradulations

Marty

I am happy tonight to be able to say that the victory against pest algae is now in sight and therefore I will post some pictures tomorrow night. [/B][/QUOTE]

[LaurentSeattle]

Month 6 - Week 26 - Day 182 - Thursday December 27th - Around 9pm

- Cut some more bryopsis tonight... Just a five minutes hunt for the last pockets of resistance...

- Turned off the skimmer, the circulation pumps, cleaned the glass and let things settle for a while, and then took these shots:

The FTS:



And a detail on corals:



At some point a few months ago, the tank was looking like this:



The battle against pest algae can indeed be won. Maybe, I should post a recap' of what I did...

[Reefmack]

Amazing difference from what it once was! Good job Laurent - Patience & perseverence! Two things I have too little of at times!

[hsifnwolc]

The battle against pest algae can indeed be won. Maybe, I should post a recap' of what I did...

Please do.

[LaurentSeattle]

hsifnwolc:

Welcome and thanks for posting your first contribution to ReefCentral in my build thread...

I will do the recap' this weekend.

[LaurentSeattle]

Month 6 - Week 27 - Day 183 - Friday December 28th - Around 9pm

- Did my weekly water change one day early (this should not hurt, right?) bracing for a busy weekend.

- Postponed again the addition of new corals so that I will recover a bit from the XMas time shopping spree and maybe most importantly receive my copy of the E. Borneman's book about corals just ordered from Amazon.

- Lucy Lu, The Yellow Wrasse is developing new colors... I will try to snap a few close-ups tomorrow.

[SeaSerpant]

Wow everything you did was awesome. i guess you had some troubles but everyone helped you and you got through it. Your tank is awesome.

[LaurentSeattle]

- Phase I: The original mistake

I started the tank last July with premium "cured" live rocks from Live Aquaria. Nice rocks, with quite a lot of life on them. However, as a noob reefer, I did not cured them properly. The rocks were carrying a lot of pink sponge. I thought they were a great addition to the tank and let them in. I did not know at the time that a sponge that has been exposed to air is condemned to slowly die when placed back in the water.

Consequently, there was a massive die-off in the tank and both nitrites and nitrates were sky high - way beyond the scale of the tests! After a few weeks, I got a massive attack of green hairy algae, bryopsis, filamentous algae, cyano and dyno bacteria. All possible colors were there, with even some bubble algae here and there.

All life on the rocks was overwhelmed by the green algae. Nitrites were still very high and nitrates beyond the scale of my test: above 500 ppm.

I tried to introduce my CUC during this phase. A few snails died probabbly because of high nitrites and nitrates.

- Phase II: Bio-Filtration finally kicks-in

I was feeling badly fustrated and discouraged when ReefMack and GDEsquire came with the right advice: Remove as many rocks as possible and clean them for algae and dying stuff. This was a long and stinky job that I did in two steps, each time followed by a massive water change: Something like 10 gallons each time.

After this big effort, in less than a week, nitrites were zero and after a few more days, nitrates started to fall and quickly reached zero.

After removal, the green hairy algae never came back as bad as it did. The tank started to look decent with about 80% of algae gone... But I still had plenty of bryopsis, still some cyano and brown filamentous algae was starting to creep...

I went back reading my books to figure out the next steps...

- Phase III: Improved Equipment, Better Flow and Meticulous Mechanical Filtration Maintenance

I added a Koralia #1 and flow diverters. This was quite quickly the end of cyano and dyno.

Cleaning much more regularly the mechanical filters also helped and within two weeks, filamentous algae were gone.

- Phase IV: Phosphate Removal

I added a bag of PhosBan after the bag of active carbon. Phosphate levels went down from 0.05 to zero in less than a week. And this was the end of filamentous slimy algae!!! This also killed the one or two small cyano spots that were resisting... I also saw a slower growth of bryopsis.

Now that phosphates are stable at zero, I am using ChemiPure Elite that contains GFO and this seems to be enough to keep PO4 low. And that's only one bag to take care of...

- Phase V: Calcium supplementation

Pushing Calcium to higher levels was originally a concern related to low ALK. But anyway, rising Ca levels slowed down the growth of bryopsis and other algae...

This was also the beginning of Coralline and a little "tree" of Halimeda started to grow. This also was the beginning of Red Hairy Algae. Not ugly, but not very nice.

- Phase VI: Magnesium Supplementation

I carefully added Mg using Tech-M from Kent Marine. Some bryopsis died away, but Calcium reached extremely high levels, beyong the scale of my test, probably somewhere around 550, if extrapolating the test results makes sense. I lost one fish and some mushrooms corals were showing signs of distress.

I quickly made a number of water changes to bring water parameters to more normal levels but Ca still reads very high.

However, Bryopsis that died during the high Mg days never came back.

- Phase VII: Water Changes: Cut and Clean

When doing these quite frequent "emergency" water changes, I noticed that each time algae was growing slowly the day after. Therefore, I started to cut algae by hand and clean the glass just before each and every water change. Since there was less and less, this became possible to do that relatively quickly - no more than 5 - 10 minutes or so.

This was actually the final blow to all pest algae.

The tank is not today absolutely and completely free of pest algae but when I look back, there's quite of a difference.

Conclusion:

The step by step approach was a discovery process, a learning curve.

I could probably have avoided all this weeks of struggle by doing the right things right from the very beginning:

- Better curing of my live rocks,
- Adding more flow in the initial setup,
- Adding Phosphate control from the beginning,
- Better control of Water Chemistry: Pest Algae do not like high Ca and Mg
- More cutting and removal earlier in the cycle.

[JB23]

Laurent;
Wow, I really agree on the issues you mentioned. Your LFS is critical in my opinion, if you elect to go saltwater. Now at 7 weeks, my RSM in GREAT shape! No nitrates ever, no substrate(a debatable issue), only RO/DI water(I utilize the Coralife System).
After 6 weeks, introduced my first corals, & just today did a 5 gal water change-All is well. My LFS, great guys, have taken me thru the whole process, & I could not be more pleased. In my humble opinion, the real key is the Live Rock-it truley Must Be Fully Cured!
Stock skimmer is just fine, although, some MB that I feel I can live with. As soon as I can learn how to use Photobucket, I'll post some pics.
Continued Success! Jerry

[gigs]

Well done LaurentSeattle you have fantastic patients! Great to see how well your tank is doing now. Your coraline is really taking off at the back of your tank, any tips? It looks so much nicer than the algae.

Thanks for documenting your solutions to "Pest Algae" I hope I can get past the cycle without too much pain. Im about 6 weeks in now and seem to be ok...

[LaurentSeattle]

Month 6 - Week 27 - Day 185 - Sunday December 30th - Around 2pm

- I just said I would be patient before adding to the tank... but I could not resist...

Here is first a cleaner shrimp. My peppermint is doing great but only shows up at night. Hopefully the Lysmata will be more present. I was a bit worried about having two shrimps in the tank because of food competition, but the LFS guy sweared that was no problem in a 30g. The shrimp has already eaten some Cyclop-Eeze. Good!



Next, is this fluorescent green Candy Cane coral. The picture is really bad. The coral is much greener that this in reality.



Lets's finish with a wider look at the bottom right of the tank.



Too many reflections to get a FTS during the day. I will probably do that later tonight.

- Also did the usual routine: White pad, top-off, ...

[Reefmack]

The tanks looking great Laurent, as well as the new additions. You'll see the Lysmata much more often than the peppermint, especially at feeding time, and as soon as the moonlights come on he'll be all over the place. Hard to miss those long white antennae any time of day! I've had my Lysmata for months and no problems ever with my peppermints.

[SeaSerpant]

Looks great. what do you feed your corals?

[LaurentSeattle]

Thanks SeaSerpant!

I regularly feed with Cyclop-Eeze. Everyone in the tank does like it: Corals, fishes, the feather duster and the shrimps. Amazing product.

I also feed with mysis and Phytoplankton.

[gigs]

Originally posted by LaurentSeattle
Thanks SeaSerpant!

I regularly feed with Cyclop-Eeze. Everyone in the tank does like it: Corals, fishes, the feather duster and the shrimps. Amazing product.

I also feed with mysis and Phytoplankton.

Just a question LaurentSeattle...

By Cyclop-Eeze do you mean the powdered type? I use the powdered type but it only seems to sit on top of the water and the corals never get it. Do you have a method of feeding it? Here is a pic of my tin of Cyclop-Eeze for reference, maybe it is different than the type you use.

[LaurentSeattle]

Hi Gigs!

I have exactly the same product. When feeding Cyclop-Eeze or Phyto-Plankton, I temporarily stops the main pumps, leaving only the additional K1 on. I put one mini-cup of powder into a glass of tank water, shake a bit and pour into the tank in two or three steps.

Fishes gets the bigger pieces and the feather duster and the corals get some. Not much, but enough... They do not complain, but they look good so far.

After two/three minutes, I turn filtration back on.

Note that xenia, GSP, mushrooms and zoanthids do not need a lot of extra food. They get most of their needs from the light.

I hope this will work nicely enough for the Candy Canes.

[gigs]

thanks for the quick reply LaurentSeattle! Can you tell me what a mini-cup is? Would this be like a teaspoon or a pinch? I put one or two pinches in and it covers most of the surface of the RSM water. Thanks.

[LaurentSeattle]

Gigs:

Here is my "mini-cup", between the mouse and keyboard for scale...