Step-by-step account of my first reef (with lots of pics) - Page 15

melev · #**351** 03/19/2006, 06:51 PM

I doubt it. You could try and let me know, but I have a feeling it won't make much difference due to the plumbing and injector in the Remora.

Dudester · #**352** 03/23/2006, 09:56 PM

Thanks, Marc, I forgot about the importance of the injector. I might try it anyway. Since the Remora works better with a higher flow powerhead, and your modification increases flow, it might just work!

bad news
Well shoot! It seems like every time I leave town, something bad happens. The day after I left, I got a call from my wife. Dorothy (my sixline wrasse) was nowhere to be found, not even after she fed the tank. This is highly unusual, as the fish has a voracious appetite. She looked throughout the tank with a flashlight, and even in the overflow box and sump, and there was no sign of her. I got home yesterday and, indeed, there is no trace of her. I presume that she died and was consumed by my hungry invertebrates, as they are being offered much less food in my attempts to control bryopsis. I am really bummed, as this was a great fish to watch ... always swimming very actively throughout every nook and cranny of my tank. I will miss this fish a great deal and will definitely replace it with another sixline wrasse. But once again, I have a dead fish without an explanation. The last time I saw her she appeared very healthy and had no lesions. I don't think she starved to death, as there has always been a surplus of flatworms to eat if she so chose. All other tank inhabitants are healthy.

good news
My new corals have assumed some coloration over the sites of previous STN, and they've just begun to lay down a small base. Their polyps are more extended than ever. I think they've adjusted well and are happy in their new home.

Bax · #**353** 03/24/2006, 09:14 AM

Good news about the corals ... sorry about your wrasse.

Do you think it carpet surfed? ... Check the nooks and cranies outside the tank too.

Dudester · #**354** 03/24/2006, 01:12 PM

Definitely didn't carpet surf. Impossible, since my floor is all tile

. Thanks, you guys are great. I'm here all week. (how do you spell "badump bump"). But seriously though, no signs of her on the floor behind or beneath the cabinet. She's a goner for sure. I think I'll go ahead and get another one along with a lawnmower blenny. It's OK to place them both in the same QT at the same time, and add them to my tank simultaneously, right?

The chaeto in my refugium really likes my new light. The fuge is almost completely full now. I'm a little unclear about pruning chaeto and the benefits of doing so. As I understand it, the chaeto in our fuge serves many functions, one of which is to consume nutrients so that nuissance alge becomes malnourished, so to speak. For that reason, I would assume that we would want to keep our refugia literally packed with as much chaeto as possible. More chaeto = more consumption of nutrients. On the other hand, is it possible that once the refugium is full, the chaeto becomes "lazy" and comparatively inactive metabolically? When we remove some of the chaeto, does the remaining portion become stimulated metabolically to proliferate and, therefore, the smaller quantity of macro actually consumes more nutrients than if it were packed in?

melev · #**355** 03/24/2006, 01:37 PM

Yes, that is correct - to both questions.

When you prune the cheato, tug it apart slightly as this too will encourage new growth.

bcoons · #**356** 03/24/2006, 07:49 PM

Sorry to hear about your wrasse. I think I actually saw that fish at AA just before you bought it. I really hate it when they just vanish like that. It's almost as bad as when they just die for NAR. I must say my tank's survivability rate for fish is not too good.

And,...... I want to let you know that you (and Marc) were both absolutely right about my pH varying from day to night. Now that I have the pH probe with the RK2 I've been watching it closely. When I had the 'fuge light on the day cycle pH was about 8.45 at main lights out in the evening and 8.10 in the morning. I now have the 'fuge light on at night, and pH is pretty consistent at about 8.35 at night and 8.17 in the morning. I could never see those differences in the color using the chemical pH test. So, I'm leaving the 'fuge light on at night and dosing my B-Ionic in the morning. The dosing now has my calcium up to 380ppm at last test, so I think you've gotten me on the right track.

On the cheato, I've had to split mine in the 'fuge and throw the half away about four times now. The stuff is growing very fast under the little Coralife 18W PC light fixture. It has been filling the little AC 500 'fuge every 3 weeks or so. And I guess it must be doing its job. I used to read 10-20 ppm on nitrates before I got the 'fuge set up. My last two nitrate tests have been zero nitrates. I love it when something works as predicted.

OK, here is my question of the day to you reef gurus. There were lot's of neat critters and things on the rock that I got with the mushroom corals at AA. Snails, feather dusters, some different kinds of algae (that the hermit crabs like) and some little balloon like things. I've got a pic of them, so I'll see if I can link to it on my son's server. (It's too high a res pic to fit in my RC gallery.) What are the little balloon like things at the arrows?

Don't tell me that they're something bad!

Bruce

melev · #**357** 03/24/2006, 08:46 PM

It is a type of bi-valve, called a Sea Squirt I believe. Steve Tyree did a presentation on them about 4 years ago. They are filter feeders, and nice to have around.

bcoons · #**358** 03/24/2006, 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by melev
It is a type of bi-valve, called a Sea Squirt I believe. Steve Tyree did a presentation on them about 4 years ago. They are filter feeders, and nice to have around.

Whew!

I was all steeled to find out they were some horrible pest that would wipe out my tank. That's the good thing about being a pessimist. When something normal happens, it's really good!

Dudester · #**359** 03/26/2006, 01:15 AM

melev - Thanks, I'll get rid of half of my chaeto tomorrow and pull the rest apart. I'd give my "throw away" macro to someone, but I'd hate to give them flatworms.

Bruce - Cool pic, and glad they're not deleterious to your up and coming reef! Of course I'm gonna need to get some of those shrooms from you

.

During my 3rd consecutive hour of tearing out bryopsis today, I got to thinking

... if pruning chaeto results in it's increased growth response, is this then also true of bryopsis? Have I been spending hour after hour, day after day, week after week (I know, you get the idea) ripping this crap out of my tank, only to be adding fuel to the fire this whole time? As mentioned, every time I pull it out, a little is released into the tank and I get a new outcropping somewhere else. What began as a 20 minute exercise has evolved into a half-day event

. Someone please tell me I'm doing the right thing!

melev · #**360** 03/26/2006, 02:23 AM

Plucking it out should be done so as not to release any into the system. Rinse your fingers in a bowl of water after every pinch. Use a turkey baster to blast the bryopsis patches so that detritus is flushed out, as that is the fuel that makes that stuff grow. It's a very difficult algae to get rid of, but it can be done. I did it last year.

melev · #**361** 03/26/2006, 02:32 AM

You might consider adding some Lettuce Nudibranchs to your tank to eat bryopsis. I did that.

Dudester · #**362** 03/26/2006, 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by melev
Plucking it out should be done so as not to release any into the system. Rinse your fingers in a bowl of water after every pinch.

That's exactly what I do I learned that from your website ) but try as I may, some pieces still fall off of my fingers and float away as I tear it off of the rocks. I will persist and am sure that one day this will end.

OK John, please add AzNO3 and lettuce nudi's to my wish list.

Dudester · #**363** 03/27/2006, 12:14 PM

Yesterday I again treated with FWE. I administered 3x the recommended dose and allowed it to dwell in the system for 45 minutes before replacing the (new) carbon. Of course I first siphoned out all of the flatworms that I could see, but there's no way to get them all. During the treatment I saw several of them fall off of the glass and become swept into the current. These worms were dead, I assumed, since they normally can hold onto the glass quite tenaceously. Frustratingly I found several living worms on the glass last night. I have come to the conclusion that a subpopulation of my worms are resistant to FWE. I have decided to perform several consecutive FWE treatments at 4-5 day intervals, and to treat with Praziquantel as well (in between FWE treatments). I am going to approach this problem the way therapy is directed at human pathogenic bacteria that develop antibiotic resistance and use multi-drug therapy (like the way tuberculosis is treated). I considered using the FWE and Praziquantel concurrently, but John talked me out of this since we don't know if this combination will cause a chemical reaction that might wipe out my entire tank (like when I added TurboCalcium with baking soda).

Regarding my other plague (bryopsis), I had an interesting thought. As you may recall, I keep a filter sponge in my sump so that I have some biological filtration at the ready in the event that I need to set up a hospital tank quickly, or for when I'm ready to get my QT up and running. During my water change yesterday, I pulled that sponge out and realized that it's been in my sump for months, and I've never cleaned it out. When I rang it out in the sink, the drainage from it was black. That sucker was just packed with detritus! I wonder if this has been adding nutrients to my tank, which may have been feeding the bryopsis? At any rate, I threw the sponge away, and I'll place a new one in my sump. I'll be sure to clean the sponge out every time I do a water change, like I do to the large blue sponge that sits in my sump beneath the spray bar.

this one

I spoke with John and asked him to order me some lettuce nudibranchs. I also pruned back my chaetomorpha yesterday (removed about 1/2) and I hope that this makes a difference.

My SPS are doing well. They're encrusting and coloring up pretty well. The same cannot be said for my LPS and softies. My (previously) beautiful green ricordeas have become quite pale, and my blastos are beginning to die off. My small frogspawn has retracted substantially. These changes have come about since I decreased my feedings (to combat bryopsis). I can't bear to watch them do poorly and I'm going to have to increase my feedings a little. Hopefully the lettuce nudis will have a strong appetite for bryopsis and I'll be able to return to the liberal spot-feeding that I was doing in the past.

Dudester · #**364** 03/28/2006, 10:05 AM

I ran a full battery of tests last night.

temp 80.1
salinity 1.027
pH (monitor) 8.34
pH (Salifert) ~8.3
Ca 305
alk 8.45 dKH
nit 0
phos 0
NH3 0

I added TurboCalcium and again added baking soda to increase my alkalinity. I'm having a very hard time keeping my alkalinity up despite dosing B-Ionic at 1 ml/gallon/day (45 ml daily). I will probably re-add kalk to my topoff, but I'm concerned that my pH will get too high. This morning my monitor read 8.20, so the range is currently between 8.2 and around 8.35. If I add kalk it will likely increase. I'm not sure which is worse, to let my pH increase a little or to allow my alkalinity to drift down and have to add baking soda on a daily basis? Does anyone have any idea as to why my pH would be so high, and what I could do to decrease it? I'm not looking for a one-time acid addition; I'd like to find the problem and cure it. I know that ESV makes a low pH version of B-Ionic, so I'll probably order that in the future. Oh yeah, I'll also remove some tank water and replace it with RO/DI to get my salinity down to 1.026.

Above I listed my pH twice, once with my monitor reading and once with my Salifert test kit reading. I made a point of doing this as a reminder to mention that I have not calibrated my pH probe since I placed it in my tank in early January. The instructions recommend calibrating the probe monthly, but I figure as long as the readings are close to what I'm seeing on the Salifert test kits, I'll not calibrate the probe and buy frags instead of calibration fluid. I guess you could argue that I could buy calibration fluid instead of pH test kits too.

I placed a new filter sponge in my sump last night in preparation for setting up my quarantine tank. I just might have a sixline wrasse and a lawnmower blenny on the way

. Since LMBs eat filamentous algae, what would I feed it in my QT? I was thinking Spirulina or some other algae flakes/pellets? Scott Michael's book mentions that LMBs need a tank of 55 gallons minimum. This concerns me, but I think many people have kept them successfully in smaller tanks.

While looking into my sump/fuge last night, I saw a snail eating algae off of the acrylic in my carbon chamber. In order to get into the sump, this must have been small enough to pass through the strainer of my CPR overflow and the spray bar in my sump. Unless there are some snails in my refugium that are breeding? At any rate, it doesn't look like ANY of the other snails in my system. This one is about the size of my thumbnail. The shell is flat and only covers it's back, almost like it's wearing a shield. It has an elongated soft underside, like a nassarius snail, except there's a longitudinal line along the entire underbelly (unlike the nassarius). There's a small round orifice, likely the mouth, just in front of the elongated body portion. In addition, this snail has 2 elongated tentacles projecting from it's head, whereas the nassarius snails have only one elongated tentacle. I'm not sure what this snail is or how it got into my system, but I was worried that it would crawl into my Mag5 return pump. So I picked it out of my sump and placed it into my tank. I watched it for about 20 minutes to see if it would get into trouble, and no sinister activities were observed, so I just let it stay in there. I hope this was the right thing to do. I'll try to get some pictures of it this week. It hung out on the glass a fair amount, and it didn't burrow into the sand, so I think I'll be able to find it again without too much difficulty.

This raises a question: The Mag pump comes with a prefilter, but I figured it would just be a detritus trap and therefore I haven't used it in the past. Should I install the prefilter to prevent snails and the like from getting into the pump? I've already had one incident where the string on my carbon filter bag got caught in the impeller, and I had to take the pump apart to release the string.

melev · #**365** 03/28/2006, 07:30 PM

If you want the Bi-Carbonate (I think that is what it is called) B-Ionic that doesn't affect pH, I have 10 gallons of it (5g of each part). It cost me $100, when I ordered it about 1.5 years ago. It was the wrong kind, as I need the one that raises pH. I've posted it for sale a few times, but very few people in the U.S. need that kind - which is why I still have it. I never used a single drop, but because I'd added RO/DI water to it to mix it up as directly, it wasn't possible to return it. Let me know - I really don't want to toss it out, but I'm sick of it eating up space in the garage.

That snail is a stomatella, and is a good guy. You can't have too many of them. They breed in my tank.

I like to use the hard Mag pump strainer, to keep fish and snails out of the impellar section. I don't use the sponge, nor do I recommend it. That would just be one more thing that needs to be cleaned regularly.

Dudester · #**366** 03/28/2006, 07:35 PM

Marc, I'll take'em (the B-Ionic, I mean)! I'll send you a pm. Thanks for the info regarding the pump strainer - I'll install it.

p.s. how was my description of the stomatella snail?

melev · #**367** 03/28/2006, 07:41 PM

It sounded just like every other person's description. Here's a typical one: "it looks like a thumbnail-shaped shell on its back..."

Dudester · #**368** 03/28/2006, 07:50 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by melev
It sounded just like every other person's description.

Don't I feel small now. And here I thought I had a possible contribution to your "Hidden Treasures."

And now, for the record, I return to 'ultra newbie' status.
What about the origin of my high pH? Think it could be from my calcareous substrate? Anything I can do about it (and for all you BB fans out there, siphoning out the sand is not an option!)? How about feeding my LMB in quarantine, and concerns about placing it into a 30g tank?

Questions, questions, questions. Oh well, at least I'm not polluting the newbie forum by starting new threads about each of these issues.

melev · #**369** 03/28/2006, 08:13 PM

I'd link you to my stomatella picture, but my site has a DNS issue for the next 1.5 hours. I'm going to renew my site for 5 years to resolve this once and for all.

I don't know what would cause elevated pH, other than using home-made liverock prematurely perhaps. High pH is normal coming from the concrete mix.

Your numbers sound perfectly safe though, so no worries.

thedude15810 · #**370** 03/29/2006, 12:16 AM

Mike-

We're going to officially revoke your status as qualified reefer back to ultra newbie after that question for sure lol.

Oh yeah the only thing I can say about your substrate problem is siphon it out so I'll just keep my opinions to myself. The lawnmower should be fine in a 30 gallon tank but do get quite large and territorial which would be my main concern. The other is that it would exhuast your supply of algae and die. Formula 2 might be a good food to try it on while it's in QT. I have some of their pellets if you want them so let me know.

Dudester · #**371** 03/29/2006, 02:40 AM

melev - I noticed that your site was down. Right after you mentioned the species of snail, I tried to see what you had and found it inaccessible. Now that it's up I agree 100% - stomatella! Glad I have them.

thedude15810 (John) - Pretty harsh, bro, but I deserved it. I can't imagine one fish eating all of the algae in my tank, but I believe you and I've also read about them dying after the algae is consumed (Scott Michael's book again). It seems like I could feed a whole school of LMBs. I'll definitely try to train it to eat pellets while it's in the Q, and I'll take you up on your offer of Formula 2 pellets. I'd hate for this fish to perish due to an inability to nourish it properly.

Well, it's been one of those nights ...
I got home from work at around 7:30 with plans to set up my quarantine tank. I immediately noticed how stationary all of the corals were in my display tank. The surface water had no ripples. I placed my hand over my closed loop Locline returns, and there was no flow

. I checked to make sure I hadn't unplugged the pump from my ReefKeeper, and I hadn't. I then felt the pump and it was friggin' hot! This leads me to believe that the impeller is obstructed, and it's probably from accumulating 6 months of precipitate and calcium deposits. I know it was working this morning when I dosed B-Ionic at 6:00, so it was not circulating water anywhere from a few minutes to 12 hours (I'll never know). Remember how I was going to clean out my pumps with muriatic acid when I removed my light rack to mount the fan, and remember how I never quite got to that? Well, here it is burning me in the tush! Fortunately my sump return pump was still functioning and this must have provided enough oxygenation, as all of my livestock looked healthy.

As I was preparing to remove the pump and clean out the impeller and pump with muriatic acid (by the way, I have a spare impeller, just in case) I got an emergency and had to go to work. So I quickly threw a MaxiJet 1200 powerhead into the tank and went on my way. I got home at about 12:30 and just finished setting up my QT. I used 10 gallons of water from my current tank and added nearly 10 gallons of aged saltwater. This was kind of a crash setup, as the filter sponge has only been in my sump for about 30 hours now, but it should be fairly well colonized with bacteria by tomorrow evening when I bring home my new sixline wrasse and lawnmower blenny

.

Oh, and just to top off the evening, I was starving so I opened a brand new box of my daughter's Panda Puffs cereal. Holy crap, I don't know what they're making these cereal bags out of anymore, but you've got to be a circus strong man to open one. Of course the darn thing nearly exploded from all of the force it took for me to open it, and I spent several minutes picking Panda Puffs out of every nook and cranny of our kitchen.
Note to self ... use scissors next time!

melev · #**372** 03/29/2006, 08:08 AM

Now that is something I never would have thought I'd read about here on RC, but this is the NTTH forum. "Expect the unexpected."

Yep, I noticed my site was down too, and called up ipowerweb to find out what the deal was. All was immediately repaired, but it still aggravates me. They did the same thing to me last March, and a phone call fixed it, but I shouldn't have to call.

Hope your pump will resume running again.

Dudester · #**373** 03/29/2006, 12:32 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by melev
Hope your pump will resume running again.

You mean there's a chance that it won't

? That would really suck, as I already can't stand the look of that MJ powerhead in my tank.

This morning I looked things over pretty carefully to ensure that the constant, unidirectional flow of the MJ wasn't harming anything. To my dismay, the small frogspawn frag that sits atop the back of my aquascape was under a constant current. This did not please the coral at all, and it was 50% retracted to such a degree that I could see the skeleton quite well. As an interesting aside, the skeleton resembles that of a blastomussa, another LPS coral, quite closely. Unfortunately I've been seeing a lot of the blasto skeletons, as my polyps have been slowly dying off and I'm down to 3, maybe 4 nice ones. I thought the frogspawn was going to be a goner, but I moved it down to the substrate away from the current and adjacent to the large frogspawn. An hour later it was fully inflated and happy once again. Phew, I'm glad it's better as I would hate to lose this coral. I got it as a tiny frag whos "shell," for lack of a better term, was split in half. I repaired this with super glue gel and also glued it onto a rock base so that it would sit upright in my tank and not get swept away. It's grown significantly since then and there are even several small buds extending from it's skeletal base. Not to mention the time I've spent picking bryopsis off of it's supporting rock!

I plan on cleaning out my Mag 12 CL pump when I get home tonight. If it doesn't start up when clean, then I'll likely place a second MJ into my tank and connect the 2 pumps up to my ReefKeeper. It has a wavemaker function and it can alternate the pumps so that some random flow is generated. I just love the ReefKeeper.

melev · #**374** 03/29/2006, 03:49 PM

If you can't get it to work again, you should contact Danner Mfg as each Mag pump has a 3 year warranty.

Dudester · #**375** 03/30/2006, 12:51 PM

What an exciting and interesting evening I had. I left work and first went to John's place to check out his tank. It's gorgeous and his corals look great. He's using the Reeflux 10K DE MH bulb and the color is exactly what I'm looking for. It's truly helpful for me since his tank is the same as mine (30g cube), but without the bryopsis (

) and without the sand (

). This will certainly be my next bulb once my Phoenix is old enough (six months I guess). From there we went to the LFS where he works and I picked up the following items:

lawnmower blenny
sixline wrasse
lettuce nudibranchs (3)
PraziPro (praziquantel, for killing flatworms)
Flatworm eXit
Seachem Purigen pad
AzNO3 (thedude threw this in for free

)

I transferred the filter sponge from my sump to the QT AquaClear filter, then acclimated and placed the sixline wrasse into the Q. The lettuce nudis and LMB were acclimated and placed into my display tank. I was a little reluctant not to quarantine the LMB, but they have an extremely low rate of ich infection, and clearly its food supply would be plentiful in my tank. This would likely cause less stress to the fish than if I placed it in quarantine for a couple of weeks. I was concerned about what to feed this fish in the future once (if ever) my algae is controlled, and one of the guys at the LFS mentioned a great trick. He told me to get a rock out of my refugium that's covered with algae and place it in the tank as a food source for the LMB. Once this is cleaned, I can exchange it for a new algae covered rock, and the blenny won't starve. Seems intuitive but I probably wouldn't have thought of it.

Within 5 minutes of being in my tank, I observed the LMB eating the maroon-colored filamentous algae, as well as eating algae from the sand bed. Later in the evening I even saw it chomp off some bryopsis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No hostility was observed whatsoever with my percula clownfish. The lettuce nudis were placed directly on top of large bryopsis patches, and I hope they ate some but can't tell. They are slugs, after all. One of them tried to get into my overflow but the strainer caught it. I rescued it and hope it learned its lesson; I'd hate for one or all of them to die in my overflow box while the bryopsis continues to grow in my tank.

The sixline was a little freaked out in the QT initially, but after several hours without being harassed it settled down. Very early this morning I went to check on it and couldn't find it in the tank. I remembered from my past experience that these fish like to "hole up" for the night. I looked carefully and there it was, tucked into a tight space between the MJ powerhead and the suction cup holder. It lay motionless except for the gill movements. If this had been my first time wittnessing this behaviour I would have tried to flush it out with a turkey baster (remember last time I did that and terrorized my poor, deceased wrasse?). Instead, I left it alone, and a few hours later it was out and about, swimming peacefully in the tank.

My next chore last night was to tackle my nonfunctioning Mag pump. I disconnected it from the tank (thank heaven for unions) and disassembled it. There were a lot of deposits on the impeller and inside the impeller chamber, but I actually expected it to look a little worse. It's never been cleaned in the 6 months it's been in action. I placed it in a muriatic solution and then went after the 'machine gun' PVC section that drains the tank into the closed loop pump. For those of you thinking of using muriatic acid, be very careful. I wear chemical proof gloves and am careful not to splash it around. This pic is old, but for those of you who may be new to this thread, I'm referring to the vertical PVC pipe with all of the holes in it. This drains water from the tank and sends it to my Mag12 CL pump.

With the pump disconnected, I was able to lift the PVC partly out of the water in order to grip it well and try to disconnect the drilled segment from the rest of the plumbing. This proved to be the most difficult part of the job. I couldn't lift the plumbing all the way off since the light rack prevented me from doing so. I then simply could not pull the machine gun section off of the rest of the plumbing even though it wasn't hard connected with PVC cement. I therefore used my PVC cutter and cut it off leaving enough length connected to the fitting to allow me to get my hand around it and really give it the business. With the bulk of the PVC out of the tank, I was able to get a good grip and finally disconnected the pieces. I didn't want to leave it as it was and add another fitting for a reconnect since the fittings are obviously bigger than the PVC itself and I thought this would look ugly. I almost toppled the aquascape on several occasions but ultimately it came out without too much disruption.

At any rate, I placed the drain pipe into the muriatic acid as well and gave it a good cleaning. After allowing it to soak, I noticed that the drain holes were nearly occluded with coralline algae, and I cleaned out each and every hole with a pipe cleaner. Man, what a PITA. In the future, I'm going to consider this segment of pipe 'disposable' and I'll just make a new one. That would be far easier than cleaning up the dirty one.

I cleaned out all of parts of the Mag pump and reassembled it. It was as clean as the day I bought it. After a thorough rinsing and before plumbing it to my tank I dropped it into a bucket of water to ensure that it worked. It didn't. I took it apart again and got out my spare impeller. The spare impeller looked a little different at the tip, just beyond the propeller portion. The spare had a small white stem covered with a black casing, whereas on the original impeller, the white stem was uncovered. Looking at the pump housing I discovered the problem. The white impeller stem had broken apart, and the casing and small broken stem were jammed in the pump housing. I removed the broken portion of the impeller and installed my spare impeller -- worked like a charm! I then reconnected my drain PVC pipe and plumbed the pump back up to the system and voala, flow was restored. Happily, my next job was to get the MJ pump out of my tank! All was well ... so I thought.

When I rescued the lettuce nudi from my overflow strainer, I hit the "feed mode" button on the ReefKeeper so that I could free the critter. When the pumps turned back on, my CL pump was sucking air and wouldn't prime spontaneously like it had in the past. I realized that since I cut the drain pipe and made it shorter, some of the holes at the top were no longer submerged after the tank drained down to the overflow box level. I unplugged the CL pump so that the pipes would fill from the tank and upon plugging it back in, it started up normally.

So now my options for a fix include:
1. take out the drain pipe and make a new one with holes farther from the top
2. add a fitting to drop the drain pipe to a lower position
3. occlude all of the holes that are positioned higher than my overflow box and sump return antisiphon hole
4. drill an additional, higher-positioned antisiphon hole in my sump return pipe so that the water doesn't drain below the uppermost holes of my CL drain pipe.

I think I'm going to go with option #1, but it kills me to have spent so much time cleaning that sucker out only to toss it.

I placed the Purigen pad into the drawer of my sump that sits directly beneath the spray bar. I also added 1 tsp of kalk to the reactor in my topoff reservoir. Hopefully this will aid in my ability to maintain alkalinity without affecting pH adversely (in my case, raising it). If my pH doesn't go up much, I'll gradually increase the volume of kalk that I add.

I'm planning on doing a PraziPro treatment tonight, and I'll probably start a new thread documenting its success or failure in controlling the flatworms. Regarding the bryopsis, I'm going to hold off on using the AzNO3 for now and I'll see how well the nudis and LMB do in controlling it.

Last thing to report is that my clownfish has 2 small white lesions on its flank, very likely lymphocystis. I think it's because of the decreased feedings and incresed stress lately. Now that I have some active bryopsis control in my tank and improved filtration with the Purigen pad, I'll feed her a little more. I haven't given up on the idea of finding her a mate. Maybe after I add the sixline I'll get a juvenile perc.