Sniperhank's UPGRADED 55 gal Build

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It has remained a tough battle. I've been stirring things up and working on skimming. Most things haven't been affected, but I ended up losing my pj cardinal and my tomini tang along with a couple of heads to my smaller purple and green Duncan colony.
I believe I stirred up real trouble when I moved a power head from the middle of the tank to the back. It kicked up a ton of junk. I've sucked out and been removing as much as I find, but post water changes there always ends up being more. So, once it is all gone things should be much better off.
Should get around to some pictures while off work to thanksgiving and put more effort into keeping the community informed about what is going on.


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may I suggest using a gravel vac in the future as opposed to stirring it up?


I was also having issues with stuff collecting along the back wall.
I got a Magnum 350 filter and hooked up the output to a couple of Hydor rotating flow things and that has helped immensely. As they rotate they force water down along the back wall and across the sand bed to the front where the other currents carries it to the top and to the overflow. My tank has shown marked improvement after doing that. Between the flow and my Golden Headed Sleeper always sifting the sand, junk in my substrate has become a thing of the past.


But then again I'm utilizing many different methods,
refugium with a deep sand bed and caulerpa/chaeto, GFO, Purigen, Carbon, Bio-Pellets, protein skimmer, a reverse slow flow undergravel filter, and filter materials that should work great for de-nitrifying bacteria (pumice blocks)
plus probably 3 times the live rock needed; 25lbs rubble in the refugium, ~60 lbs in the display and another 40 lbs in the sump.


yeah, overkill, but my fish and critters are all nice and healthy now and my water stays pretty good quality.
 
Oh I did gravel vac. There obviously was a pocket behind the rocks I wouldn't have been able to get. So, a mistake in hindsight but probably not something I'd have been able to done anything about.

I've thought about bio pellets onto the system as I've been carbon dosing on top of my purigen, phosguard, skimmer, and ats.
 
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Well, what a long strange trip it continues to be. I haven't done any updating in way too long.
So, I currently have biopellets in my reactor in place of the GFO. Things have really started to turn around. Was minor bacterial and cyano bloom, as to be expected. Faded away and things are looking well...at least better than they were before. The cotton candy algae is very easy to remove now. Goes to show, once you remove the food source the roots weaken for easy removal. It is still a long path to recovery, but one day at a time. I continue to remove what I can in small bits through the day when I get the opportunity.
There have been no new additions to the tank to replace the losses that have been suffered through the process. This is due to not wanting to up the bioload or waste any additional livestock or money on my end...no matter how much I miss my tomini tang.
One very interesting piece is that all of the coraline algae that was covering the tank has been dying off since the addition of the biopellets. Though the stuff is pretty, it is also a pretty big pain to remove so I'm actually happy about this. I will be happier when it is all gone and not in such an 'eye sore' state.
With the downfall of the cotton candy algae, which is almost fully removed from the tank at this point, something always takes its place as per nature. The other red algae in the tank has spread some. It is easy to see in this picture as I didn't remove much during this weeks water change. It is very easy to remove compared to the cotton candy. I believe this simply to be the remnants of 'what happens when you don't use ro/di water' at this point.
Either way, not the most beautiful the tank has been by far but still need to share the journey. Take note in the right side of the tank you see the most surprisingly hardy fish in there, the hard to photograph and stunning marine beta, or comet.
 
I think we all go thru these mind boggling episodes with our tanks,..sometimes things work out as expected and sometimes it's just a long drawn out battle just to get to the point where you can see some improvement , a few years back I tried the bio pellets but in my case ( prob due to my impatience ) I couldn't decide if they were working or not so I used the reef octopus reactor to run my gfo.
No doubt about the complexity of the hobby ,.. Keep plugging away !


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Nice article i want a salty tank real bad and a royal gramma is gonna be fish number 1 so atleast now ill be sure and get the gramma not a dottyback

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Only read back a little bit, but sorry to hear about your setbacks. Can't wait to get back into following your threads again though!
 
Setbacks happen. Things are in the right direction I believe.
I did come home the other day from work and my massive duncan colony was in the sand. I tried to get it back where it was, but it has become too top heavy. It is now down in the sand near the war coral frag. Been there a couple of days and looks like nothing ever happened.
 
Continued business as usual today. Water change and manual removal of any algae. Continuing to look better every week and really thanking these biopellets. Always seems some more detrius shows up after lights out on water change day, but it can wait until next week.
Colors are looking OK. Seeing more color from the acro and the mushrooms are showing themselves better than before.
Also ordered a cheap filter sock holder to hold these things in place as they keep falling down.
I pulled a small bag of Purigen out of the sump I forgot about some time ago. I was quite surprised, there attached to the bag was a vermetid snail. Removed.
 
Someone over here done a test with biopellets they couldn't beat algae and couldn't figure out why. He shut his tank down and restarted soaked all the rock till his po4 reading were 0. Still had bad algae problems. Then one day his mag cleaner detached in his sump.. Went to pull it out and found it stuck to the side of his reactor and all the pellets getting attracted to it. Done a lab test and found a whole bunch of metals in his pellets was crazy

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just checked, my bio-pellets are not magnetic....LOL (two little fishies brand)


Were they some type of "bargain bin" type of deal?


Sniper, have you given your tank a complete black-out or very low light for a week to force the algae to grow on the scrubbers?
I found that was the only way I was able to shift where the algae was mainly growing.
cleaned up the refugium last week, now algae is starting again in the display. That tells me the balance is still too precarious for my liking.
Thinking of a bigger dedicated refugium.
How did you manage to save your hard corals? I lost all but one of mine and some of my zoas from crap growing over them.

it's always an ongoing process, intriguing for the DIY and Sherlock Holmes crowd :cool:
annoying as heck for others :banghead:
 
Lots of TLC is how I was able to save what I could. I still have my original bubble coral, that was very damaged. Due to all that damage, it is easy for algae to grow on it. Literal weekly removal from the skeleton. Everything else though wasn't that bad, just ensuring they weren't overwhelmed.
I didn't do a black out on the display. When I started I still had a clam I believe...and I get very anxious when it comes to clams and I never get it right even though I have kept much more delicate creatures than they.
I simply plugged the ATS in and let it start adjusting. It takes some time for the screen to get algae going on it and didn't want additional nutrients to be 'free' in the water column.
 
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Thought I'd do a quick share today. First is a nudibranch that was roaming around in my lfs' tank.
The second is the new filter sock holder I got today. It is a really nice eBay pickup. Next is to gather up felt to make more filter socks.


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Nudibranchs are such cool creatures. Wonder what kind that one is. EBay has all your reef needs!
 
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