Recent content by reefrunner69

I have also heard them called Johanni cichlids.

I'm probably wrong with the scientific name but I think it is (Melanochromis cyaneorhabdos) sold to us as an electric blue cichlids.

My wife's African cichlids, a couple of them anyway.

Well, this tank finally cycled, I put a couple of corals in around Labor Day and they died pretty quick, so the notion that is was done and there was something interfering with the testing kits was a wrong one. I thought it was done again a couple of months ago, and bought a damsel and put it in...

Does your overflow box look similar to this? It's important that the J tube is on the side without the bulkhead so you do not break siphon in your overflow, that's also why you do not want to drill a hole in your j tube.

Just a shot in the dark...is it possible you have something in your tank eating the coral, maybe a nudibranch, or starfish or the hermits?

Do you have a TDS meter? My LFS sold me RO/DI water that had a TDS of 90. Don't trust the LFS;-)

You can wait it out, once whatever they are eating is gone they will die off. Since it appears to be a waterchange that sparked the bloom, i would hesitate to do more as there seems to have been a catalyst in the last pwc. FWIW, I've never seen a bacterial bloom that wasn't white ;-)

You can do very large water changes, without much stress on the tank inhabitants, but it takes a little work.

What are you basing this opinion on?

Enough nitrifying bacteria will survive, just do lots of water changes to keep ammonia down and maximize the life on the rock.

Filtration wise you'll want about 1 lb per gallon, rockscaping...I like 1.5-2lb per gallon. Fwiw, curing your own rock is not hard, it's just a pain, but my experience has always been; more life on rock I cured than rock cured at the LFS.

That is my point, if you cannot add cured lr (in sufficient quantity) and immediately add coral and fish (within the same constraints you would put on any newly cycled tank) then the rock is NOT cured.

We will agree to disagree, if there is die off, minimal is a relative term, there will be a spike, if there is an established biological filter present, it may not be evident, but if you were to use this as your entire biological media it will need to be re-cycled. If you don't believe me...take...

I agree with ccCapt, but from the first pic it almost looks like anacropora sp. Edited to add that is one word "anacropora" not "an acropora"