Greg's 75g

[gregzz4]

Originally Posted by Reefie

I have tried similar suggestions in my tank to battle GHA. So far, I've got a mix of snails and hermits, Starry Blenny, 2 Tuxedo Urchins, and a Seahare. The only thing I'm missing is a "partridge in a pear tree." To top that, I'm also running RowaPhos passively.

The critters do a decent job mowing GHA down to a certain degree, however GHA always comes back. In my situation, I am suspecting PO4 leaching from my LR. I don't know if you'll be in the same boat with me Greg.

I am awaiting my last resort that is expected to arrive on Friday.....FozDown! I have heard great things about this product. It is even supposed to remove PO4 from LR, which in my case will solve my problem. I will keep you posted as soon as I receive some and start using it.

You and I were supposed to meet to trade some frags, or am I mistaken ........

[gregzz4]

Yup, I'd say I have PO4 leaching as I added some new LR last month that wasn't fully cured

[Reefie]

Originally Posted by gregzz4

You and I were supposed to meet to trade some frags, or am I mistaken ........

No, you aren't mistaken. I've just started a new job this week and it is a huge learning curve for me, so I haven't had time to arrange anything. I made a frag for you of the ORA/MIMF Purple & Green Acro. Some people have called this a Garf Bonsai, Tricolor Valida, etc. It's about 1" tall, I'm waiting for it to heal a bit first.

I've got GHA issues in my DT that I'd prefer to get control of before cutting a piece of the ORA Purple Stylo, ORA Bird of Paradise, ORA Cali Tort. The GHA might grow over the fresh cut instead of healing first.

I've attached pictures from ORA in case you don't know what they look like.

Purple & Green Acro


Purple Stylo


Bird of Paradise


Cali Tort

[gregzz4]

Those are very nice
I too would like to get my HA under control and before adding any more corals
PM me when you're ready and we'll talk

[gregzz4]

I was going to post pics of the new cleaners, but there's no point as we've all seen them before, and they aren't zoomin' 'round, as I hoped they would

Lookin' for a way to exfoliate your fingerprints whilst getting to know every nook and cranny of your LR ?
Spend hours plucking algae by hand

In all fairness to our algae-eating dudes, there's just too much for them to keep up with, and some are not touching the longer stuff at all
The Hare is going over most of the lower half of the tank, but it's not doing much other than cleaning off already cleaned areas
The Urchins are acting like the Mail Carrier and constantly treading the same patches
And the Turbos are pretty much the same as the Urchins, except they hardly move around at all up 'till now
This is one of the Urchin's paths, with the Hare coming along behind to grab the leftover easy stuff;


So I'm trying to give them a hand and today I spent a few hours plucking it and dipping my fingers in a cup of RO to rinse it off

This is an example of how unfair a Boss I've been
Before;


After picking;


After brushing and blasting with the baster;


I'm going to try this approach for awhile, instead of the brush cut and water change route
Lots of sock changes and blasting rocks with the turkey baster for awhile after will probably spread it around again, but it can't keep growing forever as I'm not feeding the tank
I realise some of the algae will get past the socks, but we'll see how it goes
I've also turned off half the T5s and backed off the hours of the remaining ones. I hope the SPS aren't to peeved about this ...

I'm off to buy more socks

[gregzz4]

I bought 6 more socks
I am now blasting the rocks with the baster every 5 mins for the next hour after scrubbing and I'll see where this gets me ...

I am still adamant that if I do this enough, I may get a grip on things
I now have 15 socks to rotate

[gregzz4]

English composition has never been my strong point .... so suffer ye all who enter here

This is my new plan
I am going to scrub the LR everytime I see some hairy stuff I don't like, blast the LR with the baster for an hour or so, and change socks until they don't plug up ....

Not the greatest plan, but it seems to be working, so I am going to fly with it

Better than trying to give the HA a brush cut and siphon out the water everytime I get to it
Not that there is anything wrong with that idea, but I can't change that much water whenever I feel like it ...

The Sea Hare hasn't been doing much ...
"And a bell was ringing in the village square for the rabbits on the run"

That's an excerpt from a Paul McCartney song, in case you young bucks didn't know

So, the little bugger is pretty slow. I'm keeping an eye on him to make sure he doesn't starve ...
We're going to call it Ricochet Rabbit ...

Changing socks seems to be my new job ...

I've been using IO salt and I have found it's very high in Ca

Carry on my wayward son ... I'll post more later

[gregzz4]

Time for some more critters
Since I'm now able to see through the hair algae, it appears we have a couple of Aiptasia. I counted over 20

I feel the tank is mature enough, so I bought 2 Peppermint shrimps today
I've been acclimating them for a couple hours and am going to now plop them into the DT before the lights go out
Hope they're hungry dudes

Until the QT fishies go in, I'll feed the shrimps once a week, but only after all the aiptasia are gone

Forgot to mention ...
I would have bought some berghias from Bill, but I spotted a crab a couple days ago ...

[Ginu]

Hey Greg,
I was just looking over your build thread to see how the 75g is doing as I just got one last night (upgrade here I come) as well and I wanted to give you a tip on the HA.

I had some HA growing in my 34g cube and tried pretty much everything besides a sea hare and strawbery top hat snails. Only visual progression was to let it grow and prune it weekly.
Needless to say I've spent over 100$ in additives, scissors, brushes, you name it and the only thing that did the trick was a strawberry top hat snail which a fellow canreef member gave me while I was buying some clams.
I was a little scheptical at first since these guys are quite strong and big which allows them to knock over corals quite easily, but to my surprise the snail cleaned the entire tank of all algae (this includes rocks and back wall) without any coral casualties... I suggest trying one as they are inexpensive.

[Enigma]

Have you thought about attacking the algae with H202?