Myka vs Valonia Round 672

[saltyrigger]

The reef shoppe in Lloydminster has emerald crabs

[StirCrazy]

sorry I missed this thread untill now. Emerald crabs are the key, 3 of them in your tank, and remove the large one manualy. Don't worry about popping them unless they are going sexual, they are a single cell algae from what I have read. There were bigh threads on them on RC and here about 7 years ago. for my tank I had them pretty bad, I poped all the big ones and then let the emerald crabs clean up the rest.

Steve

[Myka]

That's interesting about them being single cell organisms. I do have 2 Emerald Crabs in there already, and I suck out as many as I can during waterchanges. It really is getting a lot better lately!

Originally Posted by saltyrigger

The reef shoppe in Lloydminster has emerald crabs

This tank is still in Kelowna, BC. I do have to make it to The Reef Shoppe though!

[MMAX]

First of all, NO TANGS your tank is too small. Wait a minute, where have I heard that before?

[Myka]

Someone said to me the other day, "My tang has more swimming room in comparison to his size right now (3" Sailfin in a 60 I think it was) than he will when he is full grown in my 180g." I had no comeback. He was right. Similarly, I have noticed that my Kole tang has more swimming room in my 33g than he will when he's full grown in my 90. This is an interesting approach, although I'm not entirely sure which side of that fence I'm on since it encourages people to keep large fish in small spaces with little follow through in upgrading. You know, the upgrade that is always planned but never happens?

[christyf5]

So the only zeo stuff you're dosing in this tank is part of the zeo nano pack (sponge power, LPSAA, Pohls Xtra and Coral Vitalizer)? Valonia is getting out of control in my nano as well, my crappy CPR bakpak isn't getting the job done so I'm doing rather large weekly waterchanges but algae is still pretty rampant in there. I have all those zeo products and am tempted to try them in there for fun, I can't imagine it getting much worse

[Myka]

Ya, I'm only dosing the SP and the CV now. I am getting a teeny bit of cyano from using it (there in the afternoon, gone in the morning), but I hear that's normal in the beginning. The Zeo forums suggested I use ZeoZym too, but I don't have a skimmer, so I asked them back about that, and haven't heard yet. I really think the change in Kelvin made quite a difference too. I changed the bulbs on my tank to higher Kelvin, added two Emeralds, the tang (who may or may not be helping), and then my tank went from end of December to middle of March without a waterchange. I started these Zeo additives in the middle of March. When I came back to see the tank in March (last time I saw it was NYE) the tank was significantly lower in Valonia. Now a month later and Zeo, an even bigger jump towards non-Valonia-ness. So...I'm led to believe the Zeo is helping too, but I think the biggest factors for me was the Kelvin change, and possibly the Emerald crabs, and possibly the tang. If the Emerald crabs and/or tang contribute to the control, they are slow to make a difference. Both are constantly picking at the rock. So...I'm not entirely sure. I did a lot of changes.

For bulbs, I was using one Giesemann Actinic+ and one Giesemann Midday 6000K. The bulbs were 10 months old when I changed them to one KZ Fiji Purple and one AquaScience 17,500K which is quite a blue combination. It's good for supplementing my current MH though! The Valonia was at its worst during the 10 months of Giesemann bulbs, coming to a peak when I finally changed them out. I am fairly certain the low Kelvin was a significant contributing factor to the INCREASE of Valonia growth, I would not say the bulbs were the CAUSE, as the Valonia was already there when I put the Giesemanns in.