Myka's 90 gallon build & 3 province move (Pics Feb 6)

[Myka]

Long story short, in early April I decided to pull the GFO and try vodka and Microbacter7 dosing. I dosed for about 6 weeks. I built up slowly, and followed the "famous dosing schedule" and I managed to slowly brown out all my SPS by about 99% and near the end of the 6 weeks I lost half a dozen small pieces. I was quite stubborn about making it work. When I started losing pieces in early May I quit dosing the vodka and MB7, and went back to the trusty GFO and Prodibio dosing in mid-May. I've had good luck with Prodibio before. So, now I'm starting to get some color back, but the tank still looks like poop. So much for experiments. Argh.

When I did the vodka dosing, most of the SPS went brown, but some of them bleached out. The ones that I lost were ones that bleached. Two of my favourite colonies were two of the pieces that bleached and when they started to RTN at the base that's when I threw in the towel on the vodka + MB7. I found a pic I took of the one colonies:




This is what it looks like in its prime:




Also, in the beginning of March I moved most of my LPS out of the 90 and into the new 50. In the process I basically pilfered the 90 and it looked a bit barren. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of how bad it looked. Between the tank looking awful, and me killing my main camera in Hawaii in May I haven't taken many pics since.

Here it was halfway browned out, partway through the vodka dosing. When I pilfered the corals out, I took almost all the rock out of the right hand side of the tank, so it was quite bare looking.




So, Canada Day weekend I moved the last of the LPS and Gorgonians out of the 90 and put about 40 lbs of live rock into the 90 to fluff it back up. Finally, after 18 months of putting it off, the tank doesn't have a million corals on the sand! It still needs A LOT more color to develop back again, but here is how it looked shortly after the re-aquascaping on June 30th...

[reefwars]

looks like you did some fragging as well, so is this going to be sps only now??

[Myka]

Yeah, I chomped down the large birdnest on the left, and the birdnest on the right is not in the new pic because it was in the sump when I took the pic. I forgot it in the sump for a week, but is now back up in the display, and is a cool white color (lol)...it is starting to get color back. I think everything else is still in there. It is amazing how much more room there was when I took out all the LPS. This tank is now 98% SPS. It would be 100% SPS if I could peel the Meteor Shower Cyphastrea off the rocks and that is not very possible...

[Leah]

Tank is still nice. Is that a Squarespot in the last photo? Do you still have the Kole Tang and if so has it changed in color?

[Myka]

Leah, I sold the Kole Tang a long time ago. I can't remember why...he either started picking on corals or he was picking on another fish. Last I heard he was normal Kole coloring again. Yes, that's a Squarespot Anthias...he's cool he eats out of my fingers.

[Myka]

Wow, I haven't updated this thread in over a year...

I guess the short story is I was working in Alberta from October 2012 to April 2013. My tank had a rough winter in the hands of the tank sitter with massive hair algae growth. I lost my large Snappy's Rainbow Stylo due to the hair algae. I replaced the Stylo with a new mini colony of the same lovely piece (thanks to my frag sharing). I lost several smaller pieces too including most of my Birdnests. The hair algae has been very tough to get out of the large Austera and I was afraid to lose it as well. Since the hair algae was sucking the nutrients out of the water in such efficiency, the SPS were all very pale and thin skinned from essentially "zero" nutrients in the water column. My D-D Merck phosphate kit showed no color change and neither did the API nitrate kit.

In order to save the corals, I had to feed the water column in the evenings for the benefit of the corals. In the mornings I turkey basted the hair algae to blow the detritus out, and twice per week I used long tweezers to pull as much hair algae out as possible.

In June of this year I decided to give biopellets a go after I've been watching everyone's experiences with them over the last few years. I was very nervous about this, but the hair algae was at such a density that it was very difficult to eradicate - especially when having to balance algae removal with coral feedings. That's a tough balance.

I bought a Reef Dynamics BPR 135 biopellet reactor and some Vertex biopellets. To avoid cyano outbreak, I started with a meager 50 mL of biopellets on June 8th. I know it takes 3 weeks to establish bacteria in the reactor, so around that time I increased my evening coral feedings. I started to see a bit of a difference around 3 1/2 weeks. At 4 1/2 weeks, on July 10th, I added another 50 mL of biopellets. The reactor has been running this way since and I have continued my evening feedings.

The hair algae was officially gone mid-August though I am still working on increasing SPS coloring. While at MACNA I lost a large fish that wasn't removed from the tank (I just found bones), so when I came back from MACNA there was a return of the hair algae in the large Austera. I'm really not sure why the fish died as it was in great condition and had been in the tank for 6 months.

Water parameters:

Calcium 420 ppm (Elos)
Alkalinity 7.5 to 8.0 (Hanna Checker)
Magnesium 1350-1400 ppm (Salifert)
Potassium 380-420 ppm (Elos)
pH 8.1 morning, 8.3 evening
Phosphate 0.008 ppm (Merck)
Nitrate undetectable (API)
Salinity 35 ppt (1.0264)

Here is a photo journal.

It looked fine on July 15th 2012 (I added a couple rocks - the white ones)...


It looked pretty bad on December 22nd...


It looked really bad in April (no pics), although a bit better by May after working on it for 6 weeks even though it was a bit bare from coral loss...


And now today it's finally starting to look pretty good again...

[lastlight]

Looking great. I'm also battling some pale coloration and apparently not doing as well as you.