FarmerTy

Awesome. Who thinks this should be the next photo contest? Haha.

Awesome! Good luck with the start and let us know if you have any questions. -Ty

Just throwing ideas out there but it would be nice to have a free frag pack, where people donate $XX amount of dollars (usually on the cheap side like $5 that Mike recommended) to the Nature Conservancy Adopt-A-Reef drive. for the pack. The pack will usually consist of your basic start corals (GSP, anthelia, mushrooms, xenia, etc) But also have a premium frag pack (not meaning just for premium members) that has some pretty nice choice corals in it (for instance Sean's pokerstar/rainbow monti frag) that would go for a higher donation to the Nature Conservancy Adopt-A-Reef drive... or even an auction system for the premium frag packs where all the money goes to the Nature Conservancy Adopt-A-Reef drive. Just brainstorming. Be happy to donate for the starter frag pack and the premium frag pack if someone puts this thing together. -Ty

I was afraid someone was going to call me out on missing the meeting... let alone the big chief himself! Haha. I will have some things to donate to the charity frag pack if we get this going. -Ty

Great idea! We should totally incorporate this into our December meeting. Bring something for donation to a charity and bring a small frag as a freebie for anyone who wants it. I'm sure we'll get a pretty good new members turnout with that for that meeting. -Ty

ARCers tell it how it is around here! Haha

Wait... so I am all the crap leftover after making Tim's tank?

+1 Epoxy would blow up any skimmer. I'd be more worried if it didn't blow your skimmer up. I had a reef octopus in my 65-gallon. Was a big fan of the skimmer. -Ty

Didn't I mention the uglier, less talked about twin?

+1 I see disaster in trying to accomplish this and leaving it in someone's care while you are gone. I'd be extremely worried about removing all the beneficial bacteria from your sandbed. To me, its the equivalent of starting your tank over. You'd be cycling your system again and would have to wait for the balance to strike again between the denitrifying bacteria and your bioload. If you do it slowly, you may have a better chance of not starting a cycle... but if it was my tank... slow would be over the course of a 6-months to a year for the change. Anything quicker to me is too much of a risk. In my opinion, definitely don't do the whole filter sock/vacuum hose idea. Your intent would be to remove the sand and put back nice clean water but just remember, you'd be disturbing the sand bed and that nice clean looking is chock full of nitrates, phosphates, hydrogen sulfide, and fine particle detritus. I would caution against it in my opinion.

PBNJ, check out his build. I thought I saw a video and some pics. May be older but give you some idea. Last time I saw his colonies were much bigger. -Ty http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/21647-wizardx322s-190-build/page-2

I wouldn't have any room for them. I may have to evict all my tangs to make room. Plus, I've bought so many things from Tim over the years, my tank is like his less pretty, shyer twin of a tank.

What a freakin' steal! He's got like at least over $1500 worth of coral. Some of the best SPS colonies I've seen in Austin.

I don't know much about either product so I wouldnt be the best person to ask about that. Hopefully someone will chime in. I usually don't like to advise with products or methods I don't have first hand experience with.

I'm sure you know, but for those reading that don't know, snail deaths are associated with dino's. The toxicity of the dinos will usually end up killing all your snails if the dinos are persistent enough in your system. As far as dinos affecting your corals, you will usually see it first in your softies... mainly irritated polyps. I had some deflated LPS and then the more picky types of SPS will start receding from the base up.

I'd keep doing what you are doing for the chaeto. I see nothing wrong with that. I would definitely cool it on the shrimp and frozen foods. I feed about once every two weeks with frozen as a treat but otherwise, I try to minimize my frozen foods. Be careful with frozen shrimp from the store... heard rumors of places spraying nitrate on them for preservation I believe. Don't know much about it but what I heard. I would keep the salinity at 1.023 for now... the higher salinity is what dinos prefer. If I had to take a guess, it would be your liverock and sand from the former FOWLR system. The rocks from those systems were usually exposed to higher nitrates and phosphates and may be slowly leaching over time in your system. Just my opinion so take it for what it is worth...

The monti caps will take a toll on your calc/alk levels. They are quick growers and may push you into the need to maybe dose calcium/alk if the amount of mass of monti caps in your tank is on the higher side. I think you can order Dr. Tim's but I don't know from where. A quick google search should square that away for you. As far as potential sources of nitrates/phosphates, do you have an RO/DI system? Have you tested your water coming out of that system if you do? What's your feeding regiment? Bioload? Do you have a lot of fishes? Your chaeto I assume is in a sump. Do you run a reverse lighting cycle for the sump? How much chaeto do you have? I had best success when my chaeto at minimum took up roughly 10-15 percent volume of my tank size. Basically, for a 100-gallon tank, the volume of chaeto would roughly fill a 10-15 gallon tank. Other potential sources are settling of detritus in tank? phosphate-saturated liverock? Just a heads up, I removed cyano from my tank and that is when the dinos started up in my tank. With removal of one part of the balance in your system, another will fill its place unless the food source is removed. I wish I would have stuck with the cyano and just treated the nutrient source with cyano in the tank instead of letting dinos get a foothold. Just a word of warning if someone is unsatisfied with cyano in their tank... don't kick out your current resident unless you're prepared to have their meaner and messier cousin take over the place instead. -Ty

A biopellet reactor is not needed for peroxide dosing. The idea as I understood it was to use the peroxide to wipe out as much of the dinos as possible. It will also cause other single-celled organisms to die as well, basically wiping out a lot of your bacterial populations in your tank. After the dinos are gone, replenish your bacterial populations with any sort of bacterial additive (microbacter, Dr. Tim's, or TLC from Fishy business). There is not point in replenishing while you are treating with peroxide, you will just kill off the bacteria you dose. After my dinos disappeared, I went heavy with the bacterial addition until I felt like the tank normalized (about 1.5 months, weekly additions). I started back up my biopellets during that time to capture some of the beneficial bacteria and jump start it again, since all the bacterial populations in the reactor had died since it was shut down. Ideally, if you ran your biopellets correctly, you shouldn't even be adding additional bacteria to your tank as it should all be skimmed out before hitting your main display either way. I don't think you have to worry about losing any coral due to dosing. I have over 125+ varieties of softies, LPS, SPS, and inverts and not a single coral was affected (besides zoas closing for 30mins and then opening back up). As far as testing/supplementing alk/calcium/magnesium, as long as regular water changes are occurring, I feel the testing/supplementing is not needed, especially if you are only keeping some LPS and easy SPS. The water changes should take care of most of your needs. Now if you throw a clam in there and start adding a bunch of SPS, then it may be time to look into supplementing and testing. To me, adding SPS and a clam is a double-edged sword. Before adding those, you could have stable enough levels for LPS and softies with just simple water changes and just keeping an eye on your salinity and temperature. Once SPS and clams are added, you get to enjoy the beauty of them but at the same time, your work on your tank just about doubles. Supplementation, testing, constant monitoring... for me, the reward was worth it but I do remember back to the days of my softie/LPS tank and remembered how carefree those days were. Don't get me wrong, I am lazy. So I've basically automated everything in the tank but still... it is a lot of work and stress... more so than a softie/LPS tank. If you're in school right now, softie/LPS is the way to go... otherwise, a lot of your money and time will be on the tank. -Ty

To The Top Used to bump your post to the top of the list.

Here's a link to the previous topic regarding dinos. http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/24429-dinoflagellates/ Lots of good advice in there as well as my own strategy for attacking my issue. I did 1ml per 10 gallons for about 2 weeks with lights off for 3 days and then minimal lighting period (1-2hrs) afterwards until the problem went away... wet skimmed as well as got very aggressive on activated carbon changes and GFO (2x a month instead of the usual 1x a month). Occasionally I would dose with a turkey baster directly at areas where dinos were attached (making sure to not blast more than the 1ml per 10 gallon rule total when using the turkey baster). Once I couldn't see them anymore and they weren't coming back at the end of the photo period, I stopped doxing peroxide and then I kick started my biopellets back up and dosed bacteria to rebuild bacterial populations in the tank. I slowly increased lighting over a period of a month until I was back at my normal lighting levels. Done! Pain in the rear for sure. I don't know about how chaeto would suffer but people are constantly giving that stuff away so replacing would not be an issue. I know that dosing peroxide is great for algae removal but more so as a dip instead of a smaller dose in this case. I did however observe less green growth on my glass during the treatment but that can be partially due to the peroxide and the shorter photo period as well. Let me know if you have any other questions but that was my multi-pronged attack that I used to fight dinos. I don't think it was particularly one thing I did versus another that was the key factor, but more so the accumulation of all the different methods to weaken the dinos stronghold on my system. -Ty

I dosed peroxide in my 125-gallon tank with no issues. I have softies, lps, SPS, and anemones and did not encounter any ill effects other than the zoas would immediately close after dosing and open back up in about 20-30 mins. I am not saying everyone will have the same result but just passing along my experience. -Ty

I would be for sure pulling bristleworms if I had sexy shrimp. They are like the sea's shrimp-flavored snack... everything wants to take a bite of them... and it helps that they are so bite-sized. Haha.

I think the point of emphasis is to pull out "pests" that may be detrimental to your tank. To each tank, it may be different what is classified as a pest. Most of the pests listed above are generally universal pests. I don't think that was the intent when listing bristleworms as they walk the line for some as being detrimental or beneficial. For me it is beneficial because in case one of my fish die, if I didn't notice in time, I would appreciate the backup of bristleworms and nassarius snails to clean up as much as possible.

+1 on bristleworms being beneficial. Never understood the scare with these guys. They're great! -Ty

The easy SPS should be no problem (birdsnest, stylos, and pocciloporas) and they have pretty good growth rates too so they should be able to fill out your tank quite quickly. I say for sure frequent water changes (every week or a minimum every 2 weeks) to supplement alk/calcium levels and to keep nitrates/phosphates at lower levels. If you have the ability, GFO or a small refugium would be beneficial. It is definitely possible. Mandarin + 14 gallon = bad idea. Unless you train it to eat pellets. The green spotted one's are supposedly more open to eating prepared foods instead of live foods. -Ty