Funlad3's 24G JBJ Nano

The tank has been doing well as a whole, but I've borderline bleached some of my corals. I kept on increasing the intensity of my lights over the past few months, but the white channel on the LEDs was set to go off if the tank got too warm. When it finally started to get cooler outside, the whites suddenly started staying on all day at the newly increased intensity, and many of the pieces I've had for a while paled out a bit. Growth has been phenomenal over the past few weeks with the higher light intensity, but I do want a bit more color on the pieces. The lights have been turned back down.

My skimmer pump died two weeks ago, but I replaced it at the beginning of this week. I might have to go on another algae pulling crusade, but none of the corals seem annoyed with this particular species, so it just as easily might get to stick around for a while.

My calcium and alkalinity consumption have also been off-the-charts insane, so it's been difficult keeping up with dosing powders. I have a project in the works to get that resolved though.

For now, here's a full tank shot.

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You’ve got some nice pieces! Time for a tank upgrade so you can continue to feed the addiction. I’m excited to see how you grow out all of these sticks in such a tight space.
 
Sawdonkey said:
You’ve got some nice pieces! Time for a tank upgrade so you can continue to feed the addiction. I’m excited to see how you grow out all of these sticks in such a tight space.
Click to expand...

I'm planning on an upgrade at the end of the year depending on how well (or poorly) the acros all play together... :)
 
Just saw this build thread for the first time. Solid hour of reading and learning (as well as being blown away by the project). Well done, sir. Looks amazing. Your clam colors are inspiring to say the least.
 
930reef said:
Just saw this build thread for the first time. Solid hour of reading and learning (as well as being blown away by the project). Well done, sir. Looks amazing. Your clam colors are inspiring to say the least.
Click to expand...

I'm never going to have another SPS tank without clams; they're just so bright and easy to take care of under these conditions. :)
 
It's been a super hectic week for the tank resulting in me losing four pieces; I started last week by giving myself a second degree burn on my hand, so I was limited in what I could do for maintenance. The next morning, naturally, my Vectra seized because of how concentrated my dosing has been, so I had to tear the pump apart with one hand and give it a vinegar bath without getting any in my open burns. My dosing solutions have been so concentrated that they've precipitated almost instantly (see the seized Vectra), so my consumption has been all over the place.

To mediate all of this, I've been repairing an old and broken calcium reactor and assembling the new parts that I need to bring it online. It should come to life tomorrow, and then hopefully everything in the tank settles down.
 
I've been super busy with work, but that hasn't stopped me from playing around with the tank and filling it up with more corals and equipment.

In my last update, I added a calcium reactor which I have completely dialed in. I've already had to decrease the reactor pH to from 6.70 to 6.65 keep up with my tank's consumption, and everything is growing quickly. I didn't see the reactor impacting the tank's pH, but because it had been holding steady at around 7.9, I decided to take a BRS mini reactor (half the height of a regular one) and run it as a CO2 scrubber. My pH is now averaging around 8.0 over a 24 hour period, but considering the size of the tank, I'm going to leave it alone instead of chasing higher numbers.

My color has been fading out on a lot of my pieces for the past six weeks or so, and it's finally to the point where I'll have to start testing my water for nutrient levels like a responsible reefer. I've always had algae in this tank, which I don't usually mind, but I'm thinking that it's finally causing problems. I run like to run my Alk around 10, so I've always liked to have dirty water. With no clean up crew, however, I'm afraid that the algae has gotten out of hand in that it's stripped my water clean. When I had better color, I would have to clean my glass on a daily basis, but I haven't had to do it for the past two weeks or so. Some of the corals had been turning brown (and many still are), so I had assumed that my phosphates were high and added a GFO reactor. Within a day, the algae underwent a phase change and started to melt and be replaced with a different type, but it's still hanging around.

Again, I'm going to test my nitrates and phosphates to confirm my suspicion, but I think that I have to get rid of my algae problem so that my tank can get dirty again. Ordinarily, I'd try to change out water and run chemical filtration to try to starve out the algae, but I fear that it would only lead to the further discoloration of my corals. I think the simple solution is to go crazy with adding more hermit and emerald crabs to remove the algae so that there are more nutrients for my corals. I've been feeding Reef Chili heavily, but it's also four or five years old and probably feeding the algae more than corals.

All of that being said, I've still been having great growth on my corals. I'm super happy with my calcium reactor, and I love having the interface set up entirely through the Apex Fusion portal. If I can solve my nutrient/lack of nutrient problems and get my color back, I'll be thrilled with the tank again. Until then, here's what some of my pieces are looking like and what their color used to look like before this temporary blight:

Today:
46491701_1142816005867015_1353126891099258880_o.jpg


September 3:
40610079_1097616920386924_8982927359464177664_o.jpg



Today:
46459217_1142815979200351_3449074414765735936_o.jpg


September 3:
40641468_1097616823720267_2297676012936232960_o.jpg



Today:
46451739_1142816042533678_4178464774792675328_o.jpg


September 3:
40684378_1097616837053599_3318947844978638848_o.jpg


A new addition that I'm going to try to heal up:
46422824_1142815765867039_880001106317410304_o.jpg


Another new piece that I'm only going to keep a frag of:
46505720_1142815525867063_7036590155355914240_o.jpg


Hugo's Rainbow Stag:
46470048_1142815579200391_7262987704118280192_o.jpg


A few bad pictures of a complete oddball. Never seen anything like this species before; each branch is thicker than most of the minicolonies in my tank. I doubt it'll turn into anything other than green, but I love it anyways:

46501717_1142815635867052_4626220393915482112_o.jpg


46479528_1142815729200376_5893937926143737856_o.jpg


Another bushy acro that forgot that it was supposed to be pissed this month:
46437318_1142815669200382_7767786776764088320_o.jpg


My two favorite wild pieces I've found this year:
46505963_1142815612533721_8659868517983584256_o.jpg


46625577_1142815872533695_140627648861700096_o.jpg



And here are two very ugly full tank shots. No one's tank looks beautiful 24/7!
46445863_1142815785867037_248950735566274560_o.jpg


46438387_1142815859200363_4307691793744396288_o.jpg
 
So here's a weird little mystery...

I decided to go nuclear on my algae by adding a whole new clean up crew to the tank. I added something like 40 snails, 10 hermits, and two emerald crabs to the tank. I've always had luck with just tossing small inverts like this straight into the tank after floating them. Sure enough, everything went into the tank fine and immediately started munching on algae, as planned. The next day, the two emerald crabs were toast and a few hermits had died too, so I resolved to actually acclimate my replacements.

47095285_1150155001799782_5082922060548669440_n.jpg


Tonight, I brought home another emerald and a pair of Harlequin Shrimp that I had been eyeing at the store all week. I set them up in individual containers for acclimation and carefully added water from my tank into their buckets while I worked on my computer. After an two hours, I went to throw everything into the tank and both shrimp were floating on their sides and the emerald was curled up into a ball. I quickly threw the shrimp into a fuge on a different system that I have here at home and put the emerald in the DT of the other system. I looked more carefully at my DT realized that there's not a single hermit crab to be found.

47146018_1150154981799784_856578407679393792_n.jpg



After a few minutes in the fuge on the other system, the harlequins started to groggily shake about, so I'm hoping that they recover. The closest thing that I've seen to this has been when gorilla crabs have gotten nuked in Bayer when acros were dipped. It seems like their motor functions slowly freeze out until they die altogether. The strange thing is that all of my snails, chitons, corals and clams are totally fine and happy in my tank. Whatever this issue is, it only seems to be effecting crustaceans.

My acclimation containers have never seen copper or Bayer, nor do I think that they're the vector for whatever is killing my crustaceans, as even the crabs that I threw straight into the tank died within 24 hours or so. I always try to keep water changes to a minimum, so I'm thinking that my major constituent ions (Na, Cl) might be out of whack from all of the super concentrated dosing that I did a month or two ago. I still don't know that that would be lethal to something as hardy/bulletproof as an emerald crab though, so maybe my water is contaminated with something else? I'm tempted to send water off for a Triton test...

In the meantime, I'm going to hope that my Harlequin pair recovers. I'm not thrilled that I had to throw them in a completely different system after acclimating them to mine, but at least that system isn't discriminately killing crustaceans...
 
Funlad3 said:
So here's a weird little mystery...

I decided to go nuclear on my algae by adding a whole new clean up crew to the tank. I added something like 40 snails, 10 hermits, and two emerald crabs to the tank. I've always had luck with just tossing small inverts like this straight into the tank after floating them. Sure enough, everything went into the tank fine and immediately started munching on algae, as planned. The next day, the two emerald crabs were toast and a few hermits had died too, so I resolved to actually acclimate my replacements.

47095285_1150155001799782_5082922060548669440_n.jpg


Tonight, I brought home another emerald and a pair of Harlequin Shrimp that I had been eyeing at the store all week. I set them up in individual containers for acclimation and carefully added water from my tank into their buckets while I worked on my computer. After an two hours, I went to throw everything into the tank and both shrimp were floating on their sides and the emerald was curled up into a ball. I quickly threw the shrimp into a fuge on a different system that I have here at home and put the emerald in the DT of the other system. I looked more carefully at my DT realized that there's not a single hermit crab to be found.

47146018_1150154981799784_856578407679393792_n.jpg



After a few minutes in the fuge on the other system, the harlequins started to groggily shake about, so I'm hoping that they recover. The closest thing that I've seen to this has been when gorilla crabs have gotten nuked in Bayer when acros were dipped. It seems like their motor functions slowly freeze out until they die altogether. The strange thing is that all of my snails, chitons, corals and clams are totally fine and happy in my tank. Whatever this issue is, it only seems to be effecting crustaceans.

My acclimation containers have never seen copper or Bayer, nor do I think that they're the vector for whatever is killing my crustaceans, as even the crabs that I threw straight into the tank died within 24 hours or so. I always try to keep water changes to a minimum, so I'm thinking that my major constituent ions (Na, Cl) might be out of whack from all of the super concentrated dosing that I did a month or two ago. I still don't know that that would be lethal to something as hardy/bulletproof as an emerald crab though, so maybe my water is contaminated with something else? I'm tempted to send water off for a Triton test...

In the meantime, I'm going to hope that my Harlequin pair recovers. I'm not thrilled that I had to throw them in a completely different system after acclimating them to mine, but at least that system isn't discriminately killing crustaceans...
Click to expand...
Dman that's sucks man hope everything bounces back for ya and you get that algae prob under control

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
 
Funlad3 said:
So here's a weird little mystery...

I decided to go nuclear on my algae by adding a whole new clean up crew to the tank. I added something like 40 snails, 10 hermits, and two emerald crabs to the tank. I've always had luck with just tossing small inverts like this straight into the tank after floating them. Sure enough, everything went into the tank fine and immediately started munching on algae, as planned. The next day, the two emerald crabs were toast and a few hermits had died too, so I resolved to actually acclimate my replacements.

47095285_1150155001799782_5082922060548669440_n.jpg


Tonight, I brought home another emerald and a pair of Harlequin Shrimp that I had been eyeing at the store all week. I set them up in individual containers for acclimation and carefully added water from my tank into their buckets while I worked on my computer. After an two hours, I went to throw everything into the tank and both shrimp were floating on their sides and the emerald was curled up into a ball. I quickly threw the shrimp into a fuge on a different system that I have here at home and put the emerald in the DT of the other system. I looked more carefully at my DT realized that there's not a single hermit crab to be found.

47146018_1150154981799784_856578407679393792_n.jpg



After a few minutes in the fuge on the other system, the harlequins started to groggily shake about, so I'm hoping that they recover. The closest thing that I've seen to this has been when gorilla crabs have gotten nuked in Bayer when acros were dipped. It seems like their motor functions slowly freeze out until they die altogether. The strange thing is that all of my snails, chitons, corals and clams are totally fine and happy in my tank. Whatever this issue is, it only seems to be effecting crustaceans.

My acclimation containers have never seen copper or Bayer, nor do I think that they're the vector for whatever is killing my crustaceans, as even the crabs that I threw straight into the tank died within 24 hours or so. I always try to keep water changes to a minimum, so I'm thinking that my major constituent ions (Na, Cl) might be out of whack from all of the super concentrated dosing that I did a month or two ago. I still don't know that that would be lethal to something as hardy/bulletproof as an emerald crab though, so maybe my water is contaminated with something else? I'm tempted to send water off for a Triton test...

In the meantime, I'm going to hope that my Harlequin pair recovers. I'm not thrilled that I had to throw them in a completely different system after acclimating them to mine, but at least that system isn't discriminately killing crustaceans...
Click to expand...

Is your tank contaminated with bayer from dipping frags?
 
Sawdonkey said:
Is your tank contaminated with bayer from dipping frags?
Click to expand...

I thought that briefly, but I hadn't added corals for two weeks or so and I doubt the half life of residual levels of Bayer on old frags would be enough to have an almost immediate impact on crustaceans. I spoke to a few industry professionals today and they're thinking it might be heavy metal contamination. Only ICP will tell me for sure, so I guess I might have to buy a test next week.
 
Six weeks later... I've finally added Carbon. :)

I lost a few frags while I was out of town for 10 days over new year, but by and large, everything else did fine. I had a lot of algae growth (despite the tank not being fed) while I was gone, so a few acros got oxygen burns, but I'm hoping they all recover quickly. Since doing a 80% water change last month and then another 25% water change a week or two after that, the surviving hermit crabs have all come back to life and are healthily scuttling around the tank. I added a sea hare last week, and I'm planning on adding more inverts this week. I've finally *almost* got the algae under control, at which point I will resume normal feeding of my corals. Once I do, I'm expecting to see everything fully color up again and explode with growth. :D
 
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