Second round of maintenance!
I wasted a lot (a lot) of time tonight trying to fix that leaking union at the Eheim. It was just one thing after another. But, it is running and it is tight. While I had everything pulled out to access the pump I added a cup of kalk to my reactor.
I read an interesting idea tonight on reefcentral. Accomplish a water change by skimming extremely wet. The logic was, you want to get the nastiest water possible out during a water change. What water would you rather use to start a new system with – skimmate, overflow water, or water you siphoned out of the tank? That had me sold. Skimmate for my water changes it is! That is some of the nastiest stuff I’ve ever seen. Some people have set up an automated system to skim a few gallons out over the course of a couple days, at the same time topping off with new salt water. That wouldn’t work well for me, but I did like one other guy’s method. He adds his fresh salt water to the tank, and then skims really wet for a couple hours, and gets a few gallons (in his case several dozen gallons) of skimmate out.
I tried it tonight… but I wasn’t as successful. When I restarted the Eheim pump the foam head on the skimmer disappeared. In fact, even as I write this it hasn’t started skimming again. I tried the new method anyway. I took the drain hose from the skimmer cup and routed it to my 5-gallon water change bucket. I closed the skimmer valve almost 100%, let the “foam” level rise up the neck, and over an hour or so collected the skimmate (which was almost perfectly clear). I think it was pretty much water straight from my overflow. But, no worse than my normal water change. Next time I’ll know not to disturb the tank at all and keep the head built up.
After I was done I dosed Prodibio BioDigest. This was my last vial, so time to make a purchase.
Monday Update
It’s been a few days without any updates… Let’s see where to begin. How about a short update on almost everything.
Friday night the pajama cardinal released a few larvae. The female stayed immediately downstream of him gobbling them up. Wonderful. How’s that for gratitude for carrying her babies?!? He released the rest of them Saturday night after lights out.
All of the fish have been eating well. The flameback angels have really taken to frozen foods (especially spirulina gut-loaded brine shrimp; the mysis seem to be a bit too large). Alvy is getting much more confident and capable of pulling food out of the water column.
The new frags seem to be acclimating well to their new environment. The urchin (whom we’ve renamed “junkyard”) knocked over the teal stag tonight, despite my having epoxied it in place. I superglued it to the epoxy… hopefully that is effective. Once it encrusts the epoxy there should be no more problems.
I had to relocate the Acropora carolinas. The anemone seems happy in its new location but it was dangerously close to stinging the acro. I moved it to the other side of the overflow. It is in a very slightly shadier spot, and less direct current… it’s showing polyp extension but I’ll still keep an eye on it.
Seeing great growth out of a few other corals, real growth spurts lately. I think this is due to the finally stable alk & ca, and temps. Two in particular are surprising me. The green/yellow “ORA millepora” has started shooting branches in a few directions, really came out of no where. Up until 2 weeks ago or so it was a big colorful lump of coral. Also seeing great encrusting growth from the rainbow montipora. I think that a red millepora is about to take off too. It was a tan/brown color for a while, but I’ve recently noticed better polyp extension, deepening red color, and a light green growth ring around the base. Very cool.
Last night I did a double-water change, about 10 gallons. For no particular reason, just felt like I may have been feeding heavily lately. I forgot to dose the Prodibio BioDigest, but I did that tonight at lights out. It’s about time to purchase some more. I haven’t dosed VSV for about a week… for no good reason. I may pick it back up again, just not sure.
Cyanobacteria Photos After Dosing VSV
OK, yet another non-reef night. This time I was hard at work getting a report done for the guy who signs my paychecks… that felt important.
Since I didn’t have time to finish my thoughts on VSV/Bacteria/Algae (and quite frankly want to reread a bunch of resource materials so I don’t say anything foolish) I’ll just present some interesting photos. Will I include any commentary? I don’t know yet… but we’ll both have figured that out by the end of this post.
I have a few areas of my tank with cyanobacteria growth. It isn’t always present, and even over the course of the same day I have seen it spread and disappear. It does seem to reoccur in the same locations in the tank. Recently I noticed in particular that the cyano recedes considerably after dosing my normal amount of VSV in the evenings. Yesterday I decided to take some photos of it, which follow. Interestingly, tonight when I glanced at the tank I didn’t see any cyano at all… although it’s been present the previous 3 or 4 nights. Huh. Guess I took my photos at the right time.
The first photo is taken right before dosing VSV, and the remaining were taken every 30 minutes. In this first photo check out that thick mat of cyano covering everything in the photo frame.
Cyano at 0 Minutes
Cyano at 30 Minutes
Cyano at 60 Minutes
Cyano at 90 Minutes
Cyano at 120 Minutes
Cyano at 150 Minutes
Cyano at 180 Minutes
In the last photo, you are not seeing cyano – you are seeing the red cotton algae that was on the live rock under the cyanobacteria. The cyano is pretty much completely gone. To give you an idea of how much cyano receded, try to find the caulerpa in the first photo (not just the one exposed leaf). My halides shut off after this last photo and I wasn’t able to take any more photographs, but I could see the cyano further recede in the following hour. Most of the recession is captured in these photos.
I’ve read that different concentrations of the VSV components can contribute to growth of cyano. To me, these photos are further empirical proof that different bacteria do in fact thrive on different carbon sources. Obviously there is a bacteria present in my tank (presumably from the Prodibio BioDigest) that was able to outcompete the cyano… or is that not so obvious? Is there something in the VSV that would have killed the cyanobacteria? I find that less likely.
I think I can also conclude that VSV does not necessarily cause cyanobacteria, although in a different concentration than I am using cyano may thrive on it as a carbon source. Now does Prodibio BioDigest introduce cyano? … maybe. I have no idea. I have had cyano outbreaks in other tanks that weren’t dosed with Prodibio products. Frankly, I think it is always present (although not always visible to the naked eye) and any excess nutrients can cause it to rear its ugly head (am I crazy for not finding it too ugly? I guess it’s all relative when my choices are cyano or red cotton algae). Again, it’s one of the most prevalent strains of bacteria out there, so who knows when or how it got introduced.
Now my question to myself is… will cyano outcompete the red cotton algae for nutrients? If so I may try to find a way to encourage cyano to grow. I find it a lot easier to get rid of than the red cotton algae…
Hey what do you know, I provided some commentary.
Quiet Night
Worked a long day today, so got home an hour before lights out. Didn’t have as much time to watch the tank as I would have liked, but that happens sometimes!
I did make time to do a 5-gallon water change and dose a vial of Prodibio Biodigest.
I think I will start dosing a small amount of VSV again tomorrow. I had been holding off since the new fish, I think because in the back of my head I wanted to let algae grow so they can forage all day. Well, they’ve been getting more and more willing to join the Rod’s Food frenzy at feeding time, and tonight I saw both grabbing Rod’s Food out of the water column. I also fed 1/2 a cube of the spirulina gut-loaded brine shrimp, and they ate a fair amount of that too. Couple their willingness to eat prepared foods with what looked to me like a bit lackadaisical grazing on the live rock (might be my imagination!), and I’m less concerned with foregoing what’s been regular maintenance to allow algae to grow.
Back from the holidays!
Had a very nice trip to Texas to visit the in-laws. A lot of fun, a lot of love, a lot of nice warm weather! It’s still hard adjusting to our rotating holiday schedule, I missed my family and I know how unruly felt at Thanksgiving when she was missing hers. I don’t expect it will ever get easier to split up the holidays but at least we both have really welcoming families. That makes it easier to deal with.
Came back late Saturday afternoon. Everything looked in order, so one of the first things we did was feed the fish (including Bert the fresh water betta). They were all very anxious to eat so we fed a couple times over the course of the evening.
I noticed that one of the blue Florida ricordea mushrooms split while we were away. This was just a matter of time; it had two mouths for a while and it was very evident that it was in the process of splitting. I also noticed that there was no noticeable algae growth while we were gone! This was a nice change from Thanksgiving, when we saw a big algae bloom in our absence. Is this a sign that nutrients are finally under control, or that the clean-up crew is hard at work, or something else? I don’t know, but it was a nice surprise to come home to.
This morning (Sunday) we woke up to see that the male pajama cardinal spit out the eggs. I think this was right on schedule.
As for maintenance, today I did a 5-gallon water change, cleaned the skimmer, and dosed a vial of Prodibio BioDigest. I also added a couple ml of VSV over the course of the day at several-hour intervals. As part of the water change I spent a while really blowing out the live rock with a powerhead.
Saturday Maintenance
Did some work on this blog, and also on the tank. It was a good day. I’ll stick to the work on the tank for this post.
Did a 10-gallon water change this afternoon. That’s twice the volume I usually change. I have noticed a big dent in algae this week, and this afternoon before the water change I stirred up a lot of detritus with a powerhead. Figured, a little extra nutrient export probably isn’t a bad thing. I also added a vial of Prodibio BioDigest and cleaned the skimmer.
I’ve also been noticing a lot more cyano on rocks. It seems to be replacing the algae, so I’m leaving it be for now. I may have added a little too much sugar to the VSV on this batch, so I might “Dilute” it with some extra vodka. I don’t know yet. I figure the cyano will be easier to combat than hair or fuzzy cotton algae, so I’m not concerned yet.
