My 280g build....

[spotter]

Its been a tough week....

So I had been dealing with an ich outbreak for about a week before I lost power last weekend. I was trying to feed my way thru the ich cycle as I had done in the past with success but the power failure really thru it into overdrive and within the last few days a few of my fish have lost the battle.


RIP...
1 false percula clown
Large male Bimac Anthias
Pair of Japanese Swallow Tail Angles...this one stings the most not just from a cost stand point but they quickly became my favorites in the tank.


The corals are looking better and better every day and only had a minor loss on a small portion of my digitata where I noticed rtn/stn at the base. I quickly cut it and mounted on a new frag.


I've been experiencing a lot of Micro bubbles coming from the return lines that are driving me nuts and I am being told that I have too many elbows between my sump and return pump. So I will be looking to change how that is set up.


Needless to say its been a very trying week but I am hanging in there. The remaining fish in the tank are looking better every day and are still eating like pigs.

 

[dnov99]

Damn Steve!! Sorry that really stinks about the angels!!

 

[Baxreefs]

Uhg! Ich really suks and a power outage is bad anytime. I hope you work through it.

 

[spotter]

Damn Steve!! Sorry that really stinks about the angels!!

Uhg! Ich really suks and a power outage is bad anytime. I hope you work through it.

Thanks guys. Its always tough to lose fish but losing the angles was especially tough. The remaining fish seem to be ok and continue to eat and stay active. I'm taking this time to focus on the corals and will hold off on adding any new fish for a while.

 

[asonitez]

Spotter I'm trying to bring some of this stuff in

http://www.drgsmarineaquaculture.com/index.cfm

We just have to ask them to use dry ice and ship it to us.



I was actually able to contact him today. He told me that if we wanted to do a group buy of his product we would need to get to 500 dollars between any combination of product. He gurantees that the Anti-Protozoan medicated fish food is 100% reef safe. The active ingredient is cloroquine phosphate.

 

[spotter]

Its been a while since my last update and unfortunately that last 5 months have been difficult for the tank. We made it thru Sandy with no problems and I actually discovered 4 new fish that were added to my system by my Bangai Cardinals. The night the hurricane hit we discovered 4 babies roaming the tank and then a couple of weeks later there were only two and those are still in there and growing. My kids have affectionately named them Stormy and Sandy. Thats it for the good news. I've been having chronic po4 problems ranging as high as .12 and then down to .05 but never staying at the .05 level for long. I found that I was exhausting gfo in 5.7 days. I tried dripping lanhtanum chloride which was actually the most effective but noticed it would only get the levels down to .05 and as soon as I stopped dripping the levels would rise back up to .08. I cut back on my feeding significantly with no impact. I decided to test my rock and pulled a couple of med sized pieces out of the tank. I put them in a 20g tank with new saltwater, a heater and a powerhead. I tested the water 24 hrs later and my po4 was at .06 ppm and then after 48hrs it was at .08 ppm. With that info my next thought was to pull a few pieces of rock out of the tank at a time so I dip in acid, soak in rodi, cure and return to the tank. I realized this would take several weeks if not months to do considering how much rock I have. I was set to start doing that but then I had a severe ich and or velvet outbreak shortly after xmas. I had too many fish to move them all to a qt and after talking to a few people, I decided to do hypo on the dt. So over a few day period I pulled out just about all of the rock, all of the sand lowered the sg down to 1.009. Its been almost two weeks now that I did this and the fish are doing great. I moved whatever corals I had left into my 80g frag tank and that's being run on its own system now which is really just a hob filter with a couple of power heads. I am doing 1g wc every other day and that seems to be keeping everything in check.

Now onto the rock....this past weekend since it was nice out, I decided I would dip the rocks in muriatic acid, then do a rodi soak and see what happens. After the dip I scrubbed and scrubbed and then let sit in rodi for 48 hrs. Then yesterday I took the same two pieces I had tested before and put them back in the test tank, waited 24 hrs and the results were disappointing. Still got po4 levels of .07ppm after 24hrs. I used muriatic acid that I bought at home depot and my neighbor who is a chemical engineer looked at it and felt it was too diluted with a less than 20% conencentration. ACE Hardware sells muriatic acid that has a concentration of 31%. I am going to try it out on the test pieces tonight and see what happens but there is a part of me that just says ditch the rock and start new. This is also the suggestion of another member on here as well as my wife.

So, I would like to hear your thoughts on what you would do? The pukani rock is beatiful but is it worth all of the work and trouble. Also, since it is so pourous is this going to be an on going battle and will I be doing this all over again in 2-3 yrs.

 

[downbeach]

I've bought the Pukani on three separate occations. I realized right away that the rock would need to be etched, and cured before using it in an established system. So, after re-hydrating it and hosing it down to remove as much of the organic matter as possible, I soaked it in a tub of 50/50 vinegar/water (much less diluted than the acid you've used), for two days with a PH. I then let it cure for about a month in my QT, until the PO4 was negligible, and placed it in my DT. I haven't had a problem with it.

 

[mnat]

I would buy new rock. You can still keep and work on the pukani and work it back into your system over time when you have it completely under control. To fight an ongoing battle that you know is going to to adversly affect your system to me is not something I would do. Figure when you factor in the cost of all the cleaning supplies, gfo, lanthium chloride, water changes and your time it might just be cheaper to get new rock.

 

[spotter]

I've bought the Pukani on three separate occations. I realized right away that the rock would need to be etched, and cured before using it in an established system. So, after re-hydrating it and hosing it down to remove as much of the organic matter as possible, I soaked it in a tub of 50/50 vinegar/water (much less diluted than the acid you've used), for two days with a PH. I then let it cure for about a month in my QT, until the PO4 was negligible, and placed it in my DT. I haven't had a problem with it.

Jim....were you running gfo or a skimmer or anything to help with the export?

I would buy new rock. You can still keep and work on the pukani and work it back into your system over time when you have it completely under control. To fight an ongoing battle that you know is going to to adversly affect your system to me is not something I would do. Figure when you factor in the cost of all the cleaning supplies, gfo, lanthium chloride, water changes and your time it might just be cheaper to get new rock.

Time is becoming an issue as the hobby is falling out of favor with the wife and kids which is why I am leaning towards new rock. With that said, what kind of rock would you buy? I have used marco rock in the past with no problems but what else is everyone using?

 

[downbeach]

Jim....were you running gfo or a skimmer or anything to help with the export?

Not until it was placed in the DT. While it was in the QT I just did WC's, using the water from my DT, when I did its WC's. Although I did weekly WC's, instead of my normal two week schedule during that time.

 

[spotter]

Thanks Jim. I have some really huge pieces and maybe what I will do is concentrate on the smaller ones and replace the big ones. Its such a difficult decision because I've already invested a lot of time, energy and money into this rock and hate to walk away from it now. Not to mention what it will cost to replace.

 

[mnat]

We used a blend of tonga branch, real reef (the fake stuff), and other assorted live rock we have cherry picked throughout the years. If you are having problems with live rock, get the fake stuff so you know there will not be any issues. We had the luxury of time to cycle and clean our live rock which does not sound like the case for you.

 

[spotter]

I decided to follow Jim's method and give it one more shot. I am not ready to give up on my rocks yet!!!! Here is what I set up tonight and the rocks are in there now.

It didnt take long for the "stuff" to start floating to the surface....

 

[spotter]

Over the last two weeks I have done the following to my rock.....


*Dipped in muriatic acid
*Scrubbed, rinse and soak in RODI for 5 days
*Changed the water and soaked agin for 48hrs in a 50/50 vinegar/rodi bath
*Changed the water and started treating with Lanthanum Chloride on a daily basis.


Results....for the last 3 days I have been testing po4 @ .01 ppm on the milwaukee martini phosphate tester.


Today I gave the rocks a really good rinse to remove and precipitate from the LC, drained/cleaned the bins and filled them back up with fresh salt water. The bins have a few power heads, a heater and mag pump for circulation. I will keep my fingers crossed and see how this works out. I really dont want to replace all of the rock but if I get an increase in po4 I will have to look for new dry rock.


I am thinking about adding live rock to the system as well. I am converting the tank that was plumbed into my system as a water change tank into a rock sump so I will be needing additional rock and thought it would be good to use live rock for this in addition to what ever other rock I have that doesnt make its way back into the dt.

 

[spotter]

Forgot something else I did....pressure washed them too!

Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk 2

 

[spotter]

Iphone Pictures

I am amazed at the quality of the pictures that the iphone takes. The only editing I did to the pics is cropped them a little. All of these pieces are thriving in my frag tank that is being run with a HOB filter, 3 pieces of live rock, 2 part dosing and a 8 bulb AquaticLife T5 fixture with all ATI bulbs. Theres no skimmer, no scrubber and I've been doing 15% wc's every other week since everything got moved into the frag tank.

 

[iTzJu]

Those pieces look good Steve! what's the name of the zoas in the 5th picture?

 

[spotter]

Those pieces look good Steve! what's the name of the zoas in the 5th picture?

Thanks...to be honest I have no idea. I bought a bunch of frags from Pac East a while ago and forgot the names they had listed. Maybe someone on here will know. I've never been big on the names....too hard to keep track of.

 

[NikkiT]

Very nice, Steve, I love the photo of the Duncan!

 

[Sunny]

Good going. I have always believed that every now and then we should give the skimmer a rest