Bap's RSM 250 Tank thread

[newo11]

Tank update:
Scoly is getting better now that it has been in the shaded area. Gaining color back, and puffing up more.

Unfortunately the anemone died on us last night. He had seemed to find a nice spot and then yesterday turned into a shredded looking mess.
Tank looks ok. Ammonia was a little high, so we are definitely going to do a water change once we finish mixing up the salt water.

Probably going to be getting some new coral soon. Pics to come...

You may want to run some fresh carbon on the tank as well ASAP to help pull out any leftover junk from the nem. Several big water changes will help as well just as soon as you can get water made.

Good luck and sorry to hear that this happened!

 

[Adrienne]

Sorry about your nem. I am a newbie but was advised to wait 12 months before I get one. I love that red coral at the front right of your tank - what is it?

 

[bap819]

Thank you every one for your condolences. Our leopard wrasse is the only one who was badly effected by the death of the BTA. Still waiting for him to one out today to see if he's feeling better. He usually hides in the sand when the lights go out. I would hate to lose him. We did a 30% water change and changed the carbon out.

I plan on taking some nice photos of some of our coral and posting, along with a mystery algae (weed?) that showed up in the tank a few weeks ago and is a real pain in the butt.
Also, we plan on eventually setting up an ATO. Anyone use AutoAqua Smart? http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/autoaqua-smart-ato-auto-top-off-system.html that's what we have been looking at possibly getting. We're also going to get around to hooking up the MP40 that has been sitting around the house for a few months.

It's a pink goniopra Adrienne. Adds some really nice color.

I love that red coral at the front right of your tank - what is it?

 

[Danreef]

I wanted one of those, but from reading I understood they need to be on a glass surface. In the pump 1 chamber you only have clear glass on the small window with water level marks.

Most people use Tunze. I was using the nano Tunze but had some problems. I changed to a JBJ. I had all those ATOs from previous tanks. The JBJ so far is doing great.

Daniel

 

[bap819]

Thanks for letting me know Dan. Definitely didn't think about that. I'll look into the others you mentioned.

We had a very sad week, after the anemone died, the leopard wrasse took a beating from the toxins and passed on as well. Tank parameters are finally back in check and I took some close ups of the coral, and the nuisance algae that I can't seem to get rid of.
Still perfecting my photography skills, I apologize in the meantime lol.
FTS

Dragon Soul Favia

Green Hammer

Hairy green Mushroom

Pink Goniopora

Duncan

Hopefully Recovering Scoly

Nuisnace Algae. Any one know what it is or how to get rid of it, besides ripping it out every other day???

 

[nanoreefing4fun]

Sorry to hear you lost your nem & leopard wrasse Tanks and corals are looking great !

 

[Danreef]

Tank looks very nice !!!!..... sorry for the lost.

In the full tank picture, what is the right yellow coral ?

Daniel

 

[bap819]

Tank looks very nice !!!!..... sorry for the lost.

In the full tank picture, what is the right yellow coral ?

Daniel

The one on the rock on the right side is a cabbage coral. Pretty cool looking, and the camera made him more yellow looking. He's actually fluorescent green.

 

[bap819]

It has been a while since I have updated. Not too much has happened.

We picked up some new corals about two weeks ago:
Stylophora
orange ricordia
Blastomussa Wellsi dark red with green mouth
Blastomussa merletti red with green "spots"
blue echinata sadly bleached and died within 48 hours, no clue why
Acropora (not sure which type but it stopped putting out its polyps, they were the hairy type of polyp)

Unfortunately the mystery weed/algae (picture in earlier post) has taken over the tank, along with a mild case of bubble algae ever since the emerald crab died.

 

[BigJim70]

I think the algae in your pictures might be bryopsis. The close up picture seems to show a fern or feather like structure like bryopsis. If you do an internet search, you can look at some images to see if I'm right. The only thing that worked for me when I had it was raising my magnesium with Kent Tech M. I can't remember the exact amount to dose, but you can search for "bryopsis kent tech m" and find the proper way to go about it. You definitely need to be careful if you use that treatment because you can kill your inverts.

 

[bap819]

I think the algae in your pictures might be bryopsis. The close up picture seems to show a fern or feather like structure like bryopsis. If you do an internet search, you can look at some images to see if I'm right. The only thing that worked for me when I had it was raising my magnesium with Kent Tech M. I can't remember the exact amount to dose, but you can search for "bryopsis kent tech m" and find the proper way to go about it. You definitely need to be careful if you use that treatment because you can kill your inverts.

That's exactly what it is! Thanks Jim! I've been googling for hours about how to get rid of it and raising the mag with kent seems to be the best solution.

 

[BigJim70]

That's exactly what it is! Thanks Jim! I've been googling for hours about how to get rid of it and raising the mag with kent seems to be the best solution.

It worked great for me. I didn't lose any inverts either. Just take it slow and you will see it slowly turn white and die Try to pick out as much as you can before you start the treatment or you could get a nutrient spike from the die off causing a new algae outbreak. I didn't do that and green hair algae replaced my bryopsis.

 

[bap819]

I started raising the magnesium levels about a week ago after picking out as much of the bryopsis as I could. It grew back rapidly but I am starting to see some die off. It is turning white and hopefully will continue to disappear. Unfortunately the bubble algae is starting to get worse. I didn't want to get an emerald crab until I have finished the mag treatment though. I guess you lose some and you win some.

 

[Joeys Tank]

Keep up the fight. I am cheering for you.

 

[BigJim70]

I started raising the magnesium levels about a week ago after picking out as much of the bryopsis as I could. It grew back rapidly but I am starting to see some die off. It is turning white and hopefully will continue to disappear. Unfortunately the bubble algae is starting to get worse. I didn't want to get an emerald crab until I have finished the mag treatment though. I guess you lose some and you win some.

It sounds like you are on the right track. Make sure it is dead all the way down to the root before you quit the treatment. If you stop too soon, it will come right back. I stayed on the low end of the recommended magnesium levels and it took a couple months and a couple gallons of Kent Tech M to finally win the battle. Bubble algae might be the only algae I haven't had in my tank.

 

[bap819]

This bubble algae is starting to become a real problem. We have two different types, the branching sausage like kind and the traditional big round bubbles. The sausage are extremely hard to remove manually. We had an emerald crab for a while and he kept the tank spotless but the zoos did suffer quite a bit from him. So I have been doing some research and saw that urchins will sometimes eat bubble algae. Called the LFS today and they don't have any . I'll have to wait till the end of the week and call again when they get their next shipment.

 

[bap819]

Picture Day!

FTS

Corals

 

[bap819]

Wow it's been almost a year since we updated. Life happens sometimes, but we did still manage to buy corals and do a water change at least once a month. The real neglect came over the summer months.

For some reason we had taken the thermometer out around the spring time and never put it back in. That was mistake number one. Mistake number two was being too lazy to put the portable ac unit for the summer in the room that the tank is kept in. The house has central air but the bedroom the tank is in gets the worst air circulation. Well first the sps started to look bad and die off around June, but the main culprit was our flame angel who decided to turn on us. One day we just sat there watching for an hour or so and he would just go to town pecking them. Which was particularly upsetting because we had just gotten the sps corals to finally take off and grow like crazy. Catching him proved unsuccessful and we gave up. We also probably didn't do a water change for a good 3 months. Fast forward to two weeks ago and we are doomed. One day the skunk shrimp, flame angel, and almost all our coral was dead or dying suddenly. The water felt really warm so I stuck the thermometer in.....90 degrees. Yikes!

I checked the heater which was still set at around 78, but the air temp of the room had to be about 80 degrees. I also heard a little voice in my head reminding me that rsm 250s are notorious for creating lots of heat. So off went the lights, opened the hood all the way, opened all the windows in the room, did a 25% water change, and waited. Thankfully the unusually warm nj september decided to normalize that day, and after about 24 hours it the water temp went down to 82ish. The ac unit was being lent out to another family member and won't be back until hopefully next week, but by then it starts to get cold here anyway. Last summer it never went over 80 with the ac unit in, so I don't really see a need for a chiller since it was mainly human error/laziness.
Survivors List:
- All the zoas pulled through
- Both clowns
- Royal Gamma
- the black and blue fish which I can never remember the name of
- cabbage coral
- Duncans
- Hairy mushroom
- Trumpets
- Clavularia
- the green star looking polyp thing that took over the one rock
- and the jury is out for now on the pink Goniopora

Loses:
- All our sps
- Hammer coral which had at least 25 heads on it now
- Frogspawn
- All blastos
- And anything else not mentioned in survivors list either died already or because of the heat

On a positive note we now don't have to worry about the flame angel. The rock work has also been bugging me, but we couldn't move anything because there were too many happy corals that would be majorly disturbed. So in the coming weeks we will probably be putting a lot of work into the tank.

Oh and the asterinas decided to multiply like rabbits in the past week and were not affected at all unfortunately.

 

[bap819]

The tank seems to be pretty happy now. Almost everything is fully opening and growing again. The only problem is with the pink goniopora. It hasn't opened up or extended its polyps for almost a month now. Its completely retracted in the middle but not dead, and only the outer edge opens up a tiny bit. I'm going to try feeding it a few times a week to see if maybe thats the issue since we don't regularly feed our corals.

After this post I'm going to do a full workup on the tank parameters to make sure everything is ok before we start adding any sps coral into the tank again. Being as we lost any and all sps to the overheating. We are also working on what to do with the palys that decided to take over half of a very large supporting rock. They are multiplying like crazy!

 

[bap819]

If I don't start updating are tank thread more often, it seems that annual updates will be all you see from us. We will definitely try to work on that. Slowly but surely we eventually get the upgrades that are desperately needed for our beloved RSM 250.

Our heat issues have been resolved by keeping a window ac unit in my brother's room where the tank is. Before, our central air system just wasn't cutting it in the summer in there. His room is all the way at the other end of the house and never got the proper air circulation. And we already had the unit just sitting in storage, so this was a much cheaper solution than buying a chiller.
We removed the stock skimmer and replaced it with the Tunze 9004 back in February. What a difference!

Sadly over the past few months we lost many of our LPS, always overnight they would be half gone or gone altogether, but not the ones that were high up or on the frag rack. All the parameters were always great so we think that we had a bristle worm hiding in the rock work munching on things. We haven't gotten many, if any, new corals because of this. We definitely do not want to tear the tank apart.

Today however, we purchased the led system from @StevesLEDs and should be working on that sometime next week.

Still on our upgrade list to one day purchase is an ATO system and doser.

Pictures to follow later this week!