alabella1
Valuable Member
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I wish I could be thankful for my tank, but man... I'm going through it right now and I'm getting closer every day to throwing in the towel.
Here is most of my story... so far...
I could really use your help here. I've been struggling like no other for over a year now and I'm almost ready to quit, but I'm looking for some new things to try. For a year or more since my first ever velvet outbreak I was using Jay Hemdal's QT protocol. I've just lost too many fish QT'ing this way. I happened to be speaking to a few people who said they do not QT and Alex @ Reef Exclusive gave me some methods to follow which I've been following since June. I was looking to maybe try HTTM going forward BUT I need to get my DT healthy before doing anything else.
So let's get into my crazy story...
2022 started off innocently enough. Things were going great and my 65g red sea max was thriving. It had the stock pumps, a Tunze 9004 skimmer, 2 MP40s and a 15w aqua UV. The occasional fish would die now and then but mostly things were okay and my coral was booming. I never QT'd fish. I'd introduce a fish a week or so. Things were largely ok. Never saw any disease in the tank. The occasional fish died, but nothing serious. One day I was driving through town and saw a LFS I'd never been to. Heard of the place, it had a good reputation. It was very clean, well lit, and nice. Staff was nice, knowledgeable and not at all pushy for a sale. I saw some really nice female lyretail anthias. They looked healthy, colorful, eating, etc. So I grabbed one. This was the first time I ever got an anthias and the first time I ever purchased anything at this store. Now I'm not saying it was this fish, but something happened. Velvet broke out and within weeks I lost 15-18 fish. I QT'd what I could, most died, I saved a few. I was miserable. While at the same LFS where I got the anthias, I was buying meds for my QT and I noticed they had this awesome tank for sale. I figured, since I was going fallow anyway, it might be a good time to start up a newer larger tank, so I got the AquaVim 155g corner tank in June of 2022.
This was the 65 right when velvet hit and then with coral only...
I built it slowly. New sand. Live rock that I had been cycling ahead of time. I wanted to start off as fresh as I could. I built my aquascape, dropped in the rock and began cycling. I gave it more than enough time to cycle.
This is also when I started grabbing some items to help automate and monitor. Apex stuff, new Ecotech MP40s, Cor20 Return pump. I had a regular old eshopps sump, eshopps skimmer, socks, bio balls, etc. Beefed up my RODI system to a 7 stage so I could make more water, faster. I have gone between Instant Ocean and Reef crystals but I'm all in with IO on this tank.
I ended up getting more live rock along the way which didn't smell great and even looked a little moldy so I bleached it for days, rinsed it well and left out in the sun to dry out for weeks. I cycled it in it's own tank and once it was ready I introduced it to the tank and my existing rock.
In sept. I bought my first batch of QT'd fish from Dr. Reef. Before these fish even made it out of QT, my existing fish which had already gone through QT appeared to start showing velvet. This was the end of Sept. I moved all fish out into another QT tank I built and began treating but lost most of them. Tank went fallow for 6-8 weeks before I brought anything back into the tank. In that time I lost most of those fish as the velvet had already set in too much and QT could not save them.
Mid Nov.
By Mid November I had finally begun moving my coral from my old 65g which had only been growing my coral to this point, no livestock since may. Coral in, lights up, nutrients balanced, things looking good. Ready for fish again? Sure. But wait. New sump time. This is when I started down the Lifereef path and had my awesome new custom sump, fuge and skimmer built which I installed in December. Once that was done I began moving in some of my fish. By February things were going great. Tank was finally taking shape. That was when disaster struck. My Apex Pro A3 brain died. While waiting for a replacement my ranco heater controller went rogue and cooked the tank. I lost ALL coral except a few resilient zoas and almost all fish save a couple. The cooking happened on a Thursday night and I woke up to it Friday morning. The kicker... that Friday afternoon the replacement Apex arrived. You cannot make this up.
This was almost enough to get me to quit but I began rebuilding... again. Before I even was able to get going with that though, we lost my father in law to lung cancer. The entire family was crushed. After a little bit, I turned back to the tank to take my mind off of all of that. I started getting on coral auctions and sales and began rebuilding my coral empire. I moved on to only buying QT'd fish or healthy fish from owners that had the fish for a long time and I would do at least 2 weeks observation before introducing them to the tank.
April came and it was time for my gastric sleeve surgery which went well. Came home, recovered, went back to working on the tank. End of April, velvet... AGAIN!! I just can't seem to beat this thing. All fish out again and back into QT.
June 3rd is around the time I started talking Alexander Kolesnikov of Reef Exclusive and trying his methods.
Per his instructions I dropped the tank temp to 75, turn my return pump to 100% and upgrade my return hose to 1 1/4", added a few more heads for flow, reduce the depth of my sand to 1" and upgraded the pump on my skimmer from a MAG9 to a MAG24. He also has me dose a mixture of RODI and potassium permanganate which he calls ApRedox.
June and July fish were back in and doing okay. Signs of ich and velvet came and went but nothing was dying. The potassium permanganate was somehow keeping them alive. I went slow. I'd introduce maybe 1 large or 2 small fish from QT per week to let the tank adjust to the load.
Mid August I sold my Neptune Sky lights and replaced them with Reefi Uno2 Pro lights.
Velvet still comes and goes but everything is alive.
End of August I suddenly lost a few fish within days. I stay the course.
Mid september something's not right. I'm noticing more red/brown on the sand. My euphyllias all start bailing their polyps. I lost all my hammers and frogspawns. Then my torches all start going one by one. I am currently down to 2x remaining of my once 11 beautiful torches. I move most coral out to another tank for observation/growth.
In the past few weeks I've lost 5-6 more fish and others are looking less than healthy. That is where we are today.
Jeff @ Lifereef who I also hit up for help says maybe my sand and/or rock is compromised. If that is the case what could cause that and how can I fix it? At this point I'm ready to try anything. I just need to get this turned around or I'm going to just cash out because it's not fun anymore. If the rock and sand just sucks I will tear down, get some new live rock, replace all the sand and start over in the new year.
So just to give you a snapshot of what I am doing now.
Tank at 75. Salinity at 1.026. Alk about 7. Calc 420ish. Mag 1400ish. Nitrate 20. Phos 2.5. I dose phyto at night. Nothing else. I feed only Ocean Nutrition flakes 2x a day. I am still running water through the fuge and can see pods everywhere and feeding them phyto. I just fired up my fuge again with a fresh ball of chaeto to get these phosphates down. The red and brown have largely cleared from the sand since I increased the flow but I'm still occasionally seeing red or brown on my frag plugs and frags. I added two gyres along with my 2 MP40s. I also have a 25w UV I can add into the mix if you think it will help.
I'm thinking about pulling the rest of my corals and moving them to my coral grow out tank and possibly starting a H2O2 dosing protocol to try to get things in my DT under control - https://humble.fish/community/index.php?threads/peroxide-h2o2-dosing-for-parasites-in-reef-tank.725/
Alexander insists my issues are my sump is not exchanging enough water, that my skimmer is inadequate and that I'm having an ammonia issue that is causing the ich and velvet to take hold. He has 7 pillars he stresses...
1. By any means it is necessary to maximize the Flow and Circulation of water through the SAMP. The main thing is that this current should be enough to lift the Ammonia up and drive it through the Skimmer.
2. Increase Skimmer Power to 100%
3. Do not change the water at all.
4. Minimize Fish and Coral Feeding and stop dosing of Micronutrients and Amino Acids.
5. Feed Fish only low-nutrient food, always rinse Frozen Food in Osmotic Water before feeding.
6. If possible, remove one or two of the most sick Pisces by giving them for treatment to the nearest store and so on, this will reduce the load and quickly restore the ORP. Fish can be returned after 1-2 months when your system restores ORP above 300.
7. Accelerate the recovery of ORP by dosing ApRedox 1 ml every 12 hours. (This is the mix of potassium permanganate)
By following these seven rules, you will easily defeat Cryptocaryon and Oodinium!
I've been following his advice since June but things have not been great so I'm looking to change gears and try something else here.
My current living fish..
I also have a pretty awesome CUC
Here is just a small snapshot of deaths since August but there were def. more throughout the year. These were not all in there since August, they have come and gone since then.
The 11/19s are not all deaths, just fish I have not seen in awhile and am assuming are gone.
Here are my most current pictures.
I have 3 Neptune DOS units but I'm only using one atm to dose phyto, but I'm ready to dos anything needed as well as thinking about setting up auto water changes via DOS as well. I just need to get this tank clean, stable and ready for future success. If that means pulling out all my rock and sand I'm ready to do that to start the new year. I genuinely love this hobby more than anything and do not want to quit, but the deaths have taken their toll and the money I'm flushing everyday is as well.
Here is most of my story... so far...
I could really use your help here. I've been struggling like no other for over a year now and I'm almost ready to quit, but I'm looking for some new things to try. For a year or more since my first ever velvet outbreak I was using Jay Hemdal's QT protocol. I've just lost too many fish QT'ing this way. I happened to be speaking to a few people who said they do not QT and Alex @ Reef Exclusive gave me some methods to follow which I've been following since June. I was looking to maybe try HTTM going forward BUT I need to get my DT healthy before doing anything else.
So let's get into my crazy story...
2022 started off innocently enough. Things were going great and my 65g red sea max was thriving. It had the stock pumps, a Tunze 9004 skimmer, 2 MP40s and a 15w aqua UV. The occasional fish would die now and then but mostly things were okay and my coral was booming. I never QT'd fish. I'd introduce a fish a week or so. Things were largely ok. Never saw any disease in the tank. The occasional fish died, but nothing serious. One day I was driving through town and saw a LFS I'd never been to. Heard of the place, it had a good reputation. It was very clean, well lit, and nice. Staff was nice, knowledgeable and not at all pushy for a sale. I saw some really nice female lyretail anthias. They looked healthy, colorful, eating, etc. So I grabbed one. This was the first time I ever got an anthias and the first time I ever purchased anything at this store. Now I'm not saying it was this fish, but something happened. Velvet broke out and within weeks I lost 15-18 fish. I QT'd what I could, most died, I saved a few. I was miserable. While at the same LFS where I got the anthias, I was buying meds for my QT and I noticed they had this awesome tank for sale. I figured, since I was going fallow anyway, it might be a good time to start up a newer larger tank, so I got the AquaVim 155g corner tank in June of 2022.
This was the 65 right when velvet hit and then with coral only...
I built it slowly. New sand. Live rock that I had been cycling ahead of time. I wanted to start off as fresh as I could. I built my aquascape, dropped in the rock and began cycling. I gave it more than enough time to cycle.
This is also when I started grabbing some items to help automate and monitor. Apex stuff, new Ecotech MP40s, Cor20 Return pump. I had a regular old eshopps sump, eshopps skimmer, socks, bio balls, etc. Beefed up my RODI system to a 7 stage so I could make more water, faster. I have gone between Instant Ocean and Reef crystals but I'm all in with IO on this tank.
I ended up getting more live rock along the way which didn't smell great and even looked a little moldy so I bleached it for days, rinsed it well and left out in the sun to dry out for weeks. I cycled it in it's own tank and once it was ready I introduced it to the tank and my existing rock.
In sept. I bought my first batch of QT'd fish from Dr. Reef. Before these fish even made it out of QT, my existing fish which had already gone through QT appeared to start showing velvet. This was the end of Sept. I moved all fish out into another QT tank I built and began treating but lost most of them. Tank went fallow for 6-8 weeks before I brought anything back into the tank. In that time I lost most of those fish as the velvet had already set in too much and QT could not save them.
Mid Nov.
By Mid November I had finally begun moving my coral from my old 65g which had only been growing my coral to this point, no livestock since may. Coral in, lights up, nutrients balanced, things looking good. Ready for fish again? Sure. But wait. New sump time. This is when I started down the Lifereef path and had my awesome new custom sump, fuge and skimmer built which I installed in December. Once that was done I began moving in some of my fish. By February things were going great. Tank was finally taking shape. That was when disaster struck. My Apex Pro A3 brain died. While waiting for a replacement my ranco heater controller went rogue and cooked the tank. I lost ALL coral except a few resilient zoas and almost all fish save a couple. The cooking happened on a Thursday night and I woke up to it Friday morning. The kicker... that Friday afternoon the replacement Apex arrived. You cannot make this up.
This was almost enough to get me to quit but I began rebuilding... again. Before I even was able to get going with that though, we lost my father in law to lung cancer. The entire family was crushed. After a little bit, I turned back to the tank to take my mind off of all of that. I started getting on coral auctions and sales and began rebuilding my coral empire. I moved on to only buying QT'd fish or healthy fish from owners that had the fish for a long time and I would do at least 2 weeks observation before introducing them to the tank.
April came and it was time for my gastric sleeve surgery which went well. Came home, recovered, went back to working on the tank. End of April, velvet... AGAIN!! I just can't seem to beat this thing. All fish out again and back into QT.
June 3rd is around the time I started talking Alexander Kolesnikov of Reef Exclusive and trying his methods.
Per his instructions I dropped the tank temp to 75, turn my return pump to 100% and upgrade my return hose to 1 1/4", added a few more heads for flow, reduce the depth of my sand to 1" and upgraded the pump on my skimmer from a MAG9 to a MAG24. He also has me dose a mixture of RODI and potassium permanganate which he calls ApRedox.
June and July fish were back in and doing okay. Signs of ich and velvet came and went but nothing was dying. The potassium permanganate was somehow keeping them alive. I went slow. I'd introduce maybe 1 large or 2 small fish from QT per week to let the tank adjust to the load.
Mid August I sold my Neptune Sky lights and replaced them with Reefi Uno2 Pro lights.
Velvet still comes and goes but everything is alive.
End of August I suddenly lost a few fish within days. I stay the course.
Mid september something's not right. I'm noticing more red/brown on the sand. My euphyllias all start bailing their polyps. I lost all my hammers and frogspawns. Then my torches all start going one by one. I am currently down to 2x remaining of my once 11 beautiful torches. I move most coral out to another tank for observation/growth.
In the past few weeks I've lost 5-6 more fish and others are looking less than healthy. That is where we are today.
Jeff @ Lifereef who I also hit up for help says maybe my sand and/or rock is compromised. If that is the case what could cause that and how can I fix it? At this point I'm ready to try anything. I just need to get this turned around or I'm going to just cash out because it's not fun anymore. If the rock and sand just sucks I will tear down, get some new live rock, replace all the sand and start over in the new year.
So just to give you a snapshot of what I am doing now.
Tank at 75. Salinity at 1.026. Alk about 7. Calc 420ish. Mag 1400ish. Nitrate 20. Phos 2.5. I dose phyto at night. Nothing else. I feed only Ocean Nutrition flakes 2x a day. I am still running water through the fuge and can see pods everywhere and feeding them phyto. I just fired up my fuge again with a fresh ball of chaeto to get these phosphates down. The red and brown have largely cleared from the sand since I increased the flow but I'm still occasionally seeing red or brown on my frag plugs and frags. I added two gyres along with my 2 MP40s. I also have a 25w UV I can add into the mix if you think it will help.
I'm thinking about pulling the rest of my corals and moving them to my coral grow out tank and possibly starting a H2O2 dosing protocol to try to get things in my DT under control - https://humble.fish/community/index.php?threads/peroxide-h2o2-dosing-for-parasites-in-reef-tank.725/
Alexander insists my issues are my sump is not exchanging enough water, that my skimmer is inadequate and that I'm having an ammonia issue that is causing the ich and velvet to take hold. He has 7 pillars he stresses...
1. By any means it is necessary to maximize the Flow and Circulation of water through the SAMP. The main thing is that this current should be enough to lift the Ammonia up and drive it through the Skimmer.
2. Increase Skimmer Power to 100%
3. Do not change the water at all.
4. Minimize Fish and Coral Feeding and stop dosing of Micronutrients and Amino Acids.
5. Feed Fish only low-nutrient food, always rinse Frozen Food in Osmotic Water before feeding.
6. If possible, remove one or two of the most sick Pisces by giving them for treatment to the nearest store and so on, this will reduce the load and quickly restore the ORP. Fish can be returned after 1-2 months when your system restores ORP above 300.
7. Accelerate the recovery of ORP by dosing ApRedox 1 ml every 12 hours. (This is the mix of potassium permanganate)
By following these seven rules, you will easily defeat Cryptocaryon and Oodinium!
I've been following his advice since June but things have not been great so I'm looking to change gears and try something else here.
My current living fish..
I also have a pretty awesome CUC
Here is just a small snapshot of deaths since August but there were def. more throughout the year. These were not all in there since August, they have come and gone since then.
The 11/19s are not all deaths, just fish I have not seen in awhile and am assuming are gone.
Here are my most current pictures.
I have 3 Neptune DOS units but I'm only using one atm to dose phyto, but I'm ready to dos anything needed as well as thinking about setting up auto water changes via DOS as well. I just need to get this tank clean, stable and ready for future success. If that means pulling out all my rock and sand I'm ready to do that to start the new year. I genuinely love this hobby more than anything and do not want to quit, but the deaths have taken their toll and the money I'm flushing everyday is as well.
