Waterbox 130.4 SPS Dominant Build

MAB Reef · May 24, 2023

Excited to report the halichoeres iridis finally came out of the acclimation box! I thought I messed up because I scared her by using a turkey baster to shoot food her way while she was swimming in the box. It prompted her to go back in the sand. I found her come out after maybe 30 minutes and this time finally made her way out of the acclimation box. She even found the bipartitus and copied her eating all the pods she was finding in the sand and rocks. I carefully fed the tank a mix of flakes and brine shrimp and she actually ate both!

Gumbies R Us · May 25, 2023

MAB Reef said:
Excited to report the halichoeres iridis finally came out of the acclimation box! I thought I messed up because I scared her by using a turkey baster to shoot food her way while she was swimming in the box. It prompted her to go back in the sand. I found her come out after maybe 30 minutes and this time finally made her way out of the acclimation box. She even found the bipartitus and copied her eating all the pods she was finding in the sand and rocks. I carefully fed the tank a mix of flakes and brine shrimp and she actually ate both!

View attachment 3167383
View attachment 3167384

Nice looking fish!

MAB Reef · May 30, 2023

Unfortunately I somehow ended up getting dinoflaggelates. I posted this May 25, 2023:

I need help figuring out what to do here. I have this tenuis that's been growing this film/string substance. I'm able to blow some of it off everyday but it quickly grows back overnight. This has started probably for the past 5-6 days and only on this one acro. I haven't noticed anything on the sand or rocks similar to this. I haven't seen this on any other coral in the tank.

Some things I've started in the last few weeks:

Around May 5th - Installed a used UV Filter: I'm afraid I may have made a mistake with this not cleaning it inside before starting it up. Not sure if there was some bad bacteria growing in this while it was sitting.
May 11 - Setup new light bars to supplement my lights. I have it hung high and been slowly acclimating the tank to the new lights since then
May 18 - Added 2 new wrasse into an acclimation box with a few handfuls of new special grade caribsea live sand inside
May 21 - Started dosing phytofeast (I've stopped this as 2 days ago)

My parameters:

Alk: 8.59
Ca: 425
Mg: 1430
P04: .05
N03: 11.5

I was able to get a microscope 2 days later and confirmed it is dinos. I also got help identifying it to be ostreopsis.

I have 3 options after some research.

Since this particular strain goes into the water column when lights are out they can be hit by UV. I have a 25 watt UV but I don't believe it is large enough to be effective for my size tank. It is suggested to have 1 watt for every 3 gallons. I estimate about 120 gallons after all the rock, sand and equipment.
There is a microbubbling technique along with creating a bacteria bloom to outcompete the dinos. There seemed to be positive results with this but there are a lot of steps.
DinoX

I was just about to start option 2 but read some good testimonials about Jebao UV sterilizers and getting good results with 1-3 days. Ultimately, I liked the simplicity of using a UV sterilizer method more so I ordered a 55watt sterilizer that should be here tomorrow. I have all the ingredients for option 2 if the UV sterilizer doesn't work.

The dinos are multiplying and getting worse but not so fast that I'm losing anything. I'm noticing that my filter floss is clogging much faster so I'm changing that more often. I've also read that ostreopsis is the most toxic so I will need to change my activated carbon more frequently, possibly every 3-4 days.

Unfortunately I did lose the very tip of my SC Orange Passion so I cut it off to try and save the rest. The rest of the tank is not looking great but is surviving. I'm running the 25 watt UV sterilizer in the mean time while cutting down on the lights to slow down dino growth until I get the bigger sterilizer tomorrow. I've also dosed phyto and pods. Lastly, I'm broadcasting dosing hydrogen peroxide after lights out.