My first reef aquarium update and questions

[Oelyk]

Hi all,

My last post was when I first introduced a single clownfish back in October, and a lot has happened since then! I've recently come upon a dilemma that I would like a more experienced opinion on, and I figured I could give an update at the same time.

First off, I got corals! I want to thank @Blue Z Reef for getting me started with some gorgeous corals! The frogspawn has split and is currently my mom's favorite in the tank. I also partook in Cuttlefish and Coral's mystery boxes and got some amazing LPS and softies! My favorite coral has to be Justin's green goniopora, provided by @Lexinverts in the last club meeting! Thank you again! Something about seeing the long polyps sway in the flow is so hypnotizing and relaxing!

I also got some tankmates for my sole clown around mid-January! A second clown and a court jester goby, both from Seahorse. The former being where my problem pertains to unfortunately, but I'll save that for the end. There is also supposed to be a peppermimt shrimp, as I have managed to pick up aptasia somehow, but I have not seen it since I added it to the tank. Hoping it is just hiding! Unless anything unfortunate happens, this is my stopping point for fish in the little 11 gallon nano.

My struggles with water parameters does make me wish I started with a larger tank, but I don't really have the room to fit anything much larger with my current living situation. I will say it's been super tempting looking at all the amazing tanks in the classified forums! I've been trying to pedal some of those to my coworkers/family to get them into reef keeping, with little success unfortunately.

Back to water parameters, I have had problems from the get-go with low nitrates and that hasn't gone away. More fish have been added as previously mentioned and I have been feeding more frozen foods in an attempt to raise nitrates with minimal success. I'm hoping as the tank matures this issue goes away. I know I added coral a little ambitiously, so it might be like Target on Black Friday for loose nitrates. All the other water chemistry issues stemmed from my mistake when I left the ATO on during a waterchange and only realized half-way through. I won't soon make that mistake again, live and learn. I immediately performed a second larger water change until the salinity returned to 1.025 approximately. Alas, the damage was done and I was going to struggle for weeks from a 2 minute lapse in attemtion. Luckily it wasn't fatal to any of the corals!

Since then I struggled with low magnesium and calcium and have been manually dosing to get those back to healthy levels, which only recently have been quite robust. I was using All for Reef initially, which I thought would be a good idea as I was lacking in the big three, but it blew up my alkalinity to 12 dKH(without nitrates in supply) without raising calcium and magnesium. This upset the pink goni and it wouldn't open for a couple of weeks. I have then switched to Seachem magnesium and calcium and have found success with those. Another issue that arose around the time of the ATO fiasco was that my phosphates blew up. I had started adding reefroids twice a week for the pink goni and I believe that was the initial cause of the explosion. I was measuring 0.02-0.04 ppm and now I've been consistently testing 0.13-0.19 ppm range using the Hanna ULR kit. The goni wasn't having a good reaction to the food, so I've since stopped adding it. My alternative is I started adding an amino and trace element solution and the pink goni reacts very well! Often opening up even in the evening when the light is down low just to feed! Despite stopping the reef roids, the phosphate levels stayed elevated, even when I have been perpetually running Chemipure Blue in my filtration. High phosphates in combination with low nitrates meant my tank became overgrown with blue-green cyanobacteria. It matted over the sandbed and I'm still struggling with it today. I experimented with dosing hydrogen peroxide(with little success), and am now trying Seachem Phosgaurd to try and pull the reins in on my runaway phosphates, hoping to make other bacteria competitive.

So currently parameters looks good except for nitrates and phosphates, and despite my mistakes the corals have beeing growing very consistently, I can see baby polyps on all the LPS, the Zoas have taken off, and even the mushrooms are growing larger and some are splitting! My current issue lies in the smaller clown, who I thought was getting along with the larger initial clown but is now showing some white spots on its body. See images below. The larger clown is the dominant clown and shows some aggresion, but from what I can tell nothing beyond play biting and competing at feeding time. I also saw them bite the green goni as I wrote this, and I'm none too pleased. Regarding the white spot developement, I don't know if this is Ich or Brook, or just small bites. The gills and eyes are clear which is why I hesitate. I have a 5 gallon tank I can use for QT but I need more equipment before setting that up and wanted advice before launching my weekend reef project. Any opinions and advice are appreciated!

[Lexinverts]

I would try adding Brightwell Neonitro to raise nitrates.

You might consider trying ATI Essentials Pro or B-ionic for Alk, Ca and Mag. Those products are easier to use in my experience.

Glad you are enjoying the Goni!

[DaveZ]

Hey mate, congrats on getting more coral and the tank finding its way toward stability. Before anything else: know that we’ve all been there with a minute or two lapse costing big setbacks. That’s happened to me with ATOs before as well. Some lapse and something going wrong in minutes is almost a right of passage in the hobby and helps moving forward if you can learn the lesson. Especially for those of us nano tank keepers, a minute is all it takes for catastrophe, but also generally easier to fix wayward stuff in <20g tanks vs a 300g.

Just keep in mind, it’s a setback. Not tank crash or throw in the towel. And it then just takes time and patience for a new system to re-adjust after the mistake. 
 

From what it seems this is a newer system (under a year old for a nano is new IMO) and it took my Nuvo20 a good 2 years to really settle in and get stable. The first thing to master is patience and trying not to rush the process of getting the tank back on track. Take one thing at a time. 

I do not think reef roids should ever be used with Nanos. It just bombs the tank with phosphate and is more of a setback for corals than a benefit. If you want to feed, I love mashing up TDO chroma boost to powder (or use their B1) and then feed that to corals. But that’s another topic. 

So I guess the real question I have is what is it you are trying to get the tank to? Is the goal to lower phosphate first? Elevate nitrate? Get rid of aiptasia? 
 

If I were in your position and I wanted to get both nutrient levels in a better balance, I would do the following in this order:

1. Do a big water change (75%, which shouldn’t be much on an 11g system) and knock down the phosphate…chemipure blue is more for carbon than phosphate and not going to dent anything over .10 PO4. Your NO3 levels are already bottomed, so you don’t need to worry about that effect. A big water change also will give your major elements a better chance at getting into more standard ranges and allow you to siphon off the bacteria’s. Then be consistent with small water changes so the tank can stabilize around that. The corals you keep shouldn’t be consuming so many major elements that dosing is necessary. Just be good about a 3g water change a week and don’t overthink dosing for the nano. That’s where one slip can be catastrophic and require testing on a weekly if not daily level as the tank is not mature. My suggestion, do not dose two part just do water changes. My tank does the best when it gets 20% weekly changes (even as a 6+ year mature reef).

2. Start adding liquid dosing of nitrate. Feeding is imprecise. Dosing set amount of liquid NO3 to an exact water column is dead precise. I suggest methods that are predictable and controllable, not ones that are guesswork and hopefuls. Things change fast in nanos, especially newer nanos that are trying to stabilize.
 

Get the nitrates to phosphate at a 16:1 ratio as a good starting point. For example: if your phosphates are .07 (that is one part) get nitrates to 1.12 (16 parts). From there take the raising of Nitrates slow. Really slow. Observe corals. Test with good test kits for low nitrates as well to make sure it’s accurate.

3. Consider getting some pods and base level biology going in the tank. Plenty of pods in bottle products out there and a few locals who do breed pods who could really help. Feed some phyto as that is a good building block to encourage microfauna growth, which brings more baseline stability. 
 

After all that I think you can get the tank in a good spot and then continue with developing the good habits. If you want to knock the aiptasia back, I breed Berghia nudibranchs and they’re the best at demolishing aiptasia. Some local shops get them in from time to time as well. 
 

Hopefully this helps in some way. And as I’m not one to give advice without showing successes, I’ll post a pic of my Nuvo20 nano tank on here.