An optimist's build

So, my tank isn't new, but I never started a thread on it. So we can go back in time a bit with pictures I took and relive it's optimistic beginning!

It was 2013. I just moved back from Los Angeles and into my parents house again. It's upstairs and I was on a budget, but I really needed something fun and just for me in my life. So I spent a bunch of money, naturally. I bought an AIO Fusion, stocked it with aquacultured rock and then happily stared at my almost empty tank for more than a year before doing anything else with it.

This picture is from directly after the arrival of some of my first coral:


As you can tell from the stark white bits of sps protruding from the rocks, things weren't really going that well. Fairly sure at that point (as now) I was starving things to death out of fear of the macro algae's that came on the rock taking over. (spoiler alert! They did anyway)

Here's my lil buddy, the Yasha Goby:

And a super cool emerald crab, doing his thing:


Shortly after acquiring Dimitri (the Yasha Goby), I started noticing my favorite corals were vanishing. A polyp or two at a time, the zoas were dwindling away! Research turned up possibilities. I read that if I turned on just blues and blasted the zoas with water, they'd close up and I'd be able to see if any nudi's were among them. I did so and viola! THE LITTLE BEASTS WERE TRYING TO CRUISE INTO THE ROCKS WITH THEIR GLOWING LITTLE HAIRDOS. I smashed one with the pipette, and sucked the other one up into it.


I also read that if you nuke the tank with flatworm exit, it'd take care of any you missed. I did that, and scraped every little egg spiral I could find. I successfully eradicated those little beasts and my zoas grew and thrived. Until I did something incredibly stupid, months down the road.

My thermometer started reporting to me that it was 72 degrees in the tank. No problem, turn up the heater. I'd just replaced the heater, so I thought maybe it just was calibrated poorly. Next day, thermometer says 73. I turn up the heater. I'm ashamed to say that I did this dance several times, really not putting a lot of thought into how off the heater was, only that it was annoying to deal with. In my defense, I was working 3 retail jobs at the time too. Fast forward two weeks, I happened to notice my dear Dimitri was no where to be seen, and I'd not seen my pink streaked wrasse either in some time. I touched the side of the tank. Wow, that's really warm. I plucked the thermometer from my freshwater planted tank and popped it in. As the mark climbed over 95, I realized it was the digital thermometer that was faulty and not the heater. I turned it down, and added cold top off water. Inspection of the tank revealed the damage I'd missed. The zoas were little smooth spots on the rocks. All the sps were dead (not that I'd had many to begin with). I hated myself for several days, until Dimitri popped out of the sand one day like nothing had ever happened. His pistol shrimp was fine too. The pink streaked wrasse appeared. Tough things.

So as mentioned before, the heat wave killed almost all the things I wanted, but none of the things I didn't. Macro algae began taking over. My rocks soon became fluffy and green. It grew fast, smoothering everything in it's path. You can see it here in this picture. I didn't take any more really, since ya know... you don't really take many pictures of things you dislike, right? The corals in the picture are almost all club corals!


I hand pulled it. I did blackouts. I drained the water and used peroxide on it with malice like we do in planted tanks. These things slowed it down, but wouldn't defeat it. Eventually, I grew tired. Even my optimism has it's limits. I consigned myself to enjoy the gentle sway of my fluffy green rocks in the current. The fish seemed happy anyway. And then I read about Vibrant. And I bought some. And I began using it. Results were fast. The stuff started fading and then disappearing. A miracle!

As they say though, "Nothing good in reefing happens quickly." Pretty sure they also say that "One nuisance takes the place of another". Everything was great for about a month. Beautiful bare rocks. Side note: the Vibrant also took out my Cheato. And yes I know why.
And then came on what I thought was Cyno. It was green, and made heavy blankets over everything. Once again, manual removal was king. Each removal saw a subsequent return, the same as before. Around this time (2017? 2018?) my dad was diagnosed with cancer. I promptly shut down everything not immediately family related. On the outside, I remained the optimist my family knew me for and depended on. On the inside, there was room for nothing. My tanks received food and virtually nothing else, until roughly 3 months ago when I finally put myself back together.
I began reading R2R again, and found threads linked to each other that talked about cyno, how to test for it, and how a lot of cyno was actually spirulina. I made the test, discovered it wasn't cyno. I ordered the recommended chemiclean.

The results were again like the magic of Vibrant. I saw progress quickly. In 3 weeks, the horrid mats that had blanketed the tank for so long were gone. Knowing what had happened before, I knew some other thing would appear. I thought there would be no way it could be worse. I was wrong.

Dino's were soon making snot across my tank. At first, I shrugged it off. Whatever, another plague. Manual removal wasn't feasible. It dissolved as I tried to siphon it away. It grew back in hours. The morning would see almost no sign of it. The evenings looked like an elephant had sneezed into the tank. Discouraged, I left it alone for a while.

Then I attended the Christmas meeting with the club. Only 5 members showed up, but I got a chance to talk to Doc, who had just finished his own Dino battle. He advised me that the toxins the stuff produces were deadly to coral. At this point, I only have a single coral left in the tank and it's become something weirdly dear to me, having survived there for years. A beautiful little orange skirted zoa, hanging on to the side of a rock in the front. I resolved to save this zoa. Doc said what I described sounded like the water column version of dino. I went home and researched on R2R. I spent $10 on one of those unshielded UV lights on amazon, stuck it down in a chamber in the back of my AIO, put some filter floss over the top of it to protect my eyes and ran it 2-4 hours per day. Or whenever I remembered to turn it on for a few hours, since it's instructions said not to run it longer than 2 hours. I also added two different types of bottled bacteria I had around, and liquid ferts I've had on hand for my planted tank.

Results crept forward steadily. 3-4 weeks later, I'm dino free. A new problem of course is now taking over, but it's a lovely red macro algae that originally came with the rocks I ordered. I know the speed it grows, and I can harvest it out. I'm pretty ok with it. I've got some bubble algae too, but honestly, I'm ok with that too. The corals I got from the December meeting are still alive (not even two months later, yes I know, but I'm a recovering optimist, remember).

I don't have a current shot of the tank, but I will add one! As soon as I scrape the glass clean. The tank may be covered in red macro, but I do have *some* standards.

Since Doc has posted the charcoal here and on Facebook, the story behind the charcoal I did for Doc: At the December meeting, we did dirty Santa. Since I live 2 hours away, and have been out of work since the end of Oct, I didn't have a chance to make it in to Little Rock for a reef related gift. No frags to bring from my tank, and I sure as heck wasn't going to gift anyone anything from what was at the time the snot tank. So I put $25 worth of cash into a card and took that. Doc ended up with my gift in the exchange at the end of the meeting, after he'd asked about my dad and my tank. Unseen to me, he slipped the card into the bag of cheato he'd brought for me. I took it to my car and headed home. Since it's a two hour trip, I had to stop for gas, where I discovered I'd left my wallet at home on the desk where I made the card. But there on the flip side of the cheato bag, was the envelope with my card in it. Cash still inside of course. I was able to get my gas and head the remaining 50 miles home.
So not only did Doc help me eradicate snot from my tank, he unknowingly made sure I got home from the meeting ok. Doc, you deserve all the good karma the universe can send you.