EvolutionZ's Floating Reef

[arklim]

Awesome write up with progress update. This will certainly spread the poison

Thanks for sharing

Cheers

[EvolutionZ]

Hey fellas,its been quite sometime since i last updated on my tank. Mostly because my tank were in a great mess, of course, due to me serving my country. i wasn't there to maintain the tank and had to rely on my dad to dose my zeovit and FM additives and its pretty complicated and at times he dose certain stuff wrongly. Things went really bad to a point SPS started to die one by one and algae were taking over the tank at a rate that i cannot imagine. I was at the verge of giving up this hobby and had thoughts of selling everything away and only to start again after my NS. My dad adviced me to quit SPS and why not just maintain a simple FOWLR, mentioning he enjoy feeding my fishes and wished i'd keep the tank.

At that point of time, i noticed for the past couple years i've been in this hobby. i seldom or almost do not keep any LPS and soft corals(execpt for duncans, i love duncans) at all! so i decided to try out something new, a LPS dominated tank with some soft corals and zoas.

sadly, i did not take any photo of my tank at its worst peak, but hair algae, diatoms and cyano was almost literally everywhere on the rocks. to a point that i cannot see the coralline on the rocks. After selling all of my LPS away, i did a major scrubbing on the rocks and changed out 30% of my water. siphoned the sand's top layer, washed and dried them. i then determined that the reason for the amount of algae was probably due to the rocks releasing phosphates and combining with the fact that i had only ~12kg of LR in the system (50% of which are tonga, and tongas are not porous at all). Probably there was too much nutrients and too little biological area to build up bacteria(i do have 10 cubes of marine pure blocks and 300g of biohome plus which i thought was enough).

After the massive clean up, i went to purchase small live rocks from ah beng (too small to have pest i believe) that were probably cured and full of good bacteria. over a couple of weeks, i bought a total of 7-8kg and added them into my sump. i also added cheato to my system for nutrients export. This picture was taken 1-2 weeks after the massive clean up. things were getting better and i continue to diligently do 10% WC weekly and scrub every spot of the rock possible. i also started to stock up on cheap LPS to test them out.


Then things got better after adding the Live rocks and chaeto, Hair algae stopped growing almost entirely, a strand like brown algae stopped plagueing my whole tank and started to infest the chaeto. But blue-green, red and brown cyano continues to thrive. i also started running Fauna Marine Ultra phos in a bubble magus reactor. At this point of time, nitrate was tested to be 2ppm. For the entire 6 months or so since i started this tank, after cycling, i've never seen any color at all in my salifert test result (meaning its 0ppm). and finally for the first time, im seeing slight pink! which probably brings more balance and stability to the system.

And today, about a month after the massive clean up. Things were looking good. i started to dose Microbe-lift Special blend as a counter for cyano (almost result to using chemiclean cyano cleaner). Hopefully it'll work like how it worked for many.
i've also stocked up on more LPS (mainly hammers) and currently too much green in my tank! LPS can be really expensive if you're look for special colors..

Here's some LPS pictures taken moments ago

hammer


baby hammer


im guessing lobo?


purple tip elegance, apparently this fella dosn't expand as big as it's pink-tip cousins, and maintains its striking green even after expanding!


golden torch!


my first ever soft coral, a green toadstool coral. and a couple yumas

[EvolutionZ]

duncans


brain and red lobo, will be slowly filling up the sand bed with more lobo and brain corals!


my lovely clam


a really nice RBTA bought from a reefer, but decided to split into 2 one week later


My sump was infested by nasty thick algae and currently, looks way cleaner and better despite having 7-8 kg of rocks (mostly in the return pump compartment), im also seeing lots of pods growing and mushrooms and xenia poping out of the small rocks i bought from ah beng! i also added 300g of Sera Siphora Mini today.



Don't be fooled by the clean sand bed thinking im algae-free now. im still fighting brown strand-like cyano and blue-green cyano (red are gone now). i siphoned the top layer of cyano away and replaced with clean dry sand for this photo shoot today.

FTS, will be filling up the front portion of the scape with zoas and acans




Thats all for now, and i'll be updating the fight against cyano with the help of special blend, wish me luck!

Thanks for viewing!

[Razor Wei]

Very nice tank and coral Bro don't give up

[longyi]

Very nice and enjoy watching every pic, so beautiful and thanks for sharing.

[EvolutionZ]

Originally Posted by Razor Wei

Very nice tank and coral Bro don't give up

Thank you for your encouragement bro!

Originally Posted by longyi

Very nice and enjoy watching every pic, so beautiful and thanks for sharing.

Thanks bro!

[EvolutionZ]

Just after a single dose of special blend, i came back from this weekend to a shocking view. There was almost no new algae growth! The tank remained how it looked like when i left the week before. Corals are opening up much better too! Amazing..


Hammers are opening bigger den before


this soft coral i bought from ah beng main tank 2 weeks ago was closed all the way, till i added the special blend


golden cloves from a stable reefer tank remained closed for 1 week too, now its fully opened


RBTA opened beautifully too


This discarded Lobo are turning more orange! so glad i decided to take it even though its almost colorless


Now, on the previous update i didn't show any zoas as they were still recovering from a very bad green slime algae attack, every single frag was hit real bad.. most other melted away unfortunately.. They were starting to open slowly after i did the mess clean up. However, after last week's special blend dose, i came home to a shocking view.. most of the polyps are opened! colors of the frags were bad because they were closed for months!




new clam!


feeding my lps..


the only SPS in my tank currently..

[EvolutionZ]

top view.. i cant believe my sand bed remained white!


Thats all for now!

[mts]

One word, swee

[longyi]

Very nice and thanks for sharing.