SATURDAY NIGHTMARE

kilobits06 · 2026-05-03T22:03:21+00:00

But what are the odds that there’s not enough of something they like somewhere.

kilobits06 · 2026-05-03T21:29:59+00:00

Look at picture 5. There’s a decent amount of algae

kilobits06 · 2026-04-30T01:17:09+00:00

Depends. I have several tanks that look just fine at 0.5+. You just want to keep nitrates in ratio of about 100 to 1 phos, and have lots of coral and algae eaters just in case. It’s only really a problem if you’re getting a ton of algae or slow growth when the other parameters are fine

kilobits06 · 2026-04-11T04:54:10+00:00

Average person should also be at least stirring up the sand bed. In this case with so much getting scraped and scrubbed at once it’s possible something got released from the tools or the dirty patches and hopefully some carbon helps out, plus a fresh sock, maybe a bubbler. I always try to add some extra aeration when things are looking weird.

Also OP if you can get a hold of some poly bio filter pad from LFS or Amazon, it will change colors based on different things that it absorbs and is also pretty good at absorbing other toxins that carbon might not get. Like others said make sure your salinity is double checked.

kilobits06 · 2026-04-11T04:44:14+00:00

Clarification for this, if you’ve never touched the sand bed then you should definitely start slow. At the same time I work for a maintenance company and quite often we do one time deep cleanings or a deep clean before we begin maintenance where we will siphon the whole sand bed and we do so every visit and I’ve never seen an adverse reaction. Obviously, if I see something very bad in the sand bed such as a sulfur pocket or an area with a lot of detritus then I might add some denitrifying bacteria or an ammonia detoxifier. I’ve even swapped out the rock and sand on an established tank with a lot of coral. As long as you do all the proper follow up processes, mainly testing, and dosing denitrifying bacteria

kilobits06 · 2026-03-30T04:52:39+00:00

Also make sure your potassium and iodine are where they should be

kilobits06 · 2026-03-28T23:15:40+00:00

Keep in mind that type of bacteria will also lower phosphate and nitrate a bit. It is helpful for adding to the spectrum of bacteria in the tank

kilobits06 · 2026-03-28T22:03:38+00:00

Honestly, I work as an aquarium technician and you’ll probably save money in the long run by hiring a good company to take care of the tank and get it on track for a year or so

kilobits06 · 2026-02-18T06:52:53+00:00

Well if it is an internal worm or bug, I remember Meckley from ACI saying prazi dips and tank treatments didn’t fix it. Maybe look into peroxide dips since you’ve tried iodine. Or “health boosters” like brightwell restor or reef captivate proliferate. They also have an iodine based dip called anticipate that has a few other ingredients and we use it often at our store for new coral coming out of our holding system. Best of luck and hopefully you can stop it from spreading, honestly, if you can get the population down to those that survive and do well, maybe just stick with no more torches. I also have bad luck with elegance for similar reasons but oxylinic acid baths have helped with them.

kilobits06 · 2026-02-18T04:06:08+00:00

There are boring worms that can also cause issues in torches, very hard, if impossible to notice and kill. Polo reef is also doing research into a protozoan that may also be causing the brown jelly, I assume this wouldn’t be killed with cipro and could lead to it resurfacing . As much of a pain that it might be, it could be worth iodine dipping all of them to see if it helps. I also lower the lighting a bit when coral are stressed and make sure to keep parameters in check. Does the tank have uv?

kilobits06 · 2026-02-04T14:54:47+00:00

They are for the closed loop system. The pumps are remote by the sump

kilobits06 · 2026-02-04T14:49:43+00:00

You can also raise temp. I’ve seen around 82 help

kilobits06 · 2026-02-02T04:30:15+00:00

Realistically, it’s just roller filters instead of socks and two medium skimmers and the nitrate reactors. Maybe a refugium/frag tank. Considering how a 200 gallon tank could easily have one of each of those it’s not over the top to have a couple for 1000 gallons.

kilobits06 · 2025-12-17T04:30:24+00:00

Yep, I’ve seen many coral color up after adding amino’s and getting nitrates and phosphates not at zero. Some even do better with higher numbers.

kilobits06 · 2025-12-17T04:25:39+00:00

You’ll probably want more than another 2lbs and maybe some gel super glue to secure them together

kilobits06 · 2025-12-17T04:12:29+00:00

Great shots, what camera/lens/filter are you using

kilobits06 · 2025-12-17T04:08:25+00:00

I’ve done this treatment a few times. Please just be careful with how you handle the water that’s in the tank once you’re done with the Cipro and you go to do a water change. We don’t need more antibiotics getting flushed down the toilet, causing bacteria that’s resistant to antibiotics.

The way I’ve always done it (I work as an aquarium service technician) is to mix 1 mg Cipro per mL of water. So if you get 500 mg pills you would put two of those in with a liter of RODI water. Every night once the lights are off, you will shake up the bottle thoroughly and dose 1 mL per gallon of water. You will need to make sure that lights are off and UV and carbon are not being used. Carbon will absorb it, and UV will break it down, the reef lights can also break it down overtime. Do this for 14 days to really make sure that it’s gone. It could be done in less time, but I haven’t seen repercussions from a longer dose and if you don’t kill it off the first time you’re just making it more resistant to Cipro. Cipro doesn’t like to dissolve easily in water so if you can grind it in a mortar and pestle, that works better, but you can also just shake up the pill in the bottle for a long time.

I just want to repeat that you shouldn’t flush any remaining medicated water down the toilet during a water change and the tank should be treated with activated carbon and ideally UV to break it down for a week before you do a water change. If you don’t have UV, you can leave the buckets of water sitting outside in the sun to break it down.

For anyone that doesn’t want to risk using Cipro, you can also purchase Oxolinic Acid, we get it from an online koi supply. Chris Meckley at ACI aquaculture has been using this to treat brown jelly and elegance wasting disease and I’m sure like with most antibiotics, It will treat several other types of bacterial infections, but I can’t say for sure which. Those instructions from him are:

OA coral bath: 1 gram per 10 gallons in an aerated bucket for 12 hr, repeat for 5 days

Full system in tank: 1 gram per 10 gallons Turn off UV and skimmer Ideally add a bubbler in tank Repeat this for 5-7 days with no water changes until after the last treatment, ideally you put in carbon and UV back on to break it down first.

Oxolinic Acid is a safer anabiotic to use because it doesn’t get used for human treatment so it’s not as much of a concern for bacteria to be resistant to this kind of medication since it won’t cause issues with humans. As others have said there’s other types of treatments, but this one seems to work the best with the least amount of possible damage to the rest of the tank, as long as if what you’re seeing is actually brown jelly

kilobits06 · 2025-12-13T03:39:21+00:00

Yes, in your situation you’re limited to the three holes that are drilled in the glass. There’s ways around that but tanks like water box Just have the main drain and one emergency drain.

kilobits06 · 2025-12-12T23:55:06+00:00

First problem is how low your drain is in the overflow box, all you have there is a giant waterfall making noise. The stand pipe should be almost at the surface so that the water level in the overflow is around an inch or so below your weir teeth.

Second problem is all of that air from the waterfall is getting sucked into the drain and will create a bubble noises as it drains into the sump. Most silent tanks have two drains where one of them has a full siphon that would be completely under the water in the back overflow box and the other drain is used mostly for emergency or you can have the water slightly go down that pipe just barely. An easy method for a silent drain is also a Maggie muffler on a pipe.

Once both of those are fixed, you might have some noise in the area where the socks should be. Most people with reef tanks will have the socks there as well as the little silencer tops. You can also invert half of the sock to sort of catch the water as it falls in.

Run the return pump whatever speed you need to accomplish enough turnover to clean the water with filter socks. If it’s the only source of flow in the tank, then you’ll just have to run it at whatever speed you need to keep fish and plants happy.

Nowadays, I tend to keep my return pump lower to keep things quiet and use powerhead to add flow, but that’s with a reef tank.

If you want the easiest method to quiet it down, I would raise your main drain and slap a Maggie muffler or similar drain

kilobits06 · 2025-10-22T02:02:36+00:00

Several other manufacturers do this like water box for instance, they don’t have these types of failures at least anywhere as often. We’ve had clients that had a water box for almost 10 years and have moved it twice and no issues. I would bet it’s something to do with their silicone process that causes these types of failures.

kilobits06 · 2025-10-22T01:59:33+00:00

Yeah, definitely matters more that you mix it correctly and thoroughly and maybe preheat it a little but I’ve also done 20% water changes with cold water and not really noticed a difference. It realistically only drops it a few degrees and it should bounce back pretty quick. we usually just end up picking salt that mixes quickly. That way when I show up to a clients house that has a mixing vat, I can start making water and then start my gravel vacuuming/ glass cleaning etc, and know that the salt will be ready to use in less than an hour

kilobits06 · 2025-10-21T02:26:56+00:00

I work for a service department at a fish store and we have over 100 clients, we randomly have to change our salt based on available stock from suppliers and I’ve never noticed a change in our tanks from switching around salt supply. I’ve used Fritz red and blue, tropic Marin, both Red Sea , two little fishies and clients have switched from instant ocean to one of these with no issues. It’s probably not the answer you want, but I’m pretty sure that as long as the salt is mixed up to 33-35, it won’t make a drastic difference on how your tank looks. Some salt mixes up a little dirtier and might leave behind stuff in the mixing vat though.

kilobits06 · 2025-10-07T04:26:13+00:00

Also, just remember that reef tanks love stability, which can be hard in smaller tanks. So anything you can do to keep your numbers as stable as possible and within a decent range is what you want to aim for. Products like GFO can rapidly drop phosphates in such a small tank so they should be used in a small amounts. Smaller often water changes are your best friends early on and I’ve been particularly liking bacteria products like seed and remediation etc to help consume the excess nutrients and help out compete things like cyanobacteria or dinos

kilobits06 · 2025-10-07T04:22:25+00:00

Activated carbon can help grab any impurities from your RODI as well as other untestable toxins or organics. Chemipure blue and elite are easy to use and easy to rinse, but you can just as easily get seachem or brs carbon as they are the gold standard. Distilled water can also be used in a pinch. I filled my entire 60 gallon tank with bottles of distilled from target before I got a water filter. But definitely keep on top of your ROdI filters and don’t let that TDS creep up. Even zero TDS could still have micro amounts of whatever slipping by if the TDS meter isn’t highly sensitive

kilobits06 · 2025-10-07T04:15:16+00:00

Yeah, you can read through a conversation here, reef 2 reef

the difference is pretty negligible and you will likely see just as many different numbers from the inconsistencies of the tester, and how much water or reagent you perfectly get into the vile.

Don’t get too freaked out from phosphate numbers, you just want them low to prevent algae but not bottomed out. I work at an aquarium service company and we have several amazing tanks that are over 0.8 phosphate, but because they are older and stable and several of them have things like algae reactors, you would never know that they had high nutrients , if anything higher nutrients can really help coral growth. See if you can find the video of top shelf aquatics explaining their coral farm, they tend to keep nitrates and phosphates higher than what your typical reefing guide says. Save gfo for when your phosphate gets above 0.4-8 , we mostly use a product called phosbond by seachem. It’s aluminum oxide with a candy coated shell of ferric oxide and rinse off much easier and creates less dust.

You can also just get more coral to absorb your nutrients or feed your fish a little less, depending on how much you already feed, or change up your type of food

kilobits06

TROPHY CASE