Outdrsyguy's 940 gallon DT Build

[casper75]

I used to use chemiclean but since I found vibrant I will never use it again you should look it up it is really good stuff and it works for all type of algae and it should be cheaper and the algae and cyno shouldn’t come back .

 

[outdrsyguy1]

Okay, see if you guys can see my channel here, i uploaded a front and backside video. Let me know if it works! My camera skills really suck. Ah well, enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmWiXFsl_8wp7I7ZXOl2oTw

 

[Dmitri]

Okay, see if you guys can see my channel here, i uploaded a front and backside video. Let me know if it works! My camera skills really suck. Ah well, enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmWiXFsl_8wp7I7ZXOl2oTw

Great video Rusty! Absolutely gorgeous tank, gotta love that aquascape!
Thanks again!

 

[AquariumSchmo]

Wow, those are huge colonies, very nice!

 

[Adam]

Okay, see if you guys can see my channel here, i uploaded a front and backside video. Let me know if it works! My camera skills really suck. Ah well, enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmWiXFsl_8wp7I7ZXOl2oTw

Man that tank has really grown in! Great job Rusty!!!

Now that you have a channel you can post links to the individual videos here and they will be playable from within your post. It should work with just the link, here's a test.

 

[t_anton0283]

Woah tank is massively impressive. way to go!!!

 

[Dmitri]

Rusty how’s your tank progress, it’s been a while. Any updates ?

 

[Adam]

@outdrsyguy1

 

[outdrsyguy1]

unfortunately it's not going well. I've lost pretty much all of my acro's over the last 2 months in some sort of rtn/stn that is never ending. I've done water changes, tested parameters, put in carbon, tried poly filter, etc and nothing seems to stop the slow demise of my acro's. I haven't added anything in probably 8+ months and it's not pests. It started when my wife broke her leg badly and I ended up having to take care of her and the family for 3 months straight. Fish weren't fed enough, flow dropped too low from clogged eductors and i had a crash. Also, my tube that fed my reactor from the pump header came just about 1/4" loose and just held water in there where I think it turned septic. IT was just blowing water into the container keeping a column of head about 6" above water level but not really getting any flow to come out the top. Then when i'd have a power outage or something it would drain down and put a shot of septic water in the system. Not sure how long that was happening but i removed it from the system about 2 months ago also. I'm not entirely sure how many fish I lost as I never saw a body or noticed until a while later but I think it was 2 blue reef chromis, 1 firefish, 2 anthias, and maybe one other i can't think of. Also a lot of huge colonies that filled the trench area died and that started the event. It's been about 2 months now and I still can't turn things around.
It's pretty heart wrenching daily to watch these HUGE acro colonies slowly die. I'll post a couple pics soon but it looks vastly different than it used to.
I thought I had turned a corner as a couple colonies started coloring up bigtime but then last week those started sloughing skin at the tips which has been the start.
I removed a pump that had siezed and also removed a heater and cleaned my other 2 heaters. Nothing showed leaking or damage.
I'll probably cough up the $50 for a triton test at this point but i don't think it will find anything of note.
Oddly enough, most of the damage stayed contained to my main DT and the frag tank didn't seem to suffer losses but then last week my awesome 4" red dragon colony RTN'd overnight. Ironically, 2 of the frags in the same frag tank (~1" each) are still okay. It really seems like i've got a stagnant water issue or something that occasionally nukes a coral but i can't for the life of me figure out where it could be at this point.
I just can't seem to tie any particular item to what's causing the stn/rtn.
At this point I think i've taken out approximately 3 - 5 gallon home depot buckets full of dead/dying coral.

Open to suggestions if anyone's got one.

 

[ZapataInc]

Sorry that you are going through this. I hope you will figure it out sooner than later

 

[Adam]

unfortunately it's not going well. I've lost pretty much all of my acro's over the last 2 months in some sort of rtn/stn that is never ending. I've done water changes, tested parameters, put in carbon, tried poly filter, etc and nothing seems to stop the slow demise of my acro's. I haven't added anything in probably 8+ months and it's not pests. It started when my wife broke her leg badly and I ended up having to take care of her and the family for 3 months straight. Fish weren't fed enough, flow dropped too low from clogged eductors and i had a crash. Also, my tube that fed my reactor from the pump header came just about 1/4" loose and just held water in there where I think it turned septic. IT was just blowing water into the container keeping a column of head about 6" above water level but not really getting any flow to come out the top. Then when i'd have a power outage or something it would drain down and put a shot of septic water in the system. Not sure how long that was happening but i removed it from the system about 2 months ago also. I'm not entirely sure how many fish I lost as I never saw a body or noticed until a while later but I think it was 2 blue reef chromis, 1 firefish, 2 anthias, and maybe one other i can't think of. Also a lot of huge colonies that filled the trench area died and that started the event. It's been about 2 months now and I still can't turn things around.
It's pretty heart wrenching daily to watch these HUGE acro colonies slowly die. I'll post a couple pics soon but it looks vastly different than it used to.
I thought I had turned a corner as a couple colonies started coloring up bigtime but then last week those started sloughing skin at the tips which has been the start.
I removed a pump that had siezed and also removed a heater and cleaned my other 2 heaters. Nothing showed leaking or damage.
I'll probably cough up the $50 for a triton test at this point but i don't think it will find anything of note.
Oddly enough, most of the damage stayed contained to my main DT and the frag tank didn't seem to suffer losses but then last week my awesome 4" red dragon colony RTN'd overnight. Ironically, 2 of the frags in the same frag tank (~1" each) are still okay. It really seems like i've got a stagnant water issue or something that occasionally nukes a coral but i can't for the life of me figure out where it could be at this point.
I just can't seem to tie any particular item to what's causing the stn/rtn.
At this point I think i've taken out approximately 3 - 5 gallon home depot buckets full of dead/dying coral.

Open to suggestions if anyone's got one.

Oh man Rusty, it was heart wrenching to read that post. The system was really coming into it's own.

You may be right about the stagnant water. It doesn't take long for hydrogen sulfide to form in the water from our systems when there's no flow. It's that rotten egg smell. Hydrogen sulfide is toxic too and if it was dumping into the system I could see it causing issues. You had something like that happen before with a reactor or something right?

I'd definitely send off an icp test to try and identify what's going on in there. You could also frag off some of the coral to try and save what is still alive on the colonies. Maybe call Premier too and see what they think. Hopefully you can get things back on track before there's more losses. Let us know if there's anything we can do to help.

I really hope your wife is doing better too!

 

[outdrsyguy1]

Pics of the carnage

 

[outdrsyguy1]

Couple top down shots from before the crash.
I really miss the red planet.

 

[Dmitri]

Man sorry to hear about the tank crash Rusty! So many beautiful colonies jeez.. it sounds like flow may have been part of the issue. What I don’t understand is how fishes were dying and why?
I hope you get it figured out and tank recovers nicely!

 

[outdrsyguy1]

Fishes died because I was a bad pet owner and would miss feeding the fish for multiple days at times. I also feed my fish very little when I should honestly bite the bullet and overfeed bigtime and pull out the extra nutrients with better export methods.
Works fine 95% of the time, but when your wife can't walk for 2 months+ and you have a 4 and 8 year old to get to school and feed and boy scouts, swimming, etc. I also have a Airbnb/vrbo vacation home i manage that rents pretty much every week all year long. On top of that, a home with a pool, cat, dog, and a full time technical sales/service oriented job. Man that's overwhelming. auto feeder went empty for a lllooooonnngggg time. Honestly probably lucky i didn't lose more fish.
it's hard to keep track of 50+ fish and how many of each you have once you are a few years in. You just one day go "man, i haven't seen one of those fish in forever". In all honestly, i'd bet it was more like 5 anthias, 3 blue reef chromis, 2 fire fish, 2 diamond sand sifting gobies, and a couple other smaller fish. No idea when, but sometime in the last 4 months. Also forgot to mention I did zero water changes for probably 6 months by the end of this disaster.
So yes, fish death probably kicked it off a hair and lack of flow in heavy coral areas with lower light then took a dive and then desolation from there. Still, should have turned around by now and it's obviously still marching along.
I'm gonna try and tear out 90% of the dead/dying coral this week and see if that helps. Probably drop some carbon in also in a baggie in the sump so there's no chance of reactor issues again. My sump has CRAZY flow as so it should go through the carbon fine (it's like 50 gallons of water fed by 2 hammer head pumps makes it around 200x per hour turnover (50g in about 18 seconds pass through it)).

I will say, a lot of the amazing tanks i've seen follow the overfeed like crazy and pull out the nutrients to keep them low and thereby having a large transient nutrient flow. It really seems to be a key ingredient that I've known for a while, but just haven't been able to bite the bullet with my wallet and follow. Maybe i'll get with one of the reef club sometime soon and have them show me how to make my own fresh fish food. Also need to finish figuring out how to design and fit in a turf algae scrubber but it's a big space issue currently in moving forward with that project.

 

[popsbjd]

I will say, a lot of the amazing tanks i've seen follow the overfeed like crazy and pull out the nutrients to keep them low and thereby having a large transient nutrient flow. It really seems to be a key ingredient that I've known for a while, but just haven't been able to bite the bullet with my wallet and follow. Maybe i'll get with one of the reef club sometime soon and have them show me how to make my own fresh fish food.

BRS did a good video on making your own fish food. I did it myself a few months ago. I got a bad of shrimp, bag of scallops, pack of squid, a pack of spirinella brine shrimp, a pack of cyclops, bottle of reef roids, bottle of reef chili, nori, some selcon, and a small bottle of garlic guard (although I've since read that garlic may not be as good as we once thought for fish). Ground the fish/scallops/squid with a Parmesan grater (I only have smaller fish right now). Added in the frozen foods, cut nori, selcon, garlic and some RO water. Done. Not bad. Took a hour or so to grind everything up. I'd love to get some Tobiko next time and maybe add something else in but I feel its been working great so far.

 

[Dmitri]

Ya about fish room, I did Brs diy reef chillie. It cost me about $350 but I did manage to make 8 extra large bags which should last me about 8 months. I also did same for just fish food, cost was about $100 but that made another 8 bags of fish food. I mix those two and feed daily. Good for a year with about same size system.

Rusty you’ve hope all is going to recover quickly for you and wish your wife fast recovery!

 

[Adam]

Fishes died because I was a bad pet owner and would miss feeding the fish for multiple days at times. I also feed my fish very little when I should honestly bite the bullet and overfeed bigtime and pull out the extra nutrients with better export methods.
Works fine 95% of the time, but when your wife can't walk for 2 months+ and you have a 4 and 8 year old to get to school and feed and boy scouts, swimming, etc. I also have a Airbnb/vrbo vacation home i manage that rents pretty much every week all year long. On top of that, a home with a pool, cat, dog, and a full time technical sales/service oriented job. Man that's overwhelming. auto feeder went empty for a lllooooonnngggg time. Honestly probably lucky i didn't lose more fish.
it's hard to keep track of 50+ fish and how many of each you have once you are a few years in. You just one day go "man, i haven't seen one of those fish in forever". In all honestly, i'd bet it was more like 5 anthias, 3 blue reef chromis, 2 fire fish, 2 diamond sand sifting gobies, and a couple other smaller fish. No idea when, but sometime in the last 4 months. Also forgot to mention I did zero water changes for probably 6 months by the end of this disaster.
So yes, fish death probably kicked it off a hair and lack of flow in heavy coral areas with lower light then took a dive and then desolation from there. Still, should have turned around by now and it's obviously still marching along.
I'm gonna try and tear out 90% of the dead/dying coral this week and see if that helps. Probably drop some carbon in also in a baggie in the sump so there's no chance of reactor issues again. My sump has CRAZY flow as so it should go through the carbon fine (it's like 50 gallons of water fed by 2 hammer head pumps makes it around 200x per hour turnover (50g in about 18 seconds pass through it)).

I will say, a lot of the amazing tanks i've seen follow the overfeed like crazy and pull out the nutrients to keep them low and thereby having a large transient nutrient flow. It really seems to be a key ingredient that I've known for a while, but just haven't been able to bite the bullet with my wallet and follow. Maybe i'll get with one of the reef club sometime soon and have them show me how to make my own fresh fish food. Also need to finish figuring out how to design and fit in a turf algae scrubber but it's a big space issue currently in moving forward with that project.

For the six months prior to my move I neglected my system, maybe not as bad as you did but I didn't have as much going on in my life as you. The one area I didn't neglect was feeding and I bet that has a lot to do with what's happened in you're system. Add in a little stagnant water and things were ripe to take a turn.

I can help you with the ATS when your ready. I made a large one for myself and had some good exchanges with Floyd R Turbo on the lighting.

 

[outdrsyguy1]

cross post from my other post trying to figure out if my tank was poisoned by something.

Okay, so thanks again to all who participated in the conversation, just wanted to follow it up with what I believe happened.
Short and sweet, then more detail for those of you with short attention spans
Not enough water changes, trace elements got too low. Reactor got disconnected causing random bouts of septic water being flushed into the system, 4 LED lights went from 90%+ to 5% for month+ without noticing and the whole thing was kicked off by lack of maintenance reducing water flow and lack of feeding causing me to lose a few fish (auto feeder ran out, and life got insane... like once in 30 years kinda thing insane).

Longer version:
Corals were likely low in health from lack of strontium, potassium, and possibly iodine but not nearly as likely. I don't think magnesium plays a big part but it was also low and i could be wrong about that as i'm not a chemist. Had some things happen to my wife which put life in the $hitt#r for 4 months. My eductors and power heads got clogged and had a LOT less flow. I also had a HUGE forest of digi and corals all over the tank and on the bottom. The spyglass reactor I got from that reef pirate company came loose and sat there full of stagnant water until a power outage would happen and then it would drain into the sump. 4-5 fish died (sorry, hard to notice when there's 50 of them in there hiding and such) likely from lack of food though i never noticed any other than 1 which was gaunt. That one was a bartlets anthias that was being forced into a cave by another male and there's absolutely no way i could catch either of them.
Probably started with the reactor sumping some septic water in which killed a few corals and fish dying around the same time. Actually, the power outage would have happened then because the battery backup (watch battery things) in my lights must have gone dead because for some reason the clocks on a few of them weren't right. I fixed the clock but didn't realize the power had reset to 5%. Then with low coral health from lack of trace elements, low flow, low light on 15" round colonies, and the occaisional hit of septic water once in a blue moon, the dominoes started falling.
I thought I had it under control but just couldn't get things to recover.
After my triton test results came back with basically just low magnesium and trace elements and no smoking gun, I decided to buy about $300 in trace elements and start dosing (if i used triton and bought all the recommended ones it would have been around $1000-$1200). I went with the strontium, iodine, magnesium, potassium, and a little bit of manganese. My belief is that strontium and potassium were probably the culprits. I probably hadn't changed more than 10% of my water total in 6 months+, if that honestly. Corals were just too exhausted to handle the trauma.

Once I started dosing the trace stuff, which took about 10 days to get it all in, things started looking better. I'd say within 1 week of completion or less things had recovered and started actually growing new branches/tips which I hadn't seen in a long time. In that time, i don't think i even did any water changes. Also, i still had a couple acro's that were slowly dying back and those stopped dying and started to look better. So with that said, i firmly believe that some trace elements are vitally important and if you don't get them in there one way or another, you'll eventually end up with exhausted corals at the end of a marathon waiting for that one pot hole to end their careers.

Oh, and fyi my 3 hammerhead pumps are still leaking a tiny bit (even the one i fixed) so I don't think that they likely had a hand in poisoning in case anyone was curious. Also i've been dosing vibrant for 10 weeks now and it's slowly getting rid of my bubble algae (and cheto too unfortunately). But i'm absolutely certain that vibrant had nothing to do with the turn around as i was 8+ weeks into dosing at that point.

Hope that helps a few of you out there learn something to avoid it for yourselves!
thanks again,
Happy reefing

 

[outdrsyguy1]

@myaquariumpro do you happen to have a list of all the fish you bought or at least an idea for your DIY fish food? Also, how do you store it so it's usable easily and not one monstrous frozen block? I definitely want to try that sometime. Thanks!