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mygolfisslow

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Last test was around 8. I can get it up to around 9.5 if I dose, but it never stays there. Ph drops with it, but not as much as it used to. I think that's because of the increased oxygen from the skimmer. Could be wrong. Last testing this is what I got:

 

Sal 1.024

Ammo, nitrates, nitrites all 0

Ph 8

Calc around 400 (week old water)

Alk 8+/-

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mygolfisslow
Last test was around 8. I can get it up to around 9.5 if I dose, but it never stays there. Ph drops with it, but not as much as it used to. I think that's because of the increased oxygen from the skimmer. Could be wrong. Last testing this is what I got:

 

Sal 1.024

Ammo, nitrates, nitrites all 0

Ph 8

Calc around 400 (week old water)

Alk 8+/-

any idea where you magnesium is.

if your mag is low, you will have a hard time keeping alk and cal up. what are you dosing with?

also look for signs of precipitation. most often will be drawn to heat. like a white chalky coating on your heater or pumps.

you may want to bring you salinity up just a bit i run mine at 1.025-1.026. you will find that when mixing salt at lower salinity the water will have lower concentrations of various elements like cal, alk, mag.

i've looked through your thread, you seem to have a good deal of calcifying organisms; sps lps. you may just be using it that fast. mine will drop about 1 point a day and i will lose about 10 ppm of cal.

you need to find out what your daily consumption is.

what test kits are you using i recommend salifert kits. they are nice and have a relatively high resolution. BRS has a good price on them.

best way to find what you daily consumption is, is test your alk and cal at say noon on day 1 then dose. then test.

most products will tell you how much each ml of there product will raise the concentration of (cal or alk) in a gallon. or you can use one of the many reef calculators online. you should be able to find how much you need to dose to get from where you are to where you want to be. don't try to go to far to fast. if your at 8 don't shoot for 12. bring it up slow.

day 1 test then dose and then after about an hour test again, just time for things to move around. so if you test 8 and dose enough to bring it up to 9 (say 10ml). than test and its at like 9.5 then you have a starting point.

keep notes.

the next day test at the same time (noon in my example) if it tests 8.5 than in 24 hour you are dropping one point. then does again and test again. do this for a week and you will see a pattern, and find what your daily consumption is of alk and cal.

once you know what your tank is using you can add a bit more every day to bring it up slowly.

 

sorry if thats a bit long winded. i got on a roll. i hope it all makes sense.

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It makes sense. Don't worry about the roll...I've been on them before lol. I will try an do what you said. Will this work (cause I don't think I have time for the above):

 

Test once at 8am (ex. Reading of 9)

Test again at 8pm (ex. Reading of 8.5)

Test again at 8 and 8 next day (ex. Reading of 8 and again of 7.5)

 

So based on that it would be dropping about 1 per 24 hours. From there dose and test again after 24 to see results and work from there. I think that's essentially what you've said. I need to read about how a coral 'uses up' alkalinity. I'm still not quite sure what it is really.

 

As far as mag, don't have a test kit. But it does seem that when I'm dosing mag consistantly (w no test kit...) everything starts to level off. That's why I started dosing mag to begin with. I really just need a system/controller that tells me what everything is so I can know how much to dose... Is that cheating?

 

Thanks for the info again.

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mygolfisslow
looking really good man. keep it up :)

thanks its getting there.

 

finally got my parameters where i want them after a two month battle and three different salt mixes. alk at 11 and cal at 440. i switched back to blended IO and RC and set up a dosing pump to split the dose to twice a day. the pumps have been running about a week and i think i got them dialed in just right, for now at least.

i have already noticed better growth for quite a few of my corals. its nice to have you alk/cal stay the same all day...... corals like it B)

now i just need to get my light tuned in. when i first switched to the shallow i turned it down to around 50%. alot of the corals i have have browned out a bit. i slowly brought up the light to about 70% then found my nitrate problem. and figured that that was the reason for the browning. now that i have my nitrates down to a reasonable level i keep looking for my color to return. its been about 2 weeks and im starting to think my light is too dim. i now have it running at 72%, i set it at 75% fror a day or two and things started to go pale. i have a buddy that may lend me a par meter tomorrow so i am going to do a par map of my tank at various percentages. i am thinking 50% 75% and 100% and see where i am at. i know this lamp can put out some light, its the same batch LEDs that AI uses in the sol but with 3 more LEDs and im running it at the same amperage with the same degree optics, so one would think that it should put out at least the same if not a little more. we shall see.

i will post results on this page and my original build thread for the lamp.

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IMO having had some exp with this, 50-65-80 is the target area. I have an SOL and not even the light hogs like it above that. Nice you got your Alk stable. Mine is a stable 8 wtf. I can't invest in dosing pumps right now and really don't mind doing it manually, but I can't get it to remain higher. Can we get another FTS?

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mygolfisslow

got my hands on a apogee mq-200 today. it took about 3 hours but i mapped the tank at 71%, 80%, 90% and 100%. now i have done a lot of reading on leds and par. mostly that they dont get along, that par meters will read up to 40% low depending on how much blue you are trying to measure. thats not just me trying to defend my numbers. when i dropped of the meter at my LFS i did some tests on one of the frag tanks they have with the eco-tech radion over it. i just have to say that yes the eco-tech has better coverage, but with my lamp 18in from the water my dead center par # just under the surface was the same as the radion hanging 11in from the water.

 

i did my first tests at 71% because that is what i have been running it at. i only did photoshop maps of 71 and 100 its pretty linear across the 4 maps that i made so i felt that i didnt have to go overboard.

now on to pics and maps

 

my crazy cat likes to stand on small things, this is her standing on the apogee box

5d9160c3.jpg

aeb9de44.jpg

photoshop maps

map71.jpg

map100.jpg

 

and some fun pics i was going to overlay #s on but did it the other way.

topdown

5cd57b86.jpg

front

72ca9849.jpg

side

ccc66813.jpg

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Nice. I saw another PAR test with the SOL LEDs on a shallow tank and the readings were pretty much the same, if not a little higher in the middle. That's probably cause you have better spread than the SOL.

 

Tank look great. It's freakishly similar to mine, but I guess there's not really a lot of other ways to set the scape. I'm considering the mangrove idea, but I done want to change my scape. I'm also looking into how to mount 2 supplemental T5s for color. What do you think about that? Some one else on here did that recently. Hasn't seen any comparison pics yet...

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Tanks looking real nice! hows the mangroves doing with the led's about to switch from MH to led's next month-little nervous

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mygolfisslow
Tanks looking real nice! hows the mangroves doing with the led's about to switch from MH to led's next month-little nervous

thanks Giga. they seem to be doing fine under leds, the one that i got first started with 4 leaves and within a month sprouted another pair. the one that started as a pod has stared growing some roots but no leaves yet and the other three have root growth (the little white stringy ones) but no leaf growth. yours should do fine under leds, you may get slower growth as the color temp is a bit cooler than what plants like.

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mygolfisslow
Looking good nick.

thanks

 

 

so for the last week i wanted to not touch anything. just to see how things go. i wanted to go two weeks

well that didnt happen :P

yesterday i did some re organizing of my sump area. it all started with the fact that my skimmer has not been pulling the dark stinky stuff that i would like it to. it would run a week and there would be nothing in the cup just thick green slime all the way up the neck. at first i thought maybe it was dirty so i pulled it out and gave it a vinegar bath. when i put it back in i flipped it around so the intake was not right next to the drain from the display just in case that was a problem. then in a manic moment i decided that the otp-1000 pump on the reefocto is rubbish so i found a BB hy-1000 online for $130. so this thing will be a monster soon. and as it turns out i just had the bubble level too low :rolleyes:

it also has been getting hotter out side and my temp went up yesterday so i put a fan over the sump, and in order for the fan to blow on the water i had to switch out my sump light. i read a thread a while back about 5000k PC floodlights growing chato super quick so i tossed one of those over the fuge.

the trickle of water over the top of the overflow has also started to get to me and i wanted to fix it with what i had lying around. and the answer is 1in pvc 90º just stuffed in the T with the 90º that came with it on the other end, and you can rotate it to adjust the water level in the overflow box.

so much for not messing with stuff.

9d9ae7da.jpg

485a2d62.jpg

8b84e66e.jpg

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mygolfisslow

its been a while since i did an update. things are going well, all sps are growing and starting to color up more. they have also started sucking up cal like mad. i have had to double the time on my pumps to keep up. the good thing is that alk and cal dosing is now balanced 11min each twice a day.

i found a really cool sight www.aquaticlog.com a new sponsor here on NR. i spent about an hour entering all the data from my hand written log and it makes a graph for all your perams. so cool. if you have not checked it out yet you should.

finally picked up some pompom crabs yesterday ive been looking for some since i got everything set back up love these guys

9705da49.jpg

b0a01b4f.jpg

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I really like the Pom poms too. Any idea why try would loose their nems? Mine looses them monthly and grows new ones. I stepped on it once so.....

 

Site is cool. Ill see about using it. I noticed other NR members on there as well.

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mygolfisslow
I really like the Pom poms too. Any idea why try would loose their nems? Mine looses them monthly and grows new ones. I stepped on it once so.....

 

Site is cool. Ill see about using it. I noticed other NR members on there as well.

how many do you have they have been known to pass them back and forth to each other

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OMG! I hope I didn't start a trend! I love my mesh canopy now. Opens up a lot of options. Costs like $20, is removable and looks pretty cool. Makes it look like the zoo or something like I'm keeping animals....I am of course. I'm never buying another fish over $30 without a top. WTF.

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mygolfisslow

a screen to may not work as well for me as i have the trees sticking up in the back. i just have to keep it to fish that dont jump.

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mygolfisslow

much has changed...... got new clowns. ive had them a few days they eat well and have not jumped out yet. so i thought it would be safe to share.

def20493.jpg

 

also over the span of this tank and the last my corals have not been as colorful as i wish they would be. even though the perams have been just about spot on. a few weeks ago i started to think it may be the light. acro frags from the same mother, in my tank pale brown white growth tips. in my buddys tank with my old boost led mu, green and blue with deep purple growth tips. everything is growing very well. its just the colors are super bland. i was having a discussion with pschom, as he also is not as happy with the colors in his tank.

i almost decided to just throw a 250w 14k halide over it and call it a day. i looked at a lot of threads about coral coloration and leds, a lot of threads and only found a handful of really nice sps tanks with leds, a bunch of them look good but only a few that looked amazing. i started to second guess leds, but have had awesome colors with the boost. it was a nice lamp i just wanted more control not just on off. thats why i built the one i have now. after talking with pschom and a few local buddys, i was ready to try something else.

i told myself that if i made enough money over the weekend, with a extra shift that i would get a 250 14k. well on clearing of a table on my extra shift i found a wad of cash under it. a big wad. after that and tips from a sunday breakfast shift, i had more then enough.

i started to think maybe an 8x24 t5 there is a guy on NR selling an ati for a good price but with no bulbs. for t5s i would have been about 600. i dont know that i like t5s that much. halides would have been hot and again just on off. i wanted some thing dimmable, controllable, high light output, and good color.

after about half an hour on the phone with a fellow reefer, i was talked into getting a radion. i know ####### me swaping leds for leds. so far i am super impressed with it and the software.

 

i have them peaking at about 45% to start with not sure how high to go on such a shallow tank.

 

i would like to see some of the curves that people have come up with.

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Lol! Next time you find cash send me some. Love to see a side by side comparison of your old fixture and the radion!

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mygolfisslow
Lol! Next time you find cash send me some. Love to see a side by side comparison of your old fixture and the radion!

ill probly take some side by side pics tomorrow or this weekend. im gunna have to talk to socal about how i should acclimate to the new light.

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