rperrice Posted April 29, 2003 Share Posted April 29, 2003 Hi All, First I want to say you have a great website and excellent forums. I've found a lot of great information. I just setup my nano reef five days ago. I have a 7-gal AGA minibow, CSL retrofit/32watt, Whisper Mini HOB, MiniJet 404, 50watt heater. I used 9 lbs Nature's Own live sand and 8 lbs. cured live rock I purchased from my LFS. I noticed a white chalky substance appearing on a couple of pieces of my live rock. This rock had some of this substance on it when I purchased it along with some purple corraline algae, however there appears to be more now than before. My water conditions are: Temperature: 78.0, Salinity:123.5, Ammonia: 0.0, Nitrite: 0.0, Nitrate: <10, Ph: 8.0, Alk: 3.8, Copper: 0.0, Calcium: 550. Also, I first ran my water through the Whisper filter/carbon bag for a couple of days and also put some phosphate sponge in the filter bag too before adding the sand and rock. I am currently running my lights about 11 hours (I have no corals yet). I did a search on this site and ReefCentral for "white substance" and on ReefCentral, Dr. Ron told another reefer the white substance was excess calcium carbonate and most likely is not a big problem. I noticed my calcium level is quite high, could this be the problem? How do I lower the calcium level? Another question is: what is the best temperature and salinity? One book I have by Dr. Ron says 82 - 84 F and 125 salinity. Another book by John Tullock says 76 - 78 F and 123 salinity. Most nano-reef members appear to side with Tullock. Which is best? Also, what's the best way to attach pictures? Thanks all. Link to comment
offsprg01 Posted April 29, 2003 Share Posted April 29, 2003 i'm still a newbie but here's my $0.02. on the temps you'll find alot of diffent answers. there's at least one person who has had sucess with any temp with in the range you specified. so just keep a constant temp around 78 - 80 degrees and you should be fine. i keep mine at 76 which is a little lower than i'd like but i had a heater boil my tank about 3 weeks ago so i'm taking no chances. also some believe that the higher end temps like dr. ron suggests expedite the life cycle of some parasites and bacteria, as well as other critters in you r tank and don't reccomend keeping temps that high. and if you keep you tank at a higher temp you heater has to work harder which could lead to it soldering it's self in the on position and boiling you tank and the higher temps will cause more evaporation. (not good in a nano) the sg should be between .023 and .025 just don't let it get outside of that range and you should be fine. Link to comment
onthefly Posted April 29, 2003 Share Posted April 29, 2003 Could it just be some bleaching of the LR, caused by the change in lighting environment? Link to comment
caja Posted April 30, 2003 Share Posted April 30, 2003 I tought the same thing fly. I purchased a few more pieces of coralline encrusted fijia and within two days of being in my tank quite a bit of the coralline had bleached to white. Seems the 2x32 watts was stronger than the LFS lights. Mine has since started to grow more coralline. Check the polls section for info on what temp most nano-ers keep their tanks at. The polls section is a great place to see what everyone else is doing with thier tanks! Link to comment
tinyreef Posted April 30, 2003 Share Posted April 30, 2003 did you add any excessive freshwater or mess around with the salinity lately? salinity changes can cause coralline to bleach as well as the lighting the others mentioned. Link to comment
rperrice Posted April 30, 2003 Author Share Posted April 30, 2003 Thanks everyone for your comments. They helped. I have not added anything to my tank besides some distilled water to compensate for evaporation. Maybe its the lighting. I lowered the time of lighting to 9.5 hours from 11 hours ( No corals yet). This might help. Link to comment
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