old thread lol

[jedimasterben]

I've already lost (and am in the process of losing) everything but soft corals, and those are already mostly covered up by the dinos. It is gonna take some serious work to get rid of them, and I think I'm going to take all the corals out, house the fish separately (all need to be removed as it is and treated for ich, looks like it snuck its way back in, probably through the dirty water that got into my system with the dispar anthias a while back), and just start over. Muriatic acid the shit out of the rock I have now, and clean all the sand.

 

It's gonna suck dicks to lose all my feather dusters, pods, etc, but gotta do whatcha gotta do, and I honestly think this is what I gotta do.

 

I have no idea what I'm going to do with the mandarin and the leopard wrasses. I don't think they're gonna like QT at all, since they'll have nothing to eat except for at feeding time, and although the wrasses eat mysis and cyclops, and the mandarin eats decapsulated brine eggs like a boss. I may just set up a few QT tanks. So I can keep an eye on everything separately. Oy, this is gonna be a friggin nightmare.

/thinks you need to stop adding stuff from the ocean that isnt qt'd

 

then again i think alot of things

 

like im sitting outside and its to bright to see my mouse pointer so i dont even know if ill be able to find the post button

And on top of everything, I have no idea what to do with the clams. I can keep them with the corals, but I'll need to keep a lot of DOC in the water. I guess I could just feed the shit out of that tank and hope for the best.

[Deckoz2302]

The clams mainly rely on photosynthesis....I wouldn't worry about DOC's they aren't babies anylonger

[jedimasterben]

Zooxanthellae can produce up to 140% of the clam's daily carbon requirements (in 83% or more of surface illumination, 1200-1600 PAR), but under this, require heterotrophy to pick up the slack, by filter feeding and intake of DOC/DOM. Just like corals, clams cannot survive on light alone. I might get some ammonium nitrate to feed them if I don't think the water is gunky enough, and I'm feeling ballsy lol. They will be under light that is intense as shit, though, wherever I put them. I'm thinking of just my temp sump, the Mr. Aqua 17.4, and making two racks out of egg crate. The first one being about 5" below the water line, and the second being on the bottom of the tank. Put all my corals on the bottom rack, and the clams on the top, and take all of the LEDs that are currently on my tank now and put them over the Mr. Aqua. That, in such a confined space, should net about 1500 PAR on the clams lol. The egg crate would shade the corals on the bottom, and if PAR still measures to insane levels, which it might, I will add some of my plastic mesh to block even more light.

[beebes]

Good luck!

[jedimasterben]

Yep, it is official - tank will be coming down ASAP. I will explain what I have come up with later.

[metrokat]

You need some stress free time. Do what you have to to get it back to being good. Since you made new rock scape and all, why not just use those and toss these away?

[FlCandy]

GL Ben, if you need I can house a mandarin in the SUMP but I can't promise being able to catch it later...

[jedimasterben]

You need some stress free time. Do what you have to to get it back to being good. Since you made new rock scape and all, why not just use those and toss these away?

Nah, this stuff will be better looking than the new rock after the acid etches them.

 

GL Ben, if you need I can house a mandarin in the SUMP but I can't promise being able to catch it later...

I appreciate the offer, but I think he'll be ok, it was in QT for a long time before he went into my tank, so I'm hoping for a repeat experience.

 

Anyone know about keeping macroalgae in brackish water?

[FlCandy]

Ha IDK re the brackish....

[Paleoreef103]

I agree with tearing it down and starting over, but I really think you need to limit your biomass. Yes I know your levels are still super low, but they're super low because they're getting bound into all the algae in your system. I've seen tons of tanks that have absurd algae levels and no measurable N or P because the algae is gobbling it up. Just because you can't measure it in the test, the algae growth is a dead give away that your system is generating tons of N and P. Cut down on stocking (20 fish in 80 gallons of water?), rinse your food/ cut down the food in the system (yes, I know, you showed me the article. Do it anyway), maintain a simple consistent regimen, add fish to the tank very slowly, and good things will happen.

[metrokat]

These is certainly room to change things and to re-think strongly held beliefs.

[jedimasterben]

I agree with tearing it down and starting over, but I really think you need to limit your biomass. Yes I know your levels are still super low, but they're super low because they're getting bound into all the algae in your system. I've seen tons of tanks that have absurd algae levels and no measurable N or P because the algae is gobbling it up. Just because you can't measure it in the test, the algae growth is a dead give away that your system is generating tons of N and P. Cut down on stocking (20 fish in 80 gallons of water?), rinse your food/ cut down the food in the system (yes, I know, you showed me the article. Do it anyway), maintain a simple consistent regimen, add fish to the tank very slowly, and good things will happen.

Before the salinity mishap (which greatly reduced the biological filtration in and of itself), my bioload was even higher fish-wise, as nutrient export was also higher and more efficient. As soon as the baffles started to break on the sump is when things went to shit, as skimmers need to keep a constant water level (which was not provided, and while still skimming, it was not efficient and not consistent with what I needed) and the algae scrubber had no place to go. Nutrient export down, nutrients in stop equaling nutrients out, and shit hits the fan. The system was at its healthiest back then, and that is what i will seek again, but try it a bit fancier and more reliable.

 

 

 

Info on the temporary setups and whatnots:

• Buy wood and build a small stand to hold three tanks for the fish - a 20g high, 20g long, and 10g.
• Filtration in these will be provided by my current Seachem biomedia, air-powered sponge filters, and I will build DIY algae scrubbers to hang on the glass - these will handle nutrient export up to a cube's feeding per day per scrubber. The efficiency of algal scrubbers is ridiculous. Activated carbon may be used, but probably only to reduce the yellowing of the water from the algae scrubbers.
• Hyposalinity will be the treatment this time - Cupramine is ok to treat the mandarin, wrasses, tangs, etc, but is difficult to keep a steady amount in the tank since it bonds to organics so easily (detritus, food, etc).
• The powder brown tang, dispar anthias, clownfish, barnacle blenny, and molly will be in the 20 long.
• The lyretail anthias, coral beauty angel, chromis, hippo tang, chalk basslet will all be in the 20 tall.
• The marine betta, Bartlett's anthias, leopard wrasses, and mandarin will all be in the 10g.
• The stocky anthias, Cross' damsel, and yellow watchman will all be traded in.
• For the corals, they will have their own stand in a different room. Unfortunately the fish rack won't fit in the new 'fish room', not with the big tank making its home there.
• The tank will be my spare Mr. Aqua 17g. Water flow will be a Koralia Nano that I have. ROX carbon, GFO, Purigen, etc as necessary. Will be fed heavily, in addition to intense lighting, and will more than likely put an algae scrubber on this system, as well, to support heavier feeding.
• Temp lighting will be a couple of cool white CFL from Home Depot until I can retrofit my current lighting to the tank, as the footprint for the light is more than the footprint of the tank lol.
• The tank will have two layers of egg crate, top one will be a few inches below the water line to hold the clams - basically the two big maximas will have their mantles almost out of the water, but they will receive as much light as I can possibly give them. I looked last night, and with the increased PAR around 300ish, the big blue maxima has new growth, so it'll love more.

 

This is gonna be one helluva weekend.

[FlCandy]

Have fun man, gl.

[Paleoreef103]

Before the salinity mishap (which greatly reduced the biological filtration in and of itself), my bioload was even higher fish-wise, as nutrient export was also higher and more efficient. As soon as the baffles started to break on the sump is when things went to shit, as skimmers need to keep a constant water level (which was not provided, and while still skimming, it was not efficient and not consistent with what I needed) and the algae scrubber had no place to go. Nutrient export down, nutrients in stop equaling nutrients out, and shit hits the fan. The system was at its healthiest back then, and that is what i will seek again, but try it a bit fancier and more reliable.

I understand what happened to your tank. If you were running a significantly lower bioload, your tank would have been able to deal with the loss of filtration with much less devastating results. Definitely try for more reliable, but fancier isn't always better.

 

Best of luck.

[jedimasterben]

Well, I have all the wood I need to build stands for the fish rack and the coral holding tank, but rain popped up and I can't finish putting them together.

All the fish are still around, though, so that is a positive. But tomorrow is Mother's Day, so I don't think I'll be able to get much done then, on anything. :/

[banshee]

Man, sucks to see you dealing with all this. Hope the tear down solves your issues so you can get back to building lights instead.

[jedimasterben]

Man, sucks to see you dealing with all this. Hope the tear down solves your issues so you can get back to building lights instead.

I keep telling ,yes elf it'll all be better soon!

 

Just got home. Dino's are rampant, and cyano is starting to take over the sand bed, but anything to suck down nutrients instead of the Dino's is welcome in my system.

 

All fish are accounted for, and OMFG I just watched mandarin suck down a whole PE mysid!!! Now I'm not worried about him at all!! A little bit of sunshine on this cloudy day.

 

I wishit weren't dark or I would get outside and clean the QT tanks, but that is a tomorrow job. Once I get the sands together, I still need to paint them to seal them from water damage, which will take a bit to dry, so I don't think I will get everything finished this weekend.

[metrokat]

Hi Benny. Hang in there okay.

[jedimasterben]

Hi Benny. Hang in there okay.

[jedimasterben]

So I tested an array today. Threw the 1350B on a 6" Makers heatsink with four of the RB M. Used a Makersdriver with two 700ma LDD. Tomorrow I will repeat these tests, but with 1000ma LDD in place. All measurements taken at 12" from the top of the heatsink (where the splash shield would be, essentially), so about 13" from the LED diodes, with an Apogee SQ-110 PAR sensor. Numbers in parentheses are the 'corrected' values of PAR for the 450nm RB M, which the meter reads about 25% low.

No optics:
BXRA only - 100 PAR
4x M only - 160 PAR (200 PAR))

Ledil Minnie WWW (74°) / Brooke W (50°)
BXRA only - 400 PAR
4x M only - 605 PAR (756 PAR)

Ledil Minnie M (26°) / Brooke S (24°)
BXRA only - 450 PAR
4x M only - 1050 PAR (1312 PAR)

 

 

Eat your heart out, Radion.

[jedimasterben]

Bought a booster pump for the RO/DI system, Aquatec 8800. About $110 shipped on Amazon, versus $139 plus shipping from Spectrapure.

[Veng]

Are you sure 1K+ Par numbers are a good thing? There comes a point where you are just nuking stuff....

[jedimasterben]

Not with clams, which have no measured photosaturation/photoinhibition point (up to around 4,000mmol PAR is the farthest I've seen tested).

[Spirofucci]

Bought a booster pump for the RO/DI system, Aquatec 8800. About $110 shipped on Amazon, versus $139 plus shipping from Spectrapure.

I had to get one as well.......pressure to the pump was only about 45psi, now I can fill up a 32 gal Brute in a few hours.

[markalot]

I dialed up the house pressure to 70 PSI How high does one of boosters go? I know AZ says you can run the SpectraPure filters at higher than rated pressure.