Arkayology's Rimless 40g

[D Z]

Damn, Ark, sorry to hear that....I'm sure you will get things turned around. Best of luck.

[Jake.g]

love how this hobbie can make you want to throw your tank at a wall and jump for joy all in 24 hours....well i mostly get the throwy feeling.

 

i would send you a colony of my superman mate...but you know the whole other side of the world is a bit of a bummer

[cnseekatz]

Sorry to hear that Ark. The reef gods giveth, and they taketh away.

[plainrt]

Sorry man for the loss

[Arkayology]

Thanks everyone. Some of base of the red dragon is showing some STN now. It is very slow moving. I saw a bit on my red planet too but I don't think it is going to spread I hope.

 

DkH is 7.7 right now. I tested this morning and it was 8.2. As long as I can keep it stable around here for awhile I am hoping the corals will recover.

i would send you a colony of my superman mate...but you know the whole other side of the world is a bit of a bummer

I wish!

[NanoTopia]

Thanks everyone. Some of base of the red dragon is showing some STN now. It is very slow moving. I saw a bit on my red planet too but I don't think it is going to spread I hope.

 

DkH is 7.7 right now. I tested this morning and it was 8.2. As long as I can keep it stable around here for awhile I am hoping the corals will recover.

Oh NO !

 

 

Low nutrients maybe?

 

GFO ?

[Arkayology]

Oh NO !

 

 

Low nutrients maybe?

 

GFO ?

I don't think I can blame nutrients. I am using GFO but haven't changed it in a month. The water should have enough organics. I do plan on emptying the reactor soon and not using GFO for a few weeks to let things settle.

[NanoTopia]

I don't think I can blame nutrients. I am using GFO but haven't changed it in a month. The water should have enough organics. I do plan on emptying the reactor soon and not using GFO for a few weeks to let things settle.

I now refer to GFO as "SPS Tissue Remover"

 

I think most of the problems with it stem from when it is changed out. A new lot of "SPS Tissue Remover" (GFO) has the ability to shock corals by reducing nutrients too rapidly. The effects of this are seen 3-6 weeks later from my experience. When you see the problems (STN) and test for nutrients they are acceptable because they have risen back up since the initial change out. It's the delay of visible symtoms that throws everyone off in this case.

 

[Arkayology]

I now refer to GFO as "SPS Tissue Remover"

 

I think most of the problems with it stem from when it is changed out. A new lot of "SPS Tissue Remover" (GFO) has the ability to shock corals by reducing nutrients too rapidly. The effects of this are seen 3-6 weeks later from my experience. When you see the problems (STN) and test for nutrients they are acceptable because they have risen back up since the initial change out. It's the delay of visible symtoms that throws everyone off in this case.

 

Yeah, your right. I have seen this too. I guess it could be the result of the GFO. My colors are looking pretty good though. I would assume I would see a lightening of the tissue eventually with the tissue loss. Who knows? I will just see what happens and plan to replace some corals if things go badly.

[kimberbee]

Hope you get it figured out before too many losses.

[markalot]

The superman was no more when I got home. I fragged a good chunk of my SSC and saved it (I think) but all of the encrusting that it has done of the past 8 months is almost completely gone with not much hope for what is left. The new small maxima clam did not make it either - the cleaner shrimp pestered it to death.

 

This is just not my week.

 

Ugh, sorry to hear this. So my SSC survived a pretty big Alk spike but apparently they are ultra sensitive to an Alk drop? I've also heard some Acros have no issue with low Alk but will up and die if it spikes. I guess this makes sense since corals probably would have not evolved to deal with Alkalinity issue so the response would be random from variety to variety.

[NanoTopia]

GFO will lower alkalinity as well, especially when new media is introduced. When GFO is overused, it's always the weaker more sensitive corals and sometimes just the tips or underside of corals that loose tissue first, corals already stressed for one reason or another will also be affected. I also find some species of montipora are easily affected by too-low nutrients in general while others are not so much.

[GtTap]

When will the pics be coming?

[4x5]

Sorry to hear about the coral losses man. Sucks so bad.

[Arkayology]

I *think* part of the issue is that my APEX DOS is acting a little funny. I 100% trust it is dosing what it says it is dosing. But the way in which is it dosing is not that great. I have it set to dose 19ml of each 2-part in a 24hr period. The wizard makes this very easy to set up. What it should do is dose around .75-.8ml/hr for the entire day; the wizard is supposed to take the total volume that you wish to dose and break it up evenly. What it is doing is dosing .6ml/hr for 23hr (=13.8ml) and then in the last hour of the day before midnight it dumps the remainder of the 19ml (=5.2ml). I cannot completely blame the DOS for the issues I am having because my red dragon was not looking too hot before I started using it and I was having some alk issues beforehand if you all remember. However, it really can't be good to have 5.2ml of concentrated alkalinity solution dumped into a 40g net tank. That is going to cause a spike for sure. Part of my low alk issues was that the amount of alk that I calculated to dose from my BRs dosers based on their volume dosed * time was low apparently (not sure why?). Either way, I think things are stabilizing. I have been testing twice a day and my numbers are consistently between 7.7-8.2 (8.0 this morning). I'm hoping things stop dying and I can eventually feel comfortable adding a couple new acros in a month or two.

 

I've tried breaking up the dosing schedule into smaller doses in a given time period to see if that changes anything but it doesn't and I am still left with the DOS dumping a large portion of the total volume of what it is supposed to dose in the last hour of the time block. I've contacted Neptune Systems about this issue so we will see what happens with that.

[end long story]

 

Hope you get it figured out before too many losses.

Me too.

 

Ugh, sorry to hear this. So my SSC survived a pretty big Alk spike but apparently they are ultra sensitive to an Alk drop? I've also heard some Acros have no issue with low Alk but will up and die if it spikes. I guess this makes sense since corals probably would have not evolved to deal with Alkalinity issue so the response would be random from variety to variety.

Yeah, the SSC I have is a very sensitive coral. I lost a mini colony of it when I was using zeovit, fragged this chunk, and it started encrusting a bit and was looking better after a year of looking like poo. I saved it and the STN on what's left of the encrusted tissue has stopped (I think).

 

GFO will lower alkalinity as well, especially when new media is introduced. When GFO is overused, it's always the weaker more sensitive corals and sometimes just the tips or underside of corals that loose tissue first, corals already stressed for one reason or another will also be affected. I also find some species of montipora are easily affected by too-low nutrients in general while others are not so much.

I have read that GFO will lower dkh, but I didn't really think it was to any really great level. I am only using about 30ml of GFO so it really isn't that much. I do agree that it's best to use GFO very sparingly and in small amounts as I have experienced corals going into shock as you mentioned. I also find it interesting that you have noticed montiporas as an indicator of low nutrients. I used to use my sunset monitor as a canary for when my nutrients got too low with my zeovit. It was always the first to start showing lighter colored tissue.

 

When will the pics be coming?

When my acros stop receding from the base. If I take a pic of one then it will RTN overnight

 

Sorry to hear about the coral losses man. Sucks so bad.

Yeah... it sucks to be at a low. I like the highs better.

[NanoTopia]

Can you set the doses manually? I don't know how Neptune has set up the wizard but can't you just go advanced with the set up? Sux if you cannot, this for me would be a negative feature of the DOS and would probably make me not buy it.

[GtTap]

Lmao at RTN overnight. So why did you choose 2 part vs kalk?

[Arkayology]

Can you set the doses manually? I don't know how Neptune has set up the wizard but can't you just go advanced with the set up? Sux if you cannot, this for me would be a negative feature of the DOS and would probably make me not buy it.

The DOS cannot be controlled with the OSC manual program I know. I have not tried to play with manual much mostly because I am lazy and would have to create profiles for it.

 

 

Lmao at RTN overnight. So why did you choose 2 part vs kalk?

 

 

It's what I've always used. I like to keep using what works. I think I will probably keep using two part for the foreseeable future. When I get a bigger tank down the road I will eventually set up a calcium reactor I think.

[GtTap]

i was reading this yesterday maybe you can read it and see why i asked.

 

http://www.reef2reef.com/blog/the-many-methods-for-supplementing-calcium-and-alkalinity/

[NanoTopia]

The DOS cannot be controlled with the OSC manual program I know. I have not tried to play with manual much mostly because I am lazy and would have to create profiles for it.

That goes against their "Control Freak" slogan IMO. You should be able to set this thing up exactly the way you want without too much work. My Profilux asks me what time and how many mLs to dose. This way I can alternate the elements so they have a 2 hour space between them. There must be a way, have you checked out the Neptune forum, maybe there is some dialog happening there. I can't help you because you can only see the DOS setup on the Apex when you plug an actual unit in.

 

EDIT: I see you have a thread started in the Neptune Community, and from the looks of it, it may not be an isolated issue. Hope this gets worked out soon.

[metrokat]

Also, the new cleaner shrimp probably has to go. It is cleaning the new maxima relentlessly and It will probably kill it if I don't do something.

Try the bottle cover method. Cover the clam with a soda bottle with holes cut in it for flow. Make sure it is the clear bottle and that it is getting light. The shrimp not being able to get to it will force it to find something else to keep it busy. Hopefully it doesn't return

 

Sad tank news - I had to emergency frag my superman acro this morning. I don't think it liked my dkh dipping to 6.1. I hope the piece I have left makes it.

Noooooo not Supe

[Arkayology]

That goes against their "Control Freak" slogan IMO. You should be able to set this thing up exactly the way you want without too much work. My Profilux asks me what time and how many mLs to dose. This way I can alternate the elements so they have a 2 hour space between them. There must be a way, have you checked out the Neptune forum, maybe there is some dialog happening there. I can't help you because you can only see the DOS setup on the Apex when you plug an actual unit in.

There is some talk of profiles, but I am not really interested in making those and dealing with them. That is mostly for changing the dosing between day/night or doing things other than dosing two part. IME dosing alk only at night doesn't really help/hurt. I like to keep my dosing as consistent throughout the day as possible so I can help keep params as stable as possible. The wizard should be the only thing I need but it has some bugs. I think that once it is worked out the wizard is all I need.

 

I am still happy with the DOS though. I love it. I just hate losing coral because poor graduate students don't have the $$ to replace SPS all the time.

 

Try the bottle cover method. Cover the clam with a soda bottle with holes cut in it for flow. Make sure it is the clear bottle and that it is getting light. The shrimp not being able to get to it will force it to find something else to keep it busy. Hopefully it doesn't return

I will keep that in mind for next time. I have 0/2 for maximas. I think I am getting them too small (~2.5''). I should only get maximas if they are bigger than 3'' maybe.

 

Noooooo not Supe

Yeah... and it was actually growing so fast. It was starting to encrust over most of the frag plug before it went.

 

i was reading this yesterday maybe you can read it and see why i asked.

 

http://www.reef2reef.com/blog/the-many-methods-for-supplementing-calcium-and-alkalinity/

I'll look it over after I am done at work. Thanks.

[D Z]

Hope you get this all figured out soon, Ark. I unfortunately learned what it is like to loose most of a decent sized tenuis mini colony yesterday do to a spike in salinity/alk, so I can somewhat feel your pain. Half of the colony RTN'ed by the time I got home from work, but I was able to get some frags off of it. Now to see whether the frags make it, fingers crossed....

[Arkayology]

Hope you get this all figured out soon, Ark. I unfortunately learned what it is like to loose most of a decent sized tenuis mini colony yesterday do to a spike in salinity/alk, so I can somewhat feel your pain. Half of the colony RTN'ed by the time I got home from work, but I was able to get some frags off of it. Now to see whether the frags make it, fingers crossed....

Thanks man. Unfortunately, I know what it is like to lose colonies. I feel for you too; it sucks to lose acros.

[mpsti05]

Ark what you usually like your cal and alk at? 420ish cal and 8.4 alk ish?