ps2cho Posted June 23, 2014 Author Share Posted June 23, 2014 So i've been doing the kalk with a little distilled vinegar for about a month now and I've definitely dialed in the alkalinity. Got it dead on 9.0 now consistently. No more fluctuations and the gooey slime that started with the carbon dosing has stopped and gone away too. The calcium doesn't seem to be keeping up quite as much though. After 2 weeks it will drop from 420 to about 405/410, so I guess I need to be doing weekly calcium additions via my 2-part solution that I have. Also doing the 15% change weekly seems to be much easier than doing 7.5% twice weekly. I also removed some of the SPS frags off their holders and glued to the rockscape. I am still not sure that my lighting is turned up high enough...I guess I can slowly ramp it up until I see negative effects. Right now its at 50% W 50% B. I will try to get an updated FTS tonight Link to comment
ps2cho Posted June 25, 2014 Author Share Posted June 25, 2014 Updated June FTS. Not much change though, but I have glued down a bunch of frags. Link to comment
ps2cho Posted June 25, 2014 Author Share Posted June 25, 2014 I have noticed in the last week my red carpet hair algae on the sand bed is also getting smaller. I think the GFO is finally catching up with everything and the phosphates are going down now. Link to comment
AJ_Tsin Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Looks good. Good to hear things are cleaning up. Link to comment
ps2cho Posted July 3, 2014 Author Share Posted July 3, 2014 Picked up a 2" yellow tang yesterday from the LFS so excited!! She will be in the 10g QT for 4-6 weeks depending on how she does. I drip acclimated and let her settle overnight. All looked well in the AM so I started prazipro right away. This time around I plan to do 2 cycles of it to be safe. First cycle for 7 days, then a 90% water change, start the cupramine, and the 2nd prazipro Unlike the Kole Tang, she destroyed the Nori I put in right away! Link to comment
ps2cho Posted July 7, 2014 Author Share Posted July 7, 2014 So my SCA-302 skimmer pump died (ph-2000). I emailed the company about the ph-2500 for fitment and they asked about what happened to my current pump. I told them out of honesty I bought it used, but it was only a few days old. I bought it off the classifieds section here. The company told me to send it back to them and they would get it working again for me! That is amazing service considering I didn't even buy directly from them. I will update when I get the pump back from them with (fingers crossed) success! Link to comment
ps2cho Posted July 7, 2014 Author Share Posted July 7, 2014 I've been doing some research and I think I'm still having diatoms because I am overly complicating things. My SPS frags are also struggling too. They are STN'ng and are pale...probably from a lack of nutrients. I am going to go back to the basics. I'm cutting the vinegar, stopping the gfo and removing the activated carbon. We will see if I can get them to brown out. Link to comment
ps2cho Posted July 22, 2014 Author Share Posted July 22, 2014 Been a while since the last update... I added today a new cleaner shrimp to replace the one that died a few months ago. I added a few more turbo snails and hermits. This should buff up the CUC since I am feeding more. Did my first water change since I stopped today. Tank is looking much healthier now. I just totally starved everything out. The only filtration I have right now is live rock, skimmer and filter sock. Nothing else. Nitrates are about 5ppm. Phosphates are 0.08ppm. Before I had zero nitrate zero phosphate and everything was dieing. Corals looked horrible, CUC vanished. I was underfeeding and overexporting nutrients. Its all a learning curve...Hopefully over the next few months everything will start stabilizing. Link to comment
ps2cho Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 Just ordered a Photon 24. I will be running it side by side with my Value LED. In the long run once I get a little more cash, I will sell the value and buy a 2nd photon 24. This should give me much better coverage and help my SPS grow since I know some of them are barely getting any light on the edges. Link to comment
Red_Blenny Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 Been a while since the last update... I added today a new cleaner shrimp to replace the one that died a few months ago. I added a few more turbo snails and hermits. This should buff up the CUC since I am feeding more. Did my first water change since I stopped today. Tank is looking much healthier now. I just totally starved everything out. The only filtration I have right now is live rock, skimmer and filter sock. Nothing else. Nitrates are about 5ppm. Phosphates are 0.08ppm. Before I had zero nitrate zero phosphate and everything was dieing. Corals looked horrible, CUC vanished. I was underfeeding and overexporting nutrients. Its all a learning curve...Hopefully over the next few months everything will start stabilizing. Glad to hear you diagnosed the source of your SPS's problems. Link to comment
ps2cho Posted August 5, 2014 Author Share Posted August 5, 2014 Well I received the Photon 24 and its awesome. The added features are really cool. I immediately purchased a second and will be selling the value LED soon. It should be perfect for someone with a smaller footprint tank than I have. Link to comment
ps2cho Posted August 19, 2014 Author Share Posted August 19, 2014 3 weeks ago my dry rocks started to turn pale green. This morning I have noticed a ton of purple specs all over the rocks. Looks like the coraline has started! So it took 8 months, but it could have been faster had I not realized that I was massively overexporting nutrients and trying so hard to get the "perfect" stats. Even though I am massively feeding more, dosing weekly aminos, the po4 and no3 haven't really gone up at all like I was expecting. I am still sitting at about 3-4ppm nitrate and 0.08 po4. Everything is fine! Some photos with the new photon 24 this morning. Wake up shots I'll try to get some peak day polyp shots soon. Link to comment
ps2cho Posted August 24, 2014 Author Share Posted August 24, 2014 Some more random pics today: You can see stuff is much happier. Everything is progressing nicely now. Link to comment
AJ_Tsin Posted August 24, 2014 Share Posted August 24, 2014 Looks like things are getting nice and clean. Good work colors are coming along nicely. Link to comment
ps2cho Posted August 25, 2014 Author Share Posted August 25, 2014 Now that I have all the corals off the sand bed, I can now start to remove the chunks that have developed. I'm not really sure the best way to do this....maybe buying a kitty litter scooper that will sift only the large chunks out and let the sand fall through. I would guess I should go slow with it though and only do a few sections at a time. I only have a 1" sand bed though, so there shouldn't be anything to be overly concerned about right? Link to comment
ps2cho Posted August 28, 2014 Author Share Posted August 28, 2014 I added an extra redundancy today to prevent both return pump failure, and potentially any fires from running dry. For a small price its such a huge peace of mind. I went away for 4 days and was freaking out over it thinking what if my ATO failed or clogged from the kalk etc...In fact on day 3 I decided to remotely shut off the return pump completely. I knew temperature would be fine because its AZ summer and my heaters haven't even turned on in 5 months. Now I won't worry about it. For the winter however I might get an extra heater probe for the display, but maybe thats overkill $21 for the float switch and bracket from autotopoff.com Link to comment
ps2cho Posted September 10, 2014 Author Share Posted September 10, 2014 Wonderful....so the skimmer pump is dead again. Stupid thing...I recently had a power outage so I am wondering if that caused the death, although nothing else had any issues. I have a feeling it was just a coincidence. Maybe its a sign I need to get a better skimmer Link to comment
ps2cho Posted October 7, 2014 Author Share Posted October 7, 2014 So its been a while since I have posted a FTS. I changed my aquascape again to get basically get off the sand bed and build UP. I like this much better. I still have a couple rocks that I am unsure about, but the basic design is there. Just a little more tweaking for the rocks on the gravel. I may remove them, but I want to give it a week like this since I already removed a lot of rocks. I am dosing bacteria to make sure there won't be any cycling if I removed too much. Just wanna be on the safe side. Link to comment
ps2cho Posted October 13, 2014 Author Share Posted October 13, 2014 Some updated coral shots...I see some growth compared to the ones I took further up this page, but its mostly the base encrusting on the rock. Hopefully once it feels comfortably attached to the rock it will grow out. This photo shows the recovery for the SPS that only had a small amount of living tissue on the very ends. The tissue death stopped, and it is very, very slowly regrowing over. Link to comment
ps2cho Posted November 13, 2014 Author Share Posted November 13, 2014 Well I have had a small crash and lost a couple of my SPS... I believe it was the mistake I made by using Gorilla Wood glue. I was stupid and did not research. I removed the offending pieces I used it on and did a few large water changes over the past week. Things are recovering now. Link to comment
ps2cho Posted November 24, 2014 Author Share Posted November 24, 2014 With the chance probably that I may have to go out of state for a few months for training, leaving either my girlfriend or friend to deal with kalkwasser is not a risk I want to take. I purchased today the BRS 2-part kit including 2 dosing pumps. I also purchased 2 extra gallon containers /w caps so that I can dedicate one gallon container to each 2-part, and then another for dedicated mixing and/or manual top up. With the 15% off deal, I cant beat $160 for the entire 2-part solution and 2 dosing pumps. This will make it a little easier since the only thing it will require will be feeding and just RODI top off once a week. I should be able to come home every 2-3 weeks in between to recheck and do any water changes if necessary. Link to comment
plainrt Posted November 24, 2014 Share Posted November 24, 2014 Looking good. I'm running same dosing setup and love it. Link to comment
ps2cho Posted November 26, 2014 Author Share Posted November 26, 2014 Looking good. I'm running same dosing setup and love it. One thing that I have noticed in the last 2 months though is my alk requirements suddenly dropped and I don't understand why. I used to require about 3/4 tsp of kalk per gallon....now its dropped to about 1/3rd tsp per gallon. Is that normal or why would this happen? Link to comment
ps2cho Posted November 28, 2014 Author Share Posted November 28, 2014 My only black friday purchase... 16 frags total...I'd say thats not bad. This time around I think I will have more success than the last one I ordered since my tank is much more stable with nutrients this time ha. I think just under half of the last order is still with me. Lets aim for 100% this time. Link to comment
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