Mark's 150 (NanoBox Retro)

[teenyreef]

Mark, I can't believe what a change there has been in this recovery. I think Cousin It and the other red guys are the most striking, but everything is doing so well. I'm really looking forward to seeing what everything looks like in a few more months!

[Arce]

Ok, so trying to go back through everything to see what your changes were. So your dosing CaNo3 to raise your nitrates. What about phosphates? What other things are you dosing?

[markalot]

Ok, so trying to go back through everything to see what your changes were. So your dosing CaNo3 to raise your nitrates. What about phosphates? What other things are you dosing?

 

I occasionally does CaNO3 but I haven't gotten serious about it yet. Before going on vacation I dosed enough to raise Nitrates to near 2, which I figured would help the tank out since feeding would be lower than normal. What I need to do is figure out a daily dose to keep them around 1, or at least so i see some pink on the Salifert test, looking sideways into the cup.

 

Daily I dose 2 drops PhosphateRx, 2 drops of MicroE (AquaForest), 4 or 5 drops of SpongePower, and recently 2 drops of Lugols to try and improve some blues.

 

I feed Reef Roids 2 or 3 times a week but I'm still guilty of not having a set schedule, which is why I see colors increase and decrease instead of remaining steady.

 

I feed trashy food, mostly flake and occasionally some higher quality pellets with the sump off so they don't go into the overflow. I do everything on feed timers so I don;t forget to turn things back on. To feed pellets or Reef Roids I use B, which I have set to turn the sump off for 30 minutes. The skimmer stays off for an additional 20 minutes.

 

One a week I will put in a cap of Potassion and a Cap of Strontium (yea, I still dose it but only weekly).

 

Because I rarely change the water I also will put in a cap of Trace elements, whatever I have on had, just in case.

 

I use a Two Little Fishes Phosban 550 (the large one) filled with Seachem Matrix media and Matrix is also in the return chamber of the sump. I shake the reactor and stir the gravel from time to time to release detritus back into the display.

 

In my 40, none of this works well. Using PhosphateRx, just a single drop, tends to bottom out PO4 and Nitrates are always near 0, probably because I have so few fish. Maybe the addition of the Chromis will help a little? I suck at small tanks, it seems to require an entirely different skill set.

[markalot]

Cut off the left half of the smaller Katropora to prevent it touching the Red Robin. Moved the lower pink milli a bit to give the clown pants acro (red with yellow polyps) a little more room. I have most of my corals mounted on movable rocks but the milli is on a big rock and I may have to pry it off while I still can.

 

 

Moved a blue/green tort looking acro from the side way up to the center to see how it does in more light.

 

 

Check out how tall and thick these 'little' daisy polyps are!

[markalot]

Rescaping, getting rid of the front frag rack and adding one to the left side, them moving things around down near the bottom. Too many frags.

 

Anyway, I'm working under blue/violet light and notice Clown Pants is almost yellow and red under these lights. If I was better at photoshop, and one of those unscrupulous r2r sellers, I might post this picture (but better).

 

 

I couldn't quite get the polyps to be yellow, but I didn't try all that hard. It does look nice under blues, it's not a full lie, but certainly an exaggeration.

 

All that said I can see how a tenuis, which always has dramatic colors, would look good under blue. Too bad I can't keep them alive.

[markalot]

Another photo dump, frag rack rescape, and macros shots. I have no confidence I can keep things this healthy so I'm recording everything. If I can survive the holidays into the next year it will be the first time I've had good color and health between November and February.

 

FTS

 

Center, with that punk tang.

 

On the new white rock at the bottom I want to put the war coral I nursed back to health. Green and red, Christmas colors ... seasonal.

 

 

The other rock has the BOP and Undata on it. Not sure it's gettign enough light here, will have to see how they respond.

 

 

 

.. and I noticed the back wall under the shelf rock. Good grief, millions of blue cloves climbing the wall.

 

This is a green polyp stylo I have on a mag plug. I scooted it over a bit, not realizing it had already encrusted on the back wall. Fast grower.

 

A couple of the blue stag. I removed two half dead branches, leaving only the healthy ones. I'm not convinced it's out of the woods yet. Color is coming back but the tips look, for lack of a better word, blurred.

 

 

Reds and yellows really looking good at the moment.

 

 

Cousin It is going from good to fantastic, and getting some of the deep orange/red that was evident when I first got the frag.

 

This is near 400 PAR, one of the highest acros in the tank.

 

The other milli is gaining a different set of colors, with this branch showing a good purple.

 

Red Robin

 

Lokani

[evan127]

Looking good Mark!

[Sk8n Reefer]

Wow Mark, tanks looking amazing, so your loving the new light ? Is that one closeup an undata- does it have two different colors coming through?

[markalot]

Looking good Mark!

 

Thanks Evan.

 

Wow Mark, tanks looking amazing, so your loving the new light Is that one closeup an undata- does it have two different colors coming through?

 

Hey, thanks. Purple and green, normal undata colors if you get a 'true' undata. When they get large it's one of the most amazing monties with columns and plating. The Jedi Mindtrick has cooler colors but the growth form is boring.

[DaveFason]

Amazing as normal Mark. This tank in a year...

[dmarkham]

Following

[markalot]

Amazing as normal Mark. This tank in a year...

 

 

Following

 

Thanks to both of you.

 

I am now at 3 drops PhosphateRx every morning (normal) and I've added another drop in the afternoon. I am feeding 1/4 tsp Reef Roids every other day. In addition I now have the Violet channel on my rear BML strip on, adding another 15 to 20 PAR. This channel is 405 and 420 diodes.

 

KH is rock steady at 6.7 with saturated Kalk and the topoff running 48 seconds every 15 minutes. Evaporation has changed, moving into winter, so I'm controlling it with the sump fan because I'm not touching the topoff timing for now.

 

The color is still getting better and the Katropora has responded by getting the vivid green with purple tips.

 

LED only shots, just after the T5's turned off.

 

For overall color the right half of the tank is kicking the left sides butt.

 

[markalot]

Welcome back red goni, which outgrew the 40 and was stinging everything.

 

While I was in here I moved the not quite pink milli down to the sandbed and Pinky up and over to give it room to grow up.

 

Taking a few macro shots .... I think when Cousin It runs into anything it may win.

 

 

 

 

Superman

[jedimasterben]

yisssssssss

[Slowtwitch]

Really looking good in here Mark

[jedimaster1138]

Hello stranger!

 

This tank looks insanely good. Like. Wow. Wow x 10000. Well done sir!

 

Inspired by your success, I bought myself a bottle of PhosphateRX late in the summer. I measured phosphate at something like 1.25 with the Hanna in around August, so .... yeah. Figured I might as well do something. Got tired having to clean the glass every day, the small patches of cyano and 0 SPS growth whatsoever.

 

It took a couple months of dosing every few days, so as to not drop P too much, too fast, but I got it down to 0 a while ago. Unfortunately I can't seem to keep it down there or close to it. I haven't dosed any in about 10 days and I just measured P to be around 0.30. Not the end of the world, but I assume it's going to be a straight line up from there. Last week I put some GFO online at a very, very slow flow rate. I don't think it's doing a lot of good if P is rising from 0 to 0.30 in a week-ish.

 

I'm somewhat wary to keep dosing Phosphate RX every day, but you seem to have success doing that so...I guess I should get over it? The Lanthanum doesn't seem to be the danger that we may have been led to believe. (Aside, i dose it down my overflow. I figure there's a ton of churn etc in there so it's gonna have a big chance to bind the P, and then pretty much go right into the skimmer, so there's that)

 

I assume I just have so much P leeching out of my rocks and sand that I can't keep up. I only feed frozen mysis, spirunlina brine, eggs, Rods etc.

 

What's frustrating is that along with all of my acropora being mostly dead (way may or may not be due to AEFW on top of everything else) I've been seeing mass tissue necrosis in things like stylohphoras, poccillopora, an m setosa and even a meteor shower cyphastrea. Oh and a rainbow monti looks like poop for 6 weeks now. Mutter. I assume it's because of the P drop (which again, took 6 weeks or so, ie it wasn't fast) but it's still frustrating. I can get over not being able to keep acro, but if i can't keep alive an M setosa or some birds, or heaven forbid, a couple caps, ugh.

 

I remain inspired by your success though and have no intentions of giving up despite my insanely limited budget (read: 0 money) and limited time (job hunting + baby stuff)

[markalot]

Hello stranger!

 

snip

 

I remain inspired by your success though and have no intentions of giving up despite my insanely limited budget (read: 0 money) and limited time (job hunting + baby stuff)

 

Hi Jedi. Hopefully things improve for you. I am a believer in the daily dosing of PhosphateRx until it stops working for me. Right now the tank is the best I've ever achieved in my 4 short years doing this.

 

Growth pic. The slimer is full speed now, and at this rate, if maintained, will dominate again in a couple of months.

 

This is 18 days of growth.

[evan127]

I need to track down a green skimmer again. I love that coral. Keep up the good work!

[Mariaface]

Yeah, I'll eventually need me one of those

[markalot]

Nothing dramatic to report. I got the impression coral color was fading and Nitrates read very low so I added 1/2 tsp CaNO3 which might have improved colors, or I'm imagining things.

 

I dosed 4 drops PhosphateRx for a few days but have since dropped back to 3 drops. I will test tomorrow evening before feeding to see where I'm at.

 

Pinky has continued to turn a more solid pink, though it may be a bit faded?

 

The Lokani gained significant brown mid week but I did bump it ... and ouch, it did not break. Delicate flower this is NOT. It has since regained most of its normal color.

 

This little guy has responded extremely well to increased light. It's infested with a filter feeder of some kind but is rapidly encrusting and starting to branch from the base.

[MikeTR]

Love the way the tanks progressing.. good job man.

[markalot]

Took a bunch of topdowns, I very pleased. Lower PO4 plus some CaNO3 dosed 5 days ago seemed to bring out some great colors.

 

I'm done, not sure I can do better than this.

 

Cousin It not responding well to lower PO4, with reduced polyp extension and some fading of color.

 

Katropora

 

Lokani

 

Full slimage.

 

 

Spent a lot of time with this tank today, cleaned all the pumps and replaced both rear pumps with Tunze 6095 Wide flows. One of these was in the 40 gallon and could not be run at full speed so I bought another and now both in here. Flow is excellent and you can still feel water movement near the center of the tank. Max flow rate is 2000 GPH, half of an MP40, but really adds to the flow up top. Hopefully this will fix Cousin It's issues.

 

FTS

 

 

 

Love the way the tanks progressing.. good job man.

 

Thanks Mike!

[Mariaface]

Oh my god, the Kat and Slimer are looking glorious.

 

The whole tank looks amazing!

[metrokat]

Dat Kat tho....

 

My slimer is encrusting on the back wall

[teenyreef]

Every time I see that lokani it has more color