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Innovative Marine Aquariums

An Engineer's first struggle with Life Sciences - BELATED UPDATE! Corals!


mooker

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Those GBG's look great! And the snail guard is perfect. I've gotten so used to knocking snails out of my hydor flo that I don't even think about it any more :rolleyes:

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Awesome!!!! Fish look super cute. You saw them eat at the store?

 

I didn't make them feed them in front of me at the store, but they've been in quarantine there for a week and the store told me they were eating frozen food. They ate when I brought them home, so I'm optimistic!

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Noticed my coral looked a little sad -- just checked nitrate levels and they're almost 80 ppm (from 10 ppm just three days ago). Gonna do a water change and change filter floss, but i'm a little bit at a loss for what to do...

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HarryPotter

Noticed my coral looked a little sad -- just checked nitrate levels and they're almost 80 ppm (from 10 ppm just three days ago). Gonna do a water change and change filter floss, but i'm a little bit at a loss for what to do...

Have you been keeping up with maintenance of the sand bed, rear chambers, etc? Blasting rocks before water change?

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Filter floss was gross, sand bed wasn't great... cleaned 'em all and did a water change. Hopefully that fixes it. As Harry gently reminded me, I need to change my filter floss preemptively...

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You also just added some inhabitants which is probably causing a mini cycle. With every livestock addition your bacterial colony has to grow to meet the added waste output and presumably the added waste from additional feeding. With older established tanks this happens quickly and doesn't usually cause any issues. With newer tanks you often get the mini-cycle effect. Water changes every day and I like to maintenance dose Biopronto Marine which seems to help my tank. How often are you changing water and how much as part of your normal routine? As Harry posted above you also have to clean up excess waste regularly. Right now with such high nitrates you are seriously at risk for a massive algae outbreak. Also test your ATO water and your RO/DI water and make sure you aren't adding any trates from an external source.


Filter floss was gross, sand bed wasn't great... cleaned 'em all and did a water change. Hopefully that fixes it. As Harry gently reminded me, I need to change my filter floss preemptively...

I change my floss every two days, not trying to grow a bacterial colony in there, wanna remove what it has captured before it starts to break down. Floss is cheap.

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You also just added some inhabitants which is probably causing a mini cycle. With every livestock addition your bacterial colony has to grow to meet the added waste output and presumably the added waste from additional feeding. With older established tanks this happens quickly and doesn't usually cause any issues. With newer tanks you often get the mini-cycle effect. Water changes every day and I like to maintenance dose Biopronto Marine which seems to help my tank. How often are you changing water and how much as part of your normal routine? As Harry posted above you also have to clean up excess waste regularly. Right now with such high nitrates you are seriously at risk for a massive algae outbreak. Also test your ATO water and your RO/DI water and make sure you aren't adding any trates from an external source.

I change my floss every two days, not trying to grow a bacterial colony in there, wanna remove what it has captured before it starts to break down. Floss is cheap.

 

Ok, thanks for the advice! I did about an 18% water change tonight, and I'll do another tomorrow. I was hoping to have water changes be a weekly thing, but I guess it'll have to be more frequent for the time being.

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Did another water change this morning, nitrates were still super high....

I went from 3 or four a week, to two a week, and am down to one every 6 days now when I started adding life to mine. I know what you mean about once a week, my goal also. You'll get there, just takes a little time and frustration as you only remove so much nutrients with each change and then add back in between. You might wanna try cutting back on feeding and look around really good to make sure you don't have a dead CUC member in there rotting. Once your tank fully establishes the bacterial colony will start to remove nitrates as well as ammonia and nitrites, then if you can balance your waste input (feeding, fish poop etc) with your biological filter you will be doing water changes to replace depleted things your corals need instead of nitrate export. Unfortunately we tend to overstock our little nano's so we never quite hit that equilibrium, its much easier in bigger tanks. My trates currently float around 2.5 and approach 5 by water change time which is low enough to not kill SPS and my zoas and such like it, it also keeps a very small amount of algae growing on my glass for the CUC. Some people like to do a massive water change when they get as high as you are right now, I personally am scared by doing such a large one and got by with many small (15-20%) ones. You'll have to decide if you want to do a huge one if your problem persists.

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Replacement fan for my NanoBox was delivered a day early! Gonna do some soldering tonight :D


I went from 3 or four a week, to two a week, and am down to one every 6 days now when I started adding life to mine. I know what you mean about once a week, my goal also. You'll get there, just takes a little time and frustration as you only remove so much nutrients with each change and then add back in between. You might wanna try cutting back on feeding and look around really good to make sure you don't have a dead CUC member in there rotting. Once your tank fully establishes the bacterial colony will start to remove nitrates as well as ammonia and nitrites, then if you can balance your waste input (feeding, fish poop etc) with your biological filter you will be doing water changes to replace depleted things your corals need instead of nitrate export. Unfortunately we tend to overstock our little nano's so we never quite hit that equilibrium, its much easier in bigger tanks. My trates currently float around 2.5 and approach 5 by water change time which is low enough to not kill SPS and my zoas and such like it, it also keeps a very small amount of algae growing on my glass for the CUC. Some people like to do a massive water change when they get as high as you are right now, I personally am scared by doing such a large one and got by with many small (15-20%) ones. You'll have to decide if you want to do a huge one if your problem persists.

 

Yes, I think one of my biggest mistakes in starting up this tank was ignoring harry's advice and getting a giant CUC. I probably do have tiny dead snails in my sandbed somewhere. I'm wondering if it's worth pulling everything except the trochus out, but I'd feel bad killing all the little snails...

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Replacement fan for my NanoBox was delivered a day early! Gonna do some soldering tonight :D

 

Yes, I think one of my biggest mistakes in starting up this tank was ignoring harry's advice and getting a giant CUC. I probably do have tiny dead snails in my sandbed somewhere. I'm wondering if it's worth pulling everything except the trochus out, but I'd feel bad killing all the little snails...

I think as you add more stuff those CUC members will come in handy, your corals aren't SPS so i think they could survive the high nitrates for a few days as you work to get it down. If you want to remove some snails (I wouldn't get rid of all of them,maybe half) you can probably give them to a LFS and wont have to kill any of them, just let them know you've got too many.

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I think as you add more stuff those CUC members will come in handy, your corals aren't SPS so i think they could survive the high nitrates for a few days as you work to get it down. If you want to remove some snails (I wouldn't get rid of all of them,maybe half) you can probably give them to a LFS and wont have to kill any of them, just let them know you've got too many.

 

I am a little worried about my corals, especially my zoas -- they're sort of inverted? They're not closed up and retracted, instead the centers have bulged outwards and they've gotten narrower.

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I am a little worried about my corals, especially my zoas -- they're sort of inverted? They're not closed up and retracted, instead the centers have bulged outwards and they've gotten narrower.

Might want to consider a 50% or better water change then, like I said doing a huge one would worry me but my nitrates never got as high as yours are. Just make sure you match temp, salinity, and PH as closely as possible to avoid further stressing everything if you choose to do it.

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The replacement fan for my nanobox arrived last night! After a quick bit of dis-assembly, de-soldering, and re-soldering...

 

27042747791_b4f1fbadc2_k.jpg

 

And it works!

 

27042747711_d4237e3e1d_k.jpg

 

26507177843_4184002c4a_k.jpg

 

I currently have it set at 125 for each channel at full daylight, which is from 8am to 7pm. 60 min ramp on each end for dawn and dusk.

 

My corals are looking a little happier, I'm gonna just keep doing water changes until my nitrates are acceptable again. I think I'm headed in the right direction.

 

New FTS tonight, hopefully!

 

 

 

PS one of my shrimp molted and it scared the hell out of me :rolleyes:

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yeah, I bought it mostly as an experiment -- I'll probably just end up using a float switch :P

 

I am also making an ATO. I tried the ultrasonic sensor with arduino and it wont give me reliable readings. So I have bought this one:

https://www.verical.com/pd/honeywell-level-sensor-lle102000-31469

Honeywell LLE 101000. It has 4-5 different mounting types. It is similar to Smart ATO's sensor. No moving parts, all optical.

I will post a build thread once I get something concrete on it.

I picked the cheapest one available on Verical website. There are some around 40 bucks which have a pyramid tip instead of a spherical.

 

 

PS: Ofcourse don't even look at IR sensors because the water will absorb IR and you wont get a reliable reflection.

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I am also making an ATO. I tried the ultrasonic sensor with arduino and it wont give me reliable readings. So I have bought this one:

https://www.verical.com/pd/honeywell-level-sensor-lle102000-31469

Honeywell LLE 101000. It has 4-5 different mounting types. It is similar to Smart ATO's sensor. No moving parts, all optical.

I will post a build thread once I get something concrete on it.

I picked the cheapest one available on Verical website. There are some around 40 bucks which have a pyramid tip instead of a spherical.

 

 

PS: Ofcourse don't even look at IR sensors because the water will absorb IR and you wont get a reliable reflection.

 

Very interesting! I was looking for a similar optical level sensor, but I never stumbled across that one! How do you plan on interfacing with it?

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Very interesting! I was looking for a similar optical level sensor, but I never stumbled across that one! How do you plan on interfacing with it?

 

It's TTL output. So I can directly hook it up to one of he GPIO pins. fingerscrossed

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So, rasberry pi? Cool! Let me know how it goes, I'll put this on my list of upgrades!

 

My current project is using one of these https://www.adafruit.com/products/1334to read titrations for me.

 

Arduino Mega for now. Later I will use the Pi to control the Arduino over the web probably. Or even get rid of the Arduino completely. Are you using the Pi for all sensors?

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Arduino Mega for now. Later I will use the Pi to control the Arduino over the web probably. Or even get rid of the Arduino completely. Are you using the Pi for all sensors?

 

Theoretically yes, but I don't actually have any sensors hooked up at the moment. Just got this ADC in https://www.adafruit.com/products/856so I should have temp up and running soon at the very least.

 

It's pretty inconvenient running wires all the way over to my pi, so I think I might end up going with the Arduino+Pi solution, and just leave the Arduino near the tank. I think a Mega might be overkill for me, though.

 

 

*EDIT*

 

After a bit more research, I think i'm going to use the ESP8226 as a wireless sensor node for my pi, similar to this: http://www.penninkhof.com/2015/05/linking-the-esp8266-a-raspberry-pi-through-mqtt/

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It's TTL output. So I can directly hook it up to one of he GPIO pins. fingerscrossed

So, I got the sensor. Super easy. Just hooked up to a digital pin on the arduino and read it. Look at the orange LED on the arduino. I am testing this with a glass of saltwater from my tank.

https://youtu.be/q5dgS-VSpLo

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