15G Nano - starting vinegar dosing

[gogeta]

58 minutes ago, MockandRoll said:

Tank looks good for being so young. Are you manual or auto dosing? Is the sponge photosynthetic? If not they can go bad quickly and crash a tank.

Thanks. Manual dosing. I've removed the sponge only because I want to get mostly acros and acans to get them ready for my bigger tank that's on coming soonish to not so soonish haha. Otherwise I've had sponges before and they were fine. I have heard all the stories though

[gogeta]

So I haven't really done much with the tank this week. . . Dosed my alk and feed the fish forgot to dose aminos and reef roids a few times. Thought I'd post my parameters after the first full week of not checking them more than every few days

 

alk - 9.5

nitrates - <2

phosphates - undetectable (salifert)

salinity - 36ppt

 

didnt bother with mag and calcium, figured their alright.

 

gave the fish and the shrimp half a cube of frozen food (double what they normally get) I forgot to feed them yesterday. And dosed both reef roids and amminos as water change tomorrow so it shouldn't make too much of a difference to parameters.

Under a large percentage of blues as its night time.

 

[gogeta]

So had a 6 hour power outage today. Had a battery powered air pump. And that should have kept everything alive temperature got a little questionable but wasn't too bad so should be fine. Just gonna let everything settle back down and do water change tomorrow. Not stir it up more today. 

[gogeta]

Surprisingly again the lps in my tank are the most fragile. Have one lps struggling since the power outage. Sps straight back to full polyp extension and as if no drama what so ever. 

[gogeta]

Maintenance

- stirred sand up a bit to remove and detritus and blew any build up

on rocks off with turkey baster

- 15% water change

- gave wave maker a run in vinegar and hot water

- scraped other algae build up in refugium off the walls

- replaced activated carbon

 

Water chemistry

alk - 10

nitrate - 2

phosphate - <0.03

calcium - 450

magnesium - 1550 (this is staying high and bothering me as I'm not dosing for it and no idea what would increase mag)

salinity - 35ppt

 

Update

- tomorrow will be going to look at some more designer acro frags hopefully come home with a couple.

- moved the rock the zoa's are on closer to the structure.

 

Considerstions 

it's getting warmer here, had a couple 32/33degree days here mid week (roughly 89-92F) which is getting hot earlier in the year than expected. I have a spare hailea 1/4hp chiller sitting around. Will be over kill for a little nano but will definitely do the job. Other options are fans? I've never used them as always having big tanks and big or multiple chillers. My aircon is on most of the time but it's a big ducted system and if I'm not home, I'm not gonna leave it on just for the tank. However hooking up this chiller to the tank will be a pain. May even have to increase return pump see how it goes moving the water back and forth. 

[Lula_Mae]

3 minutes ago, gogeta said:

Maintenance

- stirred sand up a bit to remove and detritus and blew any build up

on rocks off with turkey baster

- 15% water change

- gave wave maker a run in vinegar and hot water

- scraped other algae build up in refugium off the walls

- replaced activated carbon

 

Water chemistry

alk - 10

nitrate - 2

phosphate - <0.03

calcium - 450

magnesium - 1550 (this is staying high and bothering me as I'm not dosing for it and no idea what would increase mag)

salinity - 35ppt

 

Update

- tomorrow will be going to look at some more designer acro frags hopefully come home with a couple.

- moved the rock the zoa's are on closer to the structure.

 

Considerstions 

it's getting warmer here, had a couple 32/33degree days here mid week (roughly 89-92F) which is getting hot earlier in the year than expected. I have a spare hailea 1/4hp chiller sitting around. Will be over kill for a little nano but will definitely do the job. Other options are fans? I've never used them as always having big tanks and big or multiple chillers. My aircon is on most of the time but it's a big ducted system and if I'm not home, I'm not gonna leave it on just for the tank. However hooking up this chiller to the tank will be a pain. May even have to increase return pump see how it goes moving the water back and forth. 

Maybe try Just the fans first? And if they don't keep temps within range, then figure out hooking up the chiller.

[gogeta]

44 minutes ago, Lula_Mae said:

Maybe try Just the fans first? And if they don't keep temps within range, then figure out hooking up the chiller.

I was going to give the fans ago but figured if I don't need to upgrade the return pump I have everything on hand to connect the chiller.

 

 I will give the return pump a run with a bucket of water with the chiller and same head height tomorrow and see how it handles it. Otherwise fans before upgrade pump lol.

 

Also walked past the tank with the more blue lights at night. I have never been a fan of over blue lighting but the short time at night it is going I am liking.

 

[gogeta]

So I have a new favorite lfs. . . This place is a little further for me about 45minutr drive. But I always keep hearing great things. So went out there with the intention of looking and only grabbing 1 or 2 small frags. When I say a few larger colonies I really liked I asked if they had any frags or smaller colonies of these corals. To which I was told if you want it I'll frag a peice of for you. Just say how big of a peice. I was amazed no lfs has offered to frag up large colonies just so I could have a 1inch frag. I came home with about 8 1inch frags of acros all for $5-10 each. And one more designer 2inch frag that said $60 but was given to me for $40. Oh and I got a new strombus snail aswell. All up $90 and a bunch of frags and a snail super happy!

 

This was the expensive one.

 

[gogeta]

This one am also quiet fond of aswell, was one of the pieces I asked to be fragged for me.

 

[gogeta]

I swear all the lfs are trying to be out of this world good right now. Went to the closest lfs this morning wanting to buy a flame angel. He told me to come back in a week as he got 4 in at the same time and 2 have oddly died very quickly without warning. If they still look healthy in a week he will be more confident to sell it to me.

[gogeta]

Maintenance

-20% water change

- suck up detritus

- have started to see a little cyano again mainly in refugium so I took out cheato and rinsed and removed all visible cyano.

- Uv was off all week, must have forgot to turn back on after last time turning pump off, so turned back on

- cleaned return pump in vinegar water

- cleaned skimmer in vinegar water

- cleaned uv in vinegar water

 

Water chemistry

Couldn't be bothered today so will test tomorrow.

 

 

[gogeta]

[gogeta]

Some of the new frags and older corals doing well!

 

[TheBig053]

Looking good! Is that clown "hosting" in your duncan colony?

[gogeta]

53 minutes ago, TheBig053 said:

Looking good! Is that clown "hosting" in your duncan colony?

 Yup only one does though but he's super possessive of it haha

[gogeta]

After seeing someone else bought a clam recently I thought I'd throw out some clam love

 

 

[Lula_Mae]

4 hours ago, gogeta said:

After seeing someone else bought a clam recently I thought I'd throw out some clam love

 

 

That's gorgeous!  LiveAquaria recently had one that was gold in the middle and blue on the outside edges...gorgeous!  I have wanted a clam for years...someday!

[gogeta]

28 minutes ago, Lula_Mae said:

That's gorgeous!  LiveAquaria recently had one that was gold in the middle and blue on the outside edges...gorgeous!  I have wanted a clam for years...someday!

There are some amazing clams out there! Unfortunately here we don't have the same selection as other countries. But I am happy with Michelle (clam pun my-shell) 

[gogeta]

Not a whole lot to report

 

maintenance

- 15% water change

- remove any detritus

- have a little cyano back but only one refugium cleaned it out

- changed carbon

[Lula_Mae]

On 8/31/2017 at 11:23 AM, gogeta said:

There are some amazing clams out there! Unfortunately here we don't have the same selection as other countries. But I am happy with Michelle (clam pun my-shell) 

Are you in Canada?  Everything I read is about how challenging it can be to get good stuff there.

[gogeta]

52 minutes ago, Lula_Mae said:

Are you in Canada?  Everything I read is about how challenging it can be to get good stuff there.

Australia! Normally we have some of the best selection, but we are also very strict on what can be harvested and what can be brought in. I'm on the east coast and we have some amazing clams for most of which are protected so no harvesting.

 

also this may have just happened

 

[Lula_Mae]

6 minutes ago, gogeta said:

Australia! Normally we have some of the best selection, but we are also very strict on what can be harvested and what can be brought in. I'm on the east coast and we have some amazing clams for most of which are protected so no harvesting.

 

also this may have just happened

 

Oh nice! I was just reading on another thread from Australia and they're trying to figure out a fish for their little tank with what's available.

[gogeta]

Just for the sake of it my monitoring over the past few months of parameters.

 

Also I've always kept my alkalinity at 9-10 recently a knowledgeable reefer had suggested I try lower alk around 8 and see how it goes. His explaination was that alk, nitrates and phosphates all go together, if you have higher N&P than higher alk will work better. If you have lower N&P than lower alk will work better. So I'm gonna allow it to lower slowly and alter my dosing and see how it all goes. 

[gogeta]

Update

these a getting a little more spaced out as the tank gets older funny that!

- lost the starfish not sure why parameters where all in check when I noticed. Could maybe have been the introduction of the flame angel?

- flame angel was hiding from the clowns when he initially went in. Now he's out in full force.

- have been slowly trying to lower my alk to sit constantly around 8.

- have noticed some of the acros have really come into their own colour wise! One which I bought as a brown purple looking thing that I assumed purple was its natural colour has really flourished and coloured into something awesome with green and purple exhibit A

 

 

And the colony it came from maybe 4 weeks prior before I fragged it so something's are going well!

 

 

 

 

[gogeta]

Maintenance

- because of starfish death I decided to do a 25% water change, also I think I may have gone 2 weeks this time instead of every week

- performed maintenance and cleaning on wave maker and skimmer

- using the vacuum removed the starfish body