Lognor's Biocube 29 Journal

[Lognor]

2 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

Have you checked your equipment for rusting or stray voltage?

Good suggestion.  The only equipment I have in the tank is the pump, two power heads and the heater.  I'll give everything a good once over.

[Ratvan]

1 minute ago, Lognor said:

Good suggestion.  The only equipment I have in the tank is the pump, two power heads and the heater.  I'll give everything a good once over.

Check magnet on algae scraper as well, one has gone on me before 

[Lognor]

1 minute ago, Ratvan said:

Check magnet on algae scraper as well, one has gone on me before 

Oh, that's a good one.  Forgot about that.  I might just toss that one.  Is there a test for metals other than copper I should check for?

[Lognor]

16 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

Check magnet on algae scraper as well, one has gone on me before 

Well, I think I may have it.  The corner of the inside scraper has an orange/brown color on the pad and crusted on the plastic.  I pulled the pad off and that corner has a really strong metallic smell coming from it,. more than the rest of it.  Looks like this may be it.  Is there something I need to do to test/treat the water for trace metal?

 

[Ratvan]

I think that @Snow_Phoenixhad a similar rusting issue lately, and undertook a series of Water Changes until things looked better

[Snow_Phoenix]

21 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

I think that @Snow_Phoenixhad a similar rusting issue lately, and undertook a series of Water Changes until things looked better

That, and a lot of extra carbon.

[Lognor]

Gonna do a bunch of water changes and ordered cuprisorb from Amazon.  Hopefully that will turn things around.

[Lognor]

The last few months have been really difficult and challenging, at times pushing me to the brink of throwing in the towel.  Luckily I love my little aquatic family way to much to even try to give them away to new homes.  I just really love having a reef tank.

 

Back in November I had an issue with the magnet in the glass cleaner rusting.  I was able to get clean the system and stabilize my parameters, but getting there was not smooth and resulted in some damage.  The metal in the water column and my work to fix it which whacked my alkalinity in the process resulted in the loss of 3/4 of my zoa's, both of my torches, and a diamond goby.  Torches are my favorite corals, and it was just heartbreaking to watch them slowly whither away.  I had just gotten one of them and both were growing out really well before this.  I also have one of my acans going into a slow decline.  The other 3 have been the same, just this one.  The interesting thing about it all is that the green zoas are the one's that all died off and now the acan that is declining is green. I'm sure there's a biological explanation for it.   It's too much of a coincidence. 

 

Parameters have been stable for weeks.  Still trying to get phosphates below .1, and nitrates are a little higher than I think they should be at 25.  Not alarming, I just feel more comfortable in the 10-20 range.  I'm running filter floss, Phosphate remover pad and chemipure elite.  Not sure what is the source of the high phosphates.  I don't feed a ton, making my own TDS 0 water with RSP salt.

Alkalinity is my main focus now.  I'm manually dosing at night.  Testing almost daily and it's around 7 pretty consistently.  I'm working to get it over 8, but I can never get it there for fear of bumping it up to much too quickly.  I'm considering switching to twice a day until I can get some sort of autodosing in place. 

 

I upgraded my two Hydor PH's to a single Jaebo OW-10.  I was really surprised at the power of the little Jaebo.  Even on it's lowest setting it is really moving water.  I had initially planned on using 2 Jaebo's, but ended up returning the second one.  I'm still trying to figure out the best way to handle some dead spots.

 

Current tank shot included.  Apologies for the bad quality.  Was playing with a filter app, and didn't realize how bad the quality is until I went to write this update, but wanted to put something up.

 

New additions include: A gold hammer, various zoa's (dragon eye's, rastas, and two others I can't recall).  I also added a rock ledge in the back and put a couple of zoa frags back there that have been growing well to get some more scape in the tank, and also setup a system to let them grow over and off a plug, then remove the plug, replace with an empty one and repeat.  Trying to get a little fragging money out of this thing eventually, or at least store credits.  😄

 

Thanks for reading through my long post!

[Lognor]

Completely forgot to mention another fun issue: Lights are acting up again.  The Cyan lights went out around Christmas time.  I really like the Nanobox lights and Dave has been great to work with, but my luck has been for shit.  This is the 3rd issue I've had with them since I first installed them in Nov 2018.  Been waiting for replacements for a month.  Luckily the only time I really notice the difference is during the day.  Morning and night aren't as obvious.

[Lognor]