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Did a water change tonight.  Only spilt 2-3 gallons all over the stand and the hardwood floors. 

 

One thing I thought was cool while I was basting out the rear chamber,  Inside the silencer cup there had to have been 100+ copepods just hanging out in the little 3" circle.  Enough that I thought it was an oil slick on top of the water.  

 

In tank news, my salinity is a little low for my liking.  Just about at 1.024.  I change water at 5 gallons per week for the time being.  Today's water was mixed at 1.027.  I'll take a few readings later on to see what it is currently at for the week.  

Also lost a lime green ricordea florida today.  While Turkey basting the rocks it just floated up in the water and got swept away under a rock.  I'm hoping it just grows somewhere random and doesnt get lost forever. 

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I had store credit so made another stop at the lfs.  Picked up an emerald crab and 2 branches of frogspawn.  Wierd frag... 2 main heads and dozens of baby heads popping up along two long branches.  I physically saw the colony it came from and it looks more like a torch or hammer than a frogspawn, but it is indeed 100% from a frogspawn colony. 

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I am officially giving up on caulastraea coral.  

 

Somewhere around 10 frags have either never grown another head and died months later, or melted immediately.  

 

One of the first new corals I got for this tank was a decently large colony of red candycanes with green mouths.  Okay.... mouths turned red also.  Whatever... it was alive and even growing more flesh, puffy, eating, and overall doing extremely well.  

 

WOULDNT YOU ####ING KNOW IT..... candy cane colony after looking amazing is now falling apart out of nowhere. Euphyllia are looking great.  The montis are looking good (a little light on color, but are growing and have great PE)

Acro is looking good.  

Bubble tip is doubled in size.  

I cant keep this ####ing beginner coral to save my life, and it is so infuriating

 

 

I'm going to frag out one or two heads out of the 30+ and see if they survive. The rest is trash.  I'm going to buy a STUPIDLY expensive acropora to replace the candycane, because I have more of a chance for it to survive than another one.  

 

 

Also, the chalice is acting extremely wierd.  1 day the color looks good, the next it is real pale.  Then real good again.  #### lps.  

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Nutrient tests done.

According to red sea, no3 is at a whopping 0.

According to hannah, I'm at 8 ppb in phosphorus, which come out to .024 ppm phosphate.  

 

I thought with 8 fish I was feeding pretty heavy, and algae was showing it.  I'm guessing I should just continue feeding how I have been and beefing up the cuc?

Testing is new to me.  Lol.

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1 minute ago, vlangel said:

I hate testing too and try to avoid it as much as possible!

Lol. The guy at the store was understandably talking as if I didn't know anything about the hobby because I was asking pretty simple answers on testing. Just to save him time I finished a few of his sentences when he started talking about coral and told him i have a few years in the hobby, i just haven't tested anything in 7 or 8 of them.  His face looked something along the lines of "wtf".

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1 hour ago, patback said:

Alkalinity is at 7.1 and calcium at 490

Seems like a wide spread.. not that either numbers are bad but since your alk is on the low side and your ca on the high side just seems odd. What salt are you using?

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38 minutes ago, Weikel said:

Seems like a wide spread.. not that either numbers are bad but since your alk is on the low side and your ca on the high side just seems odd. What salt are you using?

Yeah that's what I was thinking. Neither are terrible but are on opposite sides of where they should be.  I'm using reef Crystal's. 

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1 hour ago, patback said:

Yeah that's what I was thinking. Neither are terrible but are on opposite sides of where they should be.  I'm using reef Crystal's. 

Yea find that hard to believe. What I would do is do a few test back to back to get used to the new tests then have the lfs test it and see if the results are consistent 

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9 minutes ago, Weikel said:

Yea find that hard to believe. What I would do is do a few test back to back to get used to the new tests then have the lfs test it and see if the results are consistent 

I'm gonna test again tomorrow and I also want to get the magnesium  and see where that's at.  

Either way, it's about time for a water change.  

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6 minutes ago, patback said:

I'm gonna test again tomorrow and I also want to get the magnesium  and see where that's at.  

Either way, it's about time for a water change.  

Yea I would test the mag too bc from what I read if that's whacked out then the alk and ca balance gets off. And I have used reef crystals for a year they have low mg levels ..

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7 minutes ago, Weikel said:

Yea I would test the mag too bc from what I read if that's whacked out then the alk and ca balance gets off. And I have used reef crystals for a year they have low mg levels ..

 

7 minutes ago, Weikel said:

Yea I would test the mag too bc from what I read if that's whacked out then the alk and ca balance gets off. And I have used reef crystals for a year they have low mg levels ..

I was thinking when I started this tank of maybe switching salt brands too. Im Curious if when i mix up freshwater if everything is balanced or not. 

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20 hours ago, Weikel said:

Yea find that hard to believe. What I would do is do a few test back to back to get used to the new tests then have the lfs test it and see if the results are consistent 

7.0 all.  430 calcium tonight.  Looks like I'm doing another reading, because one of those calcium tests had to have been incorrect.  

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49 minutes ago, patback said:

7.0 all.  430 calcium tonight.  Looks like I'm doing another reading, because one of those calcium tests had to have been incorrect.  

So I have never used these hanna meters but I use some of their more expensive stuff at work to check water samples. One thing we check is turbidity and I know the glass vile has to be spotless to get an accurate reading. As in we wear rubber gloves and clean the outside of the vile with rubbing alcohol before we put it in the instrument.. i dont know how these ca ones work but I would make sure the vile is pretty clean on the outside..(now you know why I hate the electronic testers lol)

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Hahaha, I think what may have happened is last night I didn't really clean it.  Just "carefully handled".  I also let it sit for 15 seconds for the air bubbles to settle after shaking.  Today, when I let it sit for 30 seconds I held it to the light and still had a shit ton of bubbles slowly rising.  

 

The tests from today were both wiped down after touching (did not go as crazy as to use an actual cleaner or alcohol) and I also made sure to wait for all micro bubbles to dissapear, as opposed to yesterday's fingerprints and not checking for the bubbles to actually be gone. 

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I still have not got a magnesium test in yet.  2 water changes this week got my alkalinity back up to 7.5, which is better than the 6.9 I dropped to.  Calcium is at 475.  

Nitrates are still registering at 0 and two phosphorus tests showed me 0ppb and 3 ppb, which equals out to about .006 phosphate. 

The tester acropora I have is now going from boulder shaped to boulder shaped with little growth tips.  

Candycane is still looking good one day and losing heads the next.  Montis still have great polyp extension but losing color.  Everything else is doing decent.  

I'm thinking I'm gonna have to test every day and figure a dosing schedule after that.  Also feeding a lot more. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Just an update.

 

No fts yet.  Acro is starting its first foray into branch nubs rather than just being a boulder.  

The chalice is still mostly bleached but alive and the montis while still sort of bleached are growing and encrusting.  

Everything else is pretty much status quo.  The rocks are starting to show up with more and more purple and red coraline dots and a very orange tunicate seems to be growing under one of the euphyllia.  

Pretty sure I saw the biggest clown rubbing on the acans but it's hard to say.  Anytime I walk near the tank, 5 of the 7 fish including all 3 clowns dart to the top of the water to be fed.  

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Ended up doing 2-5 gallon water changes this weekend and just spent time cleaning lots of stuff overall.  Still have some more algae on rocks, back glass and power heads I want to hit with a razor blade and toothbrush.  

Other than that, not much is going on here.  

Will try to post a fts and some other pics tomorrow. 

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10 minutes ago, patback said:

New stylo and baby plate added today.  Had to get a new baster and figured why not check out the frag racks while I was at it.  

 

20181111_183419.jpg

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Baby plates are so cute.  😄

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5 minutes ago, WV Reefer said:

Baby plates are so cute.  😄

I had to have it  lol.

I tried finding out if they got it in like this or if they have a skeleton producing babies, but he said they bought out a whole table of frags at RAP and this was just one of them. 😞

I was hoping to get a bunch more and just scatter them all around. 

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