Dave's 20g glass box 🎉 Water Box 20 IS STILL GOING.......

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

6 hours ago, Ratvan said:

Ewwww reef talk in daves thread. 

 

How's the Gecko hunt? 

Not good 😞 I hoping in the next couple weeks he's going to get some in. I have the automatic mister and last equipment by is a uva uvb bulb and fixture. I'm gonna stop in this weekend and see if he got any yet. It is winter so if the weather is bad his supplier might not ship animals... Could be the hold up 🤷‍♂️

[Matteo]

1 hour ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

Not good 😞 I hoping in the next couple weeks he's going to get some in. I have the automatic mister and last equipment by is a uva uvb bulb and fixture. I'm gonna stop in this weekend and see if he got any yet. It is winter so if the weather is bad his supplier might not ship animals... Could be the hold up 🤷‍♂️

Day gecko? 

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

6 hours ago, Matteo said:

Day gecko? 

I'm gonna grab a gold dust day gecko. They are smaller so I can have a few in my exo terra. I have the 18x18x24 so it'll be plenty big for a male and a female. I have the monsoon solo that i'm gonna hook up this weekend.

[mcarroll]

2 hours ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

I'm gonna grab a gold dust day gecko. They are smaller so I can have a few in my exo terra. I have the 18x18x24 so it'll be plenty big for a male and a female. I have the monsoon solo that i'm gonna hook up this weekend.

Does anyone let Geckos run around the house loose for (e.g.) bug control?

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

1 minute ago, mcarroll said:

Does anyone let Geckos run around the house loose for (e.g.) bug control?

I have two cats and a dog.. they already wanna "play" with my kingsnake

 

I know people that live I florida have nice outdoor enclosures for their lizards. I've see some cool ones.

 

Edit: they are actually really fast little things so if they escape you probably will have a lizard running up and down the walls

[Ratvan]

15 minutes ago, mcarroll said:

Does anyone let Geckos run around the house loose for (e.g.) bug control?

I have two cats and a chicken that do that for me

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

7 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

I have two cats and a chicken that do that for me

Our youngest cat is a crazy hunter. You should have seen him chasing the crickets that came out of the container he knocked down and the top came off. I had 20 crickets loose in the house . It was like a treasure hunt for them all.... it was pretty funny to watch just sucky having to hear crickets that they didn't eat all night.

[Ratvan]

3 minutes ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

Our youngest cat is a crazy hunter. You should have seen him chasing the crickets that came out of the container he knocked down and the top came off. I had 20 crickets loose in the house . It was like a treasure hunt for them all.... it was pretty funny to watch just sucky having to hear crickets that they didn't eat all night.

Yeah my cats are both great hunters, Tikka however is a Ninja thief. A black flash of feathers and no bug and one pissed off kitty lol

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

6 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

Yeah my cats are both great hunters, Tikka however is a Ninja thief. A black flash of feathers and no bug and one pissed off kitty lol

We call merlin the white ninja... he's so ####ing sneaking its scary. He takes my dogs bones and chews on them... actually steals it goes under the kitchen table so the dog cant get to him and chews on her bones

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

I've been looking for a lighting option for the soon to be gecko tank and I found one. I wanted something sleek instead of having the stupid dome lights all over the top and stumbled across this thing...….

This thing is great! I may actually get one for the snake too..

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

So I got around to testing tonight and boy do I have some questions. 

 

So starters, I had to go by a nitrate kit cause the one I had expired.

Results of testing....

alk 8.6

ca 430

salinity 1.026

phosphate 0?????? tested twice

nitrate 40ish???? also tested twice

 

So my takeaway from this is well, I done ####ed up somehow. I new something was a miss from how the corals have been the last couple weeks. Now I know. I would say the concern right now is why phosphate is zero(salifert kit). Today was week 8 of vibrant. I'm 95 percent clear of the green hair algae. It worked great. It was a lot of work getting this tank to where it is. I am also going to stop the twice a week dose of it as I have cleaned up the tank significantly.

 

I feed everyday, so not sure why the phosphate is low? I still do my water change every week and I'm sure i know why the nitrates are so high, I 've taken out all the algae that was using it. I am gonna do a couple back to back water changes and get nitrates lower while also feeding the tank twice? a day? What am I looking at happening with such an imbalance between N & P? Should i be super concerned? I've never experienced such an imbalance before...

 

Thanks for reading my long post again.. I start typing and it just flows out sometimes.😄

[StinkyBunny]

On 1/16/2020 at 3:20 PM, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

I've been looking for a lighting option for the soon to be gecko tank and I found one. I wanted something sleek instead of having the stupid dome lights all over the top and stumbled across this thing...….

This thing is great! I may actually get one for the snake too..

Look at the watts used and the replacement bulb costs on that thing.

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

1 minute ago, StinkyBunny said:

Look at the watts used and the replacement bulb costs on that thing.

I did it's ####ing expensive for the bulbs 😂. I have to check the watts on that bad boy. Gotta give the soon to be new animal all that he needs though. It's like having t5 lights for the reef. I'll have to replace the bulbs every 6 months 😑

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

3 minutes ago, StinkyBunny said:

Look at the watts used and the replacement bulb costs on that thing.

What are your thoughts on the phosphate and nitrate issue i'm having? Cause for concern or just slowly fix it?

[StinkyBunny]

8 minutes ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

What are your thoughts on the phosphate and nitrate issue i'm having? Cause for concern or just slowly fix it?

In a tank that small, small water changes are what I'd do. 2-3g every day until it drops.

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

3 minutes ago, StinkyBunny said:

In a tank that small, small water changes are what I'd do. 2-3g every day until it drops.

Oh thanks man, that's way different than what I was gonna do 👍

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

Well, shit... looks like i'm loosing one sps. Got home last night and one purple stylo is stn'ing. I think I injured it when I broke it off the rock. I have to get some fragging tools so this doesn't happen again.

I ran the works last night.

1.026

alk 8.8

ca 430

mg 1500

phosphate 0

nitrate 20

 

I only have a couple spots of gha so the tank looks good. Corals are a tad pissed. They are all open just not fully open. I've done two water changes since Friday and i'm doing another one tonight.

[A.m.P]

Is be careful with undetectable phosphates, you may want to consider dosing, 0 P04 is an invitation for Dino's in small systems. You need P04 for photosynthesis as well, so sometimes corals can suffer if there's nothing free in the water column.

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

3 minutes ago, Amphrites said:

Is be careful with undetectable phosphates, you may want to consider dosing, 0 P04 is an invitation for Dino's in small systems. You need P04 for photosynthesis as well, so sometimes corals can suffer if there's nothing free in the water column.

I'm super concerned about it actually. I think that's why the corals are closed up some. I just don't wanna over do it and have an algae outbreak.

I'm trying to do everything slow. I've upped the feeding slightly, but I feed lrs food which I guess I a lot cleaner of a food.

 

edit: I'm guessing it's been low for a bit. That's what I've been thinking has been going on the last couple weeks.

[Ratvan]

2 minutes ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

I'm super concerned about it actually. I think that's why the corals are closed up some. I just don't wanna over do it and have an algae outbreak.

Algae is easier to get rid of...

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

1 minute ago, Ratvan said:

Algae is easier to get rid of...

lol yeah.. I just got rid of it too

[A.m.P]

1 minute ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

lol yeah.. I just got rid of it too

If you get a bad algae outbreak it might just be because you need a bigger cleanup crew, more trochus and astrea lol. Oddly enough all of my hair algae and other pests got outcompeted by film algae's and the like once my levels hit 0.1+

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

4 minutes ago, Amphrites said:

If you get a bad algae outbreak it might just be because you need a bigger cleanup crew, more trochus and astrea lol. Oddly enough all of my hair algae and other pests got outcompeted by film algae's and the like once my levels hit 0.1+

I still get plenty of film algae so I have to have *some* p04. It's just odd that my p04 dropped out like it did.

 

I'm going to start out feeding slightly more than normal and see if I can get p04 to read slightly. I thought when I had all the algae I had no p04 because of the algae using it up. Well, now I have hardly any algae so I figured it'd show up slightly. Kind of a head scratcher.

[A.m.P]

I think you might be too cautious over a number which doesn't really matter so long as it isn't 0.

https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/tank-parameters-of-some-masters.263/

[mitten_reef]

just stop measuring, then you won't have to think about it 🤣