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Coral Vue Hydros

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Hope it improves quicky, definitely sounds like the urchin or an unnoticed scrape on your liverock, infections from urchins were common on the island -especially among tourists.

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DISQUALIFIED-QQ
18 minutes ago, Amphrites said:

Hope it improves quicky, definitely sounds like the urchin or an unnoticed scrape on your liverock, infections from urchins were common on the island -especially among tourists.

Exposure suits are a must if anyone is going underwater. I'm a thiccboi with my 7mm suit but that's because I've done all my scuba dives in the crisp California waters. Crisp is taking the temperatures lightly haha.

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DISQUALIFIED-QQ

June 20:

 

Temperature 85F

Nitrate 0ppm

Phosphate 0ppm

Salinity 1.025sg

Alkalinity 7 dKh

Calcium 450ppm

Magnesium 1230ppm

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DISQUALIFIED-QQ

This is more of a me update rather than the tank itself.

 

As you may have noticed my journal slowed down a bit as the abscess grew quickly the past week. It got to the point where so much pus was collected that it exerted painful pressure to my entire thumb tip. I went to my primary care doctor to see if it was time to drain it. With pandemic measures, the meeting was digital so I went to another place, an urgent care clinic, to get my thumb addressed. Nearly immediately, my thumb went back to normal. After a couple days the pus pretty much disappeared. However I'm still bandaged and keeping the area cleaned daily just to be fully sure.

 

The tank is doing fine. I purchased another bottle of Fusion 1 and 2. I noticed my bottle of 2 was precipitating out early so I might have to toss out the old solution. Along the rear face there's a lawn of green algae with some red wiry stuff coming out. It's kinda nice to look at. I am bummed it won't really be a thick sheet of coralline right now. Otherwise my goby is certainly gotten bold and is traveling throughout the tank for the next best piece of coral rubble. I mean they all look the same.

 

One of the managers at work got the idea to start up his 29 gallon again. I'm thinking it would be opportunity to hand down my LEDs and get an upgrade. I'm considering getting the stronger IC Pro from Current USA. If said manager is moving to the saltwater route, I'll toss in the Koralias so I can get the eFlux powerheads. (It does imply I'm wanting anemones are the months pass by.)

 

Question for the readers:

Is there a correct light setting for corals defined in what percentage of reds, greens, blues, and whites? I made my light settings in a way where it was mostly white with red and greens to warm up the color temperature. There is some blue but not to the degree as some other tanks will have. Do the photosystems in coral zooxanthellae behave similarly to terrestrial vascular plants where they have strong sensitivities to blue (short) wavelength light and some degree of (red) long wavelength light due to their pigments? Basically, should I get more blues to encourage a little more growth out of my corals?

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Kind of the opposite and it really depends on the animal.

The old consensus was that whites grew and burnt corals, while blues were great for pop. Now people tend to go blue-heavy and adjust whites to visual-preference.

Cool whites grow less algae than warm whites, which grow less than reds - blues grow less of certain types of algae than all of the above.

Near-UV and Violet are useful for coloring-up certain corals, but at-the-end-of-the-day tons of softies and LPS, even many sps, look best/great under 10000k or even daylight.

I have a bunch of charts and long write-ups, lots of journals and research papers tucked away if you want them, but the gist of things is lights of a proper par-value will grow corals (even pure red will grow some).
8 hours is the limit before photo inhibition (starts at 6 hours and peak absorption starts 1 hour after first light -persisting through hour 5) so it's best to keep lights a bit lower in the evening and afternoon (past the 8-9 hour mark) for viewing.

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DISQUALIFIED-QQ
36 minutes ago, Amphrites said:

Kind of the opposite and it really depends on the animal.

The old consensus was that whites grew and burnt corals, while blues were great for pop. Now people tend to go blue-heavy and adjust whites to visual-preference.

Cool whites grow less algae than warm whites, which grow less than reds - blues grow less of certain types of algae than all of the above.

Near-UV and Violet are useful for coloring-up certain corals, but at-the-end-of-the-day tons of softies and LPS, even many sps, look best/great under 10000k or even daylight.

I have a bunch of charts and long write-ups, lots of journals and research papers tucked away if you want them, but the gist of things is lights of a proper par-value will grow corals (even pure red will grow some).
8 hours is the limit before photo inhibition (starts at 6 hours and peak absorption starts 1 hour after first light -persisting through hour 5) so it's best to keep lights a bit lower in the evening and afternoon (past the 8-9 hour mark) for viewing.

I never really was a fan of blue-heavy systems. I guess may be at first glance, but it gets old and I don't like having strong blues hurt my eyes (totally my preference). I prevailing idea for my lighting was to have a color temperature that emulated daylight. I suppose to really find out is to rent a PAR meter from somewhere.

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59 minutes ago, Diamonds x Pearls said:

I never really was a fan of blue-heavy systems. I guess may be at first glance, but it gets old and I don't like having strong blues hurt my eyes (totally my preference). I prevailing idea for my lighting was to have a color temperature that emulated daylight. I suppose to really find out is to rent a PAR meter from somewhere.

I'd not aim for daylight, shoot for 10000-12000k, it's quite a nice balance - 5600k isn't flattering for most animals and is best suited for algae.
Can remove the photo if you prefer, but a visual example can help; this is just about what 12-15000k looks like with a pretty-mild gel-filter on for correction.

WP_20191223_12_11_07_Pro.thumb.jpg.9cc3264738fe8592c4fcb016a6472d85.jpg

 

Rocks are still white, algae is still green, fish look good and corals get a bit more depth to them. 5600k is daylight and most animals will overproduce dino's and turn brown instead of producing more varied pigments which bounce the colors we perceive back at us. 
Metal Halides dominated this hobby for a long time, and about the bluest you'd get was 16000k, most had 10-12000k.
 

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DISQUALIFIED-QQ

Per previous conversation I decided to muck around with the light settings. I think it's the best I can do with an 8K light. I tried to dig up in my head about how light gets absorbed underwater. A lot of it comes from what I learned during my diving certification course. I did read a blurb from University of Hawaii, Manoa. Not sure how spot on this graph is but I found it to be pretty cool.

 

Before

Quote

Full daylight program: Reds 100%, Greens 70%, Blues 30%, Whites 100%

Sunrise/set program: Reds 70%, Greens 35%, Blues 15%, Whites 50%

Nighttime program: 0% all channels

After

At about 2.5-3m deep: (we'll be rolling with these channels)

R: 65

G+avgW: 85

B: 95

 

I'm thinking for a sunrise-sunset parameter, we'll assume half. This is also based on assuming there's a near zero amount of light in nautical conditions (no anthropomorphic light pollution).

 

Temperature 84F

Nitrates 0ppm

Phosphates 0ppm

Salinity 1.026sg

Alkalinity 8-9 dKh

Calcium 450ppm

Magnesium 1290ppm

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DISQUALIFIED-QQ

I ordered a Nyos Nitrate Kit so I can buy my wife her potting soil with free shipping on Amazon. The test kit arrived today so I'll be trying some practice runs with it.+

 

Pocket update: It appears this test kit is pretty sensitive as it was still able to display even the slightest reading. No, it wasn't 1ppm, but holding both vials to the light I was able to discern that the test vial was just off-white...off-clear. Whatever the right word would be. We have a nonzero reading, so from here on out we'll be calling it <0ppm. For what it's worth, it's a nudge above actual 0.

 

The Nyos Phosphate Kit is coming soon, so stay tuned.

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DISQUALIFIED-QQ

Going to be completely honest as I do not feel like doing test twice a week as my new test kits do not have as many uses compared to the API ones, so I won't be barraging you with contextual numbers.

 

June 30:

 

Temperature 84F

Salinity 1.026sg

Nitrate >0ppm

Phosphate 0? ppm

Alkalinity 7 dKh

Calcium *** ppm

Magnesium 1260 ppm

 

No color changed occurred during testing today. Calcium is probably out of range. Not sure what my alkalinity is doing, but I have been noticing that my Reef Fusion 2 has been precipitating out with Fusion 1. I am thinking of spacing out 1 and 2 some more. Lately I've been dosing nearly concurrently, probably several seconds in between. I'm getting lazy. What I did before was dose 1 then brush my teeth then dose 2, since it takes me about 3ish minutes to get my teeth up to snuff.

 

Today I received my Nyos Phosphate kit. I spent a good 10 minutes rationalizing what color my test tube was. Surely enough I don't think I moved the needle if I did at all. When the solution did settle 10 minutes after mixing I felt certain it was off-white meaning there was something in the water, but I suppose staring at something long enough either makes you very sure or very unsure (and possibly question your existence),

 

My largest colony of candy cane coral went from 4 heads to 6 heads. A 7th one is finishing up its pinching off process. While the other two colonies are just expanding their head size. Indeed with their large heads there are actually a pair of mouths in some of them. Just a matter of time that I have more in all 3 colonies.

 

I got my first anemone this week. We finally got a shipment of S. tapetum at my Petco store and one of the three had really nice light blue tentacles mixed in with pink and has a green outer rim. I'm letting it figure out where it wants to be. It doesn't move much, thankfully. I'm planning to get it to a big size so I can split it and give the other half to my coworker.

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mitten_reef
On 6/23/2020 at 9:13 PM, Diamonds x Pearls said:

Per previous conversation I decided to muck around with the light settings. I think it's the best I can do with an 8K light. I tried to dig up in my head about how light gets absorbed underwater. A lot of it comes from what I learned during my diving certification course. I did read a blurb from University of Hawaii, Manoa. Not sure how spot on this graph is but I found it to be pretty cool.

 

Before

After

At about 2.5-3m deep: (we'll be rolling with these channels)

R: 65

G+avgW: 85

B: 95

 

I'm thinking for a sunrise-sunset parameter, we'll assume half. This is also based on assuming there's a near zero amount of light in nautical conditions (no anthropomorphic light pollution).

Based on the graph you provided, very little red and green reach the depth of most corals natural habitat, quite contrary to your settings. 
I realize that I could be speaking out of my ass cuz I have never been diving once in my life, so I have zero first hand experience at depth below snorkeling.  but even for snorkeling, the water ambient color is “blue”, and not the same color as atmospheric daylight. 

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DISQUALIFIED-QQ
1 hour ago, mitten_reef said:

Based on the graph you provided, very little red and green reach the depth of most corals natural habitat, quite contrary to your settings. 
I realize that I could be speaking out of my ass cuz I have never been diving once in my life, so I have zero first hand experience at depth below snorkeling.  but even for snorkeling, the water ambient color is “blue”, and not the same color as atmospheric daylight. 

Sure at 60-90 meters, corals can occur at those depths but even so most (reef building) corals will occur 30 meters or less. There's still a measurable (not a large) amount of red penetration given if it is a completely still and clear day underwater. With that, a lot of soft corals and gorgonian/sea whip/fan/NPS cousins can occur at deeper parts of a seaward reef slope.

 

However that's not the context of this particular setup. Down the road perhaps I'll do a deep reef. But in general reef moats, the section between land and the reef crest, can be really shallow. That depth may change depending on tidal variation throughout the day/month/year...even hour. When people report depths it's generally assumed it is in reference to a mean sea level. Based on (dated 1999) NOAA data, tides can fluctuate by half a meter (a tad more than 18 inches). I'm wandering away from my point. The point is that being 2.5>x>3 meters deep mean sea level may result in comparably not as much light absorption in relation to my counterparts elsewhere. My rationale comes from previous collecting stations of old coral surveys.  (see page 37 of 248 of the PDF file) Fortunately we are given depths and a small clue to reef characteristics where its a fringe, slope, flat, lagoon, etc. I was drawn to protected flats or just really shallow places. Hence Ryukyu Shallows in hopes to get a nice representative summary of anything and everything possible. (even the dubious anemone I got)

 

I've been in "average" clarity water and yeah some of my brighter color gear kind faded early, but I recall diving in 18ft deep aquarium tunnel and red still occurred appreciably. (There was this one time I had to help chase down and net up some vermilion and canary rockfishes because we need to treat a mild bacterial infection...that was hard...burned the calories from my cheeseburger though.)

 

(There has been cases where I nearly got washed out to sea when I was younger and living in California...sneaky tides).

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mitten_reef
11 minutes ago, Diamonds x Pearls said:

Sure at 60-90 meters, corals can occur at those depths but even so most (reef building) corals will occur 30 meters or less. There's still a measurable (not a large) amount of red penetration given if it is a completely still and clear day underwater. With that, a lot of soft corals and gorgonian/sea whip/fan/NPS cousins can occur at deeper parts of a seaward reef slope.

 

However that's not the context of this particular setup. Down the road perhaps I'll do a deep reef. But in general reef moats, the section between land and the reef crest, can be really shallow. That depth may change depending on tidal variation throughout the day/month/year...even hour. When people report depths it's generally assumed it is in reference to a mean sea level. Based on (dated 1999) NOAA data, tides can fluctuate by half a meter (a tad more than 18 inches). I'm wandering away from my point. The point is that being 2.5>x>3 meters deep mean sea level may result in comparably not as much light absorption in relation to my counterparts elsewhere. My rationale comes from previous collecting stations of old coral surveys.  (see page 37 of 248 of the PDF file) Fortunately we are given depths and a small clue to reef characteristics where its a fringe, slope, flat, lagoon, etc. I was drawn to protected flats or just really shallow places. Hence Ryukyu Shallows in hopes to get a nice representative summary of anything and everything possible. (even the dubious anemone I got)

 

I've been in "average" clarity water and yeah some of my brighter color gear kind faded early, but I recall diving in 18ft deep aquarium tunnel and red still occurred appreciably. (There was this one time I had to help chase down and net up some vermilion and canary rockfishes because we need to treat a mild bacterial infection...that was hard...burned the calories from my cheeseburger though.)

 

(There has been cases where I nearly got washed out to sea when I was younger and living in California...sneaky tides).

Since you like reading: https://reefs.com/magazine/imitating-natural-light-quality-intensity-and-dosage-in-a-reef-aquarium-do-we-really-want-to/


I found this article to be quite interesting for how we light up our tanks. 

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DISQUALIFIED-QQ

Finally noticed the sweepers on these. If you look hard enough at the 1 or 2 o-clock position you'll see tiny wisps.

IMG_20200701_015357.png

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July 8

 

Temperature 84F

Salinity 1.023+

Nitrate <1ppm

Phosphate 0.025ppm

Alkalinity 8 dKh

Calcium 500+ ppm

Magnesium 1260 ppm

 

I decided to give another syringe full of Ca-3 solution from the kit; and it yielded to 1.12mL of solution, so we'll be not dosing Fusion 1 for at least a week and see where that will take us.

 

I'm start to see some brown stringy formations on my substrate. I've been wondering whether it's another algae or a small case of dinoflagellates. It would help if I had a microscope on hand to actually tell if I get a sample. It has not taken over any of my coral colonies as some horror stories may have told, but I have been pretty wary this past week. Considering my photoperiod at full brightness is actually quite long now, I feel like warm water with a lot of light with ultra low nutrients triggered a measurable increase in dinoflagellate population. This past week I've been increasing my fish feeds to twice daily and doubling the amount of pellet food. I don't think the nassarius snails will complain about that. If anything it has been promoting the pistol shrimp to wander out some more during feeding time. Feeding corals have been increased by adding another 0.015cc scoop, from 3 to 4, a 33% increase per week. I am still dosing (dead) phytoplankton and Fuel (first application is mixed with Reef Roids and Coral Gumbo, as the second being just liquids a couple days later). I'm making as many stops to get nutrient levels back up to where they used to be...before I tried the AlgaeBarn Ecopack. (yet having phosphates eluded me)

 

Also a desperate move that I'll probably only do once, I topped off my aquarium with about a quart of de-chlorinated tap water earlier last week. I was risking whatever heavy metals and off elements in the water to give a slight nudge in my water testing. Big risk as I don't what trace chemicals and elements will do to a reef especially when water districts chlorinate their tap water. For subsequent emergency measures, I may get some of those Spectracide tree stump remover pellets from Lowe's (according to its MSDS it's 100% KNO3), a less riskier option than getting a renegade quality water.

 

It appears that the Ecopack has proved itself to be too good of a product. It is likely that I was too ambitious applying products into the aquarium. My suspicions lie in PNSB as I read that it could reduce nitrate concentration via fermentation or assimilation. It is used in wastewater facilities to help clear the inflow of who knows what came through the drain. Would I recommend it? Probably to those that are cautious in adding microbes or systems that are in strong danger of wildly large nutrient levels.

 

 Based on these results we've moved to needle, but I am thinking it'll be a long way to reach 5-10ppm where I used to be. This may be the shitty excuse of needing more animals.

 

Given this situation, it is very likely that I won't be doing a water change in a while. Wish me luck.

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Cannedfish

Feed more. I don’t see how lack of nutrients is a long term problem. You don’t have fussy SPS or any diva acros. Just target feed your LPS reef roids three times a week... or mysis everyday... or both... problem solved. Everyone wins. 

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DISQUALIFIED-QQ

I sold my 6 gallon planted cube to my coworker that had a cousin looking into entering the fishkeeping hobby. While said person just wanted a betta, I tried to push towards a coral cube. That aside my wife was wondering what I'd do next. First thing is first, I gotta dirty up the water. I've been testing nitrates every other day since this week and we're climbing up surely. My NYOS kit is now reporting between 1 and 3ppm. I did a full coral feed with liquids and my plankton cocktail (recipe later) twice this week. I'm making a third feed in 6 days today to push the needle some more.

 

I'm going to try blacking out the tank during my work week (4 days) to see how things develop. It'll be kind of sad to not wake up and have the argumentative clownfish greet me with the hungry swim.

 

Meanwhile, I am planning something. Here's a hint: わかやま

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DISQUALIFIED-QQ

July 15

 

Temperature (blackout so I can't read my thermometer oops)

Salinity 1.024sg

Alkalinity 8 dKh

Calcium 480 ppm

Magnesium 1200ppm

Phosphate 0ppm (I swear)

Nitrate >5 ppm

 

Good sign to see my minerals are coming down to earth. After reading a lot of anecdotes, I'm not sure what to believe about dinoflagellates. The dominant narrative is bottoming out in N and P, which makes sense in my scenario, but there are also species of dinos that appear in higher nutrient loads. Guess I won't truly know until someone gets me a microscope and sees what I really have as I don't have access to it. However I am interested in mailing FishofHex a sample since he's willing to check it out if I pay and mail him. I sometimes wonder if my high calcium had anything to do with it. I hear the word "balance" being thrown around. I don't think having a lot of Reef Fusion 1 leads to a dinoflagellate bloom, but I could be wrong.

 

Otherwise, we have our big reveal tomorrow night. Fingers crossed we will have some positive results.

 

I guess I could also purchase Vibrant

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DISQUALIFIED-QQ

4 day blackout proved very successful. Vibrant came in the mail today too.

 

I decided to make a quick mop up with my siphon and add new water. The new water is a mix of filtered water and RODI with IO reef crystals, 1 quart to 3 gallons. I did this in order to dilute out the trace elements and calcium and quietly dose nutrients. (I promise this will be last of getting stuff from the tap). There were small fragmented white strings from which I assume are dead or dying dinoflagellate aggregates, so that was another reason why I chose to grab my siphon and bucket. I decided to leave the pumps running to bubble up my aquarium. With an old toothbrush I decided to do a quick brushing of the rocks...and it woke up much of the nassarius snails. One of them made quick order to climb around and eat the loosen up food. This was a short microbubble treatment.

 

There was also some marked reduction on my GHA lawn on the back wall. Not that I thought it was a problem, but it did have some brown and red covering over it, so I assume it was something else literally on top of it. Of course, the grazing pressure and lack of lighting certainly contributed as variables. (Not in the mood to measure that)

 

Another observation I had was my filter box started to overflow. It appeared that my mechanical filtration clogged up and the water began to trickle out from where intake tube goes in the Aquaclear unit. The floss was quite brown...so I like to believe we've removed dinos in that fashion as well.

 

Going conservative with Vibrant dosing. I only dosed for 15 gallon so 1.5mL. We'll see how things go. If anything the corals will probably eat the bacteria that ate up whatever leftover organics the dinos left or decayed or just had around. I'm expecting more fat and happy corals as I am having fun feeding my corals three times a week now. Shit gets a little addictive yes?

 

Pajama cardinals are strangely difficult to get this time. I ordered some this month and they won't arrive until two weeks later. It's okay. I might just pick them up at the LFS instead. I ran out of ingredients for my coral cocktail anyway.

 

Nitrate is reading closer to 12ppm on the NYOS card. Phosphate is now at .15ppm. Hope the spaghetti sticks.

 

Edit: not quite al dente as the life inside my aquarium has eaten up my phosphates to near undetectable...

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