🇨🇦🌲The Boreal Forest 🌲🇨🇦

[PJPS]

Consumption is way up.  Slowly raising AFR to compensate.

 

Notes:

 

I lost 5 acros and now my consumption is shooting through the roof (for a ho hum pH).  To me, this reinforces the idea that softies in an SPS tank is unhelpful (to say the least).  So for me, even if your SPS and softies “get along”, you’d likely see better growth and less fragile acros without.  I imagine all these factors play a role, how they would be weighted🤷🏻‍♂️.:

 

size of leather as relates to water volume

toxicity of a particular species of leather

fragility of the acro

overall water volume

proximity of acros to the leather

 

edit: 24h after removal, consumption up 1dkh.  Tank is drinking 2dkh/day currently, pH of 8ish average (low 7.8, peak 8.1).  I assume this will calm down… my AFR dosing is increased 30% since yesterday… slowly going to catch up 🐢

[PJPS]

A healthier snack than the usual YouTube reefing junk food

 

 

There are 18 parts to the.curriculum, enjoy 🍻✊🏻🤔

 

how to fix reef algae correctly, was known in 2015 at least, learn to study what you’re doing, not an influncer 🙈🙉🙊❤️

 

[PJPS]

literally everything looks better, time to start saving for a "splurge" (read pitiful begging, I'm not above that lol) at frag garage in March.  Hat in hand email sent, knowing Adam, he'll be happy to help.  Best SPS in 🇨🇦, hands down.

 

TO BE CLEAR, I *SPEND*... I just ask for what he has too much of, that's 80% of it :).  I'm looking for a bargain, not shaking anyone down.  Anything beyond that is 🇨🇦 bro shit 😂(just kidding)

 

 

E: forgot to adjust mag dosing... dropped 150 in 2 days.. usually when the trident goes wonky (25% left ca or mg reagents) they read high, so low, makes me believe it (irrationally).

 

E2: 🤬 the RR naughty sprial looks rough... probably saveable?  The digi and rainbow have been fine, so I assumed a cap would be fine.  Note to self, when SPS are all shitting the bed, CHECK ON THEM ALL.  Maybe it's the low mag, but that'd be a quick hissy fit for a monti.  It's "fuzz"? is thin, like @ml86743's cyphastrea.

[PJPS]

Staying all blue, but putting the royals back to 100%, had them at 70% for no reason than I consumed some BRS spectrum content.  And only half implemented it, so if I broke anything with light, that’s on me.  It was still all blue, just with the royals dialed back.

 

E: I am not immune from consuming content, and then trying it out. But more often than not, I should’ve just left things alone.   I’m not necessarily a believer in just leave things alone, I think you should react to the behaviour of what is in the tank. I just find that consuming certain content makes me try things I wouldn’t otherwise, I don’t think changing your spectrum is all that harmful if you move from good spectrum to good spectrum and come in under previous intensities when you switch.

[Fish out of Water]

I am slowly adjusting my light currently. I am increasing the output about 2w per color channel every 2 days. It is hardly noticeable day to day, but it has gradually appeared brighter over the course of a week. I had decreased my lights to deal with an algae issue. 

I probably consume too much content. However, once it's in this steel trap of a mind, it is in there for good. 

[PJPS]

42 minutes ago, Fish out of Water said:

I am slowly adjusting my light currently. I am increasing the output about 2w per color channel every 2 days. It is hardly noticeable day to day, but it has gradually appeared brighter over the course of a week. I had decreased my lights to deal with an algae issue. 

I probably consume too much content. However, once it's in this steel trap of a mind, it is in there for good. 

i think 2% every few days is fine.  Just when things look iffy pull back 10-20%, then creep back up.  Acclimation modes that let you set # of days & starting % intensity are perfect for this technique.  Starting intensity 80%, 30 days when I see light “trauma” on certain pieces is literally my go to when ramping up a bit quickish.  Just my $0.02 etc ❤️
 

Who doesn’t consume too much iffy reef content? 😂 I consume all the same trash and it subconsciously gets in my head just like everyone else.  I literally have to reconsume quality ocean science fairly often. Otherwise, my reefing kung fu turns to mush 🍻
 

aWhen I contemplate a product over what I know the science of, I know it’s time for a mirror check

[PJPS]

This is crazy that it's free.  If you think Andrew Sandler is helping fund Ocean research HRH Khaled Bin Sultan  has spent a crazy amount of money, like full sized research vessels with top scientists over 8 years and counting,  etc.  He's also developed some THOROUGH interactive reef educational content.  Best I've found, free or otherwise.

 

Fill your brain to overflowing, undrstanding the science of a reef.  It takes the mystery and blind guessing out of our hobby, and focuses the mind to better emulate the environment, understand coral feedin/calcification process, and a million oother things.

 

Heere's the middle school-highshool curriculumn, lessons, and interactives.  When  there's obscure sounding latinit's explained.  Highly recommended for anyone looking to\ take the game up several notches.

 

https://www.livingoceansfoundation.org/education/portal/my-dashboard/

[PJPS]

I just heard Richard Ross make a great point I feel I need to paraphrase & remind myself of these.

 

Core:

Mechanical Filtration

Biological Filtration

Clean water

Light

Food

 

Details:

How you accomplish the core.  This is where you determine your maintenance time/expense/research commitment.  You can go as fiddly, or as simple as you can responsibly achieve the core, for the livestock you have/want.  For example dose vs 50% water changes every 3 weeks.  For low-medium demand tanks, either are essentially equivalent.

[PJPS]

Tank update:

 

Fancy montipora look meh, acros look fine but also meh.  After some water changes and some time I'm not overly worried.  The mag (which montipora LOVE according to biology) was pretty low for a few days.  I'm slowly pulling it  back up.  I doubt this is the cause, but it's not helping.  I figure a big WC is in order to dilute any toxins leftover from the genocide of the Acropora.  Nothing looks crazy rough other than the dead mother pucker we can't get off the rock.  It passed a week ago.

[PJPS]

Wish I’d seen this before.  Here’s Dong Zhou detailing exactly what happened with the leather.  He says a 12” is a problem in a regular tank.  What could 6” do in 1/10th the water volume.  He gives a whole talk on it

 

 

[PJPS]

Here is a fun example of not listening to my own advice. A few times over the past couple of days I have warned people about moving your AFR dosing up too fast Because it is a bacterial driven reaction to get formate to carbonate. did I listen to my own advice? No.  So the alkalinity is now over 8 well I keep it at seven religiously.  Even more stuff looks terrible, it’s even more stress on the tank. I’m not very thrilled with myself to be honest.
 

I’m really setting the world on fire, wipe out a whole bunch of my SPS with a leather.  Wipe out some more today with an alkalinity spike.

 

just realized was probably all the water changes to get rid of the leather toxin.  I usually don’t worry about the alkalinity of the salt because I do such small water changes.  instead I did so many water changes I gave myself alk spike.  FML 🤦🏻‍♂️ 

[PJPS]

Dosing paused (obviously)  all the levels are way up, so I’m pretty sure it was the water changes. I run my levels even lower than red sea blue bucket, which isn’t usually a problem because I don’t normally do big water changes. I’m just gonna let whatever survives this drink up the rest of the elements and carbonates.  My beloved Hyacinthus isn’t looking great.

 

I’ll likely resume LIGHT dosing when it hits 7.5 so it doesn’t fall off a cliff.  Let it drop slowly to 6.5.  I may water change to support levels, undecided but water changes also dilute whatever is upsetting things, I just need to keep them small.

 

e: her’s some AFR sneakyness.  I haven’t add A drop, my alk was at 7.6 last night, it’s 8 this morning, so’Ill let it slide for a day or two.  6 dkh will be welcome.

 

now 8.15

 

6:00 7.7dkh

[PJPS]

WHAT IS HAPPENING?  Alk is 8.3 now?  I haven't added AFR for days

[PJPS]

3 hours later 7.8, good stuff...

 

So confused, but I may have figured it out.  The red sea app was open on two devices (in the backround on 1) I turned off the dosing on my Ipad days ago, but the app on my mac was open and saying it was dosing.  So in the background, it apears it overwrote newer updates to the dosing instructions.

 

If the madness stops today, it's something to watch for on your Red Sea doser.  These companies are NOT software companies, this severity of bug wouldn't pass QA.

[PJPS]

turned power off to the RS doser, stopped overnight kalk 250ml of fully potent kalk typically bumps me 0.2 dkh max.  Why on earth is it at 8ish every morning... there was NOTHING added (supposedly).

 

Touched base with Adam at Frag Garage, mensch that he is, he read through the thread and offered to work something out.  If you're in 🇨🇦, I can't recommend his stuff enough.  Serious QT, and the sickest strains.  Boutique pricing, but worth even more.  I'm just going to blitz the cheapies, there are some propper stunners in there.

 

The 2 iffy montis are bouncing back with a closer eye on mag... <1180 shows on the montis fast, over 1300 fixes them at a similar rate.  I've never seen such a dramatic bounce from a chemistry correction.

[jservedio]

52 minutes ago, PJPS said:

turned power off to the RS doser, stopped overnight kalk 250ml of fully potent kalk typically bumps me 0.2 dkh max.  Why on earth is it at 8ish every morning... there was NOTHING added (supposedly).

 

I think using something like a Trident with AFR is probably not the best thing to do because Alk and Ca ions are not immediately available after dosing AFR. It requires a bacteria to break down the AFR into those ions and your nutrient levels and your carbon levels are going to affect how quickly or slowly that happens. The reaction to break down AFR uses oxygen, so the oxygen saturation of your water is also going to affect how fast it happens. The Trident is making constant adjustments to how much is dosed and relying on what you are dosing to immediately affect the Alk and Ca. Since how much Alk/Ca is raised by a consistent dose of AFR isn't going to be consistent over the intervals the Trident tests at, it's going to cause all kinds of issues with determining the proper amount to dose.

 

Also keep in mind that pH affects your total alkalinity as well, so it makes sense if your pH drops at night and then raises when the lights come on it's going to increase your alkalinity. If your Trident is testing every hour or so, you should see the cyclic changes in alkalinity over a 24 hour period.

[PJPS]

37 minutes ago, jservedio said:

 

I think using something like a Trident with AFR is probably not the best thing to do because Alk and Ca ions are not immediately available after dosing AFR. It requires a bacteria to break down the AFR into those ions and your nutrient levels and your carbon levels are going to affect how quickly or slowly that happens. The reaction to break down AFR uses oxygen, so the oxygen saturation of your water is also going to affect how fast it happens. The Trident is making constant adjustments to how much is dosed and relying on what you are dosing to immediately affect the Alk and Ca. Since how much Alk/Ca is raised by a consistent dose of AFR isn't going to be consistent over the intervals the Trident tests at, it's going to cause all kinds of issues with determining the proper amount to dose.

 

Also keep in mind that pH affects your total alkalinity as well, so it makes sense if your pH drops at night and then raises when the lights come on it's going to increase your alkalinity. If your Trident is testing every hour or so, you should see the cyclic changes in alkalinity over a 24 hour period.

I totally agree, the trident is too close a look.  I imagine most of this is "clearing out" the AFR... I just want to recalibrate all my dosing after the wipe out.  I don't disagree with a word you've said 🙂

 

The trident doesn't adjust my dosing, I just use it to skip manual testing.

 

My pH is 7.9 to 8.2 pretty consistently.  I'm definitely not used to the behavior of AFR, unfortunately that switch happened just as the great leather wipeout.  So instead of guessing my way through it, I'm shutting all dosing off so I can get my consumption and then dose to meet that.  There have been  too many variables in trying to dial in dosing.  So I'm stripping it all back and building it back so my levels are stable again.

[jservedio]

6 minutes ago, PJPS said:

So instead of guessing my way through it, I'm shutting all dosing off so I can get my consumption and then dose to meet that.  There have been  too many variables in trying to dial in dosing.  So I'm stripping it all back and building it back so my levels are stable again.

It's always a guessing game to restart since depending on your pH, nutrient levels, lighting levels, etc. growth is going to dramatically fall off below a certain point. For example, in my tank, my caps stop growing below 6.4ish and the acros stop growing at around 5.8 and all calcification of even coralline stops around 5.5 (I've never seen it drop below 96 ppm even with the doser shut off for 2 weeks).

 

The crazy part is my usage goes from around .75dkh/day at 7.0dkh to nearly triple when I target 8dkh, so it's pretty much always a guess until you can get the alkalinity exactly where you want it to be stable at. In my case I target right at 7 dkh because I'm super lazy and don't want to have STN when I forget to refill the Alk/Ca containers and am just burnt out on the hassle of dealing with having to be constantly dealing with keeping the peace - much easier if you only have to trim every couple of months instead of every week!

[PJPS]

8 minutes ago, jservedio said:

It's always a guessing game to restart since depending on your pH, nutrient levels, lighting levels, etc. growth is going to dramatically fall off below a certain point. For example, in my tank, my caps stop growing below 6.4ish and the acros stop growing at around 5.8 and all calcification of even coralline stops around 5.5 (I've never seen it drop below 96 ppm even with the doser shut off for 2 weeks).

 

The crazy part is my usage goes from around .75dkh/day at 7.0dkh to nearly triple when I target 8dkh, so it's pretty much always a guess until you can get the alkalinity exactly where you want it to be stable at. In my case I target right at 7 dkh because I'm super lazy and don't want to have STN when I forget to refill the Alk/Ca containers and am just burnt out on the hassle of dealing with having to be constantly dealing with keeping the peace - much easier if you only have to trim every couple of months instead of every week!

Bro! a fellow 7dkh-er, I rarely see another in the wild :).  I find 8 puts me on the edge of burnt tips, I assume in larger tanks this isn't an issue, since people give me side eye when I recommend 7 in a nano.  My tank racts similarly at those lower levels.

[jservedio]

18 minutes ago, PJPS said:

Bro! a fellow 7dkh-er, I rarely see another in the wild :).  I find 8 puts me on the edge of burnt tips, I assume in larger tanks this isn't an issue, since people give me side eye when I recommend 7 in a nano.  My tank racts similarly at those lower levels.

I vastly prefer it because it means you can't possibly mess up your alk enough to kill anything. If you stop dosing all together, it very, very slowly drops and if you dose too much (like even double or triple), it just starts growing faster and very, very slowly rises - no spikes at all. Not the best for growth, but for keeping things alive I haven't found a better solution. I've even been below 7.0 since November because I've been trying to not really do maintenance. Last test was 123ppm! While my acros probably only grow at 30-40% the speed of most peoples, I also haven't lost one in 5 years yet I've had more dosing mishaps than I can count on both hands in that time period.

 

It works great if you have 10 years to spend on a tank without adding anything, but it'd probably be extremely frustrating in a new tank with a boatload of frags. I'll probably be bumping it to 7.5 when I finally, finally get off my ass and get new coral.

[PJPS]

1 minute ago, jservedio said:

I vastly prefer it because it means you can't possibly mess up your alk enough to kill anything. If you stop dosing all together, it very, very slowly drops and if you dose too much (like even double or triple), it just starts growing faster and very, very slowly rises - no spikes at all. Not the best for growth, but for keeping things alive I haven't found a better solution. I've even been below 7.0 since November because I've been trying to not really do maintenance. Last test was 123ppm! While my acros probably only grow at 30-40% the speed of most peoples, I also haven't lost one in 5 years yet I've had more dosing mishaps than I can count on both hands in that time period.

 

It works great if you have 10 years to spend on a tank without adding anything, but it'd probably be extremely frustrating in a new tank with a boatload of frags. I'll probably be bumping it to 7.5 when I finally, finally get off my ass and get new coral.

7-7.5 is my pocket, the growth isn't crazy, but fine in a nano.  The "coral to my door, chop chop, on the double!" has drilled a hefty hole in my meagre wallet, but it tricks out a nano quick.  7dkh and almost in stasis > 8.3 dkh and stripped 🙂

[PJPS]

GLUG tank drank .5 dkh, finally heading down.

 

e: no kalk last night

[PJPS]

All dosing stopped, alk seems to be obsessed at staying at 7.8-8 dkh, if AFR can't run at 7 we have a problem.. It's been days, and it keeps bounciing back up

[ml86743]

Interesting tidbit about dkh in a nano.  Mine will usually settle out around 7.6-7.8 and a weekly WC brings it to 8.3 or so.  I'll have to pay attention to the inhabitants and see what happens when it hits that pocket. 

[debbeach13]

11 minutes ago, PJPS said:

All dosing stopped, alk seems to be obsessed at staying at 7.8-8 dkh, if AFR can't run at 7 we have a problem.. It's been days, and it keeps bounciing back up

I am confused 7.8-8 seems perfect to me.