Search the Community

Hello, I'm struggling to understand the relationship between alkalinity and calcium levels in my tank. I’ve read a ton about it but I’m still confused. I have a high level of calcium (500) and low alkalinity (7) I’m not sure how to address this. I have B-Ionic calcium buffer system with component 1 alkalinity and component 2 calcium but I’ve never used it. Can someone help me out? Specifically can you tell me what you would do in my situation. I have a 13.5 gallon fluval evo tank. I also have a protein skimmer attached For coral I have some mushrooms and Xenia, a pink birds nest coral, zoas, and some leather corals. Additionally I have a coco worm (hard tube feather duster), a clownfish, 2 cardinalfish, and one tiny goby.

I recently got a coco worm (Protula bispiralis) from my LFS. They convinced me that it’s easy to care for them and so I bought it. After doing more research I realized I really shouldn’t have bought it, as my tank is new and I’m relatively inexperienced. I’m wondering if any of you have experience caring for coco worms, specifically protula bispiralis, and if so, could you let me know? If you know anyone else who has cared for them, could you tag them in this post? I’d love to have a few people that I could contact and ask if (and when) I run into problems with my worm. My care regiment for it it has been feeding two or three times a week with either reef roids or two little fishies marine snow. I do weekly water changes, sometimes bi weekly. It seemed pretty happy for the first few days I had it, but now I find that it’s retracted about ~50% of the time that I see it (it’s possible that it’s out much more often than that, I’m just basing that number on when I walk by/look at the tank).

Hi everyone! I just ordered a sun coral and a white scroll algae from ebay, so I thought it would be a good time to start officially journaling my progress with my NPS tank. Here are the current and planned specs; Filtration; Aquaclear 20 (100 GPH) with activated carbon, Sun sun internal filter (650 GPH) no media, planned Aquafuge2 small refugium (2.6 gallon, unsure about GPH, filled with macroalgae and live sand). Nutrient export: Macroalgae, 2 x 40% water changes weekly Light: ABI Par 38 tuna blue bulb, 23 watts (generic reef pro light on refugium...it adds 120 par at 14 inches below the water level) Macroalgae (tank): Caulerpa sp (something feathery), White scroll algae Corals (Tank): Sun coral, black sun coral, Red tree gorgonian (in a cave to prevent algae overgrowth), Leptogorgonia purple sea fan Other inverts: Hermit crabs, snails, Bam bam (the pistol shrimp), elephant ear sponge (in a cave to prevent algae overgrowth), fan worm? Fish: Little Dude (the royal gramma), maybe some sort of cardinalfish? Refugium life; Caulerpa prolifera, Gracilaria sp, copepods, rotifers? Feeding regime: Going to start with seachem phytoplankton and zooplankton twice a day for the filter feeders, and frozen food daily for the sun corals and fish. Will eventually replace the phytoplankton with live phytoplankton mix, and the zooplankton with reef roids. Will also broadcast some live phyto into the tank water before bed. And here's a picture of the tank! And here are pictures of my plans. The first one is for the main tank, the second one is for the refugium; Hope you enjoy following along! Don't hesitate to give your thoughts on my tank 🙂 PS...this will probably take a few months to get fully set up...the refugium and the live phytoplankton are expensive to initially procure (though they are high quality and last a while). I will post pictures at least once a week.