jedimasterben Posted July 25, 2012 Share Posted July 25, 2012 No shortage of amazing things happening in a reef tank. Thanks for the info. i know, right? from symbiosis between clowns and nems or gobies and snapping shrimp, oodles of copepods all over everything, plants that are also animals that are also technically rocks, to sex-changing fish! never a dull moment. Link to comment
uglyfish Posted July 28, 2012 Author Share Posted July 28, 2012 i know, right? from symbiosis between clowns and nems or gobies and snapping shrimp, oodles of copepods all over everything, plants that are also animals that are also technically rocks, to sex-changing fish! never a dull moment. The beautiful frags I got from Fragbox.ca are now very pale and colouration is not nearly as nice as when I got them. For the pale corals, I'm doing three things. Reducing light intensity on the radions by 30%, changing light colour from 12K to 18K and now dosing reef fuel. Taking before and after pics. Link to comment
hannahs Posted August 4, 2012 Share Posted August 4, 2012 I'm interested to see how that fuel works for you. The description of it sounds great. Link to comment
uglyfish Posted August 10, 2012 Author Share Posted August 10, 2012 I'm interested to see how that fuel works for you. The description of it sounds great. I've been dosing reef fuel for about 2 weeks now. In addition, I've been dosing Red Sea trace elements. Also turned down the lights to 70%, then down again to 50%, and increased the blue light substantially. I've changed 3 things so I'm not sure which is responsible for what. But coloration is different. My monti digitata is a very bright yellow/green. The acros with bright blue tips have changed to a dull purple. Also, the polyps on one acro turned green. They were white - now bright green polyps. My brown acro is turning a metallic green and I'm noticing new green colours starting on some coral. The colours are not as vibrant as they were, but I'm getting new colours I never had... Color changes happen so slowly that I only realize there's a change when I look back at old pics. I'm pleased with the reef fuel - the corals don't look starved anymore. Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted August 10, 2012 Share Posted August 10, 2012 Fuel is awesome. Glad it's working so well for you! :) Link to comment
JR! Posted August 10, 2012 Share Posted August 10, 2012 such a sick tank. i think i might have to try the fuel too Link to comment
uglyfish Posted August 11, 2012 Author Share Posted August 11, 2012 such a sick tank. i think i might have to try the fuel too I'm really struggling with the biopellets - Cyano appearing everywhere now. Seriously pissing me off. I believe the problem is from too much DOC, from overfeeding. (but if I don't feed heavy, the coral starve) I may have a gently used biopellet reactor up for sale next month... Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted August 11, 2012 Share Posted August 11, 2012 You have a skimmer, right? Link to comment
uglyfish Posted August 11, 2012 Author Share Posted August 11, 2012 You have a skimmer, right? What's a skimmer? Link to comment
uglyfish Posted August 18, 2012 Author Share Posted August 18, 2012 July 16, 2012 New pic showing new colours & new green polyps!: Aug 18, 2012 I've taken the biopellet reactor offline. Going back to liquid carbon dosing. Link to comment
pyronus Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 Beautiful aquarium! I'm sure you figured out your dosing, but was interested in your Ca/Alk usage issue that you had earlier in the thread. Was your 20ppm usage number accurate? It seems like you have been mixing filtration systems and experimenting with lots of different things. Have you considered going full Zeo? Link to comment
uglyfish Posted September 3, 2012 Author Share Posted September 3, 2012 Beautiful aquarium! I'm sure you figured out your dosing, but was interested in your Ca/Alk usage issue that you had earlier in the thread. Was your 20ppm usage number accurate? It seems like you have been mixing filtration systems and experimenting with lots of different things. Have you considered going full Zeo? The 20ppm was accurate at the time.. but my growth has since slowed with all the screwing around and cal/alk consumption is down about 35%. I dose magnesium by hand, weekly. Zeovit does work - but for me, the fun (and frustration) of this hobby is learning about the biological processes in the aquarium, KZ is so secret about their ingredients you never really know what you're adding. I haven't ruled it out completely though. I'm going back to basics for now - liquid carbon dosing, good skimming and light doses supplements as required. Honestly, I'm just learning as I go. The tank is still very young and the microfauna isn't developed yet. Once I get a good micro critter population, more sponge growth, I'm sure things will stabilize a bit more. My idea of feeding heavily to compensate for the aggressive nature of biopellets was a mistake. Food contains more than just nitrate and phosphate... the left over organics are just fuel for cyano. About a week before I pulled the biopellets, I started getting stn on several corals. Two weeks now without biopellets and the stn has stopped and the skin is re-growing over bare skeleton. PE is better, growth is better, coloration is worse. Link to comment
uglyfish Posted September 14, 2012 Author Share Posted September 14, 2012 Happy tank again... biopellets gone, cyano gone, stn gone. Growth is back! New coral to celebrate: Link to comment
JDigital Posted September 15, 2012 Share Posted September 15, 2012 Recent coral... Acropora Tenuis? Love your tank, uglyfish! Link to comment
uglyfish Posted September 15, 2012 Author Share Posted September 15, 2012 Recent coral... Acropora Tenuis? Love your tank, uglyfish! Thanks! I looked up Acropora Tenuis and I think you've got it right. I didn't know it was a tabling acro - I need to find a good spot for it. Link to comment
glennr1978 Posted September 17, 2012 Share Posted September 17, 2012 I'm not trying to sell you on using BP's again, just figured I'd share my experience with them. I had run into very similar issues to what you had and ditched the pellets about a year ago. I tried a more traditional approach using macro in a fuge. For some reason my tank simply cannot sustainmacros, while hair algae and cyano were growing quite well. Out of desperation I resorted back to bp's. This time however, I'm using far less than I did before. I've only got about one inch or so of bp's in a tlf reactor. It's only been a little over a month since I put the pellets back online, but so far the seem to be working. All of my corals look good, and are growing rapidly and all nuisance algae has disappeared. Fwiw, I also dose mb7 daily (a long with heavy feeding of various products). Again, just sharing my experience. If what your doing is working, that's awesome. And judging by your pics, it appears that your tank is doing great Link to comment
uglyfish Posted September 17, 2012 Author Share Posted September 17, 2012 I'm not trying to sell you on using BP's again, just figured I'd share my experience with them. I had run into very similar issues to what you had and ditched the pellets about a year ago. There's something mysterious about the biopellets. So many users, on multiple forums have the same experience. Months 1-3 all good - month 4, cyano and stn. Testing for the usual stuff doesn't show any abnormalities in parameters, yet the acros start to stn. Are the biopellets consuming some element in the water resulting in stn? Are they releasing some organic compound we can't test for resulting in cyano? I think there is something wrong in the stoichiometry of the biopellets. The first indication I have of this is the fact that they need a secondary additive (or filter) to reduce po4, where no3 is low. It appears as though it may work on FOWLR tanks where no3 is super high - but on delicate sps tanks, biopellets are crude. I have read many posts before I used the biopellets. I knew others had problems - but I was cocky. I thought I could do what the others couldn't. It was an interesting experiment, but I'm done now. (I lost my beautiful orange plate coral in the process). I've been running Red Sea's NoPox for a month now. STN is gone - Skin is regrowing over exposed skeleton. Color is ####ty, but growth is good. I couldn't make the biopellets work for my tank. I'm interested to see how you make out the second time around. One thing I found interesting is that some people were blending denitrating media like seachem matrix or denitrate rocks into the biopellet reactors and reducing the biopellet media by 1/3. Link to comment
up.left Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 This system is amazing. Link to comment
uglyfish Posted October 17, 2012 Author Share Posted October 17, 2012 any updates? lot of pics... Some pieces coloured nice, many are awful... still working on it. I hope these will make great "before" pics. The bird's nest on the left was being ravaged by green cyano - I bought it that way but couldn't fix it. I tried a bunch of different dips, blowing it clean etc... finally I dipped the whole thing in a peroxide solution. Cyano is gone, but I may have finished killing it. Some skin left... I'm hoping for a miraculous recovery. Link to comment
creefer Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 Very nice system you have there. Interesting to hear of your biopellet results. I started my biopellets about 6 weeks ago but started with 25% of the recommended volume. Will see how it works. Have 0.00 PO4 on hanna, little to no cyano, I'm dosing MB7, Zeobak, maintenance dose of special blend, and feeding heavily. Some acros are pale, others are not....macro growth in the fuge has slowed considerably. I started biopellets while running GFO and will be taking the GFO off line and use only as required to see what happens to PO4. Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 Very nice system you have there. Interesting to hear of your biopellet results. I started my biopellets about 6 weeks ago but started with 25% of the recommended volume. Will see how it works. Have 0.00 PO4 on hanna, little to no cyano, I'm dosing MB7, Zeobak, maintenance dose of special blend, and feeding heavily. Some acros are pale, others are not....macro growth in the fuge has slowed considerably. I started biopellets while running GFO and will be taking the GFO off line and use only as required to see what happens to PO4. I would go ahead and take out the GFO. What does nitrate look like? Also, if they're looking pale, just means you need to feed more. Fuel by Seachem/aquavitro is some pretty badass stuff for ULNS. Link to comment
uglyfish Posted October 17, 2012 Author Share Posted October 17, 2012 Very nice system you have there. Interesting to hear of your biopellet results. I started my biopellets about 6 weeks ago but started with 25% of the recommended volume. Will see how it works. Have 0.00 PO4 on hanna, little to no cyano, I'm dosing MB7, Zeobak, maintenance dose of special blend, and feeding heavily. Some acros are pale, others are not....macro growth in the fuge has slowed considerably. I started biopellets while running GFO and will be taking the GFO off line and use only as required to see what happens to PO4. Interesting. I know 100% that you can eliminate gfo. Biopellets will strip everything out of the water. If you want to drop po4 to 0 in a few days, just add 5-10 drops of seachem flourish nitrogen. Your Po4 will hit 0 within days - I've tested this repeatedly and I know it works. (but remember, SPS don't want 0 no3 or po4, they need some to grow). The problem with feeding heavy is the buildup of organics. And the the slow process by which biopellets break down into bioavailable carbon. They go through stages of breakdown... plastic to sugar to alcohol (ethanol) to methanol and vinegar (acetic acid) to acetone. (don't quote me on the specifics of this... the point is, the plastic goes through some stages before it's bioavailable). I think that some of the intermediate stages that occur may fuel cyano - along with the fact that users will have to feed heavier to feed their starving coral, which leads to higher organics in the system. Now I dose nopox which is acetic acid (vinegar), methanol and acetone (suspect, not sure) - which bypasses the monomer (sugar) stages of biopellet breakdown. I'm currently running 0 no3 and 0 po4... which I'm working on getting up to 0.2 no3 and 0.02 po4. My drop to zero happened because I read 0.06 po4 after introducing some marco rock. I dosed nitrate for only 2 days and my po4 and no3 dropped to 0. I overshot my goal of .2 no3 and 0.02 po4. Edit: sorry for the long post - but I have to add more... The beauty of the liquid dosing is that now I can limit my carbon source to raise no3 and po4. You can't stop or slow down biopellets. And more thoughts on Cyano... Cyanobacteria exists in mosts systems - why does it not ravage every tank with po4 higher than 0.02? Lots of tanks run po4 much much higher with no cyano. I have a strong suspicion that cyano is not linked to po4 at all. Biopellets users run very low po4. When a cyano infested tank reads 0 po4, people say it's because the cyano used it all up and you can't test for it. I think that's a load of ####. Organics and has more to do with cyano than po4 - and the proof is in the biopellet users. (or any high level carbon dosing regime... like sugar or alcohol/vodka). Link to comment
uglyfish Posted October 17, 2012 Author Share Posted October 17, 2012 Fuel by Seachem/aquavitro is some pretty badass stuff for ULNS. I'm still using Reef fuel - it is good stuff. It won't fix stripped water though. Link to comment
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