Alk Update
I’ve gotten some great advice on ReefCentral on bringing my alkalinity up.
My plan:
Raise mg from 1200 to 1300-1400 ppm
In the meantime use only kalkwasser in my make-up water, no 2-part
Come this weekend, remeasure alkalinity levels and pH levels.
Dose 2-part to hit the desired levels – if my pH is high, use recipe 2. If my pH is normal, use recipe 1. Also consider changing time of day for dosing to avoid exceeding a pH of 8.3
Measure the consumption rate… and try, try again…
Alk Seems “Locked”, Progress on Caulerpa
Well, let me start off with the good news. I have been keeping the caulerpa in the tank in check with manually removal. I’m not saying that I’m winning the battle, but I seem to be keeping it from spreading. I’ve been pulling little bits almost every night and it seems to be effective.
On to the bad, or at least frustrating, news. I can not raise the tank’s alkalinity levels above 6-6.5 DKH.
I’ve tried pulling the media reactors offline. I’ve been dosing additional amounts of saturated kalkwasser. I’ve been dosing 2-Part solution. And nothing is effective. Last night I did a test, and the results I think are typical of what happens in the tank:
10:30 dosed to get alk to 8.5 DKH. Magnesium at 1200 ppm
10:45 alk at 8.0 dkh
11:05 alk at 7.5 dkh
11:25 alk at 7.0 dkh and magnesium at 1105 ppm
Pretty rapid decrease. I was thinking precipitation must be the cause, and it seems other people do too. I started a thread at reef central, and got the following response:
If your alk test kit is correct, I would suspect abiotic precipitation in your sand bed as a possible source of eating your alk up. Check your sand bed for sand clumping.
Will do! I don’t know what to do if I find the sand bed is clumping, but I’ll check. I also received a recommendation to raise mag to ~1300. I’ll do that slowly starting tonight.
I also came across an older thread where bacteria was cited as a possible source of precipitation. I did dose MB7 for a while. Could it be related? Hmmm. Will keep updating as I find out more info.
Still Baffled Over Alk
A brief update -
I took out the rowaphos reactors, thinking they may have been causing precipitation.
I bumped up my kalkwasser concentration to 6 rounded teaspoons per batch in the ~5 gallon storage tank. Sometimes 7 rounded teaspoons, and the storage tank probably only holds 4-4.5 gallons max of fresh water. So it’s nearly at full concentration. I’m going through ~1.5 gallon of topoff water a day.
Last night I measured the alk in the tank – ~6.0dkh, same as it was when I had the reactors running and was using 4-5 teaspoons of kalkwasser at ~1 gallon a day.
I dosed two-part to get the alk to 8.0. Measured it, verified it, went to bed.
This morning, 9 hours later, I measured the alk again. 6.5 dkh.
How is that possible??? How can I be consuming that much? How can the tank keep equalizing around 6 dkh? When I checked calcium a week or so ago, it was around 450. Magnesium was around 1500. Those levels shouldn’t result in a depressed alkalinity?
More testing needed :(
Dosed MB7
I’ve been pulling caulerpa from the tank almost daily. Not always pulling out a lot, but every little clump helps make a dent in it. The clean up crew has been doing a decent job keeping hair alage in check as it gaisn strength now that it’s not competing with caulerpa. I decided to try dosing MB7 again, to see if that can also help out compete the algae. I dosed three capfuls (75 gallons worth) tonight.
Since I’m posting, I’ll also note that I made more RODI water today. I’ll be adding 6 rounded tsp of kalk powder after I log off here. I am going through ~4.5 gallons of top off water every 3 days or so.
A Month of Updates!!
One Saturday early in January unruly and I went on a short trip back to Midwest Coral Farms. I was a lucky winner of a bucket of Brightwell’s salt in the Uberfrags Christmas giveaways! They still had an impressive collection of corals available and had some nice inverts as well. Unfortunately this was a low-budget visit for us, so I only picked up some more cleaning supplies and a bottle of Brightwell’s Mircobacter7. I have seen a lot of people online dose this in their tanks (along with some type of carbon source – vodka, vinegar, sugar, or a combo) and I figured we could give it a try too. Anything to help outcompete the micro and macro algae! I started dosing the very next day per the instructions – one capful per 25 gallons each day. I didn’t make it more than a week before I stopped dosing (due to forgetting a couple nights). I will begin dosing MB7 again, maybe this week – more on that later.
Sadly Aloysius, our starry blenny, passed away in early January. He was looking more and more emaciated over a period of a few weeks and appeared to be on a hunger strike. No food was appealing to him. We’re still saddened by his loss and plan on replacing him sometime in the future. I guess as a “balance” of things in the tank, one of the anemones split so we’re up to three RBTA’s. So far all three are staying put within a few inches of eachother.
It’s been a month of equipment failures, it feels like. The second PC ballast died, leaving the tank with no actinic supplementation. Yesterday the return pump (a Mag 1.9) failed, so I am temporarily using an MJ1200 for return flow. I’m estimating that it’s giving us a whopping 46 gph, based on some measurements I did a few weeks ago. Sometime soon I’m going to need to purchase a replacement – looking at QuietOne1200.
Instead of replacing the actinic ballasts in-kind I decided to purchase an IceCap T5 retro kit with ATI Blue+ lamps. A little more money upfront, but better PAR and output for less energy = a better long term investment. It took about 3 weeks for me to get it installed, but I took care of that this weekend. I like the color quite a bit. Adds a nice amount of blue to the Iwasaki MH’s, and looks great by itself at dawn/dusk. It’s funny the tricks your eye can play on you. With the Iwasaki MH’s on by themselves, the tank looks pretty white. Add in the actinics and the tank takes on a bluer color. Turn off the actinics and suddenly those white Iwasaki’s look pretty yellow!
A few months ago I posted about a strategy I had for eliminating algae in the tank. I basically said I would let the caulerpa run rampant while I eliminated the hair algae, and then I’d focus on the caulerpa. I realized this was a horrible idea! The caulerpa is a real pain to get out of the tank, and I’d be much better off starting with eradicating that from the tank! So I reversed my strategy – I am manually removing caulerpa and letting hair algae do its own thing. The caulerpa grows back fastm but I’m making a decent dent in it. I think if I can keep it under control for a while, the invertebrates in the tank can get control over the hair algae. Then I can consider some caulerpa-eaters to take care of the rest.
Side effect of the rapid removal of caulerpa – two browned out SPS frags. The “bonsai” (which looks more like a tricolor seneca I’ve seen advertised) and the granulosa both lost color right after the first major removal. I’m sure the tank had a spike in phosphate and/or nitrate. Patience and they’ll color back up again.
Oh – I got bit while pruning the caulerpa! Prime suspect? Male pajama cardinal! Go figure. He took a small chunk out of my knuckle, the punk.
I have been having a hard time keeping the alk high in the tank. I have increased the kalkwasser concentration (now using 5 or 6 rounded teaspoons per 5 gallons) but still haven’t been able to keep alk above ~6dkh. Magnesium is testing at 1500, so that’s not the culprit. Thinking that maybe all the GFO I was running was causing some precipitation I pulled both reactors this weekend. I’m going to test alk a couple times this week, along with playing with the kalkwasser, to see if I can make an improvement.
Added cage around the modded MJ pump in sump to prevent chaeto clogs. Made the cage out of egg crate and a finer mesh material – working great so far!
Cleaned the skimmer pump, and tried a few different ways of running it to see how much skimmate I could pull. Using the silencer to adjust the amount of air restrictions, I basically found: no silencer = wet skimmate; full silencer = very dry skimmate; bottom half of the silencer = nice middle ground. Most of the time now I’m running with only half the silencer installed.
I also cleaned the Vortech for the first time in… a long time. It was getting clogged with caulerpa strands from the manual removal i’ve been doing. Noticable increase in flow after a solid cleaning.
Stupid me washed down one of the power strips with water after doing some work in the tank. Luckily I only knocked out one, and luckily the GFI outlet tripped, and luckily I was able to recircuit everything onto the remaining power strip. This makes me want to change how I have things set up. A power panel in the back of the sump would be really nice. Maybe leave a convenience outlet up front, with some toggle switches to turn equipment on/off (the toggle switches I’m using on the return pump, skimmer, and ATO are awesome). Hey, maybe even spring for a controller which could incorporate the alarm switches I installed but couldn’t get functioning. The Neptune Apex or Apex Lite look appealing but that’s a lot of coin to drop.
Well, that’s all I can remember for the time being. I will try to be a bit more diligent on my updates this month!
