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!
