More Maintenance, More Failures!!
The other day I noticed the slimmer pump wasn’t working and it was making a humming noise. Hmmm. I drained the skimmer body, removed the pump, gave everything a nice vinegar bath and cleaning, and reassembled. Got the pump working again – and it seems to be fully producing – but the hum is still there. I’m afraid the pump may die on me one of these days, that is if the humming doesn’t get so bad that I simply take it off line.
To top off that evening, the main float switch died on me. Turns out, and I don’t remember doing this, I had spliced the wires and encased them in airline tubing, siliconed shut at the ends. Well, apparently water got in there (could only have been during water changes) because one of the solders corroded away. Wonderful. Copper in the tank? Not cool. I don’t think it was much, as the inverts all look ok… Crimony. I spliced one of the other float switches (outside the sump) into the control circuit and re-hung the switches at about the right height. Another project on the list of things to fix.
Tonight I did another water change, made new 2-part, scraped the tank walls, plucked some algae, and decided to glue down the green prostrata frag. It has fallen twice now, damaging tips on the blue gomezi and green vermiculata. It appears to have done quite a bit of damage to the vermiculata, there are a number of burnt tips. To make sure it wasn’t the water quality I measured the alk and ca tonight – 8.5 dkh and 350 ppm. I dosed an extra 40 ppm ca, not sure how that got so low.
I also decided to break the encrusting blue monti off the closed loop return and mount it on the top rockwork. It wasn’t getting enough light on the return and was a pretty drab color. It should contrast well against the red rbta’s and the green prostrata.
One of the four rbta’s decided to go on a walkabout last week. It’s settled in next to the vermiculata and Mille, above the “bonsai” acro. Not a cool spot for it!
I think that’s it… If not I’ll blog something tomorrow!
Lots of new water… time for new salt.
How did a few weeks go by without an update?
I have done a number of water changes. Last week I did two mid-week, and did another last night. I’m down towards the bottom of the bucket of Tropic Marin ProReef salt, probably have enough for two water changes left. It’s a bit clumped up, must have gotten some moisture in there somehow. I’m debating which salt to use next – I have a bucket of Brightwells, and another bucket of Tropic Marin. Any thoughts from my readers?
My alkalinity and calcium levels are holding pretty steady. I’ve been dosing 200 ml daily of the recipe 2 mix (comes out to 2DKH alkalinity a day). My alkalinity seems to be slowly dropping at that dosing rate (0.5 DKH over a week) so the corals must be starting to grow again. They hit a plateau for a few weeks+, I think caused by phosphate or nitrate, but I’m not really sure. Maybe it was reduced feedings of the fish? Maybe pH – I need to measure that again to see if it’s still holding around 8. Anyway, I am hoping things are going to start growing again.
I don’t think there are any other updates to speak of. No changes to equipment, no changes in livestock. Some minor rearrangement of corals. (Did I already post about swapping the purple torch and yellow/gold torch? If not – the purple likes lower light and the yellow/gold likes higher light, and for the past year+ I’ve had that backwards!! Both look much happier now!) Still pulling algae out where I can. The new DI resin must be helping with the phosphate levels in the tank – the caulerpa I remove doesn’t grow back as quickly as it had in the past. Still have nuisance algae and some turf algae I’m dealing with, but patience is key. In the past week the red cotton algae appears to have disappeared from its foothold in the hammer coral branches – another indication that things are on the right track!
