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!
Maintenance, Resilient Monti
Plucked some algae again tonight and followed it up with a 5gallon water change. I also changed the GFO. Every night I’ve been blowing detritus out of the rockwork and manually removing macro algae, mostly some type of turf algae. Is it making a difference? I think so but unruly says she can’t tell a difference so… I’ll say it’s still too early to make a definitive answer. I keep repeating the reefing mantra – nothing good happens fast.
My tropicana twister Monti had fallen on tough times. Right when it was taking off it got stung by a trumpet coral and receded pretty far. I moved it away from the sweeper tentacles, but didn’t secure it well. The frag fell off the rock and smack dab in the middle of a plate coral. Great… I couldn’t find it for a while and wrote it off as a loss. Fast forward a couple months to two nights ago and I stumbled upon the frag while cleaning up the sand bed. I think, and am pretty sure, that there is still some living tissue on the frag! I placed it in a safer location in the rockwork and am hoping to see some recovery growth!
Quick update – algae attack!
The “new” anemone is doing just fine. I’ll have to get a photo, the tank now has a string of 4 RTBA’s in a row along a ridge in the rockwork.
I’m going on an algae assault. Running GFO for the first time in… a while. Blowing detritus out of the rockwork with a powerhead every day, if not twice a day. Cleaned the skimmer neck the other day to get a better, wetter skim. And I’ve been manually removing a lot of algae. Caulerpa, “turf” algae, hair algae, and the red cotton algae. Thought I had the red cotton under control but it’s grown thick clumps in the branches of a hammer coral. Some time this week I’m going to replace the primary DI filter. The TDS meter is still reading 0, but I’ve read that they can have a wide margin of error.
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!
Alkalinity Reading = Resolved
A local reefer was kind enough to stop by tonight with two alkalinity test kits to double check my levels. Turns out my Elos test kit was right on the money. That’s great, except for the fact that I’ve been using my Salifert test kit for months. So, for months, my alkalinity was only 4.5 dKH when I thought it was just over 7dKH. Yikes. I think the only thing that has kept the corals and inverts in good shape is the fact that the alkalinity has been extremely stable for this whole time. (It could explain why the baby’s breath hasn’t been recovering well though!)
So tonight I started the slow process of raising the alkalinty to almost double its current value. I was lucky enough last Christmas to win a set of DT’s supplements, so I have alkalinity supplement right at hand. My plan is to spend the next week raising it, which should be slow enough to not shock the tank inhabitants.
I also did some normal maintenance tonight. I cleaned out the tube I have feeding the carbon and GFC reactors – it had become clogged with chaeto. Now the reactor media is tumbling nicely.
I also pulled a LOT of halimedia out of the display tank, along with some caulerpa, and moved some extra rocks from the display tank to the sump. I shifted the frogspawn a little, and I also moved the hammer coral a bit, to free up the sand bed.
And I THREW AWAY the Salifert test kit!!!
