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BornToHula's 240 Gallon Build


BornToHula

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On 5/1/2017 at 9:51 AM, BornToHula said:

Have a few fish in quarantine.  Going to start an ich treatment (ich shield powder) and PraziPro. I considered doing the tank transfer method for ich treatment, but the cost for doing it on 40g tanks adds up quickly. (Sorry for the blurry pics)

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Also I wanted to prevent algae from growing in the overflow - its pretty hard to clean back there with the canopy on, so I made a cover out of acrylic. I still need to adjust it a tad bit, but it turned out pretty well for a 20 min project. I should have done it sooner!

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I have the same exact tank as you. Funny I just bought a piece of acrylic to cover the over flow box as well. Having major algae issues in there. With my lights hanging it's hard for me to get in and clean. Right now I have a towel temporarily covering the overflow till I can do like you did lol. I have no algae anywhere else other then there. Almost looks like a refuguim! 

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On 7/3/2017 at 4:25 PM, Jen_h said:

I have the same exact tank as you. Funny I just bought a piece of acrylic to cover the over flow box as well. Having major algae issues in there. With my lights hanging it's hard for me to get in and clean. Right now I have a towel temporarily covering the overflow till I can do like you did lol. I have no algae anywhere else other then there. Almost looks like a refuguim! 

My overflow was growing a lot of algae too.  The cover helps quite a bit, I definitely recommend making one.

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Has anyone experienced only the tips of acros dying? On about half of my acros the very tips are dying off. The rest of the coral looks fine, with good polyp extension and everything.  Everything had been looking and growing really well until the last day or two. 

I do have a decent cyano outbreak, could that be an issue?

I tested for everything tonight and everything seems to be okay:

Alk: 8.1 dkh, Ca: 435 ppm, Mg: 1490 ppm, Nitrate: 5 ppm, Phosphate: 0.02 ppm

Any ideas? I plan on doing a couple large water changes to help things, I'm just not sure of the root issue causing the tips to die.

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22 hours ago, FarmerTy said:

When's the last time you tested your salinity?

It had been awhile, but I justed tested and its 1.025.  

Unfortunately the tip die off continues to get worse.  I'm going to do another water change and run some carbon afterwards. 

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15 hours ago, FarmerTy said:

I was going to say, nothing is a better cure to what ails any tank than water changes. Unless the source water is bad... Then you have a bigger issue.

Source water should be good, I just changed out RO membranes, upgraded to a dual stage DI and added a booster pump. I guess the actual source water from the city could have an issue, but I can't do anything about that so hopefully that's not the case.

I have a Triton test kit I'm going to send in to see if it shows anything. 

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38 minutes ago, FarmerTy said:

Remind me of your nutrient removal regiment? Skimmer? Water changes? GFO? Carbon? Biopellets? Etc?

Right now I'm really only using a skimmer. I just put some granulated carbon online last night.  

I removed all my other nutrient removal due to the chrysophyte issue I was having.  Apparently chrysophytes thrive in a low nutrient environment, so I have been dosing stump remover and Seachem phosphorus to keep the Nitrates at 5ppm and phosphate between .05 and.02 ppm.  My feedings (6 cubes, & approx a teaspoon of pellets) were not enough to keep the nutrients up.

I do have Biopellets, GFO, and a 75g deep sand bed /refugium I can set up if or when they are needed. I also have cheato growing, but I only run every few days for right now.

 

Edited by BornToHula
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1 hour ago, FarmerTy said:

I forgot, you're fighting dirty against the chrysophytes. I was going to say, I could see higher phosphate levels causing STN in general on the acros, not just the tips but the bases too.

The good thing is that it has worked. 95% of the chrysophytes are gone and I think they will be gone completely in another week or two (fingers crossed).  

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, Gig 'em @ NDstructible said:

Did the burned tips correspond with increasing the nutrient levels?

I don't think so, the nutrients have been raised for about a month and a half.  The acro growth rate had actually increased quite a bit with the higher nutrients and the tips just started dying a few days ago.

The tips didn't get any worse yesterday, so hopefully the worst of it is over.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Great video... And I appreciate the music!  You either have the smoothest hand motion ever or you used some kind of program to smooth it out?

 

You went Masterflex!  Nice!  Good thing you got the digital model too, those are much quieter than the regular model.

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9 hours ago, FarmerTy said:

Great video... And I appreciate the music!  You either have the smoothest hand motion ever or you used some kind of program to smooth it out?

 

You went Masterflex!  Nice!  Good thing you got the digital model too, those are much quieter than the regular model.

Thanks! I used the YouTube smoothing edit. Not sure if the iPhone does any smoothing automatically or not.

Yes, the master flex is a digital brushless model, it's pretty quiet!  The pump is going under the stand so sound was definitely a concern.

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5 minutes ago, BornToHula said:

Thanks! I used the YouTube smoothing edit. Not sure if the iPhone does any smoothing automatically or not.

Yes, the master flex is a digital brushless model, it's pretty quiet!  The pump is going under the stand so sound was definitely a concern.

I know you already spent the money on it but after running 4 different CaRX offer the years, the good ones kept the flow rate steady and didn't ever need a peristaltic pump and the bad ones did and I moved them along.  I can't remember which unit you have but if you for some reason got tired of dealing with a peristaltic pump, you can get a different brand CaRX that won't need the extra pump.

Since you are running it, not sure if you are running it on the effluent side to pull water through but that is the recommended setup versus pushing water into the calcium reactor.

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The tip die off is interesting.  Is it only those couple of tips on those few acros?  If so, then to me it looks more like something is nipping at it than die off.  If it's water or nutrients, I would expect to see more die off and less PE.  The corals look healthy otherwise.  

What are you running your alk?

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2 hours ago, FarmerTy said:

I know you already spent the money on it but after running 4 different CaRX offer the years, the good ones kept the flow rate steady and didn't ever need a peristaltic pump and the bad ones did and I moved them along.  I can't remember which unit you have but if you for some reason got tired of dealing with a peristaltic pump, you can get a different brand CaRX that won't need the extra pump.

Since you are running it, not sure if you are running it on the effluent side to pull water through but that is the recommended setup versus pushing water into the calcium reactor.

I have an aquarium engineering CaRX.  I've talked to the owner bill and he gave a few things I could try to help solve the issue. I just happened to find a killer deal on the masterflex so went that route.

I have actually heard it is better to push the water through the reactor if it has co2 recirculation to prevent an air pocket from forming.  I don't really understand why it would make any difference?

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1 hour ago, olaggie01 said:

The tip die off is interesting.  Is it only those couple of tips on those few acros?  If so, then to me it looks more like something is nipping at it than die off.  If it's water or nutrients, I would expect to see more die off and less PE.  The corals look healthy otherwise.  

What are you running your alk?

The tip die off was on about half of the acros. I saw the flesh dying off on some of the crorals and the die off happened all at once which is why I figured it was something wrong with the water.

But yes it was weird that the PE was still there even as they were melting.

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2 hours ago, BornToHula said:

I have an aquarium engineering CaRX.  I've talked to the owner bill and he gave a few things I could try to help solve the issue. I just happened to find a killer deal on the masterflex so went that route.

I have actually heard it is better to push the water through the reactor if it has co2 recirculation to prevent an air pocket from forming.  I don't really understand why it would make any difference?

Mainly because a peristaltic can cause pressure buildup in the CaRX if there is a blockage on the effluent side and kaboom!  Whether that is a real danger or not, I don't ever want to find out but the rollers are more resistant to pressure build up than say a regular feed pump or manifold setup.

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Am I ever going to catch a break with this tank? :firefirefire:

I was out of town this weekend and on my return I noticed I have dinoflagellates popping up in a few places.  I'm 90% sure its dinos this time and not chrysophytes.  This stuff is much more snot like and matches the pictures of dinos perfectly.  

Going to try and manually remove as much as I can.  I remember reading that hydrogen peroxide may help in removing it as well. Any tips?

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I just kicked dynos in my frag tank a month or so ago.  What worked for me was making sure my phosphates were > 0.03 (checked every day), adding pods, and dosing phyto every night.  This coupled with two sessions of siphoning out everything with all pumps turned off, and also went ahead and replaced siphoned out water with fresh.  No lights out for me either.  Took about 4 weeks to kick and they've been gone since.  Not sure this is scientific, but my tank is looking great now ...

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