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White tips on SPS - what's the dealio, yo?


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Personally, I'd never had an issue with too low phosphates. It's your zero nitrates that are the issue. I'd leave the reactor as is.

Maybe feed more or start dosing aminos or potassium nitrate in the tank to bring up your nitrate levels.

Started feeding twice a day, algae growth is definitely up, but still zero nitrates.

As far as ALK burn, I stopped the Kalkwasser drip, as I couldn't get it to be a consistent flow and having to fill it up every day is a bit of a beating. Now I'm dosing 15ml Seachem Fusion 2 after lights out and testing every morning between 9a-10a to see if I can find the sweet spot. Letting CA go for now as I'm convinced my testing chems are no good. There's no way I add no CA for a week and the levels bounce back and forth from 400-600, right?

Yeah, that's a funky Ca test. Get a new one.

Remind me what are you doing for water changes and filtration (reactors, skimmers, Etc)?

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Oredered new CA reagent for my Hanna today.

Bubble Magus Curve 5 skimmer

BRS GFO & Carbon dual reactor

Change about 15gal water every 6-8 weeks in ~90gal system.

Have a fuge w/ chaeto, but I'm convinced it's ornamental. Hasn't grown a bit in months. I think my fuge light isn't an ideal spectrum, but my assumption was that any light should work for macroalgae growth.

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Oredered new CA reagent for my Hanna today.

Bubble Magus Curve 5 skimmer

BRS GFO & Carbon dual reactor

Change about 15gal water every 6-8 weeks in ~90gal system.

Have a fuge w/ chaeto, but I'm convinced it's ornamental. Hasn't grown a bit in months. I think my fuge light isn't an ideal spectrum, but my assumption was that any light should work for macroalgae growth.

Perhaps remove your chaeto entirely? Also, that Hanna Ca checker is the only unreliable checker to me for marine use. I like their alk and phosphate one but the Ca checker is highly inaccurate. They made their test protocol too sensitive for that one.
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I'm guessing that w/ the chaeto removal, I'm just going to shake the heck out of it to make sure I get as many pods staying in the fuge as possible, eh?

Hanna checker is going to have to do for a while on the CA testing. Hopefully the new reagents help, instead of the 2014 expiration stuff I got from someone on here....thumbsdown.gif

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Oredered new CA reagent for my Hanna today.

Bubble Magus Curve 5 skimmer

BRS GFO & Carbon dual reactor

Change about 15gal water every 6-8 weeks in ~90gal system.

Have a fuge w/ chaeto, but I'm convinced it's ornamental. Hasn't grown a bit in months. I think my fuge light isn't an ideal spectrum, but my assumption was that any light should work for macroalgae growth.

How old is this aquarium? Chaetomorpha sp. that hasn't grown in months can be caused by low nutrients. White tips on SPS can also be caused by low nutrients. Do you have a low fish load? Are you carbon dosing, using a large amount of GFO or wet skimming? Chaeto should have a deep green color, like a Christmas Tree. If it's washed out or light in color then that may be the problem.

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Tank has been up since March.

Running BRS carbon/GFO reactor - I never know if this is what you guys mean by "carbon dosing"... GFO is about 60-75% of the reactor container.

4 smaller fish in the tank - clown, pink stripe goby, firefish and anthia, maybe 6-8 members of the cuc. not a high load.

You guys keep saying low nutrient load, but the only way I know to increase that is to feed more, which I did. I cut back this week because algae was starting to grow more than I'm comfortable with. If there's something else I can do, I'm all ears.

I removed the majority of the chaeto last night, and yes, it was fairly light in color. I did leave the darker green clump as I thought there may be some difference. We'll see how it goes w/ that chunk.

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Carbon dosing is a general term for methods that make carbon available in the water to induce bacteria to grow and consume nitrates I believe. Then people skim off the bacteria and this accomplishes nutrient export. Some examples are vinegar dosing and vodka dosing.

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How old is this aquarium? Chaetomorpha sp. that hasn't grown in months can be caused by low nutrients.

You know what? The chaeto was in the fuge while the tank was fallow for 70+ days, and I was feeding the corals Reef Chili and using Aquavitro Fuel, but pretty sparingly. Maybe the chaeto starved back then and never really recovered?
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Whoa! What reactor are you using for your GFO when you say its 60-75% full? You may be running waaaayyyyy too much GFO. Got a picture?

Nevermind, I see you said you're using a BRS dual reactor. That's way too much. Like crazy too much. I'm pretty sure this is the problem. How much carbon are you running as well? What type of GFO? What type of carbon?

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Just for reference, I use half of what you are using for both the GFO and the carbon in my 215-gallon monthly.

I would recommend using 1/3 of the GFO and 1/4 of the carbon and I have a feeling all your corals are going to be really happy in the next couple of weeks.

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Tank has been up since March.

Running BRS carbon/GFO reactor - I never know if this is what you guys mean by "carbon dosing"... GFO is about 60-75% of the reactor container.

4 smaller fish in the tank - clown, pink stripe goby, firefish and anthia, maybe 6-8 members of the cuc. not a high load.

You guys keep saying low nutrient load, but the only way I know to increase that is to feed more, which I did. I cut back this week because algae was starting to grow more than I'm comfortable with. If there's something else I can do, I'm all ears.

I removed the majority of the chaeto last night, and yes, it was fairly light in color. I did leave the darker green clump as I thought there may be some difference. We'll see how it goes w/ that chunk.

Your comments about the algae tipped me off as to what might be the problem. You're using more GFO and Carbon on your 75g then I use on my 300g. Better yet, you're got The Rock on Kendall Jenner's diet.

Carbon dosing is a general term for methods that make carbon available in the water to induce bacteria to grow and consume nitrates I believe. Then people skim off the bacteria and this accomplishes nutrient export. Some examples are vinegar dosing and vodka dosing.

Good summary Jolt. Biopellets is becoming a popular method of carbon dosing as well. Technically, you're not "dosing" anything, but the media adds a constant carbon source for the bacteria.

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I haven't been able to monitor CA until I got my reagents in yesterday, so I wasn't going to add any. I'll be doing that over the next week and seeing where the sweet spot is re: ml/day.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this: To help keep pH balanced, add ALK at night and CA in the morning, yes?

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I haven't been able to monitor CA until I got my reagents in yesterday, so I wasn't going to add any. I'll be doing that over the next week and seeing where the sweet spot is re: ml/day.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this: To help keep pH balanced, add ALK at night and CA in the morning, yes?

I'd bring Ca back to 420 ppm ASAP, and then tune your system to figure out ml/day. The priority is to get it back to a tolerable level for your acros before they decline in health any further.

Ideally I'd never chase pH, such a useless parameter to follow once your tank is stable, but to answer your question, ideally you'd want to dose in the middle of the night to keep it balanced, but since that's not a reality unless you automate it, I'd dose in the morning to bring your pH back up.

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I've been using the methods described in this article by Rand Holmes-Farley. I think it's a losing battle to dose Alk to raise pH, and I've never heard of dosing in the day or night, but it's possible. I try to do all of my testing and corrections at the same time of day for consistency.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sascha - it's not in an effort to raise pH. It's that your tank naturally has rise/fall of pH during different time of the day, so you dose at an appropriate TOD to compliment/normalize that, instead of intensifying it. I wish I could find the specific vid where they describe it.

I've been testing at the same time of day (or at least trying to) for the same reason - normalize my findings. I'm more confused than ever now! lol (not really lol)

Here's the Alk - Ca is just as looney.

14m4dgz.png

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i wish i knew all the correct peramiters....i just watch the corals and how they react. I check the salinity and that's about it. I guess I did adjust my levels at 1st to get to a desired level then set up the Ca Rx and let it go. ill post some growth pic from a new tank set up 6 or 7 months.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Sascha - it's not in an effort to raise pH. It's that your tank naturally has rise/fall of pH during different time of the day, so you dose at an appropriate TOD to compliment/normalize that, instead of intensifying it. I wish I could find the specific vid where they describe it.

finally found it! (looking for a dosing pump)

http://youtu.be/zbUzr_YNJIg?t=1m50s

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  • 7 months later...

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