Planeden

"FarmerTy"

Thanks for the tip! So how'd you get into saltwater? [emoji12]

Masochism

Wow Ty, that's a lot of fish swimming around. Looking good.

He's alive!

Yeah, alive and well. But maybe not back online much. I came on to message someone and had a couple of minutes, so I checked out a few builds.

So more of a proof of life posting and then back in the shadows, huh? [emoji6]

well, if you keep talking to me, and i have to respond, you may suck me back in .

Wow Ty, that's a lot of fish swimming around. Looking good.

He's alive!

Yeah, alive and well. But maybe not back online much. I came on to message someone and had a couple of minutes, so I checked out a few builds.

Wow Ty, that's a lot of fish swimming around. Looking good.

The tank is looking good, Kim. I am having a hair algae problem, too. I think I am going to try the water change and scrubbing thing.

welcome to the club. the setup looks good.

Max posted this article. It has a lot of information. it is long, but a good 25% of it is "author of this piece accepts no liability or responsibility for tanks crashing through the floor".

http://badmanstropicalfish.com/articles/article28.html

hey lara, unfortunately work has piled up and i wont be able to help.

That sounds like a good Yoda quotable... chaos leads to destruction... destruction leads to frags... frags lead to happy ARC members...

that is the path the bright side.

looks good

looks good so far.

Lol all good. I think I just stick with my habit but with my tap water it's a necessity. We have 25 dKH alk in our tap and if I let a rinsed glass air dry it looks like it was splattered with white paint no lie.

Holy cow. That's nuts. Maybe you should dose your tank with tap water and save on kalkwater.

I'll elaborate further. Test your water once a week for a month. Don't rinse your supplies. Just dump everything out in the sink and put them away. Record your results. Then on the 5th week test again after giving everything a thorough cleaning and drying and compare.

I don't mean to come off as abrasive. I've just personally witnessed how much not cleaning your testing equipment can throw off a regular testing and dosing regiment

Ok, I'm not a non believer exactly, I was just questioning the amount. But I never considered not rinsing as an option. Nor continued build up increasing the error. I was imagining that with a good tap water rinse and an air dry you may have 10 ppm error on calcium.

I'm not really a good candidate to test that, though, because between trying to figure out when my pink matches their pink and reading the microscopic numbers on the syringe I figure I get +/- 20 on my best days

Oh I didn't feel abraded. I asked, you answered.

I believe the syringe he's talking about it a reagent syringe not a sample syringe.

Either way it's the same principle, right? A few drops maybe drying and leaving some deposits.

Ive become more weary of phosphate numbers (readings) since i switched from the hanna phosphate to the hanna phosphorus. I think you have to be really careful about bottle cleaning and sampling procedures to get good data. I think i was getting false highs for a long time and have had lower phosphate than i would like to be keeping. For instance, I have ZERO ppp of phosphorus, and thats after heavy feedings. If i use an old cuvette that didnt have an acid wash, i get like 6 ppb. Lab procedures matter apparently.

My God I'm so glad to see someone else say that. I harp so much on lab procedures with local newbies when testing and everyone rolls their eyes. I get so frustrated. The amount of error you'll get by simply not cleaning and preparing vials and syringes properly is multiple times out of our tests standard error range. You can get 100+ ppm off on calcium and magnesium and 1-2 dKH off on alk if you're not careful.

People. With your test vials...rinse and scrub them with each use and them rinse with RODI water, and if they have lids...STORE them full of RODI water, as RODI water is highly reactive and will prevent any residual reagents from sticking to the glass, and DRY or rinse in tank water before using. Rinse all syringes with RODI water thoroughally and be sure to evacuate any fluid from the Red Sea pro and salifert syringe tips before use. Forget that and you'll be diluting your titrant by 10-20%. Lab procedures matter!!!

How can the few drops of drying water in the syringe and vial possibly change the calcium results by 100 ppm when you are measuring in a 5 mil sample? Even if you had 1 mil of water dry in the vial and syrenge it'd have to be at 1600 ppm or something to change the results that much. 0.006 ppb I believe because of the miniscule reading it wouldn't take much contamination to get from zero to very very close to zero. But to change from 400 ppm to 500 ppm?

I'd try river city aquatics. Or Timfish sets up and maintain tanks, so he may move one. I don't know the name of his company, though.

what would your wife say?

my grandmother had striations like that. never thought about whether it made her more valuable.

thanks guys,

Sorry to hear Planeden. Do you know your parameter levels on your tank? Perhaps post those and people can chime in on what may be the potential problem?

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parameters? those are those things you get from the little glass tubes, right?

If I had to guess, I'd say nitrates or phosphates, as I imagine feeding the dendros in a smaller tank tends to overload nutrients in the system if you don't have a good export system in place.

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actually, since the nitrate explosion fiasco earlier this year, those have been have been holding steady. what i need to do is take a sample to the experts and let them run a full panel for me and get more accurate results than "closer to 0.0 than 0.25" on the phosphates. nitrates have been around 5 ppm. but on one of my "i have an extra tube, lemme check nitrites" tests a couple of months ago was positive (low, but positive). i was surprised and rant he test again. i'll get into that with robb below. my alkalinty tested a little low at last check, but i have not had the time to re-start my dosing and am just sort of hoping that my recent water changes will help correct that.

Sounds somewhat like the typical new tank cycle. I didn't read all the thread, at work, but run carbon and increase water changes. If you can do smaller weekly water changes it would be better than larger bi weekly or monthly ones.

didn't read the thread? it's only 26 pages. i guess i am just not that important to you.

quick recap: the tank is about 1 year old. earlier this year something got out of whack and my nitrates jumped off the charts and had a bunch of stuff die. a bunch of water changes and got that back in control i thought i was in the clear. the fuge started growing normally, film on the glass slowed way down, everything seemed to be back to normal.

but i think it may have triggered mini-cycle or something because i did have nitrites in a couple of tests. so, i have been doing more frequent water changes (probably more fair to say "have been doing water changes". i deep cleaned about 1/2 the sandbed a week or so ago. things have been improving since then. the mushroom is starting to look like a throw pillow with fringe all around the perimeter, the nem is puffed up more, and the duncans and frogspawn were more extended yesterday. i plan to deep clean the other half this weekend.

we take turns?

i was apparently too adult in one of ty's threads and was told to keep it pg.

i can't believe that you bleached your coral just to show us a research example. you are generous man.

Never mind. I just saw on their site they have 18" ones now.

Yeah, but it is like you said. They basically packaged a 12" in a longer body. For my needs, it should work fine.

i think that the 20" i got was $1 per extra inch. i may be confused. but i know it was very cheap compared to the cost of the light.

Thanks everyone! I got some from Ty (thank you!) and getting some from Tim this weekend. I realized I hardly have any pods at all in my sump :/ I'm hoping getting a little from a couple tanks will help remedy this.

if not aquadome sells them (pods) as a fuge kit or something. i accidentally bought one a few weeks ago.

I forgot about that, thanks for the reminder. I'll probably pick one up when I'm there tomorrow

they like it when you call ahead so hunter can get it put together.

interesting article. thanks. although, i would not want to be the one in a german court having to cite this article to keep me out of jail. just to be on the safe side. i'll let other people test that first.