eddius-maximus

Hey there, my money's on coral starvation. High alkalinity and GFO without enough dissolved organics. The solution is a fun one, though. Get more fish. Feed them more often. Pull the GFO. All good things.

Maybe once you have 15 fish in there and they're all fat from all your feedings, you could consider re-adding the GFO. Until then, your water is too clean!

What’s the top one?!

Wow this resulted in a shocking amount of private messages. Apologies guys, he's gone, going with the honor system with the first person that PMed me.

Beautiful, peaceful, reef safe angelfish. As far as I know, the only type of reef safe angel. Currently stocked with tons of SPS, LPS, and softies. Eats everything (nori, mysis, HEB seafood, etc). Disease free. 

At some point my convict tang decided that The General (his name) deserves death. Their beef is stressing out the rest of the tank. I was able to catch the angelfish first so, off he goes. 

Needs a 125+ display. He's around 4 to 5 inches. Located in Circle C, SW Austin.

Toss 'em in the washer and use hot rinse cycle and a little bleach. They'll be good as new. Afterwards do another rinse cycle, no bleach.

Or put them in a box in your garage and never use them again like I did. 

Another viable course of action is just to wait and let it burn out. I'm about 4 months into a new anemone tank. I got GHA a month in and instead of doing anything I just dropped a few turbo snails in and let it ride. It turned lighter and wispier and eventually vanished.

Diatoms in the sand is normal. GHA this early on tells me your rock probably has some phosphate leeching. The first year or two will be gross. It's normal.

What PO4 remover were you thinking of using? GFO? In a perfect ideal world your skimmer and chaeto would be enough nutrient export, and in a few months, it likely will be enough. For now, it isn't a bad idea to start the GFO. Take BRS's calculator recommended amount and cut it in half, especially if using the high capacity stuff.

....I'm going to use this thread as a dump of random photos, I hope no one minds.

Full tank shot. Switching over to Orpheks was one of my good reef decisions. Tons of acro frags placed, I think it'll look really good once they've taken off.

11 minutes ago, Gig 'em @ NDstructible said:

My GHA has started to come back already. I left carbon offline for just shy of a month, but I guess that wasn’t long enough. I’ll likely be dosing again soon and starting the process over again. I have ulva in my tank and it’s not affected by Fluco at all, you could always use that as a form of nutrient export!

That is very surprising! Was your original dose 20mg per gallon? 

So I dosed Fluconazole back in May, around 7 months ago. It 100% annihilated my annoying Bryopsis problem. I woke up this morning to big tufts of Bryopsis in 4 different sections of my tank. I'd say 7 months of not having to worry about this terrible crap is pretty good.

Now the debate is whether or not I should re-dose. The last time I did it, it also killed my hair algae. Now that I'm using an algae scrubber as a source of nutrient export, it's not so clear what the appropriate course of action is.

Don't do it. There are a gajillion beautiful corals out there. They'll take over your tank.

I love these things. I have two XF-250s as my primary flow (one on each side of the tank). Like jolt mentioned they require cleaning or flow output strength reduces considerably. I hate cleaning these. To the point where I've stopped. It's been 9 months since my last cleaning. Instead what I do is just increase flow. Pre cleaning, 40% is too strong. Now they're both sitting at variable flow rates between 70% and 100% and it's the perfect amount for my tank.

My 4 year old son saw me attempting to figure out how to elegantly fit my new Turbo scrubber into the sump. His solution, utilizing some old toys.

Thanks for the links. I read them.

26 minutes ago, Timfish said:

Micheal Palletta back in the mid 90's observed the same thing when looking at Leng Sy's "Ecosystem" method

What was Palletta's observation? Was it lack of coral growth/recession? Or sudden macro algae loss?

I just can't seem to get chaeto to grow anymore. 

45 minutes ago, jolt said:

I run a Turbos aquatics on both my systems.  I really like them.  I would say I am still learning the finer points on how to tune them, but my display tank unit generates quite a bit of algae and it definitely keeps nitrates in check.

Argh, Turbos Aquatics. Drives me nuts. Maybe I'll get lucky and find one second hand one of these days.

I'm actually really impressed at the apparent efficiency of a thriving refugium. As soon as I pulled mine, I'm now seeing hundreds of tiny microbubbles all over my live rock which tells me algae and cyano is brewin'. I need to find some alternate means of nutrient reduction until I can get my macros going again. I *really* don't want to bring out the old GFO reactor.

My tank has recently decided that refugiums are for scrubs. Chaeto, ulva/sea lettuce, Gracilaria, all rejected.

Definitely not a nutrient issue as now that the macro algaes have lost dominance in my system, I'm starting to see a little cyano and HA in both my fuge and display - things I haven't seen in a long time.

I'm toying with the idea of swapping out my refugium for an algae scrubber. Does anyone have any experiences? There's also a handful of 'popular' ones. Turbo scrubbers seem to be the top of the list but after swapping e-mails with him since February begging for a unit, I'm done. Making scrubbers doesn't appear to be a business or even a hobby for the guy at this point. I see different brands like 302Aquatics and Santa Monica and Clear Water. The Santa Monica RAIN2 seems interesting. 

Who uses one? Thoughts? Worth it?

Calcium will never rise on its own in a reef tank without some sort of dosing or additive like PurpleUp, et cetera... 

I'd guess either fluctuations in salinity or time to order a new Salifert. FWIW Salifert is my favorite calcium test but there have been many times where I've had to discard half-used reagent bottles from strange anomalies. It does happen.

Tropic Eden Reefflakes. It's my goto sand.

So, my wife has been passively watching me scramble this morning. She just did the same math that Sierra Bravo did. Except she called me a dumbass at the end of it. Deserved. After emptying a few more cups I've been able to get the Refractometer to read 1.027 from 1.028 so it appears its all in working order and my tank is in fact sitting at 1.028.

So how did my salinity creep so high? Interesting dilemma. I stopped doing water changes 6 months ago and my tank has never looked better. But after some digging just now it would appear the large amounts of 2-part I dose (200ml of each) for all my SPS does indeed increase salinity. I had no idea. You add sodium carbonate and calcium chloride, and as the calcium carbonate is removed by corals, the sodium and chloride remain. I do empty quite a bit of SW out with my skimmer, I'd assume it would balance out. Apparently not. 

Thanks for the quick replies guys. I'll do all the things suggested. 

I woke up this morning, had some coffee, checked my salinity. 1.028. I know some people have success running that salinity but that's a little too high for me. 

I recalibrate the Milwaukee Refractometer using the included 0.00 solution. Re-check. 1.028. I grab a jug and scoop out 3 cups of water to let my ATO compensate with RODI.

I check again. 1.028. Three more cups of water removed. 1.028. Three more cups of water. 1.028. 

At this point I'm starting to wake up and my brain is starting to function. Maybe the refractometer is busted despite it being exceedingly expensive and babied. So I check my upstairs anemone tank. 1.024. I check some freshly made saltwater. 1.025. So it appears to be working.

Why is it that even after 12 cups of water (130g total water volume) I'm unable to get this **** thing to read any different? At this point I'm just shooting for 1.027 but I'm afraid that this meter is fubared and I'm going to accidentally brick this tank!

What am I missing here? It's also probably worth mentioning that the included validation 1.025 SG solution is reading 1.028 as well. How bizarre! Although this could be an anomaly as it's fairly old solution and there have been instances where I've left it open on accident so evaporation could be an issue.