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SChambers

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SChambers last won the day on July 17 2019

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  1. Hey all, I am looking to get some leather corals for my tank to help it get more established. I tried starting out with some SPS and have managed to kill off most of them, so I am looking for something cheap and hardy while I get the feel for coral care and get my tank better established. Let me know if y'all have anything or could point me to somewhere to take a look. Thanks!
  2. Yea I'm not sure what to do... If I lose them, I am not sure how to prevent further loss in the future. I know there is a lot of factors that go into each specific coral... Amount of water flow, Lighting levels and amount of time for lighting... I have a power head for water flow and it is the one most people suggest for the size of my tank. I'm not quite sure if I have optimal placement for the best flow or if I placed the corals properly to get the flow they like. For lighting I am running day lights from 11 am to 7 pm and the blue lights from 7 am to midnight... this will all change when I get my retrofit though. I'm hoping the instruction guide gives a good suggestion for how to program the controller for optimal coral care. I looked into both the nanobox retrofit and Steve's LED retrofit. Ultimately I ended up going with Steve's LED after reading multiple reviews and inputs.
  3. Well, I am going to try a retrofit because I would really like to keep the hood on. I couldn't find a decent option to be able to keep the tank covered since it is a bow front and I am not crafty enough to make my own from acrylic like I have seen others do. I have cats and a kid and I am too scared things would get in the top if I left it open. I also got the inTank fuge basket for the back and a LED underwater light so I can start growing macroalgae back in the second chamber. I haven't had any macroalgae up to this point, but I hope this can help my tank stabilize. I saw my fish sitting towards the top of the tank and sometimes mouthing at the surface, so I was concerned that the O2 levels in the tank might be getting low. I did a larger volume water change to help that and it does seem to have helped the fish; however, the corals up top are degrading badly. I think the bizzaro cyphastra is lost, it is entirely white and I don't see any polyps. The Nauti Spiral Montipora is losing color by the day and the Rainbow Montipora has not gained any color back. PO4 - 0.05 Mg - 1240 Ca - 390 pH - 8.0 KH - 9.3 NO3 - 5 NH3 - 0 Salinity - 1.025 NO2 - 0 This larger water change caused my KH to drop, but so did Ca and Mg. I did a Mg dose to try and get that level up, but I am going slow with it. I think the larger water also negatively impacted my corals... Not sure how to balance this, but I don't think I can salvage the 3 that are losing colors. The LEDs won't be here for a bit and I'll need to go slow with dialing up the LEDs on the retrofit so I don't blast my corals and allow them to acclimate. The vermetid snails are also being a huge pain... they keep latching to my corals and are all over the tank. No matter how many I break off there are more all over the place and they keep coming back. I did treat the anemones and they are mostly gone... I missed 2 aiptaisia and I will treat again soon.
  4. I situated the meter on the rock near coral and took the reading with the lid down, but it was propped open the thickness of the probe wire.
  5. Got out to aquadome today to rent a PAR meter. Top of my tank at the height of the highest coral I am reading 130 and then lowest coral I am reading around 75. The measurements are definitely not exact since this tank has a hood on and I could not get it to fully close while reading out on the meter. PAR does seem low when comparing it to suggested lighting levels for most of my corals so that is a bit concerning. There are a few retrofits for my tank that I could upgrade lighting with or I could look at removing the hood all together and adding lighting. Not sure what would be best or most economical at this point.
  6. Thanks jolt. So I had a bit of a set back today. Got home and noticed the color was looking very bad on my rainbow montipora and that my tank was super cloudy. Apparently my pump somehow got stopped up and had next to no flow going. All I did was resit the pump in chamber 3 and the flow went back to normal. All I can think is that the pump got too close to the wall between chamber 2 and 3 and it cut off flow. I have suction cups on the bottom of the pump, but they don’t stay stuck. Hope I don’t lose the rainbow because I really like that coral.
  7. So I wasn’t able to get out this weekend due to my son getting sick. I will try and rent a PAR meter when I can, but the research I have is pretty mixed on the stock lights for LED biocube. There are some upgrade retrofits that I could get if it is not enough. I am not seeing any growth on the corals yet and I think I am about to have another cyano bloom. I ordered Aiptaisia X to deal with the pests and that should come in soon. PO4 - 0.03 MG - 1320 Ca - 400 pH - 8.0 KH - 10.3 NO3 - 10 NH3 - 0 Salinity - 1.024 Parameters seem to be heading in the right direction. Still trying to figure out what that growth is as well.
  8. I did not realize those were snails. I do have tubes like that extending from all over my rocks and my torch coral. It seems like there is not an easy way to deal with them. I tried breaking as many off as I could, but I doubt I did very much to impact the population. I also spotted some Aiptasia which I hope to get a peppermint shrimp to help deal with. I could also try some Aiptasia X if the shrimp doesn’t seem to take to them. I also have this soft growth on one of my live rocks that I cannot seem to identify. Any ideas?
  9. Really interesting read, thanks for all the detail... I would love to be able to get something like this setup as I get more experience in the hobby. Any updates on progress for the tank?
  10. A little late on the pictures but here we go... Whole Tank - Chalk Bass - He did have an injury to his eye, but it is starting to recover Firefish Goby - Torch Coral - It got really white after my last cyanobacteria treatment, but now it is starting to get color back toward the edges. I'm hoping it colors up nicely Nauti Spiral Montipora - Green Goblin Anacropora - I just noticed those black spots toward the bottom... is that something I need to be concerned about? Bizzaro Cyphastrea - Montipora Setosa - Rainbow Montipora - This one is hard to take a good picture of... I'm hoping it gets bit more color after I have raised it up in the tank. Lemon Lime Favia - LA Laker Turbinaria - I'm worried about the color on this one... it seems really dull. The green is not very vibrant and it doesn't glow under the night lights
  11. Big congratulations on the article... was a really good read and something to try and aspire to as someone new into the hobby
  12. I will think a little more about doing the ICP test and might get it in the next few weeks. I tested my tank again tonight and I'm hoping things are going in the right direction, but I don't know if it is enough. PO4 - 0 ... still 0; I tried dosing, but have not removed chemipure/purigen as Timfish suggested. If the dosing continues to not have an impact, I will try this but I don't want to run the tank for an extended period of time without these... any suggestions? MG - 1260; down a bit, but I don't want to dose any because I think it will let me Alk go up too high Ca - 400 pH - 8.0 KH - 10.9; down a bit from last week so this is going in the right direction NO3 - 10; no change from last week, but I don't think 10 is a bad number... is it too high? NH3 - 0 Salinity - 1.024 I didn't get to working on the tank until the night lights had already kicked on so I will try and get some pictures tomorrow of the corals and the tank overall. I had a rough time getting the corals to stay with my seachem reef glue... I tried going pretty light on first application, but I had to go pretty heavy to get it to stick. I looked up some suggestions and it looks like layering with glue + putty would be better for the future. Also, my sea urchin was being a pain and kept picking up my frags and dragging them around the tank. However, they seem to be in place now and staying put. During my water change this week, I did about half as much as I usually do and scrubbing on the algae to try and help clear that up as Timfish had suggested. I usually do a 5 gal change, but did about half of that. I think the GHA is looking better, but it is not a massive impact yet. I also notice that I have a lot of bristle worms including quite a few babies... seems like there was a pretty big boom in breeding and now they are swarming out in the light during feeding time which I think means they overcrowded and are now having to struggle for food. Is this something I need to look into manually removing some or will this auto correct?
  13. I missed these posts since I guess I forgot to click notify me of replies... Thanks for y'alls input so far. I will check at my next aquadome visit about renting a PAR meter. I mounted my corals this past weekend after looking up and getting some input on the light levels each require. I will post some pictures later with my next water test results. They are still alive so that is good... Is the ICP truly that useful? It looks like a 2 week turn and just from the few tests I've done so far, the results aren't stable from week to week for my tank. I am wondering how reliable the results would be... I would hate to react to a parameter that has since subsided or overcorrect and cause my tank to crash.
  14. Thanks Tim, I will work on trying to get the phosphate levels up... the salifert kit does not have ideal resolution it seems and I keep doubling up to try and get the higher resolution, but even then I didn't see any color to call it above 0. I have created a new post in tank builds if y'all are interested or could continue to help me out with tips
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