mhart032

I cant seem to keep my phosphate up. last week it was .03 from undetectable, i fed heavy for several days 3 times a day, i reduced fuge lighting to every mondays thursdays and saturdays. thinking it would be .05-6 and i would be happy, checked this morning .00 i have not done a water change yet on this system in 3ish months. i dont get it. any ideas?  

forgot.. Oh and Angel fish are d!cks  

So i have been having some noise issues with the return pump. It works well just been a little noisy. I have been looking at different options and i think im going to go with the Abyzz A200 i have some travel coming in the next 2 months and really thats the one thing i dont want to fail, I did recently pickup a Neptune AFS as well. i plugged it into the system and it shut down all my modules and i had to reprogram my entire apex to get everything working again. what a POS. That quickly went back to BRS. 

I think the ICP will be a big help. 

nice, how was the calibration? Pretty easy? I know the alkatronic was not easy and it took forever to setup. I've heard it's easier on a iPhone, but I use Android so it kept disconnecting on me. I hope the Triton works out well, I'd like to switch when I can get one. 

How was the setup? Do you need a reservoir for waste discharge? 

I agree on that 100% 

2 minutes ago, eddius-maximus said:

I was able to snag one, it’ll be here in a couple days. I agree about 4x minimum testing, what is that? For cal and mag no less. But if the reported reagent prices are accurate then it’ll amount to less than what I’m paying at the moment for daily alk and weekly cal/mag manual testing. 

Nice, ill try again when they come back in stock. 

I tried to buy one last night. but im not going to jump through all the hoops. if i cant buy it in 30 secs then my attention is diverted elsewhere. im just running fish only for a couple more months anyway and i dont really need to make sure my alk is on point for my coraline algae. 

Id never seen a price on it yet. 599 isn't to bad to be honest. I do like the alkatronic once it's dialed in it's great. I was just shocked that they were finally advertising it with a price and that it's going to be in stock very soon. I knew the new Apex update included support for it and all. 

https://www.saltwateraquarium.com/apex-trident-alk-cal-mag-monitoring-device-neptune-systems/

23 hours ago, eddius-maximus said:

No temp swings. 78.5 to 79, controlled by two heaters/Apex. 

Interestingly, my tank is no longer clean. My nitrates are up, as are phosphate. And I tossed in a healthy 'tester' acro frag two weeks ago, long after any spikes or drops associated with MP blocks. This tester frag has received nothing but stability.

Two weeks later and death at the tips. So whatever horrible **** is happening isn't from the MP blocks or drops in nutrients. 

Back to square 1. I've been thinking long and hard as to what could possibly be causing this. So much money, gone.

I bought a huge batch of Tropic Marin Pro when starting this tank - I've still been working my way through it. And I remember the very first time I mixed it, Alk registered as 6.0. I thought this was odd, having to adjust alk/cal/mag up when making new batches. Now I'm wondering if I received a bad batch of Tropic Marin, if that could cause what is happening here. 

Your welcome to borrow the alkatronic for a few weeks if you want to rule out any alk swings that might be happening, while i wait on my tank to mature enough for corals. its not hooked up currently. 

6 hours ago, eddius-maximus said:

Thanks, guys. I’m not even mad anymore. Just curious. I’m slowly going through variable by variable.

No stray voltage. Lights are fine. RODI still outputting 0 tds. Nutrients are good. No bad hardware leeching metals. What’s left? Bad batch of salt? Bad batch of ATI Essentials? Those are the last two things I can think of. I’m slowly swapping out my water with Fritz salt as I’ve had great success with it prior to this new tank. 

All in all I’ve lost around 40 acros ranging in size from frag to colony. I’m bracing for more losses. Weirdly all softies and LPS are vibrant and healthy and happy. Who knows.

My wife has been a rockstar. Her stance is, well you love buying corals and now you get to buy more. Keeper. 

Im curious as well. I guess it prob could be bad batch of salt and or ATI supplements. I've been racking my brain trying to think of anything else it could be. 

 Yes definitely a keeper! 

Eddie, by chance can you check your apex logs and see what water temps were during this time?

What are the chances it stays this way in home aquariums? 

I've been thinking about that, I think I'm going to cut the fuge back to lighting every other day. See if I can get it up a little higher and stabilize for a couple months. I'm thinking dosing the kalk will help with the alk and calcium, and the PH swings as night. Hopefully the phosphates will fall in line when the decreased lighting of the fuge. I appreciate the info I'll give it a read. 

Looks great. 

Having some DKH issues, alk is dropping and having issues keeping it up, i think i will setup a kalk reactor in line with the ATO to keep it up. Phosphates finally went back up to .02 which im great with. still no algae other than the fuge. 

Ok, thanks I'll give that a try. I have never fed this much, only once every 2 days when it was just the clowns. But with 12 fish and feeding the fuge to keep the algae growing I have been feeding a ton. Oh the angel also eats sea lettuce, loves it in fact goes crazy when it gets to the display. But I'll cut down and just feed mysis and pellets once a day, see if that helps

Thanks again! 

The pellets are hikari marine pellets. 

I feed rods, frozen mysis, brine and pellet food. I feed a cube of mysis in the morning, pellets in the afternoon and rods and mysis in the evening. I also have sea veggies on a clip the butterfly and angel graze on due to no algae in the display. This fish has only been in the tank for tomorrow will be a week. Could it have been constipation from stress of the new tank and travel? It eats like a pig and is very very active. 

All, i will be trhe first to admit i know some about fish, but not alot, never had to treat for any parasites or ever had anything strange go on with them. ive kept very small populations of 3 or 4 fish most the time in most my tanks weather it be a 90gal, 40gal and so on. the point.. I have a coral beauty Angelfish that keeps pooping long stringy brown substance roughly 4 times in the last couple hours, it eats like a pig and breaths and swims normal. what could be wrong.  

Quick update, My phosphates fell to 0.00 on the hanna checker, ALK is 7.8 Mag is 1260, Calcium is a little low at 360. no nitrates, ammonia or nitrites. Im a little worried about the 0.00 phosphates and no nitrates i really wanted a little just to be on the safe side. Ive been feeding 3 times a day frozen in the mornings and evenings and pellets during the day and still no phosphates. I might have to dial back the fuge a little and remove some micro algae. I still haven't connected the Alkatronic back up. I am noticing that im using alk but i have not dosed anything in the tank yet. 

Could always send a ICP into Triton or API.