bige Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 I have dumped about two or three times the recommended amount without any problems. The guy at aquatek told me he does it all the time. 400 might be too much though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bige Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 But I found dosing too little never will bring it up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted March 10, 2014 Author Share Posted March 10, 2014 When I tested last weekend it was 1260, so it's losing like 80 per day. Dosing for 150 should bring it up well enough. Assuming its consistent in some way. Anyone know of a place south to get mg on a Monday (aquafome's closed on todays). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+brian.srock Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 I have plenty of Mg if you want to swing by my place tonight. I have unopened Mg sulfate and Mg Cloride 1 gallons so you can pay the BRS price of $19 each if you want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 As an alternative, magnesium sulfate is Epsom Salt. It is available at any pharmacy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted March 10, 2014 Author Share Posted March 10, 2014 I have plenty of Mg if you want to swing by my place tonight. I have unopened Mg sulfate and Mg Cloride 1 gallons so you can pay the BRS price of $19 each if you want. Thanks, but you're a bit farther than I can go tonight. As an alternative, magnesium sulfate is Epsom Salt. It is available at any pharmacy. Oh really? Well I have to go to the pharmacy tonight anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted March 11, 2014 Author Share Posted March 11, 2014 As an alternative, magnesium sulfate is Epsom Salt. It is available at any pharmacy. I read about it and got a "recipe" but it cautioned against using it to raise, or even maintain, mag with just Epsom salts because of sulfate buildup. They recommended a 30% water change a month with it. Man, at that I'd probably not need to dose anything. Do you know anything about sulphate build up? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted March 14, 2014 Author Share Posted March 14, 2014 Greedy lil buggers. I just had a porcelain crab grab a giant mysis pop out of my hand and tuck it into his RBTA. Then, I got a half a giant piece and my pistol shrimp grabbed it and ran it into hs burrow. He shot it a couple of times for good measure. I hope no one gets an ice shrimp headache. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesL Posted March 14, 2014 Share Posted March 14, 2014 I have not seen my porcelain crab feed the anemone. I have seen him eat the anemone slime when it sheds some off (yeah, great visual for a Friday morning breakfast). The clowns are good about taking large pieces of food to the anemone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted March 14, 2014 Share Posted March 14, 2014 As an alternative, magnesium sulfate is Epsom Salt. It is available at any pharmacy. I read about it and got a "recipe" but it cautioned against using it to raise, or even maintain, mag with just Epsom salts because of sulfate buildup. They recommended a 30% water change a month with it. Man, at that I'd probably not need to dose anything. Do you know anything about sulphate build up? My groundwater makeup is high in sulphate. I have not had problems with it. As a minor nutrient, it is up taken by macro and probably coral. I have never used Epsom salt, I mentioned it to give you a convient option. Patrick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted March 14, 2014 Author Share Posted March 14, 2014 I have not seen my porcelain crab feed the anemone. I have seen him eat the anemone slime when it sheds some off (yeah, great visual for a Friday morning breakfast). The clowns are good about taking large pieces of food to the anemone. poor little morticia (mama clown) can hardly get to her nem after the two porcelain crabs moved in. i need my nem to grow fast if austin is going to enact that tenant limit law. but honestly, he may not have been trying to feed the nem, he may have just been trying to manage the buoyancy. the shrimpcycle was bigger than he was. As an alternative, magnesium sulfate is Epsom Salt. It is available at any pharmacy. I read about it and got a "recipe" but it cautioned against using it to raise, or even maintain, mag with just Epsom salts because of sulfate buildup. They recommended a 30% water change a month with it. Man, at that I'd probably not need to dose anything. Do you know anything about sulphate build up? My groundwater makeup is high in sulphate. I have not had problems with it. As a minor nutrient, it is up taken by macro and probably coral. I have never used Epsom salt, I mentioned it to give you a convient option. Patrick thanks patrick, good to know. it turns out that the water changes for sulphate has not been an issue. i pulled out three gallons last night and replaced it with FW water to get my salinity down from 1.030 to 1.025. i need to retest mg tonight. according to the recipe i found i am supposed to need over a gallon to get my Mg up from 800 to 1250. but, after adding in 2-3 cups for a couple of days my test showed 1350 last night. either their recipe was wrong or one of the tests was wrong (whether it was the 800 or the 1350). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted March 14, 2014 Share Posted March 14, 2014 If you need to increase your Mg and you had a possible piece of bryopsis in your system (from that zoa frag you posted a month ago), perhaps just dose with Tech M Magnesium to increase your levels and blast any chance of bryopsis in your system at the same time? Just a thought. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted March 14, 2014 Author Share Posted March 14, 2014 If you need to increase your Mg and you had a possible piece of bryopsis in your system (from that zoa frag you posted a month ago), perhaps just dose with Tech M Magnesium to increase your levels and blast any chance of bryopsis in your system at the same time? Just a thought. good idea, but that frag hasn't made it out of QT yet. one month and no sign of any bryopsis (or any pests), so it is ready to go in. but i'll probably dip it once more to be sure. it's funny. that guy spit off one cluster of three heads and a single head that seem to be perfectly content on the sand. not sure what i'll do with those. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted April 11, 2014 Author Share Posted April 11, 2014 so, i did something really dumb (learning is good, though). after finding a balance between feeding and nutrient export i did a few problematic things. my attempt at a bullet-proof system got shot . my sump is designed for a skimmer, but i filled that compartment with mud/macro as well as the main center compartment. but my light does not exactly cover this area and some of the macro is lit with light going through the pane of glass separating the two compartments. but i have let that pane of glass fill up with algae film, coraline, and some white stuff that i don't really know what it is. so, some of the light is obscured. then, on a whim i bought some chaeto. i didn't really have a good place to put it, or a good reason to other than checking it out. so, i just put it on top of prolifera i have in the skimmer compartment. so, more light blocking. the combination of these two things caused a die off of the prolifera that was in that section. the next thing i did, which was just neglectful on my part. i let the prolifera in the center (main section) go too long without being pruned. so, it kinda ran out of room to grow, and started killing off the shorter leaves underneath. three weeks ago my nitrates were less than 0.5 ppm, phosphates undetectable, and all the macro was growing nicely again. i started to see my corals not too happy and tested everything on monday. everything looked good except my nitrates were off the charts (at least 160 ppm). phosphates were up to about 0.25 ppm. so, i pulled out about 60% of the macro (more than i intended, actually) and did a couple of large water changes (maybe 30% and 20% - ran out of salt on change 2...). i extended the photo period on the sump. oh, reduced feeding, too. my nitrates were back to about 20 ppm yesterday. since not everything looks happy again, i went ahead and did another large water change and will retest tonight. two things occurred to me today: the blocked light from the glass panel, and i probably still have some dying macros (or at least not fully recovered). i guess the plan for today is retesting. i will definitely scrape that glass panel. if the nitrates are still at 10 ppm or more i will do another water change. if it is less than 10 ppm i will pull out all of the prolifera that is in there and start anew with stuff in my QT. if it is not low enough, i will probably pull out an equal amount to what i can add back in or just add some of the healthy stuff and try to pick through to find dead stuff. i don't want to reduce my filter that much. overall i am happy that i have been able to reduce the nitrates from >160 ppm to around 20 ppm in four days. good news - LPS and softies are back to full extension. my shrimp and crabs have all weathered the storm (who knows about the pom pom crab i see every six months or so, i guess i'll know in august). not so good news - my favorite coral (sunny d, the dendro) is continuing to fade. five small heads are all but gone (but still have white fleshy bits and some of them still have orange) and the main head has no tentacles out and starting to get some white patches. bad news - i have lost my clam and sun coral (both were persnickety to begin with), a blue digi may or may not come back (starting to grow coraline i think is a bad sign), and my molly died. i'm not sure that all of these have to do with the nitrates, but it seems likely. the molly is the main one i am not sure about because i am notorious for committing molly-cide. the fact he lived two months is a bit of a miracle in this house. so notes to self - if it's working, don't add chaeto and be sure to prune when things are getting full. this has once again started my thinking about reworking my sump to get rid of the skimmer compartment and remove the glass pane between it and the light. it is really hard to keep that clean since more than half of it is covered by the bubble catch baffle thing. something i should learn from this, but probably wont (if i'm honest), is to test things when i see that i have a problem. usually when things start looking the way the do it is because my alk is low. so i dosed some of that and let it go a couple of more days. when it didn't help i decided to test...whoops. well, it had been a while since i did a long rambling post, so i guess i was due. it was hard to add too much humor to this one though, but i tried to sprinkle some in here and there to make it worth it for you guys . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted April 11, 2014 Author Share Posted April 11, 2014 just retested - Nitrates at close to 5 ppm. so, tonight i'll go ahead an pull the rest of the old prolifera and put in new. also, i've been meaning to add some of the gracilara hayi i've been growing out. it wont mind higher nitrates, so may as well do it now. this is for the pretty, i don't think it grows fast enough to really do a whole lot of filtering. so long as the red macro predator (brittle star i think) doesn't break it into little decomposing bits. if he is going to mess with it, i hope he just eats the whole thing. also, the nem is looking better (bigger) and he seems to be moving back to his home in the palys. he got so small one of his crab friends moved out. it's funny, i guess he thought he could get away from it, but got about 9" away and gave up. kinda forgot to mention him in the diatribe above. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KimP Posted April 12, 2014 Share Posted April 12, 2014 What an ordeal. Good for you for keeping up with it and getting those nitrates down so quickly! I had to re-read a few times when I thought you wrote "water change" and especially "big water change" j/k j/k... Why are you changing out all of the prolifera instead of just leaving some of the stuff that's in there now? And about your dendro, that sucks! Have you been keeping up with feeding it and it still receded that much? My 2 colonies were receding but that's only because I couldn't reach them for target feeding in the new aquascape after moving. I just put them in my pico and have been feeding them like crazy. They seem to be starting to recover quickly. Sounds like you're definitely on the right track! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted April 12, 2014 Author Share Posted April 12, 2014 Thanks Kim. Yeah, me and water changes, odd I know I ended up not pulling out all the old macro. As I went through it, some of it was still dark green and kinda mushy. So every thing that was in the skimmer section is replaced. Most of what was in the center compartment was green and crisp, so I left what was healthy in there. As for sunny d, I tried to feed him yesterday, but I'm not sure he ate anything because his tentacles were lower than the rim. They are a little over the rim today (in the big head), so I'll try to give him supper tonight. None of the other heads have tentacles anymore. But I think they are all connected, so if the big guy starts eating it may bring back the little ones. There is still a lot of tissue to bounce back, if he survives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KimP Posted April 12, 2014 Share Posted April 12, 2014 If you have any smaller food, like frozen cyclopeeze or baby brine, even filter feeder food would be good for the heads without many tentacles. I've also read that the heads can support each other. I bet you'll get it back in shape. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted April 12, 2014 Author Share Posted April 12, 2014 If you have any smaller food, like frozen cyclopeeze or baby brine, even filter feeder food would be good for the heads without many tentacles. I've also read that the heads can support each other. I bet you'll get it back in shape. I just shoved a couple of pellets in its mouth I scraped the glass and stirred the sand playing with algae. So as lot of whatever is released when I do that spread around the tank for the filter feeders. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted April 12, 2014 Share Posted April 12, 2014 I bet if you added some bioballs you could avoid this dennis... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted April 12, 2014 Author Share Posted April 12, 2014 I bet if you added some bioballs you could avoid this dennis... OK, so my first thought was "hahaha". Followed by "why you gotta bring this to my thread, isn't two enough?" I then landed on "who cares, that was funny". But bio balls may fit nicely in my sump if I do end up pulling the macro out of the skimmer compartment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted April 18, 2014 Author Share Posted April 18, 2014 Well my nitrates are hanging out at 10 ppm and phosphates are between 0 and 0.25 ppm. Upon further investigation my chaeto experiment is over. The prolifera is growing again, but the cheato is shrinking. I think it wasn't getting enough light where I moved it. So, I've pulled it out and am going back to what was working before. Every inhabitant is doing great. Except sunny d. The dendro has some fleshy bits left but no obvious mouth bits. Is there any hope that an NPS coral can grow new mouth bits to feed the remaining fleshy bits? I wouldn't think so, but I'm no expert, clearly. Maybe it can absorb plankton or something through its pores. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gonzo59 Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 I'm sorry about your dendro not doing well :/ I love those things. What your feeding schedule look like for it? Maybe it wasn't getting enough? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted April 18, 2014 Author Share Posted April 18, 2014 Ha, he was getting fed 10-15 mysis shrimp a day. Nitrates is the only explanation I have. Or I got chemical in the tank. If he goes I'll get another one. I'm just worried I'll be mean to it and constantly compare them. "yeah, sunny day ate a peppermint shrimp, what you got there sunny e. See you don't even get a good name, just moving to the next letter for you" I may need a sufficient mourning period before replacing him. If he doesn't pull through. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gonzo59 Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Haha I kinda like sunny e. I hope sunny d will pull through though, do you have a plan to get nitrate down quickly or are you waiting for the prolifera to do its job? I've been trying to get a dendro myself for a while now, fingers crossed for c4! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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