Planeden Posted April 18, 2014 Author Share Posted April 18, 2014 i dropped my nitrates from >160 ppm to 20 ppm in four or five days with two water changes and cleaning the decaying algae out of the fuge. i'm not terribly concerned about 10 ppm as up to 25 ppm has never been a problem before. my only minor concern is that if sunny d is suffering from nitrate poisoning, then he may have less tolerance than normal. i'm sure if i leave it alone for a bit and let all the little nitrate eaters clear their heads it'll drop back down to 5 ppm or less (usually less) where it was steady for quite some time. just a note: by my calculations a 30% and 20% water change would have dropped the nitrates from 160 to 160 - 0.3 * 160 = 112 ppm to 112 - 0.2 * 112 = 90 ppm if no nitrate was being added in those few days. so, the water changes accounted for about 50% of the drop and filtration accounted for another 50% of it. that is assuming my math is right and that my water changes were around what i think they were. if things weren't dying on me i would have just watched to see how long the filter took to drop it on its own, but yeah, life saving wins over research. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluemoon Posted April 21, 2014 Share Posted April 21, 2014 c4!!! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted April 21, 2014 Author Share Posted April 21, 2014 I'm still holding out hope. According to the guys at aquadome it may reform mouth bits. And it may be able to eat plankton. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted May 3, 2014 Author Share Posted May 3, 2014 Ok, it seems close to stabilized. For this process, since algae eats nitrates, i was not doing a lot of glass scraping. Why not use every advantage I have, right? Anyway, the other day I noticed the algae on the front glass started to clear itself up a bit, so i scraped it off and tested. Expecting 0 nitrates, but I found that it was at 5 ppm and phosphates were near (but not) 0 ppm. I still have some nuesance algea on the rocks, pumps, and whatnot, but you can see in the pictures below that it is doing pretty well. I either scraped the glass tuesday or wednessday and it is still clear. Although, i did clean the outside of the glass for the pictures. FTS 2-21-14 FTS 5-2-14 So, overall I think it still looks ok, and many things have had good growth in those 2 months. Dendro 2-18-14 Dendro 5-2-14 To Be continued, it is not letting me add more photos at the moment I do not expect you guys to play "where's waldo" nearly as long as we have, but i see what looks like 4 definately with tentacles, 3 more possibles, and four more spots that i think have a chance to grow out. It is also a little easier to see with the camera before i take the picture, move about and blur the snot out of it. it's funny, the two spots i htought may grow a head were not the ones i see that have. if my excitment over this news wins out over lazyness i may pull out the 10X lens and see what i can see. unless something truly amazing comes out, i wont bore you with the details. He's a fighter, that's for sure. Speaking to Hunter at aquadome, we joked about how if it came back it would sprout heads all over the place and that a good way to get it to spread out is to nearly kill it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted May 3, 2014 Author Share Posted May 3, 2014 Ok, it seems close to stabilized. For this process, since algae eats nitrates, i was not doing a lot of glass scraping. Why not use every advantage I have, right? Anyway, the other day I noticed the algae on the front glass started to clear itself up a bit, so i scraped it off and tested. I found that it was at 5 ppm and phosphates were near (but not) 0 ppm. Not bad by my standards. I still have some nuisance algae on the rocks, pumps, and whatnot, but you can see in the pictures below that it is doing pretty well. I either scraped the glass tuesday or wednessday and it is still clear. Although, i did clean the outside of the glass for the pictures. FTS 2-21-14 FTS 5-2-14 So, overall I think it still looks ok, and many things have had good growth in those 2 months. But there were some losses. Dendro 2-18-14 Dendro 5-2-14 I do not expect you guys to play "where's waldo" nearly as long as we have, but i see what looks like 4 definitely with tentacles, 3 more possibles, and four more spots that i think have a chance to grow out. It is also a little easier to see with the camera before i take the picture, move about and blur the snot out of it. it's funny, the two spots i thought may grow a head were not the ones i see that have. if my excitement over this news wins out over laziness i may pull out the 10X lens and see what i can see. unless something truly amazing comes out, i wont bore you with the details. He's a fighter, that's for sure. Speaking to Hunter at aquadome, we joked about how if it came back it would sprout heads all over the place and that a good way to get it to spread out is to nearly kill it. A final note: I added perhaps a quart of Grac. Hayi a two-three weeks ago. Now I have one sprig stuck to my powerhead. I'm not sure who, but someone in here devours red macro like a fiend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KimP Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 How's that dendro doing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustin Pedretti Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 My turgid love red macro...can't keep any in my dt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustin Pedretti Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 That was supposed to say my turbo...stupid smart phone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted July 9, 2014 Author Share Posted July 9, 2014 How's that dendro doing? he's coming back nicely. i'm sure that some of these heads will grow together so it wont have dozens, but i'm just glad that he has heads . i will pass along your concerns. i know he will appreciate it. these are taken with a 4X lens. so, some of the heads can eat a mysis shrimp, but it kinda dwarfs them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted July 9, 2014 Author Share Posted July 9, 2014 My turgid love red macro...can't keep any in my dt i think mine may be a brittle star, but turbos are also a possibility. when i set up the GOM box, i moved my QT tank. i culled at least 1.5 quarts of gracialara hayi. it was full of pods and bristle worms so i just put it in the DT and let it get eaten but keep the worms and pods. it lasted about a week. something eats it fast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted July 9, 2014 Author Share Posted July 9, 2014 so, not great news about the tank. it seemed to be just kinda slowly dying. i thought it had stabilized, but then i lost my two hammers. my nem is not looking too happy. so, now it is really lacking color. oh, and the cleaner shrimp hasn't come out of hiding...so...yeah...he's gone. i haven't lost any fish. i thought i had, but i found him in the sump. for the life of me i can't figure out how they get from the overflow to the sump. maybe they just get sucked in? i spoke to hunter about it (aquadome guru) and he recommended a deep vacuuming of the sand bed. since then nothing has been fading away. the mushroom is starting to peak out tenticles again. the frogspawn fell of the rock and i don't think i glued him down exactly where he was, so he is not extending as much as he was before he fell. that is not helping the color. but i haven't had a chance to do any water testing. but, i'm going to give it more time and then start adding some corals back in. i think that i will add more corals than i had originally planned, too. after seeing the BML light on my GOM box, i really like the colors better. i think that will also help the look of the tank, so i'm thinking of buying BML light(s) for it. it will also light up more of the tank and remove some of the shadows. i am thinking i should wait until everything gets happy again before making such a change, though. although, i will feel a little guilty with "oh, you're happy now...bam...get used to this #$#@$#@". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 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? Sent via Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 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. Sent via Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robb in Austin Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted July 10, 2014 Author Share Posted July 10, 2014 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?Sent via Tapatalk 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.Sent via Tapatalk 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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