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Reef #2 - The Unplanned Upgrade (1 Viewer)

Not on my qt tank. And I just picked up 2 new crabs at the expo. So they’re not through 76 days. So short of setting up a tank for a single emerald crab until it’s QT’d, I have no where :)
 
the weediest part of my yard is my favorite spot for naughty crabs and stinky dead snails 🥶
 
Is that a straight up death sentence out of the water, though? I know I shouldn’t care, but I do.
 
Ick. No like. Maybe I’ll setup that small tank….finish the QT then dump him in the sump.

Others are welcome if you want a sump crab :)
 
Well....I feel bad, but 1 crab down :(. I popped down to feed the tanks and saw it was literally bear-hugging my pink caddy frag. SOO I figured this would be an easy catch (and it was). I pulled the frag out and out came the crab. I was going to throw him in a little water and figure out a mini tank to finish his QT. Well...I thought I had learned that they could hold onto the rocks tight enough to rip themselves apart....which is accurate. I just prodded him a little with my turkey baster to get him to come off the frag, and instead I ripped off 2 legs. Eek. So then, to your point @spsick, I ended him ASAP to try to be humane. Man...I feel a little dirty. Hopefully that was the only one with a taste for polyps.
 
I don't like anything with claws in general, but maybe the crab was not really eating the coral? It might just be picking foods from the coral polyps? Sometimes I see the tang picks on the corals as well, but I don't really see any damage. I'm thinking it was just picking foods or algae there. I bought a few things online and they sent some free crabs, I just threw them into my 10 gallon frag tank and never paid attention to them. It's not like I care much for the crabs, but next time, if you feel so bad about that and need a place to get rid the crab, you can bring it to me :). ... But, I must say, David, it sounds like you don't eat seafoods? No lobster with black bean sauce? No fried crab???!!!??? 🤣
 
Dadzilla11 said:
Ben your cold cold man...lol
Click to expand...
You mean me?? 😂 ... OK then, very well! For my next meeting, I was thinking about cooking some shrimp fried rice, asparagus crab soup, etc ... But since I now know people might get offended about eating shrimps and crabs, I'll feed you guys tofu, e.g. Fried tofu, sea salted tofu, boiled tofu in soybean sauce, steamed tofu ... Basically, a lot of tofu!!!! 😆
 
Haha, no I'm very much a meat eater, and I like seafood. BUT, I don't tend to buy the seafood as a pet, then turn around a few weeks later and kill it. I guess maybe I could have cooked him...but I think it would have been tough to get much meat out of him :).

Noted though Ken, next time I'll dump them off at your house :)
 
Me to.. just getting to be a big softy in my old age... I've got my elks,, deers, moose... in my days..
But not my tank friends...👾
 
Did my weekly testing yesterday along with some extra maintenance. I fully took out the skimmer and cleaned everything. There was a little gunk down by the needle wheel, but nothing obviously obstructing the Venturi or anything, who knows. It’s clean now and I adjusted water/bubble level up closer to the black ring as @reef junkie mentioned. I’ll keep an eye to see if that gets me closer to emptying the cup ~1 time per week and see what that does for my nutrients.

I also got @jlanger’s super algae jammed into my ATS screen. Fingers crossed I can start growing some proper turf algae instead of mostly slime. I’m also thinking about having my wife stop feeding pellets at noon. The fish eat them all, so I don’t think they’re going straight into the sand and building nutrients, but maybe it’s just too much feeding. My nitrates didn’t climb this week (stayed constant at 25ppm…), but my phosphate increased again from 0.27ppm to 0.35ppm. So clearly way too high and going the wrong direction.

I also calibrated my pH probes for the first time in…quite awhile. The DT went down about 0.3 (from 8.3 to 8.0). I will see if that maintains a constant step down over the next few days. If so it might be time to get that recirculating skimmer plumbed in. The QT tank went the other way. It went from ~8 to 8.5. Eep. I guess the good news is that proved again that my automatic kalkwasser dose stop system worked. As with the DT I’m going to wait to see if that is real and sustained or not.

The only thing I’m currently annoyed about is I’ve been struggling to get the alkalinity up in the coral QT tank (maybe because the pH was 8.5….). I had maxed out my kalkwasser dose (based on evaporation) and started dosing soda ash to supplement. And it still wasn’t coming up, it was hovering around 6.8 to 7 dkh (Target has been 8.5 dkh). Well, I’m not sure what happened, but I did my normal dosing overnight (automatic) with an extra supplemental dose that should have increased it 0.8-1 dkh. Well when the KHD tested this morning it was up to 8.5 (I guess hooray…target…), but I didn’t like that it jumped 1.5-1.7dkh over the course of 12 hours. Hopefully I didn’t kill anything. With as much trouble as I’ve been having getting it to come up, I’m actually legitimately surprised. I was beginning to think that I was precipitating CaCO3 with my doses and that I’d need to fully stop dosing for a few days to get that to stop. The only thing I’m wondering is during my maintenance I did clean up quite a bit of coralline algae from the glass and from the power head/random flow generator etc. I don’t know how much dKH that stuff can uptake When it’s growing, but perhaps removing that source of uptake from the tank along with the extra dose caused the jump? I’m definitely a little worried about it, things have been stable and the acros are growing, I’d be mad at myself if I just killed them all with an alk swing. I guess we’ll see.

Okay, after all the blah blah, you need at least one picture. I took this one this morning from the beach bum acan, full on ready for some food:

IMG_4472.jpeg

Thing looks like a baby Duncan :)

Happy reefing friends,
David
 
Quick update from last week. As I mentioned I was/am having issues with nutrients climbing, so last week a made a couple of changes (I know I should have done one at a time, BUT I'm not that smart).

1) Cut out daily pellet feeding (focused on frozen)
2) Cut out daily phyto feeding (reduced to just a few times)
3) Reduce nori feeding to ~2/3 sheet per week (~1/3 sheet, twice a week)

During my weekly testing I did finally notice the first turn around in my phosphate. The previous week had been 0.38ppm, this week it was 0.24ppm. One point doesn't make a trend, but I guess it was good to see it go in the right direction. Obviously nothing good happens fast in a reef, so since it took me ~4 weeks to get into this problem, I'm totally fine if it takes 2-4 weeks to get back into good levels. My nitrate level didn't come down as much, just 25.6ppm to 24.5ppm, which could be just testing error. So again, we'll just keep an eye on that. Honestly I'm less concerned about ~20ppm nitrate than I am 0.38ppm phosphate. Anyway, the battle will continue.

The other idiot move I made was on my coral QT tank. I believe I mentioned that I seemed to have reached the limit for kalkwasser to keep up with alk demand, so I was supplementing with BRS soda ash. Well.....I'm dumb. I was adding some calcium chloride, but not in a scientific way. But the soda ash was on a doser and being added daily to help bring my alk back up to 8.5dkh and then hold it there (still trying to finally tune that, but I am pretty stable at 8.1/8.2, so just trying to make that slight adjustment). Anyway...I tested calcium this week and it was 320ppm.....doh. In retrospect it's not surprising to me, I was adding about 1 dkh worth of soda ash a day, which apparently correlates to ~7ppm of calcium. So without a regular dose of calcium I assume I was losing about 10ppm per day. Take that over 7-10 days and it's no surprise that it dropped from ~415-430 to 320ppm.

The question is, it SEEMS like people are okay bringing calcium up a little faster than other nutrients. On the BRS calculator it suggests only splitting up corrections if they're bigger than 50ppm per day. That seems too fast, so I was thinking more like I'd try to bring it back up to 420-440ppm over the course of 7-10 days. Does that seems reasonable? Roughly 10-15ppm per day increase? I just added the calcium to a doser, so it's super easy to just add that extra dose over 2 weeks or whatever if that's better. Thoughts?


Also, this is my first time needing to split up dosing times to prevent precipitation (previously only used kalk). I know the internet says 20-30 minutes between doses. But I also don't know if I need to split up the 2 part does from the kalkwasser (I assume yes). So right now I was planning to do:

7:00am - Kalkwasser
7:15am - Calcium
7:45am - Soda Ash

Obviously repeated on the hour (with kalk only being overnight). Since kalk was only overnight that's why I split the 2 part up by a full 30 minutes, and only 15 minutes between them and kalkwasser. But it would be easy to just split it 20 minutes a piece. Again, any advice is much appreciated.


It looks like I have a few more corals that finished up their QT, so I'll try to get a picture/video with them in the DT once I get them moved over.

Cheers!
David
 
Idiott move ..( that's my nickname Idiot. Lol keep trudging David...) fight the fight for that success we all strive for... have a blessed day
 
I e always been ok bumping Calcium 50er at a crack when needed but I also have a system 5x the size of your frag tank which has more stability in other areas. May want to watch salinity with a bump of 100ppm as the chloride may have an impact. Nothing a couple water changes won’t even out…
 
Thanks guys. Yea I don't know how much the salt will change with the 2 part. I always seem to hear that being a thing over longer periods of time, but maybe I'm wrong? Regardless, I also only recently implemented my "solution" to that tank changing salinity due to the KHD test removing 160mL/day that were mostly getting replaced with ATO water. You may recall that originally I just mixed up my ATO to ~6ppt salinity, and that made up for the salt loss. BUT as my kalk usage continued increasing and taking the vast majority of the daily ATO needs, I lost that ability to replace the salt daily. So I had been trying to remember to hand dump in the 160mL per day of salt water and let it evaporate down. And I wasn't very good at doing that. So now I have a gallon jug set up and I'm dosing 80 mL 5 minutes after each test begins to replace the sample water volume with salt water. Hopefully that will eliminate that problem. BUT since I hadn't been very good at doing it, I was already down in the 34-34.5ppt (target 35ppt) range anyway, so I guess if the 2part bumps me up a bit that will be okay. That being said, I still may do some big water changes once it's corrected, because I don't want my salinity to read correct but have the actual balance be off (hence the reason for part C in the balling method or otherwise).

Long story short, I'll stick with the 10-15ppm per day (just since it is such a smaller water volume and things don't seem to be totally messed up with the lower calcium levels) to prevent any massive swings. And in ~10 days I'll get the doses adjusted to be equal and we'll go from there.

Thanks again guys!
 
Again, not huge updates. Calcium is slowly coming up in my QT tank (as desired), we're up to 380ppm. I'll keep that increased dosing rate going until I get back in the 430-450ppm range, then reduce it to match my alkalinity. Once again my alkalinity uptake seems to be going up in that tank. I honestly don't know if I can believe it. There are some nice frags with some obvious growth and LOTS of coralline algae. BUT if you can trust the Hamza Reef calculator for kalk I'm adding ~1.84dkh daily in kalkwasser and then an additional ~2dkh in BRS Soda ash. I have a LOT of trouble believing that it's actually up taking 3.84dkh per day. Perhaps I got into a precipitation event? I'm not really sure. I had things pretty stable, but then my daily alk tests starting showing a reduction, so I've been increasing the dose. I dunno. Thoughts?

Regarding my DT, things are I think still turning the right direction with nutrients. This week I had a fairly sizeable reduction in nitrate (~24.5ppm to ~14.5ppm), but my phosphate stayed the same ~0.24ppm. Phosphate had a large reduction the previous week, so I dunno. The couple things I currently have in mind to try:

1) Increase photoperiod of my ATS from 16hrs to 20hrs (I did this today)
2) Consider rinsing my PE Mysis. I don't recall exactly when, but the brand of mysis I'm feeding changed sometime in the last 4-6 weeks. I don't think it directly correlates with the increased nutrient levels, but it for sure thaws "cloudier" than the other brand. Maybe that's a problem?
3) If nitrate continues to drop (from either the wetter skim and/or the ATS) but not phosphate, I may add in a small amount of RowaPhos. I may start with a bag in the bubble trap. And if that's not enough setup a reactor.

All that being said, all the coral in there looks super happy and is clearly growing, except for my orange setosa. I moved it along with some other corals into the DT about a month ago. It seemed to be doing really well in QT, sitting in around 130 par under LED. In the DT it is sitting with a little lower par, 90-100, more directly under some of the T5s with some light from the hybrid LED I'm sure. The tips started to turn white (not new growth) and overall it doesn't look great. Curious if anyone has any thoughts. I'm wondering if it's a flow problem (flow is still a mystery to me). There is a gyre doing circular flow around the tank (it's mounted vertically on the back wall). Perhaps it's getting too direct of flow from one direction? Any other thoughts? I suppose I should just move it and see if it gets happier, and if not move it back to QT incase it's related to the nutrients?

IMG_4642.jpegIMG_4641.jpeg

Any advice is appreciated.

Short of that, I just keep trying to find time to do some of the little tasks that are waiting on me, like fixing that tiny leak, setting up the autofeeder, etc. Maybe next week :)
 
Another quick one. Nothing major this week, still ignoring fixing my tiny tank leak. You know the drill :). The orange setosa maybe looks slightly better (I see some orange in those spots that were mostly white. Perhaps it didn't like the initial transition into the DT? Perhaps it needed to get used to the flow? The light? Will continue to monitor.

On my DT, nutrients came down again a little (Phosphate 0.24ppm to 0.21ppm). Slowly but surely. We're getting into the realm of "this doesn't feel absurd." So that's good.

BUT, that brings me to my issue. I mentioned it last week, but I'm even more vexed this week. The issue? My QT tank's alkalinity. I have continued to increase the dose (1-2mL per day) to try to get it to raise up off ~7dkh without success. As you saw last week I was adding the equivalent of almost 4dkh per day, I am convinced there is NO way I'm actually using that much dkH per day, so it must be precipitating? BUT the vexing part is that my calcium, which you saw was super low, is actually still continuing to increase at about the rate I had calculated it should increase. I thought I'd be up to 420ppm this week (from 380ppm) and my test result came back at 410-415ppm. So IF the alk is precipitating, it must be doing so in equal portion with calcium (since that's what the precipitate is as I understand). BAH! What the heck is going on?

I'm currently planning to stop ALL dosing for 48 hours (apparently that's how long you have to stop to allow the precipitation to stop. That being said, I'm terrified about what will happen to the acros if the alk drops substantially further below 7dkh. Any advice? Probably just "suck it up buttercup," but I figured I'd throw this out one more time to see if anyone had suggestions on other things it could be that would cause me to drop this much alk, but not calcium. Any advice is much appreciated.

Happy reefing!
 
I don't see other people comment so I'll jump in even though I feel this is too technical for me 😆.

You know me, I'm not a number guy. Those numbers are another foreign language to me. But your setosa does not look good. I think it is dying off. Again, I'm not sure about the numbers, so maybe the light change is a bit too drastic for it? I usually find the tips will get burned out (turns white) if it's too much light. If it turns white at at spots where the light does not shine then of course, it's because it's not getting enough light there. I think this is a usual issue I have with my LED. LED casts strong shadow, and my SPS keeps having tissue necrosis where the shadow parts are at, unlike T5, where the light is spread more evenly. I think a lot of people on here who are doing a great job of keeping SPS have T5?
 
Hmm 4dkh does seem like a lot.

Are you getting calcification on heaters and pump impellers? That would be a sign of precipitation.

I am adding 2.5dkh to my tank between 2 part and Kalk for reference. If you have a lot of coral and coralline in that little tank it doesn’t sound outside the realm of possibility.
 
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