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BlindSwordsman's K.I.S.S. 90 Gallon Mixed Reef (1 Viewer)

Jjdurrant said:
Nice... I can you all, pics do not do it justice... have to see in person! :)
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Thanks! I can't argue with you there. My tank does look awesome .. when I don't have my glasses on! 🤣🤣🤣
 
I haven't done a full tank shot for about 4 months, so here are some new photos. Things are not perfect but .. okay 😁. I have moved a few things around, and bleached out a few things here and there. I let the right island going wild so it looks fuller. I keep the left side under more control with no zoas on the rock, just LPS and other things so I don't have to keep rescuing them from the zoas, so it doesn't look as full. I'm now wondering if I should keep whatever I want to make sure to keep alive in my frag tanks, and add zoas to the left and fill up that space as well or not 🫤. Maybe at least for the top part? 🤔 If so, I probably will redo some of the things before adding in the zoas 😁. Who knows that I probably have gotten it done by the time I finish typing this? You know how erratic I am! 😆

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I’m trying to figure out in what world that’s not full :)

Looks great as always, Ken
 
reef junkie said:
Your tank always look so beautiful and full of life.
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Thanks! .. I know. I keep live corals, you know?!! So, yes, they must be alive, of course. .. Well, until they are dead 😆.

Varig said:
I’m trying to figure out in what world that’s not full :)

Looks great as always, Ken
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No, seriously! I saw empty spaces!!! 😆 I spent some time yesterday doing some gluing. I woke up this morning and redid some parts again. And then I took a shower. I came back with a cup of coffee. I sat down and I looked at it and I .. still see an empty spot!!! 😬😬😬🤣🤣🤣
 
If empty spots are success, my tank is a failure. :)
 
Haha, I just meant that I have tons of bare spots. But I guess either I’m cheap (don’t want to buy more frags) or for me my desire is to grow big colonies. As such, I’m trying to plant frags sparsely now, with the hope that they fill in. 🤷‍♂️

I was mostly joking, since my tank has bare rock all over the place.
 
Varig said:
Haha, I just meant that I have tons of bare spots. But I guess either I’m cheap (don’t want to buy more frags) or for me my desire is to grow big colonies. As such, I’m trying to plant frags sparsely now, with the hope that they fill in. 🤷‍♂️

I was mostly joking, since my tank has bare rock all over the place.
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Well, seriously, it's a hobby. Everybody is different and their interests are different. It's their tank. They do whatever that makes them happy. Do I usually follow other people's advice or how other people do things? Not really!! Heeheehee 😁 'I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it' even! 😆 .. Honestly, I don't have your patience, David 😄 ... (Darn! I've been reading these 2 chapters over and over again 🥵.)
 
Varig said:
Haha, I just meant that I have tons of bare spots. But I guess either I’m cheap (don’t want to buy more frags) or for me my desire is to grow big colonies. As such, I’m trying to plant frags sparsely now, with the hope that they fill in. 🤷‍♂️

I was mostly joking, since my tank has bare rock all over the place.
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Your tank looks great though!
 
I will continue with my tank parameter checking here as I have already side tracked the other thread I created 😁.

So, with the Hanna checkers that I bought, some numbers for the testings for my tanks are as follow (I have to say, it's a bit confusing, so I'm kind of picking out some that make a bit more sense.)

The Alkalinity for the main tank was going from 6.8 dKH to 6.7 on the next day, to about 6.3 on the next. The frag tank's alkalinity was lower. It was around 6.5 dKH -> 6.3 -> 6.0.

Phosphate for the main tank was at 0.02 yesterday. For the frag tank, it showed at 0 ppm.

Nitrate for the main tank was at around 1.6 ppm -> 1.9 ppm. For the frag tanks, it was 0 ppm for both days.

So, it appears my tanks are low in nutrients? @spsick agreed that I could dump more stuff in to raise nitrate and Phosphate. Well, last night, I blended a whole medium size table shrimp and fed my tank. I left it run for a few hours, then let the water flow through the filter floss. I haven't turned on my skimmers yet and here are the readings today;

Main tank: Nitrate 2.6 dKH, Phosphate 0.05 ppm (I dumped more into the main tank)

Frag tanks: Nitrate 0.7 dKH, Phosphate 0.03 ppm

So, I did raise them a bit but not really much? I think after turning my skimmers on and a water change, I'm going to get them down again.

@asifiqbal2 recommended not to chase the numbers if things are fine. I don't plan to add chemicals in to raise Nitrate or Phosphate though. My stuff is generally fine. I think the negative effect of having these low levels is slower coral growth, and that really is not my concern. I just have issue with keeping some harder to keep SPS, so I'm trying to see if I can figure that part out. It would be nice to have a few nicer SPS here and there. But I'm not really aiming for a SPS dominant tank so if this is the way it is, it's fine too, I guess 😁. Maybe, my tanks are clean in general, but like @spsick said, they are 'heavy in, heavy out' tanks so there are fluctuations in between that those fancier SPS just can't handle? ...And I'm thinking about adding some new fish in since @Varig brought it up and I did lose some fish recently. Maybe that'll dirty up my tanks a bit 😂.

Edit: Now now thinking more about it, I was wondering how @Livestuff could handle his crawl space. I had thought it would be hard because I used my den (which had been technically a small bedroom) for my 'fish room', it has more open space and sometimes it can even stink up my house. Coming to see his crawl space, I saw that it was spotless and had no smell. I think if that were my space, with the ways I keep my tanks, I probably need to burn it down and move 🤣🤣🤣🤣.
 
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Ken I forget your Frag tank is not connected to the main system correct? In which case I would add more fish if it was me and start feeding the corals.
 
BlindSwordsman said:
Main tank: Nitrate 2.6 dKH, Phosphate 0.05 ppm (I dumped more into the main tank)

Frag tanks: Nitrate 0.7 dKH, Phosphate 0.03 ppm
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These numbers are fine your course of action was great. Anything above zero is fine. Just gotta find that happy place for your tank.

Asif advice of more fish in the frag tank is a good one.
 
I still remember some new person who told me that his skimmer smelled like 'sea breeze' 😬. Mines can stink to heaven!! 😂 After my feeding last night, and the old activated carbon and all that, I can tell my room smells pretty fishy right now. I probably need to do a water change and change the activated carbon 😁.

@asifiqbal2: No, my frag tanks are set up with the same concept like my display tank but it's a separate system.

The idea of adding more fish sounds like a fine idea and I think I can stuff a few more fish into the display tank but 1) I actually don't feel like spending money on fish at the moment. If I place the order then I would need to add enough fish and corals into the cart to have the order big enough to get free shipping. And it seems unnecessary with so much stuff I have already. So I've added something into my cart and they have been sitting there for a few days 😆 2) The display tank is kind of crowded, but it has more hiding places. The frag tanks just have too much open space and the tank dimensions are small. The fish in there are not feeling much at 'home' already. So, I don't think I will add more fish into those tanks. I probably can increase the feeding 😁.
 
Just buy local from the store that’s free shipping err pickup
 
I thought I heard once people struggled to keep sps when they ran activated carbon. I’m not sure of the truth behind this but if your numbers are in range along with par. Then maybe the carbon or maybe flat lining the numbers could be the answer.

Reach out once you feel you’re ready for some sps if you want. I’d be happy to give you some for free. They have to look better in your tank then they do in my trash 🤣🤣🤣
 
reef junkie said:
I thought I heard once people struggled to keep sps when they ran activated carbon. I’m not sure of the truth behind this but if your numbers are in range along with par. Then maybe the carbon or maybe flat lining the numbers could be the answer.

Reach out once you feel you’re ready for some sps if you want. I’d be happy to give you some for free. They have to look better in your tank then they do in my trash 🤣🤣🤣
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Thanks for the offer. I'm not planning on doing a drastic change on the current system but maybe I should think of a different strategy. I probably can run some experiments on a separate system 😁. This will likely take some time. Question though: As far as I know, activated carbon removes some contaminants, keeps the water clear and helps with issues like chemical warfare in the tank. So for the people who focus in SPS, if you don't run activated carbon, then what do you do?
 
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