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Durand tank build (1 Viewer)

The aftermath of my Chaeto Gro over dose.
STN seems to have slowed. Hopfully Ill see it puff back up and grow back with time.
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My new ATO reservoir had a small pin hole leak so had to send back. Hopefully get that back by the weekend.

Everthing else in the tank seems to be doing well. The new wrasse have setttled in well. The tang does not even care about them. The poor blenny gets chased a little but not the wrasses. Think there is something to this 3 day acclimation box idea that maybe works.

I have a cromis that has decide to buddy up the blenny. So it’s fun to see the two swimming together. LOL
 
The daunting task of filling the vat and marking every 500ml so I can try and figure out easily how much water I burn through between seasons. And my little helper was a little board and kept laying down on the job.

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So question (loaded)... but question.
So everyone that is using the doser finding good results and liking these stirrers... next what seems to be the better of the stirrers... say economy and reliability.. im really pushing my way forward here.. thanks and don't mean to hijack but would love to revisit
 
Dadzilla11 said:
So question (loaded)... but question.
So everyone that is using the doser finding good results and liking these stirrers... next what seems to be the better of the stirrers... say economy and reliability.. im really pushing my way forward here.. thanks and don't mean to hijack but would love to revisit
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I like the stirrer. Maybe not at consistent as a vet full of kalk and a dosing pump. But it fits well. Could probably replenish kalk powder weekly but I choose biweekly and clean every 6ish months or when I remember. Kalk has been the smoking gun for me.
 
I had a neighbor over the other evening and they asked how many fish I had. Well I had not given it much though. Always felt the tank was not too crowded. So we started counting.
2 clowns
1 purple blenny
Fox face
4 anthias
3 chromis
Lawnmower Blenny
Kole tang
Melanarus
McCosker
Hooded flame.

Did now realize I had add this many lol
This could be a very good reason dosing for no3 and po4 is not needed.

Time will tell if another action will be needed to lower these numbers.
Updated pic of this side of the tank. I never seem to take pictures of this side. But it’s the side I see the most from the kitchen. lol
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I can’t help but think there is some sort of chemical warfare amongst all these corals. Between the zoas (was blaming all the starfish) and the mushrooms (was blaming all the light) melting and now this. So cool but a month ago was half eaten to death from the rabbit fish
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Things are still mostly moving in the right direction after my Chaeto Gro overdose. SPS are definitely showing the results of a healthier tank. The zoas and shrooms still seem to be slowly disappearing and I just cant figure out why. Ive given up trying to chase the reason though. At this point things that will make it will and the ones that dont will leave more room for some more acros 🤣.

Week one with my new ato container and im seeing 24,500 ml of evaporation over a 7 day period. Going to run a few weeks and see how consistent this number is. This brings up the question. Im only dosing 1800ml of kalk a day along side 15ml of All For Reef. Im curious if I should look at upping that kalk dose to closer to my full evaporation rate. As the tank settles back in from the over dose my alk is slowly dropping (im also trying to get it lower then I was running since the Nyos salt tends to be a little lower then the HW I was using). Assuming the reason its dropping is because the corals are growing again. So i will need to up the dose anyways but maybe with kalk instead of AFR would be a better option.

Testing I can see Po4 and No3 are slowly coming back down to what I would call a better range.
Po4 .08
Nitrates 19.1
Alk was running in the 9 range. But slowly dropped to 7.75. Upped the AFR a little. Will retest next week and maybe Kalk dose will get increased to get me near that 8.5. If I can dose more i think it will leave less sludge in the bottom of my Kalk reactor and maybe give me less cleaning to do.

It’s been a little while since I calibrated the ph probe. Going to do that today during my weekly maintenance and see if I get a different results. Been very consistent over the last couple of weeks. Avering 8.29. With day time highs at 8.41 and lows at 8.09. I had decided to run the fuge on a 12hour schedule up from 6 and biweekly Chaeto removal is needed and help to get that last few points needed to keep the avg ph up where i wanted. Adding more kalk will most likely boost that ph up just a little bit higher. So will need to watch that as I increase the dose.

Gotta say being able to set the return pump to the level I want and not really needing to adjust it much sure has been awesome. I still see the water level move around a little after water changes or If I randomly turn off the pump but it eventually fall right back to where it was. A little adjustments here and there as it dirties up I expect will come as it rums more and more.

All done rambling if your still reading this nice job not falling to sleep 🤭
 
I hear that man. I hear that.
 
If it weren’t for the value of identifying an overdose id say we should all band together and start a No pH Probes club!
 
spsick said:
If it weren’t for the value of identifying an overdose id say we should all band together and start a No pH Probes club!
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Im in!! I dont think I even have mine setup that way anyways. Really im not doing anything with it other then false hope
 
I mean, like Ben I have mine for overdose situations. But I guess when it was out of calibration and reading low by 0.3 points, that’s not super helpful either. Blech.

Do you guys ever clean your probe, outside of some light scrubbing? I’m always worried about breaking it, but feel it could probably justify a little deeper clean. Anything that it’s safe to soak it in? I assume not acid as that could mess up how it works?
 
Varig said:
I mean, like Ben I have mine for overdose situations. But I guess when it was out of calibration and reading low by 0.3 points, that’s not super helpful either. Blech.

Do you guys ever clean your probe, outside of some light scrubbing? I’m always worried about breaking it, but feel it could probably justify a little deeper clean. Anything that it’s safe to soak it in? I assume not acid as that could mess up how it works?
Click to expand...

I think they’re mean to be used in acid (pH of 4) so prob no issue soaking in citric.

That being said I never clean mine. Just replace every couple years.
 
Almost a month check in with not much to report. I had upped my alk dose and lowered my AFR does and all that I noticed was my ALK dropped to about 6.5. Spent a few weeks getting it back up to 8.5. Some corals are suffering from the drop in alk but nothing loss yet.
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With upping the kalk dose my overflow box likes to drop its level and become loud in the evening and early morning, but by around 9am its back up to its normal running level. Not sure what this Is all about. But since I dont spend much time in the living room in the evening this time of year its a problem for fall LOL. Salinity does not seem to change with the swings and Ive not done anything to the pump so 🤔

Changed to doing bi weekly water changes. This might be the reason for the water level change. Not turning off the pump more regularly??? Doing about 25 gallon water change. But still topping off the AFR and ro water weekly. No3 and Po4 spiked when I over doses Chaeto and introduced the newest addition of the fish (wrasses and fox face) but they have been slowly dropping to a level im a little more comfortable at. It’s not perfect but im ok with it. Might toss in some ROwaPhos to get po4 a little lower but not sure im ready to take on another thing to do just yet.

With the addition of the fox face bubble algae is no more. I dont see it anywhere and this fox face has not become a fan of LPS yet. So feel this is a win. It nibbles a little in the beginning on a favia but was short lived. Lawn mower blenny seems to be doing a good job at the tuffs of hair algae I have here and there.

Mushrooms and zoas still seem to slowly disappear. They start of by bleaching or loosing color and then slowly fade away little by little. I thought it was something I was doing but lean more and more to the animals. The longer between water changes really spiked this. I had considered running carbon but feel this is a death sentence for the acros so ive just let it go. Nothing I test for seems to be out of wack in a way to cause this so i dont fully know what to do other then let nature take It’s course.

Lights are off so no updated FTS today but saw this last week 🥰

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Great Update all around.

If it makes you feel any better Zoas don’t do much in my tank. I had 5 pink diamonds a few years ago and now I have 10 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
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