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Reef #2 - The Unplanned Upgrade (1 Viewer)

Man so frustrating. With my limited experience with two part I dont have much advice in terms of what you are doing wrong. It would read that what you are doing is on par for what ive seen in other places over the years. One thought I had going back looking at some of your videos and pictures posted it appeared you have a lot of coraline algae in that a little tank. Is it possible that this high demand for Alk be because of all that coraline? If coraline can absorbs a high amount Alk and Cal this could explain some of why it seems your intake is so high maybe??? Another though if it takes it and the corals are happy feed it all the kalk, and two part it takes to stay stable. It seems like a lot for a small tank But if the corals aRe growing and the tank is happy and your not seeing any sort of issues run with it??
 
ok I do remember reading RHF somewhere talking about what it means if calcium drops when alk is raised.

Check out my last post and test some of that soda ash as I am sus about it. I have a new single gallon packet of soda ash you can have to compare if you like. (BRS sent them to replace that very bag of soda ash you have).

I’ve been using 2 part for over a decade and never had this issue only time things were wonky is when Magnesium gets really low. Have you checked Mag??
 
Just a thought with regard to chemistry, is your PH where it is supposed to be and stable as you are dosing? If it is low, I would expect it to have an effect on the alkalinity
 
Yea I mean hindsight is always 20/20. Maybe I wasn’t precipitating and I should have just kept up dosing and adjusted the soda ash further up. Onward!

So my mistake. I actually thought about magnesium and assumed that was my problem because I hadn’t tested it in a month. But I checked it last week (obviously forgot to post the value), but it was 1400ppm. My understanding is the big problem was if it tanked, like 1100-1200ppm. 1400ppm is in the range I try to run, so I think it’s fine? I don’t dose it, but maybe the 10% weekly water changes are keeping it up? Regardless, I don’t think it’s that?

pH is looking great. With the CO2 scrubber still online I’m around 8.15 (range is 8.11-8.2). We’d all dream to be slightly higher, but it’s not crazy low.

@spsick - If I understand you correctly, you’re just saying take 1L saltwater, measure the dkh. Then add the fixed amount of powder, mix, and check again? Or is there some way to do it in RODI? I didn’t think our test kits worked properly in RODI? That’s a good test for sure.

I will also dump a pH probe in my kalk and see what I see.

Thanks guys.
 
So you would take 1L of tank water and add the .7ml (maybe use the reagent syringe out of a test kit for accuracy) of mixed soda ash out of your jug and you should see the listed change. If not I would suspect the soda ash is weak.
 
Okay, just did the test. 1L of tank water. Tested all first = 7 dKH. Added 1mL soda ash (I did use a syringe, but didn’t take your advice because I’m dumb. I used a 10mL syringe, so I‘m sure I wasn’t perfectly accurate). According to the BRS calculator, 1mL should have increased from 7dkh to 12.3dkh. Hanna said 13.5dkh (Which would have been 1.2mL). I “doubt” I was off by 0.2mL with the syringe I used, but it’s not IMPOSSIBLE. Long story short, it doesn’t appear to be super weak. Sort of “too bad” that it isn’t the smoking gun.

Regardless, I’m working the calcium back up and the alkalinity is up to 7-7.5 (depending on the test). So still another 1 dKH to go to get it back to my desired 8.5, slowly but surely.

I’m still vexed that I could be using THAT much alk….but I guess onward and upward.


On another note, regarding my DT, the nutrients still are coming the right direction by stopping with the pellet feeding and reducing the amount of nori. Nitrates are ~20ppm still, but the phosphate is down to 0.14ppm. Still not fully down to where I want it, but getting there.
 
Been too long since I've done an update. Not a lot has been going on. I have continued to stay with frozen food only feeding (with some nori for the tangs/blenny) to try to keep bringing down my nutrients. Slowly but surely that is working. Here is the data from the last 8 weeks or so:

DateNitrate (ppm)Phosphate (ppm)
4/26/202425.60.38
5/4/202424.50.24
5/11/202414.50.24
5/17/202419.10.21
5/27/202421.30.14
6/2/202419.40.19
6/7/202418.10.16
6/15/202413.80.14

1718573031286.png1718573046313.png

So while it's still maybe a little higher than I will ideally target, I'm very happy that it has settled in roughly to the 100:1 ratio. And it continues to trend more or less in the right direction.

I'm ready to start bringing more of my SPS over from the quarantine tank, but did some thinking on my light levels and I have decided to get the PAR up in the DT before I bring over the frags. Everything is sitting around 150 PAR in the QT tank, but I started my DT quite low (to prevent hair algae from taking over before I got the tangs, since there was just LPS in there anyway). Most of the DT was sitting around 80-100 PAR. So I'm working that up over the next 3-4 weeks to my "mid level" settings that I tested with the PAR meter, namely 180-220 high on the rocks, and 90-150 lower on the rocks.

My hope is that will be enough to actually help some of the SPS tester frags I have in the DT (like the green digi you'll see in the video below that doesn't look super happy). And to at least match the levels that the arcos have in the QT tank. Then I'll take the plunge. And hopefully not kill them. All the remaining coral I have will finish it's 76 day QT on 6/21 (quite the wait since the Expo), but things are generally looking great. So hopefully they'll make the transition well.

Here is a quick overview video of the DT:


Here is a quick overview video of the QT:


Happy summer reefing! And happy Father's Day to those dads out there.

Cheers!
David
 
Haha, thanks Ben. My little conch gets some work done for sure. I also see the tangs pick at the sand some. Let’s see if that holds when the lights come up :)
 
Getting very close to making the plunge and dropping the SPS into the DT. I think I have 2 more weeks of raising the light levels to get things up to ~150PAR (which at least matches the QT tank. I will maybe stop there for a month or so, and if things are doing okay then I will probably go even a little higher to get enough light on the top of the rocks for the acros.

In terms of the DT health itself, it seems like things are still doing well. I’m seeing a little more color on the bubblegum digi (I think that’s its name), so perhaps it was just mad that I didn’t give it enough light. Two small “bad news” issue. I see just a little GHA in two pockets of the rock. I don’t know if it’s tough for the tangs to get down into the little holes or what. It’s nothing plague like or anything, but I’ve got my eye on it. Also, I noticed 2-3 bubbles of bubble algae. Boooooo. I knew I had a little in my QT tank from incoming frags. I tried to take care of it with the emerald crabs (which they did) but as you’ll recall, the crabs also seemed to be tasting my polyps, so 2 of them had to leave the tank. Anyway, obviously I missed one somewhere on a frag when I moved it to the DT. Which is annoying. But I’ll live. I’ll pick them off and try to stay ahead of it.


Beyond that, the biggest thing that continues to FRUSTRATE me to no end is the alkalinity on the coral QT tank. I’m still at a total loss. Since I still don’t think it is precipitating (based on not seeing anything on pumps/heaters), I decided to just keep upping the dose. I thought I was winning as I got the alk up to about 7.5dkh. BUT then it started coming back down again, getting down to 6.5 dkh which is where it is currently sitting, But to keep it there….I’m dosing 100mL/day of soda ash…..into 14 gallons of water. What…..the…heck. According to the BRS calculator that is like 10dkh per day. There is just NO way it’s using that much. I’m not that good of a reefer :). BLARG.

So, next course of action was to change paths. I just mixed up some All for Reef and put that on a doser tonight. If I’m getting something weird from the 2 part, my hope that the way that All for Reef has that delayed alk release that it might not react and cause more precipitating or whatever is happening. Frustrating level is maximum…that’s for sure.

I guess at the end of the day I’m hoping to transfer the vast majority of the frags left in QT over to the DT in the next 2 weeks once the light is up. I might take it a little slow with just 1-2 of the acros (instead of all of them) to make sure I just don’t instantly kill them. But maybe taking out some of the coral will give it the opportunity to catch up. I dunno.

If anyone has other thoughts on what might be going on I’m all ears. It feels like it MUST be some sort of precipitation. But where is it going? Why can’t I see it? Blech. I should sleep…
 
Good luck with the All for Reef. It’s tricky because it takes a couple days for the alkalinity to “metabolize?” so you have to just keep doing and adjust with the wave. And with you sucking up that much alk it may be a steep and drastic change so I’d be testing daily.
 
Right for sure. As you know I’m checking twice daily. But it’s not a bad idea during this transition to bump it to 4 times daily. Just to make sure I don’t mess it up too badly. I didn’t try to get fancy and replace all the 2 part with all for reef at once. I started with tropic marins recommended starting dose. I hope that means I won’t blow it out of the water. 6.5dkh is lower than I want for sure, but not so low that I need to be making drastic changes. Slow and steady. I just don’t understand what is going on to be using so much alk….
 
Well, so I still have absolutely NO idea what was/is happening with my 2 part dosing, but adding in the All for Reef I’m finally actually getting the alkalinity back up to the range I want it to be in. I’ve been taking it slowly as discussed. I set it up on 7/4 when the tank alkalinity was 6.3 dkh. It’s now the 9th and we’re up to 8.2 dkh. I’m glad it has increased fairly slowly, but now I’m starting to back down the dose of both my 2 part and the all for reef to try to slow the rate of increase (especially with the delayed reaction of the all for reef). Hopefully I won’t overshoot my goal of 8.5 by too much. I guess the plan will be to try to get it to balance out with just the kalkwasser and the all for reef, turning off the 2 part totally (only using it with hand dosing to fix imbalances of calcium/alkalinity if they happen).

So I guess it’s good news, but again, it makes no sense. The calcium part of the 2 part is clearly working as it helped me increase my calcium from 350 to 430ppm. The alkalinity part seems to be working because dosing it into 1L of water (for a test) raised the alkalinity by the expected amount. I’m dosing Them 1 full hour apart into a high flow part of the tank and see no obvious signs of precipitation on heaters or pumps. As Yoda might say, “Vexed am I.” :)

Anyway, onward and upward. Just as soon as I get things balanced out in that tank the lights will be at their increased PAR level in the DT, so I’ll be pulling out the majority of the coral from QT and throwing off the balance. Smart move David….
 
Short one, but with the all for reef I finally have the coral QT tank up to 8.5dkh. As most that have used All for reef might expect, I’m still trying to get it totally dialed in with the “delayed” reaction. But I’m in the +/- 0.3dkh range. So not horrible. But I know I can tighten it up.

On that note, I maybe have found part of the issue. The only real filtration I run on that tank is a little filter floss. But because it wasn’t looking super dirty and my nutrients were staying stable, I decided not to change it. As I figured a little bit of food decomposing was maybe helping to keep my nutrients off zero. Well today I noticed that it seemed like the water wasn’t going through it, so I decided to change it. Well….I may have found some of my precipitated CaCO3

IMG_5271.jpeg

This was the underside. But the thing was stiff and crunchy….whoops. I guess I’ll just go back to changing it a few times a week and deal with keeping nutrients up other ways. I still don’t get why it was doing it since it was dosing an hour apart. But whatever I guess. The all for reef will be good for helping with trace elements as well I guess. Onward and upward.
 
So are you dosing an obscene amount of AFR proportionate to the 2 part?
 
Obscenely lower? Yes. I was dosing ~100ml per day of soda ash into 14.2 gallons, which BRS says in 10dkh. Right now I’m at 7.2ml/day of all for reef, which is supposed to be about 0.76dkh in my water volume. So coupled with my 800ml/day of kalkwasser (which is allegedly 1.84dkh), it’s still a pretty healthy uptake. But obviously nothing like 10-11dkh (which I knew had to be wrong).

Hopefully in another few days we’ll get the all for reef dose nailed down. As you can imagine I was playing a fun balancing act of trying to add all for reef (with the delayed alk) and reduce the 2 part. I only got to the point 2 days ago that the 2 part dose went to zero. So still a little nudging to be done. We’ll get there.
 
Dang! Once you get AFR dialed it I have found it is set it and forget it. I am dosing 12.5ml day and my dkh is pegged at 8.5.
 
I suppose that’s a good thing. I dont’ mind having to increase it from time to time if it’s a reflection of increased coral growth ;). But I hear you, that’s great to hear that it really helps to stabilize. I was planning to give it a week or so to get refined, then maybe do an ICP to see where that tank is at. I do weekly 10% water changes, so I can’t imagine it’s crazy far out of whack, but with all that extra 2part dosing, the associated increase in salinity, etc., I just want to make sure I get things balanced back out.

OR, maybe the right thing to do is just get all that coral transferred into the display tank, then do a huge water change to reset things. That option seems actually decent as I also want to relocate the tank in the basement. So maybe get the new stand area built, then do a big water change and move the tank at the same point. Hrm.
 
Okay, another quick update. I'm still being a huge slacker and haven't transferred the acros over from my coral QT. It's totally a case of "they're growing in there, I don't want to kill them." But the time is quickly approaching. I hadn't changed my T5's for over a year, so I decided to recheck my PAR levels (science experiment). I run Blue Plus and Coral Plus bulbs, and found that over that period they only lost about 10 PAR versus the new bulbs. That was running at 30% for the majority of the time and 50% for a month or so, maybe that slows down the rate that they lose their effectiveness?

That being said, I have been convinced that I should run the T5s at 100%, the fear being that running a T5 at LESS than full power could impact the spectrum that comes out of the bulb (which from the little I know about lights does seem possible). So I retested my PAR levels with the T5 at 100% and the LEDs at 0%:

1723260023984.png

This is pretty similar to what I was seeing with T5 at 50% and LEDs at 50%, maybe a little higher:

1723260059848.png

I was talking to @spsick though and he felt like with the acros I want to put in there I could even go higher with the PAR levels. He suggested T5 @100% and LEDs at 30%. From my previous testing, 20% worth of LED seems to be 50 or so PAR. So running 100%/30% might push the upper rocks towards 300 PAR. Hopefully that will be better for the SPS.

Given that the coral I have now in QT is sitting around 140-150PAR, I think I'll move everything over and then start ramping up the lights over the next 2-4 weeks, that way I am essentially acclimating them as I go. Perhaps a project for tomorrow.


The only other thing I've done in the last week was send out an ICP on the DT. It's been just shy of a year running the tank, so I decided it was time to check to see how things are doing. Results attached. I was happy that the results matched up pretty closely with my home test results (taken the same day):

ParameterHome TestICP
Salinity (ppt)3434
Alkalinity (dkh)8.38.3
Calcium (ppm)415450
Nitrate (ppm)1015.4
Phosphate (ppm)0.120.05

Clearly I am working on getting the salinity back to 35ppt. I'll keep an eye on the calcium, but neither of those concern me. And nitrate and phosphate I'm generally happy with.

The ICP did show that my iodine is quite low (it was like that on my last tank as well). So perhaps I'll dose some of that. Any other big things stick out that you guys would recommend I jump on right away?

Beyond that, I still have some basic stuff that I need to do (new screen top, change out my heater controller). And I have a few things I WANT to do, like changing around my powerhead configuration to see if I can get a little more random flow. One of these days :)
 

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