TGIF!
 

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wow, Kien. Just saw your thread. So sorry to hear about the SPS losses. Your tank has always been one of my favorites, even though I've never seen it in person. On a plus side, wow I love the fish you have. Those anthias are awesome. Glad your trekking on with it.

I left for a weekend and lost a football sized colony of blue polyped pink birdsnest a while back for no apparent reason as well. Broke off a few frags before it totally died and the frags have been doing well for me. The colony was about a year and a half old.

Sorry to hear about your losses, but for many of the SPS fanatics locally in the Lower Mainland, last year was a brutal year for SPS.

On the plus side, both your tanks still look spectacular as usual, even if less full of corals. Keep up the good fight. Looking forward to seeing more beautiful pics of these gorgeous tanks.

Anthony

Fox Coral has always been one of my faves....goregous tanks!

sorry to hear about all the issues.. i am a little behind apparently.. also you mentioned one reef and one fowlr tank, can i see some pics of the fowlr tank ??? this looks more like two reefs to me.... yes see triggers and large angels in there but its hardly a FOWLR! :mrgreen::wink:

edit:: um just read the title and never mind....

Thanks! My fish definitely helped get through the tough times. When everything else was looking like crap they just kept on swimming :-D

thanks!! Ya the past year has been tough on a few tanks around here.. like I said, the "Event" has cleared up a lot of space that I'm starting to fill in now which is a lot of fun. In it to win it! :lol:

The Fox Coral was the first coral I ever got for my first saltwater tank eons ago. Sadly it did not do too well but for the time that it was in that tank it helped to solidify my love of the hobby :biggrin:

You are right though, I need to stop kidding myself as that ain't no FOWLR. I intended for it to be a FOWLR so I always refer to it as the "FOWLR". However, corals somehow manged to creep in there :)

Holy Hanna!
 

In early July I ordered one of them fancy schmancy new Hanna phosphate checkers. I ended up using it quite a but during the "event" that ripped through the tank as I frantically checked all my parameters pretty much every other day. I have to say it is pretty slick. I wish ALL test kits were like this!

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This is what you get in the box..

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The checker itself, two test tubes, a stack of 4 (maybe 5 - i forget exactly) regents, AA battery. NOTE: The blue box to the left was an extra box of regent that I purchased. It does not come with it!

It is quite simple to use. First you fill both tubes with tank water. You then empty one packet of regent into one of the tubes and gently stir/mix.

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The instructions say to wait 3 minutes before checking the tube with the regent in it. At about the 2.5 minute mark I turn on the checker by pressing the button. It'll display "Add Press C.1" once it is ready for you to insert the tube that only contains the tank water.

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Once the tube is inserted press the button. The Phosphate Checker uses this sample as sort of a zero calibration. Once it is ready it will display "Add Press C.2".

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This is when you take out the water only tube and insert the tube that has the regent in it. Then press the button again. In a pretty short amount of time (like a few seconds), it gives you a reading. voila!

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Nice and simple. I do have two gripes about it though. 1. I find the openning of the test tube small and tricky to get all the regent out of the packet and into the tube. There may have been some spillage so I had to do a couple of tests :redface: 2. The display only stays on for a few seconds. After that it completely shuts off. If you press the button again it starts from scratch which means it expects you to put the water-only tube back in for calibration. Mildly annoying when you're trying to line it up for a photo shoot.

Kien your photos are too good, the quality is actully burning my retnias and making me feel inadiquite in all of my posts :lol:!!

Tanks are looking wonderful as always buddy!

What's that? You want to see more pictures? Okay!

Nori time is a great time to see ALL the fish at once. No one can resist Nori on a stick! :biggrin:

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Sadly this does not work in the 131g aggressive tank since most of the fish in there have sworn off Nori for some reason. A scallop or clam on a stick maybe. I'll have to try that.

Hopefully I don't jinx myself.. but I think the "event" is behind me now. Corals are all looking good, growth is back on track and colours are returning.

This is a "skyberry" stag which is normally a baby blue that had completely browned out during the event. As you can see it has regained much of its colour.

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I've also put in some new frags to see how they faired and they have all done well.

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:hail:.........ya......pretty much what Levi said!.....awsome pics man!.......good to see and hear that you are happy with the tank again:biggrin:

Good to see things are on the up & up Kien. Found the same thing with the Hanna meter, you don't have much time between the 2 tubes during the test. Great pic's also :).

You could take a photo of a turd and somehow expose some hidden beauty I swear. Great shots and really good to hear you're back in the realm of growth and colour. How much is the tester and 25 reagents?

Thanks guys :-) Can't say that I've ever photographed a turd before though.

Phosphate kit is $50. A pack of 25 reagents is $11. I hear they are coming out with kits for The Big 4 (Nitrate, Calcium, Alk, Mag). I will definitely be getting them!

FTS!
 

Took some pictures of my "fish room" today.

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Very nice as usual! Tell me about the flow pattern you have in the FOWLR?

:thumb::thumb::thumb:

thanks! the flow is identical to what I have going on in the mixed reef. One power head (6105) shoots down the back wall, one shoots down the front wall. The stream hits the opposite wall and bounces back in the middle, above and below the location of the powerheads. I have all powerheads on the controller which pulses them randomly from 75% power to 100% every 10 seconds. Some of the flow that bounces off the opposite wall gets mixed with the flow from the powerheads every once and a while and causes turbulence in various middle parts of the tank. There's also the odd water funnel generated.

Photos
 

What kind of equipment are you using to photograph your corals? They are fantastic shots!

Looks like a nice macro lens.... or perhaps a point and shoot with great macro setting!

I hope to rival those shots once my tank is complete!! LOL!

thanks :) Most macro photos were taken with the Canon 5D Mark II with 100mm macro lens. In water photos were taken with the Olympus Stylus Tough 6000 in macro mode.

tanks look great as usual kien.

Also, that is a very cool chandelier.

Those smooth white panels from ikea were a smokin' idea man and they photograph really well too. Wish my house were clean enough to zoom out for room shots haha.

Nice
 

We have a Canon 40D over here... I might... MIGHT have to invest in the macro after seeing how well it does.

It is for our Graphic Design/Photography business we have.... macro might be a nice addition to the arsenal!

Olympus 6000.... I almost bought that one as well... went with the Pentax W90... might have to drop it in the tank and see what comes of it ;)


Thanks!

The Phosphate Philes
 

After using the Hana Phosphate checker I discovered that my phosphates were a lot higher than I thought they were. Using other (conventional) test kits I have a hard time distinguishing the low level colour gradients near zero. With the Hana I get an exact digital reading, cool! After a few rounds (quite a bit of trial and error) with the Hana meter I think I have the process down. One thing I learned is that there are quite a few things that can throw the meter off. Finger prints, bubbles in the cuvette, not using all the reagent (some of it ends up on the counter or stuck in the corners of its packet.. grrr!). Anyway, after seeing that my phosphate was non-zero and was actually 0.16 I started to scratch my head and wonder exactly where the phosphates were coming from. Yes, I know we introduce phosphates through various foods that we throw into our tanks but what I was really curious about was who was the greatest offender. So today I set out to answer this question and here's how it went down.

For every food product that I feed my fish I scooped up 1 teaspoons worth and dumped it into a bowl of 1/4 cup of RO/DI water.

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I then let the food sit all day to leech out all its phosphorus goodness.

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Top Left: Nori sheet (from Superstore)
Top Middle: Formula 1 Flakes
Top Right: Formula 1 pellets
Bottom Left: My homemade fish mush
Bottom Right: PE Misys (unrinsed)

After a few hours ( like 10 or 11 i think ) I began the testing. For each food item I purcolated the mixture to get as much fluid as possible.

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I tried to test this solution but it was way too concentrated so I had to dilute it. Instead, I drew up 2 mils of each fluid and diluted it with 8mils of RO/DI water.

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I now had my solutions that I could test and simply followed the Hana testing procedures with the control sample and reagent sample.

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The results were not overly surprising. We all know these foods contain phosphates that are typically used as a preservative. As I said earlier, I was mostly curious about which food items had the most phosphate. To add to my disclaimer, this is NOT a scientific experiment by any stretch of the imagination. I tried my best to keep consistent with each test but there is still a huge potential for error. This really just gives me a rough ballpark idea rather than concrete evidence of anything. Having said all that, here are my results!

NB: All results in PPM (Parts Per Million). I performed 3 tests for each sample and took an average. The meter has a resolution of 0 to 2.5. Anything higher than 2.5 and it just flashes 2.5.

1. My homemade fish mush - 1.81
2. PE Misys (unrinsed) - 1.90
3. Nori (sheets from Superstore) - 2.04
4. Formula 1 flakes - > 2.5 !!
5. Formula 1 pellets - 2.3
6. Tap Water - 0.00
7. RO/DI Water - 0.00
8. Rinsed PE Misys - > 2.5 !!
9. New Salt Water (Instant Ocean) - 0.0
10. My homemade fish mush before additives - 0.33

So there we have it. Again, I can not emphasize enough, take these results with a grain of sea salt! They are not scientific. You will notice a couple of TBD up there. I plan to do a water change tomorrow so I'll be testing that mixture and post the results then. I have also rinsed the sample of PE Misys to see what difference that makes. It should be ready for me to test tomorrow morning as it is currently leeching in its bowl.

I need to buy more reagents.. :lol:

I know that this is in no way a scientific result, but I have been trying to encourage people away from flake/ pellets for two years at the store.....You can do a search for the NLS thread where I told peeps about the actively added copper sulfate listed as an ingredient.....that was a fiasco!:mrgreen:.........I equate flake food to .......well......junk food.....the problem with it in our tanks is if any of it goes uneaten, it quickly breaks down and dissolves into the water column....which feeds.....everything....that being said you just cant beat the convenience factor that a dry food provides:wink:.....

Thanks for your kick-arse, informative posts mang!:biggrin:

very interesting information. Keep it up! Cheers

Wow Kien that's awesome thanks for documenting that.

So Doug what exactly are you telling people to feed their tanks?

I feed nothing but frozen(strained/rinsed, if necessary) .......save the times when the lights are about to go off and Im like.....crap!!!!! I forgot to thaw some food:mrgreen:....

I was under the impression these frozen foods (mysis/brine etc) were sorta like filler and not a complete diet for the fish? I currently do feed both but have been thinking of the pellets as my primary. My fish do consume all of them though...

maybe I should clarify:biggrin:.....I feed a "special" blend of food which I dont rinse, because it has garlic and selcone added to it.....I feed a brine/mysis shrimp combo which I strain and then soak in selcon.....and I also feed the "ocean plankton" (which the shop carries:mrgreen:), that I strain(no vitamins added as this is as close to a natural diet as most fish will get):wink:....

You reminded me if one surprising result. When I tested my tap water for phosphates it came up zero!! Everyone is always freaked out about the phosphate content of tap water.. Why? I know that there is a lot of other junk in our tap water, hence my TDS reading of 214 but apparently phosphate is not among them. And yes I do realize that not all tap water is created equal.

Also, I am not surprised but I am disappointed that my nori had quite a bit of phosphate. Mainly because nori tends to not get consumed right away so there is plenty of time for it to leech it's phosphates unlike the other foods that typically get eaten immediately.

not much phosphate in our taps.....but test the water below the outflow of the treatment facilities on the Bow......its what makes the Bow the blue ribbon fishery that it is......phosphate grows weeds.....which grows bugs.....which grows trout:biggrin:

This is my understanding. Might be a bit oversimplified but as far as I know it's more or less correct still: :p

There is phosphates in everything, it's not going to be possible to get away from phosphates. It is like other things however, including NO3, in that there is some uptake by organisms so there will be some minor fluctuations in the levels from one day to the next however it is usually a given that we tend to input more than a tank is able to uptake and thus there is a residual value which usually creeps up in the absence of a PO4 reduction mechanism (eg. algae, refugium, ULNS, GFO, kalk, etc.) Some phosphate is necessary for growth, although too high a value inhibits calcification and thus inhibits coral growth or encourages tissue recession.

Anyhow that said, phosphate is not just phosphate, there is inorganic phosphate and organic phosphate. Of interest to us is organic phosphate, but you can only test for inorganic phosphate. Generally speaking we assume that the level of organic phosphate is around the same as inorganic phosphate, but that may not always be the case.

I remember reading that if you boil a water sample for some period of time and then test for phosphate, you will get a different value for before and after, because the organic phosphate denatures into inorganic during boiling.

Having said that however, that may not be the explanation for the tapwater producing a zero value. Drinking water standards dictate acceptable levels for many different parameters and AFAIK, nitrates and phosphates are to be zero (or very close to zero), and municipalities are thus mandated to provide water as such. I remember there was a big thing in the news about some small town had to provide bottled water because the tapwater had a detectable level of nitrate.

I could be wrong but that's what I always thought anyhow.

Interesting that one coral "browned out" while others were dying off.

Browning is a typical sign of high nutrients, isn't it?
Perhaps the mucus secretion from your LPS and soft corals had increased suddenly for some reason leading to a high level of dissolved organics, plus some added chemical warfare happening at the same time.

Were you adding any corals shortly before that "event" or fragging anything?

Mitch

This is great thanks :biggrin:

Actually there was more than one that browned out. Mostly all of the surviving SPS (50% of them) browned out to some degree. Some receded from the bottom some from the tips. Some STN'ed some RTN'ed. No fragging was done. Yes a few corals were added just prior. Yes what you suggest is certainly a possibility among a laundry list of other possibilities. In the end Im leaning towards the cause not being one thing but rather a cascade of events probably.

Cool thanks Tony!

Thanks for the info Kien. That was a substantial amount of effort! Makes me re-think using flake foods.

wow thats some sick info there Kien, impressive.

ya didnt happen to test New Life Spectrum.... ? :wink:

No, sorry :)

Okay, so to finish up these tests I tested PE Mysis rinsed, New Salt Water (Instant Ocean), and my homemade fish mush prior to adding additives such as garlic and vitamins. I updated the original post with these results, but here they are.

- Rinsed PE Mysis - >2.5 !!
- New Salt Water (Instant Ocean) - 0.0
- My Homemade Fish mush (before additives added) - 0.33

Now, the first thing that jumped out at me was the PE Mysis! Yikes! One thing that was different was that I left the PE Mysis out over night so it had a long time to leech out. Also, PE Mysis is made up of a heck of a lot of water, so there must be a lot of phosphate bound up in its body. I was quite surprised to see how little phosphate was in the superstore mixed seafood which I use for my homemade blended fish mush. This leads me to conclude that there must be a lot of phosphates in the additives, either the garlic extract or selcon or both!