Canreef Aquatics Bulletin Board - Proteus' Shallow reef build

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- - Proteus' Shallow reef build (http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=95824)

So its been quite some time since I updated. But I figured if anything this is for my own record

About a month ago I decided to get a new fish. A Aussie multicolor dottyback. Amazingly colorful fish. I thought tgat it be ok as my McNeilli assessor is large and in charge. Well not so much. I was going to sell the assessor as the two fish didn't get along. But within 6 hours the assessor was in ICU. So I had to dismantle the entire tank to remove the dottyback. Which wasn't a huge ordeal as I wasn't happy with the scape. But in doing so I ended up with some po4 issues that prodibio would not take care of. So after rescaping and getting the fish back up to health I made the jump to zeo.
At first I just followed the labels on the bottle, not the best move. After watching the po4 rise I went on to zeo forum and got direction. Upping the dose of Zeobak and cutting out the zeo start I'm now on the good side with po4 around 0.08.
Now just to get colors back
I needed to start taking care of the big three as values were declining faster than water changes could keep up. I researched dosing kalk and ca reactor and decided that dosing was in my tanks best intrest.
I bought a cheap but easy to use marine magic doser and tm balling salts. Took about a week to get it tweaked but overall a very easy system. Down side I lost a amazing green blue tip milli. Due to alk drop.
System is stable now and po4 dropping looking forward to when I can start using other zeo products to tweak colors.
I'll post a pic when lights are on

After a battle with aefw and loosing some corals I decided to tear down and start over.

I completely dismantled tank put remains coral in qt, dipping every 5 days with rps.
All rock went into qt also.
I took this opportunity to paint the tank as well.

I bought some new rock and new substrate. While I liked the cleanliness of the tile I opt for black substrate.

All put back together now and happy to be aefw free.
Added some peppermint shrimp which from what I read will consume flatworm. Worth a shot I guess.
http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/...7164012308.jpg

Reboot? How trendy of you ! I'm going to miss the tiles though.

Good to see the tank up and running again!

Yeah I liked the tiles but didn't care for the look with the blacked out glass.

Did 50% new water when refilled and alk was at 11.2 dkh.
Had a few Burnt tips hoping it comes down soon

Being I'm still new at this the flatworms almost made me quit but I'm glad I didn't

Quote:

Originally Posted by Proteus (Post 902800)

.. almost made me quit but I'm glad I didn't

Never give up. Never surrender.

Lol no couldn't quit. I am still learning at times though lol

So upon restarting tank i had two boxes of salt that had really high alk and low mg.
I never thought of testing nsw as ive been using reefers best for a couple years and was always good.

My alk was at 11.2 dkh wow!!

I notice very quickly that i was haveing alk burn on acros.
After some reading i decided to use muriatic acid to slowly lower alk buy rotaing and treating water in seperate bin.
I was suprised at how fast the muriatic acid works to lower alk. Although i took a week of water rotations to get it to 7.5

Funny though ever thou having alk burn some of the brown acro colored up greatly.

So I figure a small update and I'll get a pic when lights come on...
I was using geissmann 21k bulb on my tank but upon setting up a new Coral bed I got a halide with a new xm 20k..to my surprise the geissmann looked violet compared to the xm. So I bought a new bulb for my dt.. Very nice bulb.
Still fighting a slightly anorexic tank with pale colors. I upd the feeding and now have upd the AA and CV. should see a difference in a week or so.