120 gallon journal - picture Feb 27

[Quagmire]

Here's a link to recent info on the Elegance coral problems

http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic31241-9-1.aspx

At one time these corals were hardy and easy to care for,untill this infection poped up.If you're lucky enough to get an uninfected elegance,you shouldn't have much problem keeping it heathy.If not,then good luck.Maybe message Borneman on the linked forum to see if he can help you out.

P.S. I like the rock work.lots of open spaces for good water flow.

[kwirky]

I looked through the thread, and the website, but there wasn't specific info yet. Any clue what I should be looking for if it's infected? I've been feeding it every day, and I guess that's a good thing for it in case it IS infected.

Just would be nice to know what to look for.

It's interesting to hear this is what's causing it. I read on the net people figured they were being collected in deeper water, which caused a new set of husbandry requirements.

But the argument of them catching diseases from holding tanks because of the huge assortment of corals that are collected now, sounds quite plausible.

now thousand dollar question, is what does the infection look like? and the ten thousand dollar question is how do you treat it?

Come to think of it, at the LFS, one of the elegance corals did have an infection, and the guy wouldn't sell it. Quite thankful for that. It was from a different system, though, so that increases my chances of a healthy coral.

I'll continue the daily feedings and hope for the best.

[kwirky]

ok so I bought more stuff! woot!

I added two seio 1100's, totaling my water movement to aproximately 4000gph. that's 33 x of tank turnover haha. Everything seemed to perk up almost instantly when I added the extra 2200gph. I've got the powerheads arranged to prevent the deadspots I had before while not giving my softies/lps a thrashing. The clowns are definately enjoying the extra water movement

I also added another 10 lbs of liverock. Albert was nice enough to sell me some from a display tank, too, since there was slim pickings of rock left today. Total liverock is about 100lbs. Need more still. I stacked the rock I bought in the back lefthand corner, allowing open spaces for water movement.

And I did my own DIY auto-top off system. I bought a cheap 5.5 gallon water tank from ukranian tire, and hooked it up to a low output AC airpump run on a digital timer. It's set to pump water out for 5 minutes when the 10k's turn out at 10pm (ph starts dropping then), and another 5 minutes at about 3am. Total output then is 1.8 gallons per day. I was paying attention to my daily evaporation for a while, and normally have about 2.0-2.1 gallons of evaporation per day. It's a pretty good system, I think. Eventually I'll convert it to a 5 gallon glass jug to deal with the jug expanding/contracting when the air pump turns on and off. And I'd like to get a digital timer with more daily on-off's if I come across one for a good price. Spread out the dosing.

Upgraded some more test kits to salifert and aquatest kits. My aquarium pharmeceuticals kit was reading 330ppm calcium, but my new salifert kit reads 390ppm. Good thing I got the new one, I was about to make corrective action today. Also bought a good pH kit to see if my milwaukee monitor is still reading accurately, and it is. 8.3pH while the lights are full blast.

So here are some pictures. Don't mind the cloudy water, I just finished basting the rocks before the photos.


Campwasser dosing bottle. Hehe, get it? lol I'm lame


Under my tank. Don't mind the mess.


as of Nov 15, 2006

[kwirky]

I'm completely sick of dosing kalk. I don't have the means to hook my RO system to the tank, so a kalk mixer is out of the question

i've ordered some calcium chloride, and i'm going to try two part dosing. my calcium's slowly worked it's way down to 320ppm, even though i'm dosing 6 tps of kalk every night like clockwork. it's getting expensive, too, buying kalk from the LFS.

the two part system will give me more control to balance out my kH and calcium, and if it works, i'll look into some dosing pumps to do it for me.

I'll have about 9 lbs of calcium chloride in about a week, ordered from littlesilvermax, and we'll see how it all goes

I'm gonna have fun baking baking soda (sorry, geeky word pun there lol)

[littlesilvermax]

Just joining this thread right now.

What salt do you use?

How do you keep up your magnesium?

I use to go through additives like crazy trying to get my calcium above 350 with no luck, cept I had precipitation all over my pumps, and they needed to be cleaned every 4 months or so. And that was when I had no corals!

Now I have no trouble keeping my calcium at 420 or so and I have huge SPS! All because my magnesium is in check.

Just a thought.

[kwirky]

i use oceanpure salt. it has crazy high magnesium. when i mix to 1.025, it's mg is around 1500 ppm. It's calcium and carbonate hardness are imballanced when it's freshly mixed though. high kH, but low carbonate. I think that's why dosing kalk is a pain with it because i'm starting with imballanced water.

[kwirky]

so i fragged some of the branches off the leather coral. 10 in total. I'll see how they do in the next week.

Also got some chaeto for the fuge. We'll see how that does. It's in the slow moving area of the fuge.

And I bought some kent turbo calcium to fix my calcium/alkalinity imbalance. littlesilvermax has some calcium chloride on the way, so thankfully it won't be expensive to maintain. I'm in the process of baking baking soda ATM.

Oh, and I got an urchin, and I wish I got more, it's so damned cool

[kwirky]

my calcium is under control now. been dosing to part mix every evening. 30ml each night. my coraline is coming back, and my frogspawn has shown to benefit from it.

I added two sixline wrasses today. very small. quite cute, really, and I think their roudy nature will be ok with the cinamon clowns and the royal gramma already in there (which are at least twice their size, and will be much larger when all are fully grown).

now to solve my coral coloration issues.

[kwirky]

I was tired of not having places to put coral, and being a student, I don't have the $$ to just go out and buy another 80 lbs of liverock. So I built a PVC/eggcrate support. Did it all with stuff I had lieing around. I used every single zap strap in the house. Not a single one left

Surefire way to make 90 lbs of liverock look like 140+
Just need a little more rock to fill out the right side and a bit on the top. that'll be when the semester's over. The great thing is I KNOW there aren't any dead spots piled under all the rock, cuz it's just a big open space

I've got a powerhead pointed at the back (as you can see) to make sure nothing collects behind the rockwork. The overall water flow's better too, this way. Just flows right over all the rocks.

I was even thinking of leaving the little bit of PVC/egg crate open on the right, as it was an extremely convenient place to place all my frags. I don't know of too many people who have their frag rack integrated into their rockwork

BEFORE:


AND AFTER:

[Joe Reefer]

I hate to say it but I like before better than after.