120 gallon journal - picture Feb 27

[kwirky]

No experience like experience. It's just over a month, now, and things are starting to come together

So the hair algae's all gone. I'm not embarrased any more to post a picture of the tank other than when the lights are out.


I'm starting to feel I don't have enough rock... what do you think?

I think I pretty much sorted out my alkalinity problem for the moment. I'm just dosing more often, and I'm trying to work myself into the habit of regularity.

Oh and I got a refractometer. It's a nice tool, and now I'm aware I was running my system at a salinity of 1.028, instead of the 1.025 I thought it was running at.

coraline algae's starting to show up, and the macro algae on the rocks is doing well. Nitrates have stabilized, and are sitting at 0.0 or 0.2ppm each time I test for them.

And I have two cinamon clowns in quarantine ATM. They look healthy, and they're eating well. They're little pigs!

And I added a branching frogspawn. And an elegance coral, which I hope turns out for the best. I purchased it off a fair amount of book research, but the books are out of date to inform one that recently elegance coral's not faring well in the aquarium... It's feeding, though, which I take as a good sign.

the xenia's continuing to grow like a weed. The zoos are forming runners. And my early toadstool frag fell into the rock work. I managed to find the perfect spot for it, it was reacting well, but I didn't have any epoxy or superglue left. I can't find it for the LOVE of me! Tried a rescue mission tonight and carefully disassembled that end of the rockwork, but it's as if it vanished...

As money comes in, I'd like to add more liverock (i'll be curing it properly this time), get an auto top-off together (probably run it on an electronic timer rather than a float switch), and DIY a kalk mixer or a calcium reactor.

Plus on the backburner are plans for a small, 18x18x18 nano tank for up in my bedroom. That's for after christmas probably.

Oh and I tapped into the RO portion of my RO/DI, so now I'm able to make my jasmine tea with RO water. yum

[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]

Almost a month since the last update, so I figured I'd do a quick run-over of all the stuff in the past month.

I lost that elegance. Albert said he lost all his in the store too. Was kind of a bummer.

I cut back the photoperiod of my T5 10k bulbs. I run the aquablue +'s for 12 hours, and the 10000k's for 6 hours. The softies and the branching euphillia have reacted well to it. Pink coraline's starting to show up. I don't know if increasing the photoperiod of the 10k's would bring in deeper and darker coraline, or if it would just bleach it.

I want more liverock, and I think that'll be the next major thing I get for the tank, along with either a blenny or a goby.

The two adolescent cinnamon clowns are out of quarantine, and in the display tank for their second day. They're timid, as expected to be, and being weened off of Spectrum Grow to mysis shrimp because I can't feed the tiny sinking pellets in the reef tank. Man fish go crazy for that new life spectrum. Too bad it dissapears in the rockwork before the fish can eat it : \

I've been having an algae problem again. Weird, super soft wavy algae growing on the glass of the tank. I think it's because of the trouble I was having with my skimmer. Solved the skimmer problem by removing the sponge bubble catcher. It was affecting the dialing of the skimmer, causing the collection cup to overflow suddenly 10 hours after I'd dial in the skimmer.

Found a hitchiker crab in the liverock that looks like the emerald crabs, behaves like the emerald crabs, yet green. I've watched him a fair bit, and he keeps to himself, just picking at invisible stuff on the rock. Innocent until proven guilty. I'll leave him alone unless he keeps growing (2" across already).

Nobody's had interest in buying the 150W HQI light, so I think I'm going to keep it until I have the chance to start up a second reef tank.

I've been humming and hawing over starting a second tank, but I keep telling myself "NO! concentrate on the one you have! any money spent on another tank is money lost for stuff like dosing pumps, etc!" I really want an array of dosing pumps after X-Mas

I've been trying to figure out a way to convert my 33 gallon freshwater tank to another reef tank WITHOUT buying anything much more. I have two 33 gallon long tanks, one in display shape, one good for a sump. I also have a DE 150W PFO HQI light needing a reflector/socket. Great light, but not for something 3 feet long.

Anyone know of a SUPER cheap way to light a small tank? I was thinking of supplementing it with a single 96W PC light, but that would be like another $140. And I still need a reflector and bulb clips for the tank. Anyone have a good source for DE bulb clips? They're like $10 in the states, but $20 up here. I was thinking of making the reflector by butchering a worklight or two for theirs. We have some extras in the garage.

[Joe Reefer]

What, no pics?

[Johnny Reefer]

Looks good Sean. I agree that you could use more live rock.

Originally Posted by kwirky

...... Found a hitchiker crab in the liverock that looks like the emerald crabs, behaves like the emerald crabs, yet green. ....

BTW, Emerald crabs are green. Hence the name.

Cheers,

[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.