Ash's 400 Gallon Reef

[Ashish Patel]

I am now up to 55ML per day dosing Vodka (Two doses per day). PH has taken a hit but I guess I will deal with the main problem of getting these Nitrates down and worry about PH later. My skimmer produces a lot of wet skimmate and foam. I lost about 4 gallons today so I am replenishing that immediately after removing the skimmate bucket, Since my skimmer waste floats in a 5 gallon container in my sump, there is zero impact on my salinity since I add saltwater before removing the waste. Last year I was not paying attention to this and after a 1 month my Salinity would drop from 1.026 to 1.021.

Dosing vodka daily has improved my daily maintenance. I have no choice but to make sure my skimmer is running properly since the levels are always dropping. Eventually I want to add my becket skimmer to the sump where I can feed LC to this skimmer instead of my Reef Octopus skimmer - which is taking a major beating and never runs consistently without constant rubbing down of the body. I dont like that my skimmer is inconsistent and foam line drops daily. as I power it of and on, that skimmate starts overflowing the cup immediately. This is not a stable skimmer anymore and I hope adding a second skimmer will keep the main skimmer clean and free of LC staining.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Looking at some old pic and found of my first saltwater tank from 1997. The African Grey is a baby at the time.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Vodka dosing on week 6. I diluted 1ml tank water with 9ml RODI and finally got an actual credible range of around 200ppm Nitrates. Before I was just guessing. I feel it started around 400+ppm before the water changes and carbon dosing.

 

[Ashish Patel]

So decided it's time to decommission this blue vat. I'm gonna pull out and QT everything worth keeping and move the skimmer and doser to the QT. 2 radions to the far section of my sump. One MP40 in the QT and one I'm the sump.

 

[Ashish Patel]

This is some scrap pieces of starboard left over from the barebottom, that failed as a divider In my sump. So instead of using egg crate for frag rack, which I absolutely hate, I got the perfect size drill bit to make good size frag racks so I can have a place to but my frags. Too often I break something or some of the larger gonis and montis have no place to go. So I want to be ready with a good size place since I need to start making trades for newer stuff and/or sell the extra.

 

[Ashish Patel]

These drill bits from harbor freight are amazing. I wish i new about them before destroying my acrylic sump. They drill acrylic, concrete, porcelain, starboard painlessly.

 

[Ashish Patel]

I have this frag rack that has a strong magnet for $100. It's great but would I spend this type of money today. No way. It's got way to many holes way to close. I am glad I have it since it has no problem holding I'm 3/4" glass.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Some pics of the fish.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Making progress to convert section of my sump into a frag tank. I am reluctant to keep the frag system on a reverse photo period but feel that's the best thing for keeping PH up during the night.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Using the Old starboard to make a divider wall so I can eventually transfer some turbo snails who need a new a algae ground. I used some acrylic rods as support. I know it's going to rock but honestly I just need to keep the snails as well as light spill to a minimum

 

[Ashish Patel]

I hate eggcrate with a passion so much so It ends up in a bucket never cleaned. Moreover snails can't really keep it clean. So I have this genius idea to use starboard and drilled maybe 170 holes in it. I have one more board the same size so can add a second one. I left good space between holes so corals can grow without being smothered and turbos can clean the top easily while light will be minimum below giving the inverts good hiding place

 

[Ashish Patel]

Curious to see how many frags I can fit in this sump. I am taking 48"x30" space. It will be nice to have a place I can take corals from the 400 without acclimation or QT. I must have 20 lose or broke corals in the 400. Urchins hold the zoas on the head for weeks at a time so they have definitely saved alot of zoas for me.

 

[Ashish Patel]

So my NO3 are at 200ppm and holding there for the past month. I believe 25ml daily dose of vodka is just maintaining these levels and going above 25ml per day causes alot of slime. I got a dosing Pump so once I add that and have vodka dosing slowly throughout the day I believe it will give my skimmer enough time to remove the bacteria.

This dosing Pump is great for the price but I would definitely trust the versa pump over any pump on the market. I will run some tests on it before using it so I'm not overdosing. Which right now would happen bc when calibrating it's putting out 40ml and not letting me even report the fluid dosed beyond 1.3ml.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Due to the high NO3 I've decided to make a very larger waterchange. About 50% actual water volume. I will Even reduce the sump line by 3" and later add an additional 60gallons to get this 50%. The idea is vodka dosing will keep it around 100ppm and ramping up dosing in the coming weeks should get me down to where I want to me, close to 5-10ppm

 

[ryanrick]

Due to the high NO3 I've decided to make a very larger waterchange. About 50% actual water volume. I will Even reduce the sump line by 3" and later add an additional 60gallons to get this 50%. The idea is vodka dosing will keep it around 100ppm and ramping up dosing in the coming weeks should get me down to where I want to me, close to 5-10ppm

Do you have a second way to check the nitrate value?

 

[Ashish Patel]

Do you have a second way to check the nitrate value?

Not really but I am pretty confident in Salifert test kits. Ive had off the charts Nitrates for a year now that the test kit was not useful to me, I was just naive thinking it would go down in my system overtime like it has in all my tanks over 20 years. in January I diluted the water 1:10 with RO and its showing 25PPM, which times that by 9 is where = 225PPM.

2 months ago i decided to deal with the Nitrates slowly so first I did a 2x 25% water changes, added 80lbs of live sand remotely and started dosing Vodka I estimated it was probably way over 300PPM before I started. At least now I have a good reference point. If the Salifert reading hits closure to 10PPM then I know I am close to 90ppm. The Vodka is doing a good job on Phosphate so much so I had to back of the Lanthum Chlorides dosing by 80% otherwise it will bottom out my Phosphates (which after dosing Vodka went to near 0 and since around 10PPB or 0.03ppm, So ideally i want my Phosphates above 0.08PPM so that gives me a wiggle room for testing every 7-14 days, which truthfully i can go few months without testing Phosphates.

After doing 2 (25% water changes) a few weeks before dosing Vodka I noticed improvement in my SPS for about 1 month then the growth tips stopped. I imagine the NO3 just went back up fast and caused calcification issues again. Back then I was ramping up the vodka dosing and it was pretty low, maybe 5ml per day. Which is not enough to reduce the NO3 in my system which has a heavy bio-load. I think once I am done with the waterchanges I will ramp up the vodka dosing to 35ML-40ML per day via dosing pump.

 

[GBRsouth]

Nitrate tests convert nitrate into nitrite to get the test result. Any presence of nitrite in the sample water before testing can artificially give a high nitrate reading in the test result. It would be a good idea to test nitrite in your sample water to confirm a zero nitrite reading to ensure your high nitrate test result is not a false high reading.

(A small amount of nitrite can make a very big difference in the nitrate test reading.)

 

[Ashish Patel]

Getting ready to make a 240gallon waterchange (50% of total water volume).
The goal is to get this NO3 down to 100ppm and hope that my current Vodka dose will at least stop it from rising this time around.

I added a hydro dosing Pump and got the vodka on a 21 doses in 24 hours with total going in at 30ml. Hopefully spreading the dose out will stop the pink slime in the sump and permanent clogging of filter socks. Which if someone can suggest how to clean them that would be great.

 

[MartyK]

My go-to for filter socks is usually a cold rinse cycle followed by a hot & heavy-duty cycle in the washing machine with bleach. Let them air dry if you have the time otherwise you'll need to kill the residual chlorine with Prime or equivalent. You can also soak the socks in a bucket of diluted bleach (10:1) before the washing machine if they're really gnarly.

 

[Ashish Patel]

My go-to for filter socks is usually a cold rinse cycle followed by a hot & heavy-duty cycle in the washing machine with bleach. Let them air dry if you have the time otherwise you'll need to kill the residual chlorine with Prime or equivalent. You can also soak the socks in a bucket of diluted bleach (10:1) before the washing machine if they're really gnarly.

I been wanting to find a cheap used washing machine and put it in my basement for this reason. I could use my household machine but don't think my wife would be too happy Iam not sure I would feel comfortable using bleach unless i had 10 + socks in rotation and they where dried out for a few weeks.

Does the Bleach really make a big difference?