At wits end - QT just will not support SPS

[UK_Pete]

In the photo the surface of the water looks mirror flat. Have you got enough gas exchange going on, and circulation? Could the CO2 be building up and driving pH down? Also you mention 0 ppm phosphates and now nitrates too. Is that with an accurate test? Is your phosphate and or nitrate so low that the corals are starving as you said in your first post? Do you feed the tank much? Just suggesting because when my nutes were driven to zero as per test kits and I was feeding very little, my corals shrank over weeks and some died, and when I dosed nutes recently, they corals responded with what I interpret as extreme joy (like monti with polyps like I have never seen).

 

[TinpanVA]

Pete - Flow was indeed a concern and the photo is old, right after I moved it indoors. Since then I've added a Vortech MP-10, she's got plenty of flow now and good ripples on top for gas exchange. MP-10 has been in place for months now.
0 ppm Po4 was tested with a hanna checker, I also use a Seachem test kit because it's quick and easy. I've ordered the Ultra Low Phosphorus checker, as the standard Po4 test doesn't go that low. It reads 0.00 Just a few weeks ago nitrates were at 32ppm, but since then I've started vodka dosing in the main display tank so that has been driving down the nitrates. Once I hit 0, I backed off the dose so it's rising slightly. I use the Red Sea Pro test kit for nitrates. Lack of food for the coral was also a concern that's why I added the blenny and shrimp. Feeding only those guys should give me enough "poop" for the corals food. No other supplements are added. However, I do supplement the DT with all kinds of foods and additives. Trace amounts of those additives may be getting transferred to the QT during water changes.

pH in the tank is a little low at 7.9 to 8.1 but its very close to the same reading I have in the DT. Middle of winter here and my pH always drops a little from the house being closed up.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Ok, good luck and let us know if you detect any ammonia.

 

[UK_Pete]

Seems OK really dosent it. Re the nutes though, if it looks like starving coral and you are measuring zero, despite the fish, it could be that the lack of a sand bed, with its usual gradual nutrient leaching, is making the carbon dosing nutrient removal just too efficient perhaps? Just a thought, because when I made my tank BB it was easy to get nutes to complete zero even with light feeding. You could try holding a water change on hand and dosing say 2 ppm nitrate and 0.05 phosphate and see if you get a positive response like I did. If you do then it might lead you closer to the problem perhaps. Keep an eye on the nutrients a few times over 24 hours if possible to make sure they are not dropping immediately. My corals responded within like 24 hours or less to the increased nutes. Best of luck!

 

[TinpanVA]

I would also test magnesium.

Have you ever measured ammonia in this tank when corals are in it?

Alright, so I did a full round of water testing this morning. First off, no real difference noted between doing 1 or 2 top offs as it relates to salinity. Seems to hold 1.026 most of the time, but it does dip to 1.025 at times as seen below:

Salinity Measurements

1.026 SG	Thu	February 19, 2015 07:37
1.025 SG	Sat	February 14, 2015 12:17
1.026 SG	Sat	February 7, 2015 13:07
1.025 SG	Sun	January 25, 2015 10:41
1.025 SG	Sat	January 17, 2015 10:59
1.025 SG	Sun	January 11, 2015 11:55
1.026 SG	Sun	January 4, 2015 13:20

Ammonia was reading 0 or maybe just a trace, I have a hard time with close colors so here's a pic

Po4 was tested by the hanna checker and read 0.00

Alk was tested by a red sea pro kit = 10.13 dkh

Mag was tested by a red sea pro kit = 1520 ppm

Nitrate was tested at 0 with a red sea pro kit (pic below)

Calcium was tested by red sea pro kit = 440 ppm

Temp = 78 deg

This makes the 2nd reading in a row with 0 no3 & po4. = starving corals?

I'm suprised it's that nothing is showing up with the large piles of poo the blenny leaves behind, he's worse than a dog. I'm feeding [I feel] pretty heavy, but I guess the shrmip is doing a real good job of keeping the bare bottom clean. I think this just complicates the existing issue as the tank had 32ppm no3 weeks ago and corals still died.

1. Should I skip a weeks water change and see if no3 will rise?
2. Should I stop using DT water for water changes and use fresh mixed? At least until the carbon dose it worked out.

I feel like I should fix the no3 issue before trying to diagnose the other [original] issue, just to simplify things. i am thinking about picking up a small 10 gal petco tank and trying it all in there just to rule out the tank having some type of chemical in it.

 

[TinpanVA]

Additional edit: Alk was tested by a hanna checker, not by a red sea as I stated above. Value was correct at 10.13 dkh

 

[UK_Pete]

Well, somethign that jumps out to me is the high alk with serious ULN situation. I mean 0 and 0 for N and P on quality test kits is as far as the hobby goes, completely ULN. But everyone says dont go too high with the alk if your are ULN, and it was because of that (from Randy) that I decided to lower my alk from 9 to 7 recently, although I cant remember the exact range he recommended (I had to use muratic acid as my salt is high alk). But I am sure it was well below 10. IIRC above about 8 you see negative effects (like fairly rapid death IIRC). I'm sure you can search his posts to find his suggested ranges for ULN which you are for sure at the moment.

Also though, my own experience was that when I read 0 and 0 for N and P on salifert N and hanna 713 for P, I had no growth, sad looking corals, not dying, but not happy. Slowly shrinking hammer coral, monti that looked like sun bleached plastic with no growth and no color, shriveled mushrooms, etc. When I added nutrients some things like the mushrooms and hammer responded within 24 hours. Mushrooms expanded to like 4 times the size for instance. Monti polyps appeared that I had always thought were 1 mm long, suddenly they were 3 mm.

I think your tank is like a small version of my DT. Mine is BB but has LR too, but it is very sensitive to nutrient changes because theres nothing leaching a constant P and N into the water (ie no sand). It responds fast, and carbon dosing works extremely effectively on it. Despite your previously high N, if your P was zero, the tank would still be starved from a coral perspective.

My thoughts are this. I would drop the alk to 7, as i dont imagine you are looking at this tank as a grow tank, so why bother with the extra problems caused to corals by high alk in ULN conditions. Also I would try to get the nutes about right, like Glenns numbers sound pretty average, phosphate about 0.05ish and N of IIRC 1 or 2 ppm. Measurable at least. If that means stopping carbon dosing then stop. My own attempt to do similar is going well so far, corals looking pleased. I am feeding far more than my fish need, and dosing enough carbon to keep that food as organic rather than inorganic nutrients as it breaks down (so I am feeding lots, and keeping inorganic nutes, ie the measurable ones, low to zero). Rational is that test kits only measure inorganic nutes, but if you are adding stacks of food, and enough carbon to match the food quantity, you know you have quite a bit of organic nutrients in the tank. So say half a cube a day in a 15 gallon tank, or even more, I dont know. Im doing, in a 55, 1 gram of blended squid, clam, fish etc a day, but wil probably step up to 2 or 3 grams a day or more. But try feeding increasing amounts till you see something. If you are not getting any algae on the glass IMO your tank is too low nutrient. I went for well over a week between glass cleanings when I was far too ULN. Now I see it as if I get a slight film every one to 2 days that shows the tank is at least capable of sustaining life!

 

[UK_Pete]

Actually thiking about what Randy said about ammonia, if you stop carbon dosing the tank might cycle as if youre dosing carbon now, it might not have much nitrifying bacteria. So probably dont stop carbon dosing. Unless you want to convert the tank to 'traditional' nitrifying type biology but you should be prepared for a cycle if you stop carbon. Carbon dosing provides an alternative path for ammonia to be converted directly to biomass, live bacteria, which might be good because the bacteria seems to be food for corals. I've been reading recently that you need around 9 ml of vinegar per gram of wet food (like liquidised fish, clam, squid etc), although I only have aquaculture studies to go on and I am only speculating by using this number. For various reasons I believe more than that is required so I am currently using 18 ml of vinegar per gram wet food. Or about 2.6 ml of vodka.

 

[TinpanVA]

Ok, so I have a couple of questions. I agree, tank right now is certainly ULNS. How did you go about adding nutrients? I'm thinking if I just skip a water change the no3 will rise.

Just to clarify, the QT does not get a vodka (carbon) dose, only the DT. But I use DT water for my water change source. Should I stop that? Maybe short term while I get the no3 stabilized. I'm shooting for 1 ppm no3 in the DT or less but not less than .25 ppm.
Tomorrow I'm ordering the Hanna ULS phosphorus checker, more suitable for the lower po4 systems.

I'll cut back my alk dose, that's pretty easy to lower for me. 8 dkh more suitable for me?

 

[TinpanVA]

In my DT I feed reef frenzy (nano) daily , coral frenzy on wednesdays, reef chili on Saturdays and each day 3ml of reef energy a & b plus .5ml of reef colors a, b, c, & d. Would any of this be benifical in the QT?

 

[UK_Pete]

Well to add nutrients I just used what I had on hand. I have nitric acid and kalk, so I took a few ml of nitric acid and neutralised it with plenty of kalk. I think in the US you can get stump remover (potassium nitrate) at the hardware store for instance. Otherswise there is the garden center, which has calcium nitrate fertilizer. But maybe not as clean as the acid which is why I made my own. I'm sure you can find something with nitrate in it on ebay or at the stores if you read the labels (often not labelled on the front as 'calcium nitrate' etc, but some old fashioned name - potassium nitrate might be called nitra of potash or somthing like that iirc).

For phosphate I used phosphoric acid I have for brewing. Its also available as descaler or something like that at the hardware store again. Got to read the small print in the label. The brewing stuff I have is about 75% by weight phosphate, so if you want 1 ppm in a 1000 litre tank, thats one millionth of 1000 kg, which is 1 gram, or 1/0.75 grams of the acid. But you dont have to calculate it, you can add a little and test if you want. With the phosphoric acid its so concentrated that about 4 drops brought my 55 up to well over 1.5 ppm so start very low. Dilute it 10 to 1 and then add a drop of that diluted mix to the tank, let it mix for an hour and test, and continue that way. Have a water change ready so if you overshoot you can bring it down again. Calculating it is easier though so if you let me know your volume and what source of N and P you have I can probably tell you roughly how much to try. In a tank like your QT the levels might fall quite quickly (because theres no rock or sand to buffer it) so you might need to check daily at first to see how stable levels stay.

At the moment I decided not to continue with the inorganic N and P like the above though. I think (but dont know) that algae prefer inorganic forms of N and P, but this is something I havent properly researched yet, just a few mentions here and there I have seen. But I have also been doing a lot of reading into organic carbon dosing (DOC), although I have done it for years, but now understanding it a bit more in depth. Dosing DOC essentially keeps inorganic nutrients low by turning them into organic nutes, whether they are skimmed or not. For a few reasons I decided to try to boost organic N and P instead by carbon dosing while adding plenty of food. So I am adding to a 55 gal, 1 gram blended DIY food and 18 ml vinegar daily, despite it being too much for my fish. And I will probably increase this to 2 or 3 grams a day (and increase vinegar). Because its well blended the fish cant eat it all, only part of it, so he dosent get too fat. The blended food also has trace elements in it of course (naturally, not added by me). The uneaten food will be eaten by bacteria, who will also need the extra carbon (vinegar) to fully 'eat' the nutrients in the food. They will create large amounts of bacteria and organic nutrients in the tank, some of which will not be skimmed and will feed the corals, is the intention.

Inorganic nutrients had an almost instant effect for me. But the alternative I am now doing - heavy feeding and carbon - seems to be pleasing my remaining corals and not stimulating the remains of the GFA I got when I overshot my P dosing. There is also a suggestion that high 'good' bacteria help corals by exerting a 'probiotic' effect. Only speculation but its coming from scientists so its interesting.

I think its probably fine to use either fresh or DT water. I cant see it making that much difference, slight maybe but the input of nutes / carbon is probably not that significant (your results seem to show that too). And as for alk, I dont know really, I decided to go for Randys recommended range for ULN, which is about NSW, 7, but I am not gunning for heavy growth at the mo, just settling the tank down. If I was aiming for growth from what I have read higher nutes and alk are effective, with the higher alk needing the higher nutes for some reason to prevent coral death. Since I decided on 7 I would recommend that but its only based on ULN recomemdations I have got from other people, not personal experience.

Reef frenzy looks pretty good food to be in terms of its a blend of seafood, sounds perfect. As for the red sea supplements etc, I don't know if I would, as I think they are designed for a growing reef. If you have little to nothing using them then they could build up I imagine. Since it seems you are doing WCs I dont know if I see the need for them. But food is going to contain the important ones, N and P, plus some trace elements in fairly balanced ratios IMO. High levels of trace elements could be toxic, is my feeling. Slightly low levels seem less likely to really harm corals than high levels to me.

So to summarise - inorganic nitrate and phosphoric acid successfully raised my nutes instantly. Corals responded in hours positively. I (heavily) overshot P and got GFA, but that dosent mean you would. My tank is probably a larger version of your QT with some rock and a skimmer. My current opinion that I am trying is that having a very bacterially live tank will be positive for corals. To obtain a bacterially live tank I need to dose vinegar and nutes in some form. I could dose inorganic nutrients (like I did) but now I think, since I want to turn those nutes into organic form asap anyway, I might as well just feed DIY food, which is already in organic form. That will also have aminos and peptides in it which I hear are good for corals. And as the DIY food is broken down by bacteria, it will be converted into different forms of organic nutrients (live and dead) that are resistant to further degradation into a form which will feed algae. So I can keep nutrients present in the tank without algae. Thats my theory but I dont know if it is correct

Either way, with feeding either inorganic nutrients, or DIY food, for high bacteria population I need vinegar. Is it possible to keep corals happy in a tank with only inorganic nutrients (IE a tank that was not fed food or vinegar, only fed nitrate and phosphate, so has virtually no dissolved carbon)? I dont know, but mine did look great for a few days after I fed inorganic nutes - but GFA appeared! Natural reefs have most nutrients in organic form, and have plenty of dissolved carbon, so I intend to try that, but thats not to say I know for sure its the right approach. But since that is what I believe at the moment, I would recommend you just start dosing vinegar and make sure you feed plenty. I know its not very scientific but since you cant measure organic nutes, I am feeding so that my glass needs a slight wipe every couple of days. Just a very light build up than you can only see if you run the magnet across the tank and can see the difference between the cleaned bit and the uncleaned bit. Most successful tanks I have read about do require glass wiping.

The other thing about dosing vinegar is it keeps your ammonia down BTW. So if you dont have much area for nitrfying bacteria, and are not dosing carbon, as Randy said, perhaps ammonia could cause a problem.

 

[TinpanVA]

Can you tell by the picture I provided if ammonia was present? Those color kits drive me crazy. When I look at the picture I'd say its close to 0 but it does look to have a trace.
What I need to do is check the DT tank again for No3, I think once I have that stabilized where I want it, it will make keeping the levels in the QT easier. Making any adjustments now would be premature and just fighting myself. In the short term, I could step up the feeding in the QT to get some excess nutrients in there. Any idea how long I can run with 0 P&N? Are you suggesting I could be in a situation where I'm dosing vodka in the DT but having to dose vinegar in the QT? The 2 test frags that are in there now have been closed up about 2 weeks I think. The birdnest still has a touch of color and maybe 10% polyp ext. The NoTG is very faded and near 0% PE. Both are prolly goners. A QT really shouldn't be this difficult to maintain. The original plan was just to have a tank with water and a frag rack, heater, and some form of flow and light. Now it's fish, shrimp and live rock with a dosing plan. So much for simple.

I do have an update on the QT observations, since I removed the HOB filter a week ago, the stringy reddish/brown algae stuff is gone. Currently no plan to put the HOB back on, I was concerned I would end up with excess food (nutrients) certainly is not the case. First order of business is to get the no3 at a proper level, get my hands on a ULS Phosphorus checker and get those results and go from there.
I need to find Randy's article on best parameters for running an ULNS and get those values stable. My DT is very full (80+ corals in a 30 gal tank) so I'm not looking for growth, I want to transition to better colors. To minimize stress to corals, trying to match the QT as close to the DT as I can.

On a completely different note, it's great running into as many brewers as I do that are also reefers, I think we have a common bond and like complicated hobbies. Here's a peek at my system. HERMS with dedicated fermentation chamber and 3 tap kegerator.

Sorry, didn't mean to derail my own thread, just had to share.

 

[TinpanVA]

Talked to the tanks original owner, no chemicals used, but he said he couldn't (wouldn't) try to grow SPS in such a small tank, he felt parameters would be all over the place. He thought the tank would be just fine for a QT though. Isn't the rule of thumb to quarantine corals 6 weeks? So is a 7 gal just too small? That why I'm having so many problems?

Today is watertesting and water change day, looking forward to see the no3 levels in both tanks and bought the ULS phosphorus checker last night so I'm curious to see those as well.

Randy - went looking for an article you may have wrote on best parameters for a ULNS system but didn't see anything, could you provide a link?

 

[UK_Pete]

Paul seeing that brewing system put a smile on my face! That is one cool setup you have there, although your dog dosent look too impressed, it needs a caption saying 'I want to go in and see my owner, but that room scares the hell out of me and I think I will die if I enter'! Unfortunately now I dont do much brewing because of space in the current house, we are waiting to move hopefully this year to a place with a few acres but at the mo, since kids came along, all my old space has been taken by their stuff, and I am not allowed to have 'dangerous stuff' like 10 gallon kegs of boiling water anywhere :-( I still have a load of old copper stuff I made years ago, including this giant mash tun thats about 50 or 60 gallon, with a circulation pump powered by a drill, and steam pressure lance with a boiler made from an old keg. I also need to get brewing again soon because I cant drink normal beer now made from barley so I need to get working on malting my own corn or oats or something.

Anyway back to tanks (for now). Re the ammonia photo, its hard to tell, since the way a camera percieves color is not always going to be the same as the eye because of different spectral sensitivities of the 3 color sensors in the eye / camera. But if the photo looks like it does in real life, I dont think it looks like theres much ammonia there to me. I think you can increase the sensitivity of the ammonia test somehow, by adding alkali or something, or maybe thats just the intank sensors that can do that, not sure. But since I dont test for ammonia myself its hard for me to advise about that. Maybe Randy could provide more info re the ammonia photo.

Re how long to go without N and P, I think since our test kits only measure to tens of ppb at max, its hard to say. On the great barrier reef (gbr), inorganic N is sometimes below 1 ppb, organic N around 70 ppb, inorganic P around 3 ppb and organic P about 3 ppb too. It varies, not sure if I posted this link:

http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/7690/MMP_AIMS_August_2008.pdf

Around page 20 onwards there are tables of detailed reef water quality parameters. Really interesting. So if corals can survive and thrive at nute levels below what we can test (IE read zero on our test kits) then its not possible to say how long a coral can survive when our kit reads zero. But my experience was that different corals lasted different times. My hammer survived for months in an environment where other corals perished in weeks for instance. Others lost color but hung on just about for a couple of months. My nutes were probably gradually declining because I thought I had excessive nutes (before I got a low range test kit for phosphate). So I fed a few milligrams of flake a day to a 55, while dosing 1 ml vodka a day. Now I realise my nutes were actually low, must have been gradually declining as stuff died off and the skimmer gradually removed all traces of nutes. I dont know what the levels got down to of course. Probably pretty low, like a few ppb or less, with very little organics in the water too.

New frags of acro had no polyp extension as soon as I put them in my tank. But they didnt die for a few weeks.

Getting back to the GBR link, you can see that organic nutrients are considerable, especially nitrogen (70 ppb). So that suggests that corals can be happy with low inorganic N but medium levels of organic. So if you feed blended fish (clam, squid etc), the blending is going to release some of the organics to the water (dont strain the food imo). This is why I am thinking feed instead of add inorganic nutes. Food will eventually break down to inorganic ammonia, N and P unless you do carbon dosing though, which is why I think you should dose carbon (vodka, vinegar, all the same IMO, maybe subtle differences but they all provide similar effects and I have no idea if any is better). Carbon dosing will keep the tank ammonia and N and probably P under control I think. You can use a skimmer or GAC to remove some of the bacteria if your glass is getting too dirty too quick, signifying organic nutes are too high. From the GBR data you can see that particulate P and N are available too, one form of which is bacterial flocs, which is what is formed when carbon is dosed in our tanks too. Its slightly confusing because organic N and P in the tank water can come from both blended food, and also from bacteria in the tank created when you dose carbon. But it all feeds corals.

Re the complexity btw, IMO I dont feel you need the fish and shrimp. I think that bacterial action will do what you need, although as I say I do think you need carbon dosing too. But perhaps there are several ways to do this job. One might be to have a fish which provides a bit of ammonia, but the way I see it, if you have ammonia you need to have bacteria to get rid of that ammonia, and without much substrate that might be borderline. If you dont have a fish and feed the tank the ammonia will still be produced I think, by bacteria instead. But these are tougher bacteria which dont need as much substrate or as delicate a balance of conditions. So you could find you have enough bacteria to make ammonia but not enough to get rid of that ammonia. So if you want to try not dosing carbon, I think some kind of bacteria filter might be good, very coarse sand perhaps, maybe a cannister filter (never used myself though). But my preferred method at the moment would be carbon dosing as I say since the bacteria are aggressive, comparatively tough, and provide food, plus we all know that carbon dosing seems to have positive effects on coral tanks, even if our theories about why are wrong.

BTW if the tank or equipment is suspect did you think to do a triton test for metals etc? Not sure how much you want to spend but if for instance something electrical was leaking metals like nickel or copper, or the tank had a residue from previous problems, triton would show you wouldent it.

Does the glass ever need a clean btw?

FWIW I am getting help from Randy in another thread for an idea I have for the moment which is vinegar and blended food combined into one diy frozen cube, or perhaps as its looking like now, a paste with blended fish in vodka, which is balanced in terms of carbon : food ratio, and which I can either throw a single cube in every day to deal with both carbon and food, or perhaps even keep at room temperature and dose with a persitaltic pump, if the food is preserved in vodka.

 

[UK_Pete]

Will be interesting to see those params. I don't think a 7 gal is too small for a QT personally but I suppose it depends on your husbandry. But there are plenty of people who keep corals in nanos.

 

[hatfielj]

Just keep in mind that a QT tank takes just as long to "mature" as a display system. Meaning it may not be ready for SPS for 4-6 months depending on what you have in there. IF you're able to use live rock from your display it could be significantly faster. The conditions in that tank need to be just as stable as your display. Such a small volume of water is very difficult to keep stable parameters IMO. I use a 20gal long with a HOB skimmer and HOB filter full of LR rubble. You need an osmolator on it too. And lighting should be the similar to your display as well.

Oh and I used to homebrew too! I had a E-HERMS set up and it made some **** fine Porter Unfortunately had to give up that hobby cause it was making me drink too much!
This is the Kal Clone Controller I built for it

 

[UK_Pete]

Another brewer! My old brewing buddy also used to keep a reef tank, in fact hes the one that got me into reef aquaria. I think it must be true that many reefers like brewing too - or maybe its just that we like our beer? Certainly nice to sit down in front of the tank with a cool beer and so much better if you made it yourself. HERMS seems to be all the rage nowadays and I will probably convert my old stuff to that system, just need a good pump with SS internals though. I do brew a bit of wine nowadays although I find that makes me drink more than beer, I think a light 3.5% beer would be perfect, just got to get the malting process down really as I need to make my own malt. So many projects

Back to tanks. What I recently realised with carbon dosing, that I like a lot, is that its a far faster process than traditional tank cycling. Studies with shrimp farming have shown that a new tank with new water, no substrate, and a few juvenile shrimp, is able to have no cycle at all. No ammonia or nitrite spike, and no significant nitrate build up. The ammonia bacteria are so quick to multiply that they respond within hours to the input of food. IIRC they have a growth rate of at least 1.25 times per hour, which means in 3 days, 1 bacteria will have multiplied to 10 million. So taking a number from memory (very rough) that you end up with about 1 million bacteria per ml in a carbon dosed system in aquaculture, that means in a 7 gallon tank, starting with a single bacteria, in under 5 days you will have well over that number.

Its also interesting that some sources say that carbon dosing inhibits nitrifying bacteria, and even 'washes them out' to quote, although I'm not sure what that means. But it does not sound good for them. I wonder if you are carbon dosing a tank and stop, does it have to go through an ammonia cycle to allow the nitrifiers to build back up.

As for the stability is it mainly the alk thats the problem? My thinking is that if you only have a couple of inches of acro frags in the tank, you wont get much depletion, but of course if you want to put a large, rapidly growing coral in a tiny tank, I can see the problem.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Randy - went looking for an article you may have wrote on best parameters for a ULNS system but didn't see anything, could you provide a link?

I've not written any with ULNS as the main subject, but I do discuss parameters in these articles:

Nitrate in the Reef Aquarium - REEFEDITION

https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/re...-coral-reef-aquarium-randy-holmes-farley.html

Phosphate comes out March 1.

 

[TinpanVA]

@hatfielj - Great to see another brewer on here! Now if either of you tell me you're "traveling men on an eastward path" I will say it's a small world indeed. That would be too many similarities.

Ok, so today's water testing was interesting. First the DT:

Measurements

Temp = 78
pH = 8.1
S = 1.026
No3 = .15
P04 = 0.00 *Note - Hanna Po4 test was 0.00, but with the ULS Phosphorous test, it came to 1 ppb, 1 x 3.066 / 1000 = 0.003066 or .003 ppm Po4 - I think thats right
Ca = 460
KH = 8.45
Mg = 1420
Trace elements were tested also, but not really relevant.

QT tank results:

Temp = 78
S = 1.026
pH = 8.09
NH3 = Trace or .01
No3 = 0
CA = 430
KH = 9.35
Po4 = .04 with hanna and 26 with the ULS P meter. 26 x 3.066 / 1000 = 0.079716 or .08 ppm Po4 - Double the value in the standard Hanna (I think I read somewhere that's normal)
MG = 1520

I ended up re-connecting the HOB filter, at day 5 I had just too much poo floating around the tank and the OCD in me just couldn't let that continue. Only having to clean the glass about every 3rd day. I cut a new frag and its healing in the DT while I get the No3 stable in both tanks. The plan is to then place it in the QT and make daily (pics) and observations. If I can keep it in the QT for 6 weeks and return it to the DT and it lives, I'll call it a success.
I got yo thinking that the HOB filter may help with bringing up the No3 in the QT as it should trap some "junk" in the filter. If I add vinegar, won't that continue to drive down (out) the No3?

I think I'm one more week, 2 at the most, from having the DT No3 where I want it, right around .25 ppm and holding. Couple of water changes with that should have both tanks matched. That should put me back to square one, where I'm struggling to keep them alive 6 weeks. Having the No3 drop out right about the time I started the thread was just bad timing. hatfielj could be right, the QT just may need to mature a few more months. Esp since i can't find the "smoking Gun"

 

[TinpanVA]

Oh, hatfeilj, that's a real nice system, I wired my shed to do an electric setup and bought kals catalog and everything. I use several of his ideas on my system like the weldless bulkheads and the HERMS. But just never got around to going full electric. I guess you sold the controller eh?