120G Rimless shallow peninsula tank

[Janci]

Back from holiday with some good and bad news....
Seems like the newly added shrimp did a good job and got rid of all the aiptasia. I cannot find a single one in the tank at this moment. This is the good news.

Bad:
- seems like the high alkalinity from a couple of weeks ago did affect the corals more then first noticed. I have 2 STN'ing acros (from bottom) and 3 that are dead. About 4 have algae at the tips which must have meant that the tips were burned also due to the KH.
- on the other side, KH has dropped till around 8dKH. I will lower it till around 7.3 and try to keep it stable there again.
- there seems to have developed cyano in the last weeks which took over the bottom of the tank in places where there is less flow. Starting this weekend I will start syphoning out as much as possible and add some phosphates. I believe the imbalance of nutrients came when I started dosing NO3 while PO4 was still at zero.

I will need to find the previous balance again.

 

[Janci]

I have been looking for a long time for a digital refractometer and in the end I bought a Icecap Digital pocket tester.

I tested my tank water which seems to be at 1.022 .
My manual refractometer shows 1.026.

So I put the Icecap in rodi water where it measured 1.000. My manual refractometer seemed to be off a little.
The salinity of the saltwater for the AWC system also seemed to be 1.022 it was measured with the same refractometer).

So now I started to think that the combination of high alkalinity and this low salinity could have caused the latest tank problems.
Even more, the low salinity could have caused the high alkalinity as the corals might have stopped taking up ALK while the CARX reactor kept dosing during the previous holidays where I did not monitor the tank that frequently.

So more jobs for this weekend:
- get salinity back on track
- test my new saltwater on all parameters to see what ALK, Ca, Mg,... I get when actually making 1.025-1.026 water.
- calibrate the AWC pumps again
- ...
- ...
- ...
- ... thinking on an ALK monitor... ;Bookworm;Bookworm;Bookworm

 

[najer]

Back from holiday with some good and bad news....
Seems like the newly added shrimp did a good job and got rid of all the aiptasia. I cannot find a single one in the tank at this moment. This is the good news.

Bad:
- seems like the high alkalinity from a couple of weeks ago did affect the corals more then first noticed. I have 2 STN'ing acros (from bottom) and 3 that are dead. About 4 have algae at the tips which must have meant that the tips were burned also due to the KH.
- on the other side, KH has dropped till around 8dKH. I will lower it till around 7.3 and try to keep it stable there again.
- there seems to have developed cyano in the last weeks which took over the bottom of the tank in places where there is less flow. Starting this weekend I will start syphoning out as much as possible and add some phosphates. I believe the imbalance of nutrients came when I started dosing NO3 while PO4 was still at zero.

I will need to find the previous balance again.

Hope you find the balance again soon, sps can take a couple of weeks to show their true reaction, hopefully your issues with them is nearly past.

 

[GoVols]

;Sorry about the alk burn with low nutrients, Janci

Did you have a good vacation?

 

[Picesduh]

Do yoI regularly calibrate the refractometer? I do every few months or so, prob longer than I should be but I do find that I have to adjust it back to the norm

 

[Janci]

;Sorry about the alk burn with low nutrients, Janci

Did you have a good vacation?

Vacation was great. Thanks Freddie. Spent some time at home with the whole family.
It is always good to get back and out of the desert for a while.

Ever since the alk monitors came out this and and last year, I have been willing to get one. I read about every single one of them but there were 3 things that kept me from buying one:
- high price
- as it is a new product, I prefer to wait and see how other would review it. There are always issues that need to be rectified by the manufacturer.
- My calcium reactor is an AMS Dastaco. They are also working on an alk controller specifically for their system and it makes sense to wait for that.

Do yoI regularly calibrate the refractometer? I do every few months or so, prob longer than I should be but I do find that I have to adjust it back to the norm

I have to make new salt water every 3 weeks and follow the same procedure every time to get the same salinity.
- calibrate the refractometer with rodi water
- check the salinity of the tank water 3 times till I have a stable reading
- that stable reading I use to match the new salt water which is also checked several times to be sure the reading is correct.

So I calibrate the refractometer every 3 weeks.

At this moment, I have no idea what salinity the tank is at as I have different readings with the digital pocket meter.

 

[Janci]

;Sorry about the alk burn with low nutrients, Janci

Did you have a good vacation?

Vacation was great. Thanks Freddie. Spent some time at home with the whole family.
It is always good to get back and out of the desert for a while.

Ever since the alk monitors came out this and and last year, I have been willing to get one. I read about every single one of them but there were 3 things that kept me from buying one:
- high price
- as it is a new product, I prefer to wait and see how other would review it. There are always issues that need to be rectified by the manufacturer.
- My calcium reactor is an AMS Dastaco. They are also working on an alk controller specifically for their system and it makes sense to wait for that.

Do yoI regularly calibrate the refractometer? I do every few months or so, prob longer than I should be but I do find that I have to adjust it back to the norm

I have to make new salt water every 3 weeks and follow the same procedure every time to get the same salinity.
- calibrate the refractometer with rodi water
- check the salinity of the tank water 3 times till I have a stable reading
- that stable reading I use to match the new salt water which is also checked several times to be sure the reading is correct.

So I calibrate the refractometer every 3 weeks.

At this moment, I have no idea what salinity the tank is at as I have different readings with the digital pocket meter.

 

[GoVols]

If you can hold out the Dastaco alk monitor, it does make sense.

Glad you guys had a great trip.

 

[Janci]

So yesterday was the maintenance day.
For starters, I did not take pictures except for this one when I was struggling with the skimmer and UV set up.
She just does not seem to get that a little extra hand could have worked miracles.

 

[Janci]

So I started with making fresh salt water in a bucket.
The assumption that my manual refractometer was indicating wrong needed to be checked so I prepared a 1.026 salinity bucket (measured with the manual refractometer).
This salt water was giving 1.023 with the digital meter.
With the same water I went to my LFS and they measured 1.024 on the milwaukee digital meter.
I continued to measure alk, Ca and Mg and found them low. So I added salt till 1.025 with my digital meter and found the other parameters also to be ok.
From now on I will be making salt water with this salinity and meter as I believe it to be more consistent.

 

[Janci]

After that struggle, I started cleaning the skimmer.
It was working without cleaning for over 2 weeks so I took apart the pump as well.
I would say it was about time to clean the pump... . Amazing how dirty these things become.
Putting it back and getting it to fit the small hose that connects to the skimmer is the most difficult thing. Due to lack of space (my sump was not designed for this skimmer) I can only use one hand to put it in position and get the hose of the outlet.
Let's say that I lost about 1 hour trying to get this done... the cat did not help.
But now it runs even more quiet than it did before.

The UV was the second thing on my list.
I did not change the bulb for over a year and could now bring one from home as these lamps are not available here in UAE.
There was a lot of dirt inside the UV and the protective glass pipe was about 50% covered in lime. Not so well for this kind of equipment.
Of course, cleaning takes most of the time. Getting the thing back together and be sure it is water tight was another issue. Inside the tube there was a lot of lime. It took a while to have this cleaned to be sure the seals would have a clean surface to sit.

 

[Janci]

With a small hose I took out most of the cyano which was close to corals and on the bottom.
In total 120L of water replaced at higher salinity.
I hope this will tackle some of the problems in the tank now.

The corals are not happy at all at the moment.
It seems like they are missing something.
Corals which were doing well before (SSC for example) lost all colour and have little to no PE. Even during the Alk spike, this SSC was still happy.

Will be monitoring the rest during the next days.

 

[GoVols]

Thanks for the updates, Janci

I've not ran UV since the mid 90's... ;Oldman

What's the lifespan of a UV bulb, now?

 

[Janci]

Thanks for the updates, Janci

I've not ran UV since the mid 90's... ;Oldman

What's the lifespan of a UV bulb, now?

I love the UV, It keeps the water crisp and clean.
I believe they recommend yearly renewal of the bulb.

 

[Janci]

Strawberry Shortcake is on it way out. RTN... So are 6 other acros.
Very sad as this SSC has doubled in size since it went in the tank.

Yesterday evening when I came home from work I saw the RTN-ing ongoing so I quickly took some frags from the corals and hope some will pull through.

I will have to change my maintenance schedule back to manual water changes till there is again more stability.
I am also thinking to take out more rocks and corals and start a less occupied reef. Something to think about...

Watching the tank feels like watching "Chasing Corals"

 

[nova65ss]

Bummer hope everything recovers soon.

 

[SPR1968]

Thanks for the updates, Janci

I've not ran UV since the mid 90's... ;Oldman

What's the lifespan of a UV bulb, now?

I’ve run a UV-C since I started up my system pretty much and as long as you run it at the correct power (72000 microwatts/sec I think from memory!) it will kill ich in the free swimming stage providing it goes through the UVC. It will also kill anything else so it’s very handy to have in your system.

I think having been on the forums for a while, it’s more popular in Europe (and maybe UAE?) than the USA.

I wouldn’t run a system without it and it just means a bulb change every 12 months. I’ve currently got the DD 20w version.

 

[Janci]

I’ve run a UV-C since I started up my system pretty much and as long as you run it at the correct power (72000 microwatts/sec I think from memory!) it will kill ich in the free swimming stage providing it goes through the UVC. It will also kill anything else so it’s very handy to have in your system.

I think having been on the forums for a while, it’s more popular in Europe (and maybe UAE?) than the USA.

I wouldn’t run a system without it and it just means a bulb change every 12 months. I’ve currently got the DD 20w version.

I have the Deltec 20W version. The flow through it is more or less a guess but with a new bulb you cannot go wrong.
As it kills everything that goes through it, I add on 2-weekly basis one ampule of Prodibio Bio Digest to replace the bacteria that were lost. Nothing proven here... but it seems to help to keep NO3 down.

 

[Janci]

Bummer hope everything recovers soon.

It will eventually. Most of the problems are due to letting things run without follow up.
The last months I was hardly at home and when I was, work took most of my time.
Thanks for checking in.

 

[najer]

Makes me sad, fingers crossed here!