180 Build Thread

[Dowtish]

I may need to borrow the fish trap to see if I can catch him.

Kevan(ToXIc) has it.

 

[ToXIc]

Yup I do. You can either get it by me or I can drop it off at the critter.


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[palvyre]

If you don't mind dropping it off at the critter I can pick it up on Wednesday.

 

[fireman23]

If i can catch my sixline ryan you can have him. He has killed 2 of the last 3 fish ive put in my tank. Only fish he didnt bother was the naso tang.

 

[schooleyosis]

Appreciate the offer if you are offering the six line to me. I have had mine for about a year now with no issues. KNOCK ON WOOD! I do remember when I bought it from AC it had gotten the crap kicked out of it by a coral banded shrimp I think. Maybe that helped into making it a nice fish! :xd:

 

[palvyre]

The carpet anemone let go of the rock that came with him and pushed through the sand and attached to the bottom of the aquarium. Looks like the maroon clowns are healing, should know for sure by this weekend.

 

[palvyre]

The blue tang looks awesome and has adapted well. There is a little chasing with the sailfin, but she doesn't seem to be phased. Glad this one worked out.

 

[palvyre]

Carpet anemone looking really good.

 

[palvyre]

So not sure what is going on in my tank. My birdsnest, war coral, and favia are all receding/dying. The softies all look great, my frogspawn looks good, and the two anemones look good. I also have two gargonians that are flourishing. My temperatures only vary by about .5 degrees on any given day and all my other parameters appear to be rock solid. Nitrate and phosphate are undetectable on my API test kits and KH at 8 and has been steady there for 2+ months. I top off the tank with about 1 gallon every morning and I mix in 1 heaping tsp of Reef Builder Carbonate Alkalinity. I use a small siphon which feeds the solution into the return chamber of my sump over about 1 minute. I also add 2 oz of the BRS calcium solution daily, 20 oz of magnesium when I have run through a gallon of calcium. Changes before the receding started were an experiment with more blue light and less white which I have since reversed because my RBTA didn't like it. I have also noticed my EcoBAK is putting out a ton of biofilm, clogging my filter socks in roughly 3 days. I still have some GHA in the display and it has turned reddish around the roots, but is still holding in there. I also had a diatom outbreak for some reason about 3 weeks ago,since then I have cut my feeding amounts by about 70% and have been carefully watching food consumption. I changed out my RO filters suspecting water after the out break. I will do a WC tomorrow and am about to test my calcium levels.

 

[Dowtish]

Are you running any GAC? It's possible some of your softies are putting out some chemicals that need to be cleaned out of the system with Carbon.

 

[palvyre]

So calcium at 390. Has fallen from my target of 430 to here over the course of about 2 months. Doubt that caused this though. Will pick up my calcium dosing though to 3 oz.

 

[palvyre]

I am running carbon and GFO together in a single reactor. I replace it monthly. The corals receding aren't doing it overnight. Seems like a slow stead degradation that started about 3 weeks ago.

 

[Dowtish]

Then I'm going to lean towards either swings in parameters on how you are dosing, or what you mentioned earlier about the lighting.

By topping off that gallon in the morning with all that alk, you are getting a ph swing for sure, and your alk is going up, and then slowly falling back down until the morning when you dose again. I would save all that effort and just mix a gallon of Alk and Cal and hook them to dosing pumps and be done with it. Less work, and way more stability.

 

[palvyre]

I suspected that may be the problem which is why I made sure to detail that out. Guess I need to find some dosing pumps that will slowly add my gallon over the course of a day.

 

[palvyre]

Any ideas on a cheap way to dose this until I can do it right with some kind of auto top off ?

 

[gmoney243]

I dont think its the water ive put in 5 at a time of fresh water with no problems. But i agree with the single daily dose of alk is causing spikes and thats not good

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[palvyre]

Yeah I need a good way to get my alk in. Looking for options. Figure I'll mix my alk with my gallon of top off water and then somehow gravity feed it into the tank. Just not sure what to use yet.