Themastaa

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Hi my name is Robert. I am from south jersey outside of philadelphia. I am 30 just got back into the hobby this Christmas. Bought my girlfriend a Biocube32 we got the stand from Coralife and the protein skimmer. We are almost 3 week into having it setup. We used caribsea bahamas oolite as substrate 20lbs. We got cured live rock from out LFS(aquarium center Blackwood,NJ) 17 lbs. We are using the stock pump, koralia nano circulation pump(264 GPH). We have the protein skimmer and heater in chamber 1, chamber 2 chemipure blue 35gal, marine pure biofilter media gems, and bio pellets. The Coralife filter pad on top. We used 3 4.4gallon nutrisea and the rest instant ocean reef crystals for water. I mixed the instant ocean salt with distilled water since we have city water. Day 1 added sand rock water and api bacteria and a dead shrimp. Day 2 tank cleared ammonia 1ppm. Day 3 took shrimp out. Day 4 probably a dumb move but bought a clown from Petco. Started having problems with low ph starting 2nd week. May be from Biocube hood? 7.8ph. 2nd week ammonia went down from 4ppm to 1ppm and nitrites started to show 2ppm. Stood still for few days then end of week 2 cycle ended 0 ammonia 0 nitrites. 20 nitrates. Alk12 calcium 440. Mag 1340 phosphates 0 p.h 7.8 salt 1.025. I got my alk to 12 from p.h buffer trying to raise the ph did not know it raised the alk. We are keeping the tank at 78. After the the tank cycled I did a 10 gallon water change( instant ocean reef/distilled). Waited a few days checked water all was good alk went down to 10 calcium 440. I tested the p.h of the water I mixed before adding to the tank and it was 8.2 our tank water was 7.8. It did not change the p.h at all. 2 days after water change we got our first zoa frag, a baby orchid dotty back, and 1 electric blue hermit/ 1 blue hermit.(our clownfish is still alive and doing great) we also got red sea reef foundation abc+ and red sea coral color abcd for supplements. I been feeding the clown and dottyback pellets and mixed frozen brine/shrimp/pods occasionally. The coral, hermits and fish are doing great. Water still good 0 ammonia, nitrites, phosphates, although p.h 7.8 Went back 2 days ago got another zoa frag and gsp frag. All corals are opened and doing good. My current light schedule z1(blues)12pm-1am z2 2:30pm-9pm z3 4pm-9pm. We have brown algae and green starting to grow so I changed the light schedule. Hermits did a great job at cleaning the diatom algae. I plan on doing another 10 gallon water change this weekend changing the chemipure blue and adding more biopellets. I will post some pictures when I get home from work. Lol me and the girlfriend got addicted to reefing. Would like some advice concerning the 7.8 ph. We ordered some cheato algae in hopes that would help and I leave the feeding door open in case it was the hood causing the low ph. Also may want to do a sump/ refugium. Or we may decide to take the hood off and go with kessil led. Not sure yet. Any question or advice or criticism would be much appreciated, Thanks Robert and Lauren
 
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Themastaa

Themastaa

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Got home today from work. Both our zoa frags are doing good. But the gsp frag is completely closed. I checked all parameters. Nothing had changed. I did notice little worms on the gsp
Frag. Here are some pictures
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Themastaa

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This weekend we did a 8.8 gallon water change using nutri sea. Also bought 22 gallons of mixed saltwater from our lfs so will
Be good for a month or so. We also ordered a RODI ro buddie on sale on Amazon for$60. 50 gallons per day. The reason why I been having low p.h. I been using distilled water for top offs and for water changes. When I should have been using ro water. So
I don’t think my issue with low p.h was the hood. With the water change and using ph buffer got the p.h to 8.2. We also picked up a watchman goby and a fire shrimp. Both are doing great and so are the corals and clownfish. We returned the dottyback it was to aggressive toward the goby. We also rearranged the rock while trying to catch the dottyback. Here are some pictures
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Tank is doing great. P.h 8.0 still. Did not add anymore buffer since my alk is at 11. We added in a 6oz bottle of tigger pods from Reef Nutrition. And a 8oz bag of algagen pods apocyclops. Hopefully they will start reproducing. We also added in a sand sifting star. 2 astrea snails, and 5 nassarius snails. Here are some pictures and a bonus puppy picture! His
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6 month birthday
 
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Did a 4 gallon water change Saturday night. Tested water this morning. P.h 8.0 alk 9 calcium: 440. Nitrates 0-10. Friday night added in 3 scarlet reef hermit crabs. So that’s 5 in total now ( 1 electric blue, 1 blue legged) Picked up some live brine shrimp at my LFS everything loves it, and a frozen copepod mix. Snails have been putting in work on the brown algae.
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Looks like a good start! Some suggestions for the future. Don’t chase pH, 7.8,8 is fine. It’ll shift at night and daytime. Once your tank is more established and corals start growing faster, that gsp will spread quickly. You may want to isolate it to its own rock as even though you like it now you may not like it in 10 months when it is covering everything and you want nicer corals. Otherwise great start!
 
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Themastaa

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Thanks for the advice. I plan on moving the gsp some time soon before it spreads off the frag circle. I have been told multiple different things about the p.h thing. I think I figured out why my ph is low. I was using distilled water for top offs and mixing. Bought a rodi. And raised the p.h of the top off water a tiny bit with buffer so when I top off fresh water it’s not 7.0 water going on.
 
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I have not posted in a few weeks. Added a RBTA, Xenia frag. 4 cheap zoa frags. Did a 4 gallon water change this weekend. Changed the bio cube filter cartridge. Tang police beware added a baby blue hippo tang. The store we got it had it in a 20 gallon bare tank so IMO we rescued it. When it gets bigger we plan on giving free to someone on our local Facebook group page as long as they have 75 gallon plus tank and bring me a water sample. Here are some pictures
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Saturday I did a 8 gallon water change. 1 gallon was nutri sea. Today tested parameters Salt 1.025 P.H 8.1 calcium 440 magnesium 1420 temperature 78 nitrates 0-10 phosphates 0. Did not add any livestock or corals. I have been dosing 9 ml of phytoplankton every other day from sustainable aquatics. I also feed my BTA a piece of shrimp, I plan on feeding it once a week l. Here are some pictures. I decided not to clean the glass to provide food for copepods and snails and fish since my tank is still new. If you that’s not a good idea let me know. Here are some pictures! Hope everyone is having a great spring so far
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I forgot to mention for the nutri sea I used Red Sea ABC+ plus to bring my calcium up and also
Used Trace colors ABCD. I been maintaining my calcium with this so far been having great results. Although I don’t like how it makes my water cloudy for multiple hours like 4-6. Then it leaves a coating on rock and pretty much everything
 
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Added 3 coral frags today. 2 red mushrooms, 1 green mystery zoa. Also
Placed ordered 3 zoa frags from WWC. Laffy Taffy, Rasta, WWC ACI. Can’t wait!!
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