OP
OP
Another great sample.
April 27
vs. July 18 (approx 3-1/2 months)
April 27
vs. July 18 (approx 3-1/2 months)
Andre’s Full blown 300Gallon SPS Reeftank up within a week ;-)
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- Thread starter PSXerholic
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OP
OP
One of my new favorites which seems to like the new trace element dosing routine ;-)
It's recovering from Bromine bleaching as you can see on the whitish tips that are coloring up again.
OP
OP
Honestly I do not like to feed to much to avoid significant interferences with the trace element management and also I like to keep the tank clean ;-)
In my previous pictures you see a lot of Bubble algae coming out of rocks etc. which are almost gone by now, which I would not have likely achieved with heavy feeding. Also a lot of feeding increases the Po4 more which is a pain to manage without Po4 aborber in my case, and I like to utilize GFO as less as possible. My Nitrate reactor does an excellent job to remove Nitrates, but is not super efficient on Po4 reduction so I'm careful with too much feeding.
Last but not least, increasing Nitrates with feeding takes forever. I simply have filter sponges in my socks and in the sump which are little nitrate factories by default, so these guys help me to keep No3 detectable and I can throw them out if No3 gets above my desired target level.
Last time I dosed Nitrates is quite a while ago, the sponges keep it up pretty good.
I have not much fish, so the food would just make the tank unnecessary dirty.
Hope that helps, but that is all my personal objection ;-)
@ddrueckh
In my previous pictures you see a lot of Bubble algae coming out of rocks etc. which are almost gone by now, which I would not have likely achieved with heavy feeding. Also a lot of feeding increases the Po4 more which is a pain to manage without Po4 aborber in my case, and I like to utilize GFO as less as possible. My Nitrate reactor does an excellent job to remove Nitrates, but is not super efficient on Po4 reduction so I'm careful with too much feeding.
Last but not least, increasing Nitrates with feeding takes forever. I simply have filter sponges in my socks and in the sump which are little nitrate factories by default, so these guys help me to keep No3 detectable and I can throw them out if No3 gets above my desired target level.
Last time I dosed Nitrates is quite a while ago, the sponges keep it up pretty good.
I have not much fish, so the food would just make the tank unnecessary dirty.
Hope that helps, but that is all my personal objection ;-)
@ddrueckh
OP
OP
Currently my No3 is somewhere in the 4-8ppm range, do not care so much about it anymore at this time.
OP
OP
So here is the good news, Bromine seems to be low enough!
Red Digis and Red Acros which got affected by high Bromine restored their color and fluorescence quite well.
So I stopped the addition of cheap salt and this WC has been ended now.
I will now settle my Specific gravity to about 1.025 and let it stay that way.
Overall I replaced per the math about 350G of Water in the last 11 days.
Pretty good prediction, heh ?
Will send out a ICP sample tomorrow morning to ATI, so I can see what Trace elements need adjustments and what the current Bromine level is.
The Water change/Salinity control system I will remove for now, which I will use and reinstall in the final setup after the move.
Red Digis and Red Acros which got affected by high Bromine restored their color and fluorescence quite well.
So I stopped the addition of cheap salt and this WC has been ended now.
I will now settle my Specific gravity to about 1.025 and let it stay that way.
Overall I replaced per the math about 350G of Water in the last 11 days.
Pretty good prediction, heh ?
Will send out a ICP sample tomorrow morning to ATI, so I can see what Trace elements need adjustments and what the current Bromine level is.
The Water change/Salinity control system I will remove for now, which I will use and reinstall in the final setup after the move.
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OP
OP
;Happy lol, great compliment.
Can't wait to get the tank in its final place and the office remodeled so I can look at it while working
)Probably won't get anything done then, lol.
OP
OP
No worries, happens to me too.
In my case it does increase Po4 too quick while nitrate increases pretty slowly as said.
But that depends of course on food and filtration efficiency.
OP
OP
Oh yeah. Couldn't be happier.
Once in a while I think I could add a Reefbrite LED strip but only for some additional light. But then I forgot about it when everything grows and colors up very well.
I recently reduced the intensity of the LED overall from 80% down to 65/70% since the light became too strong from the SPS reaction when I re-started my bi weekly routine of running a bag of carbon over the weekend for 48 hours. That made the water very pristine and intensity seemed to be too harsh then.
6 months are over on the new tank and it's going to be time to replace bulbs again.
That I'm not looking forward to since I have to take off the entire fixture. Something to consider in canopy design or installation and this thing is a beast!!!
OP
OP
New ICP test after the Automated Water change was sent out yesterday.
Bromine must be below 100 now and the Red digis are glowing now again ;-)
So waiting now for the results to perform my correction dosage after it.
In the meantime I'm back to my standard daily dosing routine as described earlier here:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/a...-up-within-a-week.339591/page-36#post-4844497
Only addition is an adjustment on a few parameter such as Iodine and Chromium and I added Tin and Silver to the daily dosing routine a week prior the ICP sampling so I will see the detection right away with the new test. Both should be undetectable on the long run. Means I will slightly increase from test to test until they show up and then I simply reduce to get a feeling for the consumption/depletion on these trace elements.
Rubidium results also came in, slightly higher than the calculated level as per the start level+routine dosage. So I simply cut the daily Rubidium dosage to 1/10th and will do order 2 more ICP from Oceamo to investigate Rubidium trending more precise.
Bromine must be below 100 now and the Red digis are glowing now again ;-)
So waiting now for the results to perform my correction dosage after it.
In the meantime I'm back to my standard daily dosing routine as described earlier here:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/a...-up-within-a-week.339591/page-36#post-4844497
Only addition is an adjustment on a few parameter such as Iodine and Chromium and I added Tin and Silver to the daily dosing routine a week prior the ICP sampling so I will see the detection right away with the new test. Both should be undetectable on the long run. Means I will slightly increase from test to test until they show up and then I simply reduce to get a feeling for the consumption/depletion on these trace elements.
Rubidium results also came in, slightly higher than the calculated level as per the start level+routine dosage. So I simply cut the daily Rubidium dosage to 1/10th and will do order 2 more ICP from Oceamo to investigate Rubidium trending more precise.
Velcro
2500 Club Member
Would you consider a sunpower with reefbrites sufficient?
OP
OP
In a nutshell, no!
We always strive for the most important factor, the appearance of the tank when we look at it.
The Powermodule LED clusters and color varitation of the LED in the Powermodule allows you so much variations with different color variations during the day, that you can't get with pure Reefbrites/T5 combo.
Since the light is a big investment, I would go with a Powermodule.
BUT, that's just me, lol.
Think careful about it, prior scrubbing a few hundred dollars.
Velcro
2500 Club Member
Plenty of time to figure it out. I want to give my LEDs another few months of a chance to decide. I think my issues are more nutrient (lack of) related right now than light to be honest. Nothing dying, just not great color in a few things.
klisby
Community Member
AMAZING tank! Just went through the whole thread! So much to digest! Surely you have great success with your approach and I have learned so much in this build thread! I suddenly thing that I have run my previous tanks with way to low nutrition - starved the bacteria!
Very interesting read! Thanks for sharing! Restarting tank and defiantly going to use a lot in this thread!
~Lisby
Very interesting read! Thanks for sharing! Restarting tank and defiantly going to use a lot in this thread!
~Lisby
OP
OP
From my experience, lighting is very important, but if Corals do not color up at all its mostly an issue on the chemistry. Get an ICP done just simply to rule out plenty of other factors that would take forever to figure out ;-)
OP
OP
Almost forgot about the Rubidium update!!!
Here the full story and how I see it momentarily.
Rb seems to be a metallic trace element which may be very important to replenish when depleted. However it seems elevated levels do not seem to harm or benefit the coloration for now.
The initial (not that good brand) ICP test earlier this year, Rb was indicated as not detectable.
Not performing any water changes and not feeding the tank much other than Marine flakes.
Most Sea Water analysis I have looked at indicate Rb around 0.2ppm which is equivalent to 0.2 mg/L or better 200 microgram/L.
I guess this elements is better monitored in microgram per Liter similar to other metals such as Cobalt, Copper, Iron etc.
Compared to those, Rubidium is pretty high in concentration with 200 microgram/L.
To the Oceamo ICP results, these guys are testing pretty accurate the Rb concentration compared to the initial ICP I used.
So my test results were indicating 585 microgram/L.
That seems to be pretty high ;-)
So I dosed initially 200 microgram/L in the first day, then 9 microgram/L per day for about 32 days means 288 microgram total, plus the 200 initially which ends up at ~490 microgram of supplementation.
So I should have had 100 microgram/L at the beginning prior dosing.
I looked up the tolerances and I can’t trust the initial test I did for the Rb results.
The owner of the Oceamo Lab, which by the way will approach the US market maybe this year, is one of my Reefing buddies, hence we shared a lot of proprietary information from both sides.
What I can reveal from these conversations is since he does weekly ICP’s on his own tank, is that Rb depleted usually very slowly in small amounts. Must be nice to have your own ICP analyser, lol. Get's on my Xmas wishlist, lol.
However, I ordered 2 more tests and will do an initial test again, and another one a month later with now a Rb dosage of 0.1 microgram/L which is similar to my current dosages on other metals such as cobalt and copper in my tank.
The overall assumption is at the moment that depleted Rubidium will have a negative effect on colors such as many other metals. However Rb comes in with feeding of frozen foods and algae based foods and Phytoplankton etc. Especially when harvested from the ocean and then processed instead of algae products that are made of captive grown facilities with artificial seawater. There are not many salt manufacturers that put Rubidium into their salt mixes due to the high cost of Rb salts.
I will have more and better clarity on the next round of testing on depletion in a mixed reef. An initial blind dosage of 200 microgram/L without knowing the Rb levels of the tank apparently does not hurt the tank at least. What I did noticed after starting Rb was some improved secondary coloration on SPS and better fluorescence and shimmer on SPS.
Not sure if that is also related to Rb, but I don’t have any issues anymore to keep Zoa and shroom thriving instead of slowly dying with all the SPS in the tank.
So stay tuned for the next update in a few weeks and I will see the starting level of Rb when I resume dosing ;-)
Remember, that in many cases, negative effects will be only noticed when certain trace elements are getting to the lower limits/depleteted or exceeding a specific high level. For many trace elements these critical levels are not discovered yet !!!
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