Big Jon's nano upgrade

[12gallonsofhex]

The cyano struggle has been a long one. I have been trying to up the flow and clean the sandbed to take away whatever it was feeding on even though my nutrients are always low. I have been using 2 products from KZ wich seems to have knocked out the cyano. This last weekend i deep cleaned the sump and got a lot of detritus out. I was super excited to get the junk out that may have been feeding the cyano until yesterday. Yesterday I came home to stringy brown dinos on my sand and GSP. Uhg. I think I may have to put an auto feeder on this tank and run the skimmer only half the day to keep nutrients up. I dont know where the nutrients are going. I dont run macro anymore and I have 7 fish in a 20 gallon tank. I guess my corals are using it because their is no visible algae. This tank is making me earn my hobby.

 

[sfin52]

The cyano struggle has been a long one. I have been trying to up the flow and clean the sandbed to take away whatever it was feeding on even though my nutrients are always low. I have been using 2 products from KZ wich seems to have knocked out the cyano. This last weekend i deep cleaned the sump and got a lot of detritus out. I was super excited to get the junk out that may have been feeding the cyano until yesterday. Yesterday I came home to stringy brown dinos on my sand and GSP. Uhg. I think I may have to put an auto feeder on this tank and run the skimmer only half the day to keep nutrients up. I dont know where the nutrients are going. I dont run macro anymore and I have 7 fish in a 20 gallon tank. I guess my corals are using it because their is no visible algae. This tank is making me earn my hobby.

Crap. You just beat it

 

[12gallonsofhex]

Crap. You just beat it

Yeah. Im not worried about it this time. Dosed trisodium phosphate and potassium nitrate, feeding heavier, and going to stop doing water changes just to do them. I am pretty confident that I can adjust my process to prevent these problems. I was targeting 0.03 po4 and 2-5 no3. I am going to raise those target levels to 0.08 and 10. Wish me luck!

 

[sfin52]

Yeah. Im not worried about it this time. Dosed trisodium phosphate and potassium nitrate, feeding heavier, and going to stop doing water changes just to do them. I am pretty confident that I can adjust my process to prevent these problems. I was targeting 0.03 po4 and 2-5 no3. I am going to raise those target levels to 0.08 and 10. Wish me luck!

You got this.

 

[12gallonsofhex]

You got this.

I hope so. I may have just jinxed myself. Lol

 

[sfin52]

I hope so. I may have just jinxed myself. Lol

Nope. You know what hou where looking at Ann's caught if early. You'll be good

 

[12gallonsofhex]

The dinos are gone...again. Sucked them out and dosed nutrients as soon as they appeared. I finished the sand bed change out opting for a 2 to 2.5 mm live sand. I also purchased a Hanna ULR phosphate tester so that I dont accidentally bottom out po4 again. I love that little machine and have found that my system is losing 0.01ppm of po4 a day. I dont know why, as I haven't run macroalgae in 8 months and there is no algae in my tank. Just ask my poor snails. I think maybe, just maybe, the recent increase in alkalinity uptake means the corals are growing and using the po4. It would be awesome if I have to dose trisodium phosphate because my corals are doing well!

 

[sfin52]

The dinos are gone...again. Sucked them out and dosed nutrients as soon as they appeared. I finished the sand bed change out opting for a 2 to 2.5 mm live sand. I also purchased a Hanna ULR phosphate tester so that I dont accidentally bottom out po4 again. I love that little machine and have found that my system is losing 0.01ppm of po4 a day. I dont know why, as I haven't run macroalgae in 8 months and there is no algae in my tank. Just ask my poor snails. I think maybe, just maybe, the recent increase in alkalinity uptake means the corals are growing and using the po4. It would be awesome if I have to dose trisodium phosphate because my corals are doing well!

Man you rocked those dino world. Great job

 

[12gallonsofhex]

Man you rocked those dino world. Great job

Thanks. I feel like they were only as bad the first time because it took so long for me to recognize the problem and then research it and then try different methods until I found something that worked in my tank.

 

[12gallonsofhex]

The reef is doing well with the new target nutrient levels. I cant stop playing with the light, and would probably have more growth if I just left it alone. I am going to upgrade to Noopsyche k7 and Reef Brite strips, so until then I have committed to leaving the light settings as is.

 

[12gallonsofhex]

Got a great deal on an old vortec mp10 this weekend. I gotta say that I see now why its worth paying 300 bucks for a wave pump. The build quality and broad wave this thing puts out is aweaome. It replaced 2 Jebao ow-0's and was picking up detritus so its moving more water.
Also got around to toddler-proofing the doors and blocking off access to the back of the tank.
Still have to do a water change and break some of my rockscape to halt the growth of a Mystic Sunset Montipora. Its beautiful but grows way too fast. It spreads like GSP in my reef. Pics of that to come later.

 

[12gallonsofhex]

Luckily the rocks that were epoxied together broke apart easily. Not happy to change the scape, but I had to build a fire-break to keep the Monti isolated.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

The reef is looking great!

 

[12gallonsofhex]

The reef is looking great!

Thank you!

 

[revhtree]

The reef is doing well with the new target nutrient levels. I cant stop playing with the light, and would probably have more growth if I just left it alone. I am going to upgrade to Noopsyche k7 and Reef Brite strips, so until then I have committed to leaving the light settings as is.

Love it!

 

[12gallonsofhex]

Love it!

Thanks Rev!

 

[12gallonsofhex]

People say things will wait until you're on vacation to break. Well, that was true for me. I got home today after a 4 day trip to Reno/ Lake Tahoe to find my corals not looking happy. The Duncan was closed up a bit, the micromussa lords were barely open, and the tips on one of my acros were bleaching a little. My Ato must have stopped working sometime Sunday and I was about 1 to 1.5 gallons low on water. I run a bit of Kalkwasser in my topoff for the ph boost since my main dosing is handled with All4reef. The salinity rose, alkalinity dropped, and ph dropped. My po4 also raised from the twice a day auto feeding. Nothing like 3 hours of maintenance before unpacking from a trip. Lol.

 

[12gallonsofhex]

Managing my tank after the ato failure has felt like flying a helicopter in a tornado. This last week has been alk/calcium swings, phosphate swings, and cyano popping up. All this unbalance from the salinty and ph going south caused corals to stop uptaking minerals and nutrients. This would have definitely been a tank crash if I was a less attentive reefer.

 

[12gallonsofhex]

Its been another week of managing imbalance. My phosphate levels were sky high after the ato failure, then tanked to the point where the dinos started coming back. I am feeding reef roids daily to keep them at .05ppm, but am leaving for a week to visit my sister so who knows what kind of swings are going to happen. I hope its still living when I get back. My next tank is going to have much more water volume and hopefully stability with that.

 

[12gallonsofhex]

Sometimes it seems like the world doesn't want me to have a reef tank. I came home from a weeks vacation to find that my 18month old removed the acrylic pickup tube from the 5 gallon topoff container I set up for the tank. It was 4 gallons low, the return pump running dry, the toms aqua lifter running constantly, and the refugium looking like old stagnant water. I dumped in the fresh water and now its a waiting game to see which corals are going to make it through. Luckily I have a lot of flow in the dt so the fish survived. If I were a lesser man, or a smarter man, I would be over this hobby.