Brew's 187g slice of the ocean

[Mrx7899]

Ok thanks for the info.

 

[Brew12]

Well, nothing dead in the tank that I have noticed, so that is a plus. It does look like my Alk demand has dropped which is expected. My alk has dropped 0.6dKH in the last 6 hours and at 10.6dKH as of my 5:30am test. My target is 9.6dKH. I'm confident that once the lighting starts ramping up the rate the alkalinity drops will increase. I'm only dosing 1.4L of Kalkwasser right now, but will use 2-part dosing to get my Alk stable during the day today. I'll try putting the CaRx back on line tonight with a little more redundancy this time. I will have the feed pump turn off along with the backup CO2 isolation solenoid before it goes back online.

 

[Pmez]

Can’t wait to see it complete. Starting over and getting to learn from past trials makes it that much better. Make sure you show us pics of the aquascape

 

[Katrina71]

Glad the tank is ok! You're human, it happens. I'll ship you a manual rotisserie for the grill. Wait, nevermind... he'll eat it before you ever get a bite!

 

[Brew12]

Well, it looks like I got lucky. No signs of anything dying and once alk dropped below 10 the rate of consumption exploded.
At 10dkH I started dosing every hour, 6ml per dose. 3 hours later it had dropped to 9.6dKH and another 3 hours got it to 9.4dKH with my target at 9.5dKH. I thought it was starting to stabilize and then 3 hours after that it dropped to 8.6dKH. So I doubled my dosing rate to 12ml/hr and the KH Director added another 6ml per hour which allowed it to slowly rise to 9.5dKH overnight were it is now.
Working at slowly bringing my CaRx back on line now.

 

[Brew12]

I was having a conversation with @ksed about dosing 2 part. For some reason, I weighed the bags I dissolve in a gallon of water. At my peak, I was dosing more than 1 gallon per week. Unless I'm missing something, that means I am growing over 2 pounds of coral skeleton every week. That absolutely blew my mind.

 

[ksed]

That’s a lot of coral!
That’s also dry weight.

 

[Katrina71]

Hey how's the floor going?

 

[Brew12]

Hey how's the floor going?

I think it has aged me by a few years, but it's going well. The first time I tiled the kitchen it took me 2 days. I'm 2 days in and only 2/3 of the way done. And this tile is easier!
Motrin is my friend. My gym is closed because of the virus but I'm getting all the exercise I need right now! I'll post pictures eventually.

 

[Katrina71]

I think it has aged me by a few years, but it's going well. The first time I tiled the kitchen it took me 2 days. I'm 2 days in and only 2/3 of the way done. And this tile is easier!
Motrin is my friend. My gym is closed because of the virus but I'm getting all the exercise I need right now! I'll post pictures eventually.

Vodka helps.

 

[Lowell Lemon]

Vodka does not help tile work! Talk about lipage. I swore off Vodka before I stopped drinking all together...Vodka and Dr. Pepper made that happen...yuck! Underage drinkers what can you say?

 

[Brew12]

My aquarium has been completely neglected as I've pushed through trying to get this floor done. Was hoping to have finished yesterday and didn't come close. Too many setbacks. The worst was the dishwasher. I disconnected it and moved it to lay the tile there. Some time in the middle of the night the valve for it started leaking. I woke up at 3am to the sound of water dripping in the kitchen. I have around 8 old towels I use on the dog and aquarium and got it cleaned up. I closed the valve a little tighter and it stopped. For around 2 hours then started dripping again. I couldn't get it stopped this time. I didn't want to put the dishwasher back without grouting the tile first. I couldn't grout the tile if I couldn't keep it dry. I couldn't keep it dry without reconnecting the dishwasher. Much of my Friday morning was spent washing and drying towels so I could keep changing them out to keep the floor dry while I started working on putting down grout and letting it dry. Not only did it set me back by many hours, it sucked the motivation right out of me.
But.. I'm going to start laying more tile soon and I should at least have it all down today.

 

[Brew12]

So an aquarium update.... I can hardly see into the tank because the glass is so covered in algae. I spent around 20 minutes scraping it this morning but I figure it will take at least another hour to get it clean. What a pain!
The alkalinity spike doesn't seem to have caused any lasting damage. It may have even caused a growth spurt. I should go back into the tank and cut back more coral but that will have to wait until I have more time. My Monti Caps are weeds!
The other big development that I just noticed this morning is that I now have 3 BTA's instead of two. One of them split again in the last few days.
Filter socks changed, chaeto harvested, skimmer collector emptied. Still haven't tested anything but alkalinity in 2020 so I'm sure my PO4 is high. Probably NO3 also since I let me refugium grow in so thick.

 

[Brew12]

Did I mention that I use the Redsea blue bucket mortar? My floors do great with it

 

[crusso1993]

Did I mention that I use the Redsea blue bucket mortar? My floors do great with it

Flooring is looking very nice! (Saw your post of it in @Victoria M 's thread)

 

[Brew12]

Just because it’s the way life has been lately, I ran out or mortar. So close.

 

[Brew12]

I know I haven’t been on much. Been busy. Finally ready for the new counters.

 

[RichtheReefer21]

I know I haven’t been on much. Been busy. Finally ready for the new counters.

Great job sir. Came out very nice.

 

[Brew12]

View from the other side. Need to finish building a kitchen table now.

 

[Brew12]

I also need to give my tank more love. It's a mess, but still looking very healthy. I've spent so little time looking at it that I have a 6" wide section of monti cap on the sand bed and can't tell where it broke off from.
Things should slow down soon.