Treefer32
Valuable Member
I've had many discussions on filtration, managing phosphates and nitrates, etc. I never thought to check my equipment. My tank has been fairly coral friendly despite higher nutrients. I've been managing phosphates and nitrates with vodka dosing, an algae scrubber, skimmer, a reefmat 1200 and a 25 micron cannister filter cleaned religiously every 2-3 weeks.
With 15 larger fish in a 340 gallon display I still have issues with losing fish, though my corals are doing great (I'd expect the corals to be suffering). They don't grow as fast as they used to, but SPS and some new recently acquired LPS show pieces are opening amazingly on day one. An elegance, a large lont tentacled fungia, and a large green bubble coral. They're all doing amazing!
I removed my Dragon wrasse about a month ago due to his destroying my corals. He was over 3 years old. Now a month after removing the Dragon wrasse my copperband was found stuck to my MP 40.
He had been with me close to the same amount of time would have been 3 years in December.
He was my best friend in my tank. Followed me wherever I went. He would get irritated if I didn't clean the glass often enough. Seriously he would shake his head at me when the glass was too dirty for him to see me. When I cleaned it he was normal.
He hunted for pods day and night. He ate my frozen food all the time. When I removed the Dragon Wrasse. my Creole Anthia became more of a bully than usually take all the frozen food for himself. I'd fed more often, etc, but he was annoying. So, I don't know if it was the change in fish pecking order, that killed the copperband or he succombed to something or if three years is about the max in captivity for CBB.
That said, I decided to get back to basics and check things like salinity and ph. I replaced my 4 year old apex lab grade PH probe and calibrated the new one with ph 7 and ph 10 calibration solution. I was up to 25 fish or so around 18 months ago. I had a couple jump out, my clown fish randomly died for no reason (had 4). My Carribbean Chromises one by one picked each other off going from a group of 5 to 1. My Lyretail anthias went down to a single pair of a male and female from 8. Again, it was over time and never a group all at once, so never really thought anything of it other than life in a glass box. Some survive and thrive, others do not.
With 10 less fish and a calibrated PH probe. I'm now wondering how much fish survived. I had been dosing over the last year double or triple the amount of vodka I'm dosing now. My PH never fell below 7.9 and most days was right at 8.0.
However, dosing now 25 ml of vodka per day, (was dosing 70 ml per day). My PH is really hitting 7.65 at night and 7.88 at the peak of day.
decreasing my vodka dosing by 5ml per day increased my ph from 7.65 as my low to 7.69 as my low. Almost one for one.. At 70 ml per day, I can only imagine my ph may have been hitting 7.5 or lower. (Not sure how the curve works in carbon dosing, bacterial populations consuming oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide and ph levels, if the relationship remains the same or changes?)
Looking back at the past year of vodka dosing, I'm wondering if the lack of oxygen killed some of the more sensitive / less hardy fish. This was a brand new calibrated PH probe when I started 4 years ago, but it had a lot of stuff growing on it, and I've now learned that over time they don't work as well.
I don't know if it was oxygen, but that could explain the gradual loss of fish if one by one some suffocated and those with larger gills were able to consume more oxygen out of the water. It's all my bigger 8-11" fish that survived the healthiest. My smaller fish are the ones that died off one by one.
I'm debating putting multiple air pumps in the sump. I don't know if that would help and putting a C02 scrubber on my skimmer intake. I thought the Algae turf scrubber would remove CO2 and release O2 naturally in the water. Along with the skimmer. The two should not be a problem.
At this point in time, nothing I do will raise my ph to 8.0. At this point I just want my fish to be healthy. I'd like my corals to be healthier too, but, I don't want anything dying due to suffocation. . . I could run my skimmer line outside, but I don't really trust the chemicals that could get into the tank through the air; areal mosquito spraying and weed killer, etc.
I hate to use something requires media that exhausts. But outside of multiple massive Algae turf scrubbers, is there any other alternatives to raising ph and making sure it's healthy?
I already use baked baking soda (baked for 4 hours at 350 - stirred intermittently) for alk. Which does raise PH slightly, but not enough to offset what I'm seeing. I have 4 gyres mounted at the surface of the display at 85% doing about 4000 gph per gyre of surface tension. I don't know how to get more oxygen in the tank or to raise ph.
Is there any way to release CO2 or test CO2 to see if there's too much?
With 15 larger fish in a 340 gallon display I still have issues with losing fish, though my corals are doing great (I'd expect the corals to be suffering). They don't grow as fast as they used to, but SPS and some new recently acquired LPS show pieces are opening amazingly on day one. An elegance, a large lont tentacled fungia, and a large green bubble coral. They're all doing amazing!
I removed my Dragon wrasse about a month ago due to his destroying my corals. He was over 3 years old. Now a month after removing the Dragon wrasse my copperband was found stuck to my MP 40.
He had been with me close to the same amount of time would have been 3 years in December.He was my best friend in my tank. Followed me wherever I went. He would get irritated if I didn't clean the glass often enough. Seriously he would shake his head at me when the glass was too dirty for him to see me. When I cleaned it he was normal.
He hunted for pods day and night. He ate my frozen food all the time. When I removed the Dragon Wrasse. my Creole Anthia became more of a bully than usually take all the frozen food for himself. I'd fed more often, etc, but he was annoying. So, I don't know if it was the change in fish pecking order, that killed the copperband or he succombed to something or if three years is about the max in captivity for CBB.
That said, I decided to get back to basics and check things like salinity and ph. I replaced my 4 year old apex lab grade PH probe and calibrated the new one with ph 7 and ph 10 calibration solution. I was up to 25 fish or so around 18 months ago. I had a couple jump out, my clown fish randomly died for no reason (had 4). My Carribbean Chromises one by one picked each other off going from a group of 5 to 1. My Lyretail anthias went down to a single pair of a male and female from 8. Again, it was over time and never a group all at once, so never really thought anything of it other than life in a glass box. Some survive and thrive, others do not.
With 10 less fish and a calibrated PH probe. I'm now wondering how much fish survived. I had been dosing over the last year double or triple the amount of vodka I'm dosing now. My PH never fell below 7.9 and most days was right at 8.0.
However, dosing now 25 ml of vodka per day, (was dosing 70 ml per day). My PH is really hitting 7.65 at night and 7.88 at the peak of day.
decreasing my vodka dosing by 5ml per day increased my ph from 7.65 as my low to 7.69 as my low. Almost one for one.. At 70 ml per day, I can only imagine my ph may have been hitting 7.5 or lower. (Not sure how the curve works in carbon dosing, bacterial populations consuming oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide and ph levels, if the relationship remains the same or changes?)
Looking back at the past year of vodka dosing, I'm wondering if the lack of oxygen killed some of the more sensitive / less hardy fish. This was a brand new calibrated PH probe when I started 4 years ago, but it had a lot of stuff growing on it, and I've now learned that over time they don't work as well.
I don't know if it was oxygen, but that could explain the gradual loss of fish if one by one some suffocated and those with larger gills were able to consume more oxygen out of the water. It's all my bigger 8-11" fish that survived the healthiest. My smaller fish are the ones that died off one by one.
I'm debating putting multiple air pumps in the sump. I don't know if that would help and putting a C02 scrubber on my skimmer intake. I thought the Algae turf scrubber would remove CO2 and release O2 naturally in the water. Along with the skimmer. The two should not be a problem.
At this point in time, nothing I do will raise my ph to 8.0. At this point I just want my fish to be healthy. I'd like my corals to be healthier too, but, I don't want anything dying due to suffocation. . . I could run my skimmer line outside, but I don't really trust the chemicals that could get into the tank through the air; areal mosquito spraying and weed killer, etc.
I hate to use something requires media that exhausts. But outside of multiple massive Algae turf scrubbers, is there any other alternatives to raising ph and making sure it's healthy?
I already use baked baking soda (baked for 4 hours at 350 - stirred intermittently) for alk. Which does raise PH slightly, but not enough to offset what I'm seeing. I have 4 gyres mounted at the surface of the display at 85% doing about 4000 gph per gyre of surface tension. I don't know how to get more oxygen in the tank or to raise ph.
Is there any way to release CO2 or test CO2 to see if there's too much?
