First Reef Tank - 150g

[tbrown]

Those Nitrates and Phosphates look good to me. I was shooting for 0.14 phosphates and 35 nitrates.

 

[twentyleagues]

I did a water test a few days ago. All looks good except for Nitrate and Phos are high. I was feeding frozen food 3 cubes a day on top of feeding 4x from the auto-feeder. I have cut down on the frozen cubes to 1 to 2 a day. I'll give it another test later next week. Everything else looks good. I have been dosing AFR in the mornings and Phyto at lights off. I have also been dosing Manganese and ammonium (stopped for now until Nitrate comes down).

I also started to look into battery backup options. I don't remember the last time we had a power outage in New York City but I think it was like 8 years ago. I'm planning to get one of those power stations to run the return pumps. It looks like I will need to do some tinkering with Hydros to make it work. I found a DIY guide for it.

Low Power Mode/Prime Power Loss Detection w/o Icecap Battery (or WE/WELE)

Normally Hydros can detect when prime/wall power is lost by using the Icecap V3 Battery backup on a wave engine. Hydros does this by seeing the drop of DC power into the wave engine from 24V wall power to 12V battery power. Then you can configure Hydros to fall back to a pre-defined "low power"...

forum.coralvuehydros.com

Learning from my mistakes are we....Lol.
I agree numbers look good. My nitrates are right there my phos is lower though typically .08-.12. Tried vinegar dosing a while back did nothing at all. Tried it for about 6 weeks and no movement. If this is where she wants to run I'm going to let her nothing look bad aside from the power outage issues. (insert wha wha here)

 

[Brisk]

Those Nitrates and Phosphates look good to me. I was shooting for 0.14 phosphates and 35 nitrates.

Oh..... I thought that was high because I probably read somewhere it was best to try to keep Nitrates 2-10 ppm and phosphates under 0.1. I guess if you say this looks good, then I'll leave it. Thank you!

 

[Brisk]

Learning from my mistakes are we....Lol.
I agree numbers look good. My nitrates are right there my phos is lower though typically .08-.12. Tried vinegar dosing a while back did nothing at all. Tried it for about 6 weeks and no movement. If this is where she wants to run I'm going to let her nothing look bad aside from the power outage issues. (insert wha wha here)

Lol yea after reading your build thread. Decided to stop procrastinating and just get it done.

 

[tbrown]

Oh..... I thought that was high because I probably read somewhere it was best to try to keep Nitrates 2-10 ppm and phosphates under 0.1. I guess if you say this looks good, then I'll leave it. Thank you!

Keep in mind, Hanna has a 0.03 error margin. Anything 0.04 or higher means you're not at 0. Hitting 0 is bad for the tank. Currently I'm running 0.83 phosphates which is higher than what I prefer but I've hit 0 and spent a month fighting Dinos.

I usually keep my nitrates around 25-35.

 

[Brisk]

New additions to the tank:

• Powder Blue Tang
• Pair of Court Jester Goby
• Pair of Royal Gramma - that makes 3 in tank

 

[Brisk]

I placed my order for the battery backup power stations along with the parts for the Hydros. I also placed an order for a pair of Mandarin Dragonets from Biota. That should also be here this week. I also ordered some Tetra, Iso, Tisbe, and Apoc for culturing. I'm going to stop culturing Nano and do Tetra instead.

 

[Brisk]

I installed my ReefMat 1200 on February 23. Today I had to replace the filter roller. It lasted for 49 days with the Red Sea filter roller. I replaced it with the aftermarket brand from Precision Converting using the 20 micron filter.

 

[Brisk]

Tiny Madarin Dragonets received today from Biota.

 

[Brisk]

Just got my power stations with solar panels. One power station per return pump with RFG. It should give me about 24 hours of backup and more with the solar panels. I have to now get this hooked up to the Hydros.

 

[Brisk]

I wanted to get the back up power installed this weekend, but got busy. However, updates on the new additions: The larger of the Mandarin Dragonet is eating pellets. The smaller one hasn't yet and picks on the larger one. The PBT settled in nicely. The Court Jester Gobies I see from time to time. Of the 3 Royal Grammas, I only see 2 of them. One of them swims out in the open and the other hides behind the overflow. I'll try to get some photos in next week.

 

[Brisk]

I harvested my last batch of Nano phyto tonight. I switched to culturing Tetra and Iso. I also started the copepods again, hoping this time with success. I went with Tisbe and Apoc.

 

[Brisk]

I am on my 4th day of the new batches of culture. The Iso and Tetra is coloring up darker and I see lots of Tisbe and Apoc pods as well.

My Stratosphere is starting to come back to life. I started with I think 5-6 polyps and it dwindled down to 2 almost dead. Those last 2 are now starting to grow.

 

[Featherweight]

I love my rainsford gobies.

 

[Brisk]

I love my rainsford gobies.

Same here. At first, I don't get to see much of them because they kept hiding. Now they are adjusted to the tank and are out all the time.

 

[Brisk]

It looks like I might have crashed the Iso phyto. It was much darker yellow a few days ago, but started to get lighter. I don't think it got crossed contaminated. The light intensity and on for 16 hours a day might have bleached it. I started a new batch hoping it is savable? The Tetra came out nice and dark.

 

[Brisk]

Today I got the backup power for outages set up. When a power outage occurs, my return pumps will kick down to 30% from 50%. This gives me 24 hours of flow from the returns.

 

[Brisk]

It has been over 6 months since I last calibrated my PH probe. Today I recalibrated and PH went down to 8.1 from 8.3 during peak. Since this is my first time dealing with PH probes, I ordered a new one to replace the original PH probe that came with Hydros. I also cleaned the glass today and took some photos.

 

[Brisk]

Here are some updates for the week.

1. After 2 weeks of culturing my first batch of apoc pods, it grew so much in numbers. I'm going to put it in for another week or 2 then harvest. The Tisbe pods did not grow as much. Also putting those in for 2 more weeks.

2. My PH went from about 8.2 to 6.2 over night. The probe I ordered got delayed in shipping and hopefully will arrive tomorrow.

3. I haven't seen my 3-4" Exquisite wrasse for about 2 weeks now. I'm pretty sure it is probably dead. I looked at the rock crevices and caves, searched the floor to see if it jumped out, but no sign. I read that it could be hiding in the sand, but I'm getting mixed results about Fairy wrasses don't hide in sand. I tested my water and Nitrates were at about 46 ppm. It pretty much doubled.

Busy and tiring day, so that's all I have for updates.

 

[GuillTorr25]

Following! Very interesting! Your tank looks great on those pics from may 4. Hope that probe is an easy fix.