First saltwater tank, 40 breeder

KleineVampir · Nov 22, 2019

Well I think the hermits were good but not good enough for my problem! I ordered the h2o2 again, and this time I'm not cancelling! It seems to be one of the only things out there that will kill GHA but not macroalgae. And my chaeto is now overrun with gha growing in and on it.

Once again if you have anything to say about this, speak now or forever hold your peace! You have about a week until it gets here!

KleineVampir · Dec 7, 2019

I doubled the flow yesterday. Considered HP bombing but ended up buying a skimmer instead. Should be a few days until the skimmer gets here. Not much has happened though. The fish are all still fine which is definitely a record for me!

KleineVampir · Dec 8, 2019

I guess I'm realizing that I can't rely on the chaeto as my sole nutrient export method. We'll see what a skimmer + chaeto can do. Also I doubled the flow into my sump by putting another of the same pump in. It was a small pump that I've been trying to upgrade for a while now but haven't been able to. So I bought another tube for the backup pump that's exactly the same and put it to work.

Also about a week ago the overflow had a problem and it was kinda bad but not a disaster really. Now I have a guy who helps me with my plumbing and stuff though of course I still have to pay him a bit. He had to come over and fix it and it took some doing. But we got it working again. Now I'm waiting on an aqualifter to show up because we think a bubble formed in the top of the overflow pipe. Get a drilled tank people! This diy overflow thing is really not ideal.

Also I have a sneaking suspicion that a skimmer might be necessary for a 0 water change tank. There's just no way for chaeto alone to deal with all the nutrients. You end up growing hair algae on top of it. But we'll see how effective the skimmer actually is. At least I waited until I felt I had to upgrade in order to have a chance of beating the GHA.

KleineVampir · Dec 13, 2019

I got the skimmer up and running, though it displaced my chaeto. I put the chaeto back up in the HOB fuge with the old light. It was doing fine up there anyways. Not sure how well that chaeto is doing though. Looks kinda iffy ever since it got cold.

Anyways, a skimmer should hopefully make a big difference for the tank.

KleineVampir · Dec 23, 2019

A cleaner shrimp died about a week ago, and today I bought another one to replace it. Also ordered 10 red mangrove trees. The chaeto grew too much hair algae for me. As in, hair algae grew on and inside of it. Probably because the nutrients in my system are too high or the flow isn't high enough...either way I'm gonna try the trees to see how they do for me.

KleineVampir · Dec 31, 2019

I'm currently thinking about doing a big tub full of mangroves. A 50 gallon rubbermaid tub. Might be a comparable price to the algae scrubber but it's a lot more interesting and also adds water volume. And deep sand bed.

KleineVampir · Jan 6, 2020

Eh I've decided against mangroves in general. I think it's all about having a skimmer and an algae scrubber. I'm hoping the combination of those 2 pieces of equipment might be enough to go water change free. Until I figure out how to make an algae scrubber happen, I might limp along with nopox along with my skimmer of course.

KleineVampir · Jan 8, 2020

I have bought an algae scrubber. A nice one. Please observe: https://www.marinedepot.com/santa-monica-filtration-drop1-4-algae-scrubber

This might finally solve my GHA problem. Right now I'm kinda overdosed on nopox...gotta wait it out until some nutrients return to the tank, because the corals are not happy with it the way it is now. If I use nopox again it will be in very small amounts. Like 1-3 ml.

LegendaryCG · Jan 8, 2020

Flucanzol will clear your GHA. I put in 2ml of nopox each day on my 70 gallon. You need a skimmer if your carbon dosing because you need to remove some of the bacteria You are growing. Also skimmers greatly increase oxygen in the water which is critical.

KleineVampir · Jan 8, 2020

LegendaryCG said:
Flucanzol will clear your GHA. I put in 2ml of nopox each day on my 70 gallon. You need a skimmer if your carbon dosing because you need to remove some of the bacteria You are growing. Also skimmers greatly increase oxygen in the water which is critical.

Yes thankfully I do have a skimmer now.

KleineVampir · Jan 15, 2020

I got that algae scrubber put in yesterday. 24/7 air with 16/8 light. (on the night cycle)

KleineVampir · Feb 8, 2020

I put in 3 turbo snails today. We'll see how long they last. Been having trouble keeping inverts alive. I suspect my calcium is most likely to blame, and maybe some trace elements namely iodine. Now I have a trace element supplement with iodine in it so now with that we'll see how long I can get the turbos to last. I would like to have more clean up crew existing in my tank.

Also the algae scrubber is now just beginning to grow.

KleineVampir · Feb 9, 2020

I got the calcium back up to about 400 which is good. However, the magnesium has dropped significantly since last time I tested which is admittedly far too long. But I didn't think it would change so much. It's now at about 1200 and needs to get up to about 1400, which is 112 teaspoons! So now I'll do 6 teaspoons over the course of 18 days. Oi vey. What's eating all the magnesium?

KleineVampir · Feb 9, 2020

Oh wait...I don't know if I ever adjusted the magnesium levels after adding the 20 gallon sump and therefore the 20 gallons of water. So that's probably a huge part of what happened. But I'd be interested in knowing if it does go anywhere given you get the levels where you want them and don't mess with it.

KleineVampir · Feb 9, 2020

Oops I threw it in all at once! xD Forget over 18 days I got 'er DONE!! Lol.

Well the guy from american aquariums said he's raised Mg hundreds of ppm in a single day without any negative effects, so........ Boom. Hopefully the critters don't mind.

How fast can I raise my magnesium level?

I've been pretty lazy with testing lately and I almost never test for mag anyway. Needless to say I had an alk spike and ended up testing everything when I got home today. My mag dropped to 1170 and I want to get it up to 1300 or so. It will take around 1000ml of solution to get it there. How...

www.reef2reef.com

KleineVampir · Feb 9, 2020

Well it's only been an hour or so and it's like nothing ever happened! No big mountain of white stuff on the bottom of the sump where I poured it all in. Just totally gone and dissolved. And the tank seems pretty normal. I guess only time will tell, but it should only be a day or two before I can tell if it did anything bad or not.

In other news, prior to the magnesium dump, one of my cleaner shrimp disappeared. Hopefully he's just hiding but I dunno. Might be a goner. The turbo snails are pretty impressive. Might have to go back to the pet store and pick up more later.

KleineVampir · Feb 10, 2020

I observed some bangaii cardinal breeding behavior not but 10 minutes ago. So it seems like the possibility of getting some fry might happen. Just after the magnesium dump too. I wonder if it's actually having a positive effect already.

KleineVampir · Feb 10, 2020

I was so happy with what the turbos did in my tank that I went back and got 6 more. We'll see how they do and hopefully they clean up a bit.

KleineVampir · Feb 11, 2020

They definitely made their mark on the glass where film algae has slowly been building up. Nice to see that they really can get the film algae off.

KleineVampir · Feb 13, 2020

Well I bought a 7 pound bag for calcium, one for alk, and one for mg. So those ought to last for quite a while, especially the magnesium. Also I got the red sea foundation test kit, which I'd probably recommend to anybody doing reefing. Seems like those 3 things are pretty important so you gotta have them, especially if you aren't doing water changes but you'd still need them even if you did. Also you need to be able to test for those 3 things...and actually do a good job of testing them probably every week or so unless you feel like you have a good program going. But reef tanks are dynamic and don't take a set amount of elements per period of time. I wish there was a better way to monitor your calc, alk, and mg levels but so far I haven't found such a thing.

My calc measurement didn't go so well. It's either 500 or the test is wrong, neither of which are great results. I'm gonna try it again tomorrow since I just got it and it had been in the cold in the mail. The alkalinity I got was about 7, so a little more neutral than I'd like but not sure what to do about that tbh. Also not sure that I should do anything about that. The only good result was my magnesium which read 1400 which is exactly what I wanted to see.

Still working on a way to manage these 3 elements better. But for now it's 3 teaspoons of soda ash every other day, probably 3 teaspoons of calcium every other day, and I'm not sure what I'm gonna do about magnesium. Still haven't been able to determine what the deal is with magnesium, whether it even gets consumed or not. Certainly to a lesser extent than the other 2 though.