First Tank - Office RSR 250 Triton Method

Maokin · Jan 3, 2020

Well sand it looking much better since last update. Turned down fuge light and disabled rector to increase nutrients for a few days. Some periodic testing during that period and phosphates and nitrates increased. I was able to get my nitrates up to around 8 PPM and phosphates .15. After nutrients increased I returned the fuge back to normal photo period Of 10 hours and enabled the reactor. I would contribute this change to my improved sand. I also gravel vacuumed the sand and cleaned out the sump for around 30% water change. This is an addition to my daily 3% water changes. I also started scrubbing and removing as much algae from the rocks in the display as possible. I did this a number of times over the last two weeks. Added 3 fish with one loss. 2 bangai Cardinals and a diamond goby. The goby didn't make it 24 hours in the tank. My guess was it was stress related. I Did a really slow 2 hour drip acclimation with heating of the water. He did attempt to jump out of the acclimation bowl quite a few times. He didn't jump-out I found him dead at at the bottom of my tank after the night. Perhaps someone picked him off but seems unlikely.

Ordered some red ogo, chaeto and sea lettuce ulva to restart my fuge. My theory this time is hopefully three different types of macroalgae will prevent the green hair algae in the sump. However re-watching the BRS refugium series it seems they also had green hair algae problems with the H 380 initially in the refugium. Also pick up 2 bottles coralline algae, pods and phytoplankton. Finally got a few new corals from unqiue corals. Looking forward to the new corals. My torch continues to be unhappy. However it's still does extend every day so it continues to live on. At this point I'm uncertain if I can ever turn it around. I might try giving to another local hobbyists to see if they can have it recover. I should know more after I get my second batch of coral.

I have given up trying to attach the green star polyps to the back wall after a number of attempts. I plan to grow them out further hoping to grow a nice Matt with them growing over the sand. Once I have a good-sized Matt it'll be easier to glue them to the wall.

Recently attached my fresh air intake line back to my skimmer. Last night my tank reached almost 8.5 pH. My Tank does dip down in the morning to 7.8 pH after the fuge goes off and the lights first come on. Hopefully with the new corals my pH will not swing so much.

Thinking about expanding my clean up crew a little bit too. Looking to add some more Nassarius snails an additional tuxedo urchin and maybe a few more Hermits.

Triton Applied Reef Bioscience are the world leaders in professional sea water analysis.

Empowering aquarists around the world since 2008. Click to view shared sea water analysis.

www.triton-lab.de

I did send in a Triton ICP recently and everything looks great except for iron. For some reason my tank is showing high iron uncertain what that could be at this Point. I Have two more Triton ICP test and will send another one off soon hoping I iron goes away by itself.

Also just recently got my filter lens for my cell phone. Photos of looking much better with the new filter enjoy.

Screenshot_20200103-095850_Apex Fusion.jpg

Maokin · Jan 7, 2020

Some updates on the tank. Not sure exactly why but it seems the algae on my Aquascape is dying off. Yaya! It seems to have started around two days ago and continues to spread. The biggest change I could say is the increase nutrients in the tank. I just measured the nutrients yesterday and phosphate is .13 ppm and nitrate is 4 PPM. I've completely let the green hair algae take over my refugium. I'm getting new macroalgae three different types from algae barn and will restart the refugium very soon. Some new corals coming from Unique Corals today. All my corals except for the torch appear to be doing very well. My zoanthids and palythoa has have all added additional heads since I add them to the tank. Had another power outage yesterday thank God that I have the Ecotech battery backup for my mp40s. Tank was offline for around three hours and the temperature drop down to around 75 from its normal 78. Whole house generator is getting installed tomorrow so that will never happen again!

Maokin · Feb 21, 2020

Well sorry for the delay but things have been moving along ok. Some death but also some new life and growth.

New corals

mint wall hammer that is almost dead. brown jelly (front center)
Neon (front right) & purple Sinularia. Purple Sinularia thanks to @reef lover in the back right
Pink paly's ordered never really adapted and got taken by the urchin for a few days. Eventually emerald crab cleaned off the plug for me.
Gorgonia thanks to @reef lover (Front left)
Green birds nest that is doing amazing. (Top left)
Torch coral on top of right rock structure died
Orange ricordia florida mushroom on back right rock structure

FTS.

Zoa garden. Both doing great. GSP is kind of hanging out not growing much right now. Hammer

Very bushy gorgonia

Birds nest at the top. seems to be adding 8-9 new branches. Really thriving!

Close up of birdsnest of when i got it. much thinner and the coloration is the same!

Here is it with the growth over the past few weeks.

End view i get from my desk every day. Purple people eater paly's doing great on rocks. Gone from 3 to 6 heads in 3 months a 7th head coming soon. Mushrooms OK orange one fell into sand and isn't happy hopefully will recover after i secured it better.

Will take some pictures of the sump as added red ogo, ulva and chaeto to refugium 10G fuge. Ulva has taken off and is now probably 100x the size of what i purchased. 90% of the 10g fuge is full of macro. Looking to purchase another batch of corals soon.

Latest ICP test. Everything seems good except for high chromium. Not sure where it is coming from will do another ICP in a few weeks and hopefully it goes away.

Triton Lab Showroom - Explore this water test results and click on the image above.

Someone wants to show you the water test results and shared this link to the evaluation. Click on the image above to explore the water test results.

www.triton-lab.de

Bfragale · Feb 21, 2020

Looking good, great progress. Can’t wait to see what’s next.
Take care

vetteguy53081 · Feb 21, 2020

Like it !! One word of caution. . . . . Keep an eye on brown stuff. Looks like it may be developing into Dino.

reef lover · Feb 22, 2020

That gorg looks super happy!
Check this thread out another member chasing high chromium and using brs gfo remover.

Chromium in Triton test results

Hi Triton Folks, Started Core7 several months back, and submitted two lab tests, both showing Chromium, but getting significantly better. My question is this. I took apart all things that could possibly rust and cause the chromium in the first place, and found nothing rusting. I'm wondering...

www.reef2reef.com

Maokin · Mar 1, 2020

Some pictures of the refugium. Really doing great and pH goes crazy high 8.4 anytime there is excess nutrients. Yeah I am not too worried about dino it comes and it goes. Sending out an ICP test this week to see about the chromium. Hopefully it will be down. I if it isn't I might go for an ATI ICP test kit so then can test my fresh water. Triton does fresh water testing but you still pay the same $50 testing fee.

Bunch of new corals inbound and should be here Tuesday. Hopefully another update soon.

Maokin · Mar 4, 2020

New corals added last night from Tidal gardens and already looking good at less than 24 hours in their new home.

Left Rasta Zoa, back Rainbow Infusion Zoa, front right Green based Toadstool

Left Birds of Paradise, front right Rainbow Montipora back Neon sinularia. I believe Neon sinularia is a little brown in color planning to move to a more an area with more light soon.

vetteguy53081 · Mar 4, 2020

Nice looking pieces. I have noticed in pics. . . Aptasia in the sandbed and beginning of cyano.

Maokin · Mar 4, 2020

vetteguy53081 said:
Nice looking pieces. I have noticed in pics. . . Aptasia in the sandbed and beginning of cyano.

Yeah Aiptasia is pretty much everywhere in my tank. I tried to zap it early on with aiptasia-x however that just made it spread more. Ended up getting 12 berghia nudibranchs in early Feb. So far i have seen 1 of them since i put them in my tank but it does seem that aiptasia is demising. I am expecting to be dealing with them for at least another 2-3 months before they are gone. Hopefully the Nudis are hiding and eating at night. Goes back to nothing fast happens in a reef tank. Also don't want to take the risk with a peppermint shrimp and my soft corals.

For cyano I plan to get a diamond goby and a fighting conch to hopefully keep the sand bed sturred up more. Nassarius snails alone are not enough.

vetteguy53081 · Mar 4, 2020

Maokin said:
Yeah Aiptasia is pretty much everywhere in my tank. I tried to zap it early on with aiptasia-x however that just made it spread more. Ended up getting 12 berghia nudibranchs in early Feb. So far i have seen 1 of them since i put them in my tank but it does seem that aiptasia is demising. I am expecting to be dealing with them for at least another 2-3 months before they are gone. Hopefully the Nudis are hiding and eating at night. Goes back to nothing fast happens in a reef tank. Also don't want to take the risk with a peppermint shrimp and my soft corals.

For cyano I plan to get a diamond goby and a fighting conch to hopefully keep the sand bed sturred up more. Nassarius snails alone are not enough.

Glad youre aware and have a plan in place

Maokin · Mar 17, 2020

It has arrived. Just getting it installed tonight. Will report back with my thoughts.

Maokin · Apr 6, 2020

Well been a couple weeks with the trident and so far I do like it. I calibrated it at one week of usage. I did test the calibration solution with my test kits and all where pretty close to the trident readings. Magnesium and Calcium were almost exact with Alk being a few tenths of a point off. I have done a few Alk tests at the same time the trident tests and they are a little off compared to my Hanna checker. I am finding my Hanna checker is normally .2-.3 lower than the Trident. However I am not too concern that they are off and more concern with getting consistent precise readings. Trident does seem to be providing precision very well. While initial Alk readers were more in the 10-10.2 range they have crept up to 10.3-10.5. My calcium is a little high but all the corals seem happy so I do not plan to adjust my dosing. Once the stony corals grow out a little more I would expect the calcium numbers to stabilize more towards 475 which is my target.

Here are the last few days of numbers with the Trident. I have been using the standard 4 tests per day.

Alk Numbers

Calcium numbers

Magnesium numbers

Maokin · Apr 6, 2020

Here are some photos of the tank. I am happy to report that the Berghia Nudibranchs have complete eradicated my Aiptasia. The Nudi's sadly are starving to death now. I have posted them for sale with my local reef club and offered them to my local LFS but no one seems to want them

. There is still some dino i believe in the right of my tank and cyano. Cyano seems to be getting better and i keep blowing it off the rocks. I will dos chemiclean if i dont continue to see progress with the cyano.

I moved some corals around and mounted some to the rock permanently. I accidentally fraged my green birds next the other day when doing maintenance. The mother has already healed and the little 1/4 frag seem to be doing fine. The only coral that doesn't seem to be happy is my Rainbow Infusion Zoa. Not quite sure what is wrong with them might reach out to the coral vendor Tidal Gardens for some tips. They have expelled some black stringy substance out of their mouths a few times. This is likely zooxanthellae but not 100% sure. This happened first during transit to me and a few times in the tank. I found someone selling them on R2R and they suggested I give them more light. I tried that for a week or so and saw maybe a modest improvement.

I purchased 4 more nassarius and 5 more trochus snails for the DT and man I am glad I did. The back glass would frequently get covered in algae, this is not the case with the snails. All seem to be doing well. One nassarius snail didn't make it i believe the salinity swing might have been too much. All the rest seem great.

Zoa garden starting to fill out. Plan to mount the rasta zoa very soon near the others.

Toadstool from Tidal garden is doing well already grown a bunch since I got a few weeks ago. Plan to mount permanently soon.

Birds nest mounted along with neon green sinularia. Small birds nest frag as well as birds of paridise that came off the plug in transit and had to be mounted on it's side

.

Top down of the SPS rock all doing well. Sorry for the glare

Top down of second rock sorry again for the glare but rainbow montipora doing well attempted to mount to glass and failed. Will try again with glue otherwise going to get a magnet to mount.

Finishing off the coral changes with the latest coral a orange branching hammer from my LFS. Has expanded even further beyond this photo and seem to be really liking the it's new home. Hopefully i can mount to my right rock structure. Hopefully the flow will not be too much.

Maokin · Apr 6, 2020

In the fish department I have finally decided to stop playing Russian Roulette and QT my fish. With all this being stuck at home I have no excuse not to QT. Hard to see here but picked up 3 more banggi cardinals very small and a diamond goby. Really hoping the goby is able to keep my sand nice and white. So far all are eating in their 20G QT tank. Hopefully the banggi's will get along with my much larger one in my DT. Plan to follow @Humblefish QT article on QT fish with a proactive treatment Prazipro twice and one treatment of cupramine. With any luck they will be in the DT tank in a few weeks.

Lastly it seems I have high Iron, Zinc and chrominum. It could be from the cheatogrow I have been dosing so, I have stopped dosing it. I have also plans to tear down the sump for the deep cleaning and plan to rip apart on my pumps and magnets to look for any rusting. Here is the latest ICP for the tank.

Triton Applied Reef Bioscience are the world leaders in professional sea water analysis.

Empowering aquarists around the world since 2008. Click to view shared sea water analysis.

www.triton-lab.de

Sorry for the long update hopefully it was interesting and let me know if you have any questions.

reef lover · Apr 8, 2020

Qt s looking good! The DT is looking great! Everything looks happy!
Nice score on the hammer ! Hope he does well for you.
Still high chrominum huh???

maybe the deep cleaning will reveal its cause...

powers2001 · Apr 8, 2020

@Maokin where did you place your Trident, in or outside the cabinet?

Maokin · Apr 9, 2020

powers2001 said:
@Maokin where did you place your Trident, in or outside the cabinet?

Yes. I tried everything to make it fit into the stand but just couldn't make it work in any way I felt it was safe. Been using a 1L drain container. Only takes a few seconds to empty, but does have to be emptied around ever 2-3 weeks. Now people will see it for sure when they come over

. One thing I will say is the sound that it makes is way less than all the reviews I watched indicated. Everyone made it sound like it was super loud. I sit 2 ft away from the trident and work all day. When it comes on I can hear it but just barely and my office is very quiet. Unless you are recording music or have the thing on your lap no one should be concern with the noise it makes. Also was lucky and got a 6 month reagent supply when I bought my unit. Still haven't used up the reagents that came with the unit.

Maokin · Apr 9, 2020

reef lover said:
Qt s looking good! The DT is looking great! Everything looks happy!
Nice score on the hammer ! Hope he does well for you.
Still high chrominum huh??? maybe the deep cleaning will reveal its cause...

Yes Chromium is high and Iron now. Here is latest ICP. Given SPS are happy I am not too concern but I will keep looking for sources. Iodine is a little low too. I have started twice a week adding one drop of Iodine. Hopefully next ICP shows more inline Iodine and not an over dose again. My Iodine test kit is junk. I think all hobby ones are. Just something really hard to test.