Flippers reef 125 gallon

[NDIrish]

I have my lights installed. They are 10" above the water and 3" apart and from end of tank. Tank is 26" tall.
What would you recommend to setup the whites and blues percentage?
I don't have a par meter to setup with.

Thanks

 

[Flippers4pups]

I have my lights installed. They are 10" above the water and 3" apart and from end of tank. Tank is 26" tall.
What would you recommend to setup the whites and blues percentage?
I don't have a par meter to setup with.

Thanks

I'd start out at 50% blue, 20% white and go from there.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Water change water ready for tomorrow.

Current tank status:

And we are out of the water!:

White edges on the Monti monster shows the extreme growth patterns! Crazy!

It growing on to the back glass and is that freaking close to the front glass!

 

[reef lover]

Nice pics!

 

[RichtheReefer21]

Water change water ready for tomorrow.

Current tank status:

And we are out of the water!:

White edges on the Monti monster shows the extreme growth patterns! Crazy!

It growing on to the back glass and is that freaking close to the front glass!

Pretty soon ur top down shots are gonna be a salmon montipora filet.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Well I'm off work today. Much needed time off. Wearing PPE for 8 hours at work is tiring.

The battle with diatoms in my system has me, in the temporary, changing things. Thought came to me to take out one of my mixed bed resin and replace it with GFO down stream of my TDS meter as not to fowl it. I had some GFO to do this with, enough to fill the canister 3/4 way full. The first cartridge of mixed bed was 3/4 depleted and I just dumped it and switched the undepleted mixed bed from the last chamber to the first chamber and installed the GFO. After draining off the dust and the affluent ran clear I drained the freshwater Brute of old water and hooked up the outgoing RO/DI line to fill it up. It's filling now.

The rationale behind this without having a silica test kit, which I'm buying a Hanna HI 705 today online, is to insure I've got at least a way to remove any silica that may be getting through the unit. GFO will remove silica.

The only other sources of silicate could be coming from my calcium hydroxide that I use for Kalkwasser.

So source water is my first guess with the calcium hydroxide being the second.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Here's the issue:

 

[NDIrish]

Do you have any problems with your wrasse with the canopy, or do you have a screen top of your tank?

 

[Flippers4pups]

Do you have any problems with your wrasse with the canopy, or do you have a screen top of your tank?

No issues with my wrasses with the canopy. No screen.

 

[NDIrish]

No issues with my wrasses with the canopy. No screen.

Thanks

 

[Flippers4pups]

Up date coming in the morning. Need to get some sleep, it's 1:20 am. Working second shift is tiresome.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Well it's not morning for most and I'm getting ready for work.

Long story short, what I believed was diatoms wasn't after all and after inspecting a sand sample at work under 40x, which doesn't give me a really good picture of what I'm dealing with, looks to be dinoflagellates! I couldn't take a picture of the sample, but they are consistent brown semi round shapes sticking to the sand particles. After a short time, the sample had most of them release the sand and was floating in the water sample. Thousands of brown orbs of the same size

So with that said, since Sunday, it's been black out time.

Along with the black out I'm dosing Microbe lift special blend everyday, running my UV and using 200 micron filter socks, which get changed before I go to work each day. I'm planning a total of 4-5 days black out. I'm now contemplating ordering some phytoplankton and pods, which I will most likely do.

Anyway, that's the update. Fins up!

 

[Brew12]

Well it's not morning for most and I'm getting ready for work.

Long story short, what I believed was diatoms wasn't after all and after inspecting a sand sample at work under 40x, which doesn't give me a really good picture of what I'm dealing with, looks to be dinoflagellates! I couldn't take a picture of the sample, but they are consistent brown semi round shapes sticking to the sand particles. After a short time, the sample had most of them release the sand and was floating in the water sample. Thousands of brown orbs of the same size

So with that said, since Sunday, it's been black out time.

Along with the black out I'm dosing Microbe lift special blend everyday, running my UV and using 200 micron filter socks, which get changed before I go to work each day. I'm planning a total of 4-5 days black out. I'm now contemplating ordering some phytoplankton and pods, which I will most likely do.

Anyway, that's the update. Fins up!

Sorry you are having to deal with this, that is tough!!! I'm a big fan of live phyto and pods so appreciate your approach. Hopefully it works!

 

[TriggerFinger]

Did you decide on any phyto and pods? Have you even peaked inside at all?

Just worried about the toadstool ;Joyful;Hilarious

when are you removing the cloak of darkness? *fingers crossed* for you

 

[Flippers4pups]

It's been a total of 81 hours of total darkness. Bags came off this morning at 1:00 am before I came to bed. Shinning a light into the tank showed all of the dead Dino's flying around like snow as expected. I have a air pump with a tee with two air stones running in the DT to increase O2.

Fish, some are out, some are not. As expected. I'll feed them before going to work. They look fine.

Corals, all look fine, even the acro's.

Going forward, blue channel on a shortened light schedule for a couple days. Intensity at the lowest I can set them for light acclimation. Lights will stay on blues only for a week, then next week whites at lowest setting.

Continued air injection through the weekend.

Continued dosing bacteria.

When the phytoplankton and pods show up, dosing daily of phytoplankton. Pods will be temp acclimated and dosed after lights out into the DT with all pumps off for a hour to allow them to settle and hide.

UV running, skimmer running.

In two weeks if things haven't improved, I'll attempt Dr.Tim's method. We'll see.

 

[Flippers4pups]

All fish out and they ate.

 

[TriggerFinger]

Sand looks better I think?

 

[Flippers4pups]

Sorry you are having to deal with this, that is tough!!! I'm a big fan of live phyto and pods so appreciate your approach. Hopefully it works!

I truly believe, well I know I've had a imbalance going on in the system. This was confirmed when I had the aquabiomics test done and showed a major imbalance in bacteria.

Skimming takes out a great deal of microfauna over a long time of use.

It's a confirmation that I was experiencing "old tank " syndrome.

So I will be adding bottled bacteria during water changes, adding phytoplankton in small doses every couple weeks and replenishing pod populations every three months.

After watching Dr.Tims videos and presentations on bacteria, most likely will try his bacteria. He knows his stuff.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Sand looks better I think?

It does as expected. Blue light throws off it's look in pictures. It's pure white, for now. I'm not fully expecting the Dino's to completely disappear with just a black out. Most cases it helps drive back their numbers, but addressing the reason why they took hold is key. Thus, adding bacterial strains, microfauna, phytoplankton to compete against the Dino's is the real answer.

Black out, UV, no water changes for a month and what I said above is the answer. Takes time.

 

[Flippers4pups]