Right now I’m literally in this waiting mode to see how bad the fallout is gonna be for my 150 gal. SPS tank. Ugh.
Please bear with me as I will explain errors leading up to the issue and ask for some advice how to proceed. My goal is mostly to confirm my plan and to get advice from more experienced SPS growers.
Background: been in the hobby around 2 decades (which makes this all the more annoying) and current tank running for 3.5 yrs w sps. See tank below.
So, I decided to clean up the entire left side of the tank and get rid of almost all the Monti caps bc the tank had started looking a bit dull and I thought that the corals weren’t looking as good. I figured it was a combination of flow issues and possibly light spectrum decline (t5 at about 13 mos old). I have not replaced the bulbs yet as I wanted to let tank settle after the major change.
Now, before you guys hate me, I will tell you that after many years of doing my own maintenance I now am able to afford paying for water change and general cleaning/testing service etc. And my guy is good enough to recommend. Plus he’s bailed me out on some emergencies in the past. He pretty much comes and does 15-30 gal change every 2 weeks. That said......
I generally run my alk between 7-8 dkh, calcium been around 450ish, mg 1400, nitrates about 3, pO4 steady around 0.01-0.03. I use B-Ionic 2 part at around 50mL pt 1 and 41mL pt 2 daily. His last water change was on April 6 with confirmation of the above values.
I admit due to general success of tank I have become a little lazy on the hobbyist end. So I wanted to get some renewed interest in the tank and trade some frags. (This hasn’t happened yet btw.). I did some cleanup and now the tank looks like this—
The new rock is liferock which I researched prior to adding and I’m not concerned about it. Here’s where the fear/issue comes in. I knew that removal of the corals were going to likely need a decrease in 2 part dosing, so I thought maybe a 10% decrease was a reasonable starting point. I decided not to change it on the first day but on the day after.
Now, thank goodness I decided to calibrate the Neptune DOS before uploading the new settings. I go to the doser and guess what? Long story short the doser was unplugged. what the heck!!! Now, I scramble to my test kits and guess what? My unopened Hanna reagent expired in February, but it‘s all I’ve got so I have to use it. Alk 5.0. Retest- 5.1dKH. Check calcium also expired reagents by a couple months. Result 350.
So, for now I just started back redosing at previous settings and yesterday’s results were alk 5.6 and calcium about the same. My new reagents are in the mail and I should at least have alk reagent today. I’m having my guy come do a water change today and he will also do his testing. The corals overall don’t look much different than they have over the past 3-4 weeks, but I’m nervous about fallout.
I have seen some base recession but thought it may have been due to flow/light and now I just don’t want to cause more problems by over correcting too fast.
So, in closing, I want to know that I should be able to increase the alk by about 0.5 dkH a day safely until around previous levels right? How long should my timeline be for correcting?
Now, in my defense and as a warning to other hobbyists, I learned that even if your Neptune dos doesn’t have power to turn the pumps-Apex fusion STILL SHOWS YOUR DOSER DOSING THE PROGRAMMED AMOUNTS AND THE RESEVIOR IN THE DDR DROPPING!! This really, really, really irks me to no end as this was part of how I allowed this to go unnoticed. BEWARE.
Does anyone have any advice around this issue? I have now had my power supply unit on my EB832 fail which was borderline disastrous and now I find out another issue that can cause massive disaster with this company’s equipment.
Ultimately, it’s my own fault for being too hands off and I hope others can learn from my mistakes/issues and offer advice. Thanks in advance for replies and I’ll keep everyone posted.
Steve
Please bear with me as I will explain errors leading up to the issue and ask for some advice how to proceed. My goal is mostly to confirm my plan and to get advice from more experienced SPS growers.
Background: been in the hobby around 2 decades (which makes this all the more annoying) and current tank running for 3.5 yrs w sps. See tank below.
So, I decided to clean up the entire left side of the tank and get rid of almost all the Monti caps bc the tank had started looking a bit dull and I thought that the corals weren’t looking as good. I figured it was a combination of flow issues and possibly light spectrum decline (t5 at about 13 mos old). I have not replaced the bulbs yet as I wanted to let tank settle after the major change.
Now, before you guys hate me, I will tell you that after many years of doing my own maintenance I now am able to afford paying for water change and general cleaning/testing service etc. And my guy is good enough to recommend. Plus he’s bailed me out on some emergencies in the past. He pretty much comes and does 15-30 gal change every 2 weeks. That said......
I generally run my alk between 7-8 dkh, calcium been around 450ish, mg 1400, nitrates about 3, pO4 steady around 0.01-0.03. I use B-Ionic 2 part at around 50mL pt 1 and 41mL pt 2 daily. His last water change was on April 6 with confirmation of the above values.
I admit due to general success of tank I have become a little lazy on the hobbyist end. So I wanted to get some renewed interest in the tank and trade some frags. (This hasn’t happened yet btw.). I did some cleanup and now the tank looks like this—
The new rock is liferock which I researched prior to adding and I’m not concerned about it. Here’s where the fear/issue comes in. I knew that removal of the corals were going to likely need a decrease in 2 part dosing, so I thought maybe a 10% decrease was a reasonable starting point. I decided not to change it on the first day but on the day after.
Now, thank goodness I decided to calibrate the Neptune DOS before uploading the new settings. I go to the doser and guess what? Long story short the doser was unplugged. what the heck!!! Now, I scramble to my test kits and guess what? My unopened Hanna reagent expired in February, but it‘s all I’ve got so I have to use it. Alk 5.0. Retest- 5.1dKH. Check calcium also expired reagents by a couple months. Result 350.
So, for now I just started back redosing at previous settings and yesterday’s results were alk 5.6 and calcium about the same. My new reagents are in the mail and I should at least have alk reagent today. I’m having my guy come do a water change today and he will also do his testing. The corals overall don’t look much different than they have over the past 3-4 weeks, but I’m nervous about fallout.
I have seen some base recession but thought it may have been due to flow/light and now I just don’t want to cause more problems by over correcting too fast.
So, in closing, I want to know that I should be able to increase the alk by about 0.5 dkH a day safely until around previous levels right? How long should my timeline be for correcting?
Now, in my defense and as a warning to other hobbyists, I learned that even if your Neptune dos doesn’t have power to turn the pumps-Apex fusion STILL SHOWS YOUR DOSER DOSING THE PROGRAMMED AMOUNTS AND THE RESEVIOR IN THE DDR DROPPING!! This really, really, really irks me to no end as this was part of how I allowed this to go unnoticed. BEWARE.
Does anyone have any advice around this issue? I have now had my power supply unit on my EB832 fail which was borderline disastrous and now I find out another issue that can cause massive disaster with this company’s equipment.
Ultimately, it’s my own fault for being too hands off and I hope others can learn from my mistakes/issues and offer advice. Thanks in advance for replies and I’ll keep everyone posted.
Steve
