Leon821019218
Active Member
English is not my first language, just so you know ;)..
Anyway, about my aquarium, I'll start with the basics. Started it in August '21 It's an ILA 95 gallon full optic white tank. The dimensions are 4ftx2ftx1.6ft. I have a 200w Maxspect RSX with wifi controller for lighting.
There is one Maxspect Gyre and a Tunze stream 6065 providing flow and a Eheim thermocontrol heater. For dosing I use the Aquamedic reefdoser evo 4. A Autoaqua Smart ATO duo
and a 11 gallon fresh water reservoir. I'm running without a skimmer (yes I am strange I know :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:) but up until now it's not causing troubles or anything. I do my weekly water changes like it's a religion and test 2 or 3 times a week for N02/N03/P04 and they are always low or non existent. ALK/CA/MG are stable thanks to the dosing unit. For corals it's mostly soft/LPS and since a month or 2 I'm trying some SPS.
The only real trouble I experienced was one that (I found out later) persisted for a long time and was quite a nasty one: From the start I used a refractometer, like many in this hobby... But when I got my first 2 SPS corals I started to notice that something was not right.. I had a beautiful Seriatopora and when it started to go the wrong way I could not find out what was wrong. Water parameters seemed fine. I just started dosing because more corals mean more 'users' of trace elements and such. So my Ca was a bit low (380 or so) and Mg was also dropping They did vary from tine to time which I found odd). Well, long story short, I send out a ICP test (ATI) and when the results came back, the first thing that shocked me was that my salinity was waaaay of! It was 29PPT! When my refractometer said 35. So that was quite a shock. I tried to calibrate it with special solution, RO water. Tried everything and every time the readings were wrong. So I bought myself a new one and started to, slowly, raise the salinity. everything seemed to go OK but somehow it didn't show in the tank. Corals looked like they came back and then they weren't. so I calibrated the thing again and again. Went to the lfs, tested their water, tried a hydrometer, let them test my water. Again it was way off! So with the confusion complete (how the heck can I have 2 refractometers fail on me!?) I threw he thing away and got myself a digital one from Milwaukee. And finally I actually now what the salinity is. Before I never realized HOW important the right salinity is because it affects al lot of your other parameters. It probably explains the swings in ALk and CA I had.
But now the tanks looks it's on the way back. I can still see that some of the corals took quite a beating because of the salinity issues but slowly it all seems to right itself :) They only thing that (maybe) could be better is my N03 compared to P04...
Did a few tests yesterday and looks pretty Ok t me.
Salinity 35PPT (heel yeah!) :p
N02 0
N03 5 (it swings between 5 and 10)
P04 0.03
Ca 420
Mg 1320
KH 8.5
PH 8
I'll see if I can upload some pictures tomorrow if I can ;)
Anyway, about my aquarium, I'll start with the basics. Started it in August '21 It's an ILA 95 gallon full optic white tank. The dimensions are 4ftx2ftx1.6ft. I have a 200w Maxspect RSX with wifi controller for lighting.
There is one Maxspect Gyre and a Tunze stream 6065 providing flow and a Eheim thermocontrol heater. For dosing I use the Aquamedic reefdoser evo 4. A Autoaqua Smart ATO duo
and a 11 gallon fresh water reservoir. I'm running without a skimmer (yes I am strange I know :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:) but up until now it's not causing troubles or anything. I do my weekly water changes like it's a religion and test 2 or 3 times a week for N02/N03/P04 and they are always low or non existent. ALK/CA/MG are stable thanks to the dosing unit. For corals it's mostly soft/LPS and since a month or 2 I'm trying some SPS.
The only real trouble I experienced was one that (I found out later) persisted for a long time and was quite a nasty one: From the start I used a refractometer, like many in this hobby... But when I got my first 2 SPS corals I started to notice that something was not right.. I had a beautiful Seriatopora and when it started to go the wrong way I could not find out what was wrong. Water parameters seemed fine. I just started dosing because more corals mean more 'users' of trace elements and such. So my Ca was a bit low (380 or so) and Mg was also dropping They did vary from tine to time which I found odd). Well, long story short, I send out a ICP test (ATI) and when the results came back, the first thing that shocked me was that my salinity was waaaay of! It was 29PPT! When my refractometer said 35. So that was quite a shock. I tried to calibrate it with special solution, RO water. Tried everything and every time the readings were wrong. So I bought myself a new one and started to, slowly, raise the salinity. everything seemed to go OK but somehow it didn't show in the tank. Corals looked like they came back and then they weren't. so I calibrated the thing again and again. Went to the lfs, tested their water, tried a hydrometer, let them test my water. Again it was way off! So with the confusion complete (how the heck can I have 2 refractometers fail on me!?) I threw he thing away and got myself a digital one from Milwaukee. And finally I actually now what the salinity is. Before I never realized HOW important the right salinity is because it affects al lot of your other parameters. It probably explains the swings in ALk and CA I had.
But now the tanks looks it's on the way back. I can still see that some of the corals took quite a beating because of the salinity issues but slowly it all seems to right itself :) They only thing that (maybe) could be better is my N03 compared to P04...
Did a few tests yesterday and looks pretty Ok t me.
Salinity 35PPT (heel yeah!) :p
N02 0
N03 5 (it swings between 5 and 10)
P04 0.03
Ca 420
Mg 1320
KH 8.5
PH 8
I'll see if I can upload some pictures tomorrow if I can ;)
