skey44
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UV sterilizer did fix my issue. I was losing without it.
Martin's CADE S2 1500
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martin.a
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Happy it helped you. Fingers crossed it will help me too.
BTW, I finally got sodium metasilicate. I will dose 1ppm of SiO2 today to spark diatoms. But I need silica tester, doesn't sound right to dose without measuring.
Edit: I just bought Hanna Silica Low Range HI705.
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martin.a
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A few reasons:
- Wanted all the return water to be treated.
- Don't exactly like the idea of treating return water and spitting it back upstream from the return pump.
- The unit was not plumbed at all, and as I am to rebuild the whole return piping, I was not inclined to make a permanent installation. I don't like how CADE designed all the plumbing. But I have OCD.
shadyraro
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You need to be able to adjust the flow thru the UV via ball/gate valve or a separate pump, the flow thru the UV is minimal compared to your return flow. I can't see how this can work, but I have seen others who have plumbed the UV output water directly back into their displays.
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martin.a
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This is a Jebao DCP-10000 pump with a controller. The flow is set to circa about 2,000 L/h. I probably should take the effort and measure it properly.
Water movement in the tank is done by 2 Jebao GMP-40 wavemakers working at about 50-60% power.
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martin.a
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A short update, sorry its very late again.
The dino war rages on. But I may be getting the upper hand finally. Or, at least I stopped loosing. I did UV, 3-days blackout, dosed literally litters of PO4, NO3, and some NH4 on top of it. Raised silica to 2.5ppm. I was vacuuming, blowing, screaming, cursing... dosed bottles of allegedly-alive bacteria (local product). Nothing worked. I also raised alkalinity from 8.0 to 9.5 and switched from A4R to kalkwasser to increase pH and... to basically change the dino-friendly spa-like environment as much as possible, within reason. Hoping they will move on.
Then came a realization: How am I imagining the bacteria are supposed to be delivered to the sandbed and to the rocks? That lead to one neuron ringing a bell to another that there is the CaCO3 - the coral snow. This is a know flocculant, so, if I add bacteria to it, and then add that mix into the tank, and allow that stuff to settle on surfaces, it will deliver bound bacteria cells where I wanted them to go. On top of it, it may also make the surfaces less inviting to dinos.
So, I mixed and poured the stuff into the tank late at the night (thunderstorm outside). Gave it 60 mins of no return pump, no skimmer to circle the tank, powered by powerheads. I used 4g of dry CaCO3 powder per 100L. Roughly x10 the dosage suggested for coral snow. The morning brought a crystal clear water (of course, its a flocculant after all) and... almost no visible dinos.
Of course, everything looked like a freshly settled snow-glob. During the day snails recovered, GSP opened polyps for the first time in weeks (I was sure it was dead). Fish and shrimps were fine and hungly. Even the sand-sifting starfish started... sandsifting. So... I repeated the same protocol daily for a week. Whenever I had the time, I was doing it at the end of lights-on period to hit them jerks when they were out and about.
After one week, I lowered the CaCO3 dosage by half (to only x5 the usual dose), but I kept the same dosage of the allegedly-alive bacteria. Tank looks much, much better. And the smell... is gone. Macro nutrients are high without daily dosing. Green algae started growing on glass and powrheads instead of that brown crap. All the time UV has been off, sand and rocks untouched. I am sure bacteria and diatoms would not appreciate either. I keep fotoperiod short - 6h, and lights at ~10%. Seems to be enough for the BTA, the resurected GSP and green microalgae. Ah, I keep dosing phyto to keep my pods sustained and happy to multiply. (I am not sure if they do.) Just in case I got fresh Tisbe to relieve the old troops a bit. I am considering UV-sweeper, it's being imported. Unprotected UV lapmps are not readily available in AU. After all, who know what we would do with them. I am also importing Tropic Marin Nitribiotic. That one I don't know why its missing in AU.
Today, I had some time to look at samples under a scope. There still are Amphidinium cells visible, but much less of them, and I can see a similar number of diatoms. Yeay.
So... I don't know what worked, and if any of the things I did really mattered. I also don't know what may happen if I incresed the lights or stopped daily coral snowing. From an accademic perspectibe, experimental design of this whole dino-war is horrible. But frankly, I just want them gone. I have YWG with pistol shrimp living in observation tank already longer than planned, because I am affraid to release them into the... warzone. Them being bentic would potentially be badly affected. And, you can bay a small (used) car for the price of YWG+pistol in Australia.
On more chearfull note: The display has a pair of pink skunks in addition to the Decora. It was actually funny, kind of. When ordering the YWG+pistol the shop owner told me they also have a pair of pink skunks, I inquired before. They told me those are young and small. I confirmed that they will be OK to QT together with the gobies in 80L cube. Gobies (plural) as I also ordered a yellow coral goby... The skunks who showed up were... big. About as big as skunks can get. I honestly tried them in that 80L, and maybe if they were there by themslves it would be fine. But the gobies and the shrimp were traumatized. So the skunks had to move on.
Having no spare tank, I made a quick prayer to any god who was listening, and transfered the skunks into display waiving the QT time. This batch of fish came shop-quarantined, I was only to observe them for a few weeks, no medicated QT, so I was not totally mad. Still, the Decora was not actually happy to see them, but this is another story. The Decora seems to be happy again now.
All right, this the state of the state for tonight. Especially that it is already well into tomorrow.
The dino war rages on. But I may be getting the upper hand finally. Or, at least I stopped loosing. I did UV, 3-days blackout, dosed literally litters of PO4, NO3, and some NH4 on top of it. Raised silica to 2.5ppm. I was vacuuming, blowing, screaming, cursing... dosed bottles of allegedly-alive bacteria (local product). Nothing worked. I also raised alkalinity from 8.0 to 9.5 and switched from A4R to kalkwasser to increase pH and... to basically change the dino-friendly spa-like environment as much as possible, within reason. Hoping they will move on.
Then came a realization: How am I imagining the bacteria are supposed to be delivered to the sandbed and to the rocks? That lead to one neuron ringing a bell to another that there is the CaCO3 - the coral snow. This is a know flocculant, so, if I add bacteria to it, and then add that mix into the tank, and allow that stuff to settle on surfaces, it will deliver bound bacteria cells where I wanted them to go. On top of it, it may also make the surfaces less inviting to dinos.
So, I mixed and poured the stuff into the tank late at the night (thunderstorm outside). Gave it 60 mins of no return pump, no skimmer to circle the tank, powered by powerheads. I used 4g of dry CaCO3 powder per 100L. Roughly x10 the dosage suggested for coral snow. The morning brought a crystal clear water (of course, its a flocculant after all) and... almost no visible dinos.
Of course, everything looked like a freshly settled snow-glob. During the day snails recovered, GSP opened polyps for the first time in weeks (I was sure it was dead). Fish and shrimps were fine and hungly. Even the sand-sifting starfish started... sandsifting. So... I repeated the same protocol daily for a week. Whenever I had the time, I was doing it at the end of lights-on period to hit them jerks when they were out and about.
After one week, I lowered the CaCO3 dosage by half (to only x5 the usual dose), but I kept the same dosage of the allegedly-alive bacteria. Tank looks much, much better. And the smell... is gone. Macro nutrients are high without daily dosing. Green algae started growing on glass and powrheads instead of that brown crap. All the time UV has been off, sand and rocks untouched. I am sure bacteria and diatoms would not appreciate either. I keep fotoperiod short - 6h, and lights at ~10%. Seems to be enough for the BTA, the resurected GSP and green microalgae. Ah, I keep dosing phyto to keep my pods sustained and happy to multiply. (I am not sure if they do.) Just in case I got fresh Tisbe to relieve the old troops a bit. I am considering UV-sweeper, it's being imported. Unprotected UV lapmps are not readily available in AU. After all, who know what we would do with them. I am also importing Tropic Marin Nitribiotic. That one I don't know why its missing in AU.
Today, I had some time to look at samples under a scope. There still are Amphidinium cells visible, but much less of them, and I can see a similar number of diatoms. Yeay.
So... I don't know what worked, and if any of the things I did really mattered. I also don't know what may happen if I incresed the lights or stopped daily coral snowing. From an accademic perspectibe, experimental design of this whole dino-war is horrible. But frankly, I just want them gone. I have YWG with pistol shrimp living in observation tank already longer than planned, because I am affraid to release them into the... warzone. Them being bentic would potentially be badly affected. And, you can bay a small (used) car for the price of YWG+pistol in Australia.
On more chearfull note: The display has a pair of pink skunks in addition to the Decora. It was actually funny, kind of. When ordering the YWG+pistol the shop owner told me they also have a pair of pink skunks, I inquired before. They told me those are young and small. I confirmed that they will be OK to QT together with the gobies in 80L cube. Gobies (plural) as I also ordered a yellow coral goby... The skunks who showed up were... big. About as big as skunks can get. I honestly tried them in that 80L, and maybe if they were there by themslves it would be fine. But the gobies and the shrimp were traumatized. So the skunks had to move on.
Having no spare tank, I made a quick prayer to any god who was listening, and transfered the skunks into display waiving the QT time. This batch of fish came shop-quarantined, I was only to observe them for a few weeks, no medicated QT, so I was not totally mad. Still, the Decora was not actually happy to see them, but this is another story. The Decora seems to be happy again now.
All right, this the state of the state for tonight. Especially that it is already well into tomorrow.
Last edited:
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