Nope, it started with "Look Garcia, I'm not pointing anybody out specifically but, everyone please..."
You are in AZ so Garcia probably doesn't eliminate as many as it would out here.
It's funny because his twin brother works for us as well...
Of course he does.
I dosed stump remover a couple of times then I realized my stupid test kit was bad. I was showing really low to almost no NO3 and dosed until I was showing about a 10. Got my Hanna check and I was reading a 60!So today I got a Mexican turbo snail. It’s shell is at least 50% encrusted with lavender and purple coralline. It’s also got a decent amount of spirorbid worms.
The corals are all doing pretty well today. The fish are doing great too. All my inverts are looking good too. I got to see one of my peppermint shrimp out yesterday afternoon.
I’m happy to say my Hanna checker will be here Monday instead of Tuesday. I’ll know where I stand for phosphate levels soon enough.
In mid October give or take I started dosing LaCl because I went to test phosphates and got a reading of 1.0 ppm using Salifert. In the 75 gallon tank from last year I started with dry rock. I ended up with dinos as everyone who’s read through this thread knows. I battled the Dino’s for about 8 months altogether. After moving everything to the 45 and having the dinos come back, I was going to sell everything. I was getting lowball offers and my wife encouraged me to keep trying so I did. At about that time a local reefer came to my rescue. She sold me the two rocks with the xenia colonies on them for $10 a piece and gave me a bunch of chaeto. That knocked out the dinos. I started feeding the tank quite a bit for having just two clownfish. After about a month of that I tried to cut back. Bad move, The dinos started coming back though not nearly as badly. Then I fed heavily for another month and it would happen again. After several months of this I got the Salifert test. I was somewhat surprised at the 1.0 ppm reading for phosphates but not completely. Still I had hardly any nuisance algae. I knew nitrates were my problem. After researching the possibilities I tried dosing nitrates aka stump remover. My chaeto really started growing. Then cyano really started growing, and what was likely lyngbya or however that’s spelled. I got desperate and decided to dose phosphate-e, something I promised myself I wouldn’t do. The ratio of nitrates to phosphates was way out of whack though. Even after exporting tons of algae I wasn’t even moving the needle on phosphates. At that point I knew what culprits caused my phosphate issues so I decided to go with the LaCl. Now the lyngbya is almost completely gone. I have plenty of cyano though and I still get green micro algae on the glass and rocks. Before I started the dosing the micro algae would grow from completely clean glass to completely green in 24 hours or less. Sometimes in 12 to 18 hours. Now it’s once every 2 to 3 days.
Thanks for the support! I learn from my errors, so if you can learn from me, I glad I helped.
Instead of a scraper I prefer the sponges on sticks for most cleaning. The green stuff can be a little harder than the dusty junk but it has a lower likelihood of scratching the glass if it works. I do have a scraper for those hard to scrub places that refuse to be sponge cleaned (or the edges under the sand bed some.Three days have passed since I last cleaned the glass and the green micro algae hasn’t grown tons since then. I would say there’s less growth than there’s been in a while. I haven’t dosed any LaCl in close to two weeks now. I’ve been feeding quite a bit in fact lately. Both pellets and frozen food are fed each day. I also target feed my duncans at least once a week. I fed them twice in two days now.
I got this shortly after all four polyps ate that could eat. There’s a fifth but it’s too small to be target fed. For that matter it’s not much more than a bud with some tiny tentacles starting to form.
This is the first pic I’ve taken where at least portions of all five polyps can be seen. The fifth is to the left of the two not-so-baby-anymore polyps.
Please pardon the stuff on the glass. I need to get a scraper for the glass soon.
I hope to get my sump cleaned up a bit today. There’s a decent amount of cyano near the pump and a few other places. My chaeto needs to get turned over too.
Tomorrow my Hanna checker gets here. Once I get the results I’ll monitor trends closely because I’ll probably use small amounts of phosphate-e (LaCl) to control phosphates.
Since I’m getting the circulation pump in January I’ll have to wait before I get the next Hanna checkers. I’ll likely get the NO3 checker first. Second will be ALK, third will be CAL, Fourth will be MAG, and last will be CU. I’ll also have to get extra reagents since they only supply 10 packets with each checker. CU is the only one I won’t buy extra reagents for since that’s not something I’ll use often.
I should probably learn this.
What's causing the cyano in the sump?
To resurrect a post, this is one of my fears with adding a sump to my fw tank. I have a gate valve but to keep syphon I should just restrict enough to keep water in the drain section of the overflow?
You need to have a siphon break that keeps water in the overflow. Also, you need to make sure that there's enough flow going through the overflow to keep the air bubbles moving out of the siphon tube into the overflow. Not enough flow causes air to build up inside the tub and once there's a big enough air bubbles the siphon breaks and the sump will pump and drain down the sump and overflow the tank.
