Rebirth

[Alex Costa]

Two interesting points of view

 

[tripdad]

I can finally get a real idea of the size of your tank. Very beautiful display.

 

[85173]

Two interesting points of view

Such a good fit for that location Alex! I think if I was coming down the stairs, I would trip over, from staring at the reef too much!

 

[Alex Costa]

Within a week the PH inside the reactor went from 6,7 to 6,9, even with a small adjustment made in the middle of it. I'm using Triton CaRX media and it doesn't dissolve well with a PH over 6.8.
Fact: I need another needle valve.
:downcast-face-with-sweat:

 

[Alex Costa]

I think this shows well the size of the tank/room.
It was made to fit a 1,6m gap between the column and the door.
The initial plan was to put the older tank (1,5 x 1,0m) there, but then I decided that I want to go bigger to get more room for fishes and corals.
And here we are.....:beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

 

[Alex Costa]

After about six months of PO4 close to 0,00 I started heavily feeding with some "fresh" foods.
Fresh zooplankton, microalgae, fresh copepods in a daily basis.
PO4 arise to 0,06 and the to 0,08.
A yellow light turns on and I reduced the dosage a little bit.
One week and po4 decreased to 0,05. I'll keep this amount this time untill it reaches 0,02~0,03.
The good news: I saw a good improvement in the lps, zoas, clams, softs and the color of the sps.
Besides that, I saw an improvement in the amount of pods in my frag tank.
I hope that this can be enough to keep my pipe alive, fat and happy.

 

[Alex Costa]

I don't want to celebrate before the finish line but, so far so good with the sandbed.
:cool::cool::cool:

 

[Alex Costa]

I got this guy 3 months ago, very afraid with the possibility of not have enough food for him in the tank.
I started dosing zoo and phyto plankton heavilly, to try to help in someway.
Untill now, he's good.
Very active and "fat".

 

[Alex Costa]

Three months after returning the sand to the tank, everything is still fine.
No dynos untill now, and I think that the cause of it was my old led fixtures.
After remove them of the display, I put it on my frag tank. After a while, dynos appeared there.
I removed it and dynos, after a month or two, disappeared again.

Thinking about that I remembered that back in 2012 I run my two tanks with T5 bulbs.
In the main tank I run only ATI lamps and in the frag tank a set of chinese low cost T5 tubes.

After some months of use of the tubes a lot of dynos apeared in my frag tank.
In the display, none, and both were connected!

That time I even didn't now what it was. Researching a bit in the internet I found a Thread that related the growth os dynos with bad quality light. It was months since I was trying to deal with that.

Back then I was already thinking about to migrate from T5 from Leds.
I use the situation to replace the frag tank t5 fixture with a led kit from Rapid Led.
It was enough to clear the dynos in a month or less.

I have no idea if there's some link with both things.
I also don't know if there's a logic explanation to the fact that with the old fixtures = dynos, without the old fixtures = no dynos.

 

[Alex Costa]

Next step is to add a layer of new sand.
I removed a lot of sand when I syphoned the sandbed and now I'll replace.

 

[Janci]

Three months after returning the sand to the tank, everything is still fine.
No dynos untill now, and I think that the cause of it was my old led fixtures.
After remove them of the display, I put it on my frag tank. After a while, dynos appeared there.
I removed it and dynos, after a month or two, disappeared again.

Thinking about that I remembered that back in 2012 I run my two tanks with T5 bulbs.
In the main tank I run only ATI lamps and in the frag tank a set of chinese low cost T5 tubes.

After some months of use of the tubes a lot of dynos apeared in my frag tank.
In the display, none, and both were connected!

That time I even didn't now what it was. Researching a bit in the internet I found a Thread that related the growth os dynos with bad quality light. It was months since I was trying to deal with that.

Back then I was already thinking about to migrate from T5 from Leds.
I use the situation to replace the frag tank t5 fixture with a led kit from Rapid Led.
It was enough to clear the dynos in a month or less.

I have no idea if there's some link with both things.
I also don't know if there's a logic explanation to the fact that with the old fixtures = dynos, without the old fixtures = no dynos.

Great info Alex.
It would be interesting to hang the old lights one more time and see of dinos are coming back.
Then there must be a connection.

 

[Janci]

Next step is to add a layer of new sand.
I removed a lot of sand when I syphoned the sandbed and now I'll replace.

With extra bacteria!!!!

 

[85173]

Great info Alex.
It would be interesting to hang the old lights one more time and see of dinos are coming back.
Then there must be a connection.

Deliberately cause Dinos in Alex's tank! Noooooooo! :eek:

A separate experiment tank please, rather than destroy one of the most beautiful displays!:)

 

[Alex Costa]

Great info Alex.
It would be interesting to hang the old lights one more time and see of dinos are coming back.
Then there must be a connection.

Every time that I had an outbreak of dynos, I lost a looooot os sps and even after remove the sandbed, It took months and sometimes almost a year to the tank bounce back to its balance.
I'll never turn that lights on again on my tanks.
The only possibility to do this would be to set up a new tank, only to do this test.



An important side note that I forgot:

Every time that I had problems with dynos, it happened around the small island, where the Vegas was mounted.
I never had to remove all the sandbed.
Every time I removed just the portion around the small island in the front of the reef.

Last time that I had problems, I put the AF sand. I wanted to try some new and "live" sand. It was in January 22.
The dynos came back after a month.
That time I didn't remove the sand. I just push and blew it up to the back of the tank with a shovel and a pump.

After do this, the problem was solved.

 

[Alex Costa]

Four months and he's stong, "fat" and very active.
My fingers are still crossed.

 

[Janci]

Four months and he's stong, "fat" and very active.
My fingers are still crossed.

Those eyes are amazing, scanning every sq inch of that rocks looking for food.
Looking great!

 

[Daniel@R2R]

How's this reef looking @Alex Costa? I love following your updates!

 

[Alex Costa]

How's this reef looking @Alex Costa? I love following your updates!

Hey Daniel.
The reef is going just fine.
Colors are improving and the dynos didn't gave any signal of return. :smiling-face-with-sunglasses:
Soon I'll post some news.

 

[Alex Costa]

I recently bought a new inline TDS.

Once it arrived I installed it and found that the TDS on the RO membrane outlet was between 60 and 70.
At that moment I understood why days before I had noticed that the pressure at the entrance of the membrane was low. Around 40~50 PSI when it should be around 70 PSI.
The membrane had ruptured.
I changed the membrane and to ensure a greater durability, I replaced the inlet filters (2 polypropylene cartridges, 5 and 1 micron), as well as the carbon block cartridge.

After everything was assembled and all the water draining were done, the TDS at the membrane outlet started to show 2ppt.
For now I will keep the DI resin, which is expired, without changing it. The new TDS measures water quality at the membrane outlet and at the outlet of the second 20" resin stage.
After this there are 2 more cartridges of 10" with DI resin.
I should make the switch soon, but for now I prefer the diatoms to have food (and feed the pods) and for that, letting the silicate through the saturated resin isn't all bad.

As nothing is so bad that it can't get worse, I went to test the phosphate and came across 0.3 ppm.
Never in my years as a hobbyist have I measured such a high phosphate. On the bright side, the corals were generally not showing any signs of stress.
I put about 500 ml of GFO and left it... I'm controlling the volume of food that enters the tank a little more, and replacing the GFO weekly.
I believe that in about two or three months the phosphate level will return to the normal range for my tank, which is between 0.01 and 0.06.

Let's see....

 

[Alex Costa]

As I said in the previous post, everything looks fine in the tank.
Colours are getting better, the sandbed is clean.
Fishes are fat and healthy.
A perfect time to take a beer, watch the tank and just relax.