Your thread keeps reminding me that I DON'T yet have Vivid's Insanity and I SHOULD have a nice piece.
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Your thread keeps reminding me that I DON'T yet have Vivid's Insanity and I SHOULD have a nice piece.
It looks like you could do even more kalk, especially on the downhill pH time periods. I set mine to start dripping just before pH peak, and usually let it drip until an hour or so before lights on. I've noticed about a 30 minute lag time between drip start/stop and the effect on pH. It's kind of fun to play the "flatten the pH curve" game.
Love the Blonde Naso, I can't wait until mine gets a little more size and starts to get those colors.I added kalk to the stirrer mid week. It took about 48 hours for the solution to settle and clear. I started with four intervals on the DOS. I have the drip stop for 30 minutes before and after when the trident performs its sampling. Probably unecessary, but I wanted to reduce the chances of forming precipitate in the trident's sampling line as the sampling line is located in the return section of the sump.
I rely on a couple fans for evaporative cooling and top off more than 5 liters per day, so no concern regarding salinity with the addition of the kalk. I did program in pH and salinity parameters for the DOS as safeguards regardless.
I typically adjust the volume of dosing weekly and had deliberately fallen behind a bit in order to give a little wiggle room with the alkalinity and avoid an alkalinity spike when the kalk drip came online. I also added a large tridacna noae which will increase consumption as well.
I don't have a great sense of how much the kalkwasser is going to add to the alkalinity and calcium levels. I also don't have a great sense of the volume required to affect the pH. I plan to go slowly and monitor carefully. It is going to take some time and trialing to get things dialed in, and I plan to hold off on adding the calcium reactor in the meantime.
Love the Blonde Naso, I can't wait until mine gets a little more size and starts to get those colors.
I do the same thing! make one huge cube with a mix of all sorts of stuff. My most recent has been squid.
I have noticed a decent spike in nitrates when I started using the plank feeder a lot more. What is your most current method for dealing with off the shelf freeze dried food. I have been using a strainer for the mysis, but that is it. I use mysis, canalus, rotifers, and cyclops.
Have you noticed any changes with the addition of FWS and Booster?
That's a good question, I'm still trying to figure out the best solution for the elevated nitrates and phosphates. Have you observed any negative effects from your elevated nitrates? How high are they getting?
I think of the nitrates and phosphates in terms of nutrient import and export. I've tried to reduce the waste import by washing the food and straining the freeze dried mysis. Once I realized how high my nitrates and phosphates were I've attempted to increase the export by increasing the refugium photoperiod. The macro algae in there is dense and I've been harvesting it once every couple weeks. I also increased the volume of my daily water changes. Currently I'm changing about 4 gallons a day up from 2.5 gallons.
I don't expect to add many more fish or increase my feeding much more, so hopefully now as the corals grow that may utilize some of the nutrients as well. I haven't experienced any negatives from the high nitrates and phosphates that I can tell, but I'm still seeking a balance. I'm reluctant to add GFO or use other media to remove the nutrients. Are there other methods of export that you think might be helpful?
To be honest I have not seen any negative effects and my sticks actually look a lot richer in color. I think when I had the plank going for 5 times and day and I was feeding 3, it peaked out at 18ppm NO3. Phosphates have not been a problem at all. Max value of 0.06. I naturally want to stay in the 10-15ppm NO3 range so I took two feedings off the plank and found a happy medium.
I also change 4 gallons of water a day, and my fuge does way to good of a job removing phosphate.
I am sure once the coral get larger, they will soak up the nutrients. I would not add other medias as well. In my opinion if your tank looks good... why change it unless it is always raising slowly or you are flirting with a really high range. Can you turn your skimmer "up" a setting or two? wet skim a little more?
Sorry to jump in late. How do you have the overflow set up? Is one running directly from the tank into fuge?I ordered a custom sump from @geo. The sump offers a lot of little built in features for cord management, water management, and organization of the equipment and filtration. I'm very happy with the layout and quality of the sump.
I like using mechanical filtration, but I hate changing it. This leads to me putting it off, so I decided to try the automatic filter rollers for the new build. Due to the range of flow, there are two Clarisea SK-5000's. There is a bypass hole that allows water to equalize in both chambers.
I'd like to minimize the filter roll changes as well, so currently I put them on a timer. When I started using the timer, the rollers were coming on only once a day. I monitored the overflow and have adjusted the frequency of the timer as my bioload, feeding, and flow have changed. This is the current state of the rolls after 5 weeks of operation, and currently they come on every two hours after 5am. I am interested to see how long I can make them last.
The skimmer is under sized based on recommendations, and due to the use of the roller fleece removing many of the organics before they have a chance to dissolve. I am using the Bubble King Deluxe 200. It's taken a couple weeks, but it's skimming effectively.
I have two media reactors that run off the individual return pumps. Currently I am only running carbon. Changing the media has been clean and simple. There are also integrated bulkheads for the ATO, AWC (water in/out), and one in the refugium that I will use for the calcium reactor effluent once it's running.
I like the design of the refugium post-return. It keeps the chamber a little cleaner focused on dissolved nutrients. Pods are less likely to be skimmed out which likely is not a significant issue, but I like it regardless. I also like the reefbrite strip with the light directed down into the chamber without light spill into the other chambers. I added some red ogo a few weeks ago and added my first batch of chaeto this week.
White 1/4" tubing line is the ATO connected to a spectrapure water exchange module (WXM) that is spliced into the Osmolator. There is float tree on an acrylic rod that holds the optical / float sensors in the return section. The WXM draws water from the reservoir in the garage with a 90-100' run of tubing between the reservoir and stand.
No water changes to date, but I'm thinking about getting the automatic water changes recalibrated. I've been manually dosing. I tried coralline in a bottle and I am transferring some encrusted rocks from the other system which should get things going. Once I see some coralline, I'll start adding some more sps corals.
It's the conventional wisdom that tempts me to treat the number, but I don't want to fix something isn't broken. Maybe if the corals keep growing they'll compensate for my feeding habits partially."Conventional wisdom" would suggest this tank should be overrun with GHA and dead sticks given these nutrients.
@CharliesFrags would love to see this post, but I cannot figure out how to tag him.
I tend to get some GHA going when I push .2 or so and my herbivores get lazy. I feed 3 X a day and can hardly buy a nitrate.
Sorry to jump in late. How do you have the overflow set up? Is one running directly from the tank into fuge?