SWISS1939's Reefer 170 - DSR EZ System

[swiss1939]

Now that everything is running and the cycle started, I am considering the possibility of auto water changes using a doser pump with the extra space to do 2 part dosing when needed in the future. I came across this Jebao wifi dosing pump from amazon suggestions after purchasing their OW-10 powerhead the other day.

Jebao Wifi Dosing Pump



I wasn't considering AWC previously as a serious option but was looking at dosing pumps for what I expect to eventually need in terms of trace elements. The extra pumps on this one got me thinking I could use it for a small amount of water changes over the course of a week. This would require some containers next to my tank for new and old SW. I'm thinking 4 gallons spread over 6 days with 7th day no water changes, but reserved for emptying and filling the reserve containers, which is about 2500ml a day. My two concerns with this are 1.) return section of sump level fluctuations affecting the stock red sea ATO and 2.) forgetting to empty the old sw container one week and having a flood. I like that this dosing pump is wifi, so I can hopefully avoid any mishaps regarding the old water container by setting up a recurring calendar appointment to empty it every week and notify me on my phone as a reminder, with the backup being access over the internet when not home if I realize I didn't empty it or won't be able to be home to empty it, I can turn the AWC pumps off. This is best I can think of as I don't think there are auto cutoff valves for something like this based on water levels in all the containers and the tank, unles I wanted to go to something more expensive and purpose built.

 

[swiss1939]

I am through the cycle and ready to slowly start stocking my tank now. I started fishless cycle 19 days ago with Dr. Tim's bottled bac which I had received way too early a month prior and it sat in my warm living room for over a month before I used it. I think storing it like that was less than ideal as it worked, but took a little longer than expected to the point where I bought another bottle of bac and within a day after using a fresh second bottle it had cleared all ammonia and nitrite. Only dosed dr tims ammonium chloride once on day one but accidentally over dosed it based on total system volume calcs.

Highest everything went was on about the 10th day into the cycle with 2.4 ammonia (still on first dose), 4ppm nitrite and 50ppm nitrates. It went fast down after that, prior to second botle of bac which was added on the 13th day. Re-dosed to 2ppm ammonia at same time as second bottle of bac and the next day everything was down more than half. So I called it cycled and started water changes to clear up the remaining nitrate which was 50+. I only do 5 gal water changes at once, so I did 4 of them over 2 days to get about 40% water changed and this left nitrates still high around 30ppm. So I did another 4 water changes over the last two days for approx 70% total water change from the original water prior to cycle. This is today 19 days since the start of cycle and my parameters are still slightly elevated but safe to start slowly stocking and continue with weekly water changes which will bring the nitrates down over a few weeks.

Ammonia: 0 or 0.1ppm (color test accuracy)
Nitrites: 0.8ppm
Nitrates: 10

As far as stocking, I have two orders coming this week, one of mud with worms and brittle stars, snails, hermit crabs, amphipods and a freebie Green Star Polyp Leather Coral coming in the next 4 days, and another coming from algae barn with copepods a few days after.

I was thinking of going to my LFS and getting two small clowns, but will wait another month as I am going camping with family for a week and don't want to ask my friends to feed small clowns this early in the tank life. I may pick up one blenny because I can leave it with some macroalgae on a clip while gone for that camping trip.

The Green star polyp leather coral I am not really expecting to keep beyond first few months as Im not really into them, but its a freebie and I appreciate it! So I will keep it as a canary in the coal mine for the first few months!

My future stocking includes:

2 clownfish
1 six line wrasse
1 tail spot blenny
1 green chromis
1 mandarin goby

Inverts:
Either a blood red shrimp or a peppermint shrimp (only if I get aptaisia)
one or two emerald crabs
a couple hermits

 

[swiss1939]

I got some copepods from Algae Barn on Tuesday and seeded my DT with that and have been dosing included phytoplankton as recommended by Algae Barn. Plus on Wednesday I went to my LFS and picked up a small piece of LR to add to display just to start adding what little diversity I can with bacteria and other organisms. The LR has sponges on it plus coralline algae. They also gave me a bunch of scrapings of coralline algae which I dumped into the DT. While I was there, I picked up 3 Turban snails and an Emerald Crab just to start getting some life in the tank. I didn't want to add a fish yet cause I will be out of town first week of August and don't want to lose one too early in the tank life cycle or have the tank parameters go out of whack too much from a friend feeding too much while I'm gone.

The emerald crab is all about hiding for now. It only comes out at night. I have been dropping a tiny piece of an algae wafer or 2 or 3 tiny pieces of crab food into the tank each day for him since the tank is so sterile of detritus. He only gets what makes it into his hiding place from currents for now, so I am not feeding too much.

Thanks to the Hanna Salinity tester, my salinity is way too high as its calibration is way off even after doing a fresh calibration. So my water ended up being at 40ppt salinity due to the hanna tester. I've been slowly lowering the salinity for the past two days now that I have a refractometer with some brightwell calibration fluid. Refractometer reports 40ppt where the Hanna was at 35ppt. Only discovered this because I recalibrated it and it was suddenly 3ppt different than the test immediately before this re-calibration. So I did not trust either reading and waited for the refractometer to arrive. I'm removing 1 gal of tank water and adding 1 gal of RODI a day for 6 days. Today is second day and I'm at about 38.5ppt down from 40ppt.

And tomorrow I finally get my shipment of bristle worms, spaghetti worms, brittle stars, amphipods, hermits and snails, etc from IPSF, which includes a free ultra green mushroom toadstool frag which I will use as the canary in the coal mine for now.

Tank params are nice aside from the salinity error due to the digital tester. ammonia non existant, nitrites are 0.05ppt and nitrates are 5ppt.

Hopefully by the middle of august my tank will have enough time to build up decent copepod, amphipod and live sand rock critter cultures to add a couple fish.

Sump has some bio balls in media bags just to use every available space for biological filtration. Skimmer not even on for now as its not needed.

Couple turban snails just to start grazing surfaces as I am just starting to see the most minimal amount of diatoms in a couple spots.

And the emerald crab when I first dropped him in the tank landed next to this tiny piece of rubble and decided to hide under it for protection. He's since taken up residence in the main cave of my rock scape where I can't see him, except at night when he creeps out.

 

[swiss1939]

I woke up to this amazing sight. No clue how the emerald crab got up the glass and grabbed hold of the snail, but they are locked in an endurance battle, stuck in stalemate for who knows how long!

I knew the crab would eat the snails but i thought they would be safe where they have been staying.. High up on the glass. Who knew the emerald crab could be such a determined hunter!

Looks like this guy is gonna be a problem in this tank as I've got nothing in it for the next month but snails, worms and him!

 

[swiss1939]

I stepped in and put my finger on the scales of nature and knocked that devious emerald crab off the snail after over 4 hrs of watching him grip on for dear life. Fed him a few pellets right where he landed and he aggresively ate the pellets.

Also got my order of worms, snails, hermits and amphipods from IPSF today. Everything went into the DT which looks a mess now cause rubble is everywhere over rocks and seaweed is stuck inbetween and under everything. It is a good thing though as now I have decent amount of life in the tank which will grow. Emerald crab is no longer isolated, and has plenty of food sources for now. I expect him to eat a few micro littoraria snails or some of the other guys.

I also put my first coral in, the freebie Ultra Green Polyp Mushroom Toadstool. Dipped in coral RX for 10 min with visual inspection prior to into the tank and it was on some nice rubble instead of plug so I was able to temporarily place it by wedging the rubble into some holes in one of my rocks. After 45 min, its fully extended polyps so it looks like it wasn't bothered much by the transport or the acclimation as of now.

Tried to correct for the unnatural blue color balance of the phone camera using the raw dng in photoshop below to show a little more accurately what it looks like:

I'll need to clean of the sand rubble once the water clears up from the mud being dumped in. Need a turkey baster to blast the rubble off the display rocks where coral will eventually be placed.

 

[swiss1939]

Ok it took me a week with livestock to learn emerald crabs are banished from this system permanently. This criminal has been in the tank for a week and tried to eat my snails day 1, and is now currently sitting on my toadstool leather chowing down. Will be making a trap tomorrow to catch him tomorrow night and return him to my lfs if they will take him back. If not, banished to the sump.

 

[swiss1939]

My tank is just over 1 month old and I started noticing purple coralline specks on the bare dry rock after 17 days since Purple Helix added. I also added a small piece of live rock and some coralline scrapings from my LFS about a week after that just to ensure I would have success. I've been adding phyto every day to grow the pod culture I added two weeks ago and now I've got some neon green algae just starting to cover the top surfaces of my rocks, which preceded the purple spots by about 4 days. The live rock added also had sponges and what I believe is hair algae which has just started to spread to a tiny piece on the back glass. The leather toadstool coral is thriving and seems to be growing already, while the emerald crab I decided to leave in the DT because he doesn't appear to be damaging the leather, despite planting himself on top of it every night, and or hugging it and appearing to eat it every night. The coral sometimes closes up, but most times just keeps its polyps extended and ignores him. So I assume he's not doing any damage to it. Either way, whenever it is easy, I try to spot feed the emerald some pellets if I can get them to land right next to him he goes crazy for it. I've also been spot feeding algae pellets to bristle worms whenever I notice them sticking out from under rocks in search of food. Pods are also coating the glass sporadically which I take to mean they are growing well enough among the rocks that I can now see them on the glass.

Everything moving along nicely.

live rock with red sponge? pineapple sponges underneath.

hair algae to the left of the top snail?

hair algae on the back glass or a tiny aptasia?

Nice neon green algae, but you can see tiny purple specks all over the bare rock that are the start of purple coralline algae.

 

[swiss1939]

I've stumbled across the DSR Method and am considering trying it since I am a noob to reefing and it couldn't hurt to give something like that a shot since I'm basically at the start of my tank. Reason being, water changes to me seem needlessly expensive and kinda inaccurate in terms of measuring the waste removal/element refreshing. Just seems like two things.. 1 spending tons of money on salt only to dump it down the drain every week, 2. can't really measure the amount of nutrient export and trace element import accurately with water changes. The DSR method seems to fulfill my need to save money on salt, and at the same time give some sort of precision in terms of removing nitrates/phosphates and replenishment of trace elements. I still need to order/receive test kits for phosphate and calcium so that I can start the DSR method correctly. Also need to place order for the DSR EZ chemicals.

I'll be doing the DSR EZ method since that is what is available in the US, and suits me perfectly as I have a Jebao 4 head dosing pump sitting around not being used yet. That is exactly enough heads for the DSR EZ method.

I figure I will try to switch over to the DSR method in a few weeks when I have some more time to focus on setting it up correctly and receiving the DSR chemicals. As for now, I am putting together a powerfilter as needed since I also have a spare syncra silent 0.5 pump sitting around. This can be perfectly used in the DT as a powerfilter. It is slightly less (700l/h) than the power that @glennf suggests (1000l/h) but his suggestion is for up to 200L tank. Mine is 170L so I figure its close enough and this pump is already here and was absolutely cheap and more importantly.. really small so it shouldn't be too intrusive in the DT.

Currently building the perforated tube attachment for the pump intake. I'm using schedule 40 pvc pipe and attachments from Home Depot. Found a 1/2" threaded to 3/4" straight adapter that threads into the syncra 0.5 intake and allows me to use a standard 3/4" schedule 40 pvc pipe for the filter holder. I will cut the 3/4" pipe to size and drill nice thick holes in it for perforations to allow filtering using basic cotton filter fabric found on amazon.

I'm going to run with this in the skimmer section of my sump for a few hours and then the return section of my sump for a few hours as I've got a lot of detritus in the sump as I did not wash my sand when I first added it. So my water has become extremely cloudy after my last water change when I siphoned the sand for the first time. It will be interesting to see how filtering the sump and then running it in the DT without any dosing will hopefully bring my tank back to crystal clear water. After a few weeks of that I will finally start the DSR testing and dosing.

 

[swiss1939]

I've been dealing with extremely cloudy water for about a week now. At first i thought it was ammonia or bacteria, but i had a hunch it was phytoplankton growing from over dosing and not skimming.

I was actually gonna just let it run its course since my tank is so new, but the leather toadstool started acting weird with half extended polyps that looked like they did not want to be exposed to the water, but were trying to get minimal light exposure for a day.. then it went fully closed up and shrinking for a few hours. I had tested ammo, nitrate to see if they were up but they weren't so I tested pH and this is where I noticed the bloom was taking its toll. My pH is normally 8.0 for weeks, but was rapidly down to 7.6. So this is when I decided to go with lights off and try to get the power filter in asap. I also aimed the return flow higher to create more bubbles than I would normally do just to counteract the low pH. Im guessing its a combination of both adding more airation and removing the excess phyto bloom, but my pH is now 8.2 which it hasn't been since day one over a month ago! So two problems solved. Now to wait out the uglies while my coralline is rapidly spreading on all dry rock after only 3 weeks. The little pin points appeared 4 days ago approx and are growing fast!

With white lights on the water was green which kinda confirmed it was my dosing of phyto with full lights on all day, so i figured I'd just turn the lights off for two days and run this power filter I've been putting together. Problem solved after one day with the power filter and two days no lights.

Finished my diy power filter yesterday with some generic filter media that was not meant for water polishing..ie probably not 100 micron or smaller mesh, but it worked fine. I may cut the pvc rifle tube shorter since my pump is 700l/h instead of 1000. Figure the shorter barrel will create a stronger suction of water through the barrel and filter media, getting a faster filtering and polishing of the water. Will also replace it with 50 micron filler media in the future when this pack of filter media runs out.

Used extra screen from the red sea diy cover for mesh wrapping to hold the filter media to the power filter pvc barrel.

After one day no lights on but with no power filter... Just installed it right before this photo

24 hrs later after adding power filter and another 24 hrs no lights.. Phyto bloom cleared up without uv!

 

[swiss1939]

Went on a pest removal spree over the past day as i started noticing a few things in the dt and sump.

Spotted a small aptasia sitting on my heater in the sump last night so i removed the heater and scorched it over hot water to wash the heater off and kill the aptasia. Hoping that was the only one but expecting there are probably more hidden elsewhere.

Then today i spotted this tiny stubby armed Star crawling on the tiny piece of live rock i got from lfs a few weeks ago. It had mottled red and black spots on it's back which made it hard to notice but caught it slowly crawling over the purple Coralline on that rock. Looked it up on here and people said the colored asterina eat coral so i decided to remove it as well. Pulled the rock and picked the asterina off. While i was holding the rock looking it over i noticed a long winding white tube on the bottom side. I was in pest removal mode so i figured it was vermetid snail and super glued the tube ends before putting the rock back. Now I'm thinking it might have been a feather duster, but i have never seen it's feathers when in the tank or when examining it.. so who knows. Might have removed a critter i actually wanted which would have saved me some money! But I'll live with it as long as it means no vermetid snail! The pineapple sponges underneath the live rock are also growing along with the red sponge on top!

My freebie green leather toadstool from ipsf had been closed for the past week since my phyto bloom started and was still closed after clearing it up but was shiny and waxy until i used the baster to blow it off. Now it's open and twice the size!

Also the Coralline is really taking off on the dry rock now! Finally received phosphate test kit and that is at 0.04 so i am good with all parameters holding rock steady. Added three more snails to help out while I'm gone for a week to keep up with the basic green algae that is on the glass and rocks.

Lastly, i had left the two tiny bubbles of bubble algae that started to show on the leather toadstool rock it was attached to. I wanted to see if the emerald crab would eat it and felt it was easy enough to remove the toadstool and pick it off if it appeared to start getting out of control and the crab wasn't eating it.

After three weeks the emerald crab never ate the bubble algae despite preferring to sit right next to it as he likes to squeeze himself into the crack where I've wedged the rock the toadstool is attached to.. And the two small bubbles were right in his face. But he never ate it for three weeks and i was thinking maybe the bubble algae was too small for him to care about it so i left it until it started getting bigger. I was just about to resign that the crab didn't care about bubble algae and pull the rock to remove the algae, but it was gone this morning when i woke up! The emerald crab is finally earning his keep and not chasing after snails or picking at the toadstool. I do think he likes to sit on it and eat detritus or the dead skin off it though.

 

[swiss1939]

I set up a tunze osmolator nano in one of my 5 gallon ro containers to hold me over for a 9 day vacation i just went on, and left my ac on to keep the tank temp and salinity stable. After 9 days i got back to realize i forgot to close my living room door to hold the ac air in the smaller room cause the ac isn't big enough to cool my whole apartment. I also discovered the ro reservoir still a quarter filled instead of low, and the return pump section of the sump very low with the return pump barely pulling water from the sump.

So I'm guessing the temp was swinging way more every day than i had hoped cause i left the door open.. Meaning probably 79-86f every day. I'm also guessing the ato failed either right away or after a few days possibly from air in the line/pump as i have problems getting it to work after removing it from the ro container to replace. That ato pump is very picky and a pain to get working which i found out now after making that mistake. I only bought it the day before leaving as an emergency fix for my original plan for longer ato didn't work out.

So long story short, i filled the return pump section quickly with ro to get it back to correct salinity. Did not check salinity prior to fixing, but I'm guessing possibly went from 36-38 ppt over my vacation and back down to 36 when i refilled the sump right away. Then next day i did my 5 gal water change that was missed while gone.

Ever since then my only test coral, leather toadstool seems ticked and keeps retracting polyps for most of the day, occasionally peeking polyps out but very shrunk and annoyed. So i guess i ticked this coral off. Hoping he will get over it soon cause he was doing great for the first month prior to this. Everything else in tank is doing fine.. Snails and emerald crab. Only one turbo died while gone, assume it flipped over and couldn't right itself and was eventually eaten by the crab! Glad i waited the extra month until after this vacation to purchase my first fish cause I'm sure those issues would have been too much for the new fish.

It could have been worse though, isaias came through my neighborhood while i was on vacation and knocked down a ton of trees causing much of my neighborhood to lose power for almost a week. Somehow my block did not lose power!

Here is pic of ticked off toadstool refusing to extend his polyps gracefully.

 

[swiss1939]

I've placed another order for the older non-wifi jebao 4 head doser to hopefully get an affordable 4 channel doser to start my implementation of the DSR EZ System. I have a feeling it will not be successful just like my purchase of the wifi version which was returned. But its just so dang cheap I had to give it another try, cause the alternative is 300+ bucks for 4 pump doser.

I've also got an order of the full DSR EZ products on their way which I should hopefully be starting that transition next week from weekly water changes to the DSR EZ system. I also plan on adding my first fish and start populating the tank with more coral next week. So I'm thinking this thread will be slightly more directed at documenting my implementation of the DSR EZ system since I will be learning it and there is not a lot of english centric documentation that I can find online which is clear and concise.

Currently looking for some affordable purple hammers to start filling out this tank.

 

[swiss1939]

I've done some basic searching to figure out exactly how much dosing I'll need to do for my sized tank as a mixed reef in order to figure out the yearly costs of running dsr ez instead of weekly water changes with 2 part dosing.

From what I could find, I think a low estimate is daily consumption of approx 0.7 dKH and 5-20 ppm Calcium. Not sure how accurate that is given every tank is unique, but its a ballpark to make some estimates with.

Given those consumption numbers, I've figured out that I would need to use 6351ml of EZ-Buffer, 1570ml of EZ-Calcium, 767ml of EZ-Trace and 548-1500ml of EZ-Carbon. This works out to approx $165-189/yr in DSR EZ chemicals if bought in closest bulk size without buying excessively large qty. If I stuck to my weekly 5 gal water changes using Red Sea blue bucket 175 gal salt and started 2 part dosing to maintain approx the same consumption, that works out to approx $140 in salt and $86 in 2 part per year... or $225 for water changes and 2 part dosing.

So in fact, it's cheaper to switch to DSR EZ! And once you factor in the reduced labor of making/mixing water weekly and two part quarterly, in exchange for ordering and replacing ez bottles as needed, weekly testing and adjustment of dosing (which I would be doing anyways with 2 part), it is even more cost effective time and product wise to implement the DSR EZ method.

Time will tell if these numbers hold up or if my system ends up consuming way more chemicals.. cause once you start getting into the 2-3 dKH/day consumption, the cost of DSR EZ skyrockets to approx 800/yr and no longer remains affordable.

 

[BeltedCoyote]

Somehow I’ve just found your build. Following along. I’ve got some catching up to do!

 

[swiss1939]

I believe I'm seeing the start of dinos possibly? A couple long strings of slime waving around in the current. One on each side of the tank. My nitrates were consistently 10ppm until this last water change and are now 5ppm. My phosphates have consistently been 0.02ppm. I'm thinking i might need to feed the clean up crew a little more to keep the phosphates higher until i get fish into the tank next week.

 

[swiss1939]

I received the DSR-EZ chemicals today as well as all test kits needed to start this method. I am curious if these are good targets for a mixed reef that might end up slightly heavier on the sps. For corals I plan on getting a few types of leptoseris as I really like them, a hammer garden with multiple colors, psammocora, cyphastrea, acropora, a ricordea or two, stylo, monti, chalice.

I got these targets from the Red Sea MyRecipe Wizard:

Alk: 8dKH
Calcium: 430ppm
Magnesium: 1280ppm
Nitrate: 0.5ppm
Phosphate: 0.02ppm

My actual parameters are:

pH: 8
Alk: 7.4dKH
Calcium: 399ppm
Magnesium: 1280ppm
Nitrate: 10ppm
Phosphate: 0.02ppm

Current stocking only includes a frag of a leather toadstool, 1 emerald crab and a bunch of snails/hermits.

For livestock I plan on getting 2 clowns this week and eventually a tailspot blenny, six line wrasse, mandarin goby and a blood shrimp.

 

[swiss1939]

Finally updating with some photos of livestock and coral! I am still yet to start the DSR EZ dosing schedule as I am trying to get my jebao dosers to be as accurate as possible, so I am testing out different material/thickness tubing and trying to get a hard line tubing through the bottle caps connected to the soft tubing in some way.. to get a stable dosing system using the bottles themselves as the dosing containers. That will happen soon as I finally got my phosphates up to 0.1ppm after being around 0.01-0.02ppm for the last two months... which led to the beginnings of dinos that I am trying to solve through over feeding, dosing microbacter clean and not starting the DSR EZ carbon regiment yet as I don't want to zero out my nutrients anymore and feed the dinos.

But back to the livestock/coral additions!

Won a few cheap auctions on last weekend's POTO auction. I like that place because it is 10 minutes from my apt. and I can grab purchases and be back home real fast. I've been throwing some bids on cheaper items that I like the past few weeks, trying to keep my prices down so that I will slowly stock by not spending too much. Although this week I am trying to get non-green colored corals so I am bidding a bit higher for those few that I like a lot that are in slightly more demand. I've got too much green in my tank right now!

Here are my auction purchases from last weekend picked up yesterday:

Rainbow Yuma

Ultra Neon Hammer (was surprised this was bigger than expected):

Rainbow Stylo:

While I was there, I finally picked up my first two fish that I've been planning on, but held off until after I got back from a week out of town.

Juvenile SR MochaVinci Clowns:

female

male:

The clowns seem happy right away and are making a dent in my copepod population along the glass. They aren't eating frozen brine that I've added yet, but are eating tiny pellets. POTO feeds them mysis and i believe live brine.. So i've got some live brine eggs coming to start hatching those to feed.

Continuing on with the tank.. I had started to see deep purple corraline specks about 1 month in. Those purple are slow growing and only a little bit larger on the rocks, but in the past week I am really starting to see some neon pink corraline start up and that stuff seems to be growing faster than the deep purple corraline. Hoping I can keep a healthy mix of both purple and pink. I believe the pink started taking off when I committed to 23k lighting all day instead of fading between 23k in morning and night with 15k during day. I did this trying to combat the dinos. As a result, got a lot more neon pink corraline starting to take off! Dinos still around but not a ton of it.

You can see the neon pink glowing under 23k light here:

and under more natural daylight you can see a nice mix of dark purple and bright pink corraline:

I'm also starting to see some small tufts of GHA in a few spots, but have been unable to find a Tail Spot Blenny to purchase for over a month. I finally found one on TSM Aquatics for pre-order, ready after their quarrantine is done on 9/22. So i purchased it as I don't know when they will be available anywhere else until then. I live about 1 hr 45 min away from TSM, so I will go drive there to pick it up when ready. Should be fun to see their facilities if they are allowing people in.

Finally, I've got a few more bids in this week so hopefully will have some more additions next week to break up all the green. Here is the original coral that was a freebie from IPSF. Its growing fast already!

 

[swiss1939]

#FTF. It will eventually look good!

 

[swiss1939]

Two small updates today.

1.) I've come to the conclusion that the neon pink corraline algae that I started noticing under blue lighting last week is not separate from the deep purple corraline I have growing. They are one and the same. I believe that this deep purple corraline I have glows neon pink under blues where it is fresh growth, before it has fully calcified. I have one or two main spots on rock that are finally growing to larger than tiny speck size and I've noticed those spots have neon pink glow around the outer edges under blue lights. So what I am seeing is not two separate species of corraline, but one species of purple that is starting to take off across all areas of dry rock in tiny specks that glow neon pink because its all fresh growth.

2.) Instead of waiting to figure out the best method for accuracy on my jebao dosers, I've started manually dosing the DSR-EZ system for the past two days. Currently only dosing EZ-Buffer and EZ-Carbon. With EZ-Buffer I am targeting 8.4 dKH for now, and bringing my current water up from 7.3 where it dropped since last water change. EZ-Carbon I am going to target maintaining my phosphates at or near 0.1ppm and nitrates at at or near 10ppm for now, because I don't want to get too low after keeping it low without fish for two months and having started to see some dinos grow. I've since added two clowns and started to over feed them just to keep my phosphates up around 0.1ppm to combat the dinos. Those targets will give me some leeway to keep everything from bottoming out until I figure out dosing and feeding system and am able to keep everything stable. If needed, then I will work it down to around 0.05ppm phosphates and 5ppm nitrates.

Regarding the jebao doser, I ordered some santoprene tubing to replace my silicone tubing of the same diameter which will be here today. I'll run some new tests to see if the santoprene tubing is more accurate as it should ideally hold vacuum better since it is meant for perisaltic pumps. I may need to go from 3/16 ID santoprene to 1/8 ID santoprene tubing to get a tighter seal at connectors, but that thickness is on back order so I will wait to test current diameter first. Also still trying to find connectors that will work to join the santoprene/silicone flexible tubing to the acrylic tubing I have so that I can mount hard acrylic tubing into the bottles as the input to doser from bottom of dosing bottles. Gonna see if I can find a mur-lock connector that will work to join the santoprene to acrylic tubes.

 

[swiss1939]

Quick DSR-EZ process update.

I have been manually dosing for 10 days now, both EZ-Buffer and EZ-Carbon. My targets are 8.4dKH for alk, 0.05ppm for phosphate and 5ppm for nitrate. Two rounds of dosing adjustments on EZ-Buffer, first for 6 days dosing 4.1ml buffer came up short from 7.3-7.9 (8.4 target). Second round adjustment for total dosing of 8.7ml buffer for 3 days came up short from 7.9-8.2. Third round, I made a 1 day dosing change up to 13.7ml total and overshot it from 8.2 to 8.6dKH (8.4 target). So now I will bring it back down to 8.7ml and start looking to hold consistency at 8.4dKH.

EZ-Carbon, I have been working up the dosing table daily as instructed on the bottle (first day D1 dose I did for two days until I realized I was supposed to go up each dosing amount every day). Started out with 0.12ppm phosphates and 10ppm nitrate, looking for my targets of 0.05/5. Both nutrients saw no change over the past 10 days, until today. Using the Red Sea visual phosphate test, I finally saw my phosphates drop from 0.12 to close to the next lowest range of 0.08. Visually it could be 0.08 or 0.10 (halfway between the two). Nitrate still holding at 10ppm with no change at all. I'm going to hold my carbon dosing at the last amount used for approx. the next week and see if phosphates keep going down slowly or if nitrates finally start to trend downward, then make fine tuned adjustments based on what happens over next week.

I'm also going to finally start auto dosing using the jebao for these two chemicals, which I assume will affect my results slightly as the jebao is "close enough" at these small amounts, but not exact. So I will spread them out to 4 doses per day each chemical at around 2ml each dose, so that the deviation of accuracy on the jebao is minimized as much as possible. Seems it is more inaccurate with the increase in individual dosage amount.

Livestock update:

Moved the 4 coral into their intended "final" locations and had much disasters in removing the new ones from plugs and gluing down. Broke the skeleton on my green hammer almost up to the head half of the skeleton fractured off as it was way more hollow than expected down at the base where I tried to cut off the glue from the plug. Glued in place for 4 days and it seems to be unaffected by that. Rainbow yuma got glued onto the rock in a section of itself accidentally as my superglue bottle splurted all over when I was just trying to get a small dab out onto the bottom of the tiny rock the yuma is attached to, so that I could attach that rock to a larger one in my display. Didn't think it was going to make it cause it looked covered in glue. 4 days later it extracted itself from the glue handcuffs and will do fine, once it heals the section that was glued down. Stylo is doing fine in its final spot, and the original coral added, leather toadstool was moved to the side and slightly higher and it is happy as can be, getting much bigger.

6 more coral purchased and waiting for pickup on Wednesday. Another hammer (gold hammer), and a bunch of encrusting sps which I love. psammacora, a few different monti, digitata, etc. This will finally get my tank away from neon green dominant to a good mix of colors.