Weeble's Euro-180
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OP
OP
Defective_Weeble
Salty
Day 58: WE HAVE NITRATES!
The wrasse and 5 chromis came out of quarantine on Saturday, and I started feeding like a madman because I could tell that the pellets had kicked in (that skimmer funk is unmistakable). I've been testing nitrates every week for the past month, with straight 0's ever time, while my phosphate readings hovered between 0.09 and 0.17. Fortunately, after adding the 6 fish from quarantine, I'm now showing 0.25 nitrates and the phosphates are being reduced quickly. I've gone from 0.14 to 0.09 in 2 days while feeding heavier and not having to run GFO or something like Phosguard.
That mechanism of action has always fascinated me since I started reading about biopellets. The fact that they actually need some nitrates to reduce phosphates is interesting, and lends to the overall reason why we use them anyway - stock heavy, feed heavy, don't have the heavy stock/feeding problems.
Suffice it to say, I'm a VERY happy camper today. The sand bed is looking great again, the algae is gone off the back wall and overflows, there's only 1 small patch of cyano (about the size of a cup's mouth) and I'm almost certain that it's due to lack of flow because it's in the crook of a rock formation.
Oh! Also have a new skimmer incoming. I snagged a Reef Octopus Diablo DCS 250 from guy here on R2R. It's shipping out to me tomorrow, so I'm pretty excited to see how it does.
Current count:
14 Fish (but that's 7 chromis)
10 Coral
3 Inverts (not counting a LOT of snails)
The wrasse and 5 chromis came out of quarantine on Saturday, and I started feeding like a madman because I could tell that the pellets had kicked in (that skimmer funk is unmistakable). I've been testing nitrates every week for the past month, with straight 0's ever time, while my phosphate readings hovered between 0.09 and 0.17. Fortunately, after adding the 6 fish from quarantine, I'm now showing 0.25 nitrates and the phosphates are being reduced quickly. I've gone from 0.14 to 0.09 in 2 days while feeding heavier and not having to run GFO or something like Phosguard.
That mechanism of action has always fascinated me since I started reading about biopellets. The fact that they actually need some nitrates to reduce phosphates is interesting, and lends to the overall reason why we use them anyway - stock heavy, feed heavy, don't have the heavy stock/feeding problems.
Suffice it to say, I'm a VERY happy camper today. The sand bed is looking great again, the algae is gone off the back wall and overflows, there's only 1 small patch of cyano (about the size of a cup's mouth) and I'm almost certain that it's due to lack of flow because it's in the crook of a rock formation.
Oh! Also have a new skimmer incoming. I snagged a Reef Octopus Diablo DCS 250 from guy here on R2R. It's shipping out to me tomorrow, so I'm pretty excited to see how it does.
Current count:
14 Fish (but that's 7 chromis)
10 Coral
3 Inverts (not counting a LOT of snails)
Last edited:
Fishmania21
Community Member
that Diablo is a beast...I actually use at least 4 types of skimmer but my fav is that Diablo
OP
OP
Defective_Weeble
Salty
Video? Video.
[video=youtube;UO-Dw6pAaOg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO-Dw6pAaOg[/video]
[video=youtube;UO-Dw6pAaOg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO-Dw6pAaOg[/video]
OP
OP
Defective_Weeble
Salty
Yep. I had two RW15's, both set about half speed on Else mode. But then one of the controllers took a swim. Oops!
So now I'm running the RW15 on Wave 1 at half power, the WP40 runs on Else mode.
Gotta keep the SPS happy!
OP
OP
Defective_Weeble
Salty
Hahahah...that's amazing.
I tend to be a bit anal retentive about parameters. Not so much chasing numbers, but I have a range that I want to be in. I want nitrates low, but not undetectable because I want the nitrates in the system to be able to give the pellets the ability to control the phosphates.
Phosphates are only a concern because I don't want to brown out the corals. After bleaching the crap out of my stuff I'm slowly but surely getting back the colors, but I want them back now! :angel:
I tend to be a bit anal retentive about parameters. Not so much chasing numbers, but I have a range that I want to be in. I want nitrates low, but not undetectable because I want the nitrates in the system to be able to give the pellets the ability to control the phosphates.
Phosphates are only a concern because I don't want to brown out the corals. After bleaching the crap out of my stuff I'm slowly but surely getting back the colors, but I want them back now! :angel:
OP
OP
Defective_Weeble
Salty
That's what I'm thinking too. I invoked The Beard of Knowledge yesterday and he had a couple ideas as well. I'm going to start running socks again, and be less concerned about switching them out every 3-4 days. The whole point of the pellets is to counteract nitrates and phosphates, so if I provide them with a better source of nitrates (aka dirty socks) then there's a good chance that things will actually go better.
OP
OP
Defective_Weeble
Salty
Day 69:
It's been a pretty good couple of weeks with the tank, with a few things going on to keep stuff interesting.
I woke up to my wife in panic mode the other day. She heard the ATO pump go dry, so she dumped a couple gallons into the reservoir. Unfortunately the cheap float-switch ATO that I was using had failed in the on position, so she dumped more in because it immediately ran empty. After doing this three times, for a total of around 6 gallons, she woke me up knowing that something was wrong.
No big deal, as 6 gallons in 200 gallons of total volume won't make much of a difference. But it wasn't the way that I wanted to wake up at 4am. I ordered a Hydor Smart Level ATO, which came in today. So far it seems to be pretty nice. I like not having to rely on a float switch, though I am going to wire one up to the Apex to disable the ATO if the float switch gets kicked on.
Nitrates are still on the rise a bit. Tests today showed 0.75, phosphates still hovering around 0.17. I'm only at 120 mL of pellets, so I'm adding another 120 mL tomorrow. Still feeding LRS once daily and pellets once daily. Fish are fat and happy, corals look pretty good.
Finally got the skimmer dialed in. Coralvue says that it should sit at 7.5-8 inches of water, but I couldn't get it to stop skimming super wet when it was that deep. So I dropped the water down a little bit, to around 6.5 inches, then dropped the power on the pump down to the 4th notch. Now it's pulling the type of skimmate that I want. Unfortunately, a replacement o-ring that they sent me was the wrong size, so I'm still fighting the battle to get the right one. But it's working well enough for now.
Still seeing a bit of cyano in one of the areas of lower flow. But I'm also seeing a fair bit in the sump. So I'm going to dose another bottle of Special Blend to see if I can combat the bad bacteria with some good. I'm also looking at an MP10 or Jebao RW-4 to put on the back glass to counter the low flow.
I also need to replace the return pump. I'm running a Mag 12 and it just doesn't have the oomph that I want. By the time that it runs the carbon reactor and feeds the return, it doesn't really churn the pellets the way that I want. I don't really want to go with a DC pump, but I might give a Jebao DC 12000 a try.
The final decision right now is what to do about my bully of a Foxface. He's picking on my blue-jaw trigger and stressing out the trigger pretty bad. The trigger is super docile, and he's by far a more preferred fish than the fox, but I don't really want to get rid of the fox either. I'm going to add another structure of pukani rock (assuming I can freaking find some!) and see if that gives them a bit less aggression. With only having the one structure, it's a lot of fish that flock to a small area. The second two-boulders formation doesn't seem to interest the fish at all. Fingers crossed.
Anyway, long and drawn out, but things are pretty good.
It's been a pretty good couple of weeks with the tank, with a few things going on to keep stuff interesting.
I woke up to my wife in panic mode the other day. She heard the ATO pump go dry, so she dumped a couple gallons into the reservoir. Unfortunately the cheap float-switch ATO that I was using had failed in the on position, so she dumped more in because it immediately ran empty. After doing this three times, for a total of around 6 gallons, she woke me up knowing that something was wrong.
No big deal, as 6 gallons in 200 gallons of total volume won't make much of a difference. But it wasn't the way that I wanted to wake up at 4am. I ordered a Hydor Smart Level ATO, which came in today. So far it seems to be pretty nice. I like not having to rely on a float switch, though I am going to wire one up to the Apex to disable the ATO if the float switch gets kicked on.
Nitrates are still on the rise a bit. Tests today showed 0.75, phosphates still hovering around 0.17. I'm only at 120 mL of pellets, so I'm adding another 120 mL tomorrow. Still feeding LRS once daily and pellets once daily. Fish are fat and happy, corals look pretty good.
Finally got the skimmer dialed in. Coralvue says that it should sit at 7.5-8 inches of water, but I couldn't get it to stop skimming super wet when it was that deep. So I dropped the water down a little bit, to around 6.5 inches, then dropped the power on the pump down to the 4th notch. Now it's pulling the type of skimmate that I want. Unfortunately, a replacement o-ring that they sent me was the wrong size, so I'm still fighting the battle to get the right one. But it's working well enough for now.
Still seeing a bit of cyano in one of the areas of lower flow. But I'm also seeing a fair bit in the sump. So I'm going to dose another bottle of Special Blend to see if I can combat the bad bacteria with some good. I'm also looking at an MP10 or Jebao RW-4 to put on the back glass to counter the low flow.
I also need to replace the return pump. I'm running a Mag 12 and it just doesn't have the oomph that I want. By the time that it runs the carbon reactor and feeds the return, it doesn't really churn the pellets the way that I want. I don't really want to go with a DC pump, but I might give a Jebao DC 12000 a try.
The final decision right now is what to do about my bully of a Foxface. He's picking on my blue-jaw trigger and stressing out the trigger pretty bad. The trigger is super docile, and he's by far a more preferred fish than the fox, but I don't really want to get rid of the fox either. I'm going to add another structure of pukani rock (assuming I can freaking find some!) and see if that gives them a bit less aggression. With only having the one structure, it's a lot of fish that flock to a small area. The second two-boulders formation doesn't seem to interest the fish at all. Fingers crossed.
Anyway, long and drawn out, but things are pretty good.
OP
OP
Defective_Weeble
Salty
80 days. Time for an update video. Hi February.
[video=youtube;NNynU1s74yk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNynU1s74yk[/video]
[video=youtube;NNynU1s74yk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNynU1s74yk[/video]
Rob.D
Moderator
Looking good man, I just pulled a foxface from my tank. He was fine while there was an abundance of bubble algae but once the algae was depleted, his demeanor changed for the worst. Aggression and coral nipping made him a poor tank mate.
OP
OP
Defective_Weeble
Salty
Day 125:
Well, seems that going 6 weeks without a water change will do bad things. Like drop your alkalinity way down, brown out all your SPS, STN a couple colonies and generally make things look like butt crack. I've just been caught up with other stuff and having an "I hate my tank" moment, and it caught up with me.
I'm back doing water changes now. I did 20 gallons last week, and I'm doing another 20 this week. I'm ordering the BRS 2-part kit so I'm going to start dosing. I'll do it manually for now until I can push back a little extra cash for a dosing pump.
The tank is pretty OK otherwise. I do have some cyano starting again so I'm going to dose some Special Blend for a while to see if I can knock it out. I finally landed on my magic number for pellets, so the water is running REALLY clean right now. A little too clean for my liking, to be honest, but it will be OK.
Oh, my anemone split. Normally that would be awesome. Unfortunately one half died and the other half looks like complete crap. I'm pretty sure it's not going to make it. No idea what happened there. Fortunately he was cheap, and he always was a bit retarded. This is the same anemone that hung out upside down under a piece of shelf rock for 2 months.
I added about 40 more pounds of Pukani and moved some rock around. The fox is much less territorial now, though none of the fish have really taken to that right side structure just yet. I'm just looking forward to it getting some color so that I can get rid of the stark white that it is at the moment. I also want more fish. A lot more fish.
[video=youtube;X1aEuM57fp8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1aEuM57fp8&spfreload=10[/video]
Well, seems that going 6 weeks without a water change will do bad things. Like drop your alkalinity way down, brown out all your SPS, STN a couple colonies and generally make things look like butt crack. I've just been caught up with other stuff and having an "I hate my tank" moment, and it caught up with me.
I'm back doing water changes now. I did 20 gallons last week, and I'm doing another 20 this week. I'm ordering the BRS 2-part kit so I'm going to start dosing. I'll do it manually for now until I can push back a little extra cash for a dosing pump.
The tank is pretty OK otherwise. I do have some cyano starting again so I'm going to dose some Special Blend for a while to see if I can knock it out. I finally landed on my magic number for pellets, so the water is running REALLY clean right now. A little too clean for my liking, to be honest, but it will be OK.
Oh, my anemone split. Normally that would be awesome. Unfortunately one half died and the other half looks like complete crap. I'm pretty sure it's not going to make it. No idea what happened there. Fortunately he was cheap, and he always was a bit retarded. This is the same anemone that hung out upside down under a piece of shelf rock for 2 months.
I added about 40 more pounds of Pukani and moved some rock around. The fox is much less territorial now, though none of the fish have really taken to that right side structure just yet. I'm just looking forward to it getting some color so that I can get rid of the stark white that it is at the moment. I also want more fish. A lot more fish.
[video=youtube;X1aEuM57fp8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1aEuM57fp8&spfreload=10[/video]
Last edited:
OP
OP
Defective_Weeble
Salty
Day 149
No updates for a bit as I've been tackling some problems with the tank. I was working on getting the alkalinity and calcium levels back up to normal ranges so I could start dosing two part, but unfortunately I overdosed and caused bigger issues. Lesson learned!
At any rate, I had spiked my alkalinity up to 16 and caused a colony to RTN. The rest of the corals were able to be saved since they were fortunately still small and on frag plugs. They're now in the office tank while I wait for the alk to drop back down under 9 so that it's in a safe range for the pellets.
I've had a massive algae outbreak, which I can really only attribute to the alkalinity spike, since nothing else changed. I'm battling cyano, GHA, BHA and some rust-red stuff that looks like diatoms. I've been dosing MicrobeLift Special Blend to combat the cyano and it's working, but it's a slow process.
I did a check of the alkalinity today and it's down to 9.4. I'm dropping around 0.15 per day, so I have about 3 days left before I can safely put the SPS back into the tank. There's no way that the Special Blend is going to rid all of the cyano before then, so I dosed Chemi-Clean today, as much as I hated to do so. I'll let it run its course for 48 hours, do a 20% water change and then dose a full bottle of Special Blend after the water change to keep the good bacteria battling the bad.
Ah, this hobby. Sometimes it's such a kick in the tail. On the up shot, the tank is healthy. Fish are doing fantastic. I'll be adding a small school of anthias in a couple of weeks, so I'm pretty excited about that, and also excited about their added bio load.
No updates for a bit as I've been tackling some problems with the tank. I was working on getting the alkalinity and calcium levels back up to normal ranges so I could start dosing two part, but unfortunately I overdosed and caused bigger issues. Lesson learned!
At any rate, I had spiked my alkalinity up to 16 and caused a colony to RTN. The rest of the corals were able to be saved since they were fortunately still small and on frag plugs. They're now in the office tank while I wait for the alk to drop back down under 9 so that it's in a safe range for the pellets.
I've had a massive algae outbreak, which I can really only attribute to the alkalinity spike, since nothing else changed. I'm battling cyano, GHA, BHA and some rust-red stuff that looks like diatoms. I've been dosing MicrobeLift Special Blend to combat the cyano and it's working, but it's a slow process.
I did a check of the alkalinity today and it's down to 9.4. I'm dropping around 0.15 per day, so I have about 3 days left before I can safely put the SPS back into the tank. There's no way that the Special Blend is going to rid all of the cyano before then, so I dosed Chemi-Clean today, as much as I hated to do so. I'll let it run its course for 48 hours, do a 20% water change and then dose a full bottle of Special Blend after the water change to keep the good bacteria battling the bad.
Ah, this hobby. Sometimes it's such a kick in the tail. On the up shot, the tank is healthy. Fish are doing fantastic. I'll be adding a small school of anthias in a couple of weeks, so I'm pretty excited about that, and also excited about their added bio load.
bknapp
Has been left unattended
It's about time you updated says the pot to the kettle. I really don't think you can attribute your algae to the alkalinity swing. Seems to me that between the pellets and Special Blend you're creating a bacterial imbalance.
OP
OP
Defective_Weeble
Salty
Interesting thought. When I had cyano issues in the 40, The Beard of Knowledge suggested Special Blend to combat the bacteria that the pellets would give off. The skimmer is plenty big for the job, and the Special Blend is working, but it's just not moving quite fast enough. Normally I'd let it just run its course, but I'm getting ready to leave town and need to get things set back in line for when I won't be here.
OP
OP
Defective_Weeble
Salty
What is this box that you speak of? And instructions? Psh!
Interesting. Didn't know that. If I remember correctly, my standard dose is half of a big bottle anyway, so I'll just have two doses. Whee!
Interesting. Didn't know that. If I remember correctly, my standard dose is half of a big bottle anyway, so I'll just have two doses. Whee!
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