Anything new going on lately?
Hey Wayne, Here's the latest...
The bio pellets are gone and I replaced them with 20ml of vinegar a day. I'm also doing 70ml a day of a nitrate solution I concocted. I'm still doing the zeovit basic as well. All the brown film on the sand is gone now.
Over the weekend I took the skimmer out and dipped it in a vinegar water solution overnight to clean it up a bit. Most of it cleaned up.
I also changed out 80% of the zeovit media since it was at the 6 week mark. The spent stones went into the fuge for pod habitat.
I completed a 4 day lye treatment to 1.75 lbs of BRS HC GFO. This turned out to be easier than I thought. The strength that everyone is recommending (about 3 tablespoons 100% Lye mixed with a liter of water) is plenty diluted to make it easy to handle. There was no major odor to deal with and if I had spilled any on myself, I could have washed it quickly. Compared to using maintaining a swimming pool or using lye at full strength to clean a drain pipe, this was a walk in the park.
From the picture below you can also see a small circulation pump sitting in the sump to the far right. I had removed it last month and my sump managed to get quite a bit of detritus built up in it. I cleaned up most of the detritus manually and put the pump back in to keep the sump clean going forward.
Below you can see that I moved the RODI unit off the wall. It is now relocated outside to an outdoor cabinet mounted to the wall. I rerouted all the 1/4" tubing back inside. I'm having a 20 gal tank drilled at borter glass in Tampa ($!6). When I get it back, I'll make another shelf in that space at the same height as the 10 gal and this will be the new home for a 20 gal QT. I also put a PBT on hold with Lee over at corals and fins and the PBT will spend several weeks (probably 4) in the 20 gal getting a cautionary cupramine treatment. I'll follow that up with a 4 day treatment of General Cure and then he'll be going into the tank.
That's the tank report!
(The wife actually snapped this one herself!)
