It has been a couple of months since I last posted. There was really nothing much or good to report.
I think things are finally turning around.
A little history for new readers.
I have used NSW since I set up the tank early last year.
The tank is mainly lit with a 4x8 skylight the foot print of the tank. The shaft is lined with spectral aluminum as in a MH reflector.
In addition I have two 400 watt 10000K bulbs on light rails that run a couple of hours morning and evening. This is for me mostly.
The garage sumps/tanks are lit with two 250 watt 10,000k bulbs, all ballasts and reflectors are icecap.
The ATS is lit with a 400 watt halide.
Skimmer is a C4848 from MyReefCreations.com
Total pumps are a few small power head in the sumps, tunze 6060? In the two 250 gallon garage tanks and 5 Sequence Hammerhead pumps for OM’s, tank return, skimmer, surge tanks.
Water motion is provided with two Oceans Motions four ways under the tank driven by two Hammerhead pumps. Additional motion is provided by two 75 gallon surge tanks in the closet above the tank.
Sumps/garage tanks comprise four 160 gallon containers and two 250 gallon tanks over that.
Water from the overflows goes into the glass tanks and some goes thru AC and GFO and over the turf scrubber.
Ca and Alk is provided by cacl and soda carbonate or bicarbonate, mgcl supplies magnesium as needed. The above are dripped into the tank over the day from a 5 gallon container of RO/DI water next to the sump. Additional top off water is just dumped into the sump to keep the salinity right. I am using about 20 gallons per day of top off water.
Tank temps have been very stable this summer. No chiller. I do have a big fan over the sump that only needed to run a handful of the hottest days. Our temps rarely hit even the high 80’s here so close to the marine influence. The ocean is about 3 miles away.
Tank temps have been running 81-83. the highest this summer was 84. for those of you that keep your tanks at 77 degrees are probably freaking out about that. See the article on RonShimek.com about reef temps. Right now temps in the tropics
I had good growth of many corals but not most sps, Monti caps and LPS always grew well until the mass death. SPS corals would always just fade away usually bleaching from the bottom up.
In April I changed some of the sand bed away from quartz based sand to aragonite. many corals died in the weeks/months after. During this time I was only using DI water, no RO stage. This water was not pure and was putting ???? in the tank. The NSW has PO4 levels up to 0.15 and who knows what else.
I added an RO component to the filter weeks ago and ro/di water now is 0tds going into the tank, hurray!
Where to start. I think it MAY have been the NSW that was hurting my tank. The last water change as with previous water changes I did with the NSW, within a day there was more tissue recession on some LPS corals. I lost the couple of test corals, a birdsnest and an acro.
Other possibilities include a contaminant in some of the chems added, esp MgCl which is known to be “dirty”. Plasticides leaching from the storage container, something got dropped into the tank, like a screwdriver or screws or other metal object when working near the tanks in the garage or setting up the doors over the tank.
I have had several esteemed guests to the house and picked their brains for possible causes of the problems I have been having. They included Eric Borneman, Steve Garret, Sanjay Yoshi, Joe Yaiullo, and Melev.
So about a month ago I started doing water changes with SeaChem ASW. So far I have changed out about 60% of the 1700 gallons. The RO/DI is running almost nonstop now. The waste water is going into the 1200 gallon storage container in the yard to be used for all yard watering.
The two remaining SPS corals might be starting to grow. There are still two Acroporas in the tank and one at least has growth tips and good polyp extension. The purple Monti cap from GarretsAcropolis is growing again. The green and orange ones died.
There are still peppermint shrimps in the system and also lots of aiptasia too. not in the DT though. I guess the copperband really is eating them.
The new elbows in the tank have helped the flow I think. an interesting thing not seen as I don’t have a recent picture but the new elbows are covered with coralline algae but only on the bottom parts. The tops are still just white.
I have heard that coralline prefers lower light and that seems to be true.
Cyano bacteria was prevalent for a few weeks in the DT but is almost gone now.
Interestingly there was never any in the garage tanks which have less flow than the DT.
