A Living Room Reef: 90 Gallon Mixed Reef Build

[troubadour11]

Well I received, hooked up, and got running the 2 new WP-25s!!! While I haven't had more then a couple hours to observe the tank, I think it will definitely help. :spin1:

These things are pretty sweet right out of the box. In a matter of minutes I had the first one up and running with a nice rhythmic wave pattern rocking side-to-side. :beachbum:

I'm hoping it doesn't upset the hammer coral since I won't be there to observe today. It was extended about the amount it usually is during the night time hours yesterday after hooking up the wp-25s. But I won't know if it's to much current until DisBeReef or I can watch it during the day some.

Right now I have one set up running on W1 set at the middle speed/power. Then the other is in the back corner pointed diagonal towards the front/center glass just past the overflow. The second one is set up on W1 running at the lowest power setting of the 3 choices and running on the shortest pulses I could set up without sloshing water onto the front or back rim.

So far though, after about an hour last night, I'm liking them :thumbsup:

:thumbdown: On a rather continued upsetting note. I'm just guessing... but I don't know if our Aussie Gold Torch is going to make it or not. There is "still stuff happening" with it. So it hasn't just vanished. But it was completely retracted into the skeleton for the 2nd or 3rd day now without coming out. And it's really not looking happy. I have no clue what made it so angry. The ONLY thing I can place now is if the lighting zapped it. But I've had a towel above it for a week or two, along with the light power being lowered substantially during that time. So as for that, I just plain don't know why things aren't doing as well.

Everything was doing fine until my 1 screw up with SG when it dropped and had to be brought back up. But again, that was months ago at this point and I'm still having huge troubles keeping corals healthy and alive despite having massively improved our water conditions. I won't lie, it's a bit demoralizing... :headwally:

I just try to keep an eye on a few things to cheer me up. The blastos seem happy. That frag that was cut funky is showing new tissue growing in and connecting the damaged areas from the fragging. Currently, those 3 polyps are my pride and joy since they're the only thing that has seemed to stay happy and show any growth. For now, the hammer is doing well. The new birdsnest is still looking the same. Which means it's alive, has got color to the skin/polyps, with good PE during the day. I keep holding my breath it may show growth sometime soon . . . I just wish all the corals that I owned and kept alive, appearing to the healthy for the last year almost would stop dieing for whatever reason I can't pin down. :strooper:

 

[Bello]

Troub, happy to hear about the jebaos.

I'm concerned about the corals dying. This really shouldn't happen with just lighting. Somethings up. Check and recalibrate your salinity, could be a cause. Other than that, check all your equipment and ensure that no metals or rust is in the tank.

Just trying to help

 

[troubadour11]

Troub, happy to hear about the jebaos.

I'm concerned about the corals dying. This really shouldn't happen with just lighting. Somethings up. Check and recalibrate your salinity, could be a cause. Other than that, check all your equipment and ensure that no metals or rust is in the tank.

Just trying to help

I will definitely check the calibration on my refractometer again. I actually double checked the calibration somewhat recently on DisBeReef's recommendation. It was more or less, dead on accurate when I checked it last. Which, I guess is about a month or two ago now. We checked it when we first started noticing trouble with things that had been doing well. But I'll check it again :thumbsup: for the good :idea:

One thing I suppose I could do some :reading: on, is to check for stray voltage maybe? Is it possible something weird like that could be upsetting things? I would think anything like stray voltage, metals, tds/rodi issues, and salinity calibration would kill off my one healthy Seri before the LPS faded. But that is based off my very limited experience. I just find it difficult to diagnose since it's seemingly, somewhat random. 50% of the corals are doing fine, meanwhile other pieces are slowly disappearing :sad2:

Heaters have been over-ridden and turned off lately by the Reef Angel because the temp has been warm enough. I've kept a close eye on it and it's never topped mid 81's. It typically has been hovering between low 79 and 81. I suppose that is the only other "non-talked about" issue so far. But I was thinking, thought it's tad high, 81 and below shouldn't be killing things, right?

And I really appreciate the ideas of things to check on Bello. :thumbsup: I'll let you know if I find anything off along those lines.

OH... and the size of the Jebao wp-25's are absolutely AWESOME. Those are going to be a massive update to the flow in our tank and they take up about 1/3 of the space of our old JBJ powerheads. Very happy so far in the purchase after 24 hours. Especially the size for the amount of flow they can produce! :beer:

 

[Bello]

It can't be the temperature. One of my experimental tanks keeping sps and softies runs at 83 on average.

Stray voltage is a possibility, but I've never experienced anything like that.

What are you calibrating the refracto with?

I would guess that corals are stressed, and since each coral will exhibit different tolerances to stress, they might degrade at different times. That could explain the seri etc. Seris can be pretty hardy and is relatively newer right? Your softies don't seem to be affected are they?

I was recently troubleshooting with a friend for the last 2 months, considering tons of possibilities. I asked him about the salinity etc. He said everything was spot on. Well turns out salinity was at 28ppt, uncalibrated refracto.

 

[troubadour11]

Ok, awesome to know on the temp. That was what I was thinking. I couldn't see how barely pushing 81 in the summer over here would be the issue. And if it fluctuates, it does so very slowly over at least a 24 hour period.

Good to know that I can quit looking at that as a probable cause. :thumbsup:

To calibrate the refracto, I use the calibration fluid that came with it. I make sure to keep the lid completely tight and secured and it's under the cabinet (in temp controlled house) kept out of the light to avoid any possible evaporation and changing of the SG in the calibration fluid.

I calibrated it originally when we got it. And then have re-checked it probably 2 or 3 times over the last year and it was on target every time. But as mentioned, I will check it again tonight.

Maybe next time I go to the LFS, I'll grab the refracto with and see if they'll let me check the reading against their systems. Just as a safety measure to make sure my calibration fluid isn't off.

No true "softies" in the tank to base anything off of.
Only the 2 different types of mushrooms (1 Red Jawbreaker = seems perfectly happy and maybe growing, and 1 adult/2 baby purple/green rics).
And actually it's the opposite problem.
LPS/flubbers are the things showing problems currently.
Zoas seem fine (despite looking like what people have described as reaching for light).

** side note ** I will no longer be using zoas "reaching" as a visual reference for LED lighting. When we bumped up the LED power, they never changed and stayed the same length the whole time.

As for the SPS, the older pieces are as they were with the same problems from when the issues first started showing up. But yes, the new Seri has not shown any signs of negative things yet. The original seri died (or it sure looks dead) when that first SG screw up happened. But this new one looks just like when we got it close to 2 months ago now. And we picked up those poorly cut blastos at the same time. And the blastos are the only piece showing actual good growth. There is new tissue filling in and growing where the crappy frag cut took place. The blastos are heavily shadowed by the rockwork buried down in the back right corner currently. The Seri that is doing well currently is just above that, about 1/2 way down in tank. And it is slightly shadowed by the archway tower rocks it is on.

 

[Bello]

In the past 5-6 years, the only reasons I've lost flubber, are due to the following,

1. Brown jelly disease
2. Combination of high light and ultra low nutrients
3. Water contamination

Can't think of any other scenario in my case. As expected, your softies, your mushrooms & zoas are fine. At this point, its tough to call . May or may not be salinity, years ago, my friend had his tank at 60ppt which is insane. Surprisingly some lps made it through while some suffered.

My best guess at the moment is the possibility of some sort of pollutant.

 

[Fishy 1]

I'm sorry to hear about the troubles troub:sad1:. I'm not sure what could be the problem, but I think it could be one of the things Bello listed. What are your PO4, Nitrate and Nitrite levels currently? I think the nutrient levels might be too low and that could be why the SPS seem happy and the LPS don't do so well. Other than that I'm not much help

 

[biggles]

What the hell are you doing Troub.......... :debi:

Chronically low magnesium for extended periods will shut down all SPS and you'll see next to no polyp extension on flubber and then stuff slowly starts to die. I did this in my last tank and my Mg never dropped below 1000 either mate.
Lift it to over 1300 and keep it there - do it over 2-3 days. Start treating your magnesium as you importantly as you consider your alk and calcium because the whole thing falls apart if you let ANY of them get way out of whack - yours is what i call way out of whack.

You should have been algae free months ago so something is up there. Algae can't grow without some form of nutrition so you're either overfeeding when considering the state of your filtration or crap is leaching out of dry rock. The continuing algae problems are really that simple Troub. Matter can't be created and algae can't grow without food. Can you give us a thorough rundown of everything you feed the tank and how much including any witch doctor aminos etc. Stop everything except alk etc dosing and feed the fish nori once a day or pellets. No mysis or other meaty foods and no flake food.

Be very careful removing large amounts of even pest algae suddenly Troub. All that algae is consuming a daily amount of pollution such as nitrates and phos just like the corals do with alk etc. Drastic changes can see the normally consumed and bound up nutrients now forced to remain in the water resulting in a sudden spike in bad stuff levels. You don't even consider what you may have done because all you now see is a clean sump or display so you think it looks much better. Things continue to go bad and the algae begins to reappear. Been there and done that which is why i'm talking about things you haven't considered enough.

You're a good mate to me on RC Troub and i want to see you and your wife rewarded for all the hard work and money you've both invested. No one would keep a reef it was this hard mate, you need to go right back to basics to tackle the problem.

ALL corals have very different tolerances of different parameters be it alk etc or filth in the water. Some stuff just dies, others slowly fade away and some don't seem to be bothered by much of anything. It isn't stray voltage or a contaminant unless you're doing something stupid like spraying mozzies in the house........ my red shrooms wouldn't care if i set a flea bomb off in the display but some of my acros will RTN if you look at the bloody things for too long........ everything will react differently so get used to some stuff looking better than other stuff which is melting down.

Sorry for the long and blunt post lol, you know i don't mean it in a rude way Troub I was going to just take a random guess at anything but Bello has that covered........... how'd you come up with that pollutant one btw Bello, coin toss ?

 

[markalot]

LPS doing well in the shade might be yet another indication of too much light.

My 40 is torn down but my 46 is still half filled with water and a single circulation pump because I haven't had time to empty and get rid of the sand. At the bottom is a couple of pieces of my uncontrollable yellow/green birdsnest and a monti cap. I was running it with only a low power blue strip until last week when I took all the lights off. Both pieces are still alive in there even without light.

Radically dropping your light levels for a while will not kill any corals IMO, so you might want to try a full reset and go mostly blue with just a little white for a while and see how things react.

My other story is the frogspawn that's doing well in my little 29 gallon. It fell behind the rockwork in my 46 and was lost for 3 months until I re-arranged and found it. Amazingly it was still alive, and is now probably my healthiest frog. Crazy beasts.

The frog I'm talking about is on the lower left, under the green leather. I linked to a fullsize pic so you can count the bubble algae in here. I love this tank, almost 0 maintenance. Like I told Biggles, I use bubble algae to glue my rockwork. :lol: I own a PAR meter and I knwo this tank is getting about 100 PAR on the sand in the middle. I'm using various LED strip lights, most dimmed down to under 50%.

 

[Bello]

Lol, biggles, yeah it was a coin toss between pollutants and Kevin doing his sabotaging nonsense as usual.... Should've gone the other way

I've never had Mg drop below 1100 ppm, so guess I've never seen the symptoms. I usually keep Mg between 1250-1300 ppm. Looks like biggles is on to something . Light can also be factor, but I've never seen Euphyllia suffer from excessive light.

 

[troubadour11]

First off, thank you all for the support, helpful knowledge, and ideas your sharing with me. You are all top-notch-AWESOME in my book :dance:

I'm sure I can speak for both myself and DisBeReef, that we really appreciate it. And after the up-swelling of info and support here recently, I think we might be on track to nail this down. At least, between you all, I think we have some very good ideas as to the potential culprits.

In the past 5-6 years, the only reasons I've lost flubber, are due to the following,

1. Brown jelly disease
2. Combination of high light and ultra low nutrients
3. Water contamination

Can't think of any other scenario in my case. As expected, your softies, your mushrooms & zoas are fine. At this point, its tough to call . May or may not be salinity, years ago, my friend had his tank at 60ppt which is insane. Surprisingly some lps made it through while some suffered.

My best guess at the moment is the possibility of some sort of pollutant.

- Out of all of these, I could definitely see #2 as the most likely issue.

We did adjust our lighting based off the feeling that the zoas were not getting enough light and were reaching about 1/2 inch tall or so off the rock. During the same general time period, we were adjust feeding methods to combat the GHA outbreak. Will cover more on food input a bit further down...

- For now, the salinity is most like not the cause. I checked my refracto with the calibration fluid immediately when I got home last night. It was pinned perfectly to 1.026... so I turned around and checked the tank. Exactly 1.026. So unless the calibration fluid is ruined, we're good there.

I will see if I can verify the calibration next time I head to the LFS. I'm sure they'll let me compare results with the refracto to completely eliminate it. But I'm pretty sure we're spot on for SG.

 

[troubadour11]

I'm sorry to hear about the troubles troub:sad1:. I'm not sure what could be the problem, but I think it could be one of the things Bello listed. What are your PO4, Nitrate and Nitrite levels currently? I think the nutrient levels might be too low and that could be why the SPS seem happy and the LPS don't do so well. Other than that I'm not much help

- All my recent levels that I tested over the weekend should be listed a few posts back. Except the Alk measurement from this morning (still stable at 7.7).

But to answer it quickly: post 30ish gallon water change, Nitrates tested either 5 or 10 ppm. Definitely not above 10. On the API kit, so it was the 5-10ish range. Probably around 5, or just pushing past it. I haven't tested nitrite in a month or so now on the main system. I've never shown ammonia or nitrite at all since we started adding animals after cycling for the first couple months.

Never tested PO4. Currently don't even own a test. If I can't right the ship soon, I may pick up a Salifert PO4 test. I just feel NO3 / PO4 are always going to be present in our system with a mixed reef and a large bio-load. I'm more concerned with "chasing the numbers" for Alk, Ca, Mg then I am for NO3 and PO4. But I'm not ignoring that as a possible cause. But after all the useful ideas, a few things might be ringing a bell more then others.

I'd be curious to know... do people usually find a fixed ratio of NO3 to PO4? Or can it be widely out of balance one way or the other? The highest I've ever seen NO3 was 1 reading between 10 and 20 when we first got Reef Roids :facepalm: and then GHA :facepalm::facepalm: The rest of the time, it pretty much always registers in the 5-10 range.

 

[troubadour11]

What the hell are you doing Troub.......... :debi:

...

Sorry for the long and blunt post lol, you know i don't mean it in a rude way Troub I was going to just take a random guess at anything but Bello has that covered........... how'd you come up with that pollutant one btw Bello, coin toss ?

^^^ Sorry biggles your "rude", kick in the butt, blunt rant was just to long to quote the entire thing :lol: It needed some editing just so I didn't have 1 page of the thread dedicated to it and my respnse. ;-)

And definitely do not be concerned about the long and blunt post. It is VERY much appreciated, taken in good spirit, and I think I needed it. At least someone has the balls to call us out and put D.B.R. and I in our place :strooper: lol

- And everyone else, I know you'd call us out too. You're all just so much nicer about it :blown: (but shHHhHHHhH. don't tell biggles I said that or he'll sick Kevin on me)

Now, enough of the tounge-in-cheek repartee. Onto the info you called into question.

- I think you may be dead on with the Mg readings. This is a possible issue that we can immediately work toward remedying. I've definitely never seen it below 1000. It is typically between 1100 and mid-1200s. I knew it wasn't perfect, but I haven't seen much :reading: on the effects of Mg on the lower end of the scale. You're right, I was dead focused on stabilizing Alk... Ca fell into place a soon as I started dripping the kalk.

It amazes me how fast my Mg is being depleted I guess. I've never been able to get a high test for it. I'm wondering if my kit is testing low, or if my levels are really that. So I think I WILL BE buying a Salifert Mg kit next LFS trip. If anything just to verify my current test results and eliminate that as a factor. And in all the :reading: I've done, I haven't come across many Mg deficiency conversations really. It's always Alk or Ca.

- Addressing the algae and food question. I don't feed the tank as often as DiBeReef does now. Ever since we picked up the Fungia and the Sun Polyps, she has been helping on the food side A LOT during the week. Mainly because she is home more during peak daylight hours when the Fungia has been open and has been handling feeding the tank with these 2 corals more often then me. I tend to feed on weekends more then the weekdays.

Maybe she can chime in a bit more about the exact amounts and of what that goes on more during the week. Best it come straight from her then me guessing what I "think" she is doing based off what we have talked about. :smokin:

Typically we are feeding either... frozen (assorted mix of blood worms / mysis / sushi grade fish roe / etc) ... Spectrum sinking pellets ... Sustainable Aquatics Hatchery Pellets (http://sustainableaquatics.com/hatchery-feeds/)

We have not fed any Nori at all yet. We don't have any tangs or other herbivorous fish. Should we be feeding nori as part of the diet for others. Clownfish, YWG, Firefish, Mandarin, snails, etc?

Looking at the algae removal. I definitely understand what you're saying about the harvest / removal and possible nutrient spikes. It actually is something I have read and did think about. When I cleaned the fuge, it wasn't GHA that was in there. It was more like a ?green cyano algae? on the rocks and red cyano on the glass. So I did remove a portion of the algae, but I wouldn't expect it to cause a huge spike. Because when I blew off the rocks, it wasn't stringy and more just dispersed then clumped together. I think it's dirty appearance was due more to the power head failures and lack of flow in the fuge for the short term while we kept better flow in the Dt.

Since the fuge cleaning, there is already a fair amount of this green cyano type algae showing back up on the rocks and sand inside the fuge. Not in the display though. I feel the fuge is at least helping out with the issue. Since adding the new LED daylight spotlights over the fuge. Any nusiance algae for the most part has shown up there over the DT. The GHA has mostly vanished throughout the system with small amounts of growth showing up on the rocks of the DT. But so far, the snails have been keeping the rocks pretty bare on the DT side.

And this is where I'm slightly confused on the nutrient input / export side. I thought I stripped the water of nutrients by cutting feedings, running GFO/Carbon to get rid of GHA and then fried my corals with high powered lighting suddenly under the low nutrient water. Since then, I have removed and no longer am running GFO. I did empty my carbon and replaced with 1/2 the amount I was using this morning. Just to make sure it wasn't a contaminant issue as Bello was concerned with. However, during the gfo/carbon time, I did still have NO3 showing at 5-10 ppm during that time. So maybe I just over-powered my lights.

But doesn't it make some sense that the DT has almost no algae and the fuge does have algae? Isn't that a little bit of the point? The DT has some cyano spots on the sand bed that come and go under the lighting schedule. I'm hoping might be remedied by the new flow from the wp-25s.

Can you explain what "spraying mozzies" is? I tried googling it, but all I found was stuff about mosquito's. We tend to not spray any crazy arisols in the house. So I'm thinking we are good there.

Usually it takes a few days to just under a week before I get enough film on the glass that it really starts to bother me. I typically magnet off the front glass 1-3 times a week. Then do the entire glass surfaces once a week.

But all-in-all. Great info and help biggles as always! :thumbsup: I'm definitely going to focus on my Mg levels in the short term and get the biggles "Big 3 Way Out of Whack" label removed :beer:

 

[troubadour11]

LPS doing well in the shade might be yet another indication of too much light.

My 40 is torn down but my 46 is still half filled with water and a single circulation pump because I haven't had time to empty and get rid of the sand. At the bottom is a couple of pieces of my uncontrollable yellow/green birdsnest and a monti cap. I was running it with only a low power blue strip until last week when I took all the lights off. Both pieces are still alive in there even without light.

Radically dropping your light levels for a while will not kill any corals IMO, so you might want to try a full reset and go mostly blue with just a little white for a while and see how things react.

My other story is the frogspawn that's doing well in my little 29 gallon. It fell behind the rockwork in my 46 and was lost for 3 months until I re-arranged and found it. Amazingly it was still alive, and is now probably my healthiest frog. Crazy beasts.

The frog I'm talking about is on the lower left, under the green leather. I linked to a fullsize pic so you can count the bubble algae in here. I love this tank, almost 0 maintenance. Like I told Biggles, I use bubble algae to glue my rockwork. :lol: I own a PAR meter and I knwo this tank is getting about 100 PAR on the sand in the middle. I'm using various LED strip lights, most dimmed down to under 50%.

- Thanks for the picture and sharing your info on the lighting! Right now, the lighting is highly suspect to me.

So I think I will follow your advice also and drop our lighting intensity slightly more then I have and see the results. Especially the white/color channel if the consensus is that it won't hurt the newest birdsnest that is doing ok right now. Which judging from the picture and PAR info you shared with me, it should be just fine.

The possible good news is, after adjusting the lighting lower recently and moving the Fungia back under the archway shadow, it may be responding favorably. This morning before any lights were on and just the morning daylight bouncing into the room, I could see the beginnings of the fungia expanding. I could still see the skeleton like normal when it's retracted, but it was definitely starting to expand more then before I put it in the shadow and lowered the LED intensity. So we may be on the right track with this hunch as well.

Thanks for the help and reassurance there. I think it may be a combination of a few things not being dialed in and I'm thinking to high of lighting intensity is most likely one of them. I'd rather have dull colored or brown corals over bleaching and shrinking to oblivion ones! :beer:

Lol, biggles, yeah it was a coin toss between pollutants and Kevin doing his sabotaging nonsense as usual.... Should've gone the other way

I've never had Mg drop below 1100 ppm, so guess I've never seen the symptoms. I usually keep Mg between 1250-1300 ppm. Looks like biggles is on to something . Light can also be factor, but I've never seen Euphyllia suffer from excessive light.

^^^ Probably best to leave him be and not poke the bear Bello :lolspin: I think the coin came up on the right side for that one. LOL

Yeah, right now based off all this awesome help and experience. I'm thinking it might be a combination of things... maybe in this order...
A.) to intense of LED lighting.
B.) Mg being "to low for to long" and having things "way out of whack" as biggles mentioned.
- How much Mg are people needing to dose to maintain their levels above 1200? I estimated it on my tank based off the directions on the bottle and it seemed like an obscene amount. At that rate, I'd be burning through a bottle of Mg supplement almost every week and a half.
C.) POSSIBLY some nutrient or PO4 toxicity from potentially elevated levels.
- Oh, and biggles asked and I think I forgot to mention. We are currently not using anything with aminos, carbohydrates, or the like. Not until I get things humming along and want to focus on coloration would I think about using them.

Unfortunately the PH's broke and we jacked with the flow in the tank at the same time as trouble shooting these issues. But I don't think that will have a drastic negative influence as I'm trying to play it on the safe side and not blast anything with the new current.

But I'm feeling like we will trouble shoot in that order for now and see how things develop. I have a feeling working on those 2 or 3 things will have some good, positive improvements to coral health if I can accomplish them.

:beer: Thanks again everyone for chiming in with all your thoughts! I'll report back with any updates as the adjustments unfold. Oh and shout it out if there's a koala in the tank that I'm not seeing screwing with things! :wildone:

 

[Bello]

Troub, my experience is extremely limited with Mg. Never actually dosed it directly. It doesn't get consumed nearly as quick as Alk or Cal. Admittedly, I rarely ever test for Mg.

I use a Calcium Reactor now, so that takes care of the big 3, by default. With 2-part previously, I'd dose ESV B-Ionic 2 part and with weekly water changes, my Mg remained stable. Just my 2 cents....

I'd say, slowly get Mg up to desired levels, and test weekly and gauge the rate of consumption. We'll have a clearer picture then

 

[troubadour11]

Troub, my experience is extremely limited with Mg. Never actually dosed it directly. It doesn't get consumed nearly as quick as Alk or Cal. Admittedly, I rarely ever test for Mg.

I use a Calcium Reactor now, so that takes care of the big 3, by default. With 2-part previously, I'd dose ESV B-Ionic 2 part and with weekly water changes, my Mg remained stable. Just my 2 cents....

I'd say, slowly get Mg up to desired levels, and test weekly and gauge the rate of consumption. We'll have a clearer picture then

Thanks for sharing your Mg info. I knew Mg was the one I would have to figure out since it doesn't get controlled with the ATO. It seems as if the Kalk has been able to stabilize our Ca and Alk demand right now. So time to nail down the Mg. I kind of always expected to need to add a dosing pump at some point to control Mg through the Reef Angel since it seems like Kalk will keep up with demand for awhile. So Mg will be need more constant monitoring it looks like. :love2:

- I took some steps this morning to address things that have been discussed :mtool:

1.) tested Mg this morning at my normal 7:15-7:30 time frame. Biggles is going to sick Kevin on me for this one. It tested lower then last weekend after the water change. (which makes sense). It tested in the 1050-1085 range on my Red Sea kit! :furious: Which I still want to verify my results with a Salifert kit. Because I've never tested above 1200 really, even on a fresh barrel of water. So that's just another ? to check off the list as I pin down the rest of these parameters.

Re-read the directions on our Mg supplement and decided to follow their directions. "If levels test below 1200, dose at highest recommended rate of 10mL per 20 gallons."
So I figured 150 gallons / 20 = 7.5 * 10 = 75mL max daily dose if below 1200. I previously used 180 gallon estimate for Alk and it was to high of a dose. So I lowered my estimate to 150.

I then decided to divide this into (2) - 37.5 mL doses - morning/night. So I will do that today and retest again tomorrow morning.

2.) I adjusted my LED settings drastically lower again from where I had reduced them before.

The day lighting schedule is set to be all OFF until noon and then on until 8:30 pm with a sunrise/sunset effect running. So lights turn on at lowest %, then run a parabola curve by slowly ramping up to a peak at mid-day (or around 4:00ish on our lighting schedule) and then back down. It does not quickly ramp up to a value and then hold the value for a number of hours, then quickly ramp back down. So I should only be getting "peak" par values from about 3:30-5:30 at the most.

After daylights turn off, moonlights turn on about 1/2 hour later and run from around 9:00 or 9:30 until 11:30. These are 2 blue / 2 uv (per fixture) and run a 1/5th power with 30 minute ramp up and down to peak.

The white / color channel on are set to run from 11% (first % the lights turn on at) up to 30% and back down.
The blue/uv channels are set to run from 11% up to 50% and back down.

I'm thinking that should do well as a starting place. Please tell me if you don't agree. I'd have to look back. But I believe we started around 30 or 40% for blues and no whites originally when we first added the LEDs. And slowly worked our way up each week. I'll dig back into my documentation and photos to line up dates and see what %'s I was running when the frogspawn appeared to be healthy with improving color. Because before it and the torch shrank away :-(, I felt the color of the frogspawn was improving and it had been in there a long time since we first added the LEDs.

We should be re-filling our ATO barrel tonight with RO/DI and kalk. So I will test my tds readings then, just to make sure some tds uglies aren't getting through. Just another thing to check off the list.

Time to watch, wait, test, and repeat for a bit now until the picture gets a little clearer. :sad1:

I do have a hunch though, that in 3-4 months from now, I may be drooling over my reef. Because with all your awesome experience and help. I bet we'll have one heck of a tank once we get these last few things in place! :beer:

 

[markalot]

Good luck Troub, sounds like you are on the right path.

 

[troubadour11]

Good luck Troub, sounds like you are on the right path.

:thumbsup:

- - - - - - - - - -

A couple more small notes to update with the goings on.

- We ran a new barrel of ATO water last night. At which point I checked the TDS output from the DI chamber. I'm happy to report it is still at 0 TDS. I'm going to order a new round of filters anyway as they are about due to be changed out. But at least I can check that of the list of causes of anything.

I added Lime to the ATO water at 1/2 tsp per gallon (20 gallons). Previously I had added 3/4 tsp and it spiked alk up to 8.5 and was precipitating a lot at the dripping point in the sump. I then tried a batch at 1/4 tsp which allowed the alk to slowly lower down towards 7.4. This was all over about 2 or 3 months dripping at the rate of evaporation. So it wasn't sudden, but it did fluctuate as we were trying our best to level it off. At the 7.4 point I added additional lime and it's been rock solid at 7.7 for a few months now. So I'm hoping I've found the sweet spot and 1/2 tsp per gallon will continue to keep Ca and Alk right where it has been.

I tested Alk this morning since I was testing Mg. We were right at 7.7 or just a shade under. It started to change before, but fully changed at 7.7. Which makes sense since we hadn't been running kalk/ato since yesterday afternoon when we filled the barrel. I mixed the lime in this morning and we will resume dripping around 11 or so this morning.

Question: Is anyone concerned with our Alk being run at 7.7? To be honest, it just kind of easily leveled off there between Kalk and water changes. So that is what I've been targeting for stability. I thought this would be an acceptable level. Any concern that I should target 8.0-8.5 instead? I know I can hit low 8's with the kalk just under full saturation, but I tend to get a lot more precipitate buildup on my ato valve then.

- So I did my 2 doses of Mg yesterday. When I tested this morning, I had jumped from 1000-1040 up basically one notch on the tester to 1040-1080. So we're moving in the right direction at least :bounce2:

Anyone have a thought on how many points per day is a safe amount to raise it? I suppose it might say somewhere on the bottle what they recommend. I know I did the "max dosage rate," but if my estimate of water volume is off, I could be way under the max rate that is safe to move it.

At this measurement, it looks like it might take about 7 days and about 525 mL of Mg supplement to get it up to 1300+. Is that sounding right? That seems like a huge amount of supplement. That's about 2 bottles worth in a weeks time.

I guess it'll just take a lot to right the ship, but then a lesser amount to maintain. Seems like it's about 40 points or so a week that it drops. Maybe slightly faster. But I'll have more answers for that as I test more often and try to get it to 1300.

Hmmmm. I just did a bit of browsing and :reading: on the LFS website. Maybe I should grab a small batch of Mg power to raise up the levels to 1300. Seems way more economical that way. I noticed Saliferts Mg powder says not to raise by more the 200 ppm per day. I could easily rig up a jug with a drip line.

Unfortunately, we will be out of Mg liquid for tonights 1/2 dose. I'll be a little short of the 37.5 mL. Good thing there's a LFS visit planned for tomorrow morning to get more Mg supplement! :bounce3:

 

[troubadour11]

Well, yesterday Mg tested in the 1280-1340 range. So it took me a week or so, but I slowly brought the levels up into a better range. I'll test tomorrow morning again at the usual time. If it's still around that range, I'll do 1 more dose to make sure it's set at 1300+. :thumbsup:

We continue to run the LEDs at 50% B/UV (I'm now thinking of dropping this lower more). And the w/color go up to 30%.

I still continue to be confused. Our old orange-digi that's been through hell is still hanging on. In fact, I typically see PE on it around dusk each night. And it's about 3/4's the way up the tank (top-most living coral) in direct light and lots of water movement. But then our seri that's been doing well for the past few months isn't looking good now as of yesterday/this morning. :hmm2: Which is weird because the skin was gaining color and looking thicker all the time. There was PE on it all day, everyday. And it has even shown a small bit of growth on the branches since we got it. But now it has some skin peeling off one of it's branches and spreading.

So I've pretty much eliminated most possible causes at this point. 0-tds, Refracto is calibrated, Mg has been brought into line. Our Ca was around 450. Alk has been stable at 8.0. It very slowly bumped up from stable at 7.7 recently when I made the new batch of ATO-kalk. So from now on, I'll use the same amount of lime and that should hold it steady at 450/8.0. I'll be continuing to monitor Mg and get a typical weekly or bi-weekly dose going.

Other then the current Seri freaking out. Everything else in the tank seems to be doing the same or looking better and showing improvements or new growth. :thumbsup: So I guess we're still on the right track and it's going to take some time to sort things out now that more potential causes have been brought in line.

One interesting note. Our very first coral, a huge multi-headed candy-cane trumpet is one of the pieces starting to recover. This thing was fragged into multiple pieces when it started doing poorly. We spread it into different parts of the tank and all of them slowly withered once they took their down turn. But now... even on the mostly bare skeletons we left in, we are seeing new mouths growing in and tissue slowly coming back in around some of the mouths! Most of them are big pin-head size dots of green that you can really only see under the actinics/blues. But they're there and growing slowly. One polyp even has some of the fleshy red coming back in I'd be proud to bring that colony and the orange-digi back from the edge. At least I'd feel a little accomplished despite anything I might loose from not getting things more stable earlier on. :mixed:

 

[troubadour11]

Would a flow change cause, what looked like a healthy Seri to loose skin? We recently upgraded to the 2 wp-25s and that has changed the way the currents run in the tank.

Is to much flow a possibility here since it was looking good?

Although it isn't right in front of a powerhead. We've noticed with the new set up that this front corner gets a much stronger rush of water as the wave moves back and forth across the tank.