My best thinking is in the yard so lets go there and pace. Removed 18L and replaced with RO in a 10 hour period - that's bad........ real bad. Back inside and get the refractometer out. I can't trust anything anymore i'm checking everything. Use the calibration solution and it's spot on. Test the tank - 1.0225-1.0230 $%#$ !!!!!!
Test the three drums, all 1.0260 - phwew ! need to swap these into the display now to lift the salinity a bit, start the RO for more water and do the water change..............
More acros are looking crazy distressed now and i'm about ready to get in the ute and drive away......... what did i do wrong now, think, think. :facepalm:
Screw this i'm checking the alk again because i don't know what else to do. Test the display and now it's 8.8 ARGHHHHHHHHH !!!! what the hell is making the alk keep spiking i'm not adding any $%#$@# alk !
Test the water left in a drum, haven't tested alk of my 7.7 blue bucket mixes in over a year, why would i...........
NINE POINT BLOODY TWO !!!!!!!!!..................:hammer:
This is backyard stuff so we're going outside for a pace. Okay the salt mix is way too high to do any more large water changes - #$@% !
Need to raise the salinity so replace RO with salt water until i hit 1.0260. Need to constantly monitor and adjust the skimmer to keep it working as best it can. No idea what the alk draw has dropped to but it will need checking three or four times a day until i regain some sort of control over what's happening to the acros. Will use small 6L water changes for now to maintain alk since the salt is mixing way higher then the 7.0 i keep. Put a pedestal fan aimed at the sump all night and turn the wall aircon fan on all night blowing across the display top, i want as much evap as possible to lift the salinity.
Friday morning the house still smelled of slime but not as bad. Salinity is 1.0245 and alk is 8.4ish. Acros have stopped sliming, zero PE and everything is looking like it has a dusty grey coating and i can now see white skeleton lines starting around the bases of a lot of acros...... i knew i was going to take a big hit after seeing the acros slime so badly but i still hoped it wouldn't happen........
Since i knew Dave had fresh healthy acros in and since i still had lots of crazy thoughts that i was still missing something i decided i would shoot there and grab an acro to see if i had sorted the problem, if it went arse up once i put it in the water i'd know all was not right.
No more water changes at all as i need to get the alk down. By lights out Friday night i had the salinity back at 1.0260 and the alk was 7.8. Acros look just awful and pigments on many have almost gone completely. Everything is paling so the halides will be staying off - only been using the T5 actinics up until now so start using all the T5's and watch the acros in case they freak out. The pink acro had good PE within 30 mins of hitting the tank water and hasn't missed a beat so far.
Saturday morning the alk is about 7.3 so i start doing the 6L water changes again. I did five of those small changes with the 9 alk water and the alk stayed at 7.3. I put 50ml of alk in the drip container for Sat night.
Saw lots and lots of STN on many acros, zero PE on 90% and tiny dot polyps barely poking out on the rest. I think it's going to stop and i won't lose everything - yeehah ! Removed about 40 dead snails but the rest seem to have recovered. Not much else i could do but watch the acros look terrible.
Today i removed two echi's, a SSC and my white skin table that had the blue and fluoro tips. There's a couple more pieces i think could still RTN but i think the STN is almost stopping on almost all the affected pieces. I can see signs of polyps on most things, not out but at least they are visible again. It's Sunday night now and some of the acros have a few polyps venturing out a tiny bit so all i can do is let things settle and deal with the tissue loss areas once i know that things are well on the road to recovery.
In case anyone tries to outdo my goof just remember it was two separate RO water changes followed by an alk spiking salt water change - that's a triple header.........:facepalm:
