system update
system update
Well I may have finally gotten my Alk reactor tweaked in (I hope!). Now I know why guys actually say you should refer to it as a Alkalinity producing reactor rather than a Calcium Reactor.
I'm still running the kalk reactor and topping that off once a week with calcium hydroxide, I need to run that off my doser to only dose at night to try and raise my PH. PH drops to around 7.85 at night and is about 8.15 during the day. Used to be in the range 8.5 - 8.1.
Its sitting at 7.5dKH, effluent set with a steady tiny stream of water coming out. Ca at 420ppm, Mg at 1420ppm. And gauging from the amount of aragonite media lost so far I reckon I've lost about 250g of that stuff in about the last 3 weeks. Corals are really taking off with more signs of growth on the coral tips.
Chromis are also back into their weekly egg laying routine. They really put up a song and dance routine around spawning time.
I've added a 250w BLV 20K pendant onto a corner of the nursery tank, want to see what that spectrum of light will do to the frags I got under there. Experiment to check color differences of the corals between the blue shaded sunlit area vs. that of the MH. I've never had my previous tank with water quality anywhere close to this set-up, so keen to see what colors I can bring out. Especially on my (were once) bright lime green plating monti frags, these went brown a few days after adding them to this set up and have been like that for months.
Currently dosing 12 drops of Lugol's Iodine and now up to 16ml of vodka a day. I split the dosage of each into morning and evening. I want to also start with amino acids and possibly a potassium additive to help boost colors. Will see what I get under the halides.
I've also stabilised the water temps and these now max out to around 29 degrees. Incidentally I'm using the temp probe off my new SAGA PH controller as a reading as this one matches the temp indicated on the chiller. Those other two digital temp gauges appear to have had their own reading that vary and then some days are in line with the others.
