Aqualund
New member
Okay, so with a little backstory, I run a coral farm and have enjoyed many years of literally no issues in all of my tanks. employed proper procedures and equipment in every system I maintain and I can brag of nothing but success for years. Until I ran into AEFW which decimated most of my acroporas both at the farm, and my entire display tank at home.
With all of that, I recovered at the farm and restarted my display. The specs are as follows:
I feed the fish once a day, and have a huge maintenance crew for the algae and sand.
I try to maintain bacterial population with bakto blend, and zeobak in conjunction with the bio pellets on a drip feed.
levels are:
Ca:450
Alk:9.5
Mag:1300
No3:2ppm
Po4:<.16ppm
SG:1.025
and the tank was started with cured water and rock from my coral farm about 5 weeks ago.
My issue is with low PH. I have tried every trick in the book that you find with a google search to fix this issue. I range anywhere(with a calibrated apex probe) from 7.8 to 8.1 which by all accounts is "fine" but im mostly in the sub 8 area most of the day and all of the night. I would feel more comfortable at 8.2-8.4.
Currently I am feeding air to the skimmer from outside and topping off with kalk water.
Does anyone have any suggestions on a reliable method for me to manually bump this up (aside from cracking a window, doing what im doing now, or aerating with an airstone)?
I was thinking dosing oxygen?
Then my second problem is the tensile strength of my skimmate. Usually...in every system I've managed, the skimmate bubbles up and breaks down into the cup in a black goo...especially with the bp reactor. Now for me and this restarted system...the skimmate produces a very strong foam that pushes the cap off the top...even with weight on it...and then encapsulates the entire skimmer in foam...and this happens twice a day when im cleaning regularly.
So I am thinking that the skimmer acting this way and the PH of the water might be signs of something deeper that I am not aware of or something else the hobby is trying to teach me a lesson on...and was hoping some of you may have an idea?
My plan was to continue to let it cycle and maintain bacteria levels to see if this leveled out...but as of yet, I have only been able to maintain variations of montiporas, and zooanthids. The couple of frags of acropora and stylophora I introduced did not last long...with no pests displaying after dips with coral revive.
Any ideas?
With all of that, I recovered at the farm and restarted my display. The specs are as follows:
- 110G display, 30Gallon Sump.
- Fluval sp4 return pump
- 4 t5's supplemented with Lumias.
- Eshopps 300gallon skimmer
- 18 W UV sterilizer
- carbon and gfo reactors
- small refugium with chaeto
- about 80lbs of live rock and 50 lbs of sand
- Bio Pellet reactor
- levels maintained by dosing with balling method
- skimmer is fed air from outside and also through co2 scrubber
I feed the fish once a day, and have a huge maintenance crew for the algae and sand.
I try to maintain bacterial population with bakto blend, and zeobak in conjunction with the bio pellets on a drip feed.
levels are:
Ca:450
Alk:9.5
Mag:1300
No3:2ppm
Po4:<.16ppm
SG:1.025
and the tank was started with cured water and rock from my coral farm about 5 weeks ago.
My issue is with low PH. I have tried every trick in the book that you find with a google search to fix this issue. I range anywhere(with a calibrated apex probe) from 7.8 to 8.1 which by all accounts is "fine" but im mostly in the sub 8 area most of the day and all of the night. I would feel more comfortable at 8.2-8.4.
Currently I am feeding air to the skimmer from outside and topping off with kalk water.
Does anyone have any suggestions on a reliable method for me to manually bump this up (aside from cracking a window, doing what im doing now, or aerating with an airstone)?
I was thinking dosing oxygen?
Then my second problem is the tensile strength of my skimmate. Usually...in every system I've managed, the skimmate bubbles up and breaks down into the cup in a black goo...especially with the bp reactor. Now for me and this restarted system...the skimmate produces a very strong foam that pushes the cap off the top...even with weight on it...and then encapsulates the entire skimmer in foam...and this happens twice a day when im cleaning regularly.
So I am thinking that the skimmer acting this way and the PH of the water might be signs of something deeper that I am not aware of or something else the hobby is trying to teach me a lesson on...and was hoping some of you may have an idea?
My plan was to continue to let it cycle and maintain bacteria levels to see if this leveled out...but as of yet, I have only been able to maintain variations of montiporas, and zooanthids. The couple of frags of acropora and stylophora I introduced did not last long...with no pests displaying after dips with coral revive.
Any ideas?
