Frustration

xian

xian

Premium Member
OK so my water is all (enter explitive of choice) up and I I can't haul buckets because of my stupid leg.

Since last weekend I have changed out over 40 gals of water with the help of my family, one of those changes resulted in a salinity spike. Not good.

I managed to bring it down to 1.025 over a couple days. Better.

Tonight I tested the water and I've got .4 ppm Phosphate and 25ppm Nitrate. SPECTACULAR! :mad2:

Suffice it to say many of my corals are not happy with me.

I added a biochem zorb carbon pillow and a polyfilter to try to suck up some of this nitrate and phosphate.

I think I need a decent RODI unit that I can hook up to a faucet.

Can anyone recommend one?
 
Why do you think your Nitrates are so high? I assume it was stable before?

I got my RO/DI system from aquaticreefsystems.com. They have good prices and great customer service, but in the fall, the owner became ill and things went down hill. I'm not sure if things have recovered now. Maybe give them a call.

If you search on RC, you'll probably get an update as well as the name of the new business that the original owner (not the sick guy) started up. He provides great service as well.

A lot of people order from ebay.

Think ahead for your house and make sure you get a DI bypass and a bladder tank so that you can hook it up to your refrigerator for ice cubes and drinking water.
 
i bought a coralife pureflo with a booster pump...i think it was $250 I love it, 50 gallons a day for me and I`m on a well with crappy water. I think $100 less without pump, but you need at least 60 psi from your source to go without a pump.
 
I'm not sure about the nitrate but my current theory is: When I put all the new circulation pumps in I stirred up a whole boatload of detritus, Probably about 9 months worth. I'm sure that that has been turning into a nice batch of nitrate. The skimmer is churning out some serious goo

The PO4 came in in my replacement water, I measured my DI water and its got 40ppm TDS and a trace of Phosphate. Hell! The GD tap water has 90ppm TDS!

So currently I've got lots of Cyano and a bleached frogspawn. I'm thinking of adding some phosban just to help stop the bleeding.
 
I have the same unit Harry has...a coralife pureflo 2 ro/di.. the unit without the pump was 139 from Big Als online...and it is basically overnight shipping cuz they are in Niagra Falls...it has a sink hookup....I mounted it to a board and move it to the kitchen when I want to make water....since starting with it 3 weeks ago I have eliminated all but a little cyano...most of the green hair algae...and the diatoms..plus my corals are showing growth and the fish have colored up even more than they were....I used phosban in a canister with my tap water and still had a huge algae bloom every time I did a water change....the RO/DI will definitely solve a myriad of problems..
 
thats the unit I use..........acording to my TDS meter my ro/di water is like 5-10ppm from 500+ppm, definatly works.
 
OK I bought the filter direct one, because it was easy to get the accessories such as the faucet adapter. I'm adding phosban today.

Steve, what is the TDS of your tap water? Troy is only 90 so I might do OK with the initial resin.

FWIW the tap water filter that I have works fine. It just doesn't make alot.

Also the frog spawn looks better today.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7038648#post7038648 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by xian
OK I bought the filter direct one, because it was easy to get the accessories such as the faucet adapter.
Click to expand...
An alternative to the faucet adaptor (assuming you mean like a sink) or using the valve for piercing pipe....

There is anther type of adaptor that has a JG fitting on one end (for inserting the water input tubing) and the other end just skrews onto an outdoor type faucet (I didn't explain that well :rolleyes: )...anyway...thats what I use...mounted the unit near my washer/dryer...got one of those outdoor facet "Y" splitters and hooked it up to the cold water for my washer. When I need RODI, I just turn on the valve for the unit.

Works well.
 
The primary issue is that the tank is at my parents' house. I'll "hard wire" the thing in to my own house when it gets built but for now I just want it to work the way the tap water filter does: just hook it up to the faucet to make water and put it away when you're done.

I've seen the adapter you're talking about which I may use in my own house.
 
So a couple weeks later here's the latest

I finally got an RO/DI unit and a refractometer two things I've been putting off for a while. More on that in a bit

I currently have the nitrate down to 10ppm I consider this at least acceptable. The phosphate is down to a barely detectable level. less than 2ppm The repeated water changes have stripped down my cacium and alk, but I use B ionic (going to need to learn how to make DIY 2part in the future) so that will come back up. pH remained stable through most of this. Temp is back down to 78.

I changes the bulbs on my refugium and had a chaeto explosion so if anyone wants some send me a PM.

I've had quite a few casualties most of which were mushrooms. I do have some of my purple's and a few of my maroon discoma left but I lost all my fuzzy neon green's and my green and blue stripes. My zooanthid population is down to my orange skirts, the pink's I brought back from macna, eric's greenskirts and the pinkish browns that we fragged at the workshop. My green paly's looked bleak but seemed to have recovered some of their color.

My purple gorgonian has flourished throughout, never seen it happier :confused:.

All of my leathers are completely intact, thankfully including my green sarcophyton.

My LPS are looking sad. The two favia are holding on OK. The trumpets have receded. My Euphyllia and my Trachyphyllia have bleached a bit. This leads me to question number one:

Any advice for helping bleached (not completely) corals revover?

(Dave I know you reccomended Marc Weiss Reef DNA but I'm saving that as a last resort because its too expensive.)

Some of Dan's Monti digitata has survived all of this. I actually have a small portion of the green encrusting one of my rocks. The orange and the elkhorn is hanging on as well.

My anthelia colony died back but seems to be recovering slowly as my clownfish won't leave it alone. Xenia is happy but some of it fell prey to the now exploding aptasia population. I don't trust peppermint shrimp and I can't get to all of them with the syringe...so here comes question number two

Does anyone know where I can get some of those aptasia eating nudibranchs?

Having adequate supply of RO/DI is helpful but I'm still battling red cyano. I've tried changing my flow directon, but it just pops up in some other place. :rolleyes:

Soo...any imput would be appreciated
 
Easy solution: Drain tank, take up Knitting as a new hobby :p.


Xian, yeah the MW Reef DNA is indeed expensive, but it goes a long way. I found that Aquarium Pharmasudicals "STRESS COAT" seems to help the corals (will make skimmer go nuts, so turn it off a while) as it has aloe in it.

Aiptasia, you can use kalkwasser, and mix up a paste. Use a small plastic pippette, and simply smear the kalk on the top of the aiptasia. it melts them right quick !

Springtime the water in many cities goes kinda screwwy with TDS and nitrates, and phosphates and iron. The city tends to drain out firehydrants, and it churns all the sediment up, and oftem times, the spring snow melting brings a bunch of minerals with it to the lakes and resivors.
 
Hey, don't forget Dan's little talk about Calfo's Aptaisa harvesting. If you dip the rock in cold enough water for 25 seconds or so, the Aptasia should pop off. Of course, it's not a good idea if you have corals on the rock that you can't remove. I plan on trying it on Kim's tank which has become an Aptaisa farm.

When you zap 'em with kalk, they sometimes multiply.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7181485#post7181485 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Dave ESPI
Easy solution: Drain tank, take up Knitting as a new hobby :p.
Click to expand...

Dude have you ever tried knitting?
 
I agree with Vin. I tried the kalk trick and it turned one big aptaisa into 5-6 small ones......which then turned into big ones. Got rid of them all with Peppermint shrimp.
 
I trust no shrimp!

Seriously the last ones I got ate my torch coral. GRRRR....

Even though the bulbs are new you got me thinking so I cleaned them with some vinegar.

Cyano seems to be waning. I'm awaiting the arrival of a phosphate test to get to the bottom of that.

I have started an all out war on the aptasia they appear to be held back for the moment.

The frogspawn seems to have regained some color. I've been adding small doses of lugol's solution in an attempt to help them.

Dave I noticed the stress coat "foam" before. Next time I'll try soap;)
 
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