Going Slooooow... LQT's Oceanic BC29 Build

[LQT]

Put the Aquaticlife 115 back into service as the PH was dropping too low without the aeration of the skimmer. Ordered some parts to make a DIY CO2 scrubber for the skimmer. I'll post the build when the stuff comes in. I took the reactor offline and am running ROX carbon and GFO passively in the media basket.

Now for the fun stuff. Got some frags in today! Everything came in this morning in great shape. Everything was Bayer dipped and triple rinsed before going into the tank.


This is the Acan frag pack that I ordered. I'm thinking of setting up an Acan garden on the big rock in the foreground of the tank.


Here is the Zoa frag pack. They're not quite open all the way yet. I'm gonna use these guys to fill in the empty spaces of the rock work.


As a bonus for the two frag packs, they also sent me some freebies... three different Favia Brain frags!


I'll let these guys acclimate on the sand bed and slowly move them up into the rock work over the next few weeks. Next I will work on the two rocks on the sides. Looking at more LPS for that wavy motion. Then finally, the featured top rock will be populated with some SPS. The stocking part of the tank build is very fun indeed!

Oh by the way, my rocks aren't really that florescent green. On the LED's, I have my whites turned way up and my blues, cyan and UV turned way down to take better photos of the frags with my cellphone. For some reason, it makes my rocks look highlighter yellowish green.

 

[LQT]

Unfortunately, my purple firefish bit the dust. A couple of weeks ago, he was hiding more than usual. I noticed his mouth was more agape than normal. I read that firefish sometimes develop a mouth fungus and can't close their mouths. I last saw him a couple of days ago, swimming around with his mouth wide open, stomach pinched in and unable to eat. Fished out his carcass yesterday... poor little dude.

 

[Kolkri]

Love the way your rocks are set up.

 

[LQT]

Thanks for your kind words. They were just big chunks of dryrock that I got from Reef Cleaners. I'm very happy that they ended up fitting together pretty well.

 

[LQT]

Finished up placing my new frags onto the rockwork. Here's the latest FTS

 

[LQT]

As promised, here is my DIY nano CO2 scrubber for my Aquaticlife 115 skimmer... I have been having low PH issues with my BioCube 29. The PH, even with the windows open was hovering around 7.6 at night and 7.8 during the day. I decided to make a DIY CO2 scrubber for my Aquaticlife 115 skimmer with an already installed airline mod. I don't see why this wouldn't work for any skimmer with an airline tube extension.

I purchased an inline water trap from EBay, 2 for $10.00 plus free shipping.


Make sure you get the Salter Labs 7001 water traps, as they have unscrewable end caps.


Then I cut off the inner tubes so I could fit as much media as I could inside of the cylinder.


I went to a local dive shop and bought a bag of color changing soda lime, it's a CO2 absorbent material used for scuba rebreathers or for ventilators in the medical field. I believe you can get it at BRS also for $50 for a 9# jug.


Here are the finished products, my mini DIY CO2 scrubbers. Here are the two scrubbers that I made that I will rotate as they get exhausted. Note the purple color change beginning in the top one. On the right end, you can see a purple discoloration. It has been in use for about 3 days now, so I guesstimate each cylinder will last a little over a week before it needs to be swapped out.


Here it is attached to the airline on my Aquaticlife 115 skimmer.


So far so good. Whereas my PH before hovered between 7.6 to 7.8, even with the windows open, it now hovers between 7.9 and 8.1. It also makes for one helluva silencer for your noisy skimmer air intakes. I hope you found this helpful!

 

[LQT]

So for the last month and a half, what started out as a diatom bloom that wouldn't go away has started to become more of an issue. Snails helped in spots, but where they didn't touch, it was starting to get fuzzier with algae. Since it started, I have reduced feeding, reduced my light cycle, did a three day blackout before my corals arrived, ran GFO in both a media bag and reactor, put my skimmer back online and have kept my phosphate and nitrate at or near zero (I'm sure the algae has taken up the phosphate before it could get into the water column).

This weekend, I decided to go on the offensive and scrubbed every nook and cranny of my rock with a toothbrush and hydrogen peroxide and rinsed them off in the water from a 5 gallon water change. Several hours later, I did an additional 5 gallon water change. My acans and zoas are not happy, but hopefully they'll get over it. Once I put the rock back in, the algae started to give off a bunch of tiny bubbles which I read is what's supposed to happen after an H2O2 treatment. I'm really hoping this will work.

 

[j_mazzy]

interesting. I may try that co2 thing so I can kill 2 birds with one stone.

 

[ReefWreak]

Just thought I'd let you know how awesome I think that CO2 scrubber is. I've always thought about making one, but haven't. Awesome DIY.

Hopefully everything responds well to the scrub. If you have algae issues going forward, as long as you're skimming, you can start adding small amounts of vodka to uptake any available nutrients and export them into the skimmer.

 

[LQT]

Thanks guys! So far it's working pretty well. It's been running for a few weeks now and my PH has settled between a low of 7.9 to a high of 80.5. Definitely better then where it was before. Hopefully with the hydrogen peroxide scrub, that will help end my algae issues... we'll see. I'm still reading usually 0 to a high of 2ppm nitrates and 0 to a high of .02 phosphates. I'll just have to wait and see when and if the algae will come back. I'm hoping it won't as my parameters seem in check.

 

[LQT]

Just thought I'd let you know how awesome I think that CO2 scrubber is. I've always thought about making one, but haven't. Awesome DIY.

ReefWreak, don't sweat it. I have a couple of spare scrubbers that I made that I'll bring for you for helping me with my wiring and letting me pick your brain and check out your set up.

 

[Rakie]

Hopefully everything responds well to the scrub. If you have algae issues going forward, as long as you're skimming, you can start adding small amounts of vodka to uptake any available nutrients and export them into the skimmer.

Just curious, what would you consider a small amount?

Everything is looking nice LQT. I jumped the boat and got a Radion, after the light switch my tank went nuts with Diatoms, GHA, and what looks like runaway cheato

 

[LQT]

Rakie,

It felt like I had a diatom bloom that would never go away. Even after cutting back on feeding, lighting, running GFO, religious weekly water changes and putting the skimmer back on line, it looked like it was getting worse. I did the H2O2 scrub a little over two weeks ago and so far, so good. NO3 is still 0 and PO4 is between 0 and .02. We'll see how it goes moving forward, but so far, I'm liking the results of the H2O2 scrub.

 

[ReefWreak]

Just curious, what would you consider a small amount?

Everything is looking nice LQT. I jumped the boat and got a Radion, after the light switch my tank went nuts with Diatoms, GHA, and what looks like runaway cheato

I've been dosing 0.5mL M-W-F, with a weekly addition of microbacter7 (not necessary, but I believe strongly in biological/microbial diversity so I add it as well). That's a pretty minimal dose, many people dose much more than that daily.

I dose in the morning since the skimmer is still running (skimmer runs 4AM to 4PM). You must have a skimmer and be skimming to dose vodka, FYI.

 

[Rakie]

I've been dosing 0.5mL M-W-F, with a weekly addition of microbacter7 (not necessary, but I believe strongly in biological/microbial diversity so I add it as well). That's a pretty minimal dose, many people dose much more than that daily.

I dose in the morning since the skimmer is still running (skimmer runs 4AM to 4PM). You must have a skimmer and be skimming to dose vodka, FYI.

Ive been dosing vinegar and mb7 i read that vinegar was more trouble free, but i wanted to try vodka. I run an Aquamaxx hob-1 skimmer currently and a brs mini reactor with gfo/carbon. Had an intense algae bloom when i upgraded to a radion.

 

[ReefWreak]

I think vinegar is less potent and therefore less problematic, however I didn't want to dose vinegar becasue of the pH lowering effect. You can always start small on carbon dosing.

Have you read the teefkeeping magazine article on it? I'll link when back on my desktop, but they just recommend starting very very slowly and watching nitrates. My problem with that method is that I've never really seen any nitrates in my tank, but yet the corals were brown and some small algae grew...

I hate relying on or recommending snake oil products, but I do think that prodibio with my vodka dosing does help color up my tank. Can't explain why, but it tends to work.

 

[Rakie]

ReefWreak, don't sweat it. I have a couple of spare scrubbers that I made that I'll bring for you for helping me with my wiring and letting me pick your brain and check out your set up.

Yeah, he's one of the few whose genuinely generous with his time and knowledge. So many people, even here, can't be bothered to lend a hand or some wisdom.

I think vinegar is less potent and therefore less problematic, however I didn't want to dose vinegar becasue of the pH lowering effect.

Exactly! Although I had read here that the effect on pH is rather small, and very unlikely to induce any pH swings unless you're pushing 3-5ml/25g daily -- How true that is i'm not sure, but I've not noticed any swings.

To be fair, my dosing is rather light. I typically dose 1ml / 25g, 3x a week With MB7. When I first started this tank I threw in 2-3ml/25g daily for a week with BioSpira and my cycle finished absurdly quick. After that I cut back to 1.5ml daily, then 1ml daily, finally 1ml 3x weekly. Didn't want the bacteria to crash.

I did not know there was an article about it though!

Edit: Sorry LQT, didn't mean to Hijack your thread!!

 

[Rakie]

double post**

 

[LQT]

No worries dude... keep my thread alive! I think I'm having the beginnings of the dreaded cyanobacteria outbreak, reddish brown on my sandbead. When it shows up I immediately syphon it out and vacuum the surrounding sand. Reactor back online too w/ 3 TBS high capacity GFO.

 

[Rakie]

Sounds like good steps in the right direction man, I'm not sure if this has been debunked as a myth, but you might also crank the Vortex up a few notches.

I'm running a Jebao PP-4 at full blast pushing (supposedly) 1000gph, I've also got a Tunze 6015 I modded by taking the inner lip off (which limits flow) and it's pushing a TON of water now in a very wide pattern as well, at least 600gph. It seems to match my Jebao and then some, so if the Jebao is working at 70% it's pushing 700gph, and the Tunze is a little more.

So in total guestimate theory -- I'm pushing 1200-1400 gph in my BioCube not counting my return pump, and everything loves it (except algae). That stunted algae growth. it's still living where it took root, but it's not spreading like wildfire.

EDIT: I run regular sized sand, not Oolite, or this probably would be a terrible idea.