Isn't that a lot more work?

[Dustin07]

Looks good. Agree on the pH being a little low. I was having a problem with low pH a while back. But, since I've started dosing soda ash daily, my pH has been around 8 at night and 8.2-8.3 during the day.

well I found some recipes and whanot on on how to bake the baking soda, quantities to start with etc then got home, started testing parameters, feeding the tank, then cooking dinner for my wife cause she had a longer than usual day and completely forgot to bake some soda lol. kH was up slightly but still below 9, Mag seems to have landed specifically at 1350 on the dot.

I'll likely have another late night myself so tonight I won't test anything but tomorrow I'll give it all a gander, see where ph, kh, cal, and mag are and give this soda ash a go!

do you keep a bottle of the soda ash pre mixed that auto doses ? I read to test with 2 tspn at first, but then I read other folks pre mixing a lot more than that into a gallon of distilled water and setting up an auto dose.

 

[griss]

I will say, with the soda ash, my Alk stays around 8 and pH 8-8.2/8.3 as stated above. If I use the soda ash to push the Alk higher, my pH gets too high.

I might start dripping Kalk again in conjunction with the soda ash to see what that does.

 

[Dustin07]

Came home last night to much dirtier than usual glass so I cut the feeding back a lot and just gave the fish some pellets. topped off ATO, checked salinity, and called it a night. I didn't get home until 8pm ish so the lights were already changing to moonlight and the corals were changing for the evening a bit. Didn't test anything, but I have a feeling I'll be testing everything tonight and maybe doing a small water change if something bad happened.

I did add a little reef roids to the tank with Tuesdays feedings, which often causes a spike but that one seemed a little harsh for how little I used. I'm getting close to banning reef roids from my house. Just hard to throw away a 75% full container of useable food.

This morning things looked better, but it was only about 5am and tank lights still off so I spot lighted around and things seem fine.

 

[griss]

do you keep a bottle of the soda ash pre mixed that auto doses ? I read to test with 2 tspn at first, but then I read other folks pre mixing a lot more than that into a gallon of distilled water and setting up an auto dose.

Ooops, I missed this question. I buy the Bulk Reef Supply soda ash, mix it with RODI water and keep a gallon on hand. I don't currently have my dosing pump setup because...I just haven't done it I have a 40 breeder, about 5 gallons in the sump and a 15 gallon refugium. I dose about 10-15mL per day. I only add about 5mL at a time into a high current area. The soda ash solution is highly alkaline and adding too much at once can cause a dangerous spike in pH and can also precipitate calcium out of solution.

 

[Dustin07]

Ooops, I missed this question. I buy the Bulk Reef Supply soda ash, mix it with RODI water and keep a gallon on hand. I don't currently have my dosing pump setup because...I just haven't done it I have a 40 breeder, about 5 gallons in the sump and a 15 gallon refugium. I dose about 10-15mL per day. I only add about 5mL at a time into a high current area. The soda ash solution is highly alkaline and adding too much at once can cause a dangerous spike in pH and can also precipitate calcium out of solution.

Good info, thank you!
yeah I don't have my auto doser set up yet either. I still have to learn how it works for one thing, but for another, I just don't even know for sure how I'm going to set it up (space constraints). although for now I like doing things manually, gives me more interaction with the tank and the products. (learning and observation opportunities)

 

[griss]

Good info, thank you!
yeah I don't have my auto doser set up yet either. I still have to learn how it works for one thing, but for another, I just don't even know for sure how I'm going to set it up (space constraints). although for now I like doing things manually, gives me more interaction with the tank and the products. (learning and observation opportunities)

lol, everyone I meet who hears I have a reef tank always say they hear it's a lot of work. To me, it's not work. I enjoy doing the maintenance.

 

[Dustin07]

lol, everyone I meet who hears I have a reef tank always say they hear it's a lot of work. To me, it's not work. I enjoy doing the maintenance.

I hear that a lot too. I have a couple extra tanks laying around that I had offered to my son and step daughter but they both said they weren't up for the work involved

Tested Mag/Cal/kH, and pH last night.

Cal was about 450
KH was about 9
pH was 8.2-8.4
Mag was only 1290 ish <-despite having dosed Mag daily for the past week or so. I might try a different mag tester. I'm pretty happy to see that my cal, kh, and pH all corrected though.

oh and nitrates were 0.0 lol. I have no idea how that happened.

 

[griss]

Numbers look good. Mag is not too bad but, I agree, get another test to validate.

I think I've mentioned before but, after I added a refugium, I started having to add nitrate to keep it in the 1-10 range. This is what I use but, there are other brands out there that are just as good.

 

[Dustin07]

I think I've mentioned before but, after I added a refugium, I started having to add nitrate to keep it in the 1-10 range. This is what I use but, there are other brands out there that are just as good.

Thanks for the tip! I am starting to think I may need to do that. I retested yesterday before doing a 5% WC. I did mix up the salt significantly before doing the mixing. the salinity on my new redsea salt is very high. I mixed 5.5-6 gallons of water with only 4 servings of salt mix and still ended up at 1.026.

Cal was about 450
KH was about 9+
pH was 8.4+
Mag was 1350

so the numbers are coming back up. I forgot I do have another mag kit so I'll probably test that alone tonight with my other kit. As for my saliferts, a few of them are starting to run low and I've collected so much redundant tests, doses of supplements etc over the year (and with the purchase of this new tank) that I've decided to try to run some of my products to zero then slowly replace things like the saliferts maybe with a Hannah tester one at a time. They're kinda pricey but I like the idea of how their test results work.

I did notice a pimple looking white spot my my clown fish. I saw something like this on her before and it disappeared after a few days in a different location. this one looks like a white head ready to pop. I had shared it on a group on facebook and one person was convinced it was lymphocystis but another that it was Fluke.

 

[Dustin07]

Another fish my wife and I have our eyes on down the road is a foxface rabbit fish, or a yellow tang. I am wondering if anyone has any thoughts or advice on that. I'm aware that the rabbitfish has venemous spines.

I really love the long nosed butterfly but I know it would be a suicide mission for my corals. The foxface was my first pick, but the more we look the more I'm leaning towards the yellow tang.

 

[griss]

Numbers look good. Mag is not too bad but, I agree, get another test to validate.

I think I've mentioned before but, after I added a refugium, I started having to add nitrate to keep it in the 1-10 range. This is what I use but, there are other brands out there that are just as good.

I also don’t feed heavily since I only have 4 fish. A large Clarkii, a medium Fiji Blue Devil, a small Purple Pseudochromis and a small 6-Line Wrasse.

 

[Dustin07]

a medium Fiji Blue Devil,

never again!! ever!

 

[Dustin07]

I told you about how after years of killing my lower corals and causing havoc my damsel killed himself the day I was trying to transfer the tanks over as a final "F U!!" to me to ensure that I could not at least trade him for store credit, right? lol

 

[griss]

I told you about how after years of killing my lower corals and causing havoc my damsel killed himself the day I was trying to transfer the tanks over as a final "F U!!" to me to ensure that I could not at least trade him for store credit, right? lol

Yes, yes you did.

 

[Dustin07]

well I haven't added nitrate yet, but over the weekend I did make some soda ash and start small doses.

1/22/25
Cal = 450
kH = 10.9
Mag = 1280
pH = 8.4
Nitrate = 0
Ammonia = 0

(tested ammonia just because I haven't seen our pearl jawfish in a few days.....)
Mag really doesn't want to go up. regardless of what I do it seems to always want to sit comfortably around 1280.

 

[Dustin07]

Came home a fright last night. corals were much closed up, but tank lighting had already switched to moonlight and was nearly shut down completely. but I could not find my hippo tang anywhere. I was concerned I had lost her and my pearl jawfish this week and I had no idea why I would have lost either since none of my fish are aggressive towards each other and they seem healthy and hungry at feeding time. so I turned the lights back on and whipped up some food to pull the fish out of their caves. after ten minutes of searching I found my pearl jawfish, coming out of his new burrow to eat (LOL). I was ready to give up hope and then out of nowhere my hippo tang comes floating out to snag a late snack.


Finding Nemo really nailed the personality of Dory, these tangs are so aloof and just crack me up.

 

[griss]

Glad you found them.