JBNY's 270 Ver2.0
- Thread starter JB NY
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rocknut
Rocky
Hello Joe,
Just wanted to say that I have always enjoyed following your tanks in the past, and this newest reboot is certainly no exception. It’s kind of funny, I haven’t really been on Reefcentral much over the past year, probably because I haven’t really enjoyed the hobby much as the result of dealing with a lot of problems with my current 150 gallon tank, in part relating to some big nutrient imbalances, carbon dosing, weird algae blooms, mass coral death, tank covered in dinos and cyano, etc. Anyway, about a month ago I decided that instead of carbon dosing via Zeovit, or biopellets, or whatever, I was going to step back to something similar to how I set up my first tank about 15 years ago: good quality live rock, sand, big skimmer, and macro algae for nutrient processing. With this plan in mind, I hop back on Reefcentral and discover that there are several reefkeepers that seem to be doing something similar! Moving forward with the theory that it is better to model your approach based on how a few successful reefkeepers are running their tanks, as opposed to borrowing bits and pieces from how many are doing it, and throwing it all together, your tank seems to be closely inline to what I am trying to do.
Anyway, I wanted to pick your brain about using macro algae, and specifically your ARID reactor. After running this setup for a while, would you still recommend going with this reactor over a more traditional macro algae refugium? In my current tank, I have had high NO3 (like 40 – 50 ppm) and nearly zero PO4 for about two years. Nothing that I do seems to make any difference: dosing PO4 to correct the imbalance, lots of water changes, zeovit, Red Sea NOPOX, Ecobak pellets, etc. I am going to break my tank down over the weekend, and start over using Tampa Bay Saltwater live rock and sand (and deal with the associated hitchhikers), but my main concern is NOT using any sort of carbon dosing going forward. With this in mind, I could either set up a separate maybe 50 gallon refugium with a deep sand bed and macro algae, and plumb it into the tank, or go with a Pax Bellum ARID reactor. The traditional refugium does have the advantage of being a place to put my live rock hitchhikers, etc, but at the end of the day, I just really, really don’t want to have a bunch of nutrient issues with this new tank reboot.
Again, love your tank, and hope I can get mine to look half as good as yours someday. Thanks for your time!
Rocky
Just wanted to say that I have always enjoyed following your tanks in the past, and this newest reboot is certainly no exception. It’s kind of funny, I haven’t really been on Reefcentral much over the past year, probably because I haven’t really enjoyed the hobby much as the result of dealing with a lot of problems with my current 150 gallon tank, in part relating to some big nutrient imbalances, carbon dosing, weird algae blooms, mass coral death, tank covered in dinos and cyano, etc. Anyway, about a month ago I decided that instead of carbon dosing via Zeovit, or biopellets, or whatever, I was going to step back to something similar to how I set up my first tank about 15 years ago: good quality live rock, sand, big skimmer, and macro algae for nutrient processing. With this plan in mind, I hop back on Reefcentral and discover that there are several reefkeepers that seem to be doing something similar! Moving forward with the theory that it is better to model your approach based on how a few successful reefkeepers are running their tanks, as opposed to borrowing bits and pieces from how many are doing it, and throwing it all together, your tank seems to be closely inline to what I am trying to do.
Anyway, I wanted to pick your brain about using macro algae, and specifically your ARID reactor. After running this setup for a while, would you still recommend going with this reactor over a more traditional macro algae refugium? In my current tank, I have had high NO3 (like 40 – 50 ppm) and nearly zero PO4 for about two years. Nothing that I do seems to make any difference: dosing PO4 to correct the imbalance, lots of water changes, zeovit, Red Sea NOPOX, Ecobak pellets, etc. I am going to break my tank down over the weekend, and start over using Tampa Bay Saltwater live rock and sand (and deal with the associated hitchhikers), but my main concern is NOT using any sort of carbon dosing going forward. With this in mind, I could either set up a separate maybe 50 gallon refugium with a deep sand bed and macro algae, and plumb it into the tank, or go with a Pax Bellum ARID reactor. The traditional refugium does have the advantage of being a place to put my live rock hitchhikers, etc, but at the end of the day, I just really, really don’t want to have a bunch of nutrient issues with this new tank reboot.
Again, love your tank, and hope I can get mine to look half as good as yours someday. Thanks for your time!
Rocky
JB NY
Active member
Thanks Rocky!
I would still go for the ARID after using it for the last year. It works much better than any refugium I had in the past. It deals some real damage to Nitrates as well as Phosphates. I stopped all carbon dosing and GFO when I put the ARID online and haven't had any need for either of them since. Tristan over at Pax Bellum is very helpful and would be fine with you asking some questions on how a unit would or wouldn't work in your system. I've known Tristan for a while so you can tell him I said he would help you out.
JB NY
Active member
A little update. Things are going really good.
Since switching to dosing using the Triton products, I have seen, to me, a remarkable turnaround. This thread was created to help me get the tank back in top form. But over the last year since I started the thread I feel that is has been nothing but ups and downs. Since the switch mid January however, the tank is looking the best it has in years. Growth and coloration have picked up on almost all corals. Even corals that seemed to have gone dormant on me are showing some growth and coloration.
One of the more telling examples of how much the tank has recovered is the amount I am now dosing from what I was when I first started. Going back to when I had the Calcium reactor on the tank, I was using 17ml/min which is very little. In the past when my tank was really doing well I had the effluent at about 90ml/min. 17ml/min really made me aware of how little was happening in the tank even with some growth spurts here and there. At such low levels nothing much could happen, and in the back of my mind it was an ever present reminder that the tank was not recovering.
When I first switched to Triton I was initially at 190ml a day for dosing. Which was only slightly above their recommenced 10ml per 100L. So dosing 190ml in the beginning looked to be in line with what I was adding when using the Ca reactor. That amount stayed steady for about two weeks, then I started to see my alk dip so I raised the dose, and every week had to raise it a little more. After a month I was dosing at 270ml. Now, after a little over 2 months I am at 310ml. Alk is steady at 7.7dKH. For me, in addition to the pictures last week, that is proof that I am moving in a positive direction for the corals as this gives me some confirmation that I've got some real growth happening in the tank.
Here is what else I have done and am currenlty doing.
I had another Triton test done at the beginning of March and decided to add a few elements to get them up to spec, specifically Molybdenum (Mo) and Nickel (Ni). Nickel I debated a little but it is included in most trace element mixtures so I decided to dose a little over half the recommended amount.
Currenlty dosing weekly Iodine and Zinc, dialy Mn and KNO3. I was dosing Vanadium weekly but it showed up high in the last test so I stopped dosing.
No water changes since mid January. Been using carbon with no problems at all too. Cheato is growing again in the ARID reactor.
Triton test results from March 1 2016 below.
Vanadium you can see is a little high, I stoped dosing V because of this.
Other than that I think it is pretty good.
Since switching to dosing using the Triton products, I have seen, to me, a remarkable turnaround. This thread was created to help me get the tank back in top form. But over the last year since I started the thread I feel that is has been nothing but ups and downs. Since the switch mid January however, the tank is looking the best it has in years. Growth and coloration have picked up on almost all corals. Even corals that seemed to have gone dormant on me are showing some growth and coloration.
One of the more telling examples of how much the tank has recovered is the amount I am now dosing from what I was when I first started. Going back to when I had the Calcium reactor on the tank, I was using 17ml/min which is very little. In the past when my tank was really doing well I had the effluent at about 90ml/min. 17ml/min really made me aware of how little was happening in the tank even with some growth spurts here and there. At such low levels nothing much could happen, and in the back of my mind it was an ever present reminder that the tank was not recovering.
When I first switched to Triton I was initially at 190ml a day for dosing. Which was only slightly above their recommenced 10ml per 100L. So dosing 190ml in the beginning looked to be in line with what I was adding when using the Ca reactor. That amount stayed steady for about two weeks, then I started to see my alk dip so I raised the dose, and every week had to raise it a little more. After a month I was dosing at 270ml. Now, after a little over 2 months I am at 310ml. Alk is steady at 7.7dKH. For me, in addition to the pictures last week, that is proof that I am moving in a positive direction for the corals as this gives me some confirmation that I've got some real growth happening in the tank.
Here is what else I have done and am currenlty doing.
I had another Triton test done at the beginning of March and decided to add a few elements to get them up to spec, specifically Molybdenum (Mo) and Nickel (Ni). Nickel I debated a little but it is included in most trace element mixtures so I decided to dose a little over half the recommended amount.
Currenlty dosing weekly Iodine and Zinc, dialy Mn and KNO3. I was dosing Vanadium weekly but it showed up high in the last test so I stopped dosing.
No water changes since mid January. Been using carbon with no problems at all too. Cheato is growing again in the ARID reactor.
Triton test results from March 1 2016 below.
Vanadium you can see is a little high, I stoped dosing V because of this.
Other than that I think it is pretty good.
JB NY
Active member
A new piece of equipment I am trying out, the icecap doser for my KNO3. So far so good, setup and calibration was very easy. Right now I think I am dosing about .4ppm a day.
Also I had a quick impromptu get together with some reefing buddies two weeks ago and Sanjay dumped a big box of frags on me, and Laura from ReefGen gave me a bunch of corals as well. Ended up with about 25 frags, so score for me!
Me being like "All these frags are for me!" Sanjay being all sad that his frags are leaving him.
Sanjay explaining what he thinks is in each bag. I was only able to remember like two of them.
Bad cell pic of all the frags when I put them in the frag tank. I'll get some better pics of them soon, I'll be moving them up to the DT soon.
Also I had a quick impromptu get together with some reefing buddies two weeks ago and Sanjay dumped a big box of frags on me, and Laura from ReefGen gave me a bunch of corals as well. Ended up with about 25 frags, so score for me!
Me being like "All these frags are for me!" Sanjay being all sad that his frags are leaving him.
Sanjay explaining what he thinks is in each bag. I was only able to remember like two of them.
Bad cell pic of all the frags when I put them in the frag tank. I'll get some better pics of them soon, I'll be moving them up to the DT soon.
mhucasey
Acros & wieners, oh my!
Very interesting on the Triton results, I'm fascinated to see the elements that they test for are added so specifically. Manganese and Zinc are becoming quite interesting elements in the overall mix - I think depletion of these elements as well as Iodine can be a big problem in SPS tanks.
JB NY
Active member
I like the doser. I am used to using them with my apex controller, and this one doesn't use it, so that took so getting use to. Basically you set the amount to dose and the time that is will dose, and it does it automatically based on the time that you adjusted the time to dose. So I want to dose 10ml once a day at 8:15 in the morning, I had to make sure to set the 1 a day time at 8:15am. Now it doses 10ml once a day at 8:15am.
So for the control it gives and options it has, I think that it is a very good deal for the price.
So for the control it gives and options it has, I think that it is a very good deal for the price.
JB NY
Active member
The other day I was looking at the tank with just the LED dusk lighting on and noticed one of the frags that I pulled from the frag tank about 4 months ago that was covered with algae and not looking too good. I have it on the bottom front and it went dormant almost a year ago and was just a grayish brown color. In all honesty I pretty much forgot about it because of both it's poor placement and it's looks. So image my surprise when I notice some orange florescence being thrown off the top of the acro under LED. So the next day I took a real look at it, and sure enough it was getting some color!
Here is what it currently looks like. I am blown away by this. I don't think I have an older pic because it has been in the tank so long and never really took off.
Anyway here it is.
Here is what it currently looks like. I am blown away by this. I don't think I have an older pic because it has been in the tank so long and never really took off.
Anyway here it is.
JB NY
Active member
Me too! That one little change is actually, to me, the most exciting thing that has happened recently.
UC I think they are the only place to buy in the states.
mhucasey
Acros & wieners, oh my!
"House of Sticks" also carries the Triton line
maxxII
Super Housemonkey!
UC, Ultimate Corals?
JB NY
Active member
Unique Corals
