LPS looking drab, unhappy...

[alanbates12]

I"m sure this is in the thread but honestly I'm lazy right now, when you added your sump did you use RODI water to fill it up and was the salinity the same as the tank.

 

[Reef Bass]

+1 for BRS dosing supplement dry ingredients. I get calcium chloride for calcium supplement, and magnesium chloride and magnesium sulfate for magnesium supplement. For alkalinity supplement I get the 13lb bag of Arm & Hammer baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) from Costco.

I mix the dry ingredients with ro/di water in accordance with Randy's recipe 2 as my tank pH is high enough already. I would suggest starting with recipe 1 unless your pH is already 8.3 or more.

 

[~RuSh~]

I"m sure this is in the thread but honestly I'm lazy right now, when you added your sump did you use RODI water to fill it up and was the salinity the same as the tank.

When I added the sump I used RODI water and mixed salt as well. I had three 5g buckets full of good water at roughly 1020-1025 for the sump. It's possible that is where the drop in salinity came from, but I thought it would be a non-issue. I usually keep salinity around 1025.

 

[alanbates12]

An off subject question, Assuming you have a skimmer and it's in your sump do you have an Auto Top Off system. This will help a few things. 1, it will keep your water level the same hence no fluctuation in your salinity. 2, It will keep the area where your skimmer is located at a constant level and keep it from doing to much or to little skimming. If the level is to low your skimmer may have a difficult time and if it's to high your skimmer may go crazy. Just FYI. Also there are plenty of DIY ATO systems

 

[~RuSh~]

An off subject question, Assuming you have a skimmer and it's in your sump do you have an Auto Top Off system. This will help a few things. 1, it will keep your water level the same hence no fluctuation in your salinity. 2, It will keep the area where your skimmer is located at a constant level and keep it from doing to much or to little skimming. If the level is to low your skimmer may have a difficult time and if it's to high your skimmer may go crazy. Just FYI. Also there are plenty of DIY ATO systems

I don't have an ATO. This is my first sump and to be honest I'm still getting comfortable with the idea of being away for the weekend while this thing is still running. It makes me nervous. I've taken every precaution I can think of but it still is always in the back of my mind.

I've heard of ATO's having float valves stick and flood sumps too. I think an ATO is in my future at some point... it just makes too much sense not to do it, but I've got to really dial in my sump first. I want to get some macro algae, a good pod population, a light, a filter sock, and some more mechanical filtration... oh, and a cover, because I get a lot of micro-bubbles in the drain chamber. And now, maybe a few reactors, Phosban, and GFO would be nice. Once I have all of that taken care of, I'll look at the ATO. I'm really new and not very good at the DIY stuff so I need to take it one step at a time.

 

[alanbates12]

Here is a video of my sump system and ATO. Maybe it will give you some ideas..It's been running for close to two years and the ATO has had one switch fail but I had a backup switch that stoped it. You can build redundancey into your system and even buy a controler that will send you a text or email to tell you your water is to full. The sky is the limit, pending the budget

<embed width="600" height="361" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullscreen="true" allowNetworking="all" wmode="transparent" src="http://static.photobucket.com/player.swf" flashvars="file=http%3A%2F%2Fvid921.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fad59%2Frab1212%2F30634bde.mp4">

 

[~RuSh~]

Ok, so a few things.

I got home last night around 8pm. Things looked dreary. Near what they did when I first snapped pics. Frogspawn and Hammer were both quite retracted. Before I left friday afternoon, I moved the frogspawn into a lower region of the tank where it would get a little less flow.

The move didn't seem to make things better, but I also don't think it's a reason for the frog declining either. Since I saw the improvement, I stopped running the carbon. I figured whatever was in the water was removed, but I think I'm going to start running it again and if there is noticeable improvement again, then I'll just have to keep running it.

Can LTA's release chemicals? I'm thinking this may be the cause of the decline. After moving everything around maybe the LTA was upset and began releasing chemicals irritating the frog and hammer? Is this a possibility?

 

[alanbates12]

I've heard of that. Usually it kills everything in the tank. I'm still going with a flow issue. All your levels look good and just adding a sump should not cause this. How many power heads do you have. Did you move them around. Mayby try changing the flow and see how that works. Sometimes the best cure is to do nothing. If your water is good, and it looked to be good, I'd leave it alone. May at most move some things around. I know my frog did not like a lot of flow nor did my trump. I moved them into a low flow area and they look awesome.

 

[~RuSh~]

I didn't move any of the powerheads. I have two Koralia 750's and the return. The pump on the return is a Quiet one 1200 which does 296 gph, but with head loss I'm probably right around 220 gph.

If anything, the flow to the two euphyllia has been reduced due to the addition of the new live rock. I had moved the frog down to the sand bed and there it gets very little flow at all. Today it's mouths are gaped and zooxanthellae is excreting.

If the flow was the issue, I would expect the hammer to be improving since it hasn't been moved since the re-scape. It's had the same flow the whole time and while I ran carbon for the few days I had, it showed improvement. It hasn't been moved since and now looks retracted and unhappy again.

I need new carbon, and I'll be looking for a higher quality carbon than I had been running, hopefully a pellet form and maybe I'll just stash a big bag in the sump instead of running it through the magnum HOT I had been running.

Zoas and LTA remain healthy and look good... I'm puzzled still.

 

[alanbates12]

I'm curious was your sump a prefab, old aquarium or someone gave it to you.....

 

[greech]

I had three 5g buckets full of good water at roughly 1020-1025 for the sump. It's possible that is where the drop in salinity came from, but I thought it would be a non-issue. I usually keep salinity around 1025.

I may be way off base but I think this is where the issue may have originated from and you may still be having fluctuations in SG depending on your evaporation rate. Adding 15 gallons of water with a +/- .005 variance to an existing system could very well stress some things out for a few days. Things seemed to have improved after a couple of days of bringing the sump online but then you mentioned being gone for the weekend. Did anyone top off your tank while you were away? I don't run an ATO either but manually top off my sump twice a day. 2days without a topoff would be a fairly decent swing and then another swing once you did top it off.

I'm betting you have a good instrument for gauging SG but if by chance you have not confirmed your SG with a trusted hydrometer or better yet, refractometer, you may want to do so before trying to tweak any parameters through dosing. I made this mistake and couldn't beleive something so simple as a false SG reading gave me such headaches.

Hope things take a turn for the better (or already have ).

 

[~RuSh~]

I do have a refractometer.

I left Friday night and topped off before I left, and came back Sunday evening. I was only gone for just over a day, but there was significant evaporation in that small amount of time. SG was 1026 when I got home...

I have left my tank go longer and have experienced fluctuations of up to .005 before without much consequence. I'm not saying this isn't the issue, I just don't know if it is the primary issue. I'll get a pic of the frog when I get home... It looked bad last night...

 

[~RuSh~]

I'm curious was your sump a prefab, old aquarium or someone gave it to you.....

DIY. New aquarium. Acrylic baffles. 100% silicone used for the baffles and pvc glue used for the plumbing.

 

[~RuSh~]

PS, thanks for sticking with me guys... I know not seeing improvement can be discouraging and hard to follow... I just hope this guy pulls through. It was one of my very first corals.

 

[alanbates12]

I do have a refractometer.

I left Friday night and topped off before I left, and came back Sunday evening. I was only gone for just over a day, but there was significant evaporation in that small amount of time. SG was 1026 when I got home...

I have left my tank go longer and have experienced fluctuations of up to .005 before without much consequence. I'm not saying this isn't the issue, I just don't know if it is the primary issue. I'll get a pic of the frog when I get home... It looked bad last night...

I used a refractometer and had a run of bad luck. The arm was sticking and not giving me an accurate reading, I had no idea. Because I trusted my reading I added more salt and lost a few things in my tank. I'm not quite sure because this could have been because I was very new and was doing lots of stuff wrong but I went on line and bought a Milwaukee MA887 refractometer and its GREAT. So now I do only a few things wrong. You use RODI water to zero and when your ready to test it's a couple drops of water and push a button. Now I do push the button three times and usually it will give me a reading of 1.025 twice and maybe 1.024 once. So I call this 1.025. I'm very happy with it. It's a bit pricey, $110.00, but what in this hobby isn't. The satisfaction of knowing my salinity is spot on is worth it to me. Check it out, http://www.milwaukeetesters.com/MA887.html

 

[windyridge]

I prefer RedSea testing kits for Ca and Mg. They are refillable, convenient and there are also videos on both tests to show you exactly how to do them, on Youtube.

 

[~RuSh~]

Yesterday after work, I went to the pet store and picked up some new carbon. I also grabbed a few mesh bags and filled them both and put them in the first chamber of my sump. I also grabbed some filter pads for added mechanical filtration and added those to the sump as well.

I fed the acans last night. They all had feeders out and accepted greedily. The candy cane, and trumpet were closed up pretty tight. The frog and hammer, as I stated in yesterdays post were looking pretty bad. I'll get pics here in a second.

 

[~RuSh~]

I used a refractometer and had a run of bad luck. The arm was sticking and not giving me an accurate reading, I had no idea. Because I trusted my reading I added more salt and lost a few things in my tank. I'm not quite sure because this could have been because I was very new and was doing lots of stuff wrong but I went on line and bought a Milwaukee MA887 refractometer and its GREAT. So now I do only a few things wrong. You use RODI water to zero and when your ready to test it's a couple drops of water and push a button. Now I do push the button three times and usually it will give me a reading of 1.025 twice and maybe 1.024 once. So I call this 1.025. I'm very happy with it. It's a bit pricey, $110.00, but what in this hobby isn't. The satisfaction of knowing my salinity is spot on is worth it to me. Check it out, http://www.milwaukeetesters.com/MA887.html

The type I have has the eye piece you look through and the level of SG is indicated by a blue line. I assume its much more accurate than the plastic hydrometer I had been using. I should probably zero it out and recalibrate though, it's been almost a year since I did that.

 

[~RuSh~]

Frog as of last night. I did pick it up and move it back to it's original spot. I think it was doing better there actually though it's getting hard to tell if there has been any improvement in the past week or so.

Hammer seems to be hanging tough. It's retracted, but all of the polyps look decent. Hopefully I can get this guy to bounce back.

And a pic of some zoas. Green Envy People Eaters. Seem to be doing well during this whole escapade...

 

[trinidiver]

The type I have has the eye piece you look through and the level of SG is indicated by a blue line. I assume its much more accurate than the plastic hydrometer I had been using. I should probably zero it out and recalibrate though, it's been almost a year since I did that.

i bought one of those and one of the best investment i myself made when it comes to that. I had one of the plastic ones t first and when i checked it was giving me a reading of 1.022 compared to my new one 1.025. When it comes to having a reef tank, you really need to be spot on.