Mark's 150 (72x18x27)

[markalot]

I'm calling this Acropora confused. It started out bushy green, then grew sideways into a rock, then started getting purple and turquoise tips while the rest of the coral browned out. I swear every day it shows a new shade of something. It also feed heavily, with those filaments coming out whenever food hits the water.

And for Troub, my frogspawn BTA spot. :worried:

 

[Palting]

Gorgeous tank!! You may make me into an LED convert.

 

[Bello]

Looking good Mark :thumbsup:

Sorry to hear about the nudi's . I had them for a bit, and the only thing that worked for me was dipping the hell outta the monti's . Hopefully, they're isolated :thumbsup:

Tank seems to be coming along well though, colors look good and the photography is great :thumbsup:

 

[markalot]

Gorgeous tank!! You may make me into an LED convert.

Thanks, much appreciated! I've only seen Halide at a LFS but I can tell you the shimmer is not the same. LED is almost too much shimmer, but at least these lights do not produce any disco effect.

Looking good Mark :thumbsup:

Sorry to hear about the nudi's . I had them for a bit, and the only thing that worked for me was dipping the hell outta the monti's . Hopefully, they're isolated :thumbsup:

Tank seems to be coming along well though, colors look good and the photography is great :thumbsup:

Thanks Bello, nice to hear from you. I've got a love hate relationship with Monti caps anyway so I'll be watching and tossing anything that shows infestation. I've got some frags of my favorite pieces that I can move to another tank if I have to do anything radical.

 

[troubadour11]

It looks like things are settling down and bouncing after the move and PH swings :thumbsup:

I love the Acropora Confused! LOL That's hilarious how it grew. Was it reaching for a spot of light do you think? Or did you have some crazy type of flow that it decided to follow along in that spot? Any guesses? I haven't seen one grow like that before. But then again, I'm still waiting for anything to show some good growth in my tank. But I'll take alive and healthy looking with slow growth any day. So I'll keep plugging along towards that :bum:

The Pocillopora you have is interesting. I've had them mentioned once or twice that they could be a good, more hardy and less temperamental early addition to my system. What kind of locations (flow/light) do you have them under in your tank?

Both Poci's and Stylophora have been recommended lately. It looks like you might have a few colonies of both? I think I might do some :reading: on both and see. I need hardiness in my SPS right now. At least as best as I can get. I can worry about the super pretty colors once I get some evidence of good growth on a handful of more tolerant pieces.

Good shot of the frogspawn and anemone. They seem like a happy pair. You don't get aggression issues between them being placed and expanding so close to each other? :uzi:

 

[Bello]

Poci's and Stylo's are good additions, Troub, go for it :thumbsup:

Mark, I've the same feelings towards Monti caps as you do...well at least I did. I'd throw away the little cap bits I'd get into the rockwork... And now they've bloody grown really well!! I'm forced to kinda like them now, have about 5 different colors

Good luck with the blasted Nudi's, nothing ruins your tank groove like them bloody pests!!!

 

[markalot]

Poci's and Stylo's are good additions, Troub, go for it :thumbsup:

Mark, I've the same feelings towards Monti caps as you do...well at least I did. I'd throw away the little cap bits I'd get into the rockwork... And now they've bloody grown really well!! I'm forced to kinda like them now, have about 5 different colors

Good luck with the blasted Nudi's, nothing ruins your tank groove like them bloody pests!!!

Thanks Bello!

KH is slowly drifting up. This evening is was 9.0KH so I backed off the Alk dosing 5 ml and will watch it over the next few days. Took a bunch of photos tonight but only had time to process 3 FTS. You can see the slimer has colored back up along with some other corals, while still others are the same or a little worse. Water still stinks so it's not completely settled in yet.







The two yellow tangs are not friends, and they fight a lot, but neither damages the other. The yellow on the right owns the right side while the left yellow owns the left. Once the lights dim down to a certain level they will start swimming together like nothing ever happened. :fun5:

 

[markalot]

So I've got me a PH problem, maybe. We all know not to chase PH right?

I hit a low PH pf 7.6 a little over a week ago. High co2 in the basement is the culprit, best I can tell, and I've been slowly applying variosu methods to try and keep it higher.

co2 scrubber - so far this is by far the most effective, but also the most expensive.

Kalk with topoff - not sure yet. I have timed topoff setup to keep my levels, I removed all the electronics and, based on a weeks of evaporation, setup a timer (Apex OSC) to add Kalk saturated topoff for 30 seconds every 15 minutes.

This morning I took the co2 scrubber offline so i could see what Kalk did on its own, and so far the effect has been pretty dramatic.

Long term chart:

Shorter term. I took the scubber offline just before 7am. Can you see the PH start to drop almost immediately?

PH probe has been calibrated twice with two different batches of pinpoint calibration fluid (7 and 10). I also double checked once with a handheld calibrated with 7.0 solution.

It's ugly. :mad2:

 

[Eric Boerner]

The two yellow tangs are not friends, and they fight a lot, but neither damages the other. The yellow on the right owns the right side while the left yellow owns the left. Once the lights dim down to a certain level they will start swimming together like nothing ever happened. :fun5:

Grab a 1 or 3 more. Yellow tangs are schoolers. They're both trying to enact dominance in the tank for the other to follow. A third will pull the leader out of the 3 of them and the other 2 will follow. 5 will give you a better show to watch.

 

[markalot]

Grab a 1 or 3 more. Yellow tangs are schoolers. They're both trying to enact dominance in the tank for the other to follow. A third will pull the leader out of the 3 of them and the other 2 will follow. 5 will give you a better show to watch.

Thanks Eric, interesting idea. I am hesitant to add another fish but I will think about this.

So the PH issues. We did have a short power failure this morning, after I disabled the co2 scrubber. Ironic. This caused the dosing pump to lock up and not dose all day so Alk dropped a bit, but not too bad. With all this happening I decided to hook the co2 scrubber back up and let it ride for a few days, then maybe try again to disconnect it and see where the PH ends up at.


Latest FTS. Algae on the sandbed is gone, water is suddenly crystal clear, and the slimer is scaring me again with new growth. That beast can grow amazingly fast when conditions are good. If only it was blue.



Tip of this is all new growth over the last week or so, and it's aiming at the SSC on the rock below. Might need to do some trimming. :hammer:

I was finally able to capture the blue the tips of my confused acro are turning. I have such high hopes for this one.

 

[jerzeedevl]

Wow, that looks so amazing. It's tanks like this that made me want to try reef keeping. Very nice! One question, I noticed you said you had some BML strips...if you're looking to part ways with any of them let me know!

 

[markalot]

Wow, that looks so amazing. It's tanks like this that made me want to try reef keeping. Very nice! One question, I noticed you said you had some BML strips...if you're looking to part ways with any of them let me know!

Thanks.

I like all my BML strips so I'm hanging onto them!

 

[Bello]

Tank looks great Mark :thumbsup:

Wish I could help with the pH issues, but I've never dealt with a situation like yours.

 

[markalot]

Tank looks great Mark :thumbsup:

Wish I could help with the pH issues, but I've never dealt with a situation like yours.

Thanks Bello. The PH issue was unexpected, especially since we have cheap aluminum windows in the basement. House was built in 1985 so I thought it might be leaky, but apparently not. Ah well. I'm using a TLF reactor to hold the co2 scrubber media. I need a bigger container so I don't have to change it as often and then it won't be so bad.

Or tell the rest of the family not to exhale so much!

 

[Bello]

Or tell the rest of the family not to exhale so much!

Wonder if that could work :lol:

 

[markalot]

Time to post some updates. Tank is doing great, except I had to throw out most, but not all, of my monti caps due to MEN. Looks like they may have been thriving for months in my 46 without my knowledge. Ah well, the Xenia got tossed with them so that's a good thing, and the opportunity to re-arrange some corals is always fun.

I'll start with some of my latest pics, and then discuss the PH experiments I've been doing.

FTS from the chair.



Had some fun with side shots. These are a few days later and the corals have really been coloring up, but I swear they are always more colorful from the side than from the front. Why?

Cardinal School

My small SPS frags are really starting to grow.

 

[markalot]

Tried my hand at some blue light photos. Some of the colors are accurate, some a little over exposed, and yet some more brighter to the eye than they are to the camera. Razors are at 80% blue, 20% white for these photos.

 

[markalot]

Now, about that PH. I tinkered with a lot of things and ended going back to a completely covered display top (glass and inserts) with a completely open sump. Skimmer air intake is hooked up outside, and my sump air stones are hooked to an air pump that simply pulls in stale house air.

During this experiment the house stayed closed up, and topoff remained constant with Kalk mixed in at full strength.

I did one probe calibration check, you can see a spike in graph, and I also spot checked all readings with a calibrated handheld PH probe.

This all started when my PH suddenly fell to lower than 7.7 after I re-covered the top of the tank with glass lids. I came to the conclusion that lack of aeration caused the big co2 buildup in the display which drove down PH and, as I experienced in the past, if I did not correct this it would go even lower as the days progressed until it became a real issue.

Then my mad scheming brain came up with a hypothesis I wanted to test as best I could. If aeration was a problem then I should be able to drive PH up high during the day due to all the o2 production and somewhat mitigate the co2 buildup at night by running the air stones and sump fan on high to increase evaporation and gas exchange.

After having the air pump turned on for nearly 24 hours I decided to put it on a timer, based on PH rise and fall, so the pump would turn on in the evening, around 9pm, when PH started to drop, and turn off at 2PM once PH had been rising for a few hours. This worked well, seemingly, and since I'm not a scientist I made yet another change the next day and this time had the air pump shut off at noon. Even better PH. So this morning I manually shut the air pump off at 8am, the typical low PH point, so I could see what happened. I'm trending higher than any previous day so far, but unfortunately something else changed ...

Kids went back to school this morning so I lost two co2 factories. Does it make a difference? Anyway, I'm happy with any PH reading above 7.8, so for now I seem to be in the clear. I'm hunting for a new air pump that can pull air from a hose so I can hook them up to my oversize external hose and pull fresh air instead of room air. Right now I have one of those cheap "silent" air pumps that you can hear next door.

 

[adddo]

Nice tank and pictures!

 

[markalot]

Nice tank and pictures!

Thanks Adddo!