Mhucasey's SPS obsession

[glaukos]

Just my 02 cents guys,just saying this in advance

K.C . hit one special spot(at least for me),regarding the reports of hobbyists and how much of a proof they can be.
Imho a post someone makes can be an argument,an opinion,a personal experience etc(and thank God people go into all this trouble of sharing them) but not a solid proof nor a scientific study.
I hate seeing or participating in "reefing fights" based on what "someone" said.
As we all know every tank is and works different than the next one and that alone can make what i saw/tried in my tank,false in another hobbyist's eyes.

In addition the ego that some trolls(needless to say i'm not referring to you guys:beer: -i'm referring to the one and only) have ,can many times make them say things that simply are not true.I'm sure you have witnessed it a few times.
Trolls and egos,feed from attention and what better way to gain it,than saying something new,weird,supposedly groundbreaking etc
For example i think that i'm the best reefer around and a pioneer.I'll try and swear that throwing m&m's in the tank took it to another level.Coral's growth rate tripled and the fish are glowing.
So when my tank crashes because of that(m&m dosing ),my ego will make some good excuse like(random example) my siporax ruined my tank.I haven't tested for it but i'm sure it leached something bad in my tank.etc
So i deceived you two times and if you embraced what i said and used it as your opinion,you helped spread my "fairy tails".
Off course if the fairy tail is exposed,trolls don't take the blame and say...it's not my fault,he said it lol

I swear there are people here that i'd trust my own tank and if they'd say mike add to your tank pepsi,it'll make your corals "fly"...i would....but at the same time that's not making their suggestions holy bible material,solid arguments(especially not to use them in other forums like the troll does) or scientific research...no matter how much i trust them.
After all what they said it might just not work in my tank.
So whenever i see mike1 say,"mike2 said or reported that",i have second thoughts

Regarding the no3 my reading atm is 25.
I'm not worried but i know that if i get them lower colors will improve.No they are a bit dark compared to when they where at 1-2.
Growth slowed a bit but i can't tell if that is a result from no3 being at 25 or their sudden(i stopped my bio pellet reactor) rise.
As for the fish they look healthy but after all even if they are causing/caused them anything bad i really can't say or test for it.

Just my humble opinion/thoughts driven from what K.C. mentioned about the hobbyist's reports:beer:

Sorry for all that rumble too

 

[mhucasey]

Hi Matt,

What is the coral growth in your tank in these days? How does it compare to the days before starting to use AF products? Brown patches you get on your glass are likely to be diatoms.

Thanks

Bulent, coral growth really took off in the last month since I went to blue plus bulbs to replace the LED tubes and Actinics, and balanced the Calcium and Alkalinity. You are probaly right about the diatoms, my point in the post was more toward the observation that the growth was not green microalgae.

 

[mhucasey]

Just my 02 cents guys,just saying this in advance

K.C . hit one special spot(at least for me),regarding the reports of hobbyists and how much of a proof they can be.
Imho a post someone makes can be an argument,an opinion,a personal experience etc(and thank God people go into all this trouble of sharing them) but not a solid proof nor a scientific study.
I hate seeing or participating in "reefing fights" based on what "someone" said.
As we all know every tank is and works different than the next one and that alone can make what i saw/tried in my tank,false in another hobbyist's eyes.

In addition the ego that some trolls(needless to say i'm not referring to you guys:beer: -i'm referring to the one and only) have ,can many times make them say things that simply are not true.I'm sure you have witnessed it a few times.
Trolls and egos,feed from attention and what better way to gain it,than saying something new,weird,supposedly groundbreaking etc
For example i think that i'm the best reefer around and a pioneer.I'll try and swear that throwing m&m's in the tank took it to another level.Coral's growth rate tripled and the fish are glowing.
So when my tank crashes because of that(m&m dosing ),my ego will make some good excuse like(random example) my siporax ruined my tank.I haven't tested for it but i'm sure it leached something bad in my tank.etc
So i deceived you two times and if you embraced what i said and used it as your opinion,you helped spread my "fairy tails".
Off course if the fairy tail is exposed,trolls don't take the blame and say...it's not my fault,he said it lol

I swear there are people here that i'd trust my own tank and if they'd say mike add to your tank pepsi,it'll make your corals "fly"...i would....but at the same time that's not making their suggestions holy bible material,solid arguments(especially not to use them in other forums like the troll does) or scientific research...no matter how much i trust them.
After all what they said it might just not work in my tank.
So whenever i see mike1 say,"mike2 said or reported that",i have second thoughts

Regarding the no3 my reading atm is 25.
I'm not worried but i know that if i get them lower colors will improve.No they are a bit dark compared to when they where at 1-2.
Growth slowed a bit but i can't tell if that is a result from no3 being at 25 or their sudden(i stopped my bio pellet reactor) rise.
As for the fish they look healthy but after all even if they are causing/caused them anything bad i really can't say or test for it.

Just my humble opinion/thoughts driven from what K.C. mentioned about the hobbyist's reports:beer:

Sorry for all that rumble too

What color M&Ms work best Mike?

 

[mhucasey]

Some growth/color comparisons:

 

[Scorpius]

^It's crazy how much color acro's can change based on nutrients and light.

 

[DiscusHeckel]

Some corals grew faster than others, which one would expect. Nevertheless, I would say the growth rate is very good. Plenty of nitrogen as food source must have spoiled the corals. Has there been any change in phosphate readings since last February. Apologies if you already mentioned this.

 

[milsaltnewbie07]

What bulb combo are you using now Matt. Crazy *** growth brother wow....

 

[mhucasey]

^It's crazy how much color acro's can change based on nutrients and light.

Yep, pretty much all the acros become saturated in short order. Sometimes it would be nice to have more delicate colors in some of the acros but that's just not the way this system works...

Some corals grew faster than others, which one would expect. Nevertheless, I would say the growth rate is very good. Plenty of nitrogen as food source must have spoiled the corals. Has there been any change in phosphate readings since last February. Apologies if you already mentioned this.

The growth has really been mostly in May, there are lots of other corals that have grown enormously, but these were some of the corals I take regular pictures of from the same angle. Phosphate, last I checked (in April) was 0.07ppm. I don't know what it is these days - I'm out of reagent packets and I haven't felt like getting more.

What bulb combo are you using now Matt. Crazy *** growth brother wow....

Color, I will agree with. Growth is good but could be better. Currently I am using 4 coral plus, 2 Fiji Purple, 8 blue plus.

 

[mhucasey]

Update:
The Sulfur denitrator is working well, just a bit of a pain keeping the drip rate where I want it. It so happens that the peristaltic pump pulls water through the Calcium reactor at almost the same rate as the Sulfur reactor, so I plumbed them together.

The water is pulled from the sump, through the Sulfur Denitrator, then through the calcium reactor. At the end I have denitrified, fortified water:thumbsup:

 

[Pife]

Update:
The Sulfur denitrator is working well, just a bit of a pain keeping the drip rate where I want it. It so happens that the peristaltic pump pulls water through the Calcium reactor at almost the same rate as the Sulfur reactor, so I plumbed them together.

The water is pulled from the sump, through the Sulfur Denitrator, then through the calcium reactor. At the end I have denitrified, fortified water:thumbsup:

Brilliant!

Now I know what to do work my spare cole parmer.

 

[FloformAustria]

Some growth/color comparisons:

growth is amazing!!
color is hard to tell... looks like different white balance in the comparison shots... but the change is in every coral you showed is great!! :bounce2::bounce3:

Keep those pictures coming! ^^

Flo

 

[plyle02]

Yep, Flo beat me to the punch so to speak, I see major growth in the comparison pics, great stuff Matt! Glad to see the NO3 coming down, that plan is brilliant, but most importantly efficient. I swear, if the world comes to an end, us reefers will Macgyver are way through it, lol.... Some will not get that reference, but I am sure you are close enough to my age to get it Out of curiosity, did you find your source of NO3? I had a rise in them myself, and thought immediately to look at the AF stuff too, but after I changed my flow in the tank, causing a detritus storm, I realized that it was settling in the display. A week later my NO3 dropped from 10ppm to 2ppm. I also believe that I need to expand with more siporax, so that is on the bucket list too Tank and corals are looking great as always man! Cheers

 

[reefmutt]

Some growth/color comparisons:

Fantastic, Matt. Good growth and health and color. Nice!

Update:
The Sulfur denitrator is working well, just a bit of a pain keeping the drip rate where I want it. It so happens that the peristaltic pump pulls water through the Calcium reactor at almost the same rate as the Sulfur reactor, so I plumbed them together.

The water is pulled from the sump, through the Sulfur Denitrator, then through the calcium reactor. At the end I have denitrified, fortified water:thumbsup:

Brilliant, indeed!

I don't worry much about Nitrates, perhaps I could have been clearer about that. I prefer keeping Nitrates closer to 5ppm because I had excellent color and growth at that level. I figure that even though the tank currently looks great I may be able to get even better color and growth with Nitrates at ideal levels-it's a sickness, really:wildone:
Since the corals were thriving at these levels, I didn't think that using "Nitrates are bad for corals" as a reason for lowering nitrates was valid. My memory was that fish didn't do well in high nitrate tanks either, but I didn't research it or anything.
The Salifert test kit thing isn't applicable here. The solution is darker than it was 6 months ago by a lot. Plus this week I started using the fourth Nitrate test kit I've had since starting Aquaforest. All the cards match anyhow.

Beware of Thales as a model as well. I was impressed by the weird kind of mojo he had brewing in his tank but as you can see in that post, it eventually caught up with him in a round of serious RTN and then he had a total wipeout of all his acros. He is trying to clean his tank up now with automatic daily water changes.

Yeah.. So whatever happened to using nsw as a benchmark for food tank params?

 

[FloformAustria]

Yep, Flo beat me to the punch so to speak, I see major growth in the comparison pics, great stuff Matt! Glad to see the NO3 coming down, that plan is brilliant, but most importantly efficient. I swear, if the world comes to an end, us reefers will Macgyver are way through it, lol.... Some will not get that reference, but I am sure you are close enough to my age to get it Out of curiosity, did you find your source of NO3? I had a rise in them myself, and thought immediately to look at the AF stuff too, but after I changed my flow in the tank, causing a detritus storm, I realized that it was settling in the display. A week later my NO3 dropped from 10ppm to 2ppm. I also believe that I need to expand with more siporax, so that is on the bucket list too Tank and corals are looking great as always man! Cheers

i got the reference and i´m way younger than you guys

 

[mhucasey]

Brilliant!

Now I know what to do work my spare cole parmer.

Why the spare? I pull the water through both reactors with just one peristaltic pump. The only downside is there is more gas buildup in the Calcium reactor so I need to bleed it a bit more often. Today I had 5ppm nitrates out of the whole thing while the tank is over 50.

growth is amazing!!
color is hard to tell... looks like different white balance in the comparison shots... but the change is in every coral you showed is great!! :bounce2::bounce3:

Keep those pictures coming! ^^

Flo

Thanks Flo. The bulb selection has changed a bit more toward blue lately. I went to all ATI for the Blue and white(coral plus) bulbs and there is a stronger blue cast to the tank then before.

 

[mhucasey]

Yep, Flo beat me to the punch so to speak, I see major growth in the comparison pics, great stuff Matt! Glad to see the NO3 coming down, that plan is brilliant, but most importantly efficient. I swear, if the world comes to an end, us reefers will Macgyver are way through it, lol.... Some will not get that reference, but I am sure you are close enough to my age to get it Out of curiosity, did you find your source of NO3? I had a rise in them myself, and thought immediately to look at the AF stuff too, but after I changed my flow in the tank, causing a detritus storm, I realized that it was settling in the display. A week later my NO3 dropped from 10ppm to 2ppm. I also believe that I need to expand with more siporax, so that is on the bucket list too Tank and corals are looking great as always man! Cheers

Thanks Perry, I really am the Macgyver of my house- I'm always trying to make things work better around here. I had the idea about the linking and did some googling about it and found out it's been done before and is viable. Without the peristaltic pump it would be a nightmare to adjust though. One of the side benefits is that the more acidic water from the sulfur reactor enters the calcium reactor and requires a bit less CO2 to hit the desired pH for dissolving calcium reactor media.

I don't know what the cause of the nitrates is other than the obvious- I have a lot of fish, I feed a lot, and the SPS tank has almost no biological filtration of its own. I have siporax and matrix in the sump but they haven't done much of anything other than take up space. I siphoned out a ton of detritus out of the SPS tank today so that will help I'm sure.

 

[mhucasey]

Fantastic, Matt. Good growth and health and color. Nice!

Brilliant, indeed!


Yeah.. So whatever happened to using nsw as a benchmark for food tank params?

Thanks Matt! I agree that when in doubt try to stay close to NSW values, even though our tanks are not exactly like the ocean. I would much rather be at 2-5 ppm Nitrate than 50+.

 

[glaukos]

What color M&Ms work best Mike?

:lolspin::lolspin:
They all do the trick matt buddy
I simply buy the 300g bag,cut a couple small holes and toss it in the sump,right next to skimmer's pump.No need to rinse etc
Works very good with np pro and pro bio s:thumbsup:
Just look at the way the yellow guy wants to dip the orange one in the np pro


Works great for me.Andrew has his secret juice and i have mine

That's awesome growth matt!!!
I like the shift in colors too,especially the echinata(?) looks amazing!!

 

[mhucasey]

:lolspin::lolspin:
They all do the trick matt buddy
I simply buy the 300g bag,cut a couple small holes and toss it in the sump,right next to skimmer's pump.No need to rinse etc
Works very good with np pro and pro bio s:thumbsup:
Just look at the way the yellow guy wants to dip the orange one in the np pro


Works great for me.Andrew has his secret juice and i have mine

That's awesome growth matt!!!
I like the shift in colors too,especially the echinata(?) looks amazing!!

:lol:

 

[slavetonet]

:lolspin::lolspin:
They all do the trick matt buddy
I simply buy the 300g bag,cut a couple small holes and toss it in the sump,right next to skimmer's pump.No need to rinse etc
Works very good with np pro and pro bio s:thumbsup:
Just look at the way the yellow guy wants to dip the orange one in the np pro


Works great for me.Andrew has his secret juice and i have mine

That's awesome growth matt!!!
I like the shift in colors too,especially the echinata(?) looks amazing!!

That bottle of liquid polymer. It seems like it is just Polyacrylamide based polymers. Maybe I am wrong here? :wildone:
Similar to the waste water treatment plant would use.