My Aquaforest cube, just the way I like it!

[Piper27]

I cleaned out my rock tank refuge yesterday and found some crazy stuff, huge starfish, crabs and tons of sponge. I am thinking about getting another bottle of sponge power because it seemed to really help out. I found one rock I remember putting in the tank maybe 7 months ago had a yellow sponge about the size of a quarter. Now it's grown so big it's holding two rocks together. I also had about 1.5" of detritus on the bottom of the tank. I am going to plumb the zoanthid tank above it straight to the sump and only keep the exit from the large e eternal skimmer flowing through the rock tank. This will keep detritus at a minimum I hope and allow more flow through our zoanthid tank. I haven't had My flow other than these two returns going through the rock refuge. The water is completely still in the tank, not sure if that's a bad thing but it certainly helps keep bacteria in there and not in my system. I just got tired of cleaning the power head in there, things look just as good as when I had had one in there.

 

[Piper27]

Here is the rock with the cool yellow sponge that is about the size of a baseball now. All the rocks in the tank have growth on them similar to this. There are many different types of sponge in there too. I wish I had time to photograph them all.

These are two rocks sealed together by sponge.

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[Rakie]

I love that frag too! I have never seen a blue base and white polyp on that type of growth form. It's starting to grow so I am keeping my fingers crossed. I wish that I could have had the colony of that piece!

Right now I am using...

-Components 1 2 and 3 dosing about 140ml of each daily on a doser
-Dosing a homemade potassium mix on a doser because potassium drops 40ppm a week
-Dosing a potassium nitrate solution daily on a doser to keep nitrates readable and hopefully phosphates lower
-Dosing 50ml of vodka and 50ml of vinegar daily on a doser that drips 24/7, I am going to add sugar to the mix this weekend

I am using each of the following aquaforest bottles at one squirt equal to about 15 to 20 drops all daily.
-coral b
-coral v
-coral e (sometimes I even double this dose and also use random other Aminos)
-coral a
-flourine
-pro bio s (I dose two squirts of this daily)

-lugols (I dose 6-9 drops depending on how things look, I stopped using af iodine because it was used too quick)
-vitamin c is dosed every couple of days or every other day at about 10ml
-zeo mix in a big vertex reactor
-gfo in fluidized reactor
-carbon in a mesh bag in sump

We use selcon and a couple other things in our frozen food mix.

Yeah that frag is pretty amazing, It's going to grow into a stunner for sure! Couple questions.

- Why a mix of Vinegar/Vodka/Sugar -- Do each of them do something a little different or what?

- Also, coral B sounded like it wasn't necessary to me because it does what Kalk does. Did you find any difference when dosing it?

- Do you turn off any reactors / skimmers when dosing anything?


I'm currently using;
- Coral A aminos
- Coral E energy
- Pro Bio S
- Bio S
- -NP Pro

Coral V, and B will probably be the next I pick up. Maybe Component Strong if I need it. I love the 10ml bottles, using one drop per day (29g Biocube) will make each one of those things last 2/3 of a year pretty much.. Very reasonable, lol.

 

[Piper27]

Yeah that frag is pretty amazing, It's going to grow into a stunner for sure! Couple questions.

- Why a mix of Vinegar/Vodka/Sugar -- Do each of them do something a little different or what?

- Also, coral B sounded like it wasn't necessary to me because it does what Kalk does. Did you find any difference when dosing it?

- Do you turn off any reactors / skimmers when dosing anything?


I'm currently using;
- Coral A aminos
- Coral E energy
- Pro Bio S
- Bio S
- -NP Pro

Coral V, and B will probably be the next I pick up. Maybe Component Strong if I need it. I love the 10ml bottles, using one drop per day (29g Biocube) will make each one of those things last 2/3 of a year pretty much.. Very reasonable, lol.

I don't turn any skimmers off when dosing. Where did you read all coral b is is kalk? I am not sure what it's doing in my tank if anything. It's the only one I have thought about trying to stop and see if anything changes. The mix of vinegar and vodka and sugar are supposed to feed different bacterias but I am not sure it's proven. I use vodka and vinegar because I will get a lot of cyano if I use all vodka. I have read some good things about using smaller amounts of glucose that interested me into trying it as well as other methods that use sugar. And yea two thirds of a year for a 10ml bottle is amazing, I could go through that in days

 

[Rakie]

Okay cool, glad you don't turn anything off!

My impression of Coral B is that it's main purpose is being a pH stabilizer, which unless I'm mistaken, Kalkwasser already does. (That's what I meant to say). What *else* Coral B is supposed to do? I'm not sure.. It does claim to replenish heavy metals in the water, but when I asked AF directly what the difference between Micro E and Coral B Is I got no response (twice).

Keep us updated on your Vodka/Vinegar/Sugar martini! I've been putting Vinegar in with my Kalk to keep from having to setup my doser for a tank that will be coming down in a month.

 

[Piper27]

I will, the amount of sugar will be very small, not really for nutrient reduction as it is for other things. Aquaforest is horrible with answering questions in their threads, bad for buisness imo. I was thinking it was similar to kalk but it says it contains iodides as well as the "kalk like mixture", I haven't seen anything about heavy metals in it. I wonder if it's a refined kalk mix that already has the nasties settled out of the mixture and then has iodides and such added. I am not sure what role iodides plays in this mix though.

 

[illumnae]

From my understanding, Coral B is basically calcium carbonate + iodides. It basically does what KZ coral snow does (adsorbs "bad stuff" and gets skimmed out) with a small boost in iodides.

 

[Piper27]

That's what I was thinking originally. But it's just such a small amount that goes into the water compared to coral snow.

 

[plyle02]

Impressive growth, the colors are looking really good too...
Nice updates! Loving the diversity and your approach to keeping such a healthy tank

 

[Piper27]

Thanks man, I do like lots of diversity in the tanks and heavy feedings but unfortunately with heavy feedings and lots of fish it's hard to keep the nutrients stable. Recently it's been doing well though. I put some cheato in a tank but it gets filled with detritus and bacteria pretty quickly and I have to shake it out every few days, probably won't work long term.

 

[Rakie]

Piper, do you have the cheato tumbling? A small ph can accomplish that easy and help. As for coral B, I may try it... but I have a larger tank in process of being set up, so I'll likely hold off on it for now.

 

[shingo43]

August

What is the name of this sps?

 

[Piper27]

Rakie, I am not tumbling the cheato. It's too much work cleaning pumps and I find it grows better floating as long as you pull it apart weekly to keep surface area at a maximum. It grows to tight when I tumble it and eventually stops tumbling in a week anyways. It's really just an experiment just to see how well it grows or if I can grow it at all.

 

[Piper27]

What is the name of this sps?

People like to call it frogskin, maybe ora, but I don't have any named stuff besides that one and a handful of frags. I am guessing it's a green tort, if I can keep thick growth on it I may keep it for a while.

 

[Piper27]

Here is a shot of my rock tank after being cleaned. This is the cleanest it has ever been. I kept all the sponge covered rocks on the bottom since that's where I found the most sponge. It's amazing what can live in such a low flow area. I found a huge hairy crab and a few starfish I don't remember having before as well.

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[Rakie]

You think of removing the rock and adding Siporax or Matrix?

 

[Piper27]

I will keep the rock and probably try one of thoes types of media's soon if I need too. I have the room and like the diversity live rock gives, also I like adding carbon sources to that tank because it seems to hold the bacteria really well. I doubt thoes media's would allow me to dose as much as I do, I attribute that to the live rock.

 

[Rakie]

Cool deal! Was just wondering, as many people don't run LR in sumps as much any longer.

 

[Piper27]

Yea these media's have defiantly done away with live rock in sumps and even displays, it's given reefers a lot of options for their reefs. I am waiting for aquaforests version to come out in the us but before I use it I want to make sure it doesn't have to be replaced like they suggest.

 

[Piper27]

Took some led shots with my phone so only a few corals actually show.

Woops, this actually turned out cool looking.

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