Olasana Lagoon: High Energy SPS Nano Build Thread
- Thread starter galleon
- Start date
MammothReefer
Active member
Both of our bacteria blooms were caused by adding to much of a food source (carbon in your case) for the bacteria present in your system in unstable ill equipped tanks to handle the increased bacteria, (the bacteria was then consumed by the algae hence the green water)
You added to much vinegar, I did to large of water change with fresh NSW.
However from my understand (and I say this with confidence but not with 100% certainty). The cause of demises in both our tanks what not the bacteria bloom it's self, but the oxygen being rapidly depleted.
Your quick action saved yours, and I hope your UV filter will keep things in check. (I've used ozone but have no experience with uv filter so it may do the trick I can't speak one way or the other on it)
At the time my only thought was "to do another water change" with the only water I had on hand more NSW... It didn't help, my tank established enough, and at the time I didn't know that had I simply increase the o2 in the water it would have had less of an impact animals until it subsided. (which I have experienced going forward on tanks that have had bac blooms but no ill effects to the inhabitants)
What did your ORP test at when you said all your parameters were on par?
On another note; What constitutes as a cycled tank? What I notice here if yes you say the tank was cycled 2 small piece of non-porous tonga branch, from Nov? Do you not feel that when you add corals, or pieces that have a mass that is significantly equivalent to that of the sum of your rock that you're tank will not re-cycle? While I agree the presence ammonia is what people test for in terms of cycle completion. I don't believe we can assume that solely the lack ammonia is a sign of stability and the completion of "cycling" for an SPS capable tank. This can be compounded by large water changes (100%) where you are removing anything beneficial that is present in your water leaving you with very little surface area for things to re-cultivate from.
Well.. that about sums it up. I'm stupid discussion, debate, and conversation with me is pointless. I'm glad you can share your tank with us. I wish you the best of success. I look forward to future updates but will not participate in the discussion.
Take care, and I do hope hope there are no hard feeling on a personal level. If we ever meet at a conference, drinks are on me!
-B
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This is a much better form of discourse.
Not ill-equipped to handle the increased bacteria, but the increased carbon. Ask Randy what happens when he adds too much vinegar, or Rich ross when he had to drop his pH with a gallon of vinegar. They also get blooms.
The mistake I made was panic. I had a pH spike. I had two options: add an acid to titrate that also happened to be labile organic carbon, or go get CO2 to bring the pH back in line. The panic said "bring down pH now", so in went just enough vinegar to titrate the pH down to an acceptable level. The 100% water change was not enough to remove all the carbon.
More likely the ammonia produced by any remaining dying bacteria and the decomposers feeding on them. Marine phytoplankton like to use NH3 as it requires no redox reactions for energy. Then there's the 10 day lag, with no measurable nitrogen change in between, hence the "mystery".
Agreed 100%.
This was the first system I've ever run without it. Not anymore. As I said in my blog post, they are magical and I wouldn't take it off.
No idea. ORP is mostly black magic, in my opinion, unless you are directly controlling ozone. My guess is it wasn't great simply because of the hetertrophic bacteria consuming O2 and making the water less oxidizing. The green water likely did the same at night.
And that large, very porous Porites rock (only the front is a veneer of encrusted Porites, it's a chunk of live rock for all intents and purposes). I also I'm not sure I've seen the porosity of branch rock quantified relative to other forms. Think about scale here. People are going bats*** because it only has three pieces of rock in it, now look at the full tank shot and imagine it scaled up to something like a 150. People also forget that LIVE coral skeletons are incredibly porous themselves and have everything from bacteria to endolithic algae living in them naturally.
An Acropora is a micrometers thick layer of tissue over a relatively huge, porous skeleton that is a biofilter in itself. So, in short, No. In fact, I would have had no qualms about not using any live rock at all in this system. I have run successfully Acropora growing systems with ZERO live rock or biofilter to speak of. I only used it to mount frags on above the bottom and I like the look of branch. Die off from the rock is what caused the ammonia spike to begin with.
I added labile carbon that I normally would NEVER have otherwise added, so this was NOT an inevitable I told you so problem with my husbandry that everyone "warned" me about, That is what I have been trying to get across.
We can quibble all you want about the semantics of timing, but to me, the video speaks for itself, there was no random crash going to happen if I maintained things the way they were going. That's the other thing I have been trying to get across. Very little, rare food additions occurred, the skimmer was ripping (again think about scale), and I used tons of GAC relative to tank volume..
This is all arm wavy and speculative, in my opinion.
That is not at all what I said and your contorting it is icky. The way the discourse was going was stupid and pointless. Your last post started to change that.
No hard feelings, I love a cold beer and coral talk.
Not ill-equipped to handle the increased bacteria, but the increased carbon. Ask Randy what happens when he adds too much vinegar, or Rich ross when he had to drop his pH with a gallon of vinegar. They also get blooms.
The mistake I made was panic. I had a pH spike. I had two options: add an acid to titrate that also happened to be labile organic carbon, or go get CO2 to bring the pH back in line. The panic said "bring down pH now", so in went just enough vinegar to titrate the pH down to an acceptable level. The 100% water change was not enough to remove all the carbon.
More likely the ammonia produced by any remaining dying bacteria and the decomposers feeding on them. Marine phytoplankton like to use NH3 as it requires no redox reactions for energy. Then there's the 10 day lag, with no measurable nitrogen change in between, hence the "mystery".
Agreed 100%.
This was the first system I've ever run without it. Not anymore. As I said in my blog post, they are magical and I wouldn't take it off.
No idea. ORP is mostly black magic, in my opinion, unless you are directly controlling ozone. My guess is it wasn't great simply because of the hetertrophic bacteria consuming O2 and making the water less oxidizing. The green water likely did the same at night.
And that large, very porous Porites rock (only the front is a veneer of encrusted Porites, it's a chunk of live rock for all intents and purposes). I also I'm not sure I've seen the porosity of branch rock quantified relative to other forms. Think about scale here. People are going bats*** because it only has three pieces of rock in it, now look at the full tank shot and imagine it scaled up to something like a 150. People also forget that LIVE coral skeletons are incredibly porous themselves and have everything from bacteria to endolithic algae living in them naturally.
An Acropora is a micrometers thick layer of tissue over a relatively huge, porous skeleton that is a biofilter in itself. So, in short, No. In fact, I would have had no qualms about not using any live rock at all in this system. I have run successfully Acropora growing systems with ZERO live rock or biofilter to speak of. I only used it to mount frags on above the bottom and I like the look of branch. Die off from the rock is what caused the ammonia spike to begin with.
I added labile carbon that I normally would NEVER have otherwise added, so this was NOT an inevitable I told you so problem with my husbandry that everyone "warned" me about, That is what I have been trying to get across.
We can quibble all you want about the semantics of timing, but to me, the video speaks for itself, there was no random crash going to happen if I maintained things the way they were going. That's the other thing I have been trying to get across. Very little, rare food additions occurred, the skimmer was ripping (again think about scale), and I used tons of GAC relative to tank volume..
This is all arm wavy and speculative, in my opinion.
That is not at all what I said and your contorting it is icky. The way the discourse was going was stupid and pointless. Your last post started to change that.
No hard feelings, I love a cold beer and coral talk.
Thales
Active member
I don't think it matters how much rock is in the tank, you drop in a ton of edible carbon and weird stuff is going to happen. This was not a failure of methodology, it was a mistake. As we all know, regardless of how robust a system in, the single biggest point of failure is the person taking care of the system.
I have a lot of rock in my home display, and I did essentially the exact same thing Galleon did, a dumb kalk overdose...twice actually, but a different way each time. Hmm, maybe three times. A different dumb mistake every time.
One time I attacked it almost the same way Galleon did, vinegar to drop the pH. But instead of one 100% water change, I did several over the frist few days after the overdose which how I avoided any kind of bloom. Tank is full of live rock. Lousy with it.
Here is an article on one overdose time:
http://www.reefsmagazine.com/showthread.php?t=66910&do=print&type=html
Here is the blog about the second time where I used CO2 instead of vinegar:
http://www.reefs.com/blog/2011/05/19/boy-its-easy-to-be-dumb/
No bloom at all with the CO2. If Galleon had CO2 laying around I am sure he would have used it. As it is, I think its way cool that his tank went green pea soup. Never seen that before.
Now that the problem has been resolved, I would pull the UV, but that's me.
reefmutt
Active member
hey Galleon, i just read 90% of this thread and i laughed a lot and went 'hmm' a lot as well.. cool starting point for the nano
i'm wondering- and maybe i missed it somewhere-why you would be worried about a ph spike of 8.4. I'm looking at that graph a ways up the thread and 8.4 looks like as high as it got. did i miss something? imo 8.4 is not a worrisome upper ph limit.
why did you feel it necessary to drop the ph?
sorry, if i missed something and this is a useless question!
feel free to kick my a@@ for being dumb!
i'm wondering- and maybe i missed it somewhere-why you would be worried about a ph spike of 8.4. I'm looking at that graph a ways up the thread and 8.4 looks like as high as it got. did i miss something? imo 8.4 is not a worrisome upper ph limit.
why did you feel it necessary to drop the ph?
sorry, if i missed something and this is a useless question!
feel free to kick my a@@ for being dumb!
Craig Borowski
.Registered Member
Not sure if it was mentioned in this thread, but on one of the blogs he mentioned it spiking to over 9.
Neither have I and I agree on the way cooledness. Very impressive that everything seems to have weathered the storm!
This seems somehow relevant:
I actually disagree, my directly applicable experience saved mine.
MammothReefer
Active member
I'm not by any means disagreeing that one can over dose on a carbon source. How much of a carbon source will equate to over dosing based on your system however is something I'm sure we could go back and forth on for days.
In my experience ORP is a good "indicated parameter" I'll get into that a little later.
I'm not sure I agree with this that the corals themselves could be utilized in such a way however I have no means to prove otherwise outside of my experiences with attempting to setup minimal rock tanks so we would just butt heads if we continued down this path. In regards to the tank with no rock, or biofilter I've done that as well but only on a temporary basis. How long was this tank up for? What was it used for I. Are we talking years, weeks, or months? What were the other circumstances around the tank? To say you can setup a tank with no rock at all (note rock not live rock) I believe is a rather bold statement.
I often find there is a very large communication disconnect between "experts/professionals" and hobbyists. We have different goals we look at things from a very different perspective. It can often be challenging to see eye to eye even when discussing the same subject as the means we use for success, perception of terminology, perception and desired results are very different. The same thing can be said of any craft. Me trying to get my devs to explain to somebody in marketing, or a fiance department how the application we are building works, we might as well be speaking different languages (are often we are).
Again I don't think GAC is a replacement for rock. It's something you replace. I just don't see how that would work for long term stability.
There are a few points I'd like to touch on. I agree we won't ever resolve a debate on if the addition of rock ,substrate, or increased cycle time could have helped minimize the situation once you added the carbon source. We don't see eye to eye on my thoughts regarding re-cycling the tank by adding masses equivalent or greater to the total amount of cycle rocks in your system, nor on doing 100% water changes with such a small foot print.. so I say we just set that aside.
Lets go back and talk about the original issue, your PH. As all this stemmed from an over reaction to PH. Why do you think you found your self in a situation where you PH swung so rapidly and such a large amount? Do you not think a more stabilized system would have minimized the swing or was it an external source that caused the swing in the first place. I know once my tanks settle in my ph very rarely moves by more then .1 or so. I honestly for the most part dismiss it.
I know others may not agree with this but I classify my water parameters into different groups.
There are those that are essential sustainability of organisms in my tank, (temp, salinity, amonia, nitrite)
Those are essential for optimal health of organisms in my tank
(alk, calc, mag, nitrate, phosphate)
Those that are indicators of the condition of my tank.
(ph, orp)
and all the stuff I don't test for because I don't add it.
In the rare case I see my PH is off. I don't adjust my PH. I test my other parameters and figure out what may be causing the influx. I would typically start with ALK & Calc, then move to mag if I notice that one of those are off. To me I have found PH means nothing on it's own.
Whether you agree or not has nothing to do with reality of porosity, mass, density and surface area to volume ratio of hermatypic coral skeletons, which host entire communities of endolithic organisms, much less simple bacteria. It ain't rocket surgery. Look at the tank Thales posted on page 6:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=19757615&postcount=136
It is run in EXACTLY this way. And has been up for years! I know this from seeing it in person every year for the last several. It grows Acropora like weeds.
I have evidence I'm correct, you have no evidence that I am incorrect. It's pretty much as simple as that.
Just UV, skimmer, lots of flow, and frags/corals. Same as the tank Thales posted (except he doesn't use UV)!! You're willfully ignoring the facts that are being presented to you.
That's because it's not a replacement for rock. No one said it was. it's chemical filtration, not biological.
Did you actually read the blog post? A top off powerhead accidentally sucked kalkwasser slurry directly into the tank. So the short answer is NO. Again, willfully ignoring facts presented to you.
I posted the last 5 days from my Apex so you can see what my normal pH cycle looks like.
I'm sorry, but alkalinity and pH absolutely belong in this category.
MammothReefer
Active member
Again this is where we just don't see eye to eye. So there is no point debating it, we won't get anywhere. You have your "one truth" and that is that. not to pick a fight but you've been dismissing the questions who's answers aren't favorable to your point. So there really isn't any point in continuing down the road. On another note the tank linked above clearly is attached to a larger system and not simply a stand alone bin with a couple racks and some corals. I can also see rock under the egg crate.. sooo who knows.
I skimmed it so no I didn't see that part. Makes sense now.
I disagree on PH. PH is an indicator a byproduct of the mixture of other parameters in my tank. As far as I'm consider that is how I use it when I run my tanks it works well serving that purpose, nothing more nothing less. Again this is where our different perspectives of communication are clearly going to collide, and that's ok. I would never try to control my ph by chemical means I would try to correct the issue that is causing my ph to be off in your case you added kalk slurry which in theory spiked your alk. Had it be me, I would have been testing alk and figuring out the best way to deal with returning that to normal and thanking for ph for giving me a heads up but making no efforts to modify it on it's own.
Alk can go back and forth between categories it really depends how granular you are and what type of tank you are keeping and how you are adding it. Your tank can tolerate a large range of alk, stability is more important then a specific number so for that reason I put it in the other category.
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This represents a very fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between carbonate alkalinity and pH and how kalkwasser produces carbonate alkalinity. Without sufficient carbon dioxide to quench the hydroxide present from CaOH2, free OH will remain and the pH will remain high with minimal effect on the carbonate system alkalinity until enough CO2 had been drawn down to quench the OH-.
MammothReefer
Active member
Even so, this is where we differ in communication and goals for our tank. To me the larger area for concern would have been the spike in alkalinity as a result of adding the slurry. You and I look at things from very different points of view. Personally I don't care anything about the "sufficient carbon dioxide to quench the hydroxide present from CaOH2, free OH will remain and the pH will remain high with minimal effect on the carbonate system alkalinity until enough CO2 had been drawn down to quench the OH".
To me the only thing that matters is my ALK was at 8.0 and now it's a 10.0. Yes I know I'm simplifying things without looking for the man behind the curtain, but when it comes to a hobby like this I've found the 2 key things that matter most are Simplicity, and Consistency.
john rochon
New member
couple of questions out of curiosity.
I noticed your 400w is up pretty high above the tank. Is this due to heat?
You easily could have used a 250w MH and lowered it and saved energy. Maybe you just has the 400watter hanging around? You would have the same amount of lumens/light.
Is there any ''reason'' for this bare type setup? just wondering and not critisizing. Its a fairly small tank so you won't have many corals that you can growout to big.
I noticed your 400w is up pretty high above the tank. Is this due to heat?
You easily could have used a 250w MH and lowered it and saved energy. Maybe you just has the 400watter hanging around? You would have the same amount of lumens/light.
Is there any ''reason'' for this bare type setup? just wondering and not critisizing. Its a fairly small tank so you won't have many corals that you can growout to big.
Thales
Active member
I know, I designed it and run it.
I am not sure why you think it is 'clearly' attached to a larger system, and am not sure why you would reach that conclusion from one photo - especially since right above the photo it says "Here is a pic of part of a 550 gallon grow out system that has been running essentially the same way as Galleons tank for the past 4 years", unless for some reason you think I am lying.
It is not attached to a larger system. It is simply a stand alone bin (about 500 gallons) with an FRP deck as a coral rack and some corals. The rock to water and coral ratios are pretty close to they system Galleon has. If there is any rock under the egg crate in the picture, it is because there are lower light corals on that rock.
Thales
Active member
I think this is an unfair representation of the discussion in this thread.
