Rainbow Archipelago 1.0 Reef Journal

Wow, great job on organizing everything. Looks really clean! Sorry to hear you've had some troubles with the tank, but it looks good and ready for some acros again.
 
Nate, that's some serious organizing.
Like.... I think I just got a man crush after seeing all that neatness!
Crazy!
 
Sooo clean! Hopefully I'll be able to do something similar. Only thing would worry me is the water spilling on that vortech backup since both outlets are facing up
 
cFloor said:
Wow, great job on organizing everything. Looks really clean! Sorry to hear you've had some troubles with the tank, but it looks good and ready for some acros again.
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Hi, I'm very happy to see you drop in to the thread! Your upgrade has been an inspiration of mine. Thank you so much for the kind words - they mean a lot to me coming from someone with such a beautiful setup. While I won't be so bold to say that my troubles are behind me, I have seen improvement from all of my current corals. My brother just dropped off a couple frags from Top Shelf Aquatics in Orlando. One is a Pink Princess (?) and the other is a really awesome green, blue, and orange Mille. I'm excited to see what they do in the tank!

reefmutt said:
Nate, that's some serious organizing.
Like.... I think I just got a man crush after seeing all that neatness!
Crazy!
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Hahahaha!! Matt, you're making me blush! I have always had an affinity for extremely organized tanks, equipment, wiring, and plumbing. Perhaps my way of trying to compensate for the perpetual disorganization in the rest of my life.:lolspin:. Thank you for all the encouragement!

scrapz said:
Sooo clean! Hopefully I'll be able to do something similar. Only thing would worry me is the water spilling on that vortech backup since both outlets are facing up
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Hi scrapz! Thank you for the compliment! This is the best wire organization I have done on any of my builds. Once I finish building my sump, I will redo the plumbing to match the cables :). You're absolutely right about the power supply (it's for the Radion) - I didn't even think about it. I'll flip it over next thing. All the best!
 
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Couple (unexciting) updates:

1. Found the source of my high nitrates: a substantial amount of detritus in my sump, in and underneath where I have been keeping ~ 35 lb of Live Rock. I deep vacuumed the detritus, blew off the rock, and removed ~ 15 lb. After doing this, and performing a 20 gal water change, my nitrates are at ~ 8 ppm, which I am happy with.

2. I connect 2 TLF 550 reactors filled with Matrix, and connected them to a MJ600. It's been running on the system for about a week now.

3. 3-4 days after I added the sand to the tank I noticed a substantial drop in Alkalinity (from 8.5 down to 6.7). I'm not sure why this was, the sand had just been cleaned and would have been void of any life. Either way, my tank now has a dosing demand, which I am happy about. I have dialed in my Kalkwasser reactor, and am slowly raising the alkalinity. I am currently at 7.3 dKH and shooting for a 0.05 dKH increase daily. I will raise it to 9 over the next 2-3 weeks.

4. The 2 new frags that I put in are doing OK. They have lost some color, and I attribute it mostly due to the sudden decrease in nitrate level, and moreover, the sharp alkalinity drop and subsequent rise. I'm making changes very slowly, but I anticipate that colors and growth improvement won't begin until I have the alkalinity to above 8. The 3 original SPS that are left are slowly encrusting over their skeletons, which I am excited about.

5. The fish are scheduled to come out of the hospital tank this weekend. I will add 4 fish total over the course of the next 2 weeks. My Snowflake pair will be added this weekend, the Lubbocks Wrasse next weekend, and Jaguar Goby the weekend after. I think this will be enough time to allow the aquarium to adjust. I have been "ghost" feeding the tank every other day to help maintain (and hopefully increase) the biological filtration capacity.

Let me know if anything seems amiss, or if I am moving to fast. There are a lot of changes going on in the system, but I am trying to make them such that the organisms have time to adjust. Thoughts?

Thanks for checking in,

Nathan
 
Looks like a good plan to me.
Keep an eye on the alk. I seem to recall that new calcium carbonate sand can cause some initial precipitation and then stop, you might see your alk go up again..
Not sure you need to go all the way to 9dkh.. But it certainly won't hurt.. Why not level off closer to where you were before the drop and hold there for a while..
 
reefmutt said:
Looks like a good plan to me.
Keep an eye on the alk. I seem to recall that new calcium carbonate sand can cause some initial precipitation and then stop, you might see your alk go up again..
Not sure you need to go all the way to 9dkh.. But it certainly won't hurt.. Why not level off closer to where you were before the drop and hold there for a while..
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Hi Matt,

I have not heard about the CaCO3 precipitation, but the phenomenon would certainly explain the sudden demand for Ca & Alkalinity supplementation without the addition of a substantial amount of calcium using organisms. I got a jump from 7.3 to 7.5 dKH increase today, so I considering what you said, I will back off the dosing just a bit. I am testing alkalinity daily now with Salifert, so I should be able to catch a rise before it is catastrophic.

So I took a look at my alkalinity readings before I added the sand, and they were consistently 9.3 - 9.6 dKH - which is different than what I recalled (thank you for the prompt!). I was planning on running 8dKH with the bare bottom, and now 9 with the sand. Do you still think I should shoot for original value?
 
At this point in the young age of your system, it probably just makes sense to head toward the kh you want to keep it at and stay there.
Why the different kh depending on bb or sand ?
 
reefmutt said:
At this point in the young age of your system, it probably just makes sense to head toward the kh you want to keep it at and stay there.
Why the different kh depending on bb or sand ?
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Matt - When I ran bare bottom on my previous (larger) systems, nitrate and phosphate levels consistently remained so low that they would not register on Salifert tests. Because of these low levels, I found I had to feed heavy, keep my alkalinity low (~8.0-8.5), and run a reduced photoperiod, or I would observe lightened coloration of the corals, and even bleached branch tips.

With the systems I have run with sand, I found that nitrate and phosphate had to be regulated to remain at low levels, and that I experienced better growth and coloration around 8.5-9.0 dKH, and also a slightly more stable pH.
 
 
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Nate
The tank is looking really good leaps and bounds as far as progress. How long have you had the matrix in there now? I think I may have to go over there and take some pictures of the corals to show some real beauty. Great progress keep the updates coming
 
dantdodge said:
Nate
The tank is looking really good leaps and bounds as far as progress. How long have you had the matrix in there now? I think I may have to go over there and take some pictures of the corals to show some real beauty. Great progress keep the updates coming
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Thanks Danny. The corals are only a few days old, so i expect some to bleach a little and some to brown a little before coloring back up. Parameters are steady, and some of the flags are begging for more light. Once i have the spectrum dialed in, i will begin adding to the photoperiod, and after that, intensity. Come over any time.

FloformAustria said:
nice tank!

looking good!!
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Thank you flow form!!

sahin said:
Tank is looking really nice! :beer: Whats the current fish stock?
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Thank you for the compliment Sahin and thanks for stopping in. My fish load is tiny.

1. Oscillaris pair
2. Lubbocks wrasse
3. Jaguar Blenny
4. Fire shrimp
 
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