Rebuild and recovery of a dead tank

[jason2459]

Wow! Pulled the screen tonight and it was definitely thicker on the front brighter side. It's filled in nicely though on both sides. I went ahead and did a quick scrape/brushing. I also decided to bump up the other side.

So, both sides the reds are now at full intensity, blues at original low intensity and diffused with scotch tape, and flow is slightly cut back but slightly higher then when I first started it up. Can't wait to see what it's like next week.

Front

Back

Side view with front thicker side on the right

So, I keep coming across about how water fall scrubbers are supposed to "smell" bad. So, I took a good whiff of the scrapped off poo, as my son calls it, and it didn't smell anything to terribly bad

At least not anywhere near the nastiness of the poo my skimmer pulls out which I'm not allowed to clean until after my wife goes to bed. Which this ATS has NOT slowed down my skimmer's production one bit. I even did a full body and pump cleaning/vinegar rinse 3 days ago and now 3 days later the normal ~1 cup/day of pure thick stinky nasty has been produced as has been the usually consistency with this particular skimmer.

Cleaned this out just before hitting the ATS tonight

 

[jason2459]

Also posted about something I noticed the past week since bumping up the LED intensity on the one side. The ORP has steadily climbed much higher then normal every night the LEDs are on.


Copy paste from the algae scrubber basic thread:


Here's a graphing showing over the past week since bumping up the intensity of the LEDs on one side the ORP has for once climbed over 300 consistently.

The red line is the LEDs on and coordinates with the ORP climbing quite a bit more then normal. I normally see the up and down but not that much up to over 300. Only thing I can think of that's changed is the intensity of the LEDs on the one side.

Past 7 days from the Apex

Also another view from reeftronics

 

[jason2459]

lol. You can totally see when I was playing around with the AFS feed timing rotation programming and dumped easily a weeks worth of food in. It's the big huge dip. So its rather amazing the ORP recovered like it did so quickly and kept ramping up so dramatically compared to normal.

You can also see the normal 4 feedings per day based on the daily ORP dips. Interesting the algae sheet or the meaty foods I feed don't seem to dip it as much or at least noticeable like the pellet feedings. But I guess that could be due to the fact I don't turn off the return pump during those times.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

I was wondering what the huge negative spike was. I know that srusso noticed this ORP effect as well, but I don't know that he was monitoring it prior to adding the scrubber.

 

[jason2459]

Yeah I was playing around with the programming while playing around with the kids. Not a good idea. I won't do that again. Looks like the cyano is dissipating and diatoms are here and there now.

The ORP really shot up last night with both sides on high and seems to have leveled off at 333 for the day as the LEDs went off at 11:30. I've always monitored ORP but have never tried to control it. But this will be the first time I have to actually watch it now and may for once be shut down completely due to high ORP. Never would have thought I would have that situation. It's not a problem but it was not something I would have expected.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

What's your high ORP set point?

What is your pH doing during this?

I had to skim this article to refresh myself

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-12/rhf/feature/

 

[jason2459]

ORP shutdown is 400. It's normally mid to high 200's. Always has been even with my 55g. I believe I made note of that in this thread too when I first got a hand held ORP probe on my 55 and I think it was even in the 100's at that time wondering why my ORP was so low or if my probe was faulty. Probe at that time checked out OK. Just my orps never been high.

Normally I see a direct inverse of pH compare to ORP. And always a great read from RHF and have also read parts I, II, and III also linked way earlier in this thread by waterkeeper when I first started setting up ozone on my 55g.

But with the way the ORP has been climbing I don't see the normal correlation or no where near as dramatic rise or fall of pH compared to ORP. pH has been following its normal curve that normally my ORP takes as well. Most likely is if it is driven by the increased light output the dramatic swing of pH is not being seen because of being buffered by the CO2 consumption of the algae.

Like this morning I see the normal pH drop but its not a drop to anything of any concern or no where near the dramatic drop as seen by the increasing ORP values. And towards the end of the morning when my main display tank lights start turning on the pH is seen rising as normal which normally I also start seeing the ORP values start lowering but the ATS LEDs didn't turn off until 11:30 about 1 hour after the DT lights starter turning on and the ORP values were continuing to rise along with the pH which I've also never seen.

 

[jason2459]

Here's a 30 day chart from reeftronics. You can see when I set the one side to a higher intensity by the dramatic increased trend up.

http://www.reeftronics.net/graphns.php?probe=03&period=month&member=jason2459

It's not the full 30days as I was getting the ORP probe on the Apex setup and you can see when it got plugged in and running and calibrated. I calibrated it with the proper solution that I had to order. Not the pinpoint solution.

I don't have a chart before that but have been monitoring for years on my reefkeeper and that probe and the Apex actually line right up with in a +/-10point variance. Unlike their pH probe in which the reefkeeper reads about .1 to .2 higher consistently but trends the same as the Apex.

 

[jason2459]

Bump for reference. 8/24/2009

Quick probe test tonight.

7:30pm
Temp: 80.6
pH: 8.26
ORP: 186

Just noticed a couple small tuffs of green algae I had on one rock, only place I've seen them too, is getting white tips on the top. I find this really interesting to see the tank cycle like this.

Sorry the pic is blury. Wish I had a digital SLR and manual focus.

The unknown crab looks like a red leg. He's gotten fat and another new home.

 

[jason2459]

Another reference bump 8/18/2009

Hair algae is absolutely loving my tank. It's in nice thick mats all over the place. Though I'm starting to see small peaces floating around. Either that's a good thing and it will be going away or it's just spreading even more.

The cleaner shrimp is pretty cool. I went into the tank to clean off the glass and he attacked my hand the entire time. I couldn't keep him off.

Tests from last night 7:30pm
Temp: 78.6
SG: 34
pH: 7.93
ORP: 148
Ammonia:0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 5

Nitrates finally moved down. It's not 0 but close enough for me to be happy. So, I'm assuming the algae is starting to break up.

 

[jason2459]

Last reference bump when I first started monitoring ORP because I was planning on implementing ozone based on PaulB's setup. Page 2 of this thread....way back machine time. 8/1/2009

Finally found a few hitchhikers. Back at my LFG's place he found a little crab that he grabbed and put in his tank but that's all we saw and all I've seen since putting the rock in the tank. Maybe because the water parameters are getting better or they are just getting hungry but I've found two crabs and a snail savaging around.

The snail looks like a Nerite?

One of the crabs is definitely a blue leg.

The other crab I'm not sure. It's a bit bigger but looks more brownish. Can't be 100% but the claws look about equal in size. Hopefully it's a red tip. Crappy pic. I just have a cheap point'n shoot digital with no manual controls at all.

Very happy about those guys. Hope there's enough in the tank for them to eat.

I finally found a 1.25" bit I could use to drill a hole in the collection cup and got that plumbed to a bucket where I have a sensor on the bottom to turn off the skimmer. I like this switch as it automatically turns back on once dry. So, if by chance I'm gone for week or more and the skimmer overflows it will switch it off. As the water evaporates it will turn it back on. Takes very little water for it to react. Tested it out as soon as it was setup.

Uniseal worked great. 1/2in sch 40 pvc to a threaded/slip angle. screwed in a barb fitting and pushed in a 1/2in vinyl tubbing.

Got a Hanna instruments ph/orp/temp probe as I'm going to be hooking up the ozone to the skimmer at some point. Not sure yet on when the best time would be to do that. I was figuring on waiting until the tank fully cycled.

Another small water change this morning.

7:30pm Tests
Temp: 79.9 v (Hanna)
SG: 34 ^
pH: 7.9 ^ (Hanna)
ORP: 130mv (Hanna)
Ammonia: 0 v !!!!
Nitrite: 5 -
Nitrate: 10 v

Figured that my ammonia shouldn't be at 0 so fast so I dumped in a bit of Windex. Really glad I've been checking every night as it's given me good practice and a really good eye at determining between the different colors to match against and what the liquid looks like.

 

[jason2459]

OK one more bump for the waterkeeper and RHF arricles. 8/21/2009

And he knows his O₃ by golly.

But so does Randy Holmes-Fraley and since he is such a fan has written
Ozone in the Reef Aquarium, Part !
Ozone Part II
Ozone Part III
which covers it better than most books and saves me a ton of writing.

Almost forgot- ORP in the Reef Aquarium

 

[jason2459]

Also Note, ORP is NOT running over night during those huge increases. My ozone only runs while my white LEDs are on in the main display tank and when my skimmer is running which is shutdown for 32 minutes during feeding. So, it's only one for a fraction of a day. I also only have a 50mg/hr generator from redsea and at 50%. So, it's WAY less then the typical recommended rates. But it's more then enough to get my water crystal clear.


My outlet programming that my ozone generator is plugged into was pasted above but here it is again.

Fallback OFF
Set OFF
If DT_ORP < 350 Then ON
If DT_ORP > 400 Then OFF
If Outlet LEDW_8_5 = OFF Then OFF
If Outlet skimmer_7_5 = OFF Then OFF

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

This is very interesting. I would have expected the pH and ORP to match up more, but they don't, at all. You could be right about the CO2 consumption.

If you're worried that it's climbing too high, what you might do is break up the scrubber photoperiod into 2 blocks of time with a few hours in between, which would cut off the rise and allow it to drop.

What is also interesting is the the scrubber does not appear to be keeping your pH elevated while the DT lights are off. Perhaps though it would drop lower if it weren't there, dunno. Only way to find out is to not run the lights for one night, which won't hurt at all (I've forgotten to plug in the lights after a cleaning, for 3-4 days...)

 

[jason2459]

I'm not worried about the ORP values even if they went above 400 as long as its not driven by the ozone generator which would be shutdown. If it's happening naturally via the ATS then that's perfectly fine with me as ozone has negatives if overdosed.

 

[jason2459]

Hit 332 last night or I should say late this morning before the ATS LED's went off. We'll see after a few more days if it's hit a settling point. There can only be so much it could do.

And the pH trended with instead of inverse of ORP again which is unusual.

First three spikes are yesterday's feeding with the last one at 9pm. The last spike is today's noon first feeding.

 

[jason2459]

Here's a graph before increasing the LED intensity on the ATS and how pH and ORP typically interact with each other on my system and most others.

 

[jason2459]

Also, to note I do not think this is a bad thing what's happening. In fact, if anything, is a very good thing and shows the benefits of using an ATS if not harvesting algae in some way in general and utilizing light intensity to really drive it's growth and potential to buffer pH against rising the ORP which is an indicator of how well the system is able to handle the waste in your system.

 

[jason2459]

Leveled out at 336 this morning, 4 points up from yesterday, by the time the ATS LEDs turned off. I would guess its very close to hitting its ceiling.

 

[jason2459]

ORP still on the rise. It's already hit 342 this morning and the ATS LEDs still have 2 hours left on. May go up a couple more points.

pH how ever is finally acting normal in comparison to ORP. Probably buffered as much as it could be.