Renton's Upgrade

[Renton777]

Been working on a water mixing/storage station. Currently I just have a 55 gallon drum that I fill up, mix the salt in and the my auto water change drains it over the course of 4 or 5 days. Then it takes about 12 hours to fill up. I have always had the fear in the back of my find that I may need make a quick batch of saltwater in the case of an emergency, but if my barrel was about empty I would have to wait 12 hours.

So, I am working on the new setup using 2 x 105 gallon containers. Here is the dry run (minus the union valves that are on order).

And here is a quick picture to prove I still have tanks since it has been a while since I have posted an update.

 

[cash03ins]

You are going to have to move the couch soon. Tanks are looking great!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Renton777]

Chemiclean: Just a note to keep track...... I am running a dose of Chemiclean. It seems that every six months or so that I start to get a build up of red slime. It seems to bother some zoas and certain mushrooms if I let it go too long. So now, when I start to see it I run Chemiclean. I have probably used it 4 or 5 times over the past 3 years. This time I probably waited a bit longer then usual.

I will let it run for 48 hours do a 50 gallon water change and run some carbon. I will then do another 50 gallon water change two days later.

 

[purplereef]

Chemiclean: Just a note to keep track...... I am running a dose of Chemiclean. It seems that every six months or so that I start to get a build up of red slime. It seems to bother some zoas and certain mushrooms if I let it go too long. So now, when I start to see it I run Chemiclean. I have probably used it 4 or 5 times over the past 3 years. This time I probably waited a bit longer then usual.

I will let it run for 48 hours do a 50 gallon water change and run some carbon. I will then do another 50 gallon water change two days later.

I have been battling Cyano as well. Maybe it's something to do with the CO2 scrubber?

 

[Renton777]

I have been battling Cyano as well. Maybe it's something to do with the CO2 scrubber?

Hmmmm....I dont know, I would doubt it. I get cyano once or twice a year and it happened before the co2 scrubber

 

[Renton777]

Since I no longer need my 55 gallon barrel to mix and hold saltwater, I changed that over to a Kalkwasser reservoir. I used to run kalk on my first tank but have not used it in several years. I mixed up a fully saturated solution and plan to start off with dosing a gallon of it a day to the tank using a Litermeter and see where that takes me.

Speaking of Kalk, I mixed up some kalk paste to take out some mojano's that have been popping up. Melted about a dozen of those little bastards.

Lastly, my equipment room is really starting to look like serious reefing business.....I love it (not so sure about my wife ).

 

[brad]

Lastly, my equipment room is really starting to look like serious reefing business.....I love it (not so sure about my wife ).

I am sure you love her too. But if not, I am interested in livestock and equipment sold in the divorce.

 

[AD87]

Renton, pm box is full bud.

 

[Renton777]

Renton, pm box is full bud.

Thanks, cleared some space!

 

[biecacka]

By adding the kalk, are you hopping to decrease your demand from the tank on alk? Thus lowering your dosing or CaRx usage, or are you increasing the ph of the tank? Or just to tinker.....
Tanks look great as always man.


Corey

 

[Renton777]

By adding the kalk, are you hopping to decrease your demand from the tank on alk? Thus lowering your dosing or CaRx usage, or are you increasing the ph of the tank? Or just to tinker.....
Tanks look great as always man.


Corey

I am doing it more to raise ph. I dose two part so I can always ramp up or down Alk dosing. I have been watching pH closely as when I was able to raise it with a CO2 scrubber it was clear Alk demand picked up, leading to me to conclude corals were growing faster. I haven't changed the CO2 scrubber media for a while now and it became apparent once we shut the windows and have been running the AC that I needed to to that. After getting ph between 8.1 and 8.3 throughout the day/night, I am now only getting to 7.9 to 8.1 with the windows shut. Just changed the scrubber media so we will see where that takes me back to.

 

[Renton777]

Well, changing the CO2 scrubber media showed an imediate impact on ph.

You can see where I changed it last evening, indicated by the blue mark. Looking back over the previsous days you can see that the ph declines over night, but immediately after changing the CO2 scrubber media you can see the ph climb all night and then continue to rise during the day as it normally would.

I also have done a couple Alk tests that show Alk declining a bit over the previous few tests but its still a bit earlier to show if the increased ph has increased Alk demand. I will follow up!

 

[Renton777]

Here is an updated ph graph

And here is my latest Alk graph. As soon as ph went up, Alk started getting soaked up at a faster rate. I will be adjusting my dosing schedule help keep up with the higher demand!

 

[Renton777]

The family and I headed out on vacation recently. A couple interesting observations from test results again show the increase use of Alk when ph rises.

In this graph we left the house at the blue line, without us sucking up all the oxygen and pumping the place full of CO2, ph took a noticeable step up.

Immediately coinciding with the high ph, Alk began to drop. I have been adjusting Alk dosing up over the past few days, yet, it is still not able to keep up the increased demand. I am about to increase the dosing amount again.

 

[Renton777]

Quick Update:



I have been rather busy the past few months. I have done my regular maintenance on my tank but not much else. A couple months ago some of my mushrooms started to bleach and shrink and a few chalices started to bleach and die off. Other mushrooms and chalices were just fine. I could not pinpoint a cause. The only thing out of the ordinary that I could spot was that my phosphates were higher then normal for my tank, hitting around 0.4 versus my usual 0.15. I have brought them down with gfo. Mushrooms seem to have stablized.



My sps has been doing well, some of them too well. Some staghorn acros, porcillipora and plating monti's had gotten out of hand in my display tank. They were suffocating flow and light so, while I hated to do it, I ripped a ton of it out and nearly filled up a 5 gallon bucket. I have some more work to do but it made a world of difference for overall tank flow.



I have also been thinking that the shear concentration of coral per gallon of water had gotten very high and stripping the water of needed, untested elements and nutrients.



Anyways, just a few quick pictures I took over the past couple of days with the cellphone

 

[BKREEFBABY]

Are those dead skeletons in the white bucket?


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[Renton777]

Are those dead skeletons in the white bucket?


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Well, they are now. They were the corals that just grew so much that they were killing the flow and were going to cause problems for the tank over all. They had to go.

Some of what is in the buckets are 6 or 7 years of build up of corals growing over each other and layering up and building up the reef in my tank.

 

[BKREEFBABY]

Ohhh ok I see what you mean


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[Alex114]

Well, they are now. They were the corals that just grew so much that they were killing the flow and were going to cause problems for the tank over all. They had to go.

Some of what is in the buckets are 6 or 7 years of build up of corals growing over each other and layering up and building up the reef in my tank.

Just out of curiosity why not sell those cut pieces or bring them to a lfs? Or is it just too much work to do all that? I'm sure it took forever just to get them out lol. Amazing tank btw!

 

[Renton777]

Just out of curiosity why not sell those cut pieces or bring them to a lfs? Or is it just too much work to do all that? I'm sure it took forever just to get them out lol. Amazing tank btw!

A few reasons. I had talked to a few vendors/stores and they were not interested in 80% of what I was tearing out. I was not being delicate in cutting things out. I have been pretty busy and it wasn't worth trying to arrange for people to come buy a couple pieces here and there. I should have done it a while ago and I finally had a couple hours and the motivation to work on it last night, so I did it then and there.

Part of the reason I kept delaying it was because I didn't just want to toss corals but it had to be done for the greater good of the tank.