Scandinavian / Japanese Style Reef Tank

[cbitsiaras]

PART C










What we see now and it worries us is that at the sand bend there is this brownish slime forming within an hour from cleaning it (or stirring it) - similar slime is forming on some of the corals - Below are some pictures - Do you have any good suggestions what that can be? ( A possible reason is the 0.05 phosphate and increased NO3)






Thanks for reading my update and wishing you all a wonderful weekend ahead. Here we are getting the first spring days.


Warm regards from Copenhagen!


Dino

 

[dave.m]

Red slime algae is a cyanobacteria. The nitrates and phosphates in your system are high enough to allow it to grow. If this appears when you touch the substrate it suggests you are not keeping the substrate stirred often enough. You can do this by hand or you can introduce some sand stirring creatures to your tank. Diamond watchman gobies, conchs, nassarius snails and small brittle stars are some options. I have also seen yellow tangs eat this stuff.

The good thing about slime algae is that it is easy to remove. Just lift it out of the aquarium in sheets. Water changes can help. Replace GAC and GFO if it is over six weeks old. This stuff is common for tanks under one year old so don't think that it is only happening to you. It will eventually disappear if you keep the tank clean.

Dave.M

 

[cbitsiaras]

Red slime algae is a cyanobacteria. The nitrates and phosphates in your system are high enough to allow it to grow. If this appears when you touch the substrate it suggests you are not keeping the substrate stirred often enough. You can do this by hand or you can introduce some sand stirring creatures to your tank. Diamond watchman gobies, conchs, nassarius snails and small brittle stars are some options. I have also seen yellow tangs eat this stuff.

The good thing about slime algae is that it is easy to remove. Just lift it out of the aquarium in sheets. Water changes can help. Replace GAC and GFO if it is over six weeks old. This stuff is common for tanks under one year old so don't think that it is only happening to you. It will eventually disappear if you keep the tank clean.

Dave.M

Thanks Dave alot for the feedback. It is comforting to hear that we are not the only one with this unwanted slime / What about when the slime grows on the corals? Do you blow it away or?


Best regards,

Dino

 

[dave.m]

Gently pick it off or blow it off. I usually just fan it with my hand. You don't want to harm the corals. Once it is floating you can lift the pieces out with a net.

Dave.M

 

[cbitsiaras]

Gently pick it off or blow it off. I usually just fan it with my hand. You don't want to harm the corals. Once it is floating you can lift the pieces out with a net.

Dave.M

Thanks Dave for the good advice - did as you suggested and it easily left the coral.

Best wishes for a great weekend from Denmark

:beer:

Dino

 

[cbitsiaras]

Dino, to make sure something didn't get lost in translation, your TDS is 30 to 50? If so, that is your problem. A RO/DI should be putting out 0 TDS water. Time to change, resin, prefilters, and membrane. Afterwards, conduct several large water changes and your issues should go away.

RO/DI product water should always be at 00 ppm TDS. You may want to investigate more pre-filtering in front of the RO/DI unit and change the filters you already have.

One problem I ran into with a particular RO/DI unit was that the one-way valve was faulty, resulting in the unit constantly back-flushing the membrane and forcing me to replace the membrane too often. You should only have to replace the membrane about once a year.

Some set-ups have too low a water pressure for the RO membrane to work well. Look for RO/DI units with a pressure gauge and pressure assist canister.

An additional issue you may care to investigate is pre-heating the water to about 20°C before it enters the RO/DI unit to improve the membrane's performance.

Dave.M

Dino, my mains water is +/- ~600 and my effluent out of the ro/di unit is 0 when filters and resins are good. I change them when around 2-3. And I'm not in an agracultural area like you are; a lot of your solids are likely phosphorous compounds whereas mine are mostly dolomite elements from the mountains I live in.

No, not at all. That's why I mentioned my little adventure with a junk one-way valve causing excessive back-flushing and pre-maturely aging the RO membrane. You should only have to replace the RO membrane once per year maximum. The RO membrane is the most expensive part of the RO/DI unit to replace.

Replace your other filters first to see if this brings your TDS down to 00. If not, replace the RO membrane. Time this to see how long it takes before the TDS starts climbing again. If it starts to fail in just a few months again I suspect you may find you have a faulty RO/DI unit.

Dave.M

Dino, this is the reason I suggested buying the Dual Inline TDS meter.

You measure once after the water leaves the membrane, and the second time around after it leaves the RO/DI unit finally. This way you will know if your membrane is exhausted or if the di cartridges are.

FWIW, I believe the tds in the water is the cause of all these problems.

We hardly had the RODI unit 4 month now, is it normal that we need already now to change the membrane?


Once again thanks for the feedback.

Dino

This sounds like you got a bad unit/filters. I'd change the pre filters (not the RO membrane) and if that doesn't help see if you can actually take the unit back for a refund or a brand new unit because it should not have burnt out nearly this fast.[/QUOTE]

Your TDS should be 0-5 if you are using an RO/DI unit (and personally I start changing filters whenever it gets above 1 or 2 tds). That may be what is causing at least part of your algae bloom (and potentially some other problems). If this is the case and your TDS is 30-50 you need to replace the filters (maybe not the RO filter itself as those last for quite a long time, but the other filters should be changed).

Not sure if anyone has said this yet (as I haven't read every single post), but are you checking your temperature with at least 2 different sources? I only mention this because I had a partial crash in my 75 gallon tank and lost about 1/2 my corals several months ago. When the problems first started I spent about 2-3 months trying to figure out what the problem was and like you all my levels were relatively normal (Nitrates had elevated to about 5-10, and PH and dKH were slightly low, but nothing extreme). One day while working on my tank I felt that the water seemed warmer than usual. Turns out my digital thermometer had broken, when I replaced it I discovered my tank water was running at about 91 degrees (32.7C). I immediately started turning down my heaters and allowed the tank (and inhabitants) to slowly acclimate back to around 79 degrees (26.1C). The turn around in the tank was amazing and now everything is running smoothly again (still lost some good pieces of coral and maybe 1 or 2 fish, but thankfully it wasn't a full crash).

Needless to say I now monitor my tank's temperature at least 2 (sometimes 3) different ways.

I'm also no light expert (someone else can chime in here), but are you sure your LED's are getting the proper penetration they need to be (this can also cause algae blooms). You seemed to have bought high quality lighting units so I doubt this could be an issue, but I'm just throwing ideas out there to help with the situation.

So after listening to your comments / inputs and after I got this months salary I decided to upgrade on the RO device and go semi-pro.

Yesterday we purchased the Aquatronica OSMOPURE 75GPD - Canister system with deioniser

After some initialy hassle with setting it up and flashing the canisters then we start having some RODI production. It was so nice to see that 12l/hr flow that made things so much easier. We live in a small apartment and having the device in the shower for several hours just to have 25l of water produced was becoming annoying. The device is saying that the minimum pressure on the faucet should be 2.5bar and based on the manometer on the device we hardly reach 2bar. I guess it has to do with the fact that we live in a very old apartment (over 100years old) and on the 4th floor. The size is considerably greater than the one we had so the expectation of the quality are equally expanded - will give you an update on how happy we are

To read more about the device here is the link: http://www.aeb-tech.biz/products-1/reverse-osmosis-systems/acq606-osmopure-75gpd-1

And here are some pictures from the "opening" ceremony - it felt like Christmas!!! :bounce3:






Thats for now folks. First spring days in Copenhagen and all Danes are out but i am stranded in the apartment due to my back. Tuesday morning i go to the hospital to do a second more serious operation this time. Hope it will all be good.

Warm regards all over the world from Dino


:wavehand:

Dino

 

[cbitsiaras]

New Video - May 2013

New Video - May 2013

Hello dear Reef Central friends,

Had some free time today and made a short video of the tank as it looks today.

By clicking the image below you can see the video.



Hope you are all doing well. In the following few days I will not be so active in the forum since I go for an operation but looking forward reading your comments.

Wishing you all the best from Denmark.

:fish1:

Dino

 

[Newbie Aquarist]

Wishing you the best on your surgery and a safe recovery. Atleast when you get home you have something very very beautiful to look at. Nice video of an amazing tank.

 

[danfeig]

Dino,

I hope that all goes well with the surgery! Your tank is looking great again! I agree with what Dave stated earlier, change your GFO, vacuum up the cyano, and do more frequent water changes and the cyano will go away.

Regards and best wishes!

Dan

 

[Poriferan]

Very nice video. Music too :dance:

 

[Crazy_Beaver]

All the best Dino!

 

[TangMaiden]

Thank you for sharing your adventure with us!

 

[Bello]

Nice video :thumbsup: Tank looks good. Wish you all the best!

 

[RichieWrasee]

Hi there. I posted a while back about cyano. I've been doing some more research and it seems like fighting conches are a good natural way of minimising it. I've got 4 on order for my 100 gal system.

 

[cbitsiaras]

Hi there. I posted a while back about cyano. I've been doing some more research and it seems like fighting conches are a good natural way of minimising it. I've got 4 on order for my 100 gal system.

Hi Richie,

I am adding phosphate remover and dosing vodka daily. Today I measured the Ammonia levels for the first time and they are less than 0.25 though the phosphate has risen to 0.20 and NO3 to 25. I will increase the doses of phosphate removed and vodka tonight along with a water change will hopefully bring things in norms.

Do you know how the fighting conches behave with clams? I have read that there shouldnt be a problem but i also know that some of such snails attack clams.

All the best,

Dino

 

[RichieWrasee]

Is the vodka for you or the tank? haha

I currently have a conch (not a fighting one) in my tank and it's not interetsted in my clams at all. From what I've managed to asertain the name is a bit of a misleader... I've seen some posts about whether they eat bristle worms or not. But it seem they just eat the algae and keep the sand shifted.

Again from what I've read I'm working on one per 25 gals to keep the sand shifted and stop the build up of cyano on the sand bed.

Hopefully I'm picking them up tomorrow so I'll let you kknow how I get on and if they make any difference.

 

[cbitsiaras]

Is the vodka for you or the tank? haha

I currently have a conch (not a fighting one) in my tank and it's not interetsted in my clams at all. From what I've managed to asertain the name is a bit of a misleader... I've seen some posts about whether they eat bristle worms or not. But it seem they just eat the algae and keep the sand shifted.

Again from what I've read I'm working on one per 25 gals to keep the sand shifted and stop the build up of cyano on the sand bed.

Hopefully I'm picking them up tomorrow so I'll let you kknow how I get on and if they make any difference.

Thats how it goes: 1 part vodka in tank 2 parts vodka for Dino Please keep me posted how your experiment will go because I am interested in trying it out if you experience some success.

All the best,

Dino

 

[cbitsiaras]

Hopefully (with the) back in track

Hopefully (with the) back in track

Hello Reef Central friends,

Beginning of this week i did a lumbar fusion operation which will hopefully make me stop being in severe agony as I have been for the past few months.

Now all i need is rest-rest-rest and what a better way to rest in front of our hobby

I recently noticed that after moving some corals then i could see some war zone results the day after - i was a bit troubled as the corals that i had in that particular part of the tank weren't known to me to have long tentacles. I guess I was proven wrong when i activated my 0 Lux camera in the middle of the night and saw that peaceful Echinipora Lamellosa turning to a mean warrior.

I made a small video which you can see by clicking below picture. Maybe nothing you havent already seen but always a good reminder




After seeing this i cleared the are on a radius of 10cm (approx 4 in) - just to be on the safe side.


Warm regards,

Dino

 

[danfeig]

That's really cool Dino! I hope that your feeling a lot better. Rest up my friend!

 

[cbitsiaras]

That's really cool Dino! I hope that your feeling a lot better. Rest up my friend!

Thanks a lot :thumbsup:

The best thing about being operated is all the time you get to spent home and all the crazy things you never have time to do and now you do! :deadhorse1:

Best regards from sunny Copenhagen

:beer:

Dino