Hello everyone,
Initially I would like to wish a 2014 filled up with health, prosperity and pleasant surprises to all of you and your beloved ones. May 2014 be a year of positive changes and fulfilling contributions.
It has been a rather long time since the last update. We decided to be a bit absent from the forum and focus on research and getting the tank in shape. We reached a point of having to decide whether we make it work or we put it altogether down.
Very turbulent has been the way leading up to today concerning our tank. A year of constant disappointments, endless frustration and wrong/quick decisions/fixings. The toughest was not to know what to fix, which was an alias and which was an enemy in the tank.
Today 03.01.2014 and nearly 4 months after the last update things seem to be getting better. We can see coral growth, polyp extension and better colour. Still we experience issues with some of the corals but nothing compared to a few years back.
What changed?
- We
took the entire sand bed out. We didn't have deep enough to function as deep sand bend and neither shallow enough to act as decoration. During the process we "œkilled" some stock but that was a tough decision we needed to take in order to start ruling out possible causes of our problems. When the entire sand bed was out we waited for a month and slowly started adding a very thin layer of aragonite, thicker than the one before. The objective was to have it more as a decoration and heavy enough to not be "œflying" around the tank as the previous very thin was doing.
- We
increased the distance of our 4 Ecotech Radion lamps from 20cm from the surface to 35 cm. In addition to that we
decreased the density of the lamps from 80% to 70% and we increased the day from 6 hours to 7 hours on 70%. In addition to this we received a wonderful present from a dear friend, an LED 1.5m deep royal blue light which we placed at the background of the tank giving a nice effect especially during evening.
- We
increased our NO3 from 0 to around 5 by adding Sango Kai nutri complete daily. We also
started dosing iodine. At the same time we stopped dosing amino acids, bacteria and anything else other than the balling (Mg, Ca, kH)
- We
started using Rowa Phos in a filter back which we replace monthly. At the same time we stopped dossing Sea Klear phosphate remover as we could clearly see that our snails hated it (they were fainting)
- Last but not least and based on many hours of research
we stripped the Ocean Motion and its pippings off. That was one hard task that had to be done. The philosophy behind the Ocean Motion is great but the execution of the product design disappointing. I would not like to talk bad about a product but merely share my experience. We decided on the product as it best fitted our initial requirements (i.e. no visual pumps, sufficient circulation etc). OM worked fine with our first 6.500L pump "“ it was fairly silent and all 8 channels were working. When we realized that the flow was far from being enough, we wanted to upgrade on the pump. Our OM didn't want to work well. First a lot of noise coming from the drum and the pump, then a lot of vibration, then a combination of all, then OM simply didn't want to work at all. These along with some poor customer service from the manufacturer and similar issues read in forums made us take the decision "“ REMOVE IT! By far the best decision we have made. It took me a week to slowly remove all the pipes that were glued on the bottom and on the overflow but it was done. To ensure a sufficient flow we placed two Tunze pumps on either end of the tank attached to the back wall (1 x 6155 and 1 x 6255 connected to a 7096 Multicontroller). We have NEVER seen better flow in our tank "“ No detritus and no dead areas. Corals are moving nicely with the program set and the skimming has improved substantially.
Priceless has been your assistance and guidance without which we would have given up long ago.
A big thanks to all that took their time to share their experience with us.
We prepared a small video footage of how the tank looks now "“ only difference is that we put down the Xmas tree yesterday :sad2:
Click on the image below to start the video.
<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/83190811" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/83190811">Istedgade Reef</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user9719115">kenneth olsen</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
We are back in business and more updates will follow. Thank you for your time and once again Happy New Year!
Warm regards,
:wavehand:
Dino
