Sonny's Rimless Shallow Reef.

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sunny, after reading(hours worth) part of your thread i have been thinking of dosing lugos to my tank, i currently use BRS 2 part daily.
my DT is 84 gallons and i have another 18 gallons in the sump/fuge so around 102 gallons total. How much lugos should i use daily?

Current parms
ph 8.0
alk 7
calc 430
mag 1270
nitrates 0
using salifert test kits.

salinity 1.025

thx again

Hello,

I would add one drop every two days. Good luck, and please let us know how it goes for you. The biggest improvement I have seen with Lugols is the increase in blue SPS coloration.
 
Hello,

I would add one drop every two days. Good luck, and please let us know how it goes for you. The biggest improvement I have seen with Lugols is the increase in blue SPS coloration.

i have several different blue stags, pearlberry and blue bottle brush. i will start taking some pics of different corals and will post them.

thx again
 
Well sonny, It appears that my tank is taking a major downturn and is losing corals left and right. They seem to be bleaching from the top down, bottom up and generally looking very very pale. I have been dosing 1.0ml of vodka and after noticing my nitrates were between the 20-40 range on API test kit I upped the dose to 1.6ml. I was at 5 drops MB7 each day now at 10. CA was 560 / ALK was 10. I raised the alk after the major bleaching to 12dkh to try to lower the 'cloudy' 560 water. Neglect on my part? I havent tested or done a water change in a month. I was on a routine but I wanted to try to not do a water change for a month while starting the vodka/MB7 routine. I have 30 gallons of water ready to change when I get home, I had to mix it up and let it stir for 2 days. Im really at a loss. I know why my calcium is high, the other day I put a few squirts of Kent liquid calcium in. I didnt think it would raise it that high. Nitrates I think are an issue since I took alot of my Live rock out of the tank. I have two smaller sized bags of carbon running in my sump at the moment and I will follow up on tests after the water change.
 
Thanks for the friend request Sunny, tank is looking superb as always ;) .

I offcially joined the vortech club over the weekend.. got rid of a few of my tunzes, so far so good and i'm liking the vortech better, much wider gentler flow, and looks much cleaner in the tank... thanks for persuading me =).
 
not to intrude, but Kent concentrated iodide is like lugol's lite in that it has all the different components you can dose 8 gtts/50gal daily.
 
This was probably discussed before, but would using purigen, carbon, and GFO defeat the purpose of MB7/vodka?
 
This was probably discussed before, but would using purigen, carbon, and GFO defeat the purpose of MB7/vodka?

It should not cause any real issues by using those. I used carbon and GFO on my system concurrently with vodka without issues from those.
 
Sunny,

I am considering the Aquactinics Constellation 7x54W T5 for my new 120 gal tank which will be mixed, but mostly LPS and SPS.

With a 24" depth, do you think I will need the risers or just put the light right on the rim?

This tank will be going in my living room. How loud are the fans on this fixture? Will they distrupt normal conversation?

Trying to decide if I want to hold out for the new Aquactinics hybrid LED fixture, but I just don't know how long the new product release process will drag out. Do you think the shimmer effect is worth waiting for?

Thanks
 
Well sonny, It appears that my tank is taking a major downturn and is losing corals left and right. They seem to be bleaching from the top down, bottom up and generally looking very very pale. I have been dosing 1.0ml of vodka and after noticing my nitrates were between the 20-40 range on API test kit I upped the dose to 1.6ml. I was at 5 drops MB7 each day now at 10. CA was 560 / ALK was 10. I raised the alk after the major bleaching to 12dkh to try to lower the 'cloudy' 560 water. Neglect on my part? I havent tested or done a water change in a month. I was on a routine but I wanted to try to not do a water change for a month while starting the vodka/MB7 routine. I have 30 gallons of water ready to change when I get home, I had to mix it up and let it stir for 2 days. Im really at a loss. I know why my calcium is high, the other day I put a few squirts of Kent liquid calcium in. I didnt think it would raise it that high. Nitrates I think are an issue since I took alot of my Live rock out of the tank. I have two smaller sized bags of carbon running in my sump at the moment and I will follow up on tests after the water change.

Hello,

Your CA and ALK levels are very high and are likely the root cause of the issues. When dosing Bacteria/carbon you must do your best at keeping ALK no higher then 9 DKH. Once you get over 9DKH you run the risk of "ALK burn" on the tips of SPS, along with increased stress to the corals. The Nitrates in the range of 20-40 also dont help the matter.

I would stop dosing EVERYTHING right now in order to get things back under control. When I say everything, I am including MB7, Vodka, ALK, CA and any other supplements you are adding. Do you have a separate tank or perhaps a friend/LFS who can hold some of your corals until things settle down?

If you have sufficient growth and corals in the system you should be able to get your levels back down within a week or so. Once your CA/ALK is stable I would start up slowly again with the MB7/Vodka.

What is your Ph at?
 
Thanks for the friend request Sunny, tank is looking superb as always ;) .

I offcially joined the vortech club over the weekend.. got rid of a few of my tunzes, so far so good and i'm liking the vortech better, much wider gentler flow, and looks much cleaner in the tank... thanks for persuading me =).

Congrats on the new Vortechs! :thumbsup:
I am sure you are going to love the wider flow and clean design.
 
It should not cause any real issues by using those. I used carbon and GFO on my system concurrently with vodka without issues from those.

+1

I dont see any real issue with those listed above. Unless of coarse you were running an excess amount of GFO. The SPS need some po4 after all. :strange:
 
Sunny,

I am considering the Aquactinics Constellation 7x54W T5 for my new 120 gal tank which will be mixed, but mostly LPS and SPS.

With a 24" depth, do you think I will need the risers or just put the light right on the rim?

This tank will be going in my living room. How loud are the fans on this fixture? Will they distrupt normal conversation?

Trying to decide if I want to hold out for the new Aquactinics hybrid LED fixture, but I just don't know how long the new product release process will drag out. Do you think the shimmer effect is worth waiting for?

Thanks

Hello,

You should be able to place the fixture directly on top of the aquarium without issue. The riser are good to have on hand in case you decided to raise the fixture for a wider more even spread of light.

The fans are quiet and shouldn't be any more noticeable then a desktop computer when on.

The new fixture will be 6 bulbs with a row of high powered LED's going down the middle. I dont know how good of an effect the LED's will have on shimmer so I cant really comment on it. Personally, shimmer doesn't do much for me so I would rather go with the 7 bulb fixture.
 
Hello,

Your CA and ALK levels are very high and are likely the root cause of the issues. When dosing Bacteria/carbon you must do your best at keeping ALK no higher then 9 DKH. Once you get over 9DKH you run the risk of "ALK burn" on the tips of SPS, along with increased stress to the corals. The Nitrates in the range of 20-40 also dont help the matter.

I would stop dosing EVERYTHING right now in order to get things back under control. When I say everything, I am including MB7, Vodka, ALK, CA and any other supplements you are adding. Do you have a separate tank or perhaps a friend/LFS who can hold some of your corals until things settle down?

If you have sufficient growth and corals in the system you should be able to get your levels back down within a week or so. Once your CA/ALK is stable I would start up slowly again with the MB7/Vodka.

What is your Ph at?

Nitrates I think are an issue since I took alot of my Live rock out of the tank.

Removing a lot of live rock is not good either. I have seen STN threads time and time again...with this as a factor.
 
Sonny as to not hog your thread ygpm. Maybe you can coach me through this? I would appreciate it alot. Thanks

-Chris
 
Yeah, my posting kung-fu is strong! I was on that question like flies on turds! :lmao: In all seriousness, I appreciate you and everyone else taking the time to respond to questions here.

If I were to add an 8th bulb to my current setup it would have to be an ATI Blue+. While I do like the color I have now, a little extra blue wouldn't hurt. Who knows, it may even darken up some of your corals. ;)

Master Wu.. Your techniique is astounding. LMAO!!!

Thanks I am going to replace the Midday and one of the AB specials with Blue Plus bulbs... Thanks for the suggestion!
 
Looking for an opinion. Been dosing mb7 for five weeks or so now (90 DT, 240 gallon TWV). Started with the "new tank dose" for the first two weeks, and now adding 5 drops a day. Nitrates are at 0.1 or lower (Salifert). Still getting lots and lots of chaeto growth.
My problem is phosphates. Though the tests show clear, I have little coralline growth, and absolutely outrageous cyano growth, both sure signs of elevated phosphate levels. The cyano has been a problem for months now. I started running GFO again, about two weeks ago. Though there seems to be some of it starting to slightly recede in a couple of places, in others it is as bad as ever.
My question is whether or not I should start dosing vodka? While on one hand it seems like the vodka will just be food for the cyano, I was wondering if the other bacteria in the mb7, if given fuel, will overcome the cyano.
And will dosing vodka even be beneficial since my nitrate level is already low?
 
You may want to try dosing potassium nitrate in small quantities to try balancing nitrate and phosphate levels (there is a great thread on it here on RC). In my personal experience, this has alleviated cyano growth with my MB7/BioFuel dosing. A little nitrate is beneficial in many respects, IMO.

Another possibility is that the cyano-type growth you are getting is a result of overdosing the bacteria. If it the texture looks like cotton-candy, you are indeed ODing the MB7. If not, it's probably those low nitrates.
 
Any way to determine how much strontium to dose? Is srontium overdose something to worry about? how about other elements like potassium, molybdenum...? do you dose those?
any tests for those or any way to estimate tank consumtion based on Ca or alk consumption somehow?
 
jbanks, I'm in the same boat as you. At first, I was running this arrangement:

FRONT
ATI Blue+
ATI Aquablue Special
ATI Aquablue Special
ATI Blue+
ATI Blue+
ATI Aquablue Special
ATI Blue+

I thought that was too white, so I recently changed to this:

FRONT
ATI Blue+
ATI Aquablue Special
ATI Blue+
UVL Super Actinic
ATI Blue+
ATI Aquablue Special
ATI Blue+

I still think that's a little too white. I'm thinking of pulling the AB Special from the front and replacing it with another Blue+

Thanks New Salt! I'm going to try two more blue+ and see how it works for me. I think they just might do the trick..
 
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