drummereef
Team RC
Can't remember Alex, but are you currently running biopellets? Do you feed your corals anything specific?
Taqpol's 220 gallon custom Miracles tank!
- Thread starter Taqpol
- Start date
Can't remember Alex, but are you currently running biopellets? Do you feed your corals anything specific?
Taqpol
New member
I'm running the same WM biopellets you are, and my corals get fed nothing but frozen fish food and fish poop. To top it all off my fish haven't been getting fed as much because I was worried about overfeeding the tank when my nitrates had risen up to 20ppm.
In my last 120g vodka fueled, T5 tank I dosed lugols and amino acids as well and had great colors, growth, and PE, but I haven't wanted to try anything like that on this tank because it was too new and things were going kind of rough.
In my last 120g vodka fueled, T5 tank I dosed lugols and amino acids as well and had great colors, growth, and PE, but I haven't wanted to try anything like that on this tank because it was too new and things were going kind of rough.
drummereef
Team RC
Gotcha, where are your nitrates now, still 20ppm?
drummereef
Team RC
Sweet! And sorry for not keeping up with the latest...
Why not feed samll amounts of phyto based or cyclops sized foods and see how they respond? At least now that your nutrient levels are under control - to say the least. 
Taqpol
New member
Some corals have continued to look perfectly healthy, others have stayed crappy, and two new ones have died (both maricultured, my Purple A. millepora and A. desalwii).
Two things I have noticed though is that my top off water was reading 1 TDS up from 0 and using the Hanna photometer my top off water had 0.1 ppm phosphates. To fix both of these problems I am completely redoing and upgrading my RO/DI unit. Not only will I go ahead and sterilize the unit, I am going to be running two new 75gpd membranes in series and powering the entire setup with a booster pump to push my measly 30psi up to 60psi. I am also going to change my DI cartridge into a refillable cartridge and use new beads from Bulk Reef Supply. This should have the effect of really polishing my water that I already know contains a significant amount of phosphates, but the dual membranes are also supposed to cut my waste water in half.
Two things I have noticed though is that my top off water was reading 1 TDS up from 0 and using the Hanna photometer my top off water had 0.1 ppm phosphates. To fix both of these problems I am completely redoing and upgrading my RO/DI unit. Not only will I go ahead and sterilize the unit, I am going to be running two new 75gpd membranes in series and powering the entire setup with a booster pump to push my measly 30psi up to 60psi. I am also going to change my DI cartridge into a refillable cartridge and use new beads from Bulk Reef Supply. This should have the effect of really polishing my water that I already know contains a significant amount of phosphates, but the dual membranes are also supposed to cut my waste water in half.
110galreef
New member
Boosting ur pressure to the membrane will definitly help w/ the effectivness of your RO membrane! I am lucky to have about 70-75psi regularly! I also have the super duper deluxe RO/DI from BRS w/ dual DI....I am getting about 3ppm TDS to the DI & after! I have processed 2000g of total water (700 or so NET RO/DI water & used about 1/2 of the first DI cartride resin.
2 75GPD membranes in series may be overkill, as I think the simple factor of the booster pump will really help....unless you have serious TDS incoming which may be as I probably missed it somewhere.:spin2:
110galreef
New member
double post...just adding to ur post count! lol
Taqpol
New member
My incoming TDS isn't crazy, I think its a little over 100 ppm. I can definitely tell its lower then my old place, because my sediment filters don't turn completely brown and get clogged in just a few weeks. Yuck!
I agree that the booster pump probably would have been enough, but the main purpose of the membranes in series is to lower your waste water. I should now be getting 150gpd (2x 75gpd membranes) with the same rejection rate and the same waste water, or twice the output/same waste = half the waste. I know it won't be 100% efficient like that, but it will still help and should produce water faster.
110galreef
New member
Ok, enlighten me...if they are in series don't you still only get 75gpd out put, just polish the water wice before going to DI? series to me sounds like one line thru your pre filters, one going into the first 75gpd membrane, then the output of that going to the 2nd 75gpd membrane, then to DI. Also seems like you'd need to drain the waste water of both membranes as well? NO
2 75gpd membranes in parallel (one input to your prefilter & then split to two inputs, one for each 75gpd Membrane to net 150GPD?
nanoreefbro
New member
Alex which biopellets are you using?
Taqpol
New member
On your RO membrane you have three lines, input, output, and waste. My input from the prefilters will go into the input of RO #1. The waste line of RO #1 will then go to the input of RO #2. Lastly, both output lines will be joined together with a wye fitting and continue to the DI while the waste line of RO #2 will be the true waste line for both membranes.Ok, enlighten me...if they are in series don't you still only get 75gpd out put, just polish the water wice before going to DI? series to me sounds like one line thru your pre filters, one going into the first 75gpd membrane, then the output of that going to the 2nd 75gpd membrane, then to DI. Also seems like you'd need to drain the waste water of both membranes as well? NO
2 75gpd membranes in parallel (one input to your prefilter & then split to two inputs, one for each 75gpd Membrane to net 150GPD?
I have heard arguments for running in parallel vs. series, but this is the way Bulk Reef Supply suggests to do it and since I bought their kit I'm going to do it that way.
Warner Marine EcoBAK.
110galreef
New member
Ok, that makes sense, and know i definitly get why you will have 2x's output & less waste water.......
So no issues with the pressure RO#2 will create on the waste water exiting from RO#1
jjstecchino
New member
Hi Alex, finally I had some time to catch up with your new thread. The new tank looks fabulous and I am sorry to read about the corals die off.
I ran into a similar situation a few months ago when some of the acroporas and montipora, first stopped growing, then started RTNning. This was very puzzling since all my parameters were spot on. PO4 was 0.00 by photometer, no nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, alk was 9, ca was 400 mg 1300. It was driving me nuts, so I went step by step through the whole system and I found several problems. Some of them may apply to your situation as well.
One of the first things I checked was my RO water. I was going through DI resin quite quickly. I also had a dual membrane arrangement. Troubleshooting the system I got a pressure gauge and I saw that the first membrane caused quite a drop of pressure on the waste line, so the second membrane was fed at approximately 30 psi which is way below the 60 psi required for the membrane to produce a 98% rejection rate. So unless you can have a quite high feeding pressure a dual membrane will give you water at higher TDS and run out your di resin much faster. So I switched back to a single 75gpd membrane run at 60 psi. It takes a full day to make a 60g water change canister but it is overall ok. Water reaching the tank still had 0 TDS after the DI resin (the brs color changing one is a good one). So RO water was not the issue.
I then focused on the skimmer. I was using an euroreef 250 and I thought it was overpowered for my system. I always had consistent good dark skimmate. My feeling was that despite optimal measurable water parameter I had high dissolved organics. I felt this was the case because the chetomorpha in the refugium was growing like crazy and the glass panels were getting dirty very quickly (had to clean them almost daily) so I decided to get a new skimmer. I went for an ATB 1050A cone. This skimmer is pulling almost twice as much gunk as compared to the ER 250. Much darker and a lot more volume. After the skimmer replacement things started improving significantly.
No more corals die off and growth restarted albeit slowly.
I then focused on the sand bed which I thought was the main sink of organics accumulation. The sand bed was about 2" deep, so I decided to remove some sand and go to about 1". This improved things even more.
At this point corals were growing at their usual rate, however their color was not as popping as some of the tanks you see on the forums.
I decided to give vodka a try but did not make a significant difference on coral coloration, however I did not know how to titrate vodka since po4 and nitrates has always been undetectable.
I just started Zeovit a few weeks ago and I have to say I am quite impressed with it. Just after a week the corals color started to come up and became more vibrant. After Zeo I have to clean the glass just once a week.
Things are looking good now.
Good luck with your tank.
Claudio
