Well I guess I have an SPS tank...

[Icefire]

Go slow while doing change, your SPS look like mine exept I have 0 NO3/PO4.

Currently started dosing Nitrate to get a mesurable amount and hope to get more deeper color.

 

[.Chris.]

Go slow while doing change, your SPS look like mine exept I have 0 NO3/PO4.

Currently started dosing Nitrate to get a mesurable amount and hope to get more deeper color.

Of course. I've changed several things but always allowed 4-6 weeks between each change to measure and observe the changes. I only change one thing at a time.

The good news is that I only upped mag to 1400 in the end. I flubbed the test so I redid it and was pleasantly surprised. Went back to dosing it but at a much reduced rate (10ml per day as opposed to 50ml).

I have decided not to vinegar dose for now. If the cyano seems to be worsening then I will consider it further but so long as it remains contained to a couple of small patches along the sand I'll leave it be.

The next change, therefore will be my light bulbs. That is scheduled for January and am considering ATI instead of giesemann. Does anyone have suggestions as to what combination to go with (for either brand)? Keep in mind I have a 10000k maxspect razor that I use between 6x t5s.

I will also be buying a second 4 head doses for Red Sea colour elements in January.

 

[reefmutt]

Chris, vinegar is a good start. It will bring both n and p down. But will have more effect on n. Start very slowly and test often.
Once you get n down to around 5ish ppm. We'll see where the p is an deal with it then.
P will only begin to rise if/when n drops completely to 0. You just want to make sure you don't over do the vinegar and allow n to drop to 0.
Once you've got n where you want it, see where p is sitting. I bet it won't be to excessive.. If it is,you can either employ gfo or increase vinegar while using a nitrate additive.
As for the acropower, like reefvet said, just start feeding your tang some nori and you will get natural additions is aspartic acid..
All of this info is 'what I would do' and certainly not the only way of doing things..

D'oh.. I just read your last post where you said you'd decided not to dose vinegar... That's fine, too!
But if you want to scratch the 'adding aminos itch' just feed the nori and you get some of the benefits of the acropower without having to add it..

 

[deeznutz1]

Very nice indeed. I love the sargassum trigger. Do yourself a favour and put a cover on the tank in the evening. You will lose it from jumping. I've lost many triggers from jumping. Actually, I've lost all my triggers from jumping!

 

[.Chris.]

Chris, vinegar is a good start. It will bring both n and p down. But will have more effect on n. Start very slowly and test often.
Once you get n down to around 5ish ppm. We'll see where the p is an deal with it then.
P will only begin to rise if/when n drops completely to 0. You just want to make sure you don't over do the vinegar and allow n to drop to 0.
Once you've got n where you want it, see where p is sitting. I bet it won't be to excessive.. If it is,you can either employ gfo or increase vinegar while using a nitrate additive.
As for the acropower, like reefvet said, just start feeding your tang some nori and you will get natural additions is aspartic acid..
All of this info is 'what I would do' and certainly not the only way of doing things..

D'oh.. I just read your last post where you said you'd decided not to dose vinegar... That's fine, too!
But if you want to scratch the 'adding aminos itch' just feed the nori and you get some of the benefits of the acropower without having to add it..

That's certainly what I would have done with the vinegar. And I may yet do it but I'd like to let things go for the moment. I haven't really let my matrix seed properly so I want to give it some time. In the Siporax/Matrix topic people are reporting results on Siporax after 4 weeks so I'm thinking it could take 2-3x as long for the matrix.

Also like I said I'd like to take the changes slowly so one thing at a time.

I probably will not do nori just for practical purposes. I have a canopy and cover which are annoying to lift up daily for nori. Plus I do like the affect acropower is having so we'll continue down this route for now. I'm fine with being patient unlike some people!

Very nice indeed. I love the sargassum trigger. Do yourself a favour and put a cover on the tank in the evening. You will lose it from jumping. I've lost many triggers from jumping. Actually, I've lost all my triggers from jumping!

His name is Smiley and he's my favourite fish. I have a cover on the tank specifically because he jumped on me three times in the middle of the night. Luckily I sleep about six feet from my tank and got him all three times. Once he managed to get under the couch before I got him back. Nice and dusty fish!

 

[reefmutt]

Triggers are tough fish!
Several years ago a had a trigger with a very, very persistent ich problem..
I decided to give him fresh water baths as I didn't want to add copper to the tank.
I started at probably 30 seconds..... Over the course of a month, I continuously increased the bath time as the ich wasn't going away
My last dip was close to TEN minutes in fresh water!!!
After that, I figured if he could survive ten minutes in fresh water he could probably survive the ich, so I stopped....... Then the ich just went away...

 

[.Chris.]

So to answer the question no one asked, this is what I feed both my tank and my fish.

If you can't make out what everything is, it's a combination of:

Spirulina Brine Shrimp by Pro Salt/Hikari
Mysis by Hikari/PE
Squid by Hikari
Omni Marine by Cobalt
Mega Marine by Hikari
Cyclops by Cobalt
Rotifers by Cobalt
Coral Gumbo by Cobalt

The bloodworms are for my fire belly newts.

Two cubes of each, except Coral Gumbo which gets 5 cubes, is added to a squeeze bottle. RO water is added, along with a squirt of Selcon, Vita Chem and about 2 tsp of Reef Roids.

This all melts and gets distributed once daily (sometimes twice if I'm feeling generous) to each of my two tanks.

I also feed the following once daily:

Seachem Marine flake
HBH Flake Frenzy
Ocean Nutrition Reef Flake
Cobalt Mysis Spirulina
Tetra Color Granules
NLS Thera+A
Hikari Marine A
Hikari Seaweed Extreme
Hikari Marine Omni

I firmly believe in a diverse diet for fish, as you can tell.

 

[reefmutt]

Hm... I think somebody didn't like a bunch or your photos, Chris..
Or you didn't like them..

 

[.Chris.]

There's just one not showing up. Not sure why. Can't be bothered to try to figure it out.

 

[A1t2o]

I can't see any of your picture after the first post. looks like a great tank though from what I can see.

 

[reefmutt]

Odd. All I see are the shots in your very first post and then your full room shot..

 

[.Chris.]

Odd. All I see are the shots in your very first post and then your full room shot..

Bizarre...

I'll try to take a look at the issue when I'm home on an actual computer. Should be easy enough to fix.

 

[reefmutt]

Yeah.. Get back to work!
It's bad enough, I come in and distract you.. Now I'm doing it virtually as well!

 

[.Chris.]

That's right. I'll post a few pictures of my setup and my mess of wires. It was NOT fun to run them all through a tiny hole I drilled through my wall. I'm looking forward to cutting out some gyprock to run my pipes through when I upgrade my sump in a few weeks!

In the next picture, you can see where I'll be putting my sump. it'll be on the floor against the wall on the left. That shelf will be coming out, and either put elsewhere, or junked. I'll have to sacrifice one of my waterchange bins (containers with the yellow tops) to do it, but it's worth it to increase the system volume by 70g and add a refugium/frag tank.

A question I have is whether or not it's worthwhile or necessary to upgrade my skimmer. The one I have now performs flawlessly, and seems to handle the bioload well. With the increase in system volume, but no increase in bioload (and probably a decrease in nutrient levels with the added refugium), is it worth looking into a skimmer upgrade?

That should work now.

Although should update this: I probably will not be upgrading my sump at the moment. Maybe in several months, but I want to let things settle in before making any serious changes.

 

[.Chris.]

So to answer the question no one asked, this is what I feed both my tank and my fish.

If you can't make out what everything is, it's a combination of:

Spirulina Brine Shrimp by Pro Salt/Hikari
Mysis by Hikari/PE
Squid by Hikari
Omni Marine by Cobalt
Mega Marine by Hikari
Cyclops by Cobalt
Rotifers by Cobalt
Coral Gumbo by Cobalt

The bloodworms are for my fire belly newts.

Two cubes of each, except Coral Gumbo which gets 5 cubes, is added to a squeeze bottle. RO water is added, along with a squirt of Selcon, Vita Chem and about 2 tsp of Reef Roids.

This all melts and gets distributed once daily (sometimes twice if I'm feeling generous) to each of my two tanks.

I also feed the following once daily:

Seachem Marine flake
HBH Flake Frenzy
Ocean Nutrition Reef Flake
Cobalt Mysis Spirulina
Tetra Color Granules
NLS Thera+A
Hikari Marine A
Hikari Seaweed Extreme
Hikari Marine Omni

I firmly believe in a diverse diet for fish, as you can tell.

 

[.Chris.]

All pictures should work now. Unfortunately I can't edit my previous posts to fix the links, but I quoted the posts to fix them.

 

[.Chris.]

Cyano starting to get slightly out of hand. Stopped dosing all acropower. No noticeable difference in coral health since I stopped but also no reduction in cyano. I will probably go minimum two weeks without acropower and observe the results.

It's theoretically possible that something else is causing the cyano but given that I've changed nothing aside from acropower I have difficulty believing it's not that.

Still struggling with keeping alk elevated. Upped my dosage again. I'm sitting at about 7dkh but would like it to go up to 8 ideally.

Nitrate and phosphate still elevated. Will probably remain elevated until I either get a chaeto refugium going or dose vinegar. Media reactor and 3L of seachem matrix seem to do diddly squat and it's been 5 weeks. On the off chance that it might do something I'll leave it as it causes no harm and costs nothing to leave it.

Corals seem fine for now. No real change. No new pictures as nothing to report. I will likely get rid of my chalices as the tank looks unbalanced and I'd like to go full full SPS.

 

[markalot]

Hi Chris,

thanks for fixing the pics, love the T5 additions to the razor. Need more corals pictures now.

 

[reefmutt]

Ah.. There it is.. 'Go full sps' I was waiting for that..
Was only a matter of time!
Good idea to stop aa additions.
Chris have you tried adding some bacteria based additives?
It may or may not help..
What are you n and p levels now?

 

[.Chris.]

Ah.. There it is.. 'Go full sps' I was waiting for that..
Was only a matter of time!
Good idea to stop aa additions.
Chris have you tried adding some bacteria based additives?
It may or may not help..
What are you n and p levels now?

A friend of mine offered to buy the chalices and suggested the tank didn't look balanced and he's right. It's something I've been thinking about since you mentioned it a few weeks back.

What would you suggest for bacteria? Only thing available here is Bactiv8. I did add 250ml over the course of a couple weeks to help seed my matrix but I noticed no difference.

N is 12-16, p is 0.12-0.16. Both Red Sea, considering getting Salifert to check against.