winter update 2007
winter update 2007
It’s been a few months since my last update:
I throw this much chateo away every week or so.
Unknown nuisance algae.
Refugium shot, a bit of cyano in the mix, could use a blackout day to get rid of it.
Skimmer has been upgraded, now sports 2 genX 4100's mesh modded.
Parameters
alkalinity: 9-10dKH
calc: 500ppm
salinity: 1.025sg
temp: 78-79F
mg: 1350ppm
ph: typically 8.1
nitrite/ammonia: 0ppm
nitrates: currently 5-15ppm
Husbandry:
-Daily: 1 sheet of nori fed. clean skimmer neck, shake phyto chambers
-Bi Daily: (have reduced meaty feedings to every other day now instead of every day)
-2x / week: phytoplankton feeding (1 cup of home grown to refugium), clean glass, check kH
-weekly: blow detritus off coral, change carbon, change filter sock, backflush RO/DI unit, prune refugiums, add lugols iodide 10 drops
-monthly: 12% water change. I will likely up this to bi-weekly until my nitrates are gone now, I am considering alternating WCs w/ tropic marin and instant ocean to save $$$. I prune corals as needed, mostly just the orange montipora that wont stop growing.
Outstanding problems:
-Nitrates. I hit 30ppm in nitrates in early November. I am still fighting to reduce them to 0ppm. It takes a while in a 500G system. To correct the situation, I have implemented about 33% water changes/month. I wish I could do more, but it’s so expensive changing water with tropic marin. I may start mixing it with instant ocean to cut costs and preserve quality, a bit of a compromise.
-T5’s keep blowing. This is an expensive issue. I bought 10 more bulbs to keep an inventory now. I’ve lost 5 in only 6 months or so. I think it is from fish splashing water on the bulbs causing them to crack from temperature change. I saw one pop when I dropped a magfloat in the water causing a sploosh to hit a bulb. I could correct this I suppose by raising the lights or covering them. Not thrilled about either choice.
-nuisance algaes. I have a bit of bubble algae in the tank cropping up. I added 2 emerald crabs to combat this, and have seen a reduction, but I could use one or two more crabs in the future. I also have a strange red lettuce type of algae showing up. Nothing seems to graze on it in my tank. I had to remove several patches by hand, they are very slimy to the touch and I had to use gloves. I also still have a bit of that short purple fuzz algae leftover that just wont quit. I’m still growing a large amount of coraline though.
-clarkii clown harassing my false clowns, I knew this going in, and I like the clarkia better anyways.
-The yellow tang refuses to let the purple tang ever be in plain sight.
-brine shrimp wont grow, but I haven’t tried in 4 months either
Problems corrected:
-Have not seen any ich lately.
-Upgraded my skimmer. I modified the unit heavily, I added a second GenX4100 needlewheel recirculating pump and now feed the unit with a mag5. Both GenX’s are mesh modded and I increased the air intake device sizes with ¼†barbed fittings cut with a V shape just below the intake. I don’t have a air intake measuring device, but I am happy to see the skimmer pulling ½ gallon of tea colored skimmate each week so far. I also added a drain valve at the bottom for easier maintenance.
-Solved my humidity issues for now. I added two 65pint dehumidifier units, one upstairs, one downstairs. They are on their own 20A breaker and each pull about 650W when running. They are also permanently hooked to a drain line so they don’t need to be emptied. Right now the humidity in my house is hovering around 35-40% with the tank because it is the dry winter months. But the dehumidifiers would run maybe 8 hours/day each in the fall to keep the house at 50% humidity. A nice $40 spike to the electric bill in the name of saving my floors/doors/windows! I also lowered the humidity greatly by COVERING the sumps! That helped, and turning the fans off on the refugium helped a bit. Before covering the sump, the dehumidifiers ran nearly 16 hours/day. When I had just one, it never shut off, so $400 later, it’s in balance.
-made another batch of fish food, this time I made the chunks much larger so it wont dissolve so much.
-Added more flow to the remote deep sand bed, maybe 200gph total now, to help combat nitrates possibly.
Additions:
-Snails. About 200 golden astreas (half the size of a standard astrea) and 50 nassarius. They have made a large impact in the frequency of glass cleaning and are keeping the sand bed very clean, but I have seen little reduction of nuisance purple fuzzy algae.
-Emerald crab x 2, peppermint shrimp x 3, neon goby cleaner x 1 (have 2 total now that love to clean my fish.)
-handful of coral and zoas, also added a BTA and 2 clarkii clowns a while back, one clarkia died that week, but the other
-added 3 more maxi jet mods, making 5 total in the display now, one is in the sump to help keep solids in suspension.
-changed the colors of my lighting a bit, now it goes:
Front:
Ati blue plus
Ati blue plus
UV - Actinic
GE 6500K
Ati blue plus
14K bulb
Back:
--This results in a 14K or so appearance. It’s a bit unbalanced for the blue ratio in the front though. But I mostly did this because I wanted to have the actinic and one blue stay on longer at night for more intense moonlighting. So now they are on a 1.5 hour delay past the other lights. I like the tank better now with an actinic, despite the loss in growth rate a bit.
Losses:
-Countless chromis. From my original school of 40-50 has dwindled down to about 16. Considering how expensive these are ($10ea in Michigan), and how bad my nitrates are, they will not be replaced.
-All female lyretails. The male survives. The last female jumped out somehow.
-The polyp eating korin angel was given away for store credit.
-all birds nest SPS died, unsure why only they seem so sensitive. Also lost one colony of mean green zoas for some reason. I don’t understand this. All other corals are open and happy, polyps fully extended.
Plans: *After nitrates drop to 0ppm
-addtition of fish: 1 powder blue tang, 1 mandarin dragonette, 1 fairy wrasse, and 1 more clarkii clown and bangaii cardinal to complete the pairs again.
-1-3 clams, we’ll see. And probably slowly will add another dozen or so zoas and SPS as time goes on. The tank is getting cramped on coral locations. I keep re-arranging coral every few months because some seem unhappy with their locations with slow growth.
-- Far future I may add a kalk reactor to combat low ph and a frag tank (throw lights over my 50G equipment tank) is not that far out, another year maybe.
**My electric bill seems to be stabilizing at $165 winter, $200 fall/spring, $225 summer @ 10cents/kWH. That’s including dehumidifiers in the fall/spring, central air in the summer, and lack of humidity and central air in the winter. Water bill is only $30 typically.
