got ethical husbandry?

Max’s 30 gal

I hate DST, but the darkness does help with picture taking. I turned off all my lights besides the tank and took these shots which showcase the unique dimensions of this shallow tank
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Salinity in ppt: 34.9 hanna
Alk: 8 khg
NO3: in ppm: 1 salifert and nyos
PO4 in ppm: .09 hanna

everything is looking good, I think I’ll try to stay around these parameters. I am going to blast off the rocks and change about 5 gallons, I think biweekly/weekly (depending on my laziness) water changes have been helping recently. I also think the tank is starting to mature, the coralline is really taking over the rocks and frag rack which is very exciting
 
I found some winners in the assorted SPS tanks at Neptune. Their tanks are packed right now! I got two acros that each had been healing long enough to start encrusting, they had nice PE in the store and are looking good in my tank so far. I will move them to the rock next week and get better pictures. Based on their structure so far, I think these are both acropora tenuis?

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Alk slowly went towards 7.6 from 8 so I added another 1mL dose of each part at midnight. I could see on the khg results that it started to lower around that time.

At this point I’m dosing enough that a change like this won’t be as drastic. Unlike when I went from 1mL to 2mL/day which doubled the dosage. This increase is just 20%
 
NO3: .5ppm
PO4: .08ppm


I’m 1 week into using the ATI nutrition set which is N, P, and carbon. Hard to say anything yet, but I like that they have a website that I can just enter my weekly test results into and get the dosage. I diluted each 500mL bottle with 1500mL of rodi and am currently doing 2mL of the diluted Nitrates. I tested values on their calculator and would start dosing the carbon if my Nitrates went over 1ppm, or P if it went below .06ppm
 
The snails are the bad boys of the tank today. I was hearing a weird splashing and thought it was the ATO pouring out of the tank or something, but then I saw this:
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The snail was eating the algae growing on the return pipe and it caused it to push the flow upward, I probably should switch away from the clear tube so it doesn’t grow algae in the first place
 
I have been seeing my clowns graze up against the polyps of my gonis. Does this mean there’s a chance they may eventually have the Gonis host them? That would be very neat.

I had a small rock get trapped in the guard for my gyre and I used it as a reason to clean the whole thing. It was pretty simple, I popped the guards off and put on the other set of propellers(impellers?) on, then soaked the dirty props and guards in citric acid and brushed off the coralline from the guard.

I think the cleaning really helped because the pump was really blowing some of my frags over on the rack near it. it seems like it was getting bogged down by the gunk I pulled out of it.

I’m working on changing the placement so I can get more flow down the center where I’ve been placing the acros. I have the gyre and a Nero 5. Currently the gyre is on the bottom in the center and is sending flow down the center across the bottom, and the Nero is on the side panel, but near the overflow. It is pointing at the other side and is pulsing to create a bit of a wave motion in the tank.

Any suggestions for placement? I have the gyre, Nero, and then my return pump. I wonder if I should put both on the back wall, and then they would be sending flow down the sides and the flow would meet and come back down the center in a somewhat chaotic mix? Idk I will be tweaking it until I see the polyps moving nicely
 
I also placed an order with reef cleaners, I think I’m under stocked on snails. The glass gets nasty quicker than it did in previous tanks so I’m hoping the new snails help, I got some of the small snails to keep crevices cleaner (hopefully)
 
Grab some trochus from me next time you’re over
100%, reef cleaners didn’t have any trochus and I want some. I didn’t make a very big order, but I got some ceriths and nerites.

Most of the nerites I had have escaped the tank and dried out, I’ve read they prefer cooler temps than most reef tanks so they explore the dry world. My lid should be coming soon so I’m going to try them again since I’d always see them working on the glass and with bare bottom I have a lot of “glass”
 
My part A is crusting up the dosing tube. How can I prevent this?

When it does crust up, what should I do with the chunk at the end? So far I’ve been just dropping it into the return chamber and it dissolve. I’ve put it in because I believe I need to keep the dosage equal between the two parts, but dropping the chunk seems to provide more A so it maybe isn’t the best move?

Here’s a pic of the tubing. It’s in a holder and about 3-4” above the surface of the water. It doesn’t touch the water when the pump is off and the chamber water level raises
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Looks good! I'm thinking of making something similar with magnets so I can remove the panels easily. I think I'm going to need to make it pretty low to block the light, so might interfere with maintenance.
 
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