Cali Kid Corals

40g ADA move and upgrade

Flagg37 said:
The bacteria doesn’t need any light to propagate. Also, it benefits from the warmer water but it actually doesn’t need that either. I’m envious of your solar power wall battery.
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The light is to help the coralline spread, so this new rock matches my old rock a little better when I put them together. I might attempt to cement some of my old rock into branchy shapes on the new flat rock. The heater is to speed the process up :) my garage is probably 50F. The battery doesn’t pay for itself the way solar panels do, it’s definitely more of a luxury.
 
I measured phosphate around 0.36ppm in the pukani rock cycling tank! This is consistent with a BRS Investigates study, but I still measured phosphate in my display tank as a sanity check and it was 0.02ppm for comparison. Decided to use the opportunity to find out how much phosphate my new “big tank” skimmer can remove in a week (Skimz SN143 skimmer). I will check the phosphates in one week intervals. If they don’t come down, I’ll see how much phosphate GFO can absorb... my overall goal is to wait until the rocks stop leaching phosphates to use them in a display tank. My question is whether pukani rocks stop leaching because all the phosphates dissolve or it’s more a process of bacterial films or algae “seal” the rock against leaching?
 
Skimmer may help to keep it from going higher, but won’t get rid of existing PO4. PO4 isn’t amphipathic.

Did you check for NO3? Should also go up if rock is breaking down dead stuff and often easier to measure.

I wouldn’t bother with GFO, just do a 100% water change just before you are ready to use the rock to make sure if it done breaking down organics.


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Agree with @JVU. The bubbles in the skimmer catch larger molecules, proteins and other organic byproducts. Once it’s broken down to phosphate and nitrate the skimmer can’t clear it. That’s how carbon dosing plays a role. It feeds bacteria that take up the nutrients and form it into molecules that the skimmer CAN capture and remove. That’s one reason why you need a protein skimmer if you’re going to carbon dose.

I also wouldn’t waste your money on gfo (it’s expensive!). You’re going to doing a big water change (or more than one) before you add livestock.


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There is no PO4 leaching from the pukani rock, just organic dead matter that breaks down as far as I know. So it will keep going until it’s all broken down.


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Thanks for the reminder that protein skimmers prevent organic stuff from breaking down into inorganic phosphate that can’t be removed by skimming. Oh well, at least the skimmer is getting “broken in”. I’m going to dump the water from the pukani cycling tank when it’s done. I will take your advice and check nitrates. It’s just amazing how much junk remains in those rocks after a week of bleaching.
 
I bleached my pukani for a while, 2 weeks if I remember correctly. Dried for 3 months. Added the rocks to water to start cycling, and I noticed after a week the water wasn't perfectly clear, so I dumped it and added more water. I need a new phosphate test, but I'm also in the same boat as you, rock needs to have minimal phosphates before going into the tank
 
Well, skimming did not change the pukani cycling tank phosphate level one bit (perhaps prevented more phosphate though)? Nitrite dropped from 2ppm to 1ppm over the last week and now nitrates are registering >4ppm (I used a low range test kit that only goes to 4ppm). Lights are off until the bacteria catches up. I would be getting seriously impatient except that my light canopy is still a work in progress!

The canopy was inspired by @Gablami who has a nice one above his Reefer with AP700s but mine will only use two T5s. I used poplar because it’s a lighter hardwood and the canopy will be suspended from the ceiling by steel wire. With help from @Flagg37 and @Yippee the canopy turned out so nice I don’t want to paint it. I will probably sand and seal it after I finish drilling holes for lighting.

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Does anyone have advice for/against the light arrangement here? The two AP700s will be end to end. The LED lamps are spaced about 11.5” apart within one AP700, and I spaced lamps of adjacent AP700s 12”, if that makes any sense. I’m worried about exhaust vents of adjacent fixtures blowing into each other and the heat of the T5 ballast near the Kessil.
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Nice canopy. I think you’ve got plenty of ventilation since the top is open. Mine is much more cramped with the 4 T5s.

I should probably open mine more on the top. Next project!




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iani said:
Are you putting the power supplies for the ap700s in the canopy as well? Do you guys think the T5s are needed?
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The Kessil power supplies will be elsewhere - the T5 ballast requires a <1.5’ wire lead to the bulbs so it needs to be close. T5s should help reduce shadowing on rigid corals, which is important because the focus of my next tank will be acropora.
 
iani said:
How about using the diffusers on the ap700.
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Wouldn’t change the fact that they’re point light sources - there would still be shadowing. The T5s will also reduce the shimmer I like but should fill in those shadows, because I’ll have lights front-center-back and along the length of the tank. This valida is already severely shadowed with an AP700 and starting to get small amounts of normal die-off in the shadowed regions. My digitata was bisected by shadow-line-die off, the top and bottom sections aren’t really even connected anymore, it looks ridiculous.
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Chromis said:
Wouldn’t change the fact that they’re point light sources - there would still be shadowing. The T5s will also reduce the shimmer I like but should fill in those shadows, because I’ll have lights front-center-back and along the length of the tank. This valida is already severely shadowed with an AP700 and starting to get small amounts of normal die-off in the shadowed regions. My digitata was bisected by shadow-line-die off, the top and bottom sections aren’t really even connected anymore, it looks ridiculous.
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I tried the diffusers for a few months and eventually got rid of them. All they did was reduce shimmer and increase the intensity needed to provide the same amount of light (I tested with the club par meter). Just seemed like a waste of money and electricity to me. Only good use for them imo, is for acclimation purposes as they seem to drop PAR about 25%.


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Shadowed areas should not die off. They may not color up but there should still be flesh. There no be any polyps either, just smooth flesh but if you are seeing skeleton, something else may be up.

On the RC AP700 forums, there were many that tried pairing them with T5s. I would say about 80-90% eventually removed them. They caused the tank to become flat in aspect. Loosing the depth that AP700s provided with the shimmer and the shadowing.
 
I guess I don’t know what’s normal except for normal in my tank, but the really severely shadowed areas go through a pattern of a couple months of brown-out, a few months of smooth flesh (no polyps) and then finally a dead spot forms in the darkest part of the shadow (not like, from the top or bottom of the coral) and slowly grows, then kind of stops near the “light line”. The new growth has been outpacing the dead shadow spots so I’m not worried. When I switched to the AP700, some of those smooth brown shade spots colored up and grew new polyps so that’s why I’m blaming inadequate light cover on those dead spots.
 
I’m interested to see the results from this. How do you plan on doing the programming? Are you going to do any ramping up/down or just everything on/off?
 
Flagg37 said:
I’m interested to see the results from this. How do you plan on doing the programming? Are you going to do any ramping up/down or just everything on/off?
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Yea so I like to keep everything simple as possible so I’m thinking just T5s on a simple on/off timer like 6-8 hours, 100%, and let the Kessils compensate for the rest.

My Kessils are currently flat 30% 8 hours, with about two hours of ramp before/after peak. So, with the added T5s, I guess I’d start the Kessils at 10%, make sure the corals aren’t upset by the new T5s, then ramp up the Kessils until the acropora tips are white again. I’m imagining I won’t need to run the Kessils higher than 25%. We’ll see!
 
The pukani rock cycling tank dropped from 1 to 0.5ppm nitrate with ~10ppm nitrate in the past week. Five weeks of cycling with a donor rock from the display tank and the rock is still not quite ready.
 
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