Cali Kid Corals

bondolo's defunct tanks

I got about 10lbs of sand from Boun. I didn't fully clean it but rinsed it a couple of times in RODI. I think all of the bio material (sludge) was rinsed away. I also left it in a couple of gallons of RODI water overnight before adding it to my existing sand. Probably minimal risk in adding it and I like the colour. It's slowly mixing in with my existing dark grey sand. I am thinking of adding another 20 pounds of white oolithic to my existing sand to lighten it up even further.
 
At very long last my frag tank has more light. I picked up a 150 DE Metal Halide with a magnetic ballast from JAR at the RTC tour / BBQ day and built a hanging setup for it.

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The corals--they love it.

Q: How long does it take for coral to start to show colour after going from a 65W PC 50/50 to a 150W 14K MH + 65W PC Hamilton 420 Actinic?
A: Less than 20 minutes. Some obstinately brown montis were showing green florescent tinges after only a few minutes of exposure.

I am slowly ramping up the amount of time that the MH is lighting the tank so as not to shock the coral. I started out very modestly with only 15 minutes exposure and am increasing by 15 minutes a week for the first month and then by 30 minutes a week with a target of 3.5 hours MH + 8 hours of actinic PC.

If anyone has old 150W DE MH bulbs laying around I could borrow I am interested in trying out different colours. The bulb I have is a very worn unknown (probably Chinese) 14K. Before buying anything I would especially like to try 20K bulbs out anything to see if I can eliminate the PC fixture. Robust growth is my only goal for this tank, viewing aesthetics are secondary.

Yeah, the fan--it's very temporary. :) I need to choose a fan I can mount on the tall stand to the left of the tank.
 
I know you're leaning towards 20K, but I have a 150W DE Phoenix 14K bulb you could try out. I don't have the figures handy but it's supposed to put out more PAR than comparable 14K lamps.
 
Today I was noticing that my tanks looks better than they have for quite a while despite being almost two weeks overdue for a water change. It's really strange that a water change would make things worse....

I have been fighting cyano and brown slime since September with frequent water changes, severely reduced feeding and even reduced photo period. It hasn't helped. Originally I thought it was just the warmer weather and would dissipate once the tank temperatures were more stable at the usual 25C. I also noticed in August that my DI resin was starting to change colour quickly but I figured I could wait before doing a filter replacement until it was more worn out. WRONG!

Sean's thread about his tank issues got me doing more research about possible causes for my cyano issues. I tested my RODI reservoir today and it has very high ammonia. Higher than my test kit can measure. It seems my chloramine filter is almost certainly kaput and the DI resin, though trying valiantly, was passing some of the ammonia. Strangely my meter still reads 0.0ppm TDS. So I've been doing water changes with ammonia rich water and also using it for my topoff. No wonder the cyano was going nuts.

Sigh. At least I know how to fix it...
 
Ammonia is not picked up by a TDS meter as they only pick up charged mobile ions.

for a better understanding of what a TDS meter does:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-04/rhf/feature/index.php

Good catch though :)
 
Thanks for the article pointer. I meant to research this evening what the TDS meter was actually testing and this answers it exactly.
 
Just checked and our RODI water is fine. However, the DI resin has fully changed color but it's still outputting 1-2 PPM which is still acceptable, AFAIK.
 
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