Cali Kid Corals

Coral reefer’s 360 gal system. 225 display and frag tanks

Tested for the first time In Awhile last night.
Alk8.3, ca 500, mg 1440, sg 1.026, temp 78.
Pretty happy! Figured things were good since I'm finally seeing some spa growth and coloration!!!
Took me awhile to figure out setting on my ai sol blues, I've been slowly ramping up for awhile. I get to a max of 55-55-75 (w,b,rb) now.
Been battling a bit of black filmy (cyano?) so been doing a lot of water changes and staying on top of gfo. My new schedule is 30 gal every two weeks, seems better and easier than 20 per week.
Still anticipating joining my 100 gal downstairs with the 120 upstairs, girlfriend complained about messy wires and visible ten gal top off tank, well I guess that means time to put a hole in the floor, or wall, and link em up! That way all of the equipment will be in the man cave (garage).
 
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Thanks guys. Yep, starting to grow pretty well finally. Had some issues before with lots of things...phosphate, lighting, dosing...lots of losses, but some lessons learned. The halide to led transition took me awhile, but I'm finally stoked on the ais!
 
Sweet deal, that's my biggest fear with LEDs is that either there will be too much or too little light, in one tank with my RBTAs they actually moved away from directly under the light (too much) it actually bleached the rock where the light is hitting not algae or anything wants to grow there :D Other areas I'm finding that algae really loves the royal blue spectrum which caught me as odd as I thought more yellows/reds were more desirable.

Either way looks good Mike
 
Ok you motivated me to test my params this weekend!
Looks pretty bright there in a few spots.

How did you resolve your "issues"? What was the dosing issue? Where were the phosphates coming from?
 
I had a snafu with the soda ash pump connection on my bubble magus, alk got really low, 5s? Phosphates from laziness, feeding and lagging on water changes. Pretty small skimmer for tank size, started with used Rick, some wastes stored inside likely. I upgraded skimmer size, started using more gfo and changing it more often, and did a series of large water changes (35-50%) every 1-3 days for a couple weeks, picked up flow with a more open rock scape and the mp60.
One of the biggest factors in my downfall was when everything had been looking great, I got complacent. I thought it was all good and didn't NEED me as much. There were too many stony corals in there, so with the pump not working alk dropped fast and didn't get noticed for too long!
adjusting to LEDs took awhile as well.
 
Been having trouble posting photos on here. Seems my photobucket app isn't working for me?
Anyways, I'll be trying the toothbrush method of removing purple cloves soon. They are now my biggest problem, since I took out all my spa and soaked them in interceptor to kill off red bugs. Seems like I worked, maybe a few are left inthe tank, time will tell, but I saw polyp extension on several acros within 24 hrs that I hadn't seen polyps on in a couple months. Hopefully all acros will recover and regain good coloration.
 
Hey Mike, how come you don't like the cloves? Are they causing problems for ya? I have quite a bit myself, but I haven't noticed any problems with them. They seem to grow right up to my other coral and just move around them. Should I be concerned?
 
Can't say I've never seem them take over anything...but usually no big deal. They do grow around corals and kind of keep them from encrusting or expanding normally tho. Also, I don't want them on frags I make for others. Don't wanna be at fault for others tanks being over run. All in all not a big problem, but I guess my tank is doing well and I don't have any other big problems to deal with.

I didn't treat the whole tank for redbugs because I didn't want to kill off all the stuff in all of my liverock and I didn't wanna catch my fire shrimps. Lots of dead pods came out of the rocks w the acros on them when I put them back into the tank. If I need to treat the whole tank or pull the acros out again I can.
 
Got my second phosphate reactor setup, so now I'm using two. I change one out every two weeks, so media is in them for a total of four weeks each, but there is always fresh (less than two weeks old) gfo running in one of them. I feel this lets me fully utilize the gfo without worrying about when it is spent. Should help prevent my phosphates from ever spiking... as long as I stick to the routine!

Upgrade to a 6 ft. 225 starphire may be imminent...
Stay tuned. Fiancé was warned that I'd move my tank in order to paint the living room, but it would be replaced by a 6 ft. Tank. Booyah, WAF!!!!
 
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