Guess what?! The smaller clown is already hosting in one of my new BTAs! That was way faster than I ever expected. The larger Darwin is currently hovering over the top of the nem while the male rolls around down in the nems tentacles. Check out the video!I can't wait to see the video of the new clowns.
Thanks for coming by
Grow them...love them
You are the only other person that they know
You apparently breed smart clownfish, Erin!
Thank you, Geneva! I sent my NM friend some goodies in exchange, but I definitely got the better end of that deal. He's in the middle of nowhere, so he doesn't have a local club or other reefers to sell to or trade with, so he was excited to just offload a bunch of frags on me. This is my first time ever trying BTA's and so far so good. I give a lot of credit to the fact that they were super healthy when I got them. I hope they continue to do well. Lily just loves having her photo taken. She takes it as some form of attention, so she wants the camera pointed at her instead of the aquarium and she's very good at posing.
Thanks Kris! Gotta give Erin the credit for selling me some nice healthy clowns.
Thanks, Mike! That helps a lot. I was definitely wondering on concentration to mix it at to make a big batch. I know it will definitely be trial and error to get the dosing amount right. Its too bad they don't sell the 2 B-Ionic components separately, since I've got my dosing all dialed it with that, but its such a waste since I use very little of the calcium component.
That is super helpful, Mike. Thank you! I will definitely have to give this a try once I run out of my current jug of B-Ionic Alkalinity. Hopefully it won't take too long to sort out how much I need to dose each time to get it right. I'm dosing twice a day right now and I have it figured out to keep the alk around 9 dKH right now.
Yeah, I missed how confusing this looks. I was busy and skipped my calcium dosing for over a week, which is why Ca is low. To maintain them both where I want them (when I'm not skipping dosing), I go through a lot more of the BIonic Alk component than the calcium component. So while I do dose calcium, I always have plenty of that component leftover when I need to buy more of the alk component, so I just keep stocking up on tons of BIonic Ca component. I'd rather get something that I can buy and mix each component separately so that I can buy them as I run out of them. Does that make more sense? Sorry for being confusing
Interesting! Looks like there are a lot of different ways to do this. BRS has good mixing instructions for their bulk sodium bicarbonate and their soda ash, so I could just buy a bunch of baking soda and then decide which way I want to mix it according to one of the BRS instructions. If I follow their mixing instructions then I can probably use their calculator to get an idea of starting dose too.
Does that make more sense? Sorry for being confusing
Good point John. Honestly, I have no idea why I seem to use more Alk than Ca. For the first month and a half that this tank was set up, the Ca would stay up around 420 from just water changes with no dosing, but alk was dropping down to like 7, so I started dosing alk to get it back up to 9. Now I've got enough LPS corals that are growing that I seem to be using a bit more Ca atm, but I'm still not positive if they're going to match up in dosing amount. Maybe it was just a weird new tank thing and its all going to level out now so that I end up dosing equal amounts. Does that always happen?Thanks. That explains the results you posted. I guess my confusion runs deeper!
If the two part is designed to be added in equal quantities to match uptake in a reef system, why are you needing so much more Alk?
Using the calculator at http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html
A CA level of 420 would be in balance with Alk at 2.95 meq/l (8.26 dKH). Is there an advantage to having Alk higher than the balance point?
