Cali Kid Corals

kinetic Reefer 170

Are you still dosing anything against dinos? I had an outbreak recently which seemed to go away too easily with a few days of lights out. I thought they were gone and have been increasing the photoperiod but saw a golden brown dust on the sandbed. Maybe it is them trying to return. I just did a water change Friday which maybe was not a great idea. I will see how it looks Monday. I thought I needed more flow across the sand and added a small powerhead.
Has your nem been wandering again?
 
Flagg37 said:
When I got the iPhone X posting pictures stopped working for me. I found if you resize them then they can be uploaded. You can also try taking the pictures in the square format. I think it’s either something to do with the file size or resolution being too high.
Click to expand...

File size. There's a 5MB limit.
 
As I mentioned before, my Magnifica walked all over the tank, around the rockwork, around the entire perimiter of the tank, and settled back onto this spot for quite awhile now:

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MolaMola said:
Are you still dosing anything against dinos? I had an outbreak recently which seemed to go away too easily with a few days of lights out. I thought they were gone and have been increasing the photoperiod but saw a golden brown dust on the sandbed. Maybe it is them trying to return. I just did a water change Friday which maybe was not a great idea. I will see how it looks Monday. I thought I needed more flow across the sand and added a small powerhead.
Has your nem been wandering again?
Click to expand...

I've been keeping them totally controlled by starving them out. I dose 2.5ml of NoPox daily (using a doser with RO tubing). I tried dosing 1ml and started seeing them come back! All dinos are different. Some you can control with a powerful U.V., some you can just make sure you have enough NO3/PO4 so that your other algae can starve them out, and with mine, none of that worked except the nopox method. My tank tends to run very low nutrient (no idea why, I took out all mechanical filtration and it still was low).

I think the thinking goes, that dinos are very strong when other algae are weak, and other algae are weak when there is not enough NO3 or PO4, so you have to balance those out to grow the algae. For some reason my algae would never recover, even dosing NO3/PO4 directly, it was just a soup of dinos. The unfortunate thing is, I'm going to struggle feeding corals in the future.
 
Beautiful pics and video!

The ocean around reefs has extremely low nitrate and phosphate, mimicking that can’t be bad as long as you still have food particles floating around sometimes. I’m glad you recovered from your dino issues.
 
JVU said:
Beautiful pics and video!

The ocean around reefs has extremely low nitrate and phosphate, mimicking that can’t be bad as long as you still have food particles floating around sometimes. I’m glad you recovered from your dino issues.
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Thanks! I'm reintroducing some SPS into the tank soon, and we'll see how they do. I have a huge bottle of acropower ready just in case.
 
Just added my second Neptune DOS. I'm now maxed out on my modules on my Apex Jr.

1. FMM (for ATK)
2. FMM (for topping off my topoff reservoir from RO/DI)
3. VDM (controlling my return pump speed)
4. DOS (for dosing Alk and Ca)
5. DOS (for dosing NoPox and maybe acropower)
6. Auto feeder
7. Extra EB4

Since my tank only has a tiny piece of a montipora, the Alk dosing is really low, I can maintain 8.2 dKH with only 3.5ml of the Aquaforest 2+ a day. Ca is undetectably used, so I'm not even dosing that anymore. Once I get the new SPS pieces in, I anticipate my Alk/Ca to start being consumed again. My Mg is so high because of my Aquaforest salt, so I don't think I'll ever need to dose that.

The Nopox is keeping dinoflagellates at bay, and unfortunately I'll have to do this forever. I stopped dosing for a week and I started seeing dinos come back. I started dosing again and within two days they were all gone again. I've found the sweet spot of 2.5ml a day that keeps the dinos out.

Since things are running low in nutrients, I'm thinking of dosing a bit of acropower once the SPS have established themselves. I may have to increase my NoPox, but at least there will be more food for the corals. I will, however, introduce a bunch of chromis (6) into the tank after I finish their QT. Hopefully the poop will help and acropower not be needed. If I do dose acropower, I'm planning on dosing throughout the lights off period, with the outlet tube going right into my return chamber.
 
Tidbit on carbon/Nopox dosing from Red Sea themselves. You should really skim wet.

"What I am going to suggest in the first instance is you run the skimmer as wet as possible, wet skimate will help extract the Po4 laden PHB’s to be skimmed off as this is how the Po4 is exported from the system"

(Just passing that along. Not entirely sure it makes sense)
 
I was thinking of making my own NoPox, but I'm only dosing 2.5ml a day, and the big bottle I bought is going to last a very very long time.

Interesting tidbit on the skimming, thanks @rygh
 
I would stick with NOPOX for a small tank. Safe, easy, reproducible, inexpensive. There are a lot more problem stories (with super complex regimens and elaborate acclimation periods) out there for DIY carbon dosing than there is with NOPOX, which is super simple.

Plus, I like to support companies in our hobby that spend the time and money to refine a process or product from experimental DIY to plug ’n’ play proven success. When I see hobbyists reverse-engineering a good product so that they can have the benefits without supporting the company it seems a bit icky to me.
 
Updated my DOS:

DOS 1
Pump 1: Aquaforest 1+
Pump 2: Aquaforest 2+ and Reef Minerals diluted

DOS 2
Pump 1: NoPox
Pump 2: AcroPower

My magnesium is off the charts high (multiple test kits) because of the AquaForest Reef Salt. I don't think I will ever need to dose Aquaforest 3+. Since 3+ also comes with other things, I bought just the reef minerals and diluted it into the Ca solution (2+) so it will be dosed with calcium. Currently the load is very minimal, so I barely dose 2ml of Alk/Ca a day.

NoPox is needed in my system to keep dinoflagellates from growing. It also seems to keep my tank fairly void of algae, just enough to feed the cleanup crew. Any algae that does grow is white, not sure why (iron?)

AcroPower is an experiment. Since the tank runs pretty low on nutrients, I want to supplement some stuff in the water for the corals. I only have a few nubs (thanks @tankguy), but hopefully they'll take hold and start using Alk/Ca and benefit from the AcroPower.
 
The white on the algae that you're seeing isn't really due to the lack of iron, but rather from the bacteria activity. As noted above, NoPox is basically just carbon dosing (for bacteria). You can try dropping down your NoPox dosage slightly and it should go away.
 
One tip on carbon dosing:
I put some rubble in the skimmer section, and carbon dose there.
It seems that more bacteria grows there, and as it dies and falls off, it gets immediate sucked up by the skimmer.

That was based on advice read online, and it did seem to work a bit better for me.
 
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