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kinetic Reefer 170

Ibn said:
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.
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Hey Eric, this is what I suspected! I did mess with my nopox recently and probably dumped more in than I wanted while trying to prime the doser after redoing some lines. I'll wait a few days and if it gets too much, I'll drop the amount.

rygh said:
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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Is rubble the ideal media? That sounds like a good idea.
 
kinetic said:
...Is rubble the ideal media? That sounds like a good idea.
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Maybe.
Rubble has quite a bit of surface area, and is natural.
Small rubble does not generate hypoxic regions inside, but larger rubble can.
Although with carbon dosing, that is now less important, and arguably not even that desirable.
(The old method of bacteria inside hypoxic regions only process nitrates to N2, not phosphates)

The larger 8" x 8" x 4" MarinePure blocks are supposedly good also.

I don't think the media matters that much. You just want good surface area near or upstream from
your skimmer. You don't want all that in the display tank.
 
rygh said:
Maybe.
Rubble has quite a bit of surface area, and is natural.
Small rubble does not generate hypoxic regions inside, but larger rubble can.
Although with carbon dosing, that is now less important, and arguably not even that desirable.
(The old method of bacteria inside hypoxic regions only process nitrates to N2, not phosphates)

The larger 8" x 8" x 4" MarinePure blocks are supposedly good also.

I don't think the media matters that much. You just want good surface area near or upstream from
your skimmer. You don't want all that in the display tank.
Click to expand...

Yeah, my tank is already running lean, I don't actually need any more media, but if keeping a bunch of rubble will help with the white buildup in the display, I'll try it.

My dosing outlet goes right into my "drain" compartment, which travels through some baffles and filter media cup to the skimmer chamber. Should I put rubble into the drain compartment, or just in the skimmer area? I could also fill the media cup with marinepure spheres (I have a ton of them that I don't use).
 
kinetic said:
Yeah, my tank is already running lean, I don't actually need any more media, but if keeping a bunch of rubble will help with the white buildup in the display, I'll try it.

My dosing outlet goes right into my "drain" compartment, which travels through some baffles and filter media cup to the skimmer chamber. Should I put rubble into the drain compartment, or just in the skimmer area? I could also fill the media cup with marinepure spheres (I have a ton of them that I don't use).
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I am not sure anyone know the answer to what is best.
In the drain area makes sense, unless water flow is crazy swift.
Try things slowly...
 
rygh said:
I am not sure anyone know the answer to what is best.
In the drain area makes sense, unless water flow is crazy swift.
Try things slowly...
Click to expand...

The flow is pretty high there, I'll add a few spheres there and in the return chamber to see what works best. Thanks mark!
 
It doesn’t matter where in the sump you dose NOPOX. Assuming you have normal brisk flow through your sump back to your tank, it will disperse throughout all of the water before any bacteria start to eat it, regardless of where you dose it.

For the rubble, it would make theoretical sense to have that at or before the skimmer, but even then the difference likely won’t be noticeable since the surface area of your rubble will be small compared to all the surface area of everything in your tank, including equipment, glass, sand, rockscape, etc.
 
JVU said:
It doesn’t matter where in the sump you dose NOPOX. Assuming you have normal brisk flow through your sump back to your tank, it will disperse throughout all of the water before any bacteria start to eat it, regardless of where you dose it.

For the rubble, it would make theoretical sense to have that at or before the skimmer, but even then the difference likely won’t be noticeable since the surface area of your rubble will be small compared to all the surface area of everything in your tank, including equipment, glass, sand, rockscape, etc.
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This is my thought as well. It's unlikely that the spheres will house ALL the bacterial growth. It will have some, but I don't think it will help with the overall tank.

The tank will have algae growth, or bacterial growth, so there's no getting away from that. I might not use the spheres, since they would only change the tank and could possibly catch more detritus or something else that'll throw off the stability.
 
JVU said:
It doesn’t matter where in the sump you dose NOPOX. Assuming you have normal brisk flow through your sump back to your tank, it will disperse throughout all of the water before any bacteria start to eat it, regardless of where you dose it.

For the rubble, it would make theoretical sense to have that at or before the skimmer, but even then the difference likely won’t be noticeable since the surface area of your rubble will be small compared to all the surface area of everything in your tank, including equipment, glass, sand, rockscape, etc.
Click to expand...

Agree that where you dose Nopox is likely not very important.

But the surface of your DT is hopefully covered in coraline and corals.
And if not, often covered in algae.
Neither are that conducive to bacterial growth.
With rubble or other media, you can create a lot of surface area in unlit areas in the sump.
So I do think you can direct the bacteria a lot on where to settle.

I also know that the probability of bacteria floating in my skimmer area actually going through the skimmer
is WAY higher than bacteria floating in my display tank.
So where the bacteria grows can matter as well.

On the other hand, that bacteria does feed corals. So maybe skimming it is not the best thing...
 
rygh said:
Agree that where you dose Nopox is likely not very important.

But the surface of your DT is hopefully covered in coraline and corals.
And if not, often covered in algae.
Neither are that conducive to bacterial growth.
With rubble or other media, you can create a lot of surface area in unlit areas in the sump.
So I do think you can direct the bacteria a lot on where to settle.

I also know that the probability of bacteria floating in my skimmer area actually going through the skimmer
is WAY higher than bacteria floating in my display tank.
So where the bacteria grows can matter as well.

On the other hand, that bacteria does feed corals. So maybe skimming it is not the best thing...
Click to expand...

Ah, I understand what you're saying. Since the DT would be covered with other stuff that is light driven, the bacteria will have better luck in the sump if given the opportunity.

Luckily, my display is void of corals, coralline, and algae. Well I got small nubbins now, but nothing to write home about just yet. I am pretty sure the NoPox is keeping all of that at bay. If there becomes less area in the DT for the bacteria, I'll start tossing in some more spheres into the sump.

Thanks for all the insight!
 
Porcelain crabs are so cool. There's tons of poop floating around these days, so for the almost 1 year birthday of the tank, I decided to also add in this guy:

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Sad to see my mocha gladiators go, but they were moved to a great home! Officially dwindling down to one clown, I picked up a new one from Chad Vossen! A premium davinci ocellaris, just about an inch. Hoping to pair him with my existing davinci from Sustainable Aquatics.

The little one is going crazy trying to push itself out of the box, the larger has been in there for 2 days, so he's kind of over it.


He has a curmudgeonly old face:
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But very symmetrical as you can see on his other side:
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Both clowns looking at their future together:
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My existing clown's look:
43803841214_09a6a82cff_b.jpg


It's incredibly difficult to photograph them while they're always facing the other direction, smashing their faces white, into the opposite side of the breeder box lol.
 
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Good news, just let the two clownfish out of the breeder box. I dipped the box low enough for them to find the opening up top. Took a few tries but they finally got out. My original clown went right back to the magnifica, and the new little guy followed him. Jumped right in! Both started doing the shaking dance immediately and have been at it for awhile. It's amazing to see them smash around through the mag.

 
Tank Updates:

NYOS Skimmer has been working well, almost too well. I've opened up the outlet to keep the water level low and the bubbles are cranked down, yet it's still pulling even wetter than before. I haven't been using a filter in the filtersock/filtercup, so this might be why. Anyone have a suggestion?

I removed the big black sponge that goes in the baffles between the skimmer and return. It just seemed to get clogged too often without the filter sock being used. I would take it out every month and it would just be filthy. I think it's good for removing microbubbles, but my skimmer does a good job not letting them out and/or the baffles are enough, so I'm considering just leaving it out completely.

I added a handful of marinepure biospheres into my filter cup instead of filter floss. The filter floss and any other media constantly got backed up within 5 hours. I think this is because I'm dosing NoPox all day (2.5ml a day) and the bacteria builds up really fast. The spheres will hopefully grow more bacteria on the surfaces and maybe keep bacteria growth off the display's glass. It's helped a bit, but I'm still cleaning the glass every 3 - 4 days.

I'm still using BRX carbon ROX 0.8 in a mini reactor. I just changed it out, and I probably should've changed it out earlier. I'm thinking of just using my Aquamaxx jumbo reactor for carbon, since I don't need to run an algae reactor anymore. It might be overkill?

My calcium intake in the tank has finally started making a dent. I've needed to dose 2ML of Aquaforest 1+ for ALK maintenance for months now, but finally last week my Ca levels started to drop a teeny tiny bit. My tank was at 470ppm Ca, and finally dropped to 450. I started dosing 0.2ml (yup, 0.2) of Aquaforest 2+ to keep it around 450. I hope this increases so I have an even dose of 1+ and 2+.

My goldf sailfin blenny started chomping on some new SPS frags I got. This is bad news. It hasn't touched my older ones. It stripped most of the tissue off within hours. The blenny keeps the tank super clean, even the snail shells clean. But this SPS tissue chomping is bad news. I'm considering getting a fish trap to get him out and finding another blenny. Should I just not have any blennies? The SPS frags still have a bit of tissue left and lots of polyp extension. I'm feeding Reef Chili and Acropower daily to hopefully help these frags recover. I've also placed them right in front of my Orchid Dottyback's cave, which the blenny will NOT venture to ever.
 
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