Reef nutrition

Making Lemonade - Mike's Lagoon

Ok today was a sad day, and a productive day.

Sad part, my orange/rainbow/whatever they're called bubble tip is no more. He took the EAC (Nemo reference) trip around the edge of the gyre lagoon, got close to another anemone though he'd stay, but he just couldn't find his happy spot. Eventually worked his way into a pump, I managed to pull him and put him in a basket to recover, but never did, just dissolved or something (I don't see any more!) . So RIP him.. her.. it. Clownfish don't care though, they're in the big(ger) RBTA.

productive part, I've been cataloging all the power usage on my lagoon, specifically how many cords plugged into stuff, because everything is just one huge jumbled mess o' crap wires all over the place. Well, after taking inventory of power I needed, I came to the conclusion 13 "dumb" cables, 3 controlled cables, 2 controller power strip cables, and 2 DJ power strip cables. So yanking everything out, older lights, older light controller, fan controller, etc, tried to clean everything up. Had to give the DJ power strips a little TLC as there were some non-functional plugs/switches, but overall everything is cleaned up. Wrote down everything and when I have chance, I'll finally get to use my label maker for doing something other than saying "TEST" :D
 
yeah, I hope I didn't make too much "nemonade", last thing I want is those little nematocysts floating around the tank, and then "why did that coral die, geeze that coral died, crap a fish died"
 
KxznVlb.jpg


Have a feeling this is from nemonade :( It is kind of in the direct flow pattern of where everything would have dissolved, although all the montis lower down didn't have any issues. Thing I'll wait to see if it the death continues (i.e. STN) before doing surgery on it though. It could also be something else unrelated, not that I know what it would be.
 
Well the death continued on that coral and I got proactive and clipped off all dead parts, but see that there are brown bits of algae growing on it (never a good sign). Also noticed my purple stylo (the long armed kind) is looking a little worse for the wear too. Not sure if this is nemonade issues, or worse, these are the canaries. Either way. I finally managed to get a scrubby brush with a long extendable handle so maybe I can clean out my mixing jug, and just whip up some Instant Ocean and do a 100g water change. Tempted to buy one of those ICP tests to see if there's something else I'm not getting. Also could be my alkalinity is kind of bouncing, gotta take apart my kalk wasser setup to see what the deal is there, it should be able to keep up with demand.
 
Ok sent away for an ICP test just for kicks and giggles. I used icp-analysis.com for the test over Triton because 1) it's quite a bit cheaper at $30 a test instead of $50, 2) it also had free shipping (almost didn't see the return shipping label stuffed in the box), and 3) it had an extra RO/DI. The downside... well there really is no feedback given, other "add more" or "do a water change", now I have no idea what Triton does, although I know they are also in the business of selling fixes too so I can see how they might be more forthcoming with giving information. This place if you go to their main webpage and find out what they text if you click on any one of the elements it takes you to the wikipedia page... yeah super helpful. But this was an experiment to see what was up.

So the main webpage looks like this when your results are in, forgot how long it took something like 3 or 4 days.
LanzoUk.png

This allows you to click on any element to see what your value is, it was on silver when I took this picture, and there's also a nice graphic to the side letting you know the value compared to nature or the ICP suggested results, different locations are Fiji, Hawaii, St. Thomas and Florida, funny that Fiji was the lowest calcium level at 397 and Hawaii was the highest at 417, now how much of this is error due to sampling as I don't know what rubric they used in getting these values (did they get one sample and call it a day, multiple samples from multiple locations, multiple samples throughout the year)... yeah whatever I know what calcium should be.

Nice color coded view of what is deficient, in my case iodine was only 0.01 when Fiji is at 0.041, Hawaii is 0.04, suggested is 0.06, ironically St Thomas is 0, which again goes to the above statement about which methodology they use to get those values.

Also there are "RO/DI result," although it lights up like a Christmas tree with red boxes, which I saw that it was comparing it again salt water values, so most everything was too low. So question is if that's what they do, can you buddy up with someone and just give them them Ro/DI vial and share results? Or was this a mistake on their end and they ran it as a saltwater sample accidentally?

You can download results, but that only gives you a PDF file in column format of values. I'm not sure if you can copy/paste into a spread sheet with a pdf, or if there's some app to do that, but I just entered all the values myself into Excel, and it looks a little like this

g42NYtO.png

Now I put the RO/DI, tank water, and Fiji values in just to have some level of reference, all values are ppm, a lot of the items are largely useless, I mean really, I have 0.04ppm Uranium in my water? really? That's kind of scary... or simply a false positive. Some research shows that uranium harvesting in salt water is a real thing, but the research I saw said somewhere on the order of 3 ppb, so I really have an order of magnitude more than the ocean? Scary stuff if true... or maybe that's the truth behind coral fluorescence :D But I don't know if that should be PPM or PPB and it's just a software side glitch, that said it's not terribly surprising to see it pop up as the salt either came from the sea or was mined and well yeah uranium exists.

None of the red values are of any worry, I just highlighted them to point out some of the more common things in a tank, potassium I never really gave much thought to, nor sulfur although it's higher than Fiji it wasn't a warning (and no I don't run a sulfur denitrator). I'll tell you the chlorine one kind of freaked me out, that was until I saw what Fiji was then derp DUH! sodium chloride = salt. I will say the RO/DI value was a bit worrisome at 99ppm, that to me says "oh shit I need to change my carbon blocks PRONTO! " That said, I did double check with one of those chlorine test strips that goes up to 5ppm, so figure that thing should have had an immediate color change to the darkest level... but nope, no color change at all. Although I do think a change is needed, my DI resin still looks the right color, so go figure what that value actually means. Maybe it came from other salts? magnesium chloride? potassium chloride? Even with both of those in relatively low concentrations? Either way it is kind of suspect, maybe the trip through all the PVC leeched some off I did collect it at the the end of the supply not directly from the RO/DI unit.... but either way I tested with a strip at the same location and nada.

So will I do ICP test again? Honestly don't know. Maybe once a year thing just to see how things are, or if something drastically wrong is happening.

That said, still need to get a light and some chaeto to get my refugium going, only thing in there is sand (maybe where elevated sulfur is coming from).
 
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sfsuphysics said:
That said, still need to get a light and some chaeto to get my refugium going, only thing in there is sand (maybe where elevated sulfur is coming from).
Click to expand...

I’ll be harvesting a quart bag of Chaeto tomorrow to ship to New York. I might have enough to harvest another quart bag.

This is the amount that comes in my quart bag and the system it comes from.
0AD917F1-19EA-4B1A-ABEF-588CF95149F5.jpeg
DA7ACFC4-5DA1-4A1E-9D88-34DAB7DD32BF.jpeg
F8C86648-92F0-4AFD-9133-E2500F4B451D.jpeg
 
Well I need to the light first and foremost, what do you light yours with? A red light and a blue light? Or does the other light look blue like that because of the red?
 
sfsuphysics said:
Well I need to the light first and foremost, what do you light yours with? A red light and a blue light? Or does the other light look blue like that because of the red?
Click to expand...
I use the TaoTronics grow light (which is not being sold anymore), also I had a Kessil 150w Ocean blue in storage and decided to put that on.
 
You could try the ATI ICP test next time. I thought it was pretty good and cheaper than Triton. They test the RODI too. They do give suggestions as well.
 
Do you have any picture/review of the reports. I'm not really down to do another any time soon, I mean I'm not chasing anything right now, tank is more or less fine minus some algae/slime that I think is more flow related. I was just curious about the test in general to see how it compares, I've seen someone post shots of their Triton results, also that other ICP test by FaunaMarine. Didn't know ATi had one too.
 
EBJ said:
I did the Triton and ATI tests once. I heard ICP-Analysis is suspect
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I'm done with them (ICP-analysis).

Here are my last two tests with them. Look at my Na content. My coral should be dead if that number is correct.

From 6/13/2020:
Screen Shot 2020-07-24 at 2.12.01 PM.png


7/18/2020:
Screen Shot 2020-07-24 at 2.12.10 PM.png


And if you're curious, I sent in a triton ICP test the same day (7/18/2020)

Triton Applied Reef Bioscience are the world leaders in professional sea water analysis.

Empowering aquarists around the world since 2008. Click to view shared sea water analysis.
www.triton-lab.de www.triton-lab.de
Screen Shot 2020-07-24 at 2.21.51 PM.png
 
Yikes that is quite suspect. Odd that your chlorine level is was similar to mine/normal, do wonder if there's some sort of issue involved there with sodium just not reacting well in the test. Either way, I'd be done with them too after seeing that as a result.
 
RandyC said:
I'm done with them (ICP-analysis).
Click to expand...
Randy so from your experience the ICP test is not good? and you are using only Triniton? I am thinking to do a full test as well and not sure what would be the best option.
I see there are other elements that are not really close...

I see there is this website:
icp-analysis.com
and
https://icp1999.com/ are they the same company?
I mean if only 1 element is of maybe it could still be ok.
 
I think Randy was saying the ICP test from that company is not good. icp-analysis is one company, icp1999 is a different company, Triton is another company, and as mentioned ATi does it as well.
 
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