Kessil

Marc's ADA 60P build

HiFidelity said:
WP-10
http://www.fish-street.com/jebao_wp-10_4000l_wave_maker?category_id=35

WP-25
http://www.fish-street.com/jebao_wp-25_8000l_wave_maker?category_id=35

Jebao (chinese brand) is the maker, they are known to be the most unbeatable performance/$ powerhead currently available. They are adjustable variable speed/pattern, DC powered so they're very efficient and best part is they can be controlled via reef controller, ie; reefangel or apex.
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That price is very appealing! And since it works with the Apex, thats nice also.

Bluprntguy said:
Running some activated carbon will help keep the water clearer and help remove odors. I keep purigen and some carbon in my system usually without any problems. I'm not sure the purigen is terribly effective in SW. It takes a few months for mine to start getting even a hint of brown.

If you want crystal clear water you may want to start carbon dosing. Vinegar may be the best to start since you would need to add larger amounts and it's harder to overdose. Here's some information on carbon dosing:

http://www.reefaquarium.com/2012/carbon-dosing-in-laymans-terms/
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Yeah I was surprised with the purigen.

I'll read more on the carbon dosing. I'll get some carbon for the sump this weekend and give that a shot.
 
let me know if you have any questions pertaining to carbon dosing, I've played around with it a lot over the past year and I did both vodka & vinegar (supposed to promote more bacteria diversity I suppose) and I've had great results so far.

Just to give you an idea; my tank is a piece of crap 40 gallon non-sump built in filtration (the most horrible design) and I'm limited to a measly aquac remora skimmer and that's it, I can't fit any reactors or even a decent ATO to this system.... anyway that being said, somehow my tank grows SPS best (better than my softies) and my nutrient tests always result in Zeros, I have not seen a smidgen of color on any of my nitrate & phosphate kits, it's quite amazing that this tank can run this clean.

Vinegar in kalkwasser - wrong kinda golden you're thinking hahaha, water does not turn any color from it, I like putting vinegar in my kalkwasser because it does not allow my kalkwasser dosing to mess with the PH too much, between day & night I only have about .2 variation in PH and I dose at night only. Also I love not having to run a separate doser for vinegar, I'm actually going to try adding vodka to the mix as well because until now I've been dosing vodka manually.
 
HiFidelity said:
let me know if you have any questions pertaining to carbon dosing, I've played around with it a lot over the past year and I did both vodka & vinegar (supposed to promote more bacteria diversity I suppose) and I've had great results so far.

Just to give you an idea; my tank is a piece of crap 40 gallon non-sump built in filtration (the most horrible design) and I'm limited to a measly aquac remora skimmer and that's it, I can't fit any reactors or even a decent ATO to this system.... anyway that being said, somehow my tank grows SPS best (better than my softies) and my nutrient tests always result in Zeros, I have not seen a smidgen of color on any of my nitrate & phosphate kits, it's quite amazing that this tank can run this clean.

Vinegar in kalkwasser - wrong kinda golden you're thinking hahaha, water does not turn any color from it, I like putting vinegar in my kalkwasser because it does not allow my kalkwasser dosing to mess with the PH too much, between day & night I only have about .2 variation in PH and I dose at night only. Also I love not having to run a separate doser for vinegar, I'm actually going to try adding vodka to the mix as well because until now I've been dosing vodka manually.
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Fidel, whats your dosing regiment like with the vodka? are you still dosing daily?
 
yup, I do 3ml vodka daily

30-40ml vinegar goes into my kalkwasser mix which is dosed throughout the night when lights are off then I have the controller set to disable dosing schedule when the lights kick back on, the container lasts about a week so with some simple math I'd say I'm dosing 4-5ml of vinegar a day....

I have not dosed any vodka for the past few days because I've been injecting aiptasias with my super special cocktail (has lotsa kalk + vinegar) so I don't want to overdo the carbon haha

I believe I'm going to cut down on the vodka and mix it in with the vinegar/kalkwasser so I'm thinking about doing 30ml vinegar + 15ml vodka (weekly) which breaks down to about 2ml/day vodka & 4ml/day vinegar.

The only tricky part is establishing the cycle, there is a bacteria mess to be had when you first get started but once the chemistry settles it's smooth sailing you just adjust the amount of carbon to your desired amount of nutrients you want to remain in the water column, this can greatly vary from tank to tank and biggest factors affecting it would be livestock.

I can share more, if you decide to start I would be more than happy to assist :)

One piece of advice, I would put off carbon dosing until tank is compltely 100% cycled and you have some livestock in there. You basically want the bio-load to plateau because you want consistency when you're trying to establish a dosing regiment. There are pages & pages on the web written about carbon dosing and there are formulas to follow when you get started but I can practically give you everything you need to know in about an hour or less haha ;)

Lastly, I was able to eradicate a ton of algae to almost complete annihilation with persistence and a stable/steady dosing routine, I basically starved the algae by bringing nutrients down to absolute zero. Hard to do otherwise if you ask me... it all pretty much melted away & disappeared.
 
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HiFidelity said:
yup, I do 3ml vodka daily

30-40ml vinegar goes into my kalkwasser mix which is dosed throughout the night when lights are off then I have the controller set to disable dosing schedule when the lights kick back on, the container lasts about a week so with some simple math I'd say I'm dosing 4-5ml of vinegar a day....

I have not dosed any vodka for the past few days because I've been injecting aiptasias with my super special cocktail (has lotsa kalk + vinegar) so I don't want to overdo the carbon haha

I believe I'm going to cut down on the vodka and mix it in with the vinegar/kalkwasser so I'm thinking about doing 30ml vinegar + 15ml vodka (weekly) which breaks down to about 2ml/day vodka & 4ml/day vinegar.

The only tricky part is establishing the cycle, there is a bacteria mess to be had when you first get started but once the chemistry settles it's smooth sailing you just adjust the amount of carbon to your desired amount of nutrients you want to remain in the water column, this can greatly vary from tank to tank and biggest factors affecting it would be livestock.

I can share more, if you decide to start I would be more than happy to assist :)

One piece of advice, I would put off carbon dosing until tank is compltely 100% cycled and you have some livestock in there. You basically want the bio-load to plateau because you want consistency when you're trying to establish a dosing regiment. There are pages & pages on the web written about carbon dosing and there are formulas to follow when you get started but I can practically give you everything you need to know in about an hour or less haha ;)

Lastly, I was able to eradicate a ton of algae to almost complete annihilation with persistence and a stable/steady dosing routine, I basically starved the algae by bringing nutrients down to absolute zero. Hard to do otherwise if you ask me... it all pretty much melted away & disappeared.
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I'm definitely interested in incorporating dosing carbon to my system. I'll bug you when the tank is ready. Also I do like the fact that I can use my ATO water to mix the carbon. My water volume is about 20 gals with the sump. I'll have to calculate that.

One follow up questions. Is it okay to under dose a carbon source?
 
Underdose is great, overdose is bad you get a bacteria storm in the tank and it looks like someone blew snot all over the tank haha also it is my opinion that a ton of baceria in the tank can be bad for your fish's health.
The main lesson I learned from my experience is "less is more" hence why I'm cutting back my dosing. I believe that there is such a thing as too clean (depending on what you are keeping) because growth of all softies & some LPS in my tank has been stunned for a few months now while SPS frags are doubling in size every 3-4 months. My best assessment is that my water is very very clear of nutrients thus the SPS is loving it, on the other hand it is commonly known that softies and perhaps some LPS can actually gain from a slight amount of nutrients in the water column which my tank is lacking now.

You start the cycle with about 30 days of underdosing so you don't have a bacteria party in your tank and of course it takes a bit of time for all the bacteria to colonize (or at least that was my observation not sure if my statement is scientifically accurate) so you pretty much dose very tiny amounts (0.5ml or so per day) to start then bump it up one week at a time, should take about 60 days before reaching your baseline. Patience is key :)

Carbon in ATO is fine except you want to rinse the container every time you refill, I was already doing this by habit but recently I filled a 10g tank half way with water + vinegar to clean some equipment and I forgot to empty it, basically in one week my 10g turned into a massive petri dish with crazy bacteria growth floating on the surface (it looked like massive colonies of fuzzy fungus) so naturally you would never want that happening in your ATO reservoir. Granted I had dumped half a gallon in there and your ATO would only have a few milliliters still better to keep things clean.
 
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yes sir, I typically will buy the biggest cheapest bottle I can find.

I figured before even reading this article that stripping the water column of nutrients is counter-productive in regards to coral growth, seeing the article sort of made me feel special for having hypothesized accurately what science has discovered as well hehehe... I'm stopping vodka dosing & going to overfeed for several days to see if I can get some reading on nitrates, odd problem to have if I must say.
 
HiFidelity said:
yes sir, I typically will buy the biggest cheapest bottle I can find.

I figured before even reading this article that stripping the water column of nutrients is counter-productive in regards to coral growth, seeing the article sort of made me feel special for having hypothesized accurately what science has discovered as well hehehe... I'm stopping vodka dosing & going to overfeed for several days to see if I can get some reading on nitrates, odd problem to have if I must say.
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Are you trying to see how soon nitrates will show up after dosing? have you tried a staggered dosing regiment?
 
I've been cutting back steadily for a little while now & no results, so I'm cutting out the vodka for a little bit and sticking to vinegar to see what happens
 
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are they killing each other when they do that? I often see hermits against each other like that & I wonder if one is killing the other or they're just hugging lol...
 
HiFidelity said:
are they killing each other when they do that? I often see hermits against each other like that & I wonder if one is killing the other or they're just hugging lol...
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I havent seen them personally killing each other but I do see them sort of fighting, almost trying to pull each other out of their shell.
 
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