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Michael's 300 In Vegas

H2OPlayar said:
There is a baby strapped to me now for a lot of the time I do reef work!
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GRATS!!
 
derek_SR said:
The people demand an update. How is your daughter?
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9 months old, 24 lbs, 29", so eating is not a problem. Like my tank, I feed her often, with lots of different foods and let her eat what she can. She is crawling and pulling to stand, so I think I will just keep a baby gate on my office to keep her out at all times and away from the tanks.

Kensington Reefer said:
I imagine the youngster’s face smashed against the glass and having water dripping on its head!
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I keep her dry from the reef (euro brace), but she loves looking at the tanks.

Got some cool fish lately, and added a few chunks of montipora to get the consumption of minerals going. I can post pics and video when I get back from the bay.

Interesting chemistry thing. I put some ARF in early on (likely too much) and I believe the super high phosphate prevented the calcium and alkalinity from continuing to metabolize, so as soon as I brought the phosphate down, my calcium shot up to 600+. It is possible there is a testing error with the trident because I haven't calibrated it yet and my alkalinity is in the right range. I know I need to use my hanna to check if the trident number is real. In the meantime, montipora is robust and will soak up minerals so I am starting with those now. Had my big carpet be happy for 2-3 months, but then it walked into a powerhead and is no more. The skimmer was putting in overtime then, and continues to do good work with the number of fish I have now. Phosphates are back to a reasonable range but I used up almost a whole bottle of lanthanum chloride in the skimmer over 2 weeks. I might use my last dosing head to dose a diluted lanthanum chloride solution. I know Mr Ross used to do that, and a few other members might as well. If not, then it will dose amino acids. @derek_SR , you still dosing LC in your skimmer?
 
H2OPlayar said:
9 months old, 24 lbs, 29", so eating is not a problem. Like my tank, I feed her often, with lots of different foods and let her eat what she can. She is crawling and pulling to stand, so I think I will just keep a baby gate on my office to keep her out at all times and away from the tanks.


I keep her dry from the reef (euro brace), but she loves looking at the tanks.

Got some cool fish lately, and added a few chunks of montipora to get the consumption of minerals going. I can post pics and video when I get back from the bay.

Interesting chemistry thing. I put some ARF in early on (likely too much) and I believe the super high phosphate prevented the calcium and alkalinity from continuing to metabolize, so as soon as I brought the phosphate down, my calcium shot up to 600+. It is possible there is a testing error with the trident because I haven't calibrated it yet and my alkalinity is in the right range. I know I need to use my hanna to check if the trident number is real. In the meantime, montipora is robust and will soak up minerals so I am starting with those now. Had my big carpet be happy for 2-3 months, but then it walked into a powerhead and is no more. The skimmer was putting in overtime then, and continues to do good work with the number of fish I have now. Phosphates are back to a reasonable range but I used up almost a whole bottle of lanthanum chloride in the skimmer over 2 weeks. I might use my last dosing head to dose a diluted lanthanum chloride solution. I know Mr Ross used to do that, and a few other members might as well. If not, then it will dose amino acids. @derek_SR , you still dosing LC in your skimmer?
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Yep, still dosing lanthanum into the skimmer. Once I got over the initial "hump" (whether that was rocks leaching phosphate or whatever) I am now able to maintain po4 in a pretty flat range by dosing very, very small quantities of a heavily diluted solution. I adjust the amount slightly every few months based on the po4 result. You probably know what you're doing, but I wrote a brief thread on the subject if you missed it a few months back.
 
Nitrates are down to 20 with 10mL of vodka dosing daily.

Phosphates back to .91, but I added some more dry crushed coral to my sump to get massive biological filtration going. So I dumped in the rest of my bottle of LC to my skimmer.

Used not expired reagents with the Hanna and got way closer to the Trident numbers, so I can trust the calibration again.

Note that expired reagents changed my reading from 500 down to 375!!!
 
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