Cali Kid Corals

My First Reef: Redsea 525XL

Flagg37 said:
Have you tried running without the socks? Between my skimmer and cheato I get plenty of nutrient export without cleaning as much.
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During the early month the sock seems to do a lot of good as a decent amount of "stuff" would be removed each cleaning. Now with the sock being clean most of time, I guess it doesn't matter if I leave it in or take it out.
 
Came home on Sunday to find my tank SUPER cloudy. I freaked out for a sec and then saw that all the trochus snails are getting it on. Literally every freaking snail are unloading over and over again. By the next morning everything is all clear again.

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The only trigger I can think of is a WC the night before that shot up my ORP

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Part of my tank gets a few hours of direct sunlight in the afternoon during this season when we forget to close the blinds (which is almost always)


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Both big trochus spawning events happened for me with a bump in pH. First when I installed co2 scrubber, and second when I removed all my fish for TTM.

Interesting that your water changes bump your ORP. Mine seem to drop my ORP.


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Gablami said:
Both big trochus spawning events happened for me with a bump in pH. First when I installed co2 scrubber, and second when I removed all my fish for TTM.

Interesting that your water changes bump your ORP. Mine seem to drop my ORP.


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My ORP drops as well on WC.
 
You can see on the graph, that my ORP was on the downward trend for the past week. And then on the 27th, the WC hit, and it shot back up. I still think ORP is a useless value as we can't explain its movement most of the time.
 
It's so much more amazing in person. Cameras are great but it's so hard to capture all the activity of a thriving reef tank aquarium. I'm very blessed to have seen it in person. Absolutely inspirational.
 
Looks good Phuong.

The problem in our tanks is the fish populations we put in. In nature the coral reefs come in, and thrive then they get loaded with fish, if you ever see a destroyed reef not so many fish, but what we do is the opposite we throw in the fish population we want, then try to grow the corals around them, and since those fish eat and poop we end up fighting an uphill battle... plus not having a bazillion gallons of water to dilute things out helps too :D
 
Last week after refilling my NOPOX and repriming the line, I forgot to turn my doser back on. This went on for about a week till @Gablami nagged me to test alk since I haven't done one for 2 months. And it was.. 5.8.

At first glance, the coral looks ok, but looking more carefully I saw that the tenuis lost flesh and the tips and algae started growing there.

This motivated me to setup the DOS that has been sitting in the garage for a month.

New dosing container from 1.25G water jug
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This is what I found when pulling out my older dosing line which was hidden behind my fuge. The tip was about 2" from water, directly above my drain compartment. You can see the different color where the water started. It was surprising that alk was still some how making it into the tank.

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Relocated dosing lines to where I can see them. This spot is only 1" above water surface, in the pump chamber. But at least I'll see the build up as it happen.

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DOS online. No time to clean up wirings yet.

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I had that happen with my kalkwasser. I was a dum dum and had the line submerged in the water. Like you, it was in a spot I couldn’t see.
 
So I assumed DOS would work in a similar way to my BM doser. That it would automatically avoid dosing collision.

Bad assumption.

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I guess it is done this way to enable automatic water change application. So I changed it to dosing alk 00-12, dosing cal 12-24. And then I looked at the schedule.

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At first glance, I was very confused. I'm dosing 60ml alk, and 50 ml cal. But from the graph, it appears as if more cal is being dosed. Then I realize that they are using 2 y axises .... But why would one use 2 y-axises when the values are so close to each other. Sigh
 
Ok that precipitate is just awesome! :D Reef stalactites!!!!!

That said, this is why you keep your alk and Ca as far as humanely possibly just so you don't get this happening. Or stagger your dosing if you're dosing small amounts many times during the day.

Also those magnets on your probe/hose holder, reminds me of Ecotech's original magnets in their Vortech pumps, not sure why they thought an epoxy coating would be all that was needed to keep them safe.
 
Even accounting for different Y-axes they are still dosing different amounts, Alk is 60 and Cal is about 50.

Also I think it is recommended to dose them around the same time, not 12 hours apart. I have mine dosing over the same interval at night, tubing ends about 2 inches apart from each other on a Bubble Magus tube holder rack (BRS), and I haven’t grown any awesome stalactites yet.


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I could create a configuration to interleave them, say 00-01 alk, 01-02 cal and so on. But then it is a pain in the ass to change dosing value as you would need to change each interval individually.
 
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