Coral reefer
Past President
Why are you keeping Alk so high?
Ryan’s 40G first reef
- Thread starter rdriggett
- Start date
rdriggett
Guest
That’s just what IORC mixes to. Eventually I’ll switch to a lower alk salt. My ideal parameters are 8/450/1450. Eric said Aquaforest salt mixes to around that.
Coral reefer
Past President
I also have used iorc for years and keep most tanks between 8-9. Yes a water change will increase it a little, but it will come back down over time if you just dose a little less. The thing about being at 10 is I feel like you’re on the doorstep of potential disaster if it goes up much, and I feel like it’s kind of for no reason. I see what you’re trying to do, but I don’t think it’s worth keeping it that high just to match your new water
Prestondeeply
Guest
IORC mixes to 10-11 at 1.026. In my case, after the first 2 weeks of slow consumption in a 20G Nano, it was down at 8. Now, I dose to maintain 8 and then when I do a water change, I don't dose that day and it maintains 8 with the WC. But if I were to do a 30% or higher WC with IORC, I think it would swing to mid or high 8 pretty quickly, which worries me more because I figure at some point in the future I'll _need_ to avoid a catastrophe with a large water change and that will swing ALK hard. But I'm still early in the learning cycle. Either I'll stick with IORC and add an acid to drop the alk before I WC or I'll switch to different salt. Salt wasn't my primary concern for this first year.....but I hear you with IORC and trying to maintain an ALK under the IORC natural number.
rdriggett
Guest
Good advice, I will drop it down to 8 slowly.
rdriggett
Guest
Changed 25/40 gallons and my sps rack was mad for a few hours but it has mostly recovered by now. Alk went up to 10.7 from 10.1, a bigger spike than I wanted but still less than 1dKh. Going forward I will water change 5-10 gallons per week or every other week and use dosing to maintain numbers.
rdriggett
Guest
Turns out my doser is too cheap to dose 1ml reliably so my nitrate hit 0 again and phosphate is 0.092. I might just manually have it dose nitrate once or twice a week.
The high phosphates explain why my glass now requires daily cleaning. I’m assuming it’s from the pink streak wrasse that didn’t make it.
The high phosphates explain why my glass now requires daily cleaning. I’m assuming it’s from the pink streak wrasse that didn’t make it.
If you're saying you're just trying to dose 1ml, then that does seem like it'd be hard for a doser to do. The easy solution is just dose 10ml, and do that by just diluting the nitrate 10:1 RODO:nitrate. 1ml daily though seems like not very much nitrate being dosed.
The other option again is just toss some in the ATO water. Doesn't have to be perfect.
Prestondeeply
Guest
I spent my first 6 months scared of overfeeding. I heard it constantly. Since I don't run fish...I didn't do anything but water changes. For 6 months. Then I tried reef roids maybe once every 2 or 3 weeks. Spot fed to minimize overfeeding chances.
Yes, corals were fine, inverts were fine, etc. It was all just....fine. The frog spawn hadn't grown, acan didn't add any new heads, zoas just barely, maybe on a good month, would add a new polip.
Then I visited @H2OPlayar and got the....just feed....and feed....and feed. Well, maybe not that much. So I started feeding the corals 2-3 times a week. Spot feeding still...with LPS pellets and reef roids. The growth has been spectacular by comparison. Probably normal for everyone else. The frog spawn has 3 heads split on top and 2 buds down at the lower edge of the main head. Acans are throwing up new heads, the chalice have doubled and the lepto is looking great.
Maybe after not really feeding for the first 6 months the tank was solid, copapods and bacteria were stable, etc. So feeding at that point, the tank could take the nutrition without an algea outbreak.
I don't check anything but alk, mg, ca and salinity. But I also check all the corals every day....and they complain if there is a problem...pretty quickly.
Yes, corals were fine, inverts were fine, etc. It was all just....fine. The frog spawn hadn't grown, acan didn't add any new heads, zoas just barely, maybe on a good month, would add a new polip.
Then I visited @H2OPlayar and got the....just feed....and feed....and feed. Well, maybe not that much. So I started feeding the corals 2-3 times a week. Spot feeding still...with LPS pellets and reef roids. The growth has been spectacular by comparison. Probably normal for everyone else. The frog spawn has 3 heads split on top and 2 buds down at the lower edge of the main head. Acans are throwing up new heads, the chalice have doubled and the lepto is looking great.
Maybe after not really feeding for the first 6 months the tank was solid, copapods and bacteria were stable, etc. So feeding at that point, the tank could take the nutrition without an algea outbreak.
I don't check anything but alk, mg, ca and salinity. But I also check all the corals every day....and they complain if there is a problem...pretty quickly.
Coral reefer
Past President
Are you just gonna keep stuff on racks forever?
rdriggett
Guest
I've grown to dislike my aquascape so I'm keeping the racks for a little while. Where there's optimal light there's also too much flow or vice versa. I could add rock islands to house my species specific gardens. I'd really like to upgrade to a commercial made or at least negative space aquascape.
I'm trying to collect gonis, hammers, torches, chalices, cyphastria and some various sps species until I can stop killing acros.
rdriggett
Guest
I agree, thats why I have been slowly ramping up my feeding based on @H2OPlayar 's advice! I'm feeding 20ML of A/B+ daily and I try to feed a variety of frozen foods and pellets 1-2x per day. I think I need to start feeding my urchin nori as its running out of algae to eat.
Coral reefer
Past President
I’ll help you make structures if you come to sf