Kessil

Rygh's 250 gallon upgrade

Argh - metric pipe!
Stupid Reef Octopus skimmer.
Yet another thing that adds a little cost and a little extra delay.
Oh well. Buy some adapters online next week, or maybe route out something.
 
I bought some new fish for the aquarium this weekend!!
Blue Hippo Tang
Magnificient Foxface Rabbitfish
Second clownfish, as a friend for the first one. Identical tank raised Ocellaris. Hope that goes well.
Two pajama cardinals

They are in QT now. All seem to be eating very well and fairly happy.
The Rabbitfish is a bit skittish though, so being careful around the tank.
Cool how they go to a mottled brown when stressed.
 
Ahh, chemical bliss.

I finally got the Alk/Calc/Mg parameters where I want them. :party:
Maybe a bit over even. 9.5/440/1350

Key was adding a couple pounds of magnesium.
After that, Calcium came up as normal.

Now I just need to get my dosers tuned. They are most likely WAY to high right now.

Key : If the results of an old test kit do not match what you think should be
going on, don't be cheap. Immediately get a new test kit.
 
rygh said:
Key was adding a couple pounds of magnesium.
After that, Calcium came up as normal.
Click to expand...
Nice.

Mg is one of the first things to look at if Ca and alk don't seem to come up even with high dosing.

The Mg limits abiotic calcification by poisoning the calcium carbonate crystal lattice.
 
sfsuphysics said:
so is that a tiny magnificent foxface or a really large royal gramma and cardinal fish? :D
Click to expand...
Gotta love odd perspectives.
But it is a bit of both.
Foxface is new and small, about 4". Other fish are old and mature.
 
Have to post some of the ugly side of aquarium life. My kid made me photo and share, since it was "so gross".
Yes, nothing reefers have never seen before.
Although yesterday I was spreading/roto-tilling some rather nasty manure at the school
for "Earth day," so this was not nearly as bad.

But I must say I am very happy with my new reef octopus skimmer. A good buy.

Skimmer gook.




From Aquarium_Release



Turf scrubber gook.






From Aquarium_Release

It will be more interesting when tank is fully stocked.
 
Well, I must say it has been a very bad couple of weeks for me with the aquarium.
Pretty much everything has gone wrong, all in a short span.

1) The first problem was my GFCI was tripping every couple of days.
Which of course, turns a lot of equipment off.
But at every few days, super hard to debug.
- Faulty power strip.

SO: I decided to completely re-wire the AC section.
Instead of the normal single GFCI -> string of outlets, I now have 8 independent GFCI outlets.
So same protection, but if one trips, only that one stops, not the whole system.
A fair bit of work, and expensive, but I feel better about it.

2) Unstable Alk/Calcium, causing PH swings.
My old dosers were simply not up to the task of the large tank. Too slow.
So I got some new higher speed dosers.
Takes time to dial in the timing.
Unfortunately, the standard programming on the reef controller was to coarse, so had to change that.
Combine all that mucking around with the power going out ....
Ugly.
But now I have dosers up to run every hour, with half our offset between them, with the interval programmed in seconds.

3) Two power heads stopped working.
Full of crud, and stopped during one of the power outages.
But they were in the back, and with so many other issue, I really did not notice for a while.
Not a big deal, but annoying.

4) Pulled a comm wire out of the second micro controller.
Not sure how. Probably with all the new electrical.
But the results - lights were on full (which is above normal), for some 40 hours nonstop.
Fortunately, only issue is slight bleaching at the tips of my colt coral.

5) Main sump return pump stopped working.
It was still on. Just doing nothing. Likely crud in the impeller.
Power cycled and works. But I think I will add a better pre-filter.
It was pretty much off all night.
Heaters are all in the sump, so main tank cooled a fair bit.

6) The ICH is back with a vengeance.
No sign of it for almost 3 months, but now it is back.
No real surprise. The above mishaps I am sure caused a lot of stress on the fish.
This is now the real big issue.

Despite all that, I feel really lucky.
I have a big vacation planned. Most of the above is now fixed.
If even one of those had failed during the vacation, I could have returned to a totally dead tank.
 
gimmito said:
Good way to look at things...hang in there !
Click to expand...
Thanks. Things are going a whole lot better now.

Ph is very steady now at about 8.3 with the change from Soda Ash to Baking Soda. (carbonate to bicarbonate)
That is causing everything else to stabilize.
Plus, I am now using a bit less alk/calc supplements, probably since it is precipitating out less.
I think I can push calcium up a bit again as well. I was holding it around 380-400.
And as a bonus, baking soda is only $1/pound at the local supermarket.

Got the micro-controller working again. Kudos to Reef Angel for great support!

I even managed to test my simple fan-based chiller during the recent heat, and it worked fine.
I live in the east bay, and it was pretty hot, but tank topped out at 80.1.
Although I might add another fan and make a better bracket.

The ich was the only major bummer.
After the long vacation, time to fix it once and for all.
I don't want to go through that again.
 
Losing a coral in the new tank.
Kinda bummed. This little guy was a tiny 1" single frag, and was doing well, about 3" and starting a third branch.
Two days ago it was perfect.
Then BAM - dead meat in a couple of days.
The old "RTN" which of course, is not a particularly scientific term.

On the other hand, it is the first coral to go in the new tank, which I am pretty happy about.
And given some other peoples really bad luck recently, hard to feel too bad about a little frag.

I fragged the left branch that looked so-so, then dipped it in Coral-revive.
But the tip looks bad, so hopes are dim.

I nuked the other part, to see what critters came out - nothing but a few stars off the rock.

Water parameters seem ok, although may need tweaking.
Ammonia, Nitrate, Nitrate, Phosphate tested = 0 (undetectable with normal kits)
Mg = 1470
Ca (API) = 440
Ca (Salifert) = 480
Alk (Hanna) = 170 = 9.8
Alk (Salifert) = 9.6
Ph = 8.2
Salinity (refractometer) = 1.027 : Oddly high, but not much.

rtn_1.jpg


Ignore the brown color. It was taken out of the water in the garage, under cheap lights.

Advice welcome.
 
JAR said:
What kind of lighting was it getting and how deep was that coral?
Click to expand...
LED lighting. And pretty bright.
It was shallow. Probably 6" down.
And I have had corals react badly when placed high in the tank directly.
I usually start at the bottom, and move them up.

I moved the surviving frag piece to the bottom.

---

My real suspicion is the usual - too many nutrients.
The reason being that I am getting a few bits of new algae here and there.
I feed both the fish and coral, probably too much.
Test kits show zero, but they are only standard kits.
 
Possibly adding MH supplement, could use advice.

I thought I had a pretty nice LED lighting system. I still really like the color.
But after almost a year now, I am getting disappointed with the growth.
I tried tweaking Alk/Ca, tried more/less GFO/Carbon/etc, tried feeding more/less/targeted.
Nothing really made any difference, so I am really starting to question the lighting.
Especially since some others on BAR seem to hve switched back to MH from LED.

So I was thinking of adding 2 supplemental 150W MH lights.
That is not much for a 240G, 24" deep tank.
But the intent (hope) is to fill in whatever missing wavelengths are needed to bump up the growth,
not to fully replace the LEDs.

Thinking of going with a 10K Ushio, 150W double ended base.
Double ended because I have limited space between the heat sinks in the LED fixture,
so tricky to fit in the reflector.
10K, because I want to push growth, and I have lots of Royal Blue LEDs for the blue.

Any ballast suggestions? Lumatek?
Better bulbs to consider?
Anyone know where to get a 3" wide reflector?

I have never done MH before. I used T5 + LED in the past.
 
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