75 gallon rebuild

**feh** · 07-15-2012, 03:31 AM

Yeah I use dosing pumps with a RKL. I remember turning the pumps off for a couple of hours before I went to work to keep the Alk and Ca where there were after doing a small water change. Still getting the hang of SPS and my water change water mixes at slightly higher Alk then I generally keep things. So to avoid any risks I did a smaller water change and killed the pumps for a while. Anyway I turned them back on before leaving for work so I'm wondering if, like and idiot, I set the mode to on instead of auto for the Alk. When I shutdown the pumps after I got home last night the Alk I think was set to On instead of Auto and I think the Calc was set correctly. The alarm on the controller did shut the pump down when the pH hit 8.3. Good thing I set it lower than they suggest. I didn't bother to check parms before going to work to see what was really the fault. I didn't have time to check Calc before leaving for work today but 5hrs after doing a 15 - 20 gal water change Alk was around 219ppm / 12dKH. So at this point I think the carbon reactor helped pull some of it out since I had to change out the carbon in it today because of all the Alk it had trapped. I did manage to clean the vortechs with vinegar water to get them clean. I did clean them last night but at 1am after getting home from work at 11:30pm and having to get back up and be back at work at 7am I had to do what I could and catch some Zs. So as of right now... Alk is at 183ppm and Ca is at 375ppm. So it appears the Ca really precipitated out severely. I have water mixing and will get things worked out over the next however long so I don't cause any further harm. All the corals were find when I came home. No signs of bleaching or anything. Which is a miracle IMO. My poor kole tang I thought I had lost because it took me an hour to find him. He wasn't in his usual sleeping spot. Found him behind the rocks breathing heavily so I was expecting to lose him, but when I got home he acted like nothing ever happened. In the meantime I'm not turning the dosers back on until I know things are where they need to be. I do know I'm going to have to do more water changes to clean the rock up. Looks like the top of the Alps in places. Plus there is a lot in the sump I'm going to have to remove. So all goes well I should have things back to normal in the next week or so. I plan to clean the rest of the pumps in vinegar and the skimmer. And I'm all annoyed because I just cleaned it 2 weeks ago. Even broke down the pump and cleaned it. But I don't want to come home and find the air intake clogged up and I really don't want to have to replace my return pump because it froze up from precip caked up on it. So I'm planning to clean it up tomorrow. Man what a mess....

**feh** · 07-15-2012, 03:35 AM

Oh and one more thing I have my dosers set to alternate every 2 hrs between Alk and Ca in small doses to keep things more stable and not have to deal with huge spikes by dosing once a day or twice a day. So far I've had good luck with that and had no precip issues until the incident.

**feh** · 07-28-2012, 12:56 AM

Just got back into town an hour ago and checked on the tanks... everything looks just the way I left 'em. Pheew... I forgot how annoying airports can be. Anyway glad to be home and glad to see all my fish and corals are alive and doing well.

**feh** · 08-06-2012, 06:28 PM

Still need to move some stuff apart with the LPS for more growing room. Need to remount the favia on the right too. Anyway... things are looking ok since the Alk OD. Just needs more time... numbers are stable, but I think Alk is a little high. Alk is at 180 and Ca is at 415 but I can live with that for now. I'd like to bring the Alk down a little but the Ca is close to where I like it. I like to see it around 425 / 450. I'm just glad I'm done with all the traveling for a while. Minnesota week before last. Home for 5 days then Charlotte for 4 days. So I think I'm gonna relax and let things recoup and ease things back into my normal maintenance schedule.

**feh** · 09-02-2012, 03:43 PM

Top 3 graphs are Mg(red), Ca(green), and Alk(yellow). Around July 13th I had an Alk OD. I'm talking a nice big nasty snow storm. I'm surprised I didn't lose anything. The graph is created from the spreadsheet I log my water parms in so the OD event isn't not reflected there. Looking at the graph things seemed fairly stable from March up until around that time. Any ideas why things are bouncing around so much since? I haven't made adjustments to my dosers and other than the extra WCs for about 2 weeks to try and get things stable I've stuck to my usual routine. The other stuff at the bottom are salinity, po4 and so on, but would require a new graph to bring into a resolution to be able to see any real info from those, but I don't see any real issues there. From what it looks like to me maybe some kind of balance issue. I never dose Mg because rarely is it anything other than 1500. All 3 mentioned parms are measured in PPM.

**Tom Barr** · 09-02-2012, 09:32 PM

Base rock and knowing how much the coral will grow out is critical.
Experience helps a lot.

But.....

1. If your base rock is semi modular, then you can move it around little by little.
2. If you go and meet with many other reef folks or aquariums etc, and see and observe closely, you can see where and how these grow.

**feh** · 09-02-2012, 10:45 PM

Originally Posted by Tom Barr

Base rock and knowing how much the coral will grow out is critical.
Experience helps a lot.

But.....

1. If your base rock is semi modular, then you can move it around little by little.

2. If you go and meet with many other reef folks or aquariums etc, and see and observe closely, you can see where and how these grow.

Ya lost me. I'm guessing you're contributing spikes and so forth to growth in the graph? Some of the earlier spikes and such I contribute to dialing in dosing pumps and user error with testing. Took me a little while to nail down the Hanna Ca and PO4 checkers and the Mg kit. I don't think my Ca was ever really at 600, but a small margin for error with those Hanna checkers since it literally only tests a drop.

The rock work isn't permanently put together. I was leary of using the mortar kit that came with it. As long as I don't allow any coral to grow across more than 1 rock things should be fairly easy to move. I'll be out of here before things really grow to a point of that being an issue. The LPS I was refering to is the stuff scattered on the sandbed with moving stuff around in the earlier post.

**feh** · 09-02-2012, 10:52 PM

Almost forgot. The blastos that I was supposed to get a while back died before shipping day after getting fragged. They lost all of them I was told. Well a few weeks later I was told that a few heads survived and then last month while out of town I received an email with a pic. So needless to say I finally got my hands on some of the best blastos I've ever seen. There's only 4 heads scattered on the rock with 3 babies growing in, but I couldn't pass up a second change on picking these up.

Not the best pic, but my camera and my lighting don't get along well. So here's the pic the vendor sent me in the email.

**feh** · 10-03-2012, 09:39 PM

Still fiddling around with lighting trying to find that sweet spot for the SPS. Think I bleached 'em a little from too much light. Added new bulbs a while back and didn't raise the fixture. Was thinking it was due to the Alk OD, but raising the fixture seems to have turned things around there. Some of the LPS were showing the same signs so I raised the fixture several inches. Things seem to be coloring back up, but still not up for getting anymore sticks. They're growing and coloring up, but don't want to add any new SPS until I got things just right. Water parms are fine... raised Alk back up to around 180ppm, Ca still around 450, PO4 still lingering around 0.03 and nitrates still undetectable.

I seriously don't think my tank could handle the amount of light an ATI puts out. I only run my lights 7hrs a day. 2 bulbs for 4hrs... 4 bulbs for 3 hours. My water stays super clear from the carbon reactor. Anyway... just need to find that sweet spot for the SPS without pissing off the LPS and what not.

Lost my yellow watchman 2 weeks ago out of blue. Not sure what caused it. Never showed any signs of health issues. I don't think cyanide was used in collection because I think I would have seen signs or lost it long ago. The only thing I can think of is A/C went out day before but only saw a 2 degree rise in temp and thats over 2hr time frame so I don't think that would have caused it. Unfortunately my skunk shrimp got to him before I did so wasn't much to analyze for any cause of death. Rest of the fish are fine so still puzzled. Haven't seen any signs of hitchhikers that might be considered a culprit either. So no idea.

Anyway... here's pic of new candy.