Reef nutrition

In the beginning...

Looks great!

So I have a plexiglass protector below my lights a bit like that.
Make sure it is easy to remove to clean. I didn't.
It is amazing how much crud gets baked on between the lights and the plexiglass.

Also, you probably need a mesh net top. With that setup, snails and fish will be on the carpet.

It is 1/2" tempered starphire glass and it's in there pretty permanently. It does have a piano hinge on the top and can rotate up to reveal the passage for the wiring.

It's funny you mention a top. I just picked up a snail today. More importantly, the Zebra Moray eel I have coming on Tuesday is supposed to be an escape artist. Apparently it's only 8" right now but I'll need to figure something out sooner than later I suspect.
 
I added a dozen corals from my 30 gallon to the 125. It makes my 30 gallon look much more bare but doesn't even put a dent in the 125.
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I also got the red mandarin and Zebra Moray eel. The eel is much bigger than I had expected. Live aquaria listed it as a medium which they said was 8"-10". This one is at least 18". I needed both hands to transfer him.
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I didn't tell my wife or kids that they were coming today so when they got home from school and found it they were ecstatic. It looks like it's been named Maury and the mandarin is Mandy.

I was surprised that Maury already ate two pieces of shrimp from my feeding stick. He's pretty much stayed where I plopped him in at though. No exploring yet.
 
Wow, that is quite the eel. :cool:
I can see how the family would be excited.
Although I bet Mandy is a bit nervous about Maury.

Big addition - watch Ammonia and Nitrite (not Nitrate) carefully in case of a second cycle.
 
What'd you do for a lid?
Nothing yet.

Make your own lid and compete with artfully acrylic?
I was planning on making an acrylic one but not to compete.

Wow, that is quite the eel. :cool:
I can see how the family would be excited.
Although I bet Mandy is a bit nervous about Maury.

Big addition - watch Ammonia and Nitrite (not Nitrate) carefully in case of a second cycle.
This kind of eel doesn't go after fish since they only have grinding type teeth. I'm sure Mandy doesn't know that though.

I will be watching for a second cycle. It happened in my 30 gallon.
 
I got the auto water change set up last night. Right now I'm only exchanging 1/2 gallon a night. I want to see how it goes for the time being and see if I need to make adjustments. right now with not much in the tank I think it will be good. I'm not expecting it to be my primary nutrient export means but to help replenish the elements. It should delay the need for my CaRx for a while longer. The way it's set up is a test of the durability of the DOS. The AWC is done on one head with a "T" fitting and two check valves so that it first runs in reverse and draws out the dirty SW from my sump and goes straight down the drain. Then it runs forward and draws the water from my SW reservoir and goes back in the sump.
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I'm pretty sure @Thales would say this is the lazy way. So this is a test of volume for the DOS. Next I'll be hooking up my CaRx to have the effluent dosed to the tank via the DOS. This will be done in extremely small amounts but continuously. Neptune doesn't recommend it to be used this way but I'm going to give it a shot.
 
Those went straight in to tank without quarantined is pretty brave.


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I was wondering who would notice that. I live life on the edge. It's something that I would recommend to other people but have never actually done it myself. It's just a matter of time before something goes wrong but that time hasn't come for me yet.
 
Yeah a small red Mandarin brought in velvet and wiped my tank so never again. 3k worth of fish lots of expensive wrasses.


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So it's been a couple weeks now that the tank has been a bit cloudy. When I search on rc about it everyone points to it being a bacteria bloom. But what I see in the pics and descriptions on rc don't seem to quite match up with what I'm experiencing. First, in most cases the cloudiness shows up one day out of the blue and is very cloudy. Mine seemed to develope and us just mildly cloudy. Second, most people experience an overactive skimmer where I am not. Nothing seems to be overly effected by it but it doesn't seem normal.
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It barely shows up in the pics but is much more noticeable in person.

Last time I checked nitrates and phosphates was about a week ago. About 10 and .12. Since then I started activated carbon, phosgaurd, and purigen. I haven't tested again since then but it has had no noticeable effect on the cloudiness.

Any thoughts?
 
I put them in about a week ago too. Two days after putting them in I washed them out because they were already pretty brown. I had previously not been using them.

I used aquaforest AF Phyto Mix two times about the time I started noticing the cloudiness but stopped when it wasn't going away. That was about 2 weeks ago.
 
I had cloudiness for awhile that got a bunch better after a few weeks of rox carbon. That's the good stuff. Also since you're dosing some zeo, coral snow will really clear up cloudiness in a jiffy. In the morning after dosing CS, I can see from one end to the other like it's air in between.


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I had cloudiness for awhile that got a bunch better after a few weeks of rox carbon. That's the good stuff. Also since you're dosing some zeo, coral snow will really clear up cloudiness in a jiffy. In the morning after dosing CS, I can see from one end to the other like it's air in between.


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I haven't started dosing any zeovit on this tank yet. Just in my 30 gallon. I'd be up for trying the coral snow.
 
I had cloudiness for awhile that got a bunch better after a few weeks of rox carbon. That's the good stuff. Also since you're dosing some zeo, coral snow will really clear up cloudiness in a jiffy. In the morning after dosing CS, I can see from one end to the other like it's air in between.


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When the cs runs out and you don't feel like paying that much for it.

Quoted from an RC post.

"So Korallen Zucht's Zeovit product line has been around for a while. It contains many products, but one that finds usefulness outside of the ultra low nutrient setups is Coral Snow. In addition, the claims that KZ makes about it are not completely absurd and actually lie in the science of it. They claim it is a 'calcium-magnesium carbonate mix' (aka MgCO3 and CaCO3). When dried, it looks like an off-white confectioners sugar, extremely fine ground powder.

It is essentially a calcite chalk. Yes, the same stuff that teachers used to write on chalkboards with, that is bought for pennies and sold in RO/DI at nearly $120 per liter.

Despite being expensive, it does have its benefits. Organics adhere to its surface, as do particulates, acting as a flocculent, being easily removed via protein skimming or small micron mechanical filtration. This leads to unparalleled water clarity.

Thankfully there is a cheaper way to get that same clarifying effect. You can purchase food grade calcium carbonate powder, minimum 97% purity, for around $9 per pound, less if you order more (but that's not really necessary).

It comes as a very fine powder. You will want to mix it with water before dosing. The amount of KZ product in each mL (after it is very well-shaken to thoroughly mix) is 0.4g. This is a bit less than 1/8 teaspoon, and this is good for roughly 100 liters aquarium volume (25 gallons). You can either just put the dry powder into a small container and mix right there, or you can create a stock solution.

For a 250mL solution, use 5 level tablespoons (roughly 115 grams) of CaCO3 powder and add roughly 230mL of RO/DI water. This should mix right about 250mL. The powder will NOT dissolve, it will stay suspended in the water. Will look like this when you're done.

Mix thoroughly before dosing, and dose 1mL per 100L volume (25 gallons) whenever you feel like. No harm in doing it daily, twice a day, once a week, etc, as it gets removed from the water column. It won't raise your pH, calcium, or alkalinity, as the powder will not dissolve in a reef aquarium, the pH is too high. You can even double, triple the dose without consequence. Your tank will look like this (or actually a bit cloudier, as this is roughly an hour post-dose) for a few hours, then will clear up with much higher clarity than before.

Happy reefing!"



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