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Richie's Reefer 170

Continuing my "tank slowly crashing harder and harder" journey, things were stable and then looking better, but then all my stonies began really struggling, including the stylos I grew from nubs into encrusted mini colonies. The stylos are RTNing. Montis were bleaching more and more or STNing. My doubled in size since I got it rainbow chalice started showing skeleton.

 Debugging
I finally put a controller on the tank to get readings of temp. Turns out when it was really humid out the tank got around 82 so I finally installed some fans I'd been slacking on.

I tested all and it was low (7.5), but fine. I finally retested Ca and it was shockingly low, 300ish, so I found my dosing setup was getting air in the line, and wasn't dosing properly, so I've fixed that and the past 3 or 4 days I've been bringing the Ca up.

Tested Mg as well and it was around 1200. Did a couple Mg squirts into the ATO.

Salinity has been stable (so I thought, foreboding).

Moving the controller to this tank, I put in a pH probe. I had to wait for new calibration fluid, but nothing crazy in the numbers.

I was about to pick up an ICP test to see if maybe I have something getting into the water. Maybe some metal rusting somewhere?

Then I realized it's been awhile since I switched the battery in my Hanna salinity gauge, and done a recalibration. I put a new battery in, cut open a 35ppt calibration fluid sample and put the probe in. It reads 41ppt!!!

F.

I recalibrate it, and it's not stable. I go through 2 more bags trying to triple check it's giving me stable readings, because I don't want to believe the salinity readings I'm getting.

My tank is currently at 30ish ppt, maybe slightly below. This may mean that when I got back in town and got a crazy high salinity result, so I made new water and started reducing it, I might've taken it from 35ppt'ish down to 29-30ppt. Triggering the continued slow collapse.

Corrections
My guess at what might've happened in actuality:
  • Dinos + power outage + heat stress out the tank, and cause issues while I'm gone
  • I come back and see the way off salinity, and go to correct it, triggering another round of stress and continued damage
  • Slightly high temp swings due to not having the fan + not having temp graphed causes more stress and damage
  • I measure alk and Ca low, so I fix the dosing and start raising it, causing another issue of imbalanced levels (salinity low, Ca & Alk high for that salinity) and stress and damage

The obvious corrections/mitigations:
  • I should've checked my salinity gauge when I got back, before correcting. I honestly don't know why I didn't. I think I was in just such a stress haze from dealing with funerals and travel and estate stuff that I didn't think it through.
    • Correction 1: recalibrate
    • Correction 2: get a secondary salinity checker. Obnoxiously I had actually already ordered a precision hydrometer from BRS, but it arrived broken,  twice a couple weeks ago. I told them to cancel my order and I'd just shop around to find one in the area. I'll possibly pick up a refractometer at some point (that's what I always used to use). I'll possibly get an Apex with salinity checker for my tank when I upgrade. Third I'll possibly buy a cheapo hydrometer as my other backup. Finally I'll probably give in and track down a precision hydrometer.
  • I need to increase salinity and make sure Alk & Ca & Mag aren't crazy
    • Correction 1: I replaced my ATO water with 35ppt salt
    • Correction 2: I'm stopping 2-part until salinity stabilizes, then I'll restart it to get things where I need. If things are low I might just temporarily start putting All lmk-For-Reef into my ATO water to get all the good stuff to slowly increase through a slow dose & bacteria release
    • Correction 3: when I'm closer to 35ppt I'll do 1 or more 10% water changes, depending on how far off things are.
  • I'll continue UV to keep dinos away (that's going very well actually)
  • I'll continue feeding heavily to continue getting N/P where I want, and continue making the LPS happy
  • I moved coral I wanted to save and were looking bad into my frag tank
    • Stylo I fragged down into multiple separate pieces. The smaller pieces that didn't have RTN seem to be doing ok.
    • Chalice I moved today
    • Some stuff I just got rid of to get rid of the frustration
But wait, my frag tank is doing great?!?
The fascinating part of is my frag tank. I've got SPS, LPS, and even some softies in there. Even a bunch of nice acros and torts I got from @dandemeyere . Everything in that tank is doing wonderfully.

I don't have huge colonies or anything, so the growth rates aren't measured in kg a day it something, but there's healthy growth in everything, and I haven't had a single loss. Even despite having bleaching from when it had issues while I was out of town.

That doesn't make sense to me, because it has the exact same salinity. It is right around 30 at the moment, post calibration. The only difference is that's getting All-For-Reef instead of 2-part, and it's at nearly 12dKh.

There might be other factors at play here, and I'm going to be extremely careful on how I slowly adjust that tank, but it's very interesting.

All that being said, I'm for sure going to rush ship another salinity tester to my house. I'd go get one right now, but I'm currently positive with covid (what a wonderful final gift of the last couple weeks).
 
I can drop a hydrometer on the doorstep. Amazon can next day one too. I really like the Milwaukee electric hydrometer. I have a hard time reading the tube refractometers. Always have 2 ways to measure everything, and when one goes south, get a 3rd.
 
Qwiv said:
I can drop a hydrometer on the doorstep. Amazon can next day one too. I really like the Milwaukee electric hydrometer. I have a hard time reading the tube refractometers. Always have 2 ways to measure everything, and when one goes south, get a 3rd.
Click to expand...
F. Ordered a Milwaukee. Being done with it.

If you're going to invest in anything for the long term in this hobby, I'm guessing accurate salinity measurement will never be something I regret having or becomes useless.
 
Milwaukee MA887 arrived. It's not calibrating properly and reading high (the 1.025sg fluid is reading as 1.028), but it's confirmed directionally my salinity is too low. I did a partial water change to get it up faster (31.5ppt'ish now), and am going to just leave my fans constantly on to make raising it through the top off with saltwater go faster.

Frag tank I'm leaving to increase even slower, given coral in there are doing well.

Milwaukee I'll deal with later. I tried cleaning and recalibrating multiple times, and for $120 I'm underimpressed. I might just return it given for the cost I don't deem this reasonable to debug, but I'll probably contact them first.
 
Good news bad news again. The good news is my tank is fairly self sufficient after having made tweaks.

  • I got my salinity back where I wanted, and all/Ca/... is fine
  • I moved a reef-pi controller over, and set up external access to it on my router, so I can check temp and such remotely. I can't control dosing, because I have a separate doser, but I'm not really sure I'd want to change that remotely anyway, given I don't have a Trident or mastertronic or whatever
  • I setup an external ATO reservoir, pumped by one of my diy peristaltic pumps, controlled by the reef pi. I have it enabled for 30 minutes every morning, pumping water from the external reservoir into the Reefer's gravity feed + mechanical float ATO. So best case it'll top off the reservoir daily. Worst case it'll slowly dump water into my reservoir and overfill it into the tank, but only 30 minutes of peristaltic pump speed worth (should be around 2 gallons). Tank sitter just needs to move the hose between jugs, and if it's not filling properly I can remotely change the max time.
  • I switched to an ap9x from @Da_Neefer. Both to get more light versus the hydra 32hd, but more to prepare for a next tank.
Bad news:
  • Continuing 2022 sucks, I have to travel to Chicago again. Third family death in 6 months. This time my wife's grandmother. I don't even know what to say about it at this point, so just noting it as I randomly rant at the world and move on
  • My tank has monti eating nudibranchs (I created a separate thread). They somehow got in there, and then I spread them to my QT when I moved something out. Incredibly frustrating. I dip everything, generally look over plugs if not cut then down/off, and everything went through my QT tank for at least a stint. Obviously I didn't do it well enough.
  • I tossed my encrusting montis and my Digi from the tank. I still have some setosas that I'm watching. They grew a lot since I got them. I'm hoping somehow I got the nudis out.
  • Good/bad my anemone split again (now 3) all are very healthy, so I'm not sure if it's a good split or an unhappy, but it's fine. I don't really want 3 anemones, so I'll likely DBTC one or two
Next:
  • I have coming, hopefully a wrasse and a Molly Miller blenny, post QT with @under_water_ninja. Wrasse to fight nudis and look cool. Blenny to help with some algae
  • I'm going to order my next tank soon.
  • I'm likely going to order a parameter measuring setup. I like the idea of a mastertronic, mostly because it can do all the things and hopefully I can use it with my reef pi. I think a Trident is probably a better option, and I should just switch to apex, but that's an even bigger investment. I also like the idea of being hella lazy and measuring nitrate/phosphate automatically

I should upload a picture to be able to reference it later, when things look / are better, but meh.
 
What kind of wrasse you looking for again? I have some six lines and a blue sided flasher available today. And a black sailfin blenny. I can order the molly Miller for this next batch of Qt, but the black sailfin is pretty rad, have some tailspot blennys too
 
richiev said:
Good news bad news again. The good news is my tank is fairly self sufficient after having made tweaks.

  • I got my salinity back where I wanted, and all/Ca/... is fine
  • I moved a reef-pi controller over, and set up external access to it on my router, so I can check temp and such remotely. I can't control dosing, because I have a separate doser, but I'm not really sure I'd want to change that remotely anyway, given I don't have a Trident or mastertronic or whatever
  • I setup an external ATO reservoir, pumped by one of my diy peristaltic pumps, controlled by the reef pi. I have it enabled for 30 minutes every morning, pumping water from the external reservoir into the Reefer's gravity feed + mechanical float ATO. So best case it'll top off the reservoir daily. Worst case it'll slowly dump water into my reservoir and overfill it into the tank, but only 30 minutes of peristaltic pump speed worth (should be around 2 gallons). Tank sitter just needs to move the hose between jugs, and if it's not filling properly I can remotely change the max time.
  • I switched to an ap9x from @Da_Neefer. Both to get more light versus the hydra 32hd, but more to prepare for a next tank.
Bad news:
  • Continuing 2022 sucks, I have to travel to Chicago again. Third family death in 6 months. This time my wife's grandmother. I don't even know what to say about it at this point, so just noting it as I randomly rant at the world and move on
  • My tank has monti eating nudibranchs (I created a separate thread). They somehow got in there, and then I spread them to my QT when I moved something out. Incredibly frustrating. I dip everything, generally look over plugs if not cut then down/off, and everything went through my QT tank for at least a stint. Obviously I didn't do it well enough.
  • I tossed my encrusting montis and my Digi from the tank. I still have some setosas that I'm watching. They grew a lot since I got them. I'm hoping somehow I got the nudis out.
  • Good/bad my anemone split again (now 3) all are very healthy, so I'm not sure if it's a good split or an unhappy, but it's fine. I don't really want 3 anemones, so I'll likely DBTC one or two
Next:
  • I have coming, hopefully a wrasse and a Molly Miller blenny, post QT with @under_water_ninja. Wrasse to fight nudis and look cool. Blenny to help with some algae
  • I'm going to order my next tank soon.
  • I'm likely going to order a parameter measuring setup. I like the idea of a mastertronic, mostly because it can do all the things and hopefully I can use it with my reef pi. I think a Trident is probably a better option, and I should just switch to apex, but that's an even bigger investment. I also like the idea of being hella lazy and measuring nitrate/phosphate automatically

I should upload a picture to be able to reference it later, when things look / are better, but meh.
Click to expand...
I unfortunately can only offer my condolences to your struggles in both reefing and life. Best of luck going forward.
 
No one liked to hear it, but it is easier to get the nems out when there are fewer of them. Maybe as things get back to stable those find their own tank? I always had trouble with them stinging things I liked that weren't as mobile.

If you want to try any new encrusting monti's, I got a bunch I can frag for you/get you colonies of when you are ready.
 
under_water_ninja said:
What kind of wrasse you looking for again? I have some six lines and a blue sided flasher available today. And a black sailfin blenny. I can order the molly Miller for this next batch of Qt, but the black sailfin is pretty rad, have some tailspot blennys too
Click to expand...
I'd been messaging with Mr Ninja off thread, but for longevity my hope is to get a Molly Miller out of the idea that it'll hopefully eat algae and aptasia. Luckily so far I have no aptasia issues, but if I'm going to have another algae eater it'd be great if it served two purposes.

The wrasse I'm hoping for is a tail-spot aka Halichoeres melanurus aka Hoeven's. My reasoning being they look super cool and are relatively small, so it should be ok to do a small stint in my coral QT tank followed by my Reefer 170 followed by my eventual peninsula.

rdriggett said:
I unfortunately can only offer my condolences to your struggles in both reefing and life. Best of luck going forward.
Click to expand...
H2OPlayar said:
No one liked to hear it, but it is easier to get the nems out when there are fewer of them. Maybe as things get back to stable those find their own tank? I always had trouble with them stinging things I liked that weren't as mobile.

If you want to try any new encrusting monti's, I got a bunch I can frag for you/get you colonies of when you are ready.
Click to expand...

Thanks dudes.

Moving an anemone to a different tank is an obviously good idea which I could easily do. The nice part of where my anemone took root is it's a perfect position in the tank. It's exactly where I wanted. At the top, and away from everything else. The splits luckily are also in that location.

Time will tell though. This also is a good reminder that maybe before I leave town I should toss all the anemone guards back on. That'd be a nightmare scenario.

RE montis, I'd love to get a refresher stock of them at some point, but I'll wait until I have a happy wrasse hanging out in there and signs the nudis are gone/handled. Appreciated though.
 
PS, i have not seen my Molly Miller do much grazing. I don't have any turf or hair algae visible or aiptasia, so maybe that is why. The only picking I see him do is at the hermits and I think that is for fun or to steal food. Doesn't eat nori either. Basically just sitting around being a blenny.
 
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