milesmiles902

For what it's worth, you can also get potassium nitrate in powder form. From my understanding, the stump remover is indeed pure KNO3, but just mixed in solution. Powder form potassium nitrate is used a great deal in the freshwater planted world (as well as agricultural obviously). About 3 bucks for a pound.

Wait, wait, wait! From my understanding root killer is Copper Nitrate or Cu(II)NO₃. If the stuff you buy looks blue, stay away!!! Copper is deadly to almost all lifeforms. 

 

Just read the ingredients. It would tell you.

Looking sharp Jeff!

Karen! Happy Birthday!!!! I heard that most fish stores will give you free stuff if you tell them it's your birthday.

I think it is very unlikely that the peppermint shrimp killed the conch. It may have been eating it after it was already dead, but it wouldn't kill it. I have hermits gather on my conch and it jumps away without worry.

 

Maybe the conch just died? Inverts are so hard to read.

That's great. Let's see some pics. I wish I had a 250 gallon tank.

Why mess with all that there is this stuff called paper  last time I checked it was white also....................

Touche, sir.

 

Do that instead of painting!

Forget what these people are saying. 

 

The towels aren't as bright as white paint and it makes it look a little dull. I bet white would be pretty good looking when you paint it on. 

 

You could always do a layer of white and see if you like it, then blue if it doesn't work out.

I bet white would be pretty good looking when you paint it on. 

Here is my Hydra52's.

 

Glad to see you could make it!

Thank you everyone for the welcome. Ill give all of you a quick run down of the tank i have along with the equipment under the hood. I have a red sea e-170 with a few upgrades. I have a maxspec gyre 230, two small inovative marine reactors (was running bio pellets in one and gfo/carbon in the other but just turned both off the other day), 2 brs dosing pumps, a hydrofill auto top off, and ditched the red sea skimmer for a psk75 in sump skimmer that i trimmed the base plate to make fit in the aio rear sump section. I have been using polyfill at the top of the return section, cut the foam in that section in half so i could fit a few marine pure spheres on top and cover with polyfill. I removed the filter basket to fit the reactors in that area. Other then that it is stock e-170. I have had an issue with high nitrates down to 20ish from 50 finally. I do not believe i over feed as i only feed 4 times a week. I attribute the nitrate level to the red sea skimmer that came with the tank. I had to adjust that skimmer daily and 2 time the air inlet seemed to plug up and just didnt produce any skim for a few days before i noticed. I had done everything thing to try to lower the nitrates, multiple 5 gallon water changes a week, bio pellets, gfo ( i now know if only removes phosphates). I started using nopox about a week ago and that mixed eith the better skimmer seem to really be knocking the nitrates down. My current water parameters are as follows.

 

Salinity 1.025

Ph 8.2

Nitrate 20ish

Mag 1410

Cal 410

Alk 9.5

Phosphates ? Planning to pick one up this weekend

I dose 7ml of fuel 2 times a week and daily dose brs 2 part broken up over 6 doses daily.

Have been using coral pro salt and rodi water only since day one.

 

My biggest challenge i have right now is i have lost a few pieces of coral and have a fee that dont look to great and then i have others that are doing amazing and growing like crazy. Lost a small acan frag of 4 heads and a dmall hammer coral. I have 2 dmall acros that are not dead but one is not growing but still has nice purple color, the other was vibrant green when i first got it and now is a pink color and has been that way for about 2 months. I am starting to see a little green reappear. All my other corals are doing great, zoas, palys, 2 types of frogspawn, elegance, duncan, gonipora, Trachyphyllia, and encrusting monti. I had a bubble tip that did great for about 2 months then when my old skimmer decided to screw up he started to turn inside out. I kept a close eye on him for about 6 days but he seemed to get worse everyday decided to remove it before a disaster. Long story but wanted to give as much info as possible as i see alot of people post questions with very limited info about their tank.

 

So at this point i have 2 main questions that i hope i can get some input on. First is what do some of the more experienced think about my coral issues, related to high nitrate, possibly low phosphates since i have not tested and was stupidly running gfo w/o ability to test level, or possibly my settings on my hydra26hd.

 

Second what are your guys thoughts on upgrading to a lower sump? I seem to be able to fit what i need in the rear sump at this point but am really interested in refugiums as they seem to help with lots of issues when i comes to water quality.

 

Thank you again and sorry for the novel.

I don't think that high of nitrates is a good thing. I am astonished that your nitrates are ~20ppm with multiple five gallon water changes a week (bolded). I do two on a 75 display, ~90 gallon water volume and there is never any nitrate or phosphate issues. If you don't find what the source is you will probably burn through GFO, which is fairly expensive. How much are you feeding at once? What are you feeding? We should try to get to the bottom of this. It might be the skimmer. Do you keep the water level fairly constant? What is getting caught in the skimmer? I only have macro-algae causing issues in mine, otherwise it never gets clogged.

 

 

A refugium would help. Getting a test kit for phosphates would help too.

Welcome to the club. If you run into anymore challenges we are here to help. Someone around here has to know or can at least point you in the right direction.

Here's my update. 

 

 

Two mouths, but not two bodies...Maybe this is the start of something good.

Huh. Never seen anything like those before. I've had montipora eating flatworms and acro ones before, but they were never that dark. More translucent white or red.

 

I completely agree with keeping insecticides out of the house while the baby is still newborn. Things like Revive are pure essential oils and might be a good alternative (limonene oil and citrus oil). I am unsure about Coral RX.

 

Where did you hear about the hydrogen peroxide and potassium chloride dip? I don't cruise any other forums and am curious. I could definitely see them working, but I wouldn't know what concentrations to start with. If you are running an experiment on SPS you could easily buy the solid online and test different concentrations.

That's awesome you built your own dosers and you bring up a good point.

 

What all does everyone does in their tanks? Outside of hand-dosing. 

How fast do these things eat them? There are tons of zoas out there that grow at ridiculous rates. Almost like GSP.

 

I have one in my tank that is definitely becoming a nuisance. We should just bring old zoas each month as a sacrificial tribute to a club nudi tank.

I think a lot of good things were said here. I just feel guilty. At least when people go hunting they eat the meat. We just watch them for our pleasure assuming that they are happy. I would hate to be pulled from the breeding population.  

 

The pros and cons both have tons of weight to them. We wouldn't be able to produce captively raised species if we didn't get fish from the sea. Reef builders showed at least 5-10 new species captively bred in the last year. Some were even pelagic spawners, which are very hard to breed.

 

I guess taking it slow, buying from a reputable source and buying fish that we know are sustainable is the best we can do. I do believe that there is sustainable harvesting, I just wonder if we really know that these fish we are buying were sustainably harvested. It would be interesting to hear from some local fish stores. I really don't know the whole process.

I got this same doser but haven't set it up yet.  What do you think so far?  It was a good deal for a 4 pump doser with controller.  I'm wondering how reliable it will be long term.  

 

I think it is an awesome piece of equipment. I had to re-calibrate the doser, which took about an hour, but since then it has been rocking. I trust it at this point.

 

You bring up a good point. I think after two, four and eight weeks I am going to see if there is dosing drift. I wouldn't be surprised. If it is adding another mL over a month I don't think it would hurt the tank too much because the corals are growing.

 

I'll throw up a table in a couple months. Thanks for the advice.

Wow I didn't think gonis were that aggressive. I have had ones that touch corals with no problems. It is a beauty!

 

Same here. I have never seen a goni produce sweeper tentacles. 

 

The tank is coming along. Maybe one of these days I'll have something to trade.

Hey everyone,

 

Been out of the house a lot lately and I end up skipping dosing for a morning or afternoon with my schedule - or- I have to have my roommates dose my aquarium. Kind of scary putting all of my corals in the hands of another person, especially with something that can incinerate them if done wrong. So, I got myself a doser.

 

 

From left to right I have Calcium, Alkalinity, Red Sea Energy A+B Mix and lastly water. For now I went and cut some PVC to hold the hoses, which works pretty well. I know a lot of amino acids/vitamins decompose under light, so I went and added a solid white hose for the energy blend. Looking at it now I need to also put a white hose on the inlet. i know it should be refrigerated, but I just don't leave a lot out at once. The water dosing is a way to compensate for an auto-top off. Temps don't change much in the house and the evaporation rate is usually constant. Gotta love the dried gorilla glue.

 

The corals took a hit with climbing phosphates and nitrates, and lack of consistent dosing, but some of them seem happier since I've added it:

 

Can you see the acro-crab? It was a hitchhiker from Jeff's grand opening. Shhh. Don't tell him.

Anemone I got from Gil & Fin. It's split a couple times now.

Roommates dog with half-eaten carrot. He loves ripping out the stuffing. Recently, he has been stock piling half-eaten animal legs and only the leg. He eats the rest, but leaves the leg. I think there are four or five around the house.

The sump area. The baffles just fell apart last week. I have been told that acrylic-silicone-glass is a bad idea and next round plan to design my sump before the tank. It was poor planning on my part.

I have had this beaut for about 5 years, but this run is about 1.2 years old. There is a lot of stuff I am going to fix next time, but for now it's my baby.

You must have done a good job in moving.

 

Twice.

Or the monthly meeting at the end of this January. You would just have to tell me what you are looking for and I'll bring it.

I have a few types of birdsnest already fragged, duncans, mushrooms, and xooanthids if you want some free LPS. There are also a bunch of montis lying around, maybe a pavona or two.

 

Just come down to Corvallis. I am sure you'll find some coral.

Dumb question to fallow up: how is everyone cleaning there sump? Shop Vac? A small pump?

 

Thanks

 

Water pump and hose.

My sump looked like that last week. I have been seeing NO₃^- and PO₄^3- rise and thought cleaning the sump would help. It did. I think a lot of the junk down there was finally decomposing and began causing issues.

 

I probably do it every six months, but only because it's hard to access. If I ever build another tank I will probably make the sump easier access.

He should be added to:

 

http://www.pnwmas.org/page/officersandboard2017.html