Peng

Hi everyone I'm building a 68" x 30" x 25" tank. It's 30 inches wide. I'm still very puzzled about LED and I've been using LED but coral color and growth just aren't that good. I'm thinking about ATI sunpower fixture but I'm really not sure if T5 is a better option. I keep SPS corals. I looked at ATI 60" Sunpower 8 x 80W fixture. But I'm not sure if that can cover the 68" long, 30" wide aquarium for SPS corals. I've seen some really great colors from people who use T5 bulbs so I'm seriously considering them. But from another point of view it does look like LEDs save more money long term. However I'm not sure if they can last more than a few years though. I'm contemplating between Oceans By Design's Helios LED fixtures and ATI's Sunpower 60" 8 x 80W. What's your opinion? Will appreciate all inputs!!!

I'm seeing more and more "ultra" and "ultimate" these days .

The doser is controlled by Apex on which I programmed to make the dosing time constant everyday. Shutting it down when pH is high is unlikely a solution because pH in my tank fluctuates widely and even when alk jumped up to 12.6, the pH trend barely increased.

I think apex worked just normally. But the doser for some reason is not stable at it's dosing rate which is the reason why alkalinity spiked. Also because I kept my led powered at 95%, I'm guessing high intensity with quick spike in alk was the reason many died.

I'm using apex and BRS 1.1mL/min dosing pump with a fixed rate of Seachem ReefBuilder input. But recently the pump increased it's dosing rate for some reason (the pump should be at a fixed rate of 1.1mL/min) and spiked my alk to 12.6. I did not check alk for a few days and here it is: many SPS died. What do you do to make sure your alk is stable? Do you check your alk every day? I've decided to log my alk everyday because there can be so many factors that can make the alk swing and every time it happens some corals die. The best prevention for all possible factors seems to be checking it every 24 hrs so any problem present can be caught early.

I set up a QT about 2 weeks ago when I moved and took the original tank down and now I'm setting the original tank up again and it's going through the nitrogen cycle. I've had this problem for a while. Whenever I set up a QT/HT, ammonia quickly rises and so does nitrite. The currently case is that I have to change 40% of the water every single day otherwise ammonia rises to toxic level. I'm using Kanaplex to treat fin rot right now, and the protein skimmer is like basically off. I'm also using Seachem Prime. The current HT system has approximately 30g of water, a chunk of cheato, several piecies of rock, and 3 medium sized tangs plus several small fish. I feed them seaweed and frozen mysis/brine shrimp. Can anyone help me with this? I'm so so tired of changing water every day and worried about the ammonia/nitrite level all the time.

agreed..your price is pretty acceptable but just it's kind of off the season and 180g is pretty big

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Thanks Kim

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Just searched online and it looked like a fin rot... My angel also have it on its side fin.

You can see his broken tail and another infected patch. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The cube he is currently in right now. Nitrate is not bad but around 5. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sorry the title should be "need ..." Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My male clown fish after being beaten up by his ex partner, is suffering from infection. We just moved so everything is sort of messy and that probably didn't help him. I set up this cube for him and the water has been running for 2 days. Nitrifying bac and seachem prime added to alleviate stress from N-cycle. However, his tail gets worse and worse and I'm not sure what I should do. I don't have Dr g's antibiotic food. I only have malafix pimafix and Cupramine. The fish doesn't really have ich dots. But he tail is like falling apart. I'm not sure if I should leave him in there or get him out for treatment. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Great I'm going to try your method once he heals. It's just hard to believe how abusive their relationship is...

My onyx percula clownfish pair just broke up recently after the male was somehow sucked into the sump and got damaged by kalkwasser auto top-off. Since then the female rejected the male and has been seriously beating the male... I had to separate them because the male is so weak and hurt right now... Is it because the male couldn't fulfill her expectations anymore? I'm waiting to let the male recover. Will the female pair up with him again when I reintroduce him?

Update: Corals are slowly recovering. I haven't used PhosGuard ever since. Hopefully it's not comming back again. Corals seemed really happy with more nutrients, so as algae.

Would using calc reactor be better than kalkwasser? I'm using kalkwasser and it's all kinds of mess. There's calcium bicarbonate like everywhere. And I have to dose extra alk because it doesn't keep up with kh...

Sorry for the late reply. I have pull off the phosguard for a week now. As for alk: ---> Salt used: Kent, test result (freshly made water): 9.4 ---> Aquarium water before 30% water change: 9.2 ---> Aquarium water 30mins after 30% water change: 9.0 There is little difference caused by water change. I use red sea for KH, but kent reef salt mix says that the freshly made water should be 11. I don't know if my red sea test is inaccurate. About 3 weeks ago the alk stays around 7.5, increased slowly to around 9 by using more reef builder for the doser. Burning Tips: Sorry I said RTN. It's not... No one except 2 monti caps died. All the "infected" corals display one phenomenon: skin (slime) drys out. It's like when corals are healthy you can see the skin is very slimy and smooth but in my case the infected ones have dry skin, so thin that almost a bit further you can say this coral is gone. The acroporas infected are A. Tenius. Their blue tips are burned off. Algae started to grow and usually the coral would grow back. It's like this: grow back, blue color intensity increase, burned off, grow back, burned off, grow back..... This cycle has been going on for more than half a year. (But they did get significantly bigger.) Sometimes other corals also have burned tips, sometimes it's just these 2 separated small A. Tenius colonies and monti caps. I use D120 for lighting. 12" from the water surface, 100% intensity both channels.

Yes. They are established colonies. They have been through this many times. Every time I can fix the problem temporarily by doing 15~30% water change + pull the phosguard offline. They would usually heal after a few weeks. Now I don't know if it's the phosguard or the water elements because I always do both together. I'm going to do a trial for which I will keep the phosguard offline and change water another time, then pause water change for 2 weeks and see if the same phenomenon is taking place again. If so, I think it's safe to say that the problem is probably not associated with the use of phosguard. I'm also getting potassium/iodine test kits and see if any of them is too low in my aquarium. Because every time I change the water the corals heal up, there is definitely something that is different between the aquarium water after 1 week and new water that is causing this problem. My corals have been growing (even though RTN comes and goes) very fast that I had to use more and more kh/ca supplement to stabilize their concentrations.

That's interesting I'll check that. It could be either the depletion of certain elements or the accumulation of something that's toxic. They all go pale like really quickly before they start "drying out" version of RTN.

Hey guys, my SPS has been dying (RTN) every time I don't change my water for longer than a week... Did anyone have similar experience? My detectable parameters are fine. KH, Ca, and Mg are fine. The aquarium is 340 L, 90 G. I usually change 90~110 L (25~30G) per week. But sometimes I'm busy and can't do water change, and then about 12 days after a water change some corals start RTN. It starts when SPS's slime gets "drier" and "thinner". Their color, especially the purple color, start to pale away. And RTN usually starts at 2 major spots: the tips & the shaded areas. I'm not sure why this is happening but I'm guessing there may be some trace elements that are getting exhausted in the aquarium when new saltwater doesn't come in... I'm going to buy iodine and potassium test kits to see if any of them were getting low in my aquarium. Oh I also use phosguard. I'm not sure if its release of aluminium plays a factor. But I've pulled it offline (in fact I've done it multiple times but every I pulled it off I changed the water rigorously so it cannot tell which one caused the problem) to see if anything gets better. I feed heavily. Please share your ideas. Thanks.

I haven't but I don't know if that was the reason. I will try to change some water and keep the parameters stable. I realize that the last couple months of fast growth was in correspondence with the stable parameters.

Thanks Brian I'll try to keep it stable.