Lexinverts

LOL! You're kind of like a bull in a china shop in this discussion board. It bothers me sometimes, but if it doesn't bother others, well, then so be it. Kumbaya.

By linking directly to someone's post about their purchase Arson is passing down his judgement that a particular person here made a bad choice. It's unnecessary, because he could make the same point without linking to someone specific. This is exactly the kind of thing that keeps stirring up drama on this forum. I would re-title this post, "think before you post."

You could make this same point without referencing somebody's post directly in your thread. We don't need to have public shaming in this forum.

Thanks! What model do you use for the tank cam? The same one?

Cool.Thanks for the info! It looks like the resolution is ok. I'm leaving for a trip too, so I am interested in doing something similar. Did you put a camera on the whole tank too, or just the reactor?

What camera is that? Is that a dropcam?

It looks like Holly won! Congratulations, Holly!

I think Jeff had one of these in one of his display tanks at Cuttlefish and Coral, maybe a year ago or so. I remember seeing it and thinking "how does that work out?" Maybe he can weigh in on his experience with them.

Is that a scoly, Jeff? That is quite a specimen!

A sponge squeeze is just a little water from a cycled sponge from your LFS that you could use to seed your tank with bacteria. It's possible that you got a bad bottle of Stability if there was a constant supply of ammonia from day 1. Your options now are to just let the cycle continue naturally, or to give it a boost by adding some Dr. Tim's or some more Stability. Like I said earlier, I swear by the Dr. Tim's stuff. It always works for me.

I don't know anything about that Stability product, but I do know that Dr. Tim's "One and Only" always works well for me. I would either quickly add some more Stability or get some Dr. Tim's next-day from Amazon and get that ammonia broken down to reduce the stress on your damsels. Of course, this will eventually happen naturally, but you'll end up stressing those fish more than necessary if you don't add more bacteria right away. The problem with adding fish 7 days after dosing Stability is that the bacteria need some ammonia to feed on immediately---Otherwise they die. That is why they recommend adding fish or snails on day one. If you don't want to add fish on day one, you can add ammonia from a bottle or throw a deli shrimp in your tank.

I think I'm going to find a cheap replacement bottle that will produce drops of the same size. When you get two drops right after each other, the second drop always seems smaller than the first...... That thing drives me crazy!

The tests I use the most are Kh, Ca and Nitrate. My preference is for Salifert for Kh and Ca, but I prefer Red Sea for Nitrate, Phosphate and Magnesium. I like Hanna for Kh too. I agree with Mandinga about the color change problems for the Red Sea Ca and Kh kits, but they are pretty easy to use for Nitrate, Phosphate, and Magnesium. one complaint about the Salifert Ca test---I don't like the drop bottle for reagent #2. It's hard to get a single drop out of it at a time!

How well does it hold the calibration?

Great info Jeremy. I'm thinking of setting one up for my frag tank. Thanks!

I thought the article, while having a negative tone, actually showed the Triton results are quite accurate and precise. Most of the results for the 32 elements were spot-on. It was pointed out that most of the few that were off were also elements that were not certified for concentration in the standard sample. Hopefully, we'll learn more about reasons for the deviations, real or not, in the future, but that doesn't worry me much as a current Triton user. The Triton products themselves are at least as backed up by data as anything else in the reefing industry. Bottom line for me---We now have a test for 32 elements for 50 bucks that has been shown to be very accurate for most elements, and precise for all of them. For elements, like manganese, which is mentioned in the article, the precision was still very good, so multiple tests could detect changes in a particular element over time in your tank. It's better than hobbiest tests and will undoubtably improve with time, while generating large amounts of data that will inform the reefkeeping hobby. I've recently switched to the Triton Method for dosing, and am dosing the 4 Elementz. I am quite pleased with it so far. I will send my water in for tests every few months, but the results of this testing will probably not inform my day-to-day reefkeeping too much, unless I start running into mystery problems.

Thanks, Jeremy. I'll keep you posted on how Triton goes for me. It should be a good option for a 60 AIO setup.

That is a lot of rock!

Acans and most of my Favias are fine too.

Thanks. My ORA red Goniopora, Wellsophyllias, Alveoporas, Caulastreas, and Lobos are all fine. I lost all of my Duncans, most of my Euphyllias and several chalices, though. I have a few chalices that survived. The hammers and frogspawn were the first to go when the nutrients got too low, but I have a torch that is still doing fine.

It's been a while since I gave an update on my tanks. Unfortunately, I experienced a substantial tank crash that wiped out most of my SPS. As they say, you live and learn, and if it doesn't kill you (and your fish), you come back stronger and better than ever. I had been fighting dinos for a while (they spread to both of my tanks), and decided that the thing that was keeping them in check the best was reducing nitrate and phosphate via carbon dosing. My nitrates had been between 10 and 20 ppm before carbon dosing. Everything was great until the dinos showed up. I decided to use Red Sea NoPox, since it is supposed to reduce phosphate better than some other options out there. Once I got my nitrates down to 1 ppm, and holding steady, the dinos disappeared after about 5 weeks. (I think having an oxydator running helped somewhat too. As an aside, my Bartlett's Anthias seem to really appreciate the additional O2 in the water.) After I conquered the dinos, everything in both tanks was growing like crazy and looking really nice for about 3 months. Then I made a few critical mistakes that ended up costing me big time. I was super busy with work and got a little behind with testing my parameters, and let my nitrates get too low (<1 ppm). I should have reduced my carbon dosing when this happened. Also, because of my busy schedule, I was not able to stick to a regular routine of water changes. Right around the same time my nitrates got too low, I did several water changes on subsequent days in order to have tank water to drip acclimate some new corals that I got from Robert and from Unique Corals. This, undoubtedly, brought my nutrients down even lower while I was still dosing the same amount of carbon. Then the real kicker was when I left for a 3 day trip and did not feed my fish while I was gone. I had started to see a little bleaching before leaving on my trip, but just decreased my light intensity and added some amino acids to the water--I didn't want to panic and do something drastic. The three days without feeding the fish clearly brought my nutrients down even more. When I returned, much of my SPS was RTN-ing and my nitrates were sky-high. Over the next few days my alk spiked because I was dosing the same amount of two-part and my corals were not using it, and this caused more damage and more of a snowball effect. I rushed the surviving SPS to my other tank, and the added volume from the new corals caused a big drop in Alk in that tank. The partially RTN-ed SPS pieces I had moved in ended up spiking the nitrates in the second tank, and that led to a mini-crash in the second tank. When the nitrates went back up in the second tank, the dinos returned and ended up killing more of my SPS. Yikes! So, I ended up losing most of my SPS, but none of my fish died, my Tahitian Maxima, and my Derasa are still doing great, and most of my LPS are fine. The nitrates are back down to 4 ppm in both tanks, and the dinos are gone again. After this experience, I've decided to make some changes. I'm essentially starting over with SPS, so I decided to try the Triton Method. This is similar to the Classic Balling method, in which you dose Alk, Ca, Mg as well as trace elements. Because you are dosing trace elements, you don't have to do water changes, which I like because it should promote greater stability, and I have a hard time being consistent with water changes. (I cannot use a Calcium reactor because the RSM tanks don't have a below-tank sump with room for a reactor, so I am forced to do some sort of dosing.) As some of you may remember from when Scott Fellman spoke to our group, he is using the Triton Method for all of the raceways at Unique Corals with great success. I've also started dosing Acropower with a dosing pump on a timer (Unique Corals also does this for their raceways), which should help prevent my nutrients from ever getting as low as they did during my tank crash. I also purchased a much more accurate dosing pump for my carbon dosing. I can now dose as little as .5 ml per day, and I can adjust with much more precision. This should also help me avoid over-doing the carbon dosing. I was using a BRS dosing pump on a timer, which pumped 1.1 ml per minute, so the finest adjustment I could make was going from 0 mls to 1.1 mls, to 2.2 mls, etc... I got a 4-channel Kamoer dosing pump for the Trition Elementz. Triton Elementz are 4 solutions: 1 (alk + trace), 2 (Ca + trace), 3A (mg + trace), 3B (mg + trace). They mix up perfectly with no residue whatsoever. They are balanced so that you dose the exact same volume in ml of each solution to your tank per day. You adjust the dosing so that your Alk is at 8, and then this will also balance your Ca, Mg, and trace elements. So all you have to check every day while dialing it in, is the alk. It is very simple to do. So far my corals are responding very well, but I'll keep updating. Below is my new cabinet equipment. Wish me luck!

Glad it worked out! Red Sea Coral Pro and Tropic Marin Pro Reef are my favorite. Both mix in less than 5 minutes and leave no residue. They also produce very consistent params.

Don't worry about the high Calcium---Worry about the low Alk. High Calcium does not usually cause issues, whereas low Ca, and high or low Alk will. I agree that you should raise your Mag to 1300-1350-ish and then try to raising your Alk. The Ca should eventually balance out, on the teeter totter that Arson mentioned.

Is a "Frag Fale" the same as a "Frag Fail?" Darn edit button......lol. I've had a few "frag fails" lately, so I may be contacting you.

If you are running a calcium reactor, you shouldn't see alk swings. You might see alk swings if you were dosing 2-part by hand, or if you were adding all of the sodium carbonate / soda ash (Na2CO3) at once in the middle of the night with a pump.