SuncrestReef

Thanks for the update, and new detailed reports! I'm relieved to see I have no pathogens, and my cyano levels are low. I will sleep better tonight!

Sort of. The magnifying glass will cause some distortion in the photo because it's not tuned to work with the camera lens. It would be better than nothing, but no substitute for a quality telephoto or macro camera lens.

Glad to hear! Yes, it's a great magnifying glass for seeing both good and bad things in your tank. I use mine daily.

You can see my test results from a sample of seawater from Manzanita here:

For Sale: Two Radion XR30w Pro Gen 4 LED light fixtures with diffusers, and a Neptune WXM module: $1330. These Radions have been in use on my tank for 15 months and are in like new condition. I used them with the add-on diffusers which really helped to smooth out the light pattern and reduce the disco effect. The WXM module allows wireless control of the Radion lighting schedule from an Apex, including ramp up/ramp down and lunar lighting schedules. WXM can control up to 11 Radion and/or wireless Vortech pumps. I’d like to sell this all as a complete package. If nobody buys after a week or so, then I’ll consider parting it out. With diffuser installed: Without diffuser installed: Includes original boxes, hanging mount screws, power supplies, USB cable, and user manual.

My wife & I spent a nice weekend in Manzanita. As promised in a recent thread, I brought home a sample of seawater to test the parameters. This sample was taken in about 1 foot deep shore break, and not near any streams or sewage runoff. Here's what I found: Salinity: 1.024 Alkalinity: 6.8 dKH Calcium: 300 ppm Nitrate: 0 ppm Phosphate: 0.01 ppm I also shot some video of this cool little barnacle colony in a small tide pool. It's so fun to see them in action: Lastly, if you're ever in Manzanita and like cocktails and/or scotch & bourbon, check out MacGregor's Whiskey Bar on Laneda St. It's a tiny place, but fun and has a good collection to choose from!

I have not. But since I’m heading to the coast this weekend, I might collect a small sample to bring home and test the water parameters just for fun. I’m curious to see the alkalinity and nutrient levels.

And I need salt. Must...resist....buying...more.......corals! 🤣

11am tomorrow at CNC would be perfect!

They appear the same size to me. The only way I can tell them apart is that one has a notch missing from its tail. When would you be able to pick up, either at my house or we could meet at Cuttlefish? My only scheduling challenge is that I'm heading to the coast tomorrow evening through Sunday. So I could either meet before 4pm tomorrow, or after Sunday 3pm-ish. I just want to break these two up as soon as possible to avoid any injuries.

I just looked it up, and maybe I’m wrong. Everyone says the male has a log spike on the first dorsal fin, but mine don’t have that. Here’s another video of them taunting each other before the fight began:

I have two mandarins that had been peacefully coexisting in my tank for weeks, but now it's becoming obvious that they are both males and are starting to fight for territory. I'd like to give one away before either one is harmed. You MUST have an established reef tank 50 gallons or larger with a healthy pod population because these mandarins do not eat any frozen or flake foods. They will only eat live copepods and will starve within days if you don't have pods, and they go through them quickly. If you're not sure if you have pods, then please pass on this so the fish goes to a known compatible environment. I'm located in Beaverton.

@Kingtriton92 That's a good thing since ReefBox is probably the closest store to you.

Very cool. I'm definitely interested in seeing your future write ups and further data analysis. Thank you so much for including us in your project! Please let us know if you ever want additional samples to see how things change over time.

Yes, I dip every coral before it goes in the tank. I still ended up with aiptasia, red bugs, bristle worms, asterina stars, stomatella snails, bryopsis, ulva lactuca, and bubble algae. None of these were introduced on purpose. If all of these critters survived the dip, I'm sure bacteria weren't deterred.

Eli, I know you probably need some sleep after all your work on this, but overall did our samples provide data you were roughly expecting, or were you completely surprised by the results?

Here's that summary:

Here's the breakdown of microbial families in my tank. I'm all about the Pelagibacteraceae. 🤓

Where do you keep your NO3 and PO4?

In my case I'm guessing it's random luck. I have added inverts from 3 stores, corals from 5 stores and 11 individuals, and fish from 3 stores. The only other possible source of life was from a bag of "live sand" I added while my tank was still cycling because I decided I wanted a deeper sand bed but I didn't realize the extra bag of sand I ordered wasn't dry sand.

NO3: 4 - 8 ppm (measured by Red Sea Pro which doesn't give any granularity between those two values) PO4: 0.02 - 0.03 ppm (measured by Hanna ULR Phosphorus HI 736) I'm trying to reduce nitrates to combat a bubble algae outbreak.

I'm guessing it was the aiptasia infestation at that stage of my tank progress that pushed me over the top! 🤣 All kidding aside, I started my tank with dry Pukani rock and Dr. Tim's bacteria.

I don't want to brag, but...

Yes, the Apex Classic is fully compatible with all Neptune modules except for the EB832 and Trident. The DOS will work fine.

Very cool! Do you mind if we share snippets of our reports here in this thread to compare with our fellow participants? We're a bit of a competitive bunch, so I want to show off my relatively high microbial diversity score! 🤣