jaddc

Yeah -- my guess is that calibration is related to the position of the disc to make sure the same spot is scanned each time. If different areas of the foil were scanned then the readings could be off. My guess is $150. I'd pass on the device if the price of each disc is greater than $200.

Very cool. Google "fluorescent ionophores" to satisfy your inner nerd. This device is using some cutting edge nanotechnology. When the compound of interest hits the sensor foil, the foil glows. The brighter it glows, the more compound is present in the aquarium. It's reversible, so as the compound depletes the foil dims.

Everything is still the same as my 10/6 post. With the exception of one thing -- I'm now dosing kalk. My coral depletes the calcium and carbonate very quickly. So now I mix 60 ml of kalk with 180 ml vinegar and dilute that to 5 gallons with RO/DI and use that for top-off water. It doesn't solve the problem, but it lessens the depletion. Since I started that, my acros have had a small but noticeable growth spurt. Tank is still doing great. Still have not shot an update video. My next thing is that I am going to pull the bag of carbon|GFO this weekend. At that point, I'll have only mechanical filtration to clear the water in between water changes.

No matter which way you go it will take forever for your levels to drop and your media will get exhausted quickly. The best way to fix it is to do a series of frequent water changes (>50%) until the levels drop to zero. Be sure to blast out all detritus when you do a WC (I use a powerhead) to remove all nutrients. When the levels are low -- then use whatever means of control you like. GFO will work if you are patient. But you must change it out frequently. If it becomes exhausted then it will leach phosphate back into the water.

Nope - you are right. The smaller the particle, the larger the effective surface area. The larger the surface area, the more material it adsorbs. I prefer BRS Bulk Premium ROX 0.8 Aquarium Carbon. It has a very high surface area and rinses clean very quickly.

Very nice fish!

I am skeptical as well. The science is there. Oceanographers use these assays (tests). But as Alan said it is more complicated than just shining light through water. There are reagents involved. So it's like running a hobby grade nitrate test, but instead of trying to match colors to get a value, the device just gives you the concentration as a number. Also there is no titration. You just mix everything together and the brighter the glow, the more stuff in the water. Which is sweet. But each test requires its own reaction. I do think this is how Thrive does it, btw. So how can there be continuous monitoring without an ion selective electrode and if dyes/ reactants are needed?

From a toxicology point of view, the size of the molecule almost never matters. Take the protein ricin for example. That molecule is more than 10X larger than palytoxin and it can kill you by inhalation. By definition, a toxin is able to bypass one or more of our defensive strategies and barriers by absorption. When these molecules are able to bypass our defenses, the effects are usually devastating. How humans are exposed to a toxin is of top concern to a toxicologist since different barriers are more susceptible to others, For example, Palytoxin is not very potent when exposed to uninjured skin because it doesn't readily pass through the skin. However, if there is even a small scratch on the skin, then all bets are off. And if you inject yourself with it or breath it in, then good night.

When I do a WC, I swish my siphon hose to dislodge the detritus in the back chambers. It works pretty well.

Honestly, I don't think it matters. Everything will acclimate to the temperature. All you want to do is avoid wide swings. For each degree of heat, you are spending money on electricity and there isn't much to be gained. It makes the most practical sense to lower the temp to ~75 in the winter to ease up on the heater and warm it to 80-82 in the summer to ease up on the chiller. The shifts should be done gradually -- like a degree a day or slower. I'm in central ac/heat. So I lower my tank temp so that when I do a WC I don't need to heat my new water. The temp swing is only 5 degrees, and no one in the tank has cared so far. Also, temp swings from hot to cool are less harmful/stressful than cool to hot.

Nice! I'd guess bacteria. Hawaii treating you well?

Follow this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb4NnYOFneA

Hey everyone, An update. I have almost completely stripped my nano's equipment. Details: 29g JBJ Nanocube (effectively 15-20 gallons after displacement) Overflow with filter floss and a bag of 2:1 carbon:GFO (3/4 cup total. changed monthly mostly because the bag gets nasty) Return is a MJ1200 with innovative marine sea swirl Additional flow with MP-10 ATO: tunze ozmolator Temp control: JBJ controller (80 degrees) Lighting: AI sol blue Salinity is set at 35 ppt. Instead of a skimmer, dosers, reactors, etc, I have been changing 15 gallons of water every week (occasionally I miss a week due to life). My biggest observation is that nothing has changed. The coral growth is about the same (not faster nor slower). The fish are still fat and happy. The water is very clear. I had chaeto in the fuge, but I guess that there was not enough nutrients to keep it alive. It didn't realize it died for a while (a drawback of the hard to access sumps of AIOs) and had a mini algae outbreak. Fortunately, the large WCs and weeding took care of that fast. One thing I'm keeping an eye on is my softies (mainly some of the zoanthids and the xenia). They seem to be slowly melting away as my SPS and LPS are thriving. Not terribly surprising since the water is cleaner and others have reported the same thing. Maybe there are some chemical warfare going on that isn't getting removed fast enough. Good thing I didn't buy a $20 polyp of a zoanthid! I'm not sweating it because they were really starting to overgrow and crowd the SPS. I'll probably add SPS where the softies were. Overall I think this is less work (about 1-2 hours total including set up and cleanup) and less expensive. Plus since there is minimal equipment, the look of the entire setup is cleaner. Also, I don't temp match my fresh SW (out of laziness). No ill affects yet even though the temp difference can be as much a 8 degrees. I also haven't tested the water in about a year and the corals don't seem to care. I'll shoot a video soon. As an aside. I'm pruning my red montipora cap quite frequently. As a thank you for reading, if you want a free frag in the future then drop me a PM. I'll hit you up next time I prune. Cheers, Jeff

The solids in salt mixes are a in chemical form that allows it to dissolve readily. When the salt is exposed to water prematurely, then the chemicals change form and in the process become harder to dissolve. It's not like this will kill your tank. But it does lower values. As long as salinity matches, nothing should die. But you have to monitor your other critical levels and adjust accordingly. If it were me, I'd put that bag aside to use in a pinch and use a sealed bag.

Those are probably particulates.

That is a fact and they are removed by protein skimming and water changes. The undissolved organics refers the to metabolite by-products produced by the bacteria and also the bacteria cells themselves. They would generally foul the water if left unchecked over a long period of time. Fortunately, most protein skimmers work wonders to remove it. A more natural way to remove excess bacteria (and thus their metabolites) is to have an animal that eats pelagic bacteria (like a sponge).

I think every reefer has said that at one point. :-) Just to be clear, you don't need to turn your refugium into a red-light photography dark room. People just use regular white light bulbs with a lower Kelvin rating (<7000). That category includes fluorescent and incandescent lights, which emit a more balanced spectrum. Luckily, it is as cheap as it is effective. The DT lights are generally higher Kelvin (more blue) to replicate the effect of the ocean water on the sunlight.

He probably combats algae the same way a non-sunlit tank stays algae-free. Hard work, know-how, and the addition of minimal nutrients.

Absolutely. Here is what I'd consider in addition: 1) Temperature. Not much of a problem if you have a good chiller and heater working together to maintain a stable temperature. You could also use a screen that greenhouses use to control the heat and light. 2) PAR intensity. If you do any SCUBA, then you know that the ocean absorbs a lot of light rather quickly. So many deep corals are exposed to less intense light and they have adapted to it. Shallow corals of course love the higher intensity. But our tanks are not deep enough to replicate this gradient. The best we can do is shade a deep water coral as much as possible. Corals adapt quite well over time and so this works for the hobby. Modern lights are nice because we can control the intensity and also arrange the lights to have shadier areas of the tank. 3) PAR spectrum. The divers amongst us can tell you that as you go deeper, everything just looks blue. The ocean water absorbs long wavelength (green to red) light strongly. Blue is pretty much the only wavelength that penetrates deep into the ocean. Because of this, most deep coral (zooxanthellae) respond well to blue light (that's why we love the actinics for the "pop" of fluorescent color). So for our shallow (relatively) reef tanks, sunlight would deliver more green to red wavelength light than the corals would normally be exposed to in the ocean. Is this a bad thing? Not so much for the corals, but many species of algae love long wavelength light found in shallow waters and thrive on it. Again, to replicate this phenomenon, our modern lights have a spectrum that is well tuned (or tunable) for a reef tank and most reefers tune down the red to avoid algae. It is also why we light our refugiums with broad spectrum lights (like flood lights) to encourage algae growth. All that said. Sunlight is free and there is no reason not to use it. Greenhouses are used to house reef tanks (especially for suppliers -- like Dr. Macs) very successfully. All one needs to is acclimate, acclimate, acclimate. Also be prepared for increased algae, but like all algae outbreaks it can be controlled.

Even I have not used it, my vote is cubey. JBJ is a solid company that has never wronged me personally so I would trust their products. I loved my picotope (obviously, also JBJ), but I ended up switching to a Nuvo Pico 4 to get the overflow feature and it came with a lid. Even though I was changing my water frequently (I work in a lab so it is trivial to make high quality saltwater for my office tank), the picotope still had some water quality issues that I didn't like (but I'm OCD about that stuff) -- even after I upgraded my filter capacity. There is no lid on the picotope, so I lost a clownfish who wanted to see what life was like on the carpet. I still may use the picotop as a freshwater set-up.

I have the picotope. I would recommend the cubey because of the surface filtration. Not having surface filtration allows for a surface film to develop that is tough to get rid of in the smaller tanks where you can't have a good protein skimmer.

I had a bunch of those sneak in with my Florida Live Rock. That pistol shrimp is almost full grown and that is their final coloration. Mine hide in the rock and I rarely, if ever, see them, but I hear them all the time. It won't pair up with any goby.

I have seen a few examples where people have not done water changes in a while (or ever). The tanks had varying degrees of success, it all depends on how you define success. Here's my thought. To me it comes down to time. You may think that you are saving time by not changing the water, but I'd argue that it takes more effort to maintain a system with zero water changes. You constantly have to monitor levels and make changes accordingly. Testing. Dosing. Testing. Dosing. No time saved there. When you don't do water changes, you have to approach the water chemistry like a chemist. I used to do this. It worked, but I had to fiddle every day. Now I change 15 gallons every week for my 29g JBJ nanocube. It works out to 90% when you account for the rock and sand. It takes me 2 hours per week at most. But I don't test for anything (other than salinity and temp). I don't have a protein skimmer that needs to be cleaned. I have controlled algae growth even though I feed heavy. My coral growth is fantastic, especially for my SPS. My softies slowed down a bit, probably because the water is too clean. WC, IMHO, are the easiest way to go. And for all the fads that have come and gone, water changes are still the time tested best remedy. For those with larger tanks, my recommendation would be to do as large of a WC as possible every week.