bues0022

I dose kalk. I’m a big fan. I have a super simple setup: aqualifter, timer, 10 gallon tank. Timer has pump turn on for 5 minutes at a time, 8 times per night. This is just a little under my daily evap rate, so my ATO makes up the difference. I get balanced alk/ca addition without having the daily chore of adding two-part (I know myself. I’ll miss doses for sure). I never recommend to put kalk in an auto top off Incase it gets stuck on you can nuke your tank pretty fast without a controller, which I don’t have. I also keep it simple. I’m also a fan of starting really slow and only adding corals slowly over time as things become stable and really grow well. Despite what people describe on this and other forums, tanks under a year are notoriously “glitchy”. Can SPS be done really well on a young tank? Yes, but it’s incredibly hard. I’ve seen SOOOOO many tank build threads crumble after about 18 months because the owner built/stocked super fast, went through multiple swings of purchase/die wasting $100’s if not $1000’s. With new tanks, I find it better to ride out the storms than add more gadgets and variables to an already complicated micro ecosystem. Water. Light. Flow. Working too hard to alter one will throw others out of whack. I think others here are steering you in the right track. Something I try to remember in times like this that you’re facing (told to me by a very wise reefer back in my home club when I started): You came here asking questions. Swallow your pride and take the suggestions, don’t defend what and why you messed up. Learn, grow, and be open. (Not putting this all on you here, just a good nugget for many to remember).

Saw this today in my feed and thought of you. I suppose a 10 year old coral might be considered young for you? Crap. That’s anticlimactic. I can’t add the picture. Coral Magazine is looking for corals that have been in home tanks for over 10 years. https://www.coralmagazine.com/looking-for-aquarium-methuselah-old-corals/?fbclid=IwAR1F5cVPcZt7NCRC0ojEVUilfxLxcOQ5pcywG62M0MzbgI46aNuZp7wD3P8 Post fail. ?

My thread on my fish's demise:

^ yup. Any place where the flow in the pipe can become turbulent will cause the flow to slow down. Any joint between fitting/pipe, any corner (90's are the worst). I went a little overboard on my first build, and used a dremel to bevel the ID of all tubes to help ease the transition in/out of all fittings. In hindsight, I wish I'd have just heated and bent the tube instead. About the same work and way better for flow. In the end, however, unless you have very high demands of your pump, or are nearing the edge of how much your overflow can handle this is mostly an academic argument and practical benefits are low compared to the amount of effort on the input side to make changes for theoretical flow improvements. I could maybe gain 5-10% efficiency with getting fancy, or I could turn my DC pump up by a few percent also. Minimal cost difference for the same output at a much lower effort.

I’ve always been of the mindset to decouple ATO from kalk. Make it two systems. Then you can still have ATO capabilities no matter what happens to your kalk reactor/reservoir. Just have your kalk our in slightly less than you evap, and your ATO make up the difference.

This story is the best part of my day!!

That looks exactly what I had on mine. Wasn’t ich as it wouldn’t come off when I scraped it. I fed a lot and it went away, but came back about a month later - then it died. Still not entirely sure what it was

It seems like from what you have been discussing and others responding, you didn't let it work. Your tank was started up and full of fish extremely fast, then went almost immediately into "fix" mode instead of letting the tank cycle. Your biological filtration never had time to react to the massive amount of food/fish, and thus you've been chasing your tail ever since - adding product after product, continually swinging your nutrient/filtration teeter totter all over the place. IMHO, this is a very shortsighted thought. I don't intend any harm by this, but comparing one person's success with a "new" tank to yours is just not fair. We've all seen "Tanked" where they setup and fully stock a massive tank in a weekend. Should you do the same? There are always going to be examples you can find to justify why what you are doing should work, but the reality is that you can find examples of success and failure for everything in this hobby. So, bullheadedly plowing forward with more and more chemicals/reactors/additive/do-dads (which can work under the right circumstance, but can also hinder in others), without taking a step back unfortunately usually ends up in a for sale thread a few months down the line as you get out of the hobby from frustration. I think you're starting to take the right approach with starting to decrease food. If it were me, I'd forget keeping corals for a little bit, take all chemicals/reactors/additives/do-dads offline, and go fowler until you get the water figured out. I anticipate you could find someone to babysit the corals you do have left, and you'll probably also save money in lost corals and used-up media in the meantime.

Can you clarify "fully stocked"? What is your stocking list, and how big is the display? I always describe tanks under 12-16 months as "twitchy". You can take a water test and things look decent, but if you were measuring super frequent (like the Triton method stuff I was reading about yesterday), you'll see huge swings. Also, you're describing that corals that are bulletproof (trumpets) and ones that do not have stony components (zoas, GSP, rics) grow fine. Something seems to be messing with stony growth ability - nitrates and phosphates do that. I also enjoy feeding my LPS, and get upset at my shrimp stealing food. I only have two shrimp, so I give each of them a bigger meaty chunk that will take them a little longer to gnaw on so I can target feed my LPS in peace. Even still, I only target feed LPS 1 or 2 times per week. Otherwise my tank goes whack due to not being able to process the nutrients.

Is there anything besides jelly to glue to? Anything left on it? Shot glass isn't a bad idea - I'd toss some sand or fine rubble in the bottom to hopefully give it something to grow onto as it tries to recover. I'd keep feeding it to help give it lots of energy if it were me.

It’s on the bottoms left corner of my 30 cube. It’s tilted at about. 45 degree angle, so it’s not getting direct top down light. It does get pretty good, laminar flow through most of the day. Super high flow seems to have shorter PE, as did higher light. I feed it about 2-3x per week a mix of frozen small bits. I’m running a single radion at max intensity of 45% using the WWC light schedule - so true max intensity ends up being something like 30%. The internet research on this coral was super confusing. Some places say high light high flow - others say the opposite. At least with the color morph I have, it seems to do best with lowish light (I have it next to mushrooms/ricordias) and medium flow (not as high as sps, but more flow than something like a hammer/torch/frogspawn would like).

It’s not as impressive as your coral rehabs - especially since the reason for this coral’s original demise was self inflicted (it was in great health when I bought it from the LFS). BUT, I’m happy that it’s happy. Most of the other corals have responded well to the changes - but a couple still have me perplexed. The PE is awesome on this coral - it’s quickly become the favorite coral in my tank because of its sweet PE!

Thanks for clarifying. My memory was obviously faulty with thinking about raising/lowering them both (thinking 1:1), when it's really 2:5 - hence my faulty logic.

Phew! I’m happy I finally turned this coral around. It was dying due to my own problems, not because it came to me sick or caught a big of any kind. My skimmer was down for a little bit, my cheato light broke, I was feeding heavy, so things got a little out of whack. Zero nutrient export - yikes! Coupled on top of that I put this coral too high up and had my lights up super high. Fixes are in place, coral in a happier place, and lights tuned a bit. Oct 2018: Last night:

Happy Birthday! I always enjoy reading your threads and posts. Here’s to another successful year! ?

Magnesium? IIRC, low mag can mess up the alk/Ca balance and make it difficult to raise one of them.

I don’t know about those lights, but I am currently battling back from too much light. I had almost zero growth for over two months. I dialed the lights back a bit and my growth is starting up again. Your situation could very well be different, but I hadn’t experienced lack of growth from too much light before and was surprised what happened when I turned them down.

Teeny bits + Nikki Magic + macro lens = huge pictures = drooling audience

I know you're asking mostly about lighting for your current tank, but I'll also toss in a little tidbit of wisdom I've gained over the years - if money is tight don't upgrade to a bigger tank. If you are not able to currently afford lights for your 45ga. tank adequate to keep corals, then there's little hope of keeping corals alive on a tank 4x bigger. I'd suggest staying small, putting your money toward wise purchases of equipment before purchasing/killing more corals. This will keep your frustrations down, and keep you in the hobby longer. I can honestly say the biggest mistakes I've made in this hobby, and the lowest lows I've had are because I've tried to be cheap with something - ending up costing me far more money than I tried to "save". Now, about your lights. It might help us more to help you to know more about what kinds of corals you're looking to keep. Very generally speaking, your lights are inadequate - even for most of the lowest light corals. There are a variety of lights which could be recommended, each with pros and cons. As Eric said, there are many good deals on the board that come up. What water levels are "on target"? What salinity are you at? Temperature? What is your water source? You're lights are culprit #1, but knowing what you mean about your water being good will help out also.

I have some pieces doing the same - they are super shadowed, so my assumption is that it’s most likely light. If there are parts of the base that are retracting that are in good light, then I’d suspect low alk.

I think 2 minutes of contact over the past 15 years will be alright. But thanks for the heads up. I’ll wear gloves next time.

Thanks for the offer, but I’m on Bristow - almost as far away from you as possible in the DC area, haha! Tank is 30 cube with 10 ga sump. Coming up in a year old. I don’t test water often - I know, I know. I have some chemi clean, but I don’t like to use it because it seems to get rid of what there, but not necessarily the root cause. A few pics to show the cyano - mostly upper left. I have very little coraline, so any purple in the rocks is the bad guy.

I fixed it with Weldon 16. I pushed a razor blade into the crack to open it slightly, folded a piece of 400 grit sandpaper and pushed it as far up/down the crack as I could a couple times. With the razor blade still in holding the crack open, I put a bead of 16 down on top, and used my finger to work it into the crack until I could see the glue “squeeze out” on the inside of the skimmer body. I removed the razor blade, pushed more 16 into the remainder of the crack and “clamped” using masking tape pulled tight across the seam. It’s been running great for about 5 days now.