bues0022
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Posts posted by bues0022
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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:
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Happy Birthday!
I always enjoy reading your threads and posts. Here’s to another successful year! ?
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Magnesium? IIRC, low mag can mess up the alk/Ca balance and make it difficult to raise one of them.
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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.
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19 minutes ago, ReefdUp said:
I grabbed over 15 rescues this weekend to work on, but they're all teeny bits. I need to find some larger pieces to work on.
Teeny bits + Nikki Magic + macro lens = huge pictures = drooling audience
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I'm battling a nasty scurge of cyano. Red/purple/green and nasty. Interestingly enough, it's mostly up high where I have relatively good flow (not down in the corners with low light/flow). I've usually had it before under rocks and low flow areas, but this seems to occur almost better in high flow areas. I've upped my water changed (ro/di using reef crystals) - am doing about 20% every week, and decreased feeding, but it still continues. I've never had a phosphate testing kit, as I've always mostly assumed that the cyano uses the phosphate before its available for testing. My cheato is growing really well, but it also has a film of cyano on the top of it (kinda gross). I have absolutely zero hair algae.
edits: I have a diamond goby that keeps my shallow sand bed well stirred. I've started skimming quite wet to help pull more out. My BTA just started on a walkabout last week too - since it hadn't moved in the last 4 months, I'm currently attributing that to the same nutrient issue I'm seeing visibly as cyano.
Thoughts?
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Just got in touch with them - they only use polycarbonate now, and they only buy in thin strips instead of sheets. They don’t have much of anything for scraps.
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Hard to tell about the flow with so much junk in the water ?. I’d get a filter sock running ASAP to catch the suspended stuff though!
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I have some ideas bouncing around my head of a few little things I want to make from scrap acrylic. Is there any place down near Bristow/Gainesville/manasss, or in the sterling area that sells scrap acrylic? Acrylic shops that sell their excess?
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Life happened and I didn't get a chance to repair it last night. I'm hoping for tonight - my tank isn't happy without the skimmer.
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I'm going to be double checking for goop in the crack. I don't think there is, because it wasn't leaking before I took it out of my sump to clean it. After I cleaned it, then it sprung a leak. Also, while gluing it, I plan on using a scraper to force glue down into the crack instead of relying of natural wicking/gravity to have the glue penetrate.
It reminds me of a story about my uncle - back when he was in his late teens he bought a used/cheap Volkswagen Beetle. He thought it'd be a good idea to give it a good cleaning with a pressure washer. Not only did the back quarter panel basically fall off (previous guy "fixed" a dent with plaster of paris instead of Bondo), but after cleaning all the grease from the engine compartment - it never ran again. The gaskets were shot, and the grime had built up an "external gasket" on everything. "Cleaning" his car ruined it.
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Fish sure can sleep goofy! One of my clowns likes to sleep in a little cave where the BTA’s foot is - but it floats up the the roof of the cave, belly up, looking all faded and terrible, and doesn’t move or wiggle at all. It sure gave me a start the first time I saw it like that.
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I have them about 10-12” above the water - mouthed using the radion arms. There are definitely places in my tank where I found 0 PAR. It was in a shadow, but I could see some light in the shadow so I was surprised it was so low. When I pulled it just barely out of the water directly under the lights the values would go up into the 300s, but 1/4” below the water it dropped to half that value. The only way I could get into the 300’s would be to put the power almost all the way up - at values where I’ve killed corals from too much light.
Yes, the sensor was pointing up, and multiplied recorded values by 1.32. The meter did seem to be bouncing around a bit (value of 50 would actually see everything from 40-60, so I recorded 50 as an average).
Oh, and the ambient light in the room(5000k bulb color), at waist height directly below a 65W equivalent LED bulb in my basement with 7 foot ceilings measured 1.
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I have the club PAR meter right now, well, for about another 12 hours. I’ve been doing the testing and I’m a bit confused. The PAR readings are a lot lower than I anticipated.
I’m running a single radion over a 30 cube tank. I’m using the WWC lighting schedule at 50%, so my overall max intensity is 42%. Previously, I had them as high as 70%. I’ve had to move corals back into shadows and much lower than I thought they would need because they were showing signs of too much light. Growth is going decent right now since I dropped down to 50% from 70%.
The max PAR reading I got, about 2” below the water was 150. According to the PAR meter, my blasto is currently thriving at a PAR of 3.
So, thoughts? Do corals really need less PAR than I thought? I was expecting something in the 2-300 for max, I’ve seen others report values this high. LED’s seem to have troubles with PAR meters, is the reported 10% error actually much more?
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Mine usually works well. When it doesn’t, I just power it off/on then it’s fine. Must be a Microsoft product....
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I should have clarified a bit with pushing Emory cloth aside. I’m familiar with it - I even have some in the garage. The Emory cloth I have and have used is a good bit thicker than just regular sandpaper. All that is splitting hairs - I agree with the idea to rough up the crack edge and I’ll see which product actually proves most effective.
I got a clairifiaction email email this morning from Bubble Magus (again I’m surprised at their continued support and customer service a) on a product well outside the warranty, and b) on a Sunday morning!). He told me the wrong product. He meant 16, not 28. 16 is about $6 on amazon - prime gets it here on Tuesday. I’ll let you guys know how the fix goes.
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The crack is too thin to get empty cloth inside. I let’s not completely split top to bottom - only the middle few inches.
I emailed Bubble Magus last night (couldn’t believe they responded at 10 pm on a Saturday!) it’s out of warranty, but they suggested to either have them fix it for me, or use Weldon 28. That looks more like an epoxy than a solvent glue, and it’s expensive $60 - that’s half the price of this little skimmer! 16 is only $6 or so for the small tube. I wish I still had a lab like my last job - we had every flavor of UV cure adhesive imaginable to glue anything. 5 minutes and I’d be all set ?
I’m thinking that I may see if I can try to clean the crack with some sandpaper, try to force some Weldon 16 into the crack and band clamp it. Sound like a decent idea? I suppose if it doesn’t work I could take them up on fixing it for me...
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The gap is pretty thin - I’m not sure if 16 would penetrate the crack much. What’s the number of the thin stuff? Is it 4 or 3? It’s been years since I’ve used weld-on so I forget the viscosities of them and how it’ll flow or not flow into that crack
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I thought I was doing good things with maintenance tonight. Water change, trim cheato, clean entire skimmer (not just the cup). I even used a power head and filter sock to clean settled gunk in my sump (wife was out - so I had time to play).
My skimmer has sprung a leak. The seam of the body split apparently while I was cleaning it. I don’t know how as I didn’t drop it or manhandle it, but alas it doesn’t hold water. What’s the best method to fix this? I’m thinking the thin Weldon might go in the crack nicely? I don’t have any though. I have silicone, and could goop it on the outside. It’s ugly and may not last either.
Thoughts?
Alkalinity and PH
in General Discussion
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.