realypk

Normal state of clam The white thing... what is it?

Yea i guess if it aint broke dont fix it. I am curious how my test results will look though!

I have a LOT of marine pure in my main system. IE 2 big blocks and a bunch of smaller cubes (i definitely did overkill in how much i used, probably good enough for a 500gal worth of marine pure for my 75) in my sump. My nitrates stay consistently very low regardless how much I feed or even overfeed, I see it spike and rapidly decrease so the marine pure does probably do a very good job at decreasing nitrates... I guess the real question is #1 does it leach and #2 is what leaches harmful to reef aquaria? So far everything seems happy but is it just a matter of time and concentration? I also wonder if regular water changes negate the affects of leaching... I'm likely going to keep things as is for now as its running fine and removing it would mean lengthy cleaning process in sump as a lot of it got crushed.... Also i'd need to find a substitute as my tank is fully stocked with life. Also I will be doing a water quality analysis in the next month or so and let you all know the results.

Is aluminum leaching bad for the reef? Should I remove my marine pure or does it do more good than harm? If not a big deal than this may be worth trying. Might be willing to set up a nano that i'll use to farm copepods and see if this works similar to marine pure tank next to it.

So I just finished building a vivarium, and a critical component of it was false bottom, previously round balls of lavarock were used for the purpose but now they've gotten all fancy and started using this white stuff. Didnt think anything of it bought a few packs (it's super cheap ie 7.99 cheap for 5qts. or 7.33 if you buy 4 or more) When it arrived and i had it in my hands i was like oh... this is just smaller versions of marine pure blocks.... Its meant for use in vivariums with running water which often have very sensitive amphibians so I bet the stuff is pet/marine safe as well. The consistency when put next to marine pure is very similar and its also similarly fragile. 5 qts is a pretty good ammount 20qts is even better. What I like about the size is it could fit in filters pretty well for nano systems. What do you guys think? Rinse and use for super value marine pure? https://www.joshsfrogs.com/josh-s-frogs-false-bottom-5-quarts.html

This is awesome, exactly what I was looking for Thank you so much for the knowledge!!!! Once you sieve them how do you do it? Just like a water change but with water flowing through sieve? and then you dump sieved pods into the tank?

I dont have bristles and have been kinda happy to avoid them thus far. Thanks about the cultivation and contamination tips matt! @A.ocellaris seeing as you've had a level of success how do you do it? Do you put them in a 5 gal bucket and just green up the water and when water goes clear you just add more phyto? Also how do you go about harvesting pods? Also as far as phyto goes I've been having mixed results. Some of my batches turn out AWESOME and some end up turning into a yellow clearish liquid that quite frankly gross... it seems to be random. I'm also kinda winging it on phyto fertilizer. Is there a suggested amount of fertilizer to give? Can you over do it on lighting?

My fuge is also growing a ton of pods... I'm just not seeing them move into the main tank area through the return, perhaps the scooter blenny is just ruthlessly efficient at killing them the second they arrive. I was thinking of getting an out of tank culture of pods started to feed extra pods into the main tank on a regular basis. I'll definitely try grindals if they work they work!

Bump if anyone has insight?

I run glass lids, find par is sufficient also only have evap of just under 1 gal per week on a 75 gallon tank + 45 gallon sump. I constantly hear some of my fish splashing out and thumping on my glass lid, not dealing with dead fish and salt creep warrants having lids for me let alone less ATO upkeep. I run a combo of T5's + LEDs.

I have a shadow overflow and its really tight you really have to make sure your giving it a good large champer and smooth it out, light champer wont work on these in my experience.

Salinity still at 1.026 almost a week into it. So far I would estimate my ato has sucked 2-2.5 gal of rodi, my collection cup is still not even half way full, i'll take a photo when I dump it to compare with your experience. How much evap would you say a system like mine running at 78.5f temps in a 68f house would have on average? Does about 2.5gal of rodi use seem normal per week?

Background: So I have a nice phytoblend culture going right now that i feed my tank for my corals and featherdusters. But I've noticed my scooter blenny is constantly pecking at sand and parts of the aquarium that really dont have anything (hopefully finding some microscopic pods. I used to have a lot of amphipods and no doubt copepods in my main tank, I still have lots of visible amphipods in my fuge but the visible stuff in the tank is gone and I'm fearing that my poor blenny is slowly starving. I wanna fix that permanently and avoid having to buy pricey live pods! Also I'd like to add a male female pair of mandarins and know all three would starve without additional pods. Question. 1. For my situation with plenty of phyto to go around, what would be the best culture to start? I would prefer a 5 gallon bucket or easy 10 gallon type setup that I can easily harvest from. 2. What kinda live pods would be best for feeding my future mandarins and current scooter? 3. Are there any frozen or freeze dried options I could try in meantime? (He doesn't even glance look at frozen brine or mysis.) 4. Can i just throw a bunch of different pods in one culture and let them all breed together or will larger amphipods eat the copepods? I was thinking of getting all the different types going in one container? 5. Rotifers seem super easy to raise considering how successful my phyto operation is.... would they be a good option or too small? Will they survive in my tank or just be there right after feeding? Can I put Rotiers in with the pods? 6. I constantly see culture guides talking about phytopaste.... if I have live dense green phyto water can I just add it to the culture or do i need to turn it into some sort of paste? If so how? 7. What does each type eat? Ie copepod vs amphipod vs rotifer? 8. Any good local source for a 6 blend copepod solution or someone that has a nice culture going? How about rotifers? (i still have some amphipods I can collect from my sump.) Conclusion: I want to see my scooter thrive and am always sad when I see others happily eating and him just pecking at sand spitting it out. I also love mandarins and want them but cant even contemplate the possibility till i have a food culture going considering 1 scooter dragonette wiped out the grand majority of my visible mature amphipods, is still see small ones ever once in a while if im really looking hard in the main tank usually after I'm done moving something around, they are definitely hiding in terror of the scooter. Thanks for all the help!

Omg that belly rub is amazing!!!! hahaha that fish is like a dog Does he actually enjoy it or is he just hoping for food?

Noctua makes the best and most silent pc fans and are not the most pricey they work well.

Used PVC glue on pipes for my overflow and return 100% water tight. It literally bonds the pvc to pvc pretty much fusing the PVC into one piece. Only issue is that it bonds pretty quick you have generally less than a minute to make adjustments, so make sure all your stuff is lined up straight and ready!

The accuracy of my work with the refractometer is very much in question, the accuracy of my hannah digital is not really in doubt because its always 100% spot on. With the Skimmer is successfully dialed back I managed to get the main water/bubble line down just a few mm below the neck of the skimmer body where the collection cup goes into. So far it seems to be netting an 1-2oz of skim per day... also I've noticed having to refill my ATO reservoir far less and havnt yet had to empty my skim reservoir. Salinity is now at 1.026 for the 3rd day since making the skimmer changes. Also I just measured my fill line on the refugium which is a custom 55 gallon refugium. It is filled to about 45 Gallons. My 75 Gallon when accounting for sand has a total estimated water volume of 68 gallons when accounting for sand. Not sure how to account for rock, I have about 90lbs of live rock in it also i'm not accounting for the the 1.5" PVC pipes nor the overflow, not sure how to do that. Total estimated water volume is 113 Gallons +/- rock, pvc and overflow. I'll keep testing salinity daily and keep everyone apprised.

Yea I'm guessing I've been having salinity swings and didnt really notice till I got the hanna tester which made checking it so easy that there was no reason for me to not frequently do it. Below are my stats, rather stable at that, the par reading is def off as the sensor is askew and not really facing the light well. I can take PHO, Mag, Alk etc later when I get home, but so far everything looks pretty healthy.

Very interesting... could very well be I usually just took a reading soon after mixing and if it read right considered it good to go and dumped it in the tank. Didn't really think much about bubbles. So perhaps the water I was replacing was wrong or even worse it was wrong to begin with. Part of the reason I even noticed this was because I recently upgraded to a Hannah Salt Tester which instantly made me go "huh..." beause my old refractometer told me i was at 1.026 and my hannah told me i was at 1.025. Its always been hard for me to read the things due to my goofy eyes and I knew I was close but the digital output of the hannah leaves no question, so perhaps it is indeed a mix of both over skimming and also reading my old refractometer slightly wrong. Question, as far as skim goes, is skim the same salinity as tank water or does it export extra salt in comparison to normal tank water. IE should I replace it with 1:1 with mixed water or should I use some other salinity level for lost skim?

Yea mine was much much clearer and see through so I'm presuming this was a source of the problem. I've dialed it down significantly but it doesnt seem to produce much, when i try dialing it up just a tiny bit more then where it is now it goes nuts and skimms quite a bit. I'll leave it running at current settings for a few more days and take a pic of the skim for reference. Also good news is tank is holding at 1.026 steady for 2 days now and ato has not used nearly as much water...

I wasnt aware that you could just replace skim 1:1 as i figured skim would be ultra concentrated so higher in salinity value. I currently have a nice reservoir that the skimmer feeds with an auto aqua skimmer cutoff if it gets full so i usually dump the skim every 5 days or so, vaca id dump then go and let the thing just fill and cutoff Ive dialed the skim down so well see how this goes. Salt creep is mostly in the sump area and in the lids nothing super excessive compared to what ive seen on other tanks

Understood I'm going to take the data sets daily to see exactly how much salt im loosing, only using rodi with ATO for replacing evap so that should not be an issue. Is there a fancy calculator that lets you make the salt calculations you got @Origami?

First off your analysis and explanations are amazing! Thank you for taking the time! The skimmer currently exports about half gallon per 2 days. Is this too much? The skim looks kinda gross and smells slightly. Secondly i did add a few frags which i used tank water to dip and acclimate so that accounts for maybe 2 gallons in that period. I used approximately 10 gallons of rodi over that period but i wasn't tracking it diligently. I can tell of no wetness around the tank and creep seems normal. Here is my planned action course of action : - Take your advice on whatever skim rate i should aim for. - Fill my Rodi storage completley so I have a good guage. - Take accurate measurements of sump water content. - Get my tank to 1.026 salnity. (Is there a more accurate measurment unit? The hannah can do ppt(.1), psu(.1), sg(.001) -Take salinity readings daily and record them. I won't add anything over the next week (other than normal feeding and dosing) Would 7 days of data be sufficient? ---------- Also what would you consider major water change and how often? Should i just do the paper test and if slightly tinted do a change?

About 2 weeks... I do have a fair bit of salt creep that I whipe away every other day ( i push in the nuggets that are convinient) But i didnt think it would be that big of a deal. I checked my calibration with fluid and salt tester unit is still well calibrated... So a little under 2 weeks to go from 1.026 to 1.023 I have around 100 Gallons in the total system when you include the sump I'd have to get some measurements though and dont know how to calc for rock/sand displacement. @Origami As far as trace elements I am currently doing the ATI 3 part dosing system to replace trace element issues. I guess only issue I would have is unskimmable organics, can you explain those to me and seeing as I'm doing the ATI 3 part what would a "reduced" water change recommendation be for those to keep them safeish. Water changes are just very inconvenient (Wife aggro as well as time consuming) in my current situation so I'm trying to do as few of those as possible an so far have gotten away with not that many.

So my 75 is finally at that stage where I've got everything relatively nice and stable, corralling growing etc but I have an issue i dont know how to get arround... How do i know how much salt my tank is using? Salt creep and skimming all seem to be adding up to quite a bit of salt use!!! I dont do many water changes because my PHO and Nitrates are all very low, my biom seems to be eating everything up readily. Yesterday some of my corals looked "off" LPS retracted etc. So I checked and to my shock i was at 1.23 SG much lower than the norm 1.26 i normally run at. I'm slowly getting it back up, today its at 1.25. My question is how do i get to know how much salt I use, to where i can just put in X of salt per day to avoid changes.... Do I take daily salinity measurements? Then is there some sort of calc based off my water volume + loss rate that equates to a measurement of salt? Thanks!