p3rmafrost

Make sure you calibrate it. It might be different with each model but you generally put either calibration fluid or RODI water into the refractometer then use a screwdriver that will come in the kit to adjust it to the proper reading. Check over the instructions and set it up properly. You'll want to double check it once a month or so to make sure it's still calibrated. Let us know what you find out!

Couple of things to add - The thing with the floaty arm to check salinity is a hydrometer. My understanding (someone please correct me if I'm incorrect) is that there are many factors that can cause false readings with them. For example, bubbles on the indicator or salt binding the pivot point. I strongly suggest picking up a refractometer, calibrate it, and check your salinity again. You can get a refractometer at your LFS, Petco, or Petsmart. They generally run about 30 bucks, it isn't a costly investment to rule out salinity as a cause of your issues. https://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/product/imagitarium-aquatic-refractometer-2703720?cm_mmc=PSH|GGL|CAL|SBU05|0|OB-Imagitarium|ncG8e7Xkwp8mA74QnAc53b|||0|0|||18278802365&gclid=CjwKCAiAl9efBhAkEiwA4TorinTxvs23eGJp4IwyYTM55JR_Q-8aR9IOeEnYFb3rNqncskxrY3MZkhoCWX8QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds Another thing on salinity: My salt specifically tells you to measure salinity at a certain temperature when you mix it. You mentioned you're not using a heater, but have you ever measured the temperature of the water? If it is warmer or cooler than your tank it might have an impact. Are you measuring the salinity before you add it to the tank, then measuring the display tank salinity when you're done? You want to make sure you're not having big swings. I recently went through this because of a gummed up nozzle on my ATO, my salinity rose 1.030, I dropped it with a water change much faster than I should have and the corals were not happy. The ATI ICP test was a good move. It'll take a while to get results back. I think they get shipped to California then forwarded to the lab in Germany (unless you paid for your own label and sent it directly to Germany). In the meantime I still suggest having the LFS run a full test on the tank. Did you check your equipment for damage? Do you have a voltmeter? If so, ground the black probe and stick the red one in the water and see if you have voltage in your tank. Stirring up the sand bed can release built up gasses, but I believe you really need a sand bed that is 3 inches or more for anaerobic gasses to build up. I've seen a lot of threads discussing whether or not that's a myth. Some folks say gas bubbles build up and when released convert nitrates to nitrogen but can also create sulfide. Other folks disagree and say that isn't accurate. When I change my water (every Sunday) I vacuum the sand bed and it ends up getting quite agitated. I have never had any issues with anything being released that impacted the fish or the corals, except for phosphates. Stirring up the detritus and bits of uneaten food does cause a phosphate spike for a short period. That shouldn't have a significant impact on your fish though. This is kind of a side note, and likely unrelated to any of your issues, but if you had 11 fish and were feeding a half cube a day, that sounds really low to me. My fish (I have 7) eat 2 cubes in the morning and 2 cubes at night. They're getting significantly more food than yours and I am not experiencing the same problems you're having. Do your fish look skinny? Is there a possibility they're starving? Someone who is more experienced might have more to add on this.

TDS = Total Dissolved Solids Total dissolved solids (TDS) are the amount of organic and inorganic materials, such as metals, minerals, salts, and ions, dissolved in a particular volume of water; TDS are essentially a measure of anything dissolved in water that is not an H2O molecule. This would show you if your RODI filter is leaving something behind that might be impacting your tank. I am by no means an expert, so please take my advice with a grain of salt (pun intended). First - I would strongly suggest going to a local fish store and asking them to test your water. Some of the ones near me do some pretty extensive testing for about $10. Once you have the result post them here so folks can better review your parameters and offer feedback. Second - I would send off for an ICP test. There are several companies who offer them and they're all a little different, but at the end of the day they will tell you exactly what, and how much of it, is in your water. You could have a number of factors that are affecting things that ordinary tests aren't going to show. For example if there is a chunk of metal somewhere it could be breaking down in the saltwater and leeching into your tank. Third - Have you verified all of your equipment is in good working order? Remove it from the tank and inspect everything. I had a pump on a reactor that had a frayed wire that was sending voltage into my tank. That wasn't a good day for many of my inhabitants (or me when I stuck my hand in the sump). Start with the basics and work through it step by step. Hope that helps. I would hate to see someone leave the hobby, especially big ol tank like yours, when this is a problem that can likely be sorted out with some science and patience.

Right now I'm adding pods 1x per month. I generally pick up a bottle of Tigger pods and add them directly to the display at night. I've tried growing chaeto and I have no luck with it. I recently tested the par I'm my sump and was at 0. I guess my "grow light" wasn't cutting it. I think I'll try again after I pick up a dedicated sump light, I haven't figured out which one I want yet. I'm going to keep an eye on the for sale listings and see if one pops up here.

Thanks I like doing that kind of project. I keep an eye out for broken equipment and if I can get it at a decent price I'll try my hand at repairing it. I don't mind tearing it down and figuring out how it works. In this particular case it saved me quite a bit of money over picking up new lights. I think all in I spent around $500 on the Aurora. Retail is around $2K. Ecotech wanted $450 to upgrade one of my G3 XR15 Pros, and the other one would have needed an upgrade eventually, so it would probably have run about $1K for the pair. Then if I upgraded my tank, I'd probably need a 3rd. The Aurora has 3 LEDs and 48 inches of T5, so I think I'm good for a while and probably saved at least $500 in the long run. On that note, if anyone has broken gear they're looking to off load, holler!

Hi Beatle - I ended up grabbing another Watchman, he paired up with the Pistol very quickly. They make a happy couple. I grabbed a pair of clowns that have settled in nicely and I picked up a Mandarin Dragonet. I grabbed some other inverts and a bunch of new corals as well. I put up an update on my build thread a few minutes ago if you're interested in reading an extremely long write up about what's happening around my tank this month. Thank you for your suggestions, it looks like we were on the same path with ideas! Build thread if you're interested:

Hello WAMAS! Another 30 days, another update. This month threw me a couple of curve balls. I'm learning as I go and adapting to the problems as they pop up (and they don't seem to stop popping up). I haven't collected much scientific data this month, the majority of my observations have been subjective. Recap of Changes - Rebuilt my lighting system - this probably deserves a post by itself, and if there is feedback or a need I will make one. Changed trace element dosing and supplementation to fit recommendations from Aqua Forest. Added a few corals. Added a buddy for my Pistol Shrimp (success!). Verified Data - This month wasn't very super-sciencey. I collected a little bit of anecdotal data, but I'll need to do some additional testing to call it empirical data. Pairing Goby with Pistol Shrimp - I picked up a large Watchman Goby from a fellow WAMAS member and introduced him to the tank. He paired up with my Pistol Shrimp within a few hours. Those two are quite a pair now. The shrimp is constantly excavating the tank and the Goby keeps a watchful eye. The pistol doesn't snap anywhere near as much as he used to, comes out of his caves quite often, and appears generally happier. I find it challenging to call a fish or a shrimp "happy", but they both seem to be doing what nature intended them to do and neither of them seem distressed. The shrimp was formerly reclusive, I rarely saw anything more than antennae, now it comes all the way out of the burrow quite often. They're both eating well and appear well adjusted. I'll take this as a win. Rewiring my Geissman Aurora V4 Hybrid Light - When I purchased the light from @epleeds he told me that it had some electrical issues and would likely need new ballasts and a power supply. I tested the output of the power supply and it was within the range specified on the label. There are a ton of helpful videos if anyone needs to know how to do this. The ballasts were the original HEP SD254-58 UNI ballasts. I searched online for a replacement and was only able to find them through the official Geissman parts store. They were about $120 each, and shipping was incredibly high (I was originally quoted about $80). I decided to try and track down an alternative. I reached out to HEP and was told that those particular ballasts are extremely hard to come by. They were willing to ship me some from the factory in China, but the costs were deep into the $100s of dollars. The manufacturer told me that if I was willing to wait until February there was a shipment going out to a retailer in California and they would add mine to the shipment and they would resell them to me with a minor markup. The actual cost of the ballast was around $10 bucks. I agreed and waited to hear from them. To the manufacturer's credit, they were incredibly helpful. They attempted to find me an alternative (the size was wrong) and stayed in contact for several months (this process started in Nov/22). The reseller dropped the ball and quit communicating with me. I was never able to place the order. Back to square one. I picked up a set of Sylvania ballasts that were supposed to have the same specs as the original. The wiring was a little different but I was able to get it to work. I have experience with electronics, but I didn't know some of the eccentricities of ballasts. Once I got them installed I realized they were a tad (like 1mm) too tall. I had to modify the reflector by mounting it on the outside of the rail it connects to, which meant the splash guard no longer fit. While I was installing the ballast I noticed that the tombstones (the socket where the bulb attaches) were rusty and also needed replacement. I ordered a set from Amazon and worked on getting them installed. The Amazon ones had very brittle legs that would frequently snap off while you pushed them into the housing bracket. I got around this by using long needle nose pliers to hold the legs and push them into the frame. Once the tombstones and ballasts were installed I booted up the app and tested the lights. The dimming function was sketchy and the lights often flickered or stopped working. You would have to rotate the bulbs in the socket to get them to re-ignite, then they would stay on (until the next morning). It was pretty frustrating, I was not happy with the light at all. My lighting was inconsistent, some days the T5 would work, others it would not. It would often shut off mid-day and I wouldn't be aware until I got home from work. I circumvented a few of these issues by setting the T5 lights to be either 100% on or off. No ramp up, and no dimming. This seemed to help, but it clearly wasn't working correctly. I picked up some reference materials from the library and found out that wires in a ballast can only be a certain length before it causes problems. Most ballasts have a warning label that states something to the effect of "blue wires must be under 12 inches" or something similar to give the installer left and right limits on how long wires can be before they run into an issue. My ballasts were old stock and the labels had been damaged, so I missed that. I pulled the spec sheet from the manufacturer and saw that mine were far outside the acceptable limit. I cut the wires down and had less, but not zero issues. I decided to start from scratch and gut the whole thing. I picked up a set of Advance Mark 7 0-10V IZT2S54D35M ballasts. They had the same electrical specs (found by googling) and the spec sheet showed that they were almost the same size as the original. These were longer, but that didn't matter for my application. I picked them up on Amazon for about $54 each (needed 2, shipping included). I stripped the light down to bare bones to get a clean install. If you do this, I strongly suggest you photo document everything. Take pictures of the connections, wire colors, ballast placement, screw locations, etc. When I started my install I realized that the color scheme of the new ballast was totally different than the old ballast, which was totally different from the factory. My new ballast also had 1 less terminal than the old one. I did a little research and found that the wiring color scheme in Germany varies from many other countries, and it looks like they kind of do their own thing. I wasn't able to track down a good lead on a definitive color chart, so I had to trace all of the wiring and attempt to pair it back to the wiring diagram on the ballast. Once I was able to do that I wired up the new ballast as best I could and I had one purple wire remaining. According to the ballast manufacturer purple is the 1v-10v dimming control switch. According to the light manufacturer purple is a bridge wire that connects voltage between 2 lamps. Needless to say, I was confused. I didn't have an easy way to figure out what this wire went to because it went into a connection block that was sealed and I didn't feel like ripping it apart and risking damage. I managed to track down a help line for building engineers that was set up by Philips and reached out to them. Apparently this is a common question with an easy solution. Skip the extra wire. Simply cap it off and forget about it. The technology in the new ballast doesn't make use of it. With that settled I had everything wired up. I should also mention that I ordered new tombstones directly from Giesseman. Their tombstones snapped directly into place, held firmly and put a nice snug fit on the lamps. They look very similar to the Amazon ones, but the quality is miles apart. I tested the wiring and lo and behold the dimming function worked perfectly. No more rotating the lamps to get a connection, no more turning off during the day, no buzzing sounds, nothing. It was as good as new. The reflectors went back to their original mounting position, splash guards were refitted and the light was hung over the tank with glee. It has worked perfectly from that point on. Subjective Data (bullets here detailed descriptions below the bullets) - Corals (mostly) appear to be responding favorably to Aqua Forest supplementation protocol. Clownfish aggression has notably decreased. Green BTA has chosen to face directly into a gyre wavemaker and is taking a beating. Porcelain crab is hosting Green BTA and doing an exceptional job of keeping it clean and tidy. A couple of corals (details below) are showing signs of deterioration or stress, I have been unable to identify the source and I fear I will lose a couple of nice colonies. Subjective Data Details Dosing and supplementation protocols were changed in order to follow guidance suggested directly from Aqua Forest. I use the Aqua Forest Probiotic salt and the Aqua Forest 1+,2+,3+, supplements for CA, MG, ALK. Previous ICP tests had indicated that all of my trace elements were routinely low. I was using Korallen Zucht in addition to the AF chemicals in order to increase trace elements. I spoke with an AF representative who advised that their method ideally calls for the addition of supplemental bacteria and elements. For those who are unfamiliar the AF pro-biotic method essentially introduces strains of bacteria into your tank that are intended to out compete harmful strains of bacteria and the end result is supposed to be extremely low nitrates and phosphates, bio diversity, and ideally zero nuisance algae problems.In complete honestly, AF outlines on their webpage that there are additional products they recommend for this protocol, I didn't believe they were necessary and I skipped them. After additional research I decided to use the additional products for a few months and see if I was able to detect (and hopefully record data to support their continued use). The additional products and their purposes are: Bio S - Use only after water changes. Reload beneficial bacteria to the tank that is depleted or extracted when you change water NP Pro, and Pro Bio S - Probiotic bacterial strains designed to accelerate the decomposition of organic matter and biodegradable liquid polymers, which are an excellent source of carbon for probiotic bacteria.My understanding is that these bacteria strains effectively bond to nitrates and phosphates making them have a larger biomass that can either be eaten by corals or picked up by the skimmer. Life Source - Use after water changes. This is a weird product. It is essentially mud purported to be harvested from or near a coral reef in Fiji. AF states that " It is perfect as a buffer to enhance microbiology in saltwater aquariums. Biological stabilization is a crucial factor for corals health. Using the AF Life Source provides corals access to components and minerals derived from the natural environment." When you use it you have to mix the mud with tank water (in a jar or some kind of sealed container) shake it up to dissolve/break it down, then add to the sump or high flow area, I chose the sump. This makes your tank VERY cloudy for a couple of hours. My observation is that many of my corals responded extremely well to it. My candy canes became very full/puffy. I had strong extension on all of my gonis and acros, my nems looked beautiful. There was no sediment in my display tank and no residual detritus after dosing. I have some leftover mud in the bottom of my sump, but I stir it up with a baster and it seems to go away. My skimmer had a thin layer of film the next day, I cleaned it off, and it has not returned. Fluorine - aids in calcification and skeletal growth Kalium - Potassium is an important element responsible for neurological functions. In soft corals, potassium participates in the transport of nutrients. In SPS corals the deficiency of this valuable element causes a faded pink and red color. Iron - Iron is an important micro nutrient absorbed by corals and sea anemones. Regular and balanced iron supplementation provides intense green coloration of corals. Iron plays an important role in the process of photosynthesis, therefore its supplementation improves the coral nutrition process. Especially supports green coloring of Acroporas as well as other SPS corals.I can say that after dosing Iron for a few days a couple of my acros have incredibly bright green coloration. I need more time to make sure it is actually the Iron and not just subjective. Iodum - Iodine is used by corals for synthesizing pigments which allow them to adapt to variable lighting conditions and protect the fragile coral tissues from UV radiation. Iodum intensifies dark blue and purple coloration of hard corals. Strontium - Strontium, after calcium and magnesium, is one of the most important elements needed for growth of hard corals. Strontium supports the formation of hard coral skeletal tissue and significantly improves the calcium absorption. Micro E - Supplement contains concentrated heavy metals – manganese, vanadium, zinc, nickel, iron, chromium, cobalt & copper. Mixture of trace elements necessary for all marine organisms. The female clownfish has significantly reduced her aggression. She now will swim near you, but not bite you when you have your hand in the tank. She has, however, decided to bite whatever you're holding. In one case it was a digitata stick that she quickly took a chunk out of. Green BTA is taking a beating from the gyre pump. For some reason my GBTA has decided to move into a position where it faces a gyre. The water blasts it all day long. It opens up and inflates quite a bit, but the tentacles are short an stubby. The coloration looks good, it's healthy, eats well, and seems happy. I have no idea why it decided that "this is the spot to be". I posted recently about my euphyllia suffering tentacle retraction and poor overall health. I have not cracked the code on this. The coral has 2 main stalks. One stalk has 5 heads, the other has 2. The stalk with 5 heads has completely retracted and lost tentacles. It looks terrible. The other stalk is fully extended and looks great. I pulled it out and dipped it, no pests. I moved it to a lower flow, lower light spot in the tank, no change. I have no idea why half of it would be in bad shape when the other half looks great. I'm concerned I will lose half of the colony. After my most recent water change my mushrooms all shriveled up. I have several dozen of them and they all reduced in size by 50% or more. They are colorful, and they're open, but nowhere near the size they used to be. I have suspicions it was related to salinity. Additional details outlined under "setbacks". My large acan colony was either eaten, or rapidly died overnight. Details below. Setbacks and Tips - Setbacks - When doing maintenance this week I noticed that my salinity was high. I measured it at 1.030 with a refractometer. It appears that my valve for my ATO was partially blocked and not allowing adequate water to pass by and refill the tank. It was slowly getting by, but not enough. I cleared the blockage, scrubbed down the ATO, and refilled. I also took the opportunity to check and clear all of my dosing lines. The CA one in particular had sediment build up that was likely blocking the line, at least partially. In order to lower the salinity I used a calculator to figure out a ratio for my water change and mixed up a batch of approximately 8 gallons of lower salinity water. I cleaned the tank as usual and added the lower salinity water. Tank now read SG 1.026. Slightly elevated, but within tolerances. After the water change my mushrooms responded very poorly, photos below. My acros and many of my other corals responded very favorably. It was a mixed bag. I believe the mushrooms will recover, but they clearly didn't like something. The polyp extension on my acros is fabulous, for me anyway. They seem to like the new chemicals and the lowered salinity. The other major setback is the loss, or likely loss of my acan colony. It was about the size of a hockey puck and doing quite well. The morning after the water change I noticed it was half destroyed. To me it looks like something ate it. There were large chunks torn away and bits of flesh floating away from the skeleton. The half that was no affected is in perfect condition. I would suspect that rapid necrosis or some chemical ailment would affect the entire colony, not select polyps, is that accurate? Right now my suspicion is that either my coral beauty, or a rogue hermit crab is the culprit. My Highlander crab drags around a giant conch shell which easily could have torn the flesh on the acan and rang the dinner bell for other creatures to come feast on it, or something entirely different could have happened. I'm open to ideas, and I'm open to more acans if someone has some. Tips - This is probably an old tip for many of you, but I just learned this one. When I clean out my tank I run the discharge end of my siphon into my filter sock in the sump. I leave on all of the pumps and keep the tank running. This allows me to vacuum the entire sand bed without having to lower the water level or change buckets. Once I'm done cleaning, I shut the tank down, dump/change the sock, then vacuum out the water I'm changing and go from there. It makes the whole process much cleaner and simpler for me. New Inhabitants - PC Rainbow Dragon Lady Bounce Mushrooms Tropicana Acro Magician Zoa's Yellow Tips Microlados Garf Bonsai Unknown acro Unknown chalice Unknown wrinkly coral Adult Yellow Watchman Goby Porcelain Crab Current Parameters: Parameter: Current Level: Specific Gravity 1.026 Temperature 79°F pH 8.4 - 8.6 Alkalinity 9 dKH Ammonia (NH3) Undetectable Nitrite (NO2) Undetectable Nitrate - Nitrogen (NO3) .02 ppm Phosphate (PO4) 0.26 ppm Calcium 600 ppm Magnesium 1280 ppm Questions for the Community - #1- I still don't know what happened to my Euphilya. What are your thoughts? Is it a goner? #2 - What happened to my acan? Did someone eat it? Did the salinity swing kill it? #3 - I have a $500 credit with Bulk Reef Supply. What should I buy? As always, thank you for reading and your feedback. These posts are long, hopefully they're beneficial to someone and they prevent someone from making my mistakes over again. Full gallery of pictures here.

Agreed. I grabbed some stuff from @gws3 - super well packaged, great frags, and had some excellent information to share. It's an excellent benefit having so many great members and vendors on top of the fantastic speakers. Well done, WAMAS.

No changes to light or flow. Tank has been pretty steady for a while now. I thought it was odd that some heads on the same colony extend when others don't. They seemed to be doing well about a week ago. Today they're still pulled in pretty tight but they have nice color and don't appear to be distressed. There is no slime, they're not droopy and I don't see issues with the tissue. I guess I'll keep an eye on them and see what happens.

Well, happily I think I can rule out flatworms. It got a nice bath in a red sea dip and the only thing that came off was a couple mysis shrimp and some pods. No bad actors thankfully. Now they're grumpy and retracted. I'll check them in the morning. It does look like there's some splitting action going on as well as some new "buds" on the skeleton. I'm hoping they're just splitting. This is one of my bigger colonies (I know, it isn't even that big), I'd hate to lose it and start from a frag again.

I pulled info just after I posted. Seems pretty straightforward. I'll give it a shot tonight.

I haven't removed it from the tank. Visual inspection didn't reveal anything except for the soft white tubes visible in the picture, I think those are feather duster worms. It's in a spot in the tank where no other corals can touch it with sweepers, so I don't think that's the case. Would flat worms come off with a dip? What should I be looking for? Are we talking tiny, crumb size pests or something that would be more easily visible?

Hello Everyone - I wanted to post a couple of pictures and see if anyone had any idea what might be going on with my euphyllia. I have a Frogspawn with 7 or so heads. They're all growing from the same stalk but the front 4 (see pics) are not extending. They've been this way for a few days. In the past they usually extend like the one in the back left of the pic. I did a water change recently but that didn't have an impact, no change in extension. They're still nicely colored and they seem to retract even further when they're fed so it appears they're grabbing food particles. Several folks on Reef2Reef mentioned they retract when they split but it would be odd for 4 heads to split at the same time, wouldn't it? I haven't checked my parameters this week but I don't think it's a water quality issue, if it was wouldn't they all retract? I haven't noticed anyone picking at them or irritating them and I check the tank fairly frequently. Anyone have any thoughts?

Wow! A clown hosting an eel, that's wild. I picked this crab up at Centreville Aquarium, they had an eel that had a clownfish buddy. I don't know if it was hosting it or not, but it looked like it. My wife and I were pretty surprised the eel didn't snap at it. My clowns refused to go anywhere near my anemones until one day I had guests over, there was about 6 people looking into the tank, the clowns got spooked, darted into the anemone and that's all she wrote. I have a pistol shrimp and I tried pairing him up with Gobys a few times, I'm fairly certain that he killed them, or they're are hide-n-seek world champions. I eventually picked up a 3 inch yellow watchman from a member here and they paired up instantly. I guess the shrimp wanted a fish with a little more muscle. Like you said, nature's drive is strong. Life on the reef is weird.

It's uncommon in the home reef environment? Mine went to the GBTA within 10 minutes and hasn't left since. It preens the GBTA all day long. At night it holds on to a tentacle and sleeps. I guess I got lucky. Between the clowns and the crab my BTAs are pretty well taken care of.

Hello Everyone! I recently added a porcelain crab to my tank to keep my GBTA and RBTA clean. It's doing a great job and has been a really fun addition to the tank, but the little dude is pretty weird sometimes. This morning when I went to feed the fish I noticed that it had crawled into the mouth of the anemone and was cleaning the oral disc. It eventually got out, but it made for a strange photo. I wanted to share with the group, enjoy!

Aww yeah! I'm in security research and development. Work consultation it is!

Let me know...I don't think my office is far from you. I can likely duck out during the day and give you a hand. Depending on what industry you're in I can probably call it a work meeting. Ha.

It'll probably be pushing 400 pounds won't it? I'm in Arlington during the week for work. If you have a place for me to park I can give you a hand too.

Funny enough there was another thread about this recently. Take a look here: This might point you in the right direction. Good luck!

He looks great! Do you know the scientific name for him? How big is your tank? Where did you pick him up? Sorry for the 20 questions...

That's exactly what I'm looking for. I need something that will really turn over the sand. How big is your guy? I have a 65 now, but looking to upgrade to 100-120 later this year.

Do you have a microscope? You might be able to ID the dinos and run a UV sterilizer. If you're in VA you're welcome to borrow mine.

Howdy WAMAS - I'm looking for some livestock to turn over some dead spots in my sand. I've heard the Red Goatfish can be an interesting reef safe fish to add. Does anyone have experience with them, or know where to get one? Thanks!