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jason the filter freak

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    My Coral Rehabilitation Project

    in Conservation & Sustainability

    3 hours ago, ReefdUp said:

    And I should mention, I finally kicked BJD thanks to a combination of hydrogen peroxide dips and Cipro. I need to get that article posted (but I hesitate to do anything that might encourage people to start dosing antibiotics into a reef tank.......)

    If you preface that 1. You are not saying to dose Cipro as you're not a Dr./Vet 2. State that Cipro is a prescription medication and 3. You're not saying that Cipro is THE solution and do it your own risk. 

     

    I would absolutely post it for the simple reason that there really isn't much profit/interest in active research on using medications in advanced applications so not being researched that much. It's really helpful to get the information out there. 

    Best way to kill pest Zoa/Paly inside of a tank?

    in General Discussion

    I swear I had a thread on this already...

    Interested in hearing people's successful* methods of killing Zoa and Paly without removing rock nor the zoa/paly from the tank.

    Also if you're killing more than a couple of polyps do you find that water changes, carbon, other methods of toxin export are crucial?

    If you're killing Zoa/paly adjacent to others do you change your methods?

    *successful being things like: Effective in killing off polyps, doesn't result in a huge mess, repeatable etc.

     

     

    Ideas so far. 

    F Aptasia -Expensive and doesn't work on vertical surfaces well.

    Boil tank water and inject polyps- May release large amounts of toxin into the water column, may not be effective?

    DIce polyps with scalpel and use gravel vac to try to siphon parts as I go- may have same toxin releasing effect and requires 3 hands and may not fully remove polyp

    Do non-mechanical/electronic ATOs actually work? 

    in General Discussion

    Getting ready to start a micro tank, 0.5 total gallonage.

     

    Im looking into a mechanical ATO like the following. Question is, are they more functional than gimmicky I don't often trust Amazon reviews. 

     

    Screenshot_20210820-165720_Chrome.thumb.jpg.498c4f09d5f92386fc0f85dd92589719.jpg

     

     

     People have already mentioned ionic diffusion isn't an issue. 

     

     I'm highly doubtful a mechanical/electronic ATO will fit and If it would hose routing would be huge vs tank size, pump output out size of a small doser would be too fast to fill and frankly I don't feel like spending $100-200 on an ATO. 

    My Nitrates are too low... Now what?

    in General Discussion

    On 8/15/2021 at 1:05 PM, DaJMasta said:

    Well, that's something.  I would assume that the chaeto supplement has a fair bit of iron in total, so you may actually already have a source you can dose... but thinking about that, I wonder if the brightwell product includes some phosphate, which could sort of magnify it when so low on nitrates and iron.  Maybe there's a way to dose iron only or iron and nitrate?  Iron is required for most macroalgae, so this could at least partly explain the chaeto growth issues and the supplement helping.

     

    I know there are specifically phosphate reducing additives (mostly based on lanthanum, I think), but if it were me, I would probably try to dose iron and see how the numbers level out.  It could be with enough to let the plants grow, the phosphate gets consumed at a faster rate than now and it balances itself out somewhat, though if not, there's the phosphate specific products which could be an option.

     

    I posted the wrong results. That screen shot I was asking randy Holmes Farley about. I have Caribsea Hawaiian Black sand in my tank Wich is very ferrous. 

     

    Randy indicated it's pretty much a non issue. I'm strongly considering ending the Chaeto Brightwell dosing. 

     

    I suspect the Chaeto dying had more to do with the low nitrates and Phos than anything else. 

     

    Here's those levels 

    PhotoGrid_Plus_1629155317869.thumb.jpg.da9e314df4341b2444d8b20ab984b251.jpg

     

    I've just doubled the amount of AB+ I'm using and plan to go back to feeding reef roids 2x a week. 

    My Nitrates are too low... Now what?

    in General Discussion

    So I've been skeptical about my Salifert and TropicMarin kits reading zero for Nitrates. So I sucked it up and spent the $$ on a Hanna LR Nitrate checker. Sure enough after running the test correctly* twice, I get 0.00. 

     

    I'm blown away my Nitrates are 0. Hanna checker ULR Phos says my level is 0.5.

     

    After years and years of NITRATE BAD PHOSPHATE BAD. I'm hesitant/flabbergasted to think I might need to dose those. Can I feed more? Get a diamond goby to stir up my sand bed? Stop doing water changes?

     

    BIO LOAD (LIVE STOCK): I have around 80 gal of volume with adult 2 Bangii, 2 nearly adult Ocellaris, nearly adult Azure damsel, juvi-adult royal gramma, a juvi-adult potters angel and a antenna goby. Cleaner shimp, porcelain crab, misc CUC.

     

    BIO LOAD (FOOD): I dose 10mL AB+ daily, feed a healthy heap of New Life Spectrum daily (though I try to make sure the majority is consumed by the fish and not end up on the sand bed. 

     

    FILTRATION AND MAINT: I do around a 10 gal w/c with Reef Crystals once a month.Before I started checking levels I dropped my filter sock changes to 2 x a week because my skimmer (reef essence 130) wasn't pulling much and my chaeto was dying. Now I use Brightwell Cheato for the cheato and it seems to be helping. I also run rox carbon for water polishing. Change it every 1-3 months (aka when I remember to)

     

    CORAL: Tank is 95% zoa and Paly (the rest is anemone, no SPS/LPS. I have noticed some die off but I was attributing to my lights being too strong, finicky nature of some coral, and possibly tank wide chem warfare from other paly/zoa. 

     

     

    Probably the dumbest question ever: can "too much air" be killing my chaeto? (Aka what's killing my chaeto?)

    in General Discussion

    TL:DR my chaeto keeps dying and I don't know why. Algae reactor traps a ton of air from skimmer.

     

     

     

    Basically my macro reactor is constantly 100% of the time full of air because new generation skimmers are stupid as H-E-double hockey sticks (can't direct the effluent). 

     

    At any rate my reactor has a TON of air bubbles in it all the time. All throughout the reactor chamber, I can tell because when I strike it massive amounts of air rise from the bottom to join the bubbles already collected at the top. 

     

    I digress. I've had my last few batches of chaeto die off completely and at one point I used to grow huge thick wads of the stuff in my tank. 

     

    I don't think my tank is "too clean" as I have a heavy fish bioload, feed 1-2xdaily, dose aminos daily, and feed reef roids a couple times a week. I have not dosed vibrant nor fluconazole in months. And I do have some amount of nuisance algae in my display 

     

    1. No I can't move my skimmer nor reactor to another chamber. (No room)

    2. No I can't buy another skimmer, I'm on my 4th different one this time an escence 130. (No room, depth not adjustable enough, budget)

    3. No I can't ditch the reactor (not enough room for loose macro, not enough room for a scrubber.) And it used to work very well for a while

    20210719_223510.jpg

    Anything missing from this skimmer?

    in General Discussion

    4 hours ago, Still_human said:

    R u serious, u went to all that trouble just to get that picture for me? That is incredibly thoughtful and outgoing, i really appreciate that!

    *sorry for the delay, I have ongoing very distracting things going on, that I end up not getting around to quite a few things till much later:( I definitely want to thank you, though!

    No worries man just following along. DIY and pulling together old parts is what got me through the first 10 years of this hobby. I still do a lot of DIY and pull together used parts but now they're just a bit more expensive parts. 

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