AlanM February 25, 2014 Author Share February 25, 2014 Crazy snail pile-up every morning. I have no idea why they all go here each night and drop back each day. I keep scooping them off and spreading them around, but they all end up in the same corner each morning. The sand underneath here is like a hermit crab buffet. The biggest snail here is about 1/2" long Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YHSublime February 25, 2014 Share February 25, 2014 One of us, one of us! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM February 26, 2014 Author Share February 26, 2014 Some growth shots. Not sure how good they've turned out. It's easier to look at them in this post format than in photobucket. Acropora tortuosa, green/purple rim monti, red penn state monti, superman monti (round plug to the right) 1/18/2014: Same 2/25/2014, 5 weeks: Setosa and green polyp monti 11/27/2013: same 2/25/2014, 3 months: purple cap 12/9/2013: same 2/25/2014, 2.5 months: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkiboy February 26, 2014 Share February 26, 2014 oh yea. you got some growth going on too! i need to take some more photos for growth comparison. lovin' seeing all these build journals with comparos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM February 26, 2014 Author Share February 26, 2014 I need to get a better picture of the digitata or whatever it with the green base, round tips, and brown polyps that's on the far right of the second picture. It's really cool and has a knobby really colorful green base where it is encrusting, not fluorescent green, really green. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkiboy February 26, 2014 Share February 26, 2014 has the nem grown much at all? it's coloration morph ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM February 26, 2014 Author Share February 26, 2014 Not really. I think it is getting too much flow, but it wont move. I will redo my flow in a few weeks and maybe it will like it. Should be gentler, but more volume. Like further away flow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YHSublime February 26, 2014 Share February 26, 2014 That first shot comparison shows amazing growth! Good job! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM February 26, 2014 Author Share February 26, 2014 That first shot comparison shows amazing growth! Good job! Thanks. So that is 5 weeks between the first comparison. I imagine it was not coincidental that it was around that time that I upped my light levels from 40% at the peak to 75% at the peak and started running GFO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BowieReefer84 February 26, 2014 Share February 26, 2014 Frags take time to settle in as well, and some take more time than others. I find the first 1-3 months can be very very slow sometimes, but be patient and leave them alone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
howaboutme February 26, 2014 Share February 26, 2014 Looks good! I only see a little sign of cyano...must have taken that in the morning. huh? haha.. Just curious, what do you keep your alk at? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM February 26, 2014 Author Share February 26, 2014 Looks good! I only see a little sign of cyano...must have taken that in the morning. huh? haha.. Just curious, what do you keep your alk at? I took them at night actually! I didn't even think about the cyano. That's the stuff in the back of the tank that never gets too bad because it's kind of shadowed by the overflow box. Since siphoning out the stuff on the front a couple of days ago it actually hasn't come back out there. I also haven't checked nitrate/phosphate in a couple of days. I try to keep my alk at 3meq/l which is 8.4dKH. 3 is easier for me to remember than 8.4. I try to keep Ca at around 450ppm to my ability to measure it and Mg at 1350-1400ppm again to my ability to measure it. I don't dose Ca or Mg. Just dump some in after I do one of those tests each week or two. Whatever I've been doing lately or the corals have been doing lately has started using up more than twice the sodium carbonate solution that I used to use. Either that or the dosing pump stopped pushing 1ml/min. I should check that, actually. I was running it for 1 minute at the top of each hour and now I'm running it for 1 minute at the top of each half hour, so 48ml/day of BRS 2-part alk additive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM February 27, 2014 Author Share February 27, 2014 Nightly cerith snail migration up the glass is in progress. Picked two enthusiastic ones up off the floor after they crested and fell. They make a surprisingly loud noise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tpallas February 27, 2014 Share February 27, 2014 That's awesome. Mine are constantly trying to escape. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCReefer1964 February 27, 2014 Share February 27, 2014 Nightly cerith snail migration up the glass is in progress. Picked two enthusiastic ones up off the floor after they crested and fell. They make a surprisingly loud noise. Is you water that bad Alan ? LOL!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM February 27, 2014 Author Share February 27, 2014 Haha. Snails hate my water! Now I know what the cat has been up to making all that noise for the last week. Big thanks to Bowiereefer84 who came over and tested water with me. We ended up getting consistent numbers on the tests and he used salifert ones, which I hadn't seen before. The nitrate one is really nice how you can do high and low range at the same time. Nitrate at maybe 0.1-0.25. Phosphate back down at between 0.6 and 0.8. We had dueling Hanna 736 ULR checkers running at the same time, him using his method for emptying the powder and swirling, me using mine. So taking off the biopellets hasn't had an effect of raising nitrate, and it also hasn't caused phosphate to shoot up. Maybe removing them has caused it to drop? It hasn't done much other than make the yellow sponge in the sump less happy, maybe. Also, I feel like there is less brown/gray colored wavy stuff on the rocks and in the sump. Maybe that was bacteria clumps? Dunno. So Mike said everything looked fine to him and I should keep doing whatever I'm doing except maybe raise the light intensity a bit. It looked slightly dark to his eyes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BowieReefer84 February 27, 2014 Share February 27, 2014 0.06 and 0.08 phosphate... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM February 27, 2014 Author Share February 27, 2014 right, forgot a 0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
howaboutme February 27, 2014 Share February 27, 2014 Things look good already! haha.. Do you still have a bit of cyano? I wouldn't increase your light intensity until you've conquered that and then baby steps in raising intensity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM February 27, 2014 Author Share February 27, 2014 I do have some cyano. On rocks and sand. I'll get that under control, good advice. I actually bumped my lights up a bit and started a shrieking from the UPS that I have the EB8 plugged into. It peaks at 600W, and apparently I've been running at 590W. I have 350W of return pump and around 1800W of lights, I guess, plus skimmer recirc pump and Tunze powerheads. Guess I need a bigger UPS or another EB8. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM March 3, 2014 Author Share March 3, 2014 So guess what my nitrate was this morning? 3ppm! Jack's wish is coming true. Actually, I had tossed in a chunk of potassium nitrate last night to see what it would be like this morning since I planned to do lots of water tests this morning. Phosphate was 0.07 so it at least hasn't gone up in the past couple days. I siphoned out lots of patches of cyano on the sand and pulled out a bunch of old snail shells to make the siphoning easier. I ended up doing kind of a large water change. Larger than normal, at least. In the process of siphoning I saw a huge spaghetti worm. I was siphoning up something that I thought was cyano but it was more orange than maroon and attached to something underneath that wouldn't come up the more I tried to siphon it. It wasn't small. Kind of cool, though. I also finally got around to mounting some of the birdsnest frags that Neto had sold me a while ago. That gave me the chance of using the new handibond super glue gel from the group buy. It's really a whole different thing. Very nice stuff. It was thick enough to make a nice pile that didn't drip at all and then smear it around on the rock for a while to get a nice bond. I waited too long to mount the rainbow birdsnest that is the fastest growing thing in the tank. That one has now attached up near the top to another rock, so that's where it lives now, I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM March 3, 2014 Author Share March 3, 2014 (edited) Forgot to mention. I'm also adding my Coralux Storm X controller to run the lights instead of the Apex. It will be nice to have 4096 steps of dimming down to 0 instead of just 100. You don't need that kind of resolution once the light is up high, but down at the bottom end it is nice to get a gradual fade up without visible steps. I hooked the Storm X up to the computer and re-programmed it to change some of the things I found annoying about it. The thermometer didn't round the decimal places correctly and was showing two places past the decimal point, which is more accurate than the thermometer is anyway, and caused it the number to jump around if the second digit was a 0 because it didn't display the 0. Also, the "low power" backlight was too bright for me, so I decreased it down to a dim level of 1/255 instead of 35/255. Now it's just barely lit when not in use. I also taped over some of the convenience LEDs because I have the clear case for it and the LEDs showed through. I plan on having the display shown into the room and don't want to be blinded by it all the time. It was really easy to reprogram because the guy gives you the source code and shows a video of how to use the Arduino tool to do it. Even an arduino novice could do it. Edited March 3, 2014 by AlanM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
howaboutme March 3, 2014 Share March 3, 2014 Woohooo! In my experience, it took a week and half or two for all of the cyano to disappear for good after raising NO3. It could be faster though. Still crazy that you're NO3 still wasn't rising from taking biopellets offline.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Puckstable March 3, 2014 Share March 3, 2014 Awesome, Alan. Where did you get the potassium nitrate? What are your plans going forward? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM March 3, 2014 Author Share March 3, 2014 Unhappy nem today. Not sure what is up with it, but it normally opens up when the lights come on. Also, I didn't dose any Potassium nitrate last night, but nitrate still up there at 3ppm. Not bad. Think nem is mad about 3ppm nitrate? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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