ridetheducati July 6, 2013 Share July 6, 2013 Keep the dosage the same but feed more. Try oyster feast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimlin July 6, 2013 Share July 6, 2013 i am trying to grow macro algae at the drain chamber of my sump. i been adding more and more live rubble in the area where the drain pipes are. half of my algae have died so far from the softball size i received from a fellow reefer, but i am waiting to see if it dies completely, then i will fill the whole chamber with live rubble along with a light to filter the water and if im lucky grow green hair on the rubbles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neto July 6, 2013 Share July 6, 2013 Any before and after pics? I am also dosing vinegar, this is my 3rd week and im only dosing 6ml at the moment. I only have 32 gallons of total volume though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treesprite July 7, 2013 Share July 7, 2013 Is vinegar that weak? I do 1 ml of VSV a day in a system with about 110g in it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraffitiSpotCorals July 7, 2013 Author Share July 7, 2013 Any before and after pics? I am also dosing vinegar, this is my 3rd week and im only dosing 6ml at the moment. I only have 32 gallons of total volume though. Before and after pics from me? I have a build thread that has some pics. But none up to date yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ridetheducati July 7, 2013 Share July 7, 2013 Is vinegar that weak? I do 1 ml of VSV a day in a system with about 110g in it. Vinegar is eight times weaker than vodka. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.OptimusPrime. July 9, 2013 Share July 9, 2013 I was dosing vodka. It got rid of the cyano and the GHA, but produced this horrible stench and what I assume to be bacterial slime all over my sump and skimmer cup. It took about 2 weeks of none dosing and WCs to get it out. I probably could have resolved the issue by cutting the dosage in half, instead of stopping cold turkey. No ill effects on the tank. In fact, I just started dosing vinegar the other day this morning due to some GHA patch I saw in the DT. My GFO/Carbon Reactor doesn't seem to be helping so back to what works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraffitiSpotCorals July 10, 2013 Author Share July 10, 2013 This is what happens when you change too much on a tank at once. I think my alk went a little too high. This coral I have always had problems with. I have had a handful of acros get Stn and a few maricultures I should never have bought rtned during this process. Mainly because they were not in the right conditions at the store and were stressed from the begenning... I have not found any pests yet at least. All of this was expected though. Also if I may not I thought about carbon dosing a few times throughout the years because it was suggested for algae problems, but I never thought algae was a reason to carbon dose. Too bad this was one of my favorites, I just cut it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Origami July 10, 2013 Share July 10, 2013 ^^It looks like there's still a lot of good tissue on that coral, Paul. Hopefully the frags will make it.Is that an Asterina star doing cleanup? Right or wrong, GARF posted this observation on their website a number of years ago. I've never personally known Asterina to go after hard corals and the forums are not heavy with such reports, but GARF reported this very thing many years ago. Others commented with similar reports to that page. Take a look. Your Asterina looks similar to the one that GARF pictured on the page. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharkey18 July 10, 2013 Share July 10, 2013 Paul, Have you stopped carbon dosing? If so why? Sorry about the coral. I've been having my own set of problems with similar results..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraffitiSpotCorals July 10, 2013 Author Share July 10, 2013 The star was cleaning up, I have never seen them eat healthy coral. I have not stopped dosing either. I think the coral will make it, I have about 4 large pieces. All the other corals look great except for the Bennett tort. That piece I may not be able to save. I knew it was risky cutting it so I could get frags to people, that coral is finicky. It's polyps also changed from purple to green... Weird huh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Origami July 10, 2013 Share July 10, 2013 All the other corals look great except for the Bennett tort. That piece I may not be able to save. I knew it was risky cutting it so I could get frags to people, that coral is finicky. It's polyps also changed from purple to green... Weird huh? Stress does strange things sometimes. I wonder if they'll turn back? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraffitiSpotCorals July 10, 2013 Author Share July 10, 2013 Also I don't know if you can see the white feather duster looking mess at the base, but I thought they could be a kind of hydroid, that's another reason I cut it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Integral9 July 10, 2013 Share July 10, 2013 But each day it keeps looking more like I will eventually not be able to grow the cheato efficiently. I thought if I kept my dose low and my nitrates near .5 or 1 I would still be able to keep the cheato fuge. We will see. I am even thinking about cutting a few more off my dose to see if it helps. I am preparing to change the fuge to all rock and flow though, anyone have opinions on what might work best? Just read through this and I can say that my experience with biopellets has been very similar to what has been discussed. I got 600ml of brightwell pellets and put it in my M5 avast reactor with some a microbactor7 and let it sit for a day before turning it on. This is supposed to help with pellets floating and gives the bacteria a chance to colonize the pellets before being flushed out. At first, not much happened. About a week later the water clarity improved dramatically. Then my skimmer went bananas. I had to completely stop restricting it and was still emptying it almost every other day for about 2 weeks. Shortly after the skimmer started to go nutz, I had a bacteria bloom followed by a hair algae bloom. I found some dead snails though, so that could have attributed to the blooms. After removing the dead animals I have not seen the bacteria or algae start to come back. I have not had any macro start dieing off yet, but I hope that one day it will and I will have a fuge with nothing but sand and water. Then i will take the sand out and replace it with live rock. So changing my fuge over to LR is my "win condition". FWIW: It is possible to have a low nutrient system and still have a flourishing algae colony. The algae colony being the reason or one of the reasons the nutrients are kept low. So if you do not remove all the nutrient sources or have a carbon solution that creates a nutrient sink of a magnitude greater than your nutrient sources, you may never actually kill off the macro. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraffitiSpotCorals July 12, 2013 Author Share July 12, 2013 Thanks for sharing! I think something is up in my tank, the acro that I showed the pic of that was starting to rtn, has gotten way worse. Being that I have had that acro for a long time I think I may need to cut something back?. Today I turned down the the ozone, to 25 it was at 50 at the highest. Also the kicker is I turned off the alk and calcium dosing pumps because I thought 9 was to high of an alk and it had spiked to there for a day or two. Now it won't come down past 8.5 and the pumps have been off for 3 days almost 4. I have been feeding as much as possible which is A LOT and phosphates are at .05 without any gfo for a least two weeks. I am not having burnt tips anymore either, just two Stn spots and a few rtn's. There are a lot of acros that look fine and are growing still. Any ideas or suggestions? I posted a iphone video of the fish getting fed if anyone hasn't seen it its in my 210 in the dedicated tank forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ridetheducati July 12, 2013 Share July 12, 2013 Paul, You may have already covered this, but why are you running Ozone while using a bacterial based filtration system? Ozone kills good and bad bacteria thus creating additional bio mass that requires attention through aggressive skimming. I am not saying Ozone is causing your current challenges, just something to consider. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ridetheducati July 13, 2013 Share July 13, 2013 Bacterial Colonization Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraffitiSpotCorals July 14, 2013 Author Share July 14, 2013 Yea, I think I am going to move the ozone to another tank. I can't see any real bennifits on the 210 especially since I am already carbon dosing. I have an old beckett skimmer I am thinking of using it with on a different tank. Really the only thing that's bothering me is the the alk and calcium are standing idle for like a week now! I unplugged the dosers today just incase the old reef keepers ports are not turning off and on correctly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraffitiSpotCorals July 22, 2013 Author Share July 22, 2013 Well now the cap on my back wall has started to rtn. I am guessing my rtn issues are from the alk being 8. I let it drift down to 7.7 which took about a week. Then tried to hook the dosing pumps back up and the alk went back to 8.1. I guess I am going to have to let the alk drift farther down around 7. I didn't think the corals would rtn so quickly if I had problems. Is this normal with the alk getting high? I always thought that the corals Stn when the alk got above 8. Mine get a small patch on the underside and then just start loosing flesh... Very saddening... I am working so much I almost have no time to observe the tank and or deal with the issues. Even when I frag the pieces at first signs of rtn, they don't make it. I was hoping I wouldn't have to bump this thread but oh well... Looking for advice again... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Origami July 22, 2013 Share July 22, 2013 Some people have reported SPS tips burning at higher alk in ultra low nutrient systems, Paul, but not everybody. I don't consider an alk of 8.0 dKH high at all. (I routinely ran mine at 10 dKH while dosing vodka and didn't see the issue that you're describing in your tank). Did you confirm it with a second test? How does your calcium look? Any issue with phosphates. Can you do some large water changes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraffitiSpotCorals July 22, 2013 Author Share July 22, 2013 I could do a large waterchange, po4 has never been higher than .1 normally stays within .02 or .05. I am going to confirm the test tonight. I am praying that's my issue, I just needed to confirm its not the carbon dosing. Calcium has always been just around 420. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraffitiSpotCorals July 22, 2013 Author Share July 22, 2013 I don't think alk is the problem because my calcium has stayed consistently level throughout the past week and few days just like the alk has. Maybe I mixed the two reagents or something? I dunno. I am not sure what else could be wrong, I have always been scared of getting some copper in the water, but i have been running carbon and been extra careful recently. I am going to double check everything tonight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraffitiSpotCorals July 22, 2013 Author Share July 22, 2013 Calcium hasn't moved since the tank has been up (I just checked) and I checked the alk with the reference solution and it was one drop off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharkey18 July 22, 2013 Share July 22, 2013 Alk of 8 is not high. Some sps tanks routinely keep it at 10. Must be something else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ridetheducati July 23, 2013 Share July 23, 2013 FWIW. My bacteria based filtration system runs within the following parameters: Alk (7-8 dkh), Calcium (410-425 ppm), and Mg (1250-1325 ppm). I wanted to share my parameters because I have experimented and noticed STN or burnt tips with alk at 9.0 dkh. My safe zone is 7-8 dkh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now