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PaulS.46122

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Everything posted by PaulS.46122

  1. I recently received a Hanna Alk checker as a gift. Figuring alk was not as consistent as I would prefer in my little tank. When I ran it for the first time I was shocked to see my alk was at 7.4. First year it stayed pretty steady around 8.5 - 8.4. I then thought the MG would be the culprit for being low Well I spent 2.5 hours with the tank this morning. Running multiple tests, btw i need to get a mg and ca Hanna checker cause these drop tests suck. The Hanna checkers are so easy to use! Anyway tested the tank before a waterchange, new mixed saltwater, and after the waterchange. Also did a big cleaning of the pump, return line, and rear chambers. Flow is turned up to max on the Sicce 0.5 pump with the stock return nozzle. Getting tons of flow now too! May need to turn down the flow a bit, but we will see. So here are my results: 8-18-19 Pre-Waterchange Tank MG 1410 ALK 7.3 CA 470 TEMP 78.4 SALINITY 1.026 Mixed Saltwater before Waterchange MG 1470 ALK 9.5 CA 490 TEMP 78.6 SALINITY 1.026 Tank after waterchange MG 1440 ALK 8.2 CA 480 TEMP 78.4 SALINITY 1.026 It looks like my MG and Calcium are pretty steady but the Alk is dropping a bit more than I would prefer. I’m thinking either multiple changes weekly or dosing. Not sure I want to go the dosing route just for Alk but open to suggestions. I think WC’s might be best for this tank.
  2. Lately I’ve been reading a lot about them. Great wide flow, and powerful in a small package. The only thing I’ve read where there are issues are with fish/snails/nems being sucked through the back of the pump. There are some out there creating guards on their 3D printer to alleviate these issues. If I ever get to lagoon territory I will be grabbing one of these pumps.
  3. So over the past month I’ve lost a few frags of zoas/palys and in the process of loosing more. I have no idea what’s going on and it’s frustrating the hell out of me. I do not see any bite marks or any thing on them when lights go out. Just this brown algae/fungus looking stuff. Should I peroxide dip? Something else? I don’t want to loose my rainbow hornets or fruit loops so any help would be greatly appreciated.
  4. I like it. The controllability is awesome and hoping for good things. Corals so far seem to like it too!
  5. Right now i'm custom just to allow my tank to acclimate to a more powerful light. When that period is over I will probably look at different programs published and go from there.
  6. Switched out the Kessil A80 for a AI Prime recently. Felt I needed a bit more power as some of my corals were stretching. For reference my old Kessil was at 100% intensity 4-6 inches off the water surface. The new prime is 8-10 inches off the surface at 40% and the corals have stopped stretching. So something is working. 🤷‍♂️
  7. PaulS.46122

    MACNA

    Have fun! Take a ton of pics and share with us please.
  8. Nope not at all. They are either in the Duncan or the candy canes.
  9. Well it happened last night. Spent two hours removing frags, fragging off dead heads, and rescaping the tank. Ended up using 4 bottles of super glue gel as well. Lost the Superman shroom and at least one frogspawn. Basically the frogspawn that was showing polyp bailout issues. Might loose another hammer in the next couple days but I figured that would happen. My blue and yellow hammer are still looking great and as long as they are happy I’m happy. The new rock is a piece of caribsea liferock that has been cured in someones tank. I think it looks great. Not as over bearing as the last scape and very little shadowing issues. That was a huge problem for me and something I was trying to avoid with this change. Im excited to see the change and potential this has. My little nano has officially been rebooted. So I hope you stick along to see it’s second growth.
  10. Actually that was my first thought, but never saw anything that resembled BJD. I lost all but one of my torches to BJD, and that was no fun. Those frags showed signs of the disease before being fully taken over with it. They also smelled like death, but never once had a polyp bailout with those. They just receded into the skeleton and eventually died. These on the other hand are showing tons of life and happiness, and then an hour or two later the polyp is tumbling in the current or lying on the sandbed. Sometimes even bailing when fully opened and not showing any signs of disease. I'm thinking of transferring this tank to be either be mostly favias or acans with some soft corals mixed in. 🤷‍♂️
  11. More polyp bailout issues. Seriously this is a complete bummer. I just don’t know why this keeps happening. Nothing really is screaming at me something is up parameter wise either. I’m showing growth in my mushrooms zoas, acans, favias, and blasto. The blue hammer has split into a second head, and the yellow hammer is still happy as a clam. Going to be changing things up a bit here in the next few months for sure.
  12. got home from work and noticed I was still having polyp bailout issues. Over the past four weeks I’ve lost six heads of either hammer coral or frogspawn coral. The whole polyp was basically pulling the eject cord and dropping to the sandbed. I had checked calcium and alkalinity, even salinity, pretty much everything that you would check when you see issues happening with corals. It was baffling to me because this is something that I’ve never seen within my tank. So last night I decided to check the salinity again and noticed I had quite a spike. Somehow my salinity spiked from 1.025 to 1.030! I checked my ATO and everything was OK there. Sensor was fine, there was no issue with the pump and the reservoir was full. So I knew it wasn’t an issue of evaporation. I decided I was going to do another water change this week.Now mind you I have made mistakes I’m human after all and over the past couple weeks I really hadn’t checked the salinity before putting the new water into the tank. I had always checked it afterwards, usually the next day or so, but I had a pretty good system in place where I knew my salinity was always where it should be, or at least I thought so. So I got the water mixed up put the salt in the bucket and let it do its thing. Now when I do a water change I’m usually only doing 2 gallons a week so that means I use half a cup of Reef Crystals each week. That means I can go through a bucket in around a year and a half, pretty efficient I would say. 1/2 cup into gallons of water usually is 1.025 or 1.026 once it’s all mixed up. I recently read that it’s a good idea to stir your bucket of salt before adding it to your water. Something about the bucket clumping and such. I read it on a forum post mentioning that it’s just a good idea to keep things mixed up so results are consistent. So a couple weeks ago I went ahead and did that. Anyway….. Checked the water in the bucket last night before adding it to the tank and it was 1.028! Ugh…………. Sigh………. Ugh!!!!! This is most likely my issue with polyp bailout, but with only 3 of the euphyllia in my tank. :shrug: My yellow and blue hammer are happy as can be and are showing signs of splitting into another head. Same with my purple frogspawn. The issues are with the pieces I’ve had in my tank since close to the beginning. Pieces that are well established and came from healthy colonies to begin with. My acans, favias, zoa’s and mushrooms are all showing good health and growth. Overall very baffling. Did the water change and salinity was still high, so over an hour I would remove a turkey baster’s worth of water, and let the ATO replace the rear chamber. After an hour I was back to a salinity I was happy with. Also had to do some fragging to remove dead skeleton on the hammers and frogspawn. Re-glued them into new spots, and left it alone. I will check parameters again tonight when I get home and see if there is any changes. Lesson learned I guess on my end. ☹Here is a photo taken before waterchange, after fragging was complete. https://www.instagram.com/p/BztxFnSJT70/?igshid=1m78qeqmadjwh
  13. Unfortunately we already have other plans. 😕
  14. Sounds like a good time, but I will be celebrating my oldest's 12th birthday. Have a great time everyone!
  15. So I've gotta admit..... I'm loosing the drive to keep this tank up. Too many issues have started to show and nothing I am doing is fixing anything. A couple weeks back I switched out the spinstream and put on the stock return nozzle. Just to give a different flow to the tank. I also lowered my light a bit more to combat some corals stretching. About a week in the corals stopped stretching, and everything seemed to be happy. I'm getting good growth on my favia's, acans, and zoas/palys, however my euphyllia are acting odd. The duncan has sprouted some new heads, but one of my hammers have dropped a couple heads, same with one of my frogspawns. Seeing this polyp bailout had me concerned, that either I had an alk spike or not enough calcium. Maybe it was the flow, or the lighting. Honestly I still don't have a clue. I'm considering selling off all but two of my euphyllia, rescaping the tank, and taking a different approach. However I just don't have the desire. Part of me wants to start new, but there is still a little bit inside of me that wants to resurrect this tank to what it once was. In the end, I'm doing this for myself. Not for instagram likes or followers, or recognition in a magazine. I wan't a tank that I can be happy with and love to show off to family and friends. Right now its a highlight of gatherings at my house, but I just see so much more potential. Maybe that is what is wrong with my thought process. That I'm reaching for the stars, when I don't need to be.
  16. No offense to Jeremy at Modern, but those are better hours than his. 🤷‍♂️
  17. Actually ended up borrowing couple peppermint shrimp that cleared this issue in a few days. I was a bit hesitant, as they didn't work the last time, but this time they did a great job.
  18. Damn, this really bums me out. My girls and I always loved visiting Kenna when we could. Usually on a rainy day, or a cold winter day. Sadly we were not able to spend as much time as we would like there over the years due to other commitments.
  19. Wish we could make it, but its in the thick of softball season. Hopefully next time. Have fun everyone!
  20. So Saturday when the lights came on I noticed something looked odd within the tank. Upon further inspection, I saw my Meteor Shower Cyphastrea I got from @Gonzo620 was showing signs of melting away. Tested the tank, and everything was well within levels I'm happy keeping, and my tank has always been happy with. So safe to say, I was pretty upset with it all. The tank has really been acting funny the past couple of months and has been the most frustrating part of this journey so far. I've also been having some issues with aiptasia, and have been looking for some Berghia Nudibranches locally with no luck so far. I'm not sure where the aiptasia has come from, as I dip all of my corals, as well as removing them from the plug they come from, and gluing them to a new plug before they go into the tank. Frustration to the max. Yesterday was waterchange day since I was at the Indy 500 all day Sunday. I decided that things needed a bit of a change, so I did a little rearranging within the tank. I rotated the main rock a bit, and re-glued some corals to the rockwork. I also vacuumed the sand in the spot where the rocks used to sit, as there was a bit of detritus in those spots. Eventually I got to a point where I was happy with it, and let it be. I also removed the spinstream nozzle and stuck on the stock nozzle. I'm trying to do everything I can do to save things and promote health and growth in my corals. Even looking for an AI Prime to replace the Kessil I'm running now. I'm going to give it a few months and see where we are at the end of the summer. Hopefully the next few posts within this thread will be on the positive side. At least for those still following. If it all fails, I will be doing a complete overhaul of the tank, and a new approach, but hopefully we never get there.
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