Where to begin . . .

There's so much to share I honestly don't know where to begin.  I've made a ton of changes, trimmed back hugely, removed two entire colonies, and most importantly for this post, struggled with excessive calcium carbonate buildup.  Suffice to say I'm trying to figure out why I put a newly cleaned pump into service in November and it seized up in April.  At the moment I'm trying to figure out if pH swings due to dosing B-Ionic are the cause.  My methodology is simply to stop dosing for a while and up the calcium reactor to see if that stops the buildup then assuming that doesn't stop the buildup I'll shut off the calcium reactor and see if the removal of CO2 makes the difference then if that doesn't work I'll try something else.  Fact: I'm growing Calciium Carbonate too fast.  Answer I have no idea . . . . 


Corals:  Strange lessons . . . I gave Jason back a large colony of Tyree Purple Monster and oddly enough he's getting the same white band problem he had before starting at the base and progressing very slowly.  Pathogen in his tank?  Excessive flow?  No idea but interesting . . .  Along the same lines we both have been struggling to get Ice Fire Echinata to grow.  I bought two frags from Vivid Aq. in CA and they died.  Bought a colony from Jason.   It died.  Jason had several in the store and one colored up dramatically in his SPS sale tank while the one in his display wiped.  Then he moved the one in his SPS sale tank to his display and it started to slowly wipe at the base.  So assuming the worst I convinced him to give the piece to me and I broke it into several pieces, dipped it in Revive, and have put the pieces in various places in my system.  So far all the pieces are surviving, but we'll see.

My big "Bugga a Boo" right now is pH.  It's driving me mad that I can't control the pH, but the nightly increase in CO2 is overwhelming.  I'd really like to know how much night algae growth in a refugium on a reverse cycle I would need to completely overcome the cycle,  working . . . . standby . . . someday we'll know.

He's back . . .

Well after a week of ski vacation in Colorado and a couple days of work, I'm finally back!

Let's start with the latest installment of "It's always something" . . . two frags broke free of their glue including my Pearlberry frag which wiped, the RO top off which is running through a home rigged Nilsen reactor while I wait for my new one to arrive clogged and the top off stopped for several days, my file fish jumped into the overflow and had to be carefully extracted, and one of my ballasts needed a capacitor replacement . . . but heh . . . all in a days work for an aquarist  . . . haha!

Interestingly enough Jason from GA lost his Strawberry Shortcake colony which was spectacular.  Keep in mind that he too added ReefBrite LEDs over his system only a few short weeks ago.  Although this is highly anecdotal and unscientific is it possible that something about intense blue LED lighting kills certain corals.  My colony is holding on, but still not really recovering its coloration even after I moved it to the lowest possible position in my tank.

On another note be sure to get a copy of Coral Magazine this month and look at pg 53 for shots of my tank!  Sadly the blue Radium lighting distorted the photo in print production, but none the less, I am proud to be included in such a worthy publication!

Oh and one last note . . . I'm in a discussion on RC regarding refractometers.  I am not convinced that certain models sold as "seawater" refracts really are indexed for natural sea water and so far my testing at home seems to bear this out, but I still have much to learn with regard to this topic so I am holding back on any final judgement.

It's always something . . .

So today's installment of "It's Always Something" is brought to you by Tunze.  Since getting my new 6105s, I have been fiddling with positioning to try and find a position that doesn't blow my sand all over.  Yesterday, I tried a slightly new position, but during the night the Tunze moved slightly on it's own because the new ball style holders are not very tight.  The result was the powerhead was aimed up and sideways such that it splashed water over the sides all night long.  Not gallons but liters or quarts worth and certainly making a mess.

Last few days have been busy for the tank as I did some significant position changes.  The primary purpose was to make room for the continued growth of  my Loripes colony which was fast becoming over run by my Seriatopora and my Purple Monster.  In addition I shifted several colonies around including the bleached Strawberry Shortcake, the Nasuta, and my Stylo frag from Keith B. as well as a few others.  Now comes the hurry up and wait part to see if the changes were worthwhile.  In the meantime the right side looks amazingly bare now without the great big pink birdsnest on top  : ( Hopefully the Stylo will grow faster than it has so far as I'm trying something new and feeding Elos amino acids. I decided to give it a try after reading an article on Amino Acids at CoralScience.org.

It's Always Something

Today's it's always something was broken coral.  The Damsels have been doing some strange territorial dancing and knocked down the recovering coral frag and the zoos ate away at the body of the montipora so much that it actually fell over under it's own weight.  I tried to fix the monti back in place, but no luck then I tried to fix the fallen frag and it took me about 5 tries to get the glue to stick.  The whole endeavor cost me about 30 minutes of time . . .  it's always something . . .  the good news is because my tank is so low and open I just reached in and fixed everything.  No moving fixtures, no bringing in a ladder, no bending over the top of the tank, just nice and simple reach and fix.  Oh and I almost forgot this morning I found that the Deltec stirrer was stuck.  The extra kalk powder I added gummed up the rotating arm so I had to dump it out and put in the normal one cup.  Looks like the kalk stirrer is going to become a bi-weekly chore (see earlier post on pH study in the kalk stirrer) . . . it's always something.

Improvement.

Continuing to see rapid improvement in the frag that was bleached while the mother colony continues to struggle.  I did raise the lights higher, but obviously it's not enough to help given the position of the main colony.  May have to cut it out and move it lower somehow.

On the road again . . .

Heading to Frankfurt today and had to get the tank ready for being gone 3 days.  Cleaned out the Deltec and refilled it with 2 cups of kalk.  We'll see how long it lasts this time.  Then had to clean the glass, and futz with the Tunzes.  Ever since installing new 6105s to replace my aging 6200s I'm running into problems with blowing sand, but I think I got it right now.  Also the coral frag of shortcake is continuing to recover nicely.  Look for another picture update next week!

Eureeka! LEDs may have bleached my coral!

Had to work for 3 days and just got home last night from Zurich.  This morning cleaned glass, cleaned skimmer, added 1 L alk and 750 ml Ca+, removed carbon and phosban (after 3 days on), cleaned teeth, adjusted flow direction on Tunze because while I was gone it splashed over the top slightly when the teeth started to clog, and finally inspected the browned coral for changes and guess what . . . drumroll please . . . the coral frag I placed in low light near the bottom of my tank is making a rapid recovery and already showing hints of yellow and red zooxanthellae returning while the original colony which is higher up is till brown and white.  SO . . . I think this plus so many others experiences with bleached corals under LEDs proves to me that LEDs put out WAY more light than is registered on the Apogee meter.  I'll try to get some pictures later today, but I'm actually excited to see such results so quickly.