FarmerTy

I think all of your conclusions are on point regarding nutrients in your system. This is the perfect time for TimFish to pop in and say, I told you guys to feed your corals!!! I think the advance of technology has allowed us to be way more efficient at removing nutrients in our system, and as a whole, the industry is realizing this and starting to go the other way a bit and allowing some nutrients back in. I still aim to keep my nitrates at around 5-10 ppm and my phosphates at 0.03 ppm. My phosphate level is a bit more rigid than I would say most need to aim for, it's just because my tank is SPS-dominant. I'd imagine anything around 0.08 ppm for phosphates is ideal. I haven't dosed my stump remover yet. I was just thinking about it 2 days ago when I took a step back to look at my corals and noticed how light all my corals look. The colors aren't as deep as they were when my fish were in there and the nitrates were hovering around 5-10 ppm. I plan to soon, but I'll just wait until after the meeting this Saturday at my house in case something goes wrong and everybody has nothing to look at but acro skeletons. Though I employ a very aggressive nutrient removal strategy, I highly doubt I'd ever have a problem holding some nitrates in there. My fish population leans on the side of borderline excessive, not just heavy fish load but even more than that, so I think I'd be hard pressed to not be able to keep some nitrates in the system. If I somehow can't, I'll just decrease the amount of biopellets I run and that should give me some of my nitrates back.

You mean a free tank with free frags in it??? http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/36128-free-nano-tank-door-prize/

Welcome! That's a great start!

That's about what mine is currently, so I might even suggest you start a bit higher, like in the 6.80-6.70 range, just to start running yours and to get a feel for how much alk/Ca it'll add to your system at those pH levels. Also, I added this line in my programming as my CaRX is fed by my return pump. That way if I turn my pump off, it'll shut off the gas as well so it doesn't just keep bubbling away in there. Either way, the pH will get too low and it'll shut off anyways but redundancies are great in the Apex world. If Outlet ReturnPump = OFF Then OFF Once you have a good feel for tweaking it, then maybe adjust the pH down to match your tank consumption level. The main thing to focus on is not trying to have the CaRX increase your alk until it is at your desired level. The key is to set your CaRX so that it maintains your alk at a specific number, then just use 2-part mix for alk to get it to the level you want. The CaRX will hold it there from that point on. When you use your CaRX to increase or decrease your alk, you'll be chasing numbers all week and it's very hard to dial in using that method. Another thing to keep track of is if your Apex is actually shutting off the carbon doser if the pH gets too low, then adjust your carbon doser to put out less bubbles. That'll keep your pH levels from cycling up and down with the disengaging of the carbon doser each time the pH is too low.

He said he was going to be Jimbo. [emoji4]

Looks like you got your first test corals. Those look like zoa polyps and possibly some type of leather coral.

Can I steal this one tomorrow? Haha, sorry Brooks. I got a waitlist a mile long for this guy. I have to look back on the list and see who's next!

Hey Brooks, I actually did it last year when I ran some experiments with controlling nutrient levels with biopellets, GFO, and dosing Spectracide Stump remover. I played with being able to adjust my nutrient levels on the fly and to see if I could use biopellets as a sole source of nutrient removal by dosing additional nitrate to the system to force the biopellets to remove even more phosphate in my system (as carbon dosing is heavily skewed towards nitrate removal), hoping to remove GFO altogether. While the ability to control nutrients was achieved, the ability to remove biopellets entirely never really manifested. At a certain point, I could have continued to dose even more nitrates to the system but it seemed like a lot more work than it was worth, not to mention adding the extra element of human error and potentially overdosing nitrates. I thought it safer and more practical to stick with my biopellets and GFO regiment and so the experiment ended. Funny you mention this, because when I put my corals back in the tank about 2 weeks ago, I noticed that the colors were pretty faded. It correlates with my decreased nitrate level as I'm currently reading about 0.25 ppm of nitrate in my system using the Red Sea Pro Nitrate test. I was planning on dosing my nitrates back up again (just have to find my old bottle of stump remover) and get it back in the 5-10 ppm range that was treating me so well before. I'll probably only maintain this for a couple weeks because on March 3, my tank will have hit the 76 days of being fallow and I'll slowly start reintroducing fish. At that point, the bioload associated with the fish and feeding them should be able to maintain my nitrates at the 5-10 ppm that I was achieving prior with a full fish population. If I had to guess, 70% of the tanks in Austin probably don't need to be thinking about dosing nitrates. It's only when you're being really aggressive with nutrient removal do you need to think about adding nitrates back into the system. The other thing to think about is just because you're reading 0 on your nitrate kit, doesn't mean you don't have a nitrate problem. If you see excessive algae in your system and you're reading 0, the algae is really uptaking all your nitrates... so if you start dosing nitrates because you think you're deficient, you'll see an algae bloom in the tank and your nitrates STILL may read 0. Either case, I'm glad you posted it as information like this helps to further our knowledge of reef keeping and brings the discussion to ARC. I caution though that most will probably never need to do this so make sure you do your research before you start dumping stump remover into your system.

Nothing like a shimmering pearlberry frag to brighten up the frag tank.

Wha...huh? Were you keeping this all to yourself??? I only share if you're part of the FarmerTy reefing news blog. For a low monthly fee of $10/month, you'll get all the interesting reefing news emailed to you personally, with a commentary track recorded by yours truly. Not sure I'm ready to get that deep into it... Speaking of deep, you should see the latest article on deep sandbeds. The charts showing monitored denitrification in the anoxic zones are simply extraordinary. Just think, if you were in my FarmerTy reef news club, you'd know the latest and greatest about DSBs. Only $9.99 if you act now. Free shipping via email if you order in the next 30 mins. [emoji12]

Wha...huh? Were you keeping this all to yourself??? I only share if you're part of the FarmerTy reefing news blog. For a low monthly fee of $10/month, you'll get all the interesting reefing news emailed to you personally, with a commentary track recorded by yours truly.

Oh man, gave me the same reaction this time as it did the first time I caught it a few weeks back! Stunning! I want them all!!!

Stunner! That'll take care of all of that fish poo!

Gorgeous! If I didn't have a naso already, I'd be all over this! Oh, and I think its a "she". [emoji6]

I don't think advising people to toss skimmers is the most sound advise. Many people can run gorgeous tanks without skimmers and many people can run them with. While not critical to the success of a tank, it sure doesn't hurt.

I'll be honest, I ran a nano cube for 5 years without anything but water changes and it was awesome. For your tank, with only having the livestock that you have, I think some good water changes like Reburn mentioned will get you there for nutrient levels. From that point, you'll just have to stay on top of the water changes to maintain. For me, I despise water changes, so throwing a reactor on it and running GFO sounds better to me than all those water changes. You'll still have to do them to replenish your foundation elements and trace elements, as well as reduce nitrates, but not as much as I think you'll have to do to keep your phosphate level low without the reactor. The main thing that concerns me is the lack of feedings to your fish. I'd increase water changes or add a reactor any day if it meant I could feed my fish appropriately, meaning daily, to keep them healthy and happy.

Hello ARC! I'm very excited to offer a very special door prize donated to the February meeting. We have our very own LFS, River City Aquatics, who donated 15 coral frags consisting of several mushrooms, acans, a chalice, various zoas, and duncans as livestock for the 5-gallon Fluval Spec that will be given away to one lucky attendee of the February meeting. Please thank Jake and his crew for the generous donation and their continued support of our great club of reefers in Austin. The tank was donated by Ty The Real Estate Guy, though most of you know me as FarmerTy. I've had this tank for almost 1.5 years now and have done nothing with it so I figured it would be in much better hands and also be much more appreciated by somebody else. It comes with a MaxiJet return pump, rotating return nozzle, an ecoxotic pro LED light, and two ecoxotic actinic lights (some of actinic LEDs have burned out but enough are there to be useful so I left it in). It also comes with a decent amount of live rock and crushed coral substrate as well. You can say that the live rock and substrate have been cycling for over a year now. [emoji6] So you may be wondering, how do I win such a cool prize? 1) Show up to the February meeting this Saturday at my house at 2pm. Details here: http://www.austinreefclub.com/index.php?/topic/35937-February-Meeting-at-FarmerTy's-2/20/16-@2PM 2) Hope your number gets called on the raffle ticket. 3) That's it... really! Did I mention there's free food as well at the meeting? Hope to see a lot if you there, both familiar and also new faces! -Ty

Have you double-checked your Hanna Phosphate results? 0.8 ppm of phosphate is a pretty high number. Just for reference, my phosphate generally runs at 0.03 ppm of phosphate, though I do run a SPS dominant tank and keep my phosphate a lot lower than most. Maybe you meant to put 0.08 ppm? For nitrates, I'm curious what your Red Sea result for nitrate is. Keep in mind that for biopellets, they are really biased to remove nitrates and just a small amount of phosphates. That's why most will still need to employ another strategy to remove phosphates as well, such as GFO or aluminum oxide.

Does the manufacturer have a recommended water height to run the skimmer in?

Dang! That thing took off in your tank!

He's alive! Tank looks like it's coming together well!

Looks great! Did you get that shortcake from me?

I wouldn't overreact to it. It seems to be green cyano. You're tank is so new you're going to go through your stages of algae for the first 6-9 months. Just continue to do water changes, manually remove what you can, and make sure your nutrient levels don't get out of hand. For your phosphates, I'd employ some GFO in a reactor or aluminum oxide to remove phosphate. Do it slowly though or your corals will pay the price.

How deep of water is it sitting in?

What are your results for nitrates and phosphates?