FarmerTy

Well, your husbandry practices seem on par so I'd just keep an eye on the lighting intensity and your corals reaction to it. Out of curiosity, how long has the system been up now? And what is your current stocking list?

Oh, if I had to take a wild guess, I'd guess your corals are reacting negatively to too much light or your tank is still new enough that you're getting mini-cycles with the livestock additions and the occasional increase in ammonia/nitrite before it gets processed to nitrate may be ticking things off. Just to emphasize, these are wild guesses. [emoji16]

I don't think I'm qualified enough to make a true assessment on your tank, as I left the nano world 6 years ago. It seems like Manny and Bpb have been very helpful to you regarding specific advice for your system. I am in unfamiliar territory when it comes to medias such as chemipure or purigen. I just always throw caution out there with unnaturally raising or lowering any nutrients. I know I experimented with raising phosphates and nitrates in my own system and posted my results and the additives I used to achieve those results but I just caution others to do the same. I was doing it purely for the experimental curiosity and knew there were unknown risks involved. I was in no way condoning others to risk their tanks in the same manner so I just like to caution before doing so as we have no idea the side effects of dosing straight phosphate to a system. I will say that from the pictures, your tank looks normal and happy. Is the frogspawn the only unhappy resident? Are you getting any nuisance algae growth? What is your water change regiment? How often do you change your media? Is your sponge rinsed every 3-5 days? I always said it was 10x harder for me to run my old nanocube 12 gallon for the 5 years that I ran it than it is to run my 215 gallon. The smaller water volume is much less forgiving of missed water changes or inaccurate dosing. Kudos to all the nano sized tanks for their owner's diligent husbandry practices.

I am planning on removing my chaeto myself to reclaim my sump space for a designated frag system underneath. While nice for a refugium media, it made very little impact on nutrient levels in the tank mainly just from the shear lack of size. One ball of chaeto the size of a turkey isn't going to do much against the ample feedings my 20-odd fish are going to require in a 215-gal tank. If I had like a 400-gallon sump full of chaeto, then possibly so. Just a thought, why don't you do the same? Move a bunch of live rock to the skimmer chamber and put an eggcrate stand over the other rock in the 2nd chamber, throw a light over it, and start moving some frags into it. Just a thought.

Alright! New, expensive toys! I forgot to mention the 1st rule of the mentor program is that I get to open all new boxes of equipment for your tank and play with all of them first! [emoji12] Happy fishing by the way. I hope you catch that red coris wrasse!

I hope you mean 0.03 ppm of phosphate and honestly, I wouldn't dose it to that level, I'd just feed your tank more. If everything looks good, I wouldn't chase nutrient levels... you could end up crashing your tank. Okay, enough of the cautions! Sounds like you have it covered!

I'm stoked! Welcome to the club and I'll be following this build for sure!

What are you going to do with all that space in the 1st chamber now? I say throw the rock in there with the equipment and just have the chaeto in the 2nd chamber. That is if you're still running chaeto. Btw, the hands in the reflection creep me out. 1) Because I'm thoroughly confused how you took that picture with both hands down and 2) because they blend in so well that they look like they are actually in the tank... [emoji15] Glad you got the sump the way you want it now and I'm sure your skimmer thanks you.

Welcome!

I'll be around after 5pm today Madsalt if you want to grab the trap.

I think we've all learned that lesson personally once or twice in this hobby... siphons were personally invented to thwart saltwater hobbiests.

You have to know your parameters, to have good parameters. Sounds silly but most strive for a better tank but have no clue what any of their levels are. Also, everybody has an opinion, and there is a ton of information out there (and equally a ton of misinformation) on the hobby. If you have an idea of the type of tank you want, look for someone that has it and start asking questions. After browsing some of the national forums over the years, you just run into a lot of people who talk all day long, but their own personal tanks leave more to be desired. Preach it, teach it, and live it. Your tank is your resume. That's what defines their ability to absorb knowledge and also apply it. In my prior career, that's the difference between theory and application. There are plenty that can regurgitate information, look for those that can apply the techniques, their advice would be the one I heed to follow when first starting out. I was lead astray many times when I first started out until I learned that lesson. Can I see your tank? A good first question to anyone with advice to give. They may run an Sps tank when you want to run a zoa dominated tank, so their advice sometimes doesn't apply. They may be running a 5,000 gallon high tech tank, when you are running a low tech, natural pico... again, most of their advice may not apply.

A drop of 0.6 dKh over 5 days with what you have in there sounds about right. That's really barely anything but you only have a few calcifying corals in there right now. As a frame of reference, I roughly lose that much in 12-24 hrs in my tank... but mine is geared mainly towards calcifying corals and I have a giant clam. I'm pretty surprised at the amount of Mg drop over that time, if it was only in 5 days. I has been awhile since I have not run a CaRX, as it does help maintain my Mg levels, but my Mg always stays about the same and hardly ever dips. It's usually pretty stable in most systems which is why even BRS recommends daily dosing of alk and Ca and only monthly dosing of Mg. Your phosphate level is fine, I would not aim to lower it much more than that for now. I'd just keep running the GFO you have and start perhaps a monthly change of it, and maybe even use less than you were using before. Now that you have it at a good level, a maintenance regiment is only required, not the larger volume and aggressive replacement schedule as before. I'd be careful on the possibility of exposing your new coral to too much light too fast. LEDS have a reputation of looking darker than an equivalent MH setup when pushing the same amount of par. Basically, even though your tank looks a little shadier than my tank, it may be pushing way more par. Which red wrasse are you trying to get rid of? I have the trap whenever you want to pick it up. If I'm not home at the time, I can always leave it at the door.

I like Tim's method but I usually perform a little surgery when two are too close to each other on even shading another one. Otherwise, I get deformed plates or less growth to the shaded ones.

Just a fun point of discussion but it may also help others as well. What's your biggest "ah ha" moment in reefing?

Wait until I pull out the scalpel!

I usually cut mine with the bone cutters at the attachment point or pop them off with a small pair of forceps.

Oh no, I have fungia plate production competition! [emoji33] Following along as I may look into an led fixture for my frag section in my sump.

Day 1 of prazipro has begun in the treatment tank for treatment of intestinal worms and also external flukes. It is more of a prophylactic dose as I have not seen any signs of flukes or intestinal worms. It is also compatible with chloroquine phosphate so dosing both at once is not an issue. I will be dosing it for 6 days, doing a water change, and then dosing it a 2nd time after I have finished my CP treatment on the 4th of March. The large water change in between the prazipro treatments will help remove most of the CP from the QT and after the 2nd prazipro treatment, I will do another large water change and then add carbon to the system to remove all medications from the QT. That will put me 2 weeks away after all medicated treatment has stopped before I can return the fish to the system on the 25th of March. After discussion with Reburn, I've decided to not do the full QT for ich of 10 weeks and just do the 6 weeks for velvet. Ich has never been an issue in any of my tanks and having it in the system or not doesn't really worry me as my husbandry practices and the resultant health of the fish overcome it anyways. Plus I know, in some form or another, somehow it'll get back in the system in a drop of water or something else so why aim to have a perfectly sterile tank and worry excessively over trying to prevent it's entry into the system. For me, it's like trying to have a semiconductor factory of a home (you know, full body suits, dust decontamination chambers, etc) where I know I could never/nor want to deal with all the extra steps and stress of preventing routes of entry of ich into the system... again, a disease that has always been in all my systems but my fish population was always healthy enough to overcome it. I think the more pressing and pertinent scenario is to have the fish back in the display system where the water quality is much better than in the tub and the parameters are much more stable. My strategy to reintroducing the fish is to have all small fish reintroduced first, then the angels, then the wrasses, and finally the tangs. I will incrementally add each group over the period of days/weeks and allow for them to get acclimated, at the same time, allow the bacterial levels in the tank to readjust to the bioload of the fishes as each group is added. I may even dose some additional bacteria at this time to facilitate their increased numbers to compensate for all the "new" fish being added to the system. I have already jumpstarted my biopellets again in anticipation of the large nitrate increase once the fish are reintroduced and that should be fully coming online in the next 3-4 weeks as the bacteria culture is ramping up to full efficiency. It will coincide nicely with when it's time to start adding my fish back in. I'm looking forward to that day! [emoji106]

Hmmm, odd indeed!

Yeah, that is correct. I'd say 8 dKh would be a good level to aim for but was just curious if you had a level in mind already.

Did you recut all connections to John Guest fittings and make sure they were all straight? I still think it sounds like air is being pulled into one of the fittings.

Got a much bigger batch this time around of new saltwater I see. Any idea what your preferred alk level in the tank you want to run?

I'm pretty sure I know who does all the work now at RCA. [emoji12]

I'm pretty sure your hand was photoshopped Jake to look that good. Nobody's hands look that good! Great selection sir!