FarmerTy

Got it. PMed back.

Woohoo! I'd like to cash the 10 points for one of those fancy robot snails please! [emoji16]

I bet you order your In N Out Burger animal style too Victoly!

I believe two people on the board use the Cadlights version and like it. http://www.cadlights.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=213 I'll let them chime in on their personal experiences with them. Too bad this forum doesn't have a tag option.

You obviously haven't perfected the art of pulling the bottom rock really quickly and leaving the structure standing. I've practiced over many years with a table full of dishes and tablecloth underneath before I attempted my first bottom rock grab. The trick is to close your eyes and go fast! Captain Obvious Alert: I'm joking... sorry, nobody has invented the sarcasm button yet. All good advice from Sascha!

Agreed!

Haha, I guess I didn't think about that. Good catch on the flame angel minding his own business.

I'd try to jump on the Neptune forums and explaining your issue.

Did someone say clams for dinner?

Good points fellas. Let's see if they follow suit with perhaps different standards and also intervals between the sample submittals. I'll work with what I got for now. That's pretty lowly business practices but maybe that's the norm in Germany? Not saying that Germany has lowly business practices but perhaps there are different business norms over there that we may see as hostile here.

Did you get a free BRS mad scientist lab coat with your purchase? It's sad but I could tell exactly what you ordered from the picture alone without any of the labels. [emoji58] I need to get another hobby! So, preliminarily, I know that Wardlaw, after adding half the amount of muriatic acid to the new saltwater, was able to get it down to 7.2 dKh from 9dKh. I was hoping to get 6 dKh but maybe I didn't carry the 1 or something. I'm pretty sure it was Wardlaw's fault by measuring the 13 mL incorrectly or estimating the 35 gallon volume incorrectly... you know... since I'm the mentor and I'm always right. [emoji5] Surely it wasn't me! [emoji16] Anyhoo, we know now that 13mL of muriatic acid will lower his mixing bucket of new saltwater down 1.8 dKh. I say let's just aim for 5 dKh for the new saltwater and call it a day... so add roughly 16 ml of muriatic to the new saltwater, aerate it for a little bit, retest to confirm, and then do your water change. He also informed me that he tested his tank water and it's currently sitting at 15.3 dKh. We can see after the water change what your resultant alk level is after swapping 35 gallons of 5 dKh water for 15.3 dKh. I'm sure that's just a simple calculation but I cap myself at one calculation per week per mentor thread. [emoji4]

You can take your rocks out of the water and drill them and place them back into the water. As long as you are quick about it, you'll get minimal dieoff. No underwater drill needed. For mushrooms, fans, and worms, I wouldn't worry about them much. They will relocate if needed themselves. For aquascaping, I do something similar to Gig'em, using the live rock and dry rock throughout the tank. In the long run, you won't be able to tell which is which anyways. Just look online at different aquascapes and borrow from your favorites. The main thing is to make sure it's stable and doesn't interrupt your flow too much.

I know a lot of people have used the BRS dosers with success. I know Jaebo released a cheap dosing unit but you might want to research more on its build quality and how well its been holding up for people.

Triton IS the pinto as far as laboratory tests are concerned. Most accredited labs will charge you $25-50 for one analyte, Triton will give you 33 for that price. Granted most of the results are going to be inaccurate but at least a majority are precise. Don't get me wrong, I don't consider this a pro-Triton or a anti-Triton debate, I'm purely aiming to see what usable data I can mine from the apparent rubbish of data. If there is precision in the data, than I honestly don't care if you tell me my calcium is 5,000,000 ppm. As long as everytime I submit my sample with my 420 ppm of calcium, you always tell me it's 5,000,000 ppm... then I just correct it using a correction factor and call it a day. I don't want to jump to conclusions yet as mentioned before, I'd feel more secure in correction factors I derived from reefs.net's article if this test was also reproduced with multiple days involved to account for daily calibration discrepencies and possibly a couple other control test variables that I currently can't think of right now. I just can't honestly look at the data in front of me and say that there is NO usable data. There is to me at least. It may not be the golden ticket all of us reefers were wanting with precision laboratory results for our saltwater for a reasonable price but surely with the results that reefs.net produced that there is at least some usable data to be mined from the Triton results. Obviously, use at your own risk. For me, I won't be basing any dosing or corrective action on the results from my Triton test but I will be submitting an annual sample to track trends. For me, it's ideal at least because I don't do water changes so I can see what my current regiment of calcium reactors, biopellet reactors, GAC, chaeto, amino acid additions, Ceramico block, and feedings add to/remove from my system annually. It also gives me a good fingerprint in time so that if my tank crashes in 2018, I can look back at 2016, when my tank was humming along perfectly and looking it's best and see if I notice any discrepencies in concentrations that could allude as to what happened. Oh, when my Al was at 5,000,000 ppm in 2016 and then it shot up to 6,000,000 ppm in 2017, and that's when I started noticing problems... you get my overly facetious point. [emoji16] I don't know much about their supplements or corrective products but if people are actually basing their decisions on the Triton results and using their products to "cure it", then I worry about how those miracle solutions are going to really affect people's tanks. For everyone's sake, I hope it's just bottled NSW with a fancy label. [emoji4]

I'll take Triton's lack of accuracy over API. That's not based on anything but it was fun to say!

That one my friend hit my funny bone for some reason! [emoji23]

I'm using the results of the blind standard test as my correction factor for now. The precision is good enough for me for a ballpark number for most elements and I trashed the results for the one's that were not very precise. For accuracy, like I mentioned, I'm using it roughly as a correction factor for now. I'd feel more secure in doing that if there were other samples submitted on different days to test the variances on daily calibration but I'll work with what I got. The goal was to get a baseline reference annually for my parameters. If over time, perhaps it could be proven how accurate the results can be or not but the goal was precision. I just want to know a snapshot of what my levels are at X time and use that as a reference if my tank ever crashes to see what element was off and may have caused it. So, the accuracy isn't as important to me as long as the precision is there. And besides a couple of elements, the precision seemed well enough for me to trust for the time being. It's also the main reason I didn't do anything about my results. After discussion with Victoly a while back, I could be skeptic about the accuracy due to the limitations he informed me about but my hope was precision would be there. With the initial batch of results, I was interested in what they got as concentrations but wasn't planning on basing any decisions for dosing on those numbers. I'd have to look back at my numbers I tested with my own test kits prior to shipping off my sample to Triton but some of the applied correction factors are putting the results in more of the expected range I was anticipating before I shipped out the sample to be tested. I like them explaining the science behind the ICP... I was always curious but not enough to look it up myself.

I like the idea of carbon dosing to lower your nutrient levels. If it were me, I'd invest in a recirculating type biopellet reactor. They are about the same price or maybe even cheaper than the one you linked. That will allow you to keep the flow fast enough that the pellets always tumble but can control the output into the tank separately. With normal biopellet reactors, to lower the output, you have to lower the flow, which causes the pellets to tumble less, reducing their efficiency and it might also cause them to clump up, which is not what you want. Otherwise, good luck!

Maybe let them nibble the finger a bit? I can't wait until we are able to buy limpet bits for drilling glass.

Victoly makes a great point, rule of thumb recommendations of fish stock by inch of fish has such variation that I would not generally use it as an indicator. I could have a 215 bucket of water with no filtration versus my 215 gallon techied out tank and there's going to be a HUGE difference in my stocking capacity between the two. I use an obviously unfair comparison but just wanted to emphasize the point that it depends on your system.

You looking to have a hazy front glass view?

Oh man! This looks like some good reading. Thanks Victoly! Is it wrong to get excited about lab data?

Love/hate relationship with data... I've been there my friend.

Judging by the attainable max size of 16", I'd say probably not a bad idea if you don't intend to upgrade anytime soon. At least it'll alleviate some of your alk demands.

If possible, I'd superglue the bottom edges of the SPS that are STN'ing. It may help to slow down or halt the loss of tissue but the main issue of fluctuating alk values will need to be remedied to make it entirely stop.