FarmerTy

More pics of the new addition: He was roaming the tank and getting more and more brave. He was testing the open waters and also swimming towards the front of the tank, though in limited fashion. He didn't eat any more mysis today but snacked on a couple pieces of the angel/butterfly mix frozen food I put in there. I keep calling him a "he" as I believe I have a male. They supposedly have longer spines coming from the bottom of their operculums. No signs of diseases yet and he looks like he's been soliciting the cleaner shrimp for a good cleaning now and then.

Yeah, in Apex Fusion, you can basically input results from your tests and it will graph them for you.

Honestly, I would never chase pH for any reason unless it's outside of 7.8-8.4. The other thing is I wouldn't recommend a buffer to fix any problem in a saltwater tank. You can get away with that in a freshwater system but in saltwater, when you added the buffer, the buffer probably affected your alk levels, which caused your SPS to die off. If regular water changes worked well for you in the past, I'd stick with what works. As you continue to add SPS, you'll need to at least monitor your alk levels and make sure your water changes are keeping up with the usage of alk by the SPS. If at the point it isn't, then I'd look into additional supplementation of it.

Sorry for the losses! What exactly did you do to try to increase your ph?

Madsalt has it covered. Yes, it's through Fusion. Don't forget to be extra nerdy and add the buttons to your control panel.

In my defense, I usually test every 2 weeks but I've been calibrating my reactor since all my SPS are happy now and the growth rates are starting to skyrocket! I almost think I have the dosing rate set again and will be going back to weekly and biweekly testing again once it nomalizes.

Oh man, you broke reefer code of quantifying someone else's expenses Richard! You know we all swore to never add up our actual expenses for the hobby. What gets spent on the tank stays with the tank!

I'm with Jim! I'll keep testing myself if it means I don't have to disclose my coral spending habits!

Dude, can I sign my wife up for your water testing academy?

The sad part is the realization that I have tested my alk 22 times since the beginning of the year. It's only February 6th!!!

Well, this just happened. Nothing too exciting but I guess from a parameters standpoint, that's a good thing.

The Wardlaw 120 is looking for a reboot after a crash over the holidays that set him back. He has agreed to be part of the mentor program as we first try to diagnose what happened and how to avoid it in the future. He already knows about the grueling testing regiment to come, the hours of posting pictures of his tank, the required video updates with crazy music, and the poking and prodding that will ensue on his tank and has willingly signed on for the program. I'll let Wardlaw speak for himself to catch us up on his tank up to that point, what happened during the crash, and then how he wants to proceed forward with his ideal goals for the tank he would like to have.

I like both ideas! I'll see how it plays out and if I'm getting clogging issues, my first step will be wetter skimmate. If that doesn't do it, it's time to get handy with tubing/adaptors!

Thanks bud. I'm not sure yet in application as it hasn't gotten high enough to start spilling over yet into the reservoir bucket. I think the diameter is 1/4" ID for the tubing but I had the thought as well about chunks getting stuck in it when I first installed it. I guess I'll see and report back. I may need to drill it out and go with a larger diameter tube like you mentioned.

It was already eating mysis by the time I got it into the tank after 3 hours of acclimation. Video of his release into the tank: Video of him making himself at home: Thanks for the awesome specimen Jake and thank you to your crew too!

Thanks again to Jake and his awesome crew for this amazing specimen! BTW, it is the red sea variety with the more orange body.

Look who decided to join the party! Video of his release into the tank: Video of him making himself at home: He's already eaten some mysis shrimp and looks to be in great health. Let's hope the next two weeks are good to him in the tank all by himself.

Cute! I would have accepted Charley Manta Claire. [emoji6] Congratulations!

I agree with designer fish but still see no harm in buying hybrids or having one. Their variation may or may not survive in nature or in our tanks or even have the ability to reproduce but I don't see the harm in owning one. You're not supporting any bad industry practices by owning one either. Just my 2 cents but never saw any harm in hybrids other than as you mentioned, possible bodily defects but those won't get passed along as most saltwater ornamental fish are not bred by hobbiests.

I've been slowing adding my readings to it the last week. Very excited about this option as I have data going back to 2008. :-)

I understand designer fish but hybrids are natural. Why the sadness with hybrids? Heck half of our current fish we stock probably resulted from hybrids or habitat isolation of a certain species.

The controller will definitely help with removing it as one of your 100 problems. For the other 99, you're on your own! But we all know we create most of our problems when it comes to our tanks anyways.

Sorry for the sps troubles bud... you know all us sps keepers feel your pain.

I meant frags from other systems that are LED to his Manny but thanks for the clarification.

I'd personally let it get back down to their comfort range for the alk as long as it's not dropping too fast. I'd also stop any additional dosing, feeding, and get back to the basics before there were issues. You've kept SPS long enough to know that what you're really seeing now is the delayed effect of the alk spike prior so I'll only mention for others that are reading along. Another thing not often looked at is the light shock from going from LEDs and predominantly lit 20k tanks to your 10k lighting. When I ran a 10k frag setup, I'd see similar issues of some frags not acclimating well to the change of spectrum which is why I stopped running 10k in my frag system. One question, are Sam's frags you just got affected?