Anirban's Aquaforest journey

Anirban · May 16, 2017

AF life source:

This is a interesting product. This exactly looks like mud (Ohhhh its actually mud). This possibly is most raw form of element, nutrient and microbe supplement you can get from ocean. I will really try to know its effect over my system. I added half dose ie. 1 scoop. I mixed it with a cup of tank water and then add this to high flow area. Now, this thing is pretty muddy

like a mud. So you just can not drop it in the tank as it will not get mixed so its better you mix it well in a cup of water and then add. I actually use my hand to mix it in the water. After adding this tank immediately became cloudy like hell...

But after an hour or so everything clears up and a nice clean looking tank is back. I will keep dosing it every week once and keep a note how it turns up. Also I generally measure the Alk, Ca and Mg regularly and they are pretty stable so I will know if there is any effect on them.

After adding the life source

After an hour:

john.m.cole3 · May 17, 2017

What about the calanus makes fish mad?

Anirban · May 17, 2017

john.m.cole3 said:
What about the calanus makes fish mad?

I first came to know about calanus from PE Calanus frozen. I started feeding it with PE mysis and the fishes just loved it. I still use them in my every day fish food which is a big mixture of lot of great quality frozen and dry food. The ingredient list is quite long and scary

. So, calanus is basically a zooplankton or copepod. These can be found in cold region of Atlantic ocean and its diet mainly consist of phytoplankton. Its very high in Protein, omega 3 fatty acid and antioxidants. The version Aquaforest is selling is a freeze dried version. I tried some yesterday and fish just loved it. It seems they just love those. My fishes include Anthias, hippo, clown and wrasse. Its good for their health too. I will try to post a video later today.

john.m.cole3 · May 17, 2017

Anirban said:
I first came to know about calanus from PE Calanus frozen. I started feeding it with PE mysis and the fishes just loved it. I still use them in my every day fish food which is a big mixture of lot of great quality frozen and dry food. The ingredient list is quite long and scary. So, calanus is basically a zooplankton or copepod. These can be found in cold region of Atlantic ocean and its diet mainly consist of phytoplankton. Its very high in Protein, omega 3 fatty acid and antioxidants. The version Aquaforest is selling is a freeze dried version. I tried some yesterday and fish just loved it. It seems they just love those. My fishes include Anthias, hippo, clown and wrasse. Its good for their health too. I will try to post a video later today.

Cool, that would be awesome. Sounds like I need to get ahold of some.

Anirban · May 17, 2017

Here is the video for calanus feeding.....

Anirban · Jul 28, 2017

Its been a long time I updated the thread. Today i was looking at the tank and thought its really recovered well since January. So, its time for some photo dump. The parameters are quite stable now and aquaforest components dosing through a GHL doser really keeping the needs quite satisfied.

To start with a FTS

Anirban · Jul 28, 2017

Now I acquired quite a few bunch of nice LPS including torch and Favia. Somehow from my reefing start days I am quite attached to Favias. I like how colourful they are and yet quite less demanding.

Anirban · Jul 28, 2017

Now, time for some sticks......

Anirban · Jul 28, 2017

Finally to finish the photo dump...

My darling BTA and a nice monti...

jsker · Jul 28, 2017

Wow the DT has really recovered well.

Anirban · Jul 28, 2017

Thanks man, yes. Took some time to re-establish the nutrient levels but its there now. By the way I got rid of GFO and the system is balancing PO4 by its own quite well. One less reactor to run....lazy me...

HolisticBear · Jul 28, 2017

Very cool torch and sticks!

Anirban · Jul 28, 2017

MrMichael said:
Very cool torch and sticks!

Thanks, been quite a journey from the start and restart. But going strong. I like to see them under white light. To me if they look nice under white then they will always look better under blue. But the truth is my photography skills sucks. These are all mobile pictures.

Anirban · Aug 1, 2017

Time for some mind boggling update and food for thought. As a reefer we always talk about how parameters can affect outcome of our small ocean and how we can control all these parameters by adding different kinds of chemicals.But somehow or other natural evolution always surprises me. My todays post is divided into 2 different sections.

The first section is related to newly released AF test kits. Recently I got 3 of the big parameters test kits from them. So, I decided to place them against my old tested and reliable Hanna and saliferts kits. They need to prove themselves before I put my trust on them. I measured all three major parameters with them and the results were surprising.

Alk- dkH 7.78 (Hanna) / 7.7 (AF Alk)
Ca- 420 ppm (Salifert) / 420 ppm (AF Ca)
Mg- 1260 ppm (Salifert) / 1260 ppm (AF Mg)

They were bang on target with all 3. Best thing was alk. Generally I don't trust anything else other than my Hanna and keep checking my Hanna with calibrated solutions. For the first time I saw kit which is so close and accurate to hanna. I am really happy to see this as now I have one back up method to verify Hanna. The test kits are quite easy to use with clear colour change and final titration point and they come with clear instructions.

Now , the second and interesting part....

I stop testing my NO3 and PO4 couple of months back when I was rebooting the tank as they were moving a lot. I was suffering from a bit of diatom and cyano. Then last time I checked the NO3 was at 2-4ppm and PO4 was 0.03. I stopped my GFO reactor and no longer runs it. Over the last 2 months period my system came out of all these ugly thing by its own and now runs almost algae free. There are a bit green dust like deposits on the glass if I don't clean it for 3-4 days. Other than that nothing on rock or anywhere else. So, today I thought lets check it as my acros and other corals are at full growth mode. They are showing nice growth and colour both. I tested the PO4 with Hanna and No3 with Red sea. To my surprise the PO4 was 0.2ppm and No3 was over 40ppm. I was shocked

;Wacky;Wacky;Wacky;Wacky. I retested them and still same. Now I have no idea how with so high nutrient level the tank is running so clean with so much growth and colour. For reference you can see the pictures I posted above. I don't want to believe that but I will recheck them again tomorrow and possibly try to know how this happened. I wish to document how with this high NO3 level my tank runs so clean. I was running KNO3 dosing to keep up the NO3 levels but now I need to stop that too. I also got rid of the filter socks but now I will bring them back too. But I will change one at a time and observe the system reaction. Let the journey begins.....

Anirban · Oct 1, 2017

Its been 2 months since I last updated....

I got a bad infestation with aiptasia and nothing worked including berghias. They were just too many of those. So, I took a major step and decided to throw away all old rocks....yes each single piece of them and restart. I ordered some branch rock from BRS and man they sent me exactly what I want. Generally as a person I hate piles of rock in the tank and try to remain minimalist when it comes to aquascape. But minimalist can not have a lot of sticks. This time I was more experimentalist and tried completely new look with those branch rocks. With help of some Aquaforest stone fix I made my structure.
I transferred the whole system a month back and restarted the whole system. There was no issue with restarting and its moving smooth.
My current parameters are,

Alk-7 dkH
Ca-420ppm
Mg-1320ppm
K-380ppm
pH-7.9-8.3
PO4-0.01ppm
NO3-0.75-1 ppm

Anirban · Oct 1, 2017

Few acros.....

jsker · Oct 1, 2017

Anirban said:
Its been 2 months since I last updated....
I got a bad infestation with aiptasia and nothing worked including berghias. They were just too many of those. So, I took a major step and decided to throw away all old rocks....yes each single piece of them and restart. I ordered some branch rock from BRS and man they sent me exactly what I want. Generally as a person I hate piles of rock in the tank and try to remain minimalist when it comes to aquascape. But minimalist can not have a lot of sticks. This time I was more experimentalist and tried completely new look with those branch rocks. With help of some Aquaforest stone fix I made my structure.
I transferred the whole system a month back and restarted the whole system. There was no issue with restarting and its moving smooth.
My current parameters are,

Alk-7 dkH
Ca-420ppm
Mg-1320ppm
K-380ppm
pH-7.9-8.3
PO4-0.01ppm
NO3-0.75-1 ppm