Bonsai Cube Mixed Reef Build

[thatsruff]

A closer look at my sump setup... Cords and tubes are still a bit of a mess. Once I finalize the ATO I will actually clean it all up.

Red: three drains. Purple: diy filter box - diy cut felt filter pads, carbon bag, blue mesh plastic filter pads. Yellow: formerly skimmer, now rubble, controller thermostat. Green: refugium, IPSF sand and wonder mud, rubble, power-head, cheato, light, heater. Blue: return, ATO drain.

 

[thatsruff]

I have been looking everywhere for a pink-streaked wrasse and finally got lucky with the liveaquaria email when in stock alert. Hopefully it will come in healthy and happy.

In other news the shy goby is less and less shy and a more and more eager eater. Still very shy though.

The pavona has its polyps back out, especially after lights out, and is coloring back up. Seems it is used to the goby now.

 

[thatsruff]

The snails are doing a pretty good job on the diatoms so far. I took out all the hermit crabs, I felt like they were bothering the corals. I am struggling a bit to keep phosphates consistent. Nitrates are pretty solid between 1.5 - 3, which is a bit low for my taste but phosphate has been jumpy.

It got down to 0.064 and then I fed a good amount of coral food because there were still no fish. I have been testing daily since:

08/18 - 0.598
08/19 - 0.089
08/20 - 0.113
08/21 - 0.037 - Fish in after this test.
08/22 - 0.156
08/23 - 0.043 - One drop of live phyto after this test.
08/24 - 0.309 - Added cheato in fuge after this test.

Hopefully I can continue to dial in the phosphates by just controlling the amount I feed. It seems that it is possible, I just need to find that sweet spot.

Alk continues to climb slowly as I have been adding 2.5ml of all for reef each evening. At 7.9 as of last night. If I am at or over 8 tonight I will stop adding and dial in consumption.

 

[thatsruff]

I got a bad reading on the Hannah phosphorus checker last night, read 1, or 0.003 phosphate.

I tested again, more carefully, and got a number that looks more in line, 0.279.

Now I wonder about all my old tests. I am going to have to be extra careful from now on and will look into a backup test kit.

Nitrate is in line at 3 and alk is at 8.

 

[jk_s124]

I got a bad reading on the Hannah phosphorus checker last night, read 1, or 0.003 phosphate.

I tested again, more carefully, and got a number that looks more in line, 0.279.

Now I wonder about all my old tests. I am going to have to be extra careful from now on and will look into a backup test kit.

Nitrate is in line at 3 and alk is at 8.

I know the Hannah checkers can be pretty sensitive to any variation in testing. I found this thread and the discussion goes over some common pitfalls with testing techniques using the Hannah checkers. They mainly refer to the Alk Hannah checker, but some of the tips are worth looking at. Especially Amps post halfway down the first page. I think testing variances can be misleading, especially while testing a lot. Hope this helps!

Hanna a reagents are horrible

Here's the deal. As I use the test kit and the reagent gets older my alk climbs. I test at least three times a week. This am I tested and got a 9.0 result. I opened a new reagent and re tested. 7.6. That's a huge difference!!!! If I need a tester to check my tester, then what good is having it????

www.reef2reef.com

 

[thatsruff]

I know the Hannah checkers can be pretty sensitive to any variation in testing. I found this thread and the discussion goes over some common pitfalls with testing techniques using the Hannah checkers. They mainly refer to the Alk Hannah checker, but some of the tips are worth looking at. Especially Amps post halfway down the first page. I think testing variances can be misleading, especially while testing a lot. Hope this helps!

Hanna a reagents are horrible

Here's the deal. As I use the test kit and the reagent gets older my alk climbs. I test at least three times a week. This am I tested and got a 9.0 result. I opened a new reagent and re tested. 7.6. That's a huge difference!!!! If I need a tester to check my tester, then what good is having it????

www.reef2reef.com

Thanks, that is very helpful. I thought that I was being just about as careful as I could, doing almost the exact procedure Amps talks about. But when I got the obviously off test I noticed a little lint, or a few tiny bubbles when I held the vials to the light. Just need to be a bit more thorough.

I also ordered the Tropic Marin Pro Phosphate test kit to see how the results compare. It looks similar to the Nyos nitrate test kit and I like that one a lot.

 

[thatsruff]

Got the pink-streaked wrasse in, it was supposed to get here by 10:30 but didn't get in until 5:30 which made me nervous about its condition. It is very cute.

It didn't seem to be doing well with the h2o2 bath so I pulled it after only a few minutes and put it into the observation tank.

It also seemed to be struggling in there at first. Eventually it seemed to perk up though and was up and swimming around. I am still a bit nervous but more optimistic. Hope it looks good in the morning.

Tested phosphate again. Got a 0.031 after being 0.279 two days prior. I tested again and got 0.018. I guess I will trust it until I get the Tropic Marin test kit to compare it against.

Alk consumed 0.5 dKH in two days. Dosed all for reef to bring it back up, I will use this as a baseline for now.

 

[thatsruff]

Went to check on it this morning and it came out to check on all the commotion, then swam off back to its hiding place. Whew, a big relief.

 

[thatsruff]

After reading a bit more, seems like I got fooled by the classic wrasse playing dead trick. It is happily out grazing on pods now.

Did a scrub down blow out then water change. Certainly into the uglies right now, it needed it.

Glued down the monti, it has been chucked in the sand a few times but is still showing growth around the edges.

I want to do the same with the pavona but the goby never leaves so I don't really want to take it out to cut the frag post off. My plan is to wait another week or two and pick up a birds nest or something similar. Then it will at least have somewhere else it would be comfortable running off to.

 

[thatsruff]

Got the Tropic Marin test kit in. It read at 0.025 while the Hanna read 0.021. I am going to switch over to that kit for now, I like it and think the Hanna is a bit of a pain. I will keep using the Hanna for alk.

I got a zero phosphate reading two days ago. That evening I fed a lot of food to the corals. Now today, without testing yesterday, it is back down to 0.025 already. I am going to start feeding the coral a smaller amount each evening when I dose all for reef. I am also working on setting up my automatic feeder to feed pellets a couple times during the day.

I certainly don't need to run a skimmer in this tank for now, I know that!

The blenny is a little fatty now, August 14:

August 29th:

 

[thatsruff]

Phone camera, portrait mode, yellow filter, with a couple of small tweaks on the phone editor:

 

[thatsruff]

I have dialed in I my phosphates by feeding phyto and coral food every other evening

But now my nitrates have bottomed out. I haven't been testing it as it was pretty consistently between 2 and 5.

I would really prefer not to use a chemical solution but I am not sure how else to approach bringing it up as it hasn't responded to feeding like the phosphates.

 

[thatsruff]

Picked up a few new corals. I wanted to get the clown goby somewhere to perch other than the pavona so I picked up some easy sticks: purple birds nest, a branching monti, and a not sure what it is yellow green acro.

Also got a new gold hammer and mushroom.

Algae is still around but not too bad, the snails are doing a good job of keeping it under control.

Still a bit nervous about the zero nitrates so I ordered some sodium nitrate and will very slowly start dosing that soon.

 

[thatsruff]

Happy about this one:

Growing:

Did a full round of testing:

pH: 8.3
dKH: 7.4
Nitrate: 0.25 (not zero but not 1, a guess)
Phosphate: 0.08
Calcium: 440
Magnesium: 1350
Potassium: 370

 

[thatsruff]

Well I finally got out the microscope and it looks like I have a case of Amphidinium dinos. Dinos for sure, couldn't ID perfectly. Most of the sand bed is rust colored, no snot. I don't have a camera attachment for the microscope yet so I can't post that.

Cheato is growing and there is other green algae growing on the rocks so it isn't too bad but I certainly want to knock it back.

Going to start dosing stump remover to bump the nitrates tomorrow as I don't have the sodium nitrate yet.

Will also get something to test and possibly dose silicates.

Siphoning the sand bed is on the docket tomorrow as well.

 

[thatsruff]

Forgot to add: phosphate - 0.1, nitrate - 0 after adding reef roids last night.

 

[thatsruff]

After only blue lights for half a day and adding a lot of phyto and reef roids last night it already looks a tiny bit better.

If my initial strategy doesn't work and things get out of control I will replace the sand bed with the sand bed in the observation tank.

 

[thatsruff]

Did a full siphon of the sand, pulling as little water as possible, probably about a gallon and a half or so.

I added stump remover to the new water. I made a 10 gram to 1 liter of rodi solution and added 10ml. If my reading is right that should raise nitrates about 2ppm. I will test the waste water and then re test the tank water in a little while to check.

 

[thatsruff]

Well the nutrients tested from the siphoned water were nitrate 5, phosphate 0.2.

Post adding stump remover: nitrate 0.25, phosphate 0.1.

I think that tells me that the dinos are using all the nutrients and that I should keep dosing.

 

[thatsruff]

Dino video at 10x, just my phone held up to the eye piece. Cant get it to focus at 40x for some reason.