Bubba's SPS Journey

[MrWheelock]

Since you are in FL I could send you one pretty cheap whenever you decide you would like one.

I'll send a PM, that would be SAWEEET those colors and growth are amazing!

 

[justingraham]

Bubba why add another piece of equipment to your system? Your colors are already the best around why try to change your nitrate level if (to me anyway) there is nothing wrong with your colors as is

 

[bubbaque]

Bubba why add another piece of equipment to your system? Your colors are already the best around why try to change your nitrate level if (to me anyway) there is nothing wrong with your colors as is

Simple answer, I am adding it out of fear. What is the limit where issues might happen? I know what has worked for me in the past so I am just trying to stick to that.

I do think my colors are good and the corals are healthy but they are slightly darker than they use to be. Some people may prefer them darker but I like it just a tad bit lighter. Here is an example of my WWC all star.

Top pic is lower nutrients while the bottom was with nitrate around 40-50 ppm. Both look good to me and there hasn't been an issue with nutrients high but I want to drop nitrates to around 2-5 ppm and see what happens to color then.

All star sep 26-2 by Bubba Rivas, on Flickr

 

[justingraham]

Like always when it comes to our choices on coral selection I disagree

I like the bottom pic I think it looks healthier now don’t get me wrong the top pic is nice but it looks like a zeovit tank coral to me
but ur coral is still the best I have ever gotten color wise (make sure not to tell ty that) so ur doing something right

Just wondering as to me (and u know how much I care about nitrate And phosphate I don’t ) it’s one more piece of equipment on my system to go wrong and cause a weird expensive problem.

 

[bubbaque]

Like always when it comes to our choices on coral selection I disagree

I like the bottom pic I think it looks healthier now don’t get me wrong the top pic is nice but it looks like a zeovit tank coral to me
but ur coral is still the best I have ever gotten color wise (make sure not to tell ty that) so ur doing something right

Just wondering as to me (and u know how much I care about nitrate And phosphate I don’t ) it’s one more piece of equipment on my system to go wrong and cause a weird expensive problem.

I am happy that you loved the color of the frags you received!

I can understand what you mean by zeovit look. I like it one notch darker than that, haha. I think it shows off the coral fluorescence a little better. Coral health wise there is no doubt corals are healthier with some nutrients in the water. You will get better polyp extension and faster growth. When I see the user refer to nutrients as poison it drives me insane.

Having a new piece of equipment like the sulfur reactor is always scary, especially since it needs dialed in at first. After doing a lot of reading about it, it seems pretty straight forward and hard to screw up so I’m going to give it a try. I loved using chaeto but I made my sump wrong and it kept getting sucked into my skimmer pump and clogging it so I removed the chaeto. If I can figure out how to keep it from happening I will give that a try again.

 

[bubbaque]

One more thing Justin. The all star is naturally a lighter color so when it darkens my other corals that are already dark get a little darker also.

Here is a pic I shared a couple times with adams space laser on the left and the all star on the right and you can see how much lighter the all star is naturally without the space laser having that zeovit look to it.

 

[SeaDweller]

I am happy that you loved the color of the frags you received!

I can understand what you mean by zeovit look. I like it one notch darker than that, haha. I think it shows off the coral fluorescence a little better. Coral health wise there is no doubt corals are healthier with some nutrients in the water. You will get better polyp extension and faster growth. When I see the user refer to nutrients as poison it drives me insane.

Having a new piece of equipment like the sulfur reactor is always scary, especially since it needs dialed in at first. After doing a lot of reading about it, it seems pretty straight forward and hard to screw up so I’m going to give it a try. I loved using chaeto but I made my sump wrong and it kept getting sucked into my skimmer pump and clogging it so I removed the chaeto. If I can figure out how to keep it from happening I will give that a try again.

****Dear Acro God... please don't let anything go wrong when he hooks up that reactor, please please please... I don't want to be the one to blame for that! I don't want all of R2R to hate me, I mean, most of them on here are OK, but don't ban me... Ok? We good? Acromen.****

 

[Fudsey]

Well my nitrates are well over 50 and I lost almost every acro I had (not that many though). Most were covered in GHA that smothered them out. Funny because I though with low PO4 I'd be OK but I guess that was not the case....

 

[happyhourhero]

Been a while since I’ve seen you post. Hope all is well!

 

[bubbaque]

Been a while since I’ve seen you post. Hope all is well!

Thanks for checking in. All is well, I just take a break from pics each year around Christmas. Pics will be back next week after Christmas passes. I got a new lens to try so I’m excited for that.

 

[Abhishek]

Interesting choice on the sulphur denitrator . Am sure you will keep the thread updated on your experience .

I had experience with them long back in 2002-3 and it was a little hard for me to dial in the flow at that point in time especially with flow. Too slow a flow and you risk dumping toxic hydrogen sulphide in tank . Thought Randy had a wonderful article on it . But again - its no different in tuning the flow than a CaRX , so should be pretty easy .

Mind if I ask you - why not look into methanol denitrators ? I have used the crude NatureReef when I used to care about nitrates and phosphates and what not and they ran pretty much amazingly . You can get any acrylic fabricator to build you an amazing one and it requires way less maintenance too .

I do have plans for one but not for an acropora system soon

 

[bubbaque]

Interesting choice on the sulphur denitrator . Am sure you will keep the thread updated on your experience .

I had experience with them long back in 2002-3 and it was a little hard for me to dial in the flow at that point in time especially with flow. Too slow a flow and you risk dumping toxic hydrogen sulphide in tank . Thought Randy had a wonderful article on it . But again - its no different in tuning the flow than a CaRX , so should be pretty easy .

Mind if I ask you - why not look into methanol denitrators ? I have used the crude NatureReef when I used to care about nitrates and phosphates and what not and they ran pretty much amazingly . You can get any acrylic fabricator to build you an amazing one and it requires way less maintenance too .

I do have plans for one but not for an acropora system soon

I don’t really worry about the hydrogen sulfide. It seems for it to get to that point the flow has to be almost non existent and then you get the rotten egg smell. Turn up the flow and it goes away. At the point when flow is that low then it’s not really dosing anything to the tank anyways.

Same thing can happen with a calcium reactor. If it clogs or flow gets too low the calcium reactor turns anoxic inside.

All equipment needs some sort of monitoring to make sure it’s working correctly. Whether you dose two part so the lines don’t get clogs and the same with kalkwasser. Once a week I clean the tip of the tube to get rid of the crusty part.

 

[Abhishek]

I don’t really worry about the hydrogen sulfide. It seems for it to get to that point the flow has to be almost non existent and then you get the rotten egg smell. Turn up the flow and it goes away. At the point when flow is that low then it’s not really dosing anything to the tank anyways.

Same thing can happen with a calcium reactor. If it clogs or flow gets too low the calcium reactor turns anoxic inside.

All equipment needs some sort of monitoring to make sure it’s working correctly. Whether you dose two part so the lines don’t get clogs and the same with kalkwasser. Once a week I clean the tip of the tube to get rid of the crusty part.

Sure ! If you want to keep up with the maintenance why not try it . It works for sure . I was merely stating my age old experience with them and found one more piece of equipment to maintain closely . Denitrators driven off methanol were much easier for me

 

[bubbaque]

Sure ! If you want to keep up with the maintenance why not try it . It works for sure . I was merely stating my age old experience with them and found one more piece of equipment to maintain closely . Denitrators driven off methanol were much easier for me

I appreciate you letting me know about the methanol Denitrator and if I researched that instead I may of went with it but at this point I have all the stuff for the sulfur Denitrator so I will give it a try. Lots of people have success with it and does seem pretty simple to run but I guess time will tell.

 

[SeaDweller]

Sure ! If you want to keep up with the maintenance why not try it . It works for sure . I was merely stating my age old experience with them and found one more piece of equipment to maintain closely . Denitrators driven off methanol were much easier for me

Randy also stated that the risk of H2S gas was far less of a risk when using a sulfur denitrator vs. a carbon based one, which I think methanol is. Honestly, they're not that difficult to dial in.

 

[Abhishek]

I appreciate you letting me know about the methanol Denitrator and if I researched that instead I may of went with it but at this point I have all the stuff for the sulfur Denitrator so I will give it a try. Lots of people have success with it and does seem pretty simple to run but I guess time will tell.

oh yeah am sure you will one it work ! I was just stating having experience with both .
Now let’s get back to acros
Enough of nitrate reduction discussion in a day for me . Makes my evil self to want to test my tank lol !

 

[SeaDweller]

oh yeah am sure you will one it work ! I was just stating having experience with both .
Now let’s get back to acros
Enough of nitrate reduction discussion in a day for me . Makes my evil self to want to test my tank lol !

Ab goes to check out his tank, finds NO3 at 100 ppm and busts out both reactors

 

[najer]

Y

Ab goes to check out his tank, finds NO3 at 100 ppm and busts out both reactors

You can test tank water?

 

[Abhishek]

Ab goes to check out his tank, finds NO3 at 100 ppm and busts out both reactors

If only I had any !!! Oh yeah I don’t even have test kits too for it . I cleaned everything I don’t use day to day as part of my fall cleaning .

One of my new year resolution of 2019 was to make reefing as hard for me as possible without relying on any numbers on how to keep my acros .

They die - it’s for their fault and unwillingness to evolve
They live - it’s their willingness to evolve and change

 

[lbacha]

I don’t really worry about the hydrogen sulfide. It seems for it to get to that point the flow has to be almost non existent and then you get the rotten egg smell. Turn up the flow and it goes away. At the point when flow is that low then it’s not really dosing anything to the tank anyways.

Same thing can happen with a calcium reactor. If it clogs or flow gets too low the calcium reactor turns anoxic inside.

All equipment needs some sort of monitoring to make sure it’s working correctly. Whether you dose two part so the lines don’t get clogs and the same with kalkwasser. Once a week I clean the tip of the tube to get rid of the crusty part.

Yeah I learned the hard way about not checking your kalk stirrer nozzle, took me a couple days and some water on the floor to figure out why my Alk was dropping. Now it’s part of my weekly checklist