Cycled123 Nano to 180g

[cycled123]

That must have been fun hosting the meeting. Sounds like you were surprised by the PAR results as I bet many folks are. So nice to know where one is.

We used the par meter when first setting up the tank and I seem to remember around 250 but that was without screens. At the time that was fine for what we had. I will be honest I have never really liked "sticks" but my husband does. I will admit I love the colors though. I am definitely a mixed reef fan

 

[cycled123]

-Wow this month has flew by. We got another orphek V4 compact and a gold derasa clam for Christmas. I will have to borrow the clubs PAR meter to see where we are at. We positioned the new light right next to the other over the main rock structure. So we have 2 lights on one side of the brace and one on the other.
- My karate kid acro lost tissue at the tips. We are now slowly adjusting alk down from 10.5 to 9.5. Looking at possibly switching salts to something with lower alk. We still have 3 boxes of reef crystals left though. I have also been having to add magnesium weekly just to maintain 1300. I would like to see 1350+. I do not know what is consuming the magnesium unless cyano does. We are currently having a major cyano outbreak now that our biopelets are kicking in. Nitrates however are slowly starting to fall.
-We have also bumped up flow to 50% max on oceanic setting on the gyres. Its a hard balance of heavy flow for the acros and medium for lps. Also discovered the time was set wrong and we had the most flow at night. I'm not exactly sure for how long the time has been wrong on the gyres. We lost internet for several hours a few weeks ago which caused the apex to lose connection and somethings went a little haywire. We control the gyres with the maxpect controller but have it plugged into the EB8 so thinking it must have lost power. It kept the oceanic setting though so my other theory is the cat might have stepped on it and somehow changed the time. We keep the gyre controller on the top of our control cabinet because it gets extremely hot when inside the cabinet.
- The gold midas blenny is picking on our zebra barred dartfish so they are always in hiding We were thinking of getting more dartfish but I don't know if that will help or hurt the problem or if they all will just continue to hide.
-Got a Bellus angelfish yesterday but I don't know if she is going to make it. Opened the shipping bag and she started gasping for air at the surface. Got her out quickly but she was continuing to gasp for air at the surface 4hrs later while in QT. I don't know what I am going to find in the morning.
-On a personal note I accepted a new daytime position at work so in 2 weeks no more middle of the night posting, lol.

 

[cycled123]

It has been a busy transition at work and sports with the kids have kept me off reef2reef. Tank is trucking along. We attended a swap mid January and bought more SPS. Also ordered more from divers den this week. Everything is growing Duncans, frogspawn and hammer don't seem to like the lower alk (9.1) and/or lower nitrates but everything else is hanging in there. We have upped our dosing considerably since adding all the sps. We are currently having to adjust almost daily. We lost our clam a week after getting it. Not sure what happened but it just disintegrated in a matter of hours. Looked good at breakfast gone by dinner. We may try again with a larger one. I have attached a video update below. Sorry about changing the orientation a few times. Didn't even realize I was doing it lol.

 

[cycled123]

Oh man It's been a loooooooong time! Busy is an understatement plus internet problems and computer issues have kept me mostly in the dark. Tank is not good (busy remember? lol) Started loosing SPS to red bugs in May. Cyano outbreak in July treated with chemiclean. Cyano gone but replaced by hair algae. Still battling but taking it slow. Dosing Dr. Tim's waste away and manual removal. In the last month ephillia and zoas have taken a hit. My strategy right now is to slow down and focus on building natural defenses and stable parameters.
Fish are doing great except Quoyi parrotfish. We lost our pretty boy just about at the year mark. He was eating like a pig, very social always at the front of tank. One night went to feed and couldn't find him. Next day he was dead. Tried another got through quarantine but never really ate much and hid all the time. Died a month after introducing to DT. We are not going to try another. We have several large fish so are just going to focus on smaller for now. We are very nearly stocked. We have a group of anthias in QT currently and are thinking of getting a smaller wrasse.
Santa brought an Apex EL and Trident for Christmas I'm a little intimidated about setting it up. I started a thread if anyone has any tips. https://www.reef2reef.com/posts/6765436/
Discovered are turbotwist UV sterilizer is toast. I noticed the other day no blue glow in sump. Went to change the bulb and chamber was all full of water. Very disappointed it is just over a year old so not under warranty. I'm debating if I'm going to order another of this type or go something different. The nice thing about the twist is it fit perfectly across our sump. Anything larger we would not be able to have under stand and over sump in case of leaks.
I know there is a lot more that has happened over the months since last post but I'm blanking out now. I will try to update more often as long as computer cooperates. Viruses Suck!