Mark's 150 gallon SPS heavy reef

bubbaque · Feb 23, 2018

codydemmel4 said:
Where do you dose your PhosphateRx?

Also, when you turn off your return pump to do water changes or for any reason. Have you noticed white bacteria slime coming out? I have noticed it lately and think it is from the NOPOX, I am not worried as it is completely gone within 1 hour usually but just strange. Sure doesnt seem to effect my SPS at all either.

Is it actually slime your getting? When I turn off my pump and turn it back on I have white stuff come out but it's in like a clump. I don't dose any carbon source.

CoralWealth · Feb 23, 2018

bubbaque said:
Is it actually slime your getting? When I turn off my pump and turn it back on I have white stuff come out but it's in like a clump. I don't dose any carbon source.

I touched some of it just to see what it felt like and it was definitely slimy, however it is in clumps too so it may be the same thing. There are a couple other SPS guys on the other forum that I have messaged that say they get the same thing too. But they all carbon dose in some form.

markalot · Feb 23, 2018

codydemmel4 said:
Where do you dose your PhosphateRx?

Also, when you turn off your return pump to do water changes or for any reason. Have you noticed white bacteria slime coming out? I have noticed it lately and think it is from the NOPOX, I am not worried as it is completely gone within 1 hour usually but just strange. Sure doesnt seem to effect my SPS at all either.

Hi Cody,

yea, white slime before and after NOPOX. Foxface loves the stuff, no one else touches it. When I wasn't using NOPOX I still had the white stuff come out, but less.

I dose PhosphateRx in the first chamber, prior to the skimmer. No filter sock or anything else is used so I assume some must be getting into the display.

markalot · Feb 23, 2018

To took some macros, nothing spectacular here, I'm out of practice and always limited on time. These are hold against the glass shots rather than tripod.

choss · Mar 6, 2018

Mark - I just read your thread start to finish. Amazing tank. Happy i found this thread.

markalot · Mar 9, 2018

choss said:
Mark - I just read your thread start to finish. Amazing tank. Happy i found this thread.

Hi Choss, thanks for the nice words!

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I backed off the PhosphateRx and started dosing a couple of drops of CaNO3 daily about 2 weeks ago and colors are improving, slowly. I also made the switch from C-Balance at $50 a month to BRS 2-part (pre sized cause I'm lazy) at $12 a month. Yay for me to finally figure out that both were the same potency so switching was painless. KH is a little low still at 6.5 because I was more concerned about an overdose during the switch and backed off on the dosing a bit. I hope to take some top downs this weekend to judge the progress. The Red Robin actually looks red in a few places, which would be an amazing feat for this tank.

markalot · Mar 19, 2018

Hi all,

so about a month ago, after the super low PO4 and NO3 testing I changed my routine a bit. 1 drop PhosphateRx every other day, 2 drops CaNO3 (unknown potency) daily. The Katropora acro turns nitrates into crazy intense colors, regardless of PAR. I only have a 50mm equiv lens at the moment so some of these are annoyingly close up.

A frag, out of focus on the left, of Katropora in about 100 PAR is putting on a show as well.

Red Robin, actually red for a change.

I've worked for almost 2 years on this one. Under Radiums it has pink tips but I crashed this tank days after getting a frag of this coral. I was able to save a small piece and it's been ever so slowly growing and coloring up.

Pretty from the top.

The only frag I've added to this tank in the last year. Removed from plug, triple Bayer dipped and inspected with bright lights and and a magnifying glass. I was still nervous, but it appears I did not introduce any pests. It's not what I wanted still a pretty acro. Appears to be what some call a blue slimer? Tips are blue fading to white lower down the branch, and it's a very fast grower.

I moved the Lokani on top of the peach dragon where both are doing quite well. It approves of the extra PAR.

Even my Sarmentosa, another survivor of the crash, is finally growing after 1.5 years.

This unknown was being shaded and attacked by both the slimer and purple stylo. It was red.

Sold to me as a Hawkins echinata, I think it's too green to be a Hawkins.

And my Palmer's blue, which still refuses to color up, but at least it's growing.

markalot · Mar 19, 2018

All is not perfect, of course. The big red and yellow acro near the center of the tank started to decline a month ago when PO4 and NO3 were so low. It's behaving like an SSC, which will up and die at random in my tank, so I expect the worst but hope for the best. Red color is intense, more intense with the added nitrates, but yellow continues to slowly fade to blue and skin is tight. Little to no polyp extension at night, it's really hurting. I blew any detritus off with a turkey baster and re-aimed a couple of pumps to try and increase flow over it. I'm not sure there's anything that can be done.

It lost one of the lower branches 2 days ago.

From the top you can see how stressed it is. Most of the blue should be yellow.

It was under attack by two corals and I should have cut them away sooner.

Ah well, let's end on a better note.

Not sure how to take a picture of the slimer, there's just so much of it.

Hairy horrida on the left. Skin is a nice light blue, but the polyps normally hide it. Top down was useless, all polyps.

Chrisfish · Mar 19, 2018

Absolutely beautiful corals

bubbaque · Mar 19, 2018

Mark, have you thought about just letting nutrients go where they may and see what happens?

markalot · Mar 19, 2018

Chrisfish said:
Absolutely beautiful corals

Thanks.

bubbaque said:
Mark, have you thought about just letting nutrients go where they may and see what happens?

I have but I feel like I did that the first go around and once they got out of control it was hard to reduce without damaging the acros. This time it's just me being dumb, I wanted to get both nutrients lower to see if I could halt Xenia spread without harming the acros. I failed, and Xenia didn't even notice. Dumb move. That and I let KH bottom out a few times because the acro growth did increase with reduced nutrients, but colors faded as well.

Still, solid advice.

I also have a matrix rector in here that reduces nitrates. My first go around nitrates topped out at 20 and the Katropora had colors even more intense than it does now. THis reactor controls Nitrates quite well so I really should only be concerned with PO4 ... and not that concerned.

Here's a very old picture when the Katropora was a baby and I did nothing ton control nutrients. It's still on that same rock.

Look at the bubble algae.

I swear the intensity of the purple tips matches the salifert nitrate test. If barely any color then the Katropora is mostly green.

bubbaque · Mar 19, 2018

I guess that leads to my next question,lol. Whenever the nutrients were getting so high they were hard to control. Did you see any negative with them so high?

markalot · Mar 19, 2018

bubbaque said:
I guess that leads to my next question,lol. Whenever the nutrients were getting so high they were hard to control. Did you see any negative with them so high?

Not sure, I was still fairly new at the game then. It was only when I switched to the matrix reactor and PhosphateRx drops to control PO4 that I had success, which is continuing today. I know beautiful SPS tanks, better than mine, can run at high nutrient levels. Some acros will fail to color, others will color better.

shred5 · Mar 19, 2018

markalot said:
And my Palmer's blue, which still refuses to color up, but at least it's growing.

It looks better like this...

markalot · Mar 20, 2018

Most difficult coral to keep alive?

Why won't the pretty ones spread?

markalot · Mar 27, 2018

I messed around with NOPOX and PhosphateRx dosing to decrease nutrients and am paying the price. On the one hadn my coral colors are some of the best they've ever been, but first the SSC started to lose color and now my Lokani is half dead. I attribute both to me dropping PO4 too low (2ppb on the hanna ULR). Don't mess with stability!

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EDIT (months later): This was a very low calcium issue. My best guess is that NOPOX did not cause this but rather increased Alk usage which I corrected by increasing dosing of both parts. Due to a doser issue (the calcium doser motor slowed down and then started to fail) and me being stupid and not testing calcium the increased dosing of both parts led to an even greater error and calcium, at this point, was below 300! All this because I was too lazy to do a 3 minute test. I only noticed it when the error was so great that KH part ran out well before the calcium part. It literally took a gallon of calcium to get levels back into range. Reading the posts below I neglected to mention it, or didn't figure it out until after messing around with the dosing schedule. It's amazing anything survived, frankly.

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2 frags died but one has browned and looks to be hanging on.

The SSC is unhappy but no further losses.

Stability is key, every time I forget I pay the price. The living part of the Lokani is starting to brown out, which is a positive sign. Hopefully it can hang on.

hatfielj · Mar 27, 2018

Sucks to hear about your troubles. That red/yellow acro is gorgeous. Also, lokanis are some of the most sensitive acros in the hobby unfortunately. I've never been able to keep one going long term. I'm hoping with my current tank I will, but this just goes to show how easy they are to kill.

markalot · Mar 27, 2018

hatfielj said:
Sucks to hear about your troubles. That red/yellow acro is gorgeous. Also, lokanis are some of the most sensitive acros in the hobby unfortunately. I've never been able to keep one going long term. I'm hoping with my current tank I will, but this just goes to show how easy they are to kill.

So that's the thing, this Lokani was in an abandoned tank at an out of business LFS. Tank was in horrible shape and it was in a corner with barely enough light to survive. The new owner measured PO4 and it was way up on the Hanna regular meter, .3 something. I grabbed it and nursed it back to health only to crash my tank ... but the Lokani grew durign the entire crash. Even the slimer melted down, but not this Lokani. My guess is that the Lokani is much more sensitive to low PO4 than it is to KH swings. I starved the poor thing and it was slowly being shaded by corals above it. While starved I moved it to a brighter location. <- definition of stupid.

Hopefully I can save a part of it and grow it back.