New 305 Gallon Build

[Sdot]

Tank looks great.

Since you're local, have you looked into the Reef Moonshiners group on Facebook? Andre has been helping get my tank on track, really good dude.

No i havent, but i will. Thanks for the reference!

 

[Sdot]

Hey family, hope all is well during this pandemic. Latest update on the platinum 305, been spending ALOT of time focusing on the my Magnificent Anemone, i started noticing STN / and RTN on some of my corals and even newly acquired frags. The culprit.... no nutrients and lots of light...I believe. The past week ive tried dosing ATI nitrogen (for nitrate)... 120ML diluted per day and even tried dosing 50ML concentrated no dice. Ordered 100% food grade sodium nitrate and started getting some reading, although that didnt last long. ATI Phosphorus is great however. After dosing 6ML i got a reading in my system of .009. As of today here are my parameters:

PH: 8.17 - 8.37 (Apex Probe)

ALK: 7.13 (Trident)
CAL: 407 (Trident)
MAG: 1399 (Trident)

TEMP: 76.6 - 78.3

Phos: .009 (Hanna Checker)
Nitrate: 0 (Nyos)

Also FYI...i received some questions about my lights being dim...they are not..ROFL. I apply a filter on my camera to lower the contrast. Here are a before and after the filter being applied

Before:

After:

 

[Sdot]

Latest update: Gotta love reef aquariums.... reef aquariums + solving problems = results and less stress. So I've been dealing with STN on some of my colonies as listed in the previous post. Was my system running too clean? Welp looks like the ICP TEST confirmed it. Hardly any phosphate and no nitrate. I started dosing ATI Phosphorus...as much as 25ML a day to get readings.... it started at .009ppm, then went to .01, .04, then to .13ppm( Over the course of several days). I turned off dosing for the day (Was outside of my threshold) at around noon yesterday.

I tested again in this afternoon and guess what... back to zero. I started dosing again and tested just after 6pm and 14.5Ml of phosphorus later, gave me a reading of .08 ppm. I think 10ML per day should get me in or near my ideal range which is, .03-.05 ppm. I find that my export system works extremely well at taking care of nutrients. Honestly if i have it my way id prefer to dose phosphorus and nitrates because its a lot easier to control. Nitrates so far is a much easier, less finicky beast to dial in. I Started dosing until nitrates were detectable on the Nyos test kit. 42ML of sodium nitrate per day gives me a reading of 1-3 ppm consistently so far. Ill test again tomorrow to prove my theory. What I noticed is the STN appears to have slowed down substantially, I'm hoping it stops completely, just looking forward to the corals growing again....

Current Parameters:

PH: 8.00 - 8.27 (Apex Probe) (Need to replace CO2 media)

ALK: 7.31 (Trident)
CAL: 406 (Trident)
MAG: 1393 (Trident)

TEMP: 76.6 - 78.3

Phos: .08 (Hanna Checker)
Nitrate: 3ppm (Nyos)


FYI....Phytofeast is great! i turn the flow off to the fuge for 15 - 30 minutes and feed 5ML per week. The fuge is a pod mega center!!!

 

[Sdot]

The latest:

 

[Sdot]

More pix:

 

[Sltloser]

Latest update: Gotta love reef aquariums.... reef aquariums + solving problems = results and less stress. So I've been dealing with STN on some of my colonies as listed in the previous post. Was my system running too clean? Welp looks like the ICP TEST confirmed it. Hardly any phosphate and no nitrate. I started dosing ATI Phosphorus...as much as 25ML a day to get readings.... it started at .009ppm, then went to .01, .04, then to .13ppm( Over the course of several days). I turned off dosing for the day (Was outside of my threshold) at around noon yesterday.

I tested again in this afternoon and guess what... back to zero. I started dosing again and tested just after 6pm and 14.5Ml of phosphorus later, gave me a reading of .08 ppm. I think 10ML per day should get me in or near my ideal range which is, .03-.05 ppm. I find that my export system works extremely well at taking care of nutrients. Honestly if i have it my way id prefer to dose phosphorus and nitrates because its a lot easier to control. Nitrates so far is a much easier, less finicky beast to dial in. I Started dosing until nitrates were detectable on the Nyos test kit. 42ML of sodium nitrate per day gives me a reading of 1-3 ppm consistently so far. Ill test again tomorrow to prove my theory. What I noticed is the STN appears to have slowed down substantially, I'm hoping it stops completely, just looking forward to the corals growing again....

Current Parameters:

PH: 8.00 - 8.27 (Apex Probe) (Need to replace CO2 media)

ALK: 7.31 (Trident)
CAL: 406 (Trident)
MAG: 1393 (Trident)

TEMP: 76.6 - 78.3

Phos: .08 (Hanna Checker)
Nitrate: 3ppm (Nyos)


FYI....Phytofeast is great! i turn the flow off to the fuge for 15 - 30 minutes and feed 5ML per week. The fuge is a pod mega center!!!

It's good to hear that the manual dosing of phosphate/nitrate has been helping the acros, the tank looks great!

One thing I would also suggest to help with growth/maintenance of your acros is to increase small particulate feeding. With no detectable nitrates/phosphates you should be able to pump in quite a bit of food for a broadcast feeding. This will allow the acros to feed and increase their nitrogen input via zooplankton (or an artificial zooplankyon at least haha) like they would in the ocean. I have over the years used 36-48hr gut loaded brine shrimp nauplii and have had fantastic results.

 

[Sdot]

@Sltloser thanks bro! I continue to test and make adjustments. The good news is my nitrate appears to be pretty stable at 3ppm, phosphates are zero then over .1ppm...I start a cycle of adjustments which result in days of zero then other days of more than .14. Just looking forward to stability. I think for now dosing 10 ppm of phosphorus should keep me stable..... but you are right..while its low i should be able to dose. Just fearful of the bad and nasty algae.

 

[cromburger]

Holy cow!!! I just binge scrolled through your build. so cool to see how things progressed and changed over the thread. Great Job!!!! That tank is amazing! the sump, Fuge, control board, display, all of it is amazing. Think you just built my dream tank. congrats and keep it going and the pictures coming. only suggestion would be to get some schooling fish

 

[Sdot]

Holy cow!!! I just binge scrolled through your build. so cool to see how things progressed and changed over the thread. Great Job!!!! That tank is amazing! the sump, Fuge, control board, display, all of it is amazing. Think you just built my dream tank. congrats and keep it going and the pictures coming. only suggestion would be to get some schooling fish

Thanks bro! yes i have a couple of male Randall's Anthias, unfortunately due to the pandemic, fish are hard to come by...or at least what my local store tells me anyway. The plan in to add 3 more females to the mix. Right now i have about 14 fish in the tank.

 

[Sltloser]

@Sltloser thanks bro! I continue to test and make adjustments. The good news is my nitrate appears to be pretty stable at 3ppm, phosphates are zero then over .1ppm...I start a cycle of adjustments which result in days of zero then other days of more than .14. Just looking forward to stability. I think for now dosing 10 ppm of phosphorus should keep me stable..... but you are right..while its low i should be able to dose. Just fearful of the bad and nasty algae.

I absolutely understand that, you don't want to throw the entire aquarium into disarray with over feeding. I would suggest doing it slowly over a month or so. I would slightly drop the dosing of nitrate/phosphate on the days you feed (start with every other day and slowly ramp up to every day). This way you won't over shoot the nutrient levels and have any sort of algae outbreak.

Your fuge is looking great and I think the chaeto/ pods will help to turn any excess food into biomass and eliminate it from the system. Just a suggestion though, the tank looks great either way and I look forward to your progress!

 

[cromburger]

Thanks bro! yes i have a couple of male Randall's Anthias, unfortunately due to the pandemic, fish are hard to come by...or at least what my local store tells me anyway. The plan in to add 3 more females to the mix. Right now i have about 14 fish in the tank.

For sure, this pandemic thing is making it tough to find livestock. corals- no problem but fish and shrimps and things are tough to come by. great work though and stay healthy

 

[Sdot]

I absolutely understand that, you don't want to throw the entire aquarium into disarray with over feeding. I would suggest doing it slowly over a month or so. I would slightly drop the dosing of nitrate/phosphate on the days you feed (start with every other day and slowly ramp up to every day). This way you won't over shoot the nutrient levels and have any sort of algae outbreak.

Your fuge is looking great and I think the chaeto/ pods will help to turn any excess food into biomass and eliminate it from the system. Just a suggestion though, the tank looks great either way and I look forward to your progress!

Of course and thanks! I welcome all suggestions!!

 

[Sdot]

For sure, this pandemic thing is making it tough to find livestock. corals- no problem but fish and shrimps and things are tough to come by. great work though and stay healthy

Thanks Bro!!

 

[Sdot]

Im pretty close to getting it dialed in... My nitrates are sitting around 5ppm and Phosphorus .04!! Ill continue to test but i think im ok. Dosing sodium nitrate: 42ML per day and ATI Phos at 10ML to get those levels.

 

[mrbh22]

did you get your temp issue straightend out? did you end up putting fans on the canopy

 

[Sdot]

did you get your temp issue straightend out? did you end up putting fans on the canopy

Yes i bought some ventilation fans that work well. However i bought a chiller. In the event i want to crank up the lights the fans wont be able to keep my temp where i would want it.

 

[mrbh22]

Yes i bought some ventilation fans that work well. However i bought a chiller. In the event i want to crank up the lights the fans wont be able to keep my temp where i would want it.

nice! it sounds like the fans are working for you. do you have all of them pulling air out? if so i think you might have even greater success removing the heat if you had two pulling air out and one pushing fresh air in. either way glad you got it sorted.

 

[Sdot]

nice! it sounds like the fans are working for you. do you have all of them pulling air out? if so i think you might have even greater success removing the heat if you had two pulling air out and one pushing fresh air in. either way glad you got it sorted.

Yeah, they are in a push pull config. I have three small fans in the canopy sucking air from the outside pushing fresh air between the lights and the water line and have 2 bigger fans at the top sucking air out. Right now Im getting an average par of 290(Bottom)- 430(Middle) running at 65%, nothing at the top as the rock work doesn't extend that far. In the future when everything is dialed in I might run the lights a little brighter. At 100% im getting peaks of 650 par in the middle and near 450 on the bottom. Right now 65% is about as bright as i can run them without temp getting out of control. Also I live in Texas and our summers can be brutal, just want to make sure temp isnt a problem with this tank.


This was a few minutes ago, 78.4 peak.... thats with my house sitting at 72 degrees.

 

[Sdot]

Christmas came early:

 

[TX_Punisher]

Glad to see i'm not the only one dosing n03 and po4. I stopped the p04 finally. No3 will drop to zero even with 20 fish so I still have to dose sodium nitrate.