Tank Journal Archive

[Ben Daley]

Hello, been a bit of stuff going on over the past month so apologies for the long post....

Tank sitters
I'm off to Vietnam in 2 weeks (for 2 weeks) so have been organising tank sitters while I'm away. I seriously think that going on holiday has to be the worst part of this hobby.

New coral

• sunny d frag
• monti frags (phoenix, rainbow, sunset)
• pavona frag
• rose leptoseris frag
• leptastrea frag
• millepora colony
• stylopora colony

New livestock

• C. lineatus
• G. okinawae
• L. amboinensis
• N. magnifica
• Snails (Strombus, Nassarius, Trochus)

Dead powerhead
Biggest thing of note was equipment failure with a MP40 2 weeks ago. It was eventually sent back to Aquablue (after many emails) and I was told this morning that a replacement is on the way. Good outcome but the experience has planted the seed of doubt (reliability) with these pumps. I think "good support" could also be interpreted as "mitigate known design issue".

Water quality
One of my goals with this tank is to eliminate water changes where possible. To date, I've exchanged 50L of water and haven't touched the sand bed. So far parameters have been stable but algae on the glass suggests I need more phosphate export. The tank has going through 60ml of Alk/Calc per day, 20ml of Mag. I've also been adding aquaforest supplements (amino, energy, build, vitality).
Around the 12 week mark, chaeto growth slowed, cyano appeared in the fuge along with algae on the back wall of the DT. Could this have anything to do with biopellets and/or siporax kicking in and the lack of nitrate limiting chaeto growth?
I was avoiding adding GFO (concerned about what else it would pull out) but have added a small amount to see how phosphate levels go over the next month. I'll be ordering a triton test when we get back from holiday to see how things are really going.

Thanks for reading

 

[Mattres]

I feel the same about holidays, I've twice been saved by someone looking after the tank while away!

Good to hear you got the MP40 replaced eventually. Hopefully it was just a rare occurrence!

 

[Ben Daley]

Thanks @Mattres - just got the pump back this afternoon. So far, so good.
If it all goes south I'll let you know how I like the WAV (or possibly gyre).

 

[Ben Daley]

Just a quick update on adding GFO.

I'm still waiting on a back order of hanna reagents so unfortunately can't test for PO4.
In the week since adding the media, the mat of algae on the back wall is thinning out - Trochus are eating it and it does not appear to be growing back. I'm optimistically thinking the snails eating the algae are making the phosphate available again where it is being taken up by chaeto and GFO.
KH appears to be dropping ~1ppm per day beyond 2 part dosing so easily remedied (could be other organisms taking this up)
So far the results are looking positive... be interesting to run Triton to see the effect on trace elements - shame I don't have an earlier test for comparison, but got to start somewhere.