Anthony's WB 230.6 upgrade - SPS Dominant Mixed Reef

[anthonymckay]

I must have missed who was making your lid. I have the same tank sitting in my garage. And will need a lid. So following.

My current 140 gallon had a horrible outbreak of red slime and hair algae. Finally got a hold on it right before my update.

Shelley

TopLids. We are working on getting a replacement done now.

 

[anthonymckay]

The last week or so I started seeing some issues with some LPS. My scoly and acans that have all been super healthy for the last year and a half started to recede and exposing the skeleton. My initial thought was maybe a flow issue? Today I got my monthly ICP test back and was shocked to see it report my po4 at 0.2, and no3 at 50ppm. My mastertronic has been telling me 0.06 and ~20 pretty consistently. I then did a manual test with my hanna checkers, and they confirmed the ICP results... Valuable lesson with automated testing: "Trust, but verify". Not sure if this was the reason why my LPS were suffering, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a big contributing factor.

I suppose from here on out I'll start doing a manual tests at least every other week, if not every week. Hopefully the algae scrubber starts exporting nutrients soon!

 

[anthonymckay]

Some new coral from CFM this weekend!

Warpaint Scoly
JF Jolt
WWC red polyp Clathrata
TGC cherry bomb

 

[anthonymckay]

Ran into an issue with my Alkatronic this week that scared me! It tests every 4 hours and I usually keep my alk around 8-8.5. I noticed the last few days it started trending upwards. Above 8.4 and my kalk reactor dosing pump turns off. Usually if this happens it by the next test in 4 hours Alk drops enough to turn the pump back on.

But this week it hit 8.4 and turned off, and for the next 2 days my levels didn't drop while the pump stayed off... And even more, the alk level was still slowly rising?? 9.1 was the last measurement. Not alarmingly high, but didn't really make sense why it was giving that result consistently. I initially assumed something is ticking off the corals and their alk uptake was dropping off massively. But they all looked ok. I then did a manual Hanna alk test: 6.7 dKH!!! what the heck. I then pulled the Alkatronic out from the cabinet and ran a test. I thought maybe there was a leak in a pump hose or something. As I ran the test, I noticed barely any reagent was coming out during titration! The tip was cogged! I pulled it out, cleaned it off, and ran another test. Now it reported 6.7dKH matching the Hanna test!!! YIKES!

I slowly started bringing the alk back up over the next 2 days to 8+ range. Thankfully all the corals look fine and seem unaffected, but glad I noticed and investigated before it got way worse!

On another note, it's been two months since I've had my Algae Scrubber running. I can't say I'm noticing all that much difference in my nutrient levels... Starting to wonder if I should have gone for the larger sized one.