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DSA 135....

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Dosing nitrates seems to work for phosphates, down to 3ppb, or .009ppm. nitrates are someplace around 10ppm, i'll have to do a better test later when i'm not occupied with other things. New additions are on their way today, I don't think the 10ppm nitrate is enough to negatively effect any of them.
 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Everyone is in the tank and moving, first good sign, lol, i'll see if i can get some better shots later. I believe the mandarins are already pecking at the food i just put in there, i'll keep an eye on their bellies, love these fish. I'll target feed the scallop tonight with some different stuff and see if i get a response. Starfish is moving around, both the lettuce nudi's are on the bryopsis, hopefully chowing down. The crabs will probably be lost for a few days, i put the nem crab near the nem, but don't see him in it.
 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Well, everyone is still good, accept i can't seem to find the female mandarin. starfish is roaming around, same with the lettuce nudi's. scallop is trying to find a spot it likes. Bryopsis seems to like water changes, one thing i'm noticing though and i'm going to let it go at this point and hope it smothers it, but cyano is forming on the bryopsis and smothering it, i'm hoping this happens all over the bryopsis and eventually it dies out, and i can deal with the cyano after that. i'll see how it goes. I have too many sensitive animals at this point to go for any kind of tech m or any other nuking strategy.
 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
been a while so i figure i'll update a bit, everything is still doing well, but the bryopsis is getting on my last nerve at this point. I'm doing another round of treatments trying to get rid of it at this point, but if all else fails, i may be looking at some type of reboot to get rid of it. My first thought it getting another tank, removing everything i can from this one, and dumping in 4 bottles of hydrogen peroxide, i'm pretty sure that will wipe the tank clean, and 24 hours later i can start fresh.
 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
can you just remove the rocks and maybe give em an acid bath?
I suppose, but it would be a longer process, and wouldn't kill any spores in the water or anything on the powerheads and in the tank or sump. All i would do is dump the hydrogen peroxide in, it will leave the system within 24 hours, i'll probably have an ammonia spike, i'll dump in a bottle of bacteria to get that to normal and after that the rock just has to re-establish itself and i can transfer everything back once the cycle goes back to normal and dump some pods in.
 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Tested my instant ocean mix and turns out i'm showing .07 phosphates in it. I switched salts as of today and will see if this new salt helps. My last round of tech m did not work, i'm done with trying it, i'm going to see if i can't manage it. I'm pretty sure the salt may have had something to do with it, as the bryopsis always looked like it was taking off after each water change.
 
I was using Reef Crystal from instant ocean but my Alkalinity always seem to go up after a water change so i am switching to red sea after i run out of salt.
 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Tomorrow is sump cleaning day, and i'll figure out a way to keep the water moving in it so debris doesn't accumulate, i had to put a powerhead in the overflow as it was turning into a pile of crud on the bottom.

I was using Reef Crystal from instant ocean but my Alkalinity always seem to go up after a water change so i am switching to red sea after i run out of salt.

It's a bit high on it, i was never concerned with alk though at this point as my water changes wouldn't be enough to keep it up when my demand was high, and now with the lps i'm not worried about alk levels as long as they are within reason and steady. Another option you can look into that i'm trying out is aqua forest reef salt, i ordered it off amazon for $70 shipped to my door, alk is stated between 7.4-8.2 or so, calc at 410-440.
 
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