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Looking good George. I was scratching my head on the half piece of oak on the back until you explained the half-wall thing.
I vote for a 1/16 piece of black plexi (or clear, painted black), held in place with some sticky-tack. This way you can easily take it off to find that missing wrasse...
The chemist's answer is two moles of alkalinity are lost for every one mole of calcium. As mentioned, all two part solutions are made to provide this equivalence by adding equal volumes of each. Note that this is not an exact science since magnesium and strontium can take the place of...
Unless you put rock in that is producing excess phosphates or your water source changes, now having excess phosphates, you will not need that GFO reactor. The nitrate/phosphate ratio of poop, food, death, etc, is the same ratio need for the bacteria in the biopellet reactor. So you're good...
I definitely would not run GFO. Your tank is not producing exess phosphates and therefore the biopellets will work best just running them on their own.
This light does not ramp up and down. If you look at post #6 HERE, you'll see Ocean Revive's answer to that question.
However, you can control each of the two channels independently, having one turn on first, and shut off last, to mimic early morning and late evening. That is what I do...
You don't want to run GFO until you find out if you'll need it. And you'll only need it if you have some nasty phosphate problem for something like leaching rock. For biopellets to work, you need both nitrates and phoshates. If one or the other is missing, pellets won't work. I would...
The way biopellets work is that it is bacterial food. The bacteria grow and sluff off the pellets after "consuming" nitrates and phosphates. The skimmer immediately removes them from the water column. If you don't have the exit of the reactor right next to your skimmer, all this bacteria...
Yep. If the layer is too thick I could see the stuff not getting up to temperature in time. Simply cook it longer as suggested. You can't over cook it.
That is odd. I can only guess that all wasn't converted to sodium carbonate (soda ash) during the cooking. Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) is not as soluble as sodium carbonate.
Did you spread 2 1/4 cups of baking soda on a cookie sheet so that it was a relative thin layer? And...
Thank you Darren and Kami for this months meeting. Both you guys are such generous hosts, making us reef geeks feel welcome and right at home. Kerry and I enjoyed ourselves. Thanks again.
Justin, you'll be just fine. If you're not shaking/mixing while your adding the powder, it will cake up. But that still is not a problem. Shake it a couple times to break it up and it will eventually go into solution. I'm willing to bet by tomorrow it is all dissolved.
Valves may be installed in any direction without issue. However, I would suggest not putting a valve on the outflow. If (and when) it gets clogged up with whatever, your tank will overflow.