Re-re-boot

[ndrwater]

Welp... Besides some basic maintenance for the 240 to keep things moving in the right direction, i did a bit of a thing with the 120. No fish yet, but its now more than a box of water..
A bit out of my expertise here, but how hard can it be? All the little tufts in the forground are intended to all grow together to be a couple different types of carpet...
I know this is a reefing forum, but Im sure there are enough of you out there that have done fresh at some point.. This isn't intended to derail the re-re-boot, just an update about whats happening while the 240 catches up with itself.

 

[bakbay]

Purtee - I’ve never done one before so this will be an inspiration.

 

[mescobar]

out of curiosity, where'd you source the plants?

 

[ndrwater]

out of curiosity, where'd you source the plants?

Some from my LFS "The Reef" and some from a shop called "Nolan's Aquarium".
The Reef I have been going to since before Noah built a boat and Nolan's is a planted tank specialty shop. Reef is mostly a freshwater shop but has hidden gems for corals... Plus... They carry live Blackworms which is my secret wepon to getting CBB's to eat

 

[ndrwater]

So..... Been a minute since an update ..
I ran the course of ChemiClean so no more cyano, but .. needed to take the GFO offline for the duration.. Phosphate bounced back to 1.24.
After running a sh!te ton of carbon for a bit, the GFO reactor went back online and we are now back down to .74... Checking again tomorrow to see if we are still dropping. If yes, hold course. If no, swapping the GFO for new. 50 gallon water change again today so we'll see where everything lands tomorrow..
But.... (I know this is a reefing forum, but..)
The 120 is moving forward nicely. CO2 is now online, and i installed something i am embarrassed to admit but the wife is happy, so... Happy wife, happy life.. I'll post pix up of the major eye roll soon.. instead, Ill post a couple fish pix. Those of you actually paying attention to the photos will notice something not super great, but I have a plan in action and we'll see how things turn out...

 

[janiners305]

Nice gold nugget pleco…

I spy possibly some ich on the tail of the rainbow. Shouldn’t be an issue. Spoken as a fellow freshie lol


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[ndrwater]

I spy possibly some ich on the tail of the rainbow. Shouldn’t be an issue. Spoken as a fellow freshie lol


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Yea, it's a little worse than I had hoped. Not catastrophic, but keeping an eye for sure...

 

[janiners305]

Yea, it's a little worse than I had hoped. Not catastrophic, but keeping an eye for sure...

We had some show up one day on a black neon tetra, and a few days later it was gone. No sign of it since. You should be good. Fingers crossed for ya.


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[ndrwater]

So... Remember that whole Nitrate through the roof problem.... Welp... 3.8 as of today...
Now to get the phosphate in check... Was reading @drexel post about the molar ratio and am definitely out of whack.. pre latest 100 gallon water change... Phosphate was still hovering around .2 (yes there is a decimal point in front of that 2...)
Haven't checked post water change yet. Want to circulate a bit before I come back and see ..

 

[Jimbo327]

Phosphate 0.2 is not that bad from where you started. I think that's a solid number.

I think dosing carbon (vodka) and adding some nitrate....the phosphate can land in a good zone.

 

[mescobar]

why dose vodka when you could just feed more

LC could help take care of phosphates w/o water changes which is nice

 

[Jimbo327]

why dose vodka when you could just feed more

LC could help take care of phosphates w/o water changes which is nice

Fish get too fat.

But yeah, definitely feed more. Sometimes, it's hard to figure out how much food is adding to nitrate or phosphates. In this case, he probably only add nitrate and not so much phosphates. Plus, who doesn't like vodka, i'm sure the fishes also enjoy a little buzz.

 

[bakbay]

Glad to hear — WCs will do that but you will need to keep at it.

btw: my NO3 was 46ppm and now 25ppm with a sulfur denitrator. I got 30 big fish and they eat & poop a lot!!! I’ll likely land around 15ppm by next week. PO4 is steady at 0.08ppm to 0.12ppm by dosing 10mL of Phosphat-E everyday.

 

[ndrwater]

I honestly think my years of FOWLR and heavy feeding frozen led to the high phosphate.. with the gaggle of anthias I have now, frozen spirulina brine is always on the menu.. pellets too, but yea... Need to get things back in order..
I was honestly surprised at the nitrate number. So much so i ran the test 2x. Same number.. getting closer ..
Thanks for all the input . Helps keep the motivation up!!

 

[bakbay]

I think that keeping PO4 stable is more important than nitrate. My SPS are super sensitive to sudden PO4 changes. Softies don’t care though…

 

[drexel]

I think that keeping PO4 stable is more important than nitrate. My SPS are super sensitive to sudden PO4 changes. Softies don’t care though…

This 1000x! I think 0.2 isn't bad at all and with a little help can be lowered slowly. Raising NO3 a few point by adding some ammonium bicarb will help too.

 

[ndrwater]

This 1000x! I think 0.2 isn't bad at all and with a little help can be lowered slowly. Raising NO3 a few point by adding some ammonium bicarb will help too.

Details please?
I have some stump remover i have had since forever for this exact reason, just never used it...

 

[Jimbo327]

I would be careful to use stump remover because it is potassium nitrate, and prolonged use can increase potassium too much.

I think most folks will be just buying commercial products like neonitro if they want to increase nitrate directly. It's very difficult to buy sodium nitrate/nitrite now because retailers have banned its sale to retail customers. Used to be very cheap...now, can't even get it. It was banned because lawsuits that people were using it for suicide.

 

[bakbay]

Unless you bottom’ed out NO3 (which you’re not), then do less WCs, less biological/mechanical filtration, or feed more. It’s a good problem to have vs astronomically high levels like before! As a backup, I always have BW NeoNitro on the shelf to raise NO3, just in case though.

Anyway — looks like you’re in a good place. Corals looking good?

 

[drexel]

Buy food grade ammonium bicarbonate from Amazon and mix 20g into 1L of RO, this is your stock solution. You want to pulse dose, so you don’t want to spread the dose out over the course of the day. 2.3mL of solution will raise NO3 in 26 gallons about 0.23ppm, this seems like a small amount, but the ammonium is directly taken up by the corals and you’ll eventually see a small rise in NO3. In my 90g, I usually pulse dose 5-6mL 1-2x a day to start. Dose during the photo period, never when the lights are off. There’s no need to dose if your NO3 is 10ppm or higher, as the system has plenty of nitrogen at this point.
Go slow and test the next day to see if there’s a difference/increase.


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