So you got a new fish tank Newbie (Continuation)

[JohnL]

This thread was automatically split due to performance issues. You can find the rest of the thread here: http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...hreadid=239848

[Dudester]

I would be watching you alkalinity levels more closely as carbonate precipitation only usually occurs if it is high. In some cases adding large doses of two part additives can also create problems. Especially if they are not allowed sufficient mixing time between adding Part 1 and 2.

Very insightful, WaterKeeper. I am, in fact, dosing a large amount of a two part additive (B-Ionic at 1 ml/gallon of system water). My problem, however, is that my alkalinity is perhaps too low and not too high. Despite this large addition of B-Ionic, I still have to add baking soda regularly to maintain my alkalinity above 7.7 dKH. After starting threads here and here, it appeared that the origin of my clumping problems was an elevated pH and not an elevated alkalinity. For anyone interested, the above links themselves contain very helpful articles with respect to clumping sand and elevated pH levels.

And WaterKeeper, thanks for your take on sand siphoning.

[WaterKeeper]

Oh No, Dude!!! See what you did? The dread thread splitter came. Of course, John may also be talking about my own performance.

See you in Part II.

To get to Part I, where most of the infomation is, go to The Original New Tank Thread, From the Beginning.

[deeppitt]

I have a couple a issues which have recently cropped up.
1. I bought a couple of reeflux 12000K bulbs ( I have been using reeflux 10000K bulbs) and the new bulbs will not fire-up. I have an email off to coralvue (they have been extremely accomodating and helpful thus far), but I thought I'd ask you guys as well.

2. We've had a plate coral in the tank for a couple of weeks. The animal has started to get some sort of brown gooey stuff covering it's tentacles over about 1/5th of it's surface. Is this normal, or is it sick (and what should be done)? Would reduced light (due to running on one bulb) cause any of this?

[WaterKeeper]

Pitt,

Sounds like a ballast mis-match to me. It may be you ballast is only able to handle probe start bulbs and not pulse start (or vice versa). Of course, as you already probably know, it take a few minutes for MH lamps to actually produce much light and they can't be refired immediately after being turned off. The starting method is my best guess as to the problem.

As to the coral I'm not sure. If you can get a pic and place it over on one of the LPS forum you'd probably get more help. The lighting could be the answer as they tend to be low flow, high light corals. Plates also sometimes don't deal well with other type Heliofungia. Try moving it closer to the lights if you can. It also may be something as simple as diatom growth.

WK is better at fielding lighting questions than coral questions.

[deeppitt]

Well, I got my 12000K bulbs going!

Here's what I did:

first bulb: I ran for 4 hours continuous; it never started up. I then cycled the power, still no start-up. I removed the bulb, inspected it, reseated it, and it immediately started up.

Second bulb: I ran for 1 hour without it starting up. I removed the bulb, then reseated it. Still no startup. I turned it on expected to let it run for another 3 hours to duplicate the first bulb's process.
When I came back a half-hour later, the bulb was on and running in full glory.

Something about virgin bulbs, it seems; they occasionally need to burn in a bit, then recycle before they are ready to fire.
Every time after that, the bulbs have fired right up.

Hopefully, if someone else gets stuck similarly this will help them as well.

[goda]

whats next that your gonna talk about?

i just went to walmart and bought 4 40 watt 'cool white' bulbs for my tank will those be good for an anenome ?

had to write somthing more then BUMP

[jmait769]

Tom, you got another one!!

I’m for some continuation of Filter this Through that Thick Skull of Your's-Newbie!!
I liked that poster who jumped on you for such “cruel language directed at a newbie�!! A classic!!

I ordered my rock from TBS so will post that over on the TBS thread when it arrives. Can’t wait!!

Thanks for all your help Tom. Tank is doing great!!

J

[deeppitt]

Something strange just happened to me.
I noticed an increase in the amount of green algae "dust" sticking to the glass, but figured that this was just another blooming phase of a 3 month old tank.
A few days later, my flame angel vanished. It's hasn't looked at all stressed. It wasn't interested in eating the food I supplied (formula I, formula II, and mysis shrimp), but seemed content to graze on bits of algae growing in the tank.
The day after the disappearance, I measured my salinity and it was at 1.018!
After three months of no movement whatsoever (1.026) I suddenly end up at 1.018.
I think that the shift in salinity probably killed my beautiful fish. The body (2.5 inches) never turned up, which I thought was odd. The crabs can't be that good! Of course, I immediately did a water change with some increased salinity water (1.033) and have raised the overall level to 1.021. I think at this point I will wait a couple of days, then do another one to slowly raise the level up to 1.024.
What I cannot explain is where all of my salt went to. I had recently put in a first dose of reef builder, calcium advantage, and reef plus. I don't think that these would have done this, but I am a newbie!
I am concerned because somewhere I messed up and I can't figure out where.

[WaterKeeper]

What type of salinity measuring tool do you use?

I'm pretty sure your flame is playing his harp in fish heaven and the algae was a result of him donating body parts into the water column.

It is pretty hard to precipitate that many ions out of solution and not have crud lying all over the place. There is more likely-

• A measurement error
• A mistake such as adding RO/DI instead of salt mix during a water change
• Having a small leak somewhere and when you add top-off water you make up for both the leak and evaporation

[deeppitt]

I am using a refractometer to measure with. I thought that perhaps the calibration was off, but in checking it all looks OK.
All measurements since then have been consistent. Since my last water change (Saturday) I am currently at 1.021 salinity. I want to move it up to 1.024, but I don’t want to double-shock my animals with two sudden shifts in salinity.
Given that they have gone through one shock, how soon could I do another water-change?

I have a 200 gallon tank plus 50 gallon sump. My calculations suggest I would need to swap in 70 gallons of fresh RO water to cause that much of a drop. I can’t see how I could do that. I don’t see any wet spots anywhere, so a leak would have to be where it found its way to the drain.
But, if it can’t precipitate without being obvious (if at all) or be absorbed, then it seems the only remaining explanation is swapping too much tank water with fresh RO water. I just have to figure out how it happened. At least that gives me a direction to focus on.

Anyway, on a different note: I am getting a red-algae bloom now. Interestingly, it is most pronounced at one water inlet where the water is moving the fastest. Irving (my fox-face) doesn’t care for the stuff. Are there any other creatures who do?


…. And I miss my flame angel

[WaterKeeper]

Sorry but there are really not too many things that are biological predators of cyano. Again, I'm sure the departed Flame is also leading to it establishing itself. Hopefully it will depart in short order. As to bringing the salinity up. I'd do it in about 3 water changes about 2 days apart. You can do it faster, in the real reef some salinity changes occur overnight, but I like to take things slow. The water changes may also help speed the demise of the algae. Tell me if you ever figure out what happened as it is a mystery to me too.

[jmwebster]

I am a newbie at Saltwater- I have had freshwater for my whole life- Starting 75G w/ live rock and coral- Can someone help me put together what I need- tank, stand, lights and any suggestions where to buy? Any help greatly appreciated, I am researched out!

[dastratt]

webster
How about checking out the vendor forums here if you're looking for internet. For local info, look for a reef club forum for your area. These links are kinda hard to find on this site, scroll way down past the general forums. Guaranteed there are some folks in your area who can help you out. Don't just go buying whatever the folks in the first LFS you come across says you should buy, you'll regret it.
Look at it this way, you'll be dealing with whatever equipment you buy for many, many hours after you buy it. So a few hours browsing this thread and other threads going on this this forum is a small investment of your time. Just my two cents. Good luck!

[dastratt]

Can I ramble on a little?
Compared to FW, a SW reef tank needs a lot more current, brighter lighting, purer water, and it benefits from different filtration schemes. Higher flow rates are needed to bring oxygen and suspended nutrients to the corals. Even the brightest lights available are a fraction of what the photosynthetic organisms in the corals are provided in the wild. Filtration for coral reef tanks needs to consider removal of nitrates (end product of nitrogen cycle) and phosphates (which may inhibit coral growth). Artificial sea water mixes are formulated expecting that the fresh water is free of dissolved solids which means that an RO or RO/DI unit will be needed to process the tap water before mixing with the salt mix. Calcium and alkalinity are two additional parameters we need to maintain in balance for growth and health of a reef.
What did I miss waterkeeper? Plenty I'm sure tho I'm sure you've covered it in this thread.

[deeppitt]

Something new is starting to turn up.
There are tiny light spots appearing on the glass. If I look at them through a jeweler's loop I see that they are clear, and somewhat starfish-like in that they have a center with 5 to 8 arms or tentacles sticking out. The center is stuck to the glass while the arms blow around in the current. Each arm has small ball-shaped regions along it.
The whole thing is clear or milky in color.
I have maybe 2 dozen on each glass pane. I don't want to clean the glass until I know if knocking these off is going to make a problem worse.

Has anyone seen these and should I do anything about them?

[WaterKeeper]

Probably a hydroid Deeppitt. See this Photo in Amador's thread and see if it looks like it.

You're on a roll Alex.

[deeppitt]

Thanks WK!
I believe you are right, that this is a hydroid. A more accurate picture of what I have can be found here Hydroid
There appears to be a lot of information on RC pertaining to them; everything from "they are harmless and go away" to "these things have taken over and I can't get rid of them"

I guess I'll just watch, see, and hope for the best. One member did mention that his/her coral beauty was the only thing that would eat these. I wonder if I'm seeing them now because my flame angel died.... hmmmm....

[deeppitt]

OK, how come the URL thing didn't work?

[WaterKeeper]

It does now.

You forgot the end bracket ] after after you pasted the thread. When you get to around 7000+ posts you'll figure it out.

There are around 10,000 species of Hydrozoa so it is more or less pretty hard to tell which one you have. This Hydroid Article should give you a little more insight.

[funloven]

I don't mean to lead you off the subject, but ... I haven't been hear in a while and I need to refresh my memory about flow so I can explain it better to my DH. It seems to me that I have read terms such as 10x, 40x, etc. that are in reference to flow. Can you please remind me what this stands for and what exactly is recommended, please and thank you.

[WaterKeeper]

Sure Fun,

I always say that a tank should have at least a 10X turnover rate as a minimum. Now a days many reefers are going much higher with 20-30X times the tanks volume being very common. Those that favor a BB approach need these high rates the most as it creates somewhat of a Venturi effect on the rock pores and helps denitrification. With tanks using a DSB the real high rates can be somewhat of a problem as they stir up the sand so much. With high efficiency pumps so available in this era it is only a matter of preference as to how high one can go. If you have at least 10X flow you should be OK, especially if you can provide that flow throughout the tank using a manifold type return.

[funloven]

Thanks WK. I am getting approx 1100 gph return with my pump for my 125 gal. tank and I am currently in the process of trying to figure out how best to distribute that. I don't plan of having a huge bio-load like a lot of the beautiful tanks you see on RC so hopefully this 10x will be sufficient. Time will tell.

I tried adding some additional flow by hiding a powerhead in the bottom back of my tank behind the LR and then fed a line up the back and towards the front to which I attached a spray bar. Good concept but didn't get the flow force I was looking for, the PH was large and difficulty to position back there and so was very noisy probably from fibrationing off of something (although I never could figure out what), and was also sucking the DSB and making it look like it was raining sand granuels. So I chucked that idea.

Next am going to try placing a Ts on my returns and adding additional spray nozzles ( I call them octopus legs cuz' that's what they look like to me; I know there is a correct name for them but I don't know what it is) to see if that will work. This will decrease the amount of flow per nozzle but I don't think the overall gph return will be reduced and hopefull it will disperse the flow better to eleminate some dead spots I have.

I am really trying to avoid adding visible powerheards. I have considered the oscillator or wavemaker idea but there are so many to choose from that I find it very confusing and for each model there is one good comment that goes for every bad comment.

What do you think? Any other ideas?

[WaterKeeper]

I know what you mean Fun. When shopping for a return pump one whats to see if it can pump against a discharge head. Very often pumps can have high discharge volumes stated in the specs but that is only at zero head. Other pumps, designed to povide vertical lift, will usually be more appropiate in an situation where the pump is located out of sight. Use the Head Loss Calculator to size the pump. You can plug in pumps to figure what you need.

[deeppitt]

Wow!
I had estimated my flow at about 1700 GPH. I just rebuilt my sump and included a channel where I could measure the water speed. Then, knowing the channel cross-sectional area, I calculated the actual water flow. It came out to be about 2400 GPH.
I just tried this head loss calculator, and it says I should have 2480 GPH! Amazing... the calculator was pretty much dead-on.

Who would have thunk.....