It's a 125, by the way.
Breefcase, I know that the rock is considered to be live rock today, I just wanted to differentiate from store bought live rock to what I have (I have not bought more than 20 lbs of live rock for my reef tank in my life, and 20 is probably an exaggeration, although I have over 100 lbs in my pond which is not connected yet, over 250 if you include the old "dead rock").
Calling the substrate 2" was probably an exaggeration. It is more realistically less than 1.5" in most places, and is not made up of very fine particles, it is made up of large crushed coral and aragonite gravel.
Also, this is not a tank where if something dies and goes undetected the whole system gets thrown out of whack. Believe me, I've had fish that didn't make it before, and I never remove anything from my reef. If it dies, it gets eaten as food by all the critters. As I'm not a big advocate of feeding my fish, believing that they are better off with minimal feedings and "living off the land" creating a more or less self sufficient ecosystem, the only fish that I've lost in the past year or so have either been because of stupidity on my part or a couple of strict herbivores that plain and simple, ran out of stuff to eat and didn't adjust to eating flake (I'm not a big nori
feeder either, even though I have some).
The test kit is very old as well, however, it works on my basement pond (which by the way has a DSB, a macroalgae refugium, and the aforementioned load of LR, and only has a couple of fish in it and is over 400 gallons total, with a full capacity of over 500, where the nitrates are
sky high, maybe due to an immature DSB) and I've done numerous tests on it with the old reagents (I'm not convinced that they "go bad"). I've also had tests done in the stores with the brand new test kits as I also have had my doubts about how good the old test kits are, but the results always match.
I have 5 clams in the system, but none are larger than around 4", being the 2 largest maximas or croceas, 2 around 3", and one baby that is around 2" (all are croceas or maximas, I can't tell which, and everytime I think I can, I think maybe they're the other).
There is no macroalgae exportation in this tank, in fact, I've fed macroalgae on about 3 occasions in the past 6 months, and I don't think the night that it lasted is enough to export nutrients, especially because it got eaten and reintroduced.
By the way, no magical magnetic fields, no crazy auras of greatness emanating from me (at least according to my friends and family, although if you asked me....
), just that magic water from the Home Depot Honeywell RO filter.
I'm really just wondering what is eating it, and the xenia seem to be the main suggestion here. This tank has been on again off again set up for a number of years. I wouldn't call it a long time established tank in my new home, but the tank itself and all of the substrate and rock are very old, as is the filter itself which is really what I would call a calcerous tube worm filter (you can't see through the back of my sump as the worms have completely covered it with layer upon layer of worm tubes). In the past, I've never had any instability problems and have been very successful with most of the stuff I was keeping, with the exception of some corals and fish that I have brought up before, and that seem to be a common problem on this board, but I did always have nitrates that would sometimes get a bit high necessitating a water change here or there. Now, since I have stopped doing water changes, it seems the nitrates are going away on their own, with none of the classic removal systems in place.
Is it in fact the xenia as dmm and monkeyboy and derek suggest? If it is, why don't we do xenia filters (I know the idea has been put forth before, but why is it not a more popular concept if xenia are so good at nutrient use - not export, because I haven't tossed the xenia in the basement in a long time, they are just gathering in the open spaces of my reef)? I know that clam filters are used, but that can be very cost ineffective, and who wants to put their beautiful maximas into their sump? Are xenia the answer? Should I ditch the whole macroalgae thing going on in my pond refugium and go with xenia instead?
By the way, for those of you who want, I will begin bottling samples of my tank water combined with a lock of my hair available for no, not $100, not $95, not even $90! Just 4 easy payments of $22.49! Sign up quick, before the tank water and my hair is all reserved!
