**I thought this battle was over....dino's are back**

[mooner]

Arrrrrg!

They came back over the weekend in full force....I put the reef back in the dark for 48 hours and today it's back to a 4 hour photo period.

I am doing a lot of improvement this week (new sump, overflow and much heavier flow in and out of the main tank over carbon and Phosban with a 500 GPH sub pump).

I can see now that I need to look more at nutrients but I am damn near starving my fish, clam and coral already. I feed about 10 mysis every other day with a fresh water rinse to clear nutrients. Additives are: coralvite, tech 1, microvert in half doses. I feed my clam some DT's phyto once a week (just a cap full). The skimmer runs hard and pulls out quality looking skimmate. Water changes continue every week and I pull out the dino strings (almost all of them).

Params: Amm - 0, Nits - 0, Phos - .03, Temp - 78, Ph - 8.3, dK - 8, Calc - 380-400. Lighting is a single brand new German 10,000K MH pendant with a normal 10 hour day.

Can I get some advice on nutrients? See anything I am doing wrong?

 

[Anonymous]

been there before

I found lights off didnt work for me, and hurt the rest of the tank

I battled and won by keeping the tank ph very high

 

[mooner]

How did you keep the pH up there?

 

[liquid]

What skimmer are you running and what's the size of your tank? Dripping kalk into my skimmer worked but it took a loonnngg time and I had to ramp my lighting up *very* slowly.

Shane

 

[mooner]

It's a modified Seaclone 100 in a 44 gallon corner model. It does work well with the mods regardless of the poor Seaclone image. I will admit that it sucked before the mods but now it pulls out a lot of dark thick skimmate.

 

[Anonymous]

ohh man, I had one of those

Your fighting a long battle with it, you really should get a good skimmer, even with the mods they are pretty horrible


I used kalk 24/7 for all topoff and I increased my evap with extra fans so I could get more kalk in

 

[ChrisRD]

Additives are: coralvite, tech 1, microvert in half doses.

Never tried the first two, but I know the microvert stuff can be lethal to water quality - it's loaded with nutrients. IMO those additives could be contributing to your troubles. I also agree that a better skimmer and kalkwasser top-off would be helpful.

 

[mooner]

Additives are: coralvite, tech 1, microvert in half doses.

Never tried the first two, but I know the microvert stuff can be lethal to water quality - it's loaded with nutrients. IMO those additives could be contributing to your troubles. I also agree that a better skimmer and kalkwasser top-off would be helpful.

Gonna toss the Microvert as this is not the first time I have heard that claim. Shall I continue the DT's? I know that it is pretty vital to feed the clam but I want to keep that at a minimum. I do top off with kalkwasser and I will increase that.

Any guess on a targeted pH level?

 

[NitroxTD]

Target PH @ over 8.4 for 1 week should do the trick - it worked for me.

 

[liquid]

My gut feel is that you're using an underpowered skimmer. To compensate, do more waterchanges and see if that helps.

Shane

 

[mooner]

My gut feel is that you're using an underpowered skimmer. To compensate, do more waterchanges and see if that helps.

Shane

Right now and for the past 3 weeks I have been at 15% changes twice weekly (I have missed a few changes here and there). My RO/DI can hardly keep up! Should I do even more?

I guess I can get a small in sump model EuroReef but it just seems so big for 50 gallons of water. I can tell you this: Next skimmer I buy is going to be a bad mofo becasue I am sick up to here with skimmer issues and questions. I really think this Seaclone is doing an average, if not decent, job but I will order another one soon.

Tell me: With a 44 gallon setup like this, 5 fish, 2 med sized corals, med sized cleanup crew, some polyps and a rock of shrooms, how much skimmate should I expect? If I have it set on max I get about 1 measuring cup of skimmate a day that is like tea (greenish/yellow) and if I have it maintaining dry foam to create thick brown/green skimmate that I can't even see thru it produces about 1/5 cup a day. Now this is real cups not the collection cup. Is this "normal" or does this sound suspect?