The Journal Of A Marine Beginner

barker_23 said:

hi mate, thanks for the help. Just wondered if i did need to upgrade my lighting, where could i get it from at a good price. Where did you get yours from?

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Hi, mine came as part of a package deal from the LFS so cannot really compare (got it proper cheap!!) Best bet is a search around online

barker_23 said:

Also what heater would you say is best for the 180's. what kind of wattage have you got

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My heater does not come on, the lights and ambience covers it enough. I have a 200w in there, standard Juwel kit. Personally, if I was buying again I would buy 2 x 100w - mucho better for risk of failure etc!

Hope this helps

lighting upgrade you can get a dual t5 starter for about 40 quid then get 2x blue/white t5's which are about 55watts, this is what im doing for my 180 im also keeping the 2 t8's that are 30 watts each these will coem on an hour earlier and go off an hour later then the t5's. this will be sufficent lighting for alot of corals i believe, flowrate is also a major factor though.

as for heaters i have 2 100 or 150 watts i believe!

Well, the tank has been fairly quiet for a few weeks now, waiting for the algae to go through its cycles... Not my cyno and the brown diatomatious algae has burnt out. To celebrate I had to a trip to the LFS where I picked up a Orchid Dottyback (which almost looks ultraviolet in the tank) and a new softy, a Green Xenia (Clavularia viridis) which looks cool and is rather large.

I'm also impressed with how easy it is to frag Pulsing Xenia, I've dont my first branch today.

Water stats are a bit confusing so fingers crossed someone can help out. The PH is sitting about 7.9 and Nitrates look around 25ppm, I know I've been a bit heavy handed with the food (the fish made me do it) so that will stop and over the next few days I will do another 10% water change

Will get some pictures up a bit later

Is PH 7.9 OK or should I look to bring it up?

Pix...The new Xenia cutting


The Orchid Dottyback and Green Xenia


Another


What you think about that PH? Cheers...

There does seem to be a PH issue, I've just dusted off my electronic PH probe which is calibrated, its measuring 7.8... Any ideas where to start looking - guess I should be buying an alkalinity test kit?

Start by measuring the pH before lights on and before lights off on your cycle first. See if there's a swing of the pH due to the lights. If so... You have a flowrate problem first and foremost

Measured this morning, PH 7.6 and at lights off, PH 7.8 so a 0.2 PH swing which is normal? I also set out a bucket of fresh salty last night and measured the PH (so it would be unaffected by stuff in the tank) PH was 7.8. The tap water PH is 7.8, after going through RODI its about 6.... All inhabitants including softies seem to be doing OK.

Today I'm hopefully going to get a alkalinity (and calcium but aware it wont affect PH) kit to see whats going on there.

Ski, where are you coming from on the flowrate problem? I'm pushing 5600lph, in a 180ltr tank which is 30x the volume, is this too much?

Got magnesium, calcium and alkalinity test kits, will test later tonight... I'm concerned about the salt I'm using and its profile, mixing a bucket of fresh results in 7.8PH (albeit at SG 1.023) - I will test the fresh salty tonight and see what its mag and calc levels are. The salt is called TAP Pro-Reef Crystals, I bought it cheap from eBay - does anyone else use this?

Will bring the SG up to 1.025 before I do anything else and see what affect that has, if that done sort it I will look to target the following values:

Magnesium: 1350ppm
Calcium: 400 - 440mg/l
Alkalinity: 9-12dkh

Yeah, that's not too bad of a swing. 0.1 or 0 swing is better, but 0.2 isn't that bad. Having volume of flowrate isn't quite as important as having surface tension broken with a powerhead near the surface. Breaking the surface tension of the water really speeds up your gas exchange and really cuts down on pH swings.

Likely your problem is that you were historically only mixing up salt to 1.023. This yeilds less of everything, calc, alk, mg and pH. Corals can fare OK with low calk/alk/mg as long as nutrients are kept low (especially phosphates). Scleractinians (hard corals) will start suffering with low calc/alk/mg and high phosphates so beware that. Soft corals are generally tolerant of such conditions. In the meantime now that you have test kits, figure out how far off you are and start dosing. Remember, never add calcium and alkalinity doses at the same time to the same tank. You just precipitate calcium carbonate out of solution and do little to raise calc/alk. Good luck

Ski thanks for the reply. Yesterday I did move the pumps slightly to create surface turbulence, the surface is moving incredibly now. Nitrates are at 2.5ppm and phosphates don't even register

Tonight I'm going to bring the bucket load of salty up to 1.025 an measure its content, I'm then going to slowly bring the tank up to 1.025 and measure its content. Then as you say start brining the relevants up to target.

Will start keeping a weekly log from now on!!

Good call on the log. Wanna cheat and bring the salinity up slowly? Just topoff with saltwater till it gets to the sg you want

SkiFletch said:

Good call on the log. Wanna cheat and bring the salinity up slowly? Just topoff with saltwater till it gets to the sg you want

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Good call, will do that!

What do you think about the salt I'm using - cannot find any info about it anywhere, think I should ditch and go to something branded?

IMO/IME salt brand doesn't matter. Over time any moderate or high volume system with corals will require dosing, even those using "high end" salt.

Cheers Ski, looks like the salt measures fine....

Brought the salty batch up to SG 1.025, measured before it has gone into the tank, spot the culprit:

PH - 7.6
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 0
Magnesium - 1335ppm
Calcium - 440ppm
Alk/Kh - 7.5dkh

I'm happy with mag and calcium - how do I increase KH?

Actual tank stats (currently at 1.023SG) are:

PH - 7.8
NO2 - 0.1ppm
NO3 - 2.5ppm
Phosphate - 0ppm
KH - 7.4dkh
Magnesium - 1110ppm
Calcium - 380ppm

I guess if I raise SG then the calcium and magnesium will be fine, the PH is still out...