Blog Comments

Currently I feed once a day. I feed frozen mysis every other day with Ocean Nutrition Prime Reef Flakes. The Mysis is rather low grade in my opinion, San Francisco Bay? The closest LFS is about an hour away. So when I run out I grab this type from Petco.

I am dealing with some nutrient issues, I see the cyano slowing coming back from dosing the Chemi-clean a few months back. But I wonder if the biopellets have anything to do with that?

I do feed my LPS but I have to admit its rarely. I have some Fauna Marin Ultra LPS Grow+ Color pellets. They seem to love it when I do feed. I feed this about once every 2 weeks.

Perhaps your tank needs more nutrients for the LPS to feed upon. How often do you feed? Are you dealing with nutrient issues, like cyano bacteria?

You might consider running the LEDs at 75% for the time being, and focus on feeding those LPS corals directly with some minced mysis shrimp.

I've also noticed some hermit crabs dying off maybe due to lifespan or other. I also have 4 fish, 2 clowns, tiny yellow goby, and a small vliamingi. I also wonder if the fish load is to small and would benefit by adding more fish.

There's also probably 100 lbs of Marco Rock

That is an excellent precaution. I haven't started my 60 cube yet, so I will be sure to split it across two heaters. When it is empty (of livestock...not water.....) I should try two 100W heaters and see if it can keep up with my 62 degree house. I have suffered losses from heat before (as you can see from my blog yesterday) so I want to be sure to take every precaution possible against that.

That seems like a lot of heat, Aquarius Marinus. But I believe most people don't keep their homes 62° F daily. (Last night, I was feeling pretty cold and yet my house was 73° F.) The average rule of heat required in the U.S. seems to be 3 watts per gallon. With your link above, it suggested 5w per gallon. Not an outrageous number, but still potent enough to cook a tank if it stuck in the On position. If you are running 300w of heat, I hope you installed two 150w heaters. One won't have the juice to overheat the water, which is an excellent precaution.

Here is a great site for calculating the necessary wattage for tank heat:

http://www.kernsanalysis.com/HeaterCalculator.cgi

The only problem is that the model doesn't work for tanks without a glass top, which is what most of us have. Still, it's a great tool. If I put .05" for top thickness (the calculator won't accept "0" for top thickness, and numbers too much lower than .05 begin to give unrealistic wattages) 19 degrees F for temp delta, and measurements of my 60g cube (along with wall thickness and material) it tells me that it recommends a 303W heater, and that's "with" a .05" thick glass top to retain additional heat. If you have multiple tanks (or sumps) you can do each one individually and add up the wattage for a rough estimate. If you use that method, be sure to use the "break even" wattage, not the recommended wattage for each one. Then add a safety margin to that number.

I found out that I needed a much larger heater than I thought, but then again I do keep my house a 62 during the day when I'm gone. Cheaper to heat the reef than the whole house when its single digits outside!

Only have two working heaters plugged into apex at the moment. Each EB is plugged into a different 20 amp dedicated circuit for the tank.

Make sure your circuit isn't overloaded with the extra heater(s), or it may trip creating new issues.

I found out one of my heaters is not working when the tank got to 72.5! (I need to set up alerts on my apex). The garage heater was not able to deal with single digit temperature that Charlotte had two days ago. I stuck in a small heater to help, it is on the rise. Ordered two new 300 watt heaters which should be here by Friday, one will be a spare.

While I'm in Texas, we have too had the cold weather snap hit our area. My tank dipped to 77.6° F this morning, which is unusual. Normally the tank's heaters kick on at 77.9° F. I checked the sump and two of the three heaters were running, but the third one flicked on right before my eyes. I didn't do anything about it since I'd already bumped up the house heat a couple more degrees, and the metal halides were going to come on in a few hours.

Definitely good advice, twomonsters. Thanks for the timely reminder.

I live in Clinton ia. its -11 here with the wind chill -42 so far my tank is holding at 78.3 and everything is doing fine and I have my heater set at 79..the second heater should help if not might want to aquire another if possible.

One thing that I've learned in this hobby over the years is, something's always around the corner.

Nice. Glad to hear things are getting back on track.

Originally Posted by melev

Did you read this article yet? http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...-get-rid-of-it

I just recently treated my tank with RedCyano Rx and got rid of the stuff. I blogged about it too.
http://www.reefaddicts.com/entry.php...-Rx-treatment)

Yes I sure did. Well a bit of an update is in order. Over the holidays I dosed ChemiClean. All the cyano after 48hrs and 25% water change was done. Hopefully I can correct my problem and be on the way.

Did you read this article yet? http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...-get-rid-of-it

I just recently treated my tank with RedCyano Rx and got rid of the stuff. I blogged about it too.
http://www.reefaddicts.com/entry.php...-Rx-treatment)

My tank went through an algae cycle a few months back,it was not pleasant almost made me throw in the towel.Anyway I was left with a Cyano problem.I have been using Dr Tims Waste Away and it has been working like a charm.

I would mix some water in preparation of using chemiclean. It really is painless if you follow the directions. I have used it twice before.

I also have 50 Cree 3w LEDS from Rapidled. Blue and white only.

I run 4in and have no problem, If I was going to do it again I would use a plenum with 2 or 3 layers of different sized substrate and use a slow flow pump like a aqualifter to feed the bottom plate. Just remember a dsb need low o2 not devoid of it and I also wouldnt make the mistake of putting lr in again just builds up detritus at low flows in a fug or remote dsb

Purple up will not do any good for you. Your cal and dkh levels are good.