Blog Comments

There you go!

Just about 24 hours later and the Phos is at 0. The slow dosing approach worked well for me, with minimal clouding.

Be sure to give us an update tomorrow!

After reading Melev's blog I decided to drip it over the course of 3 hrs, 36 drops in the skimmer section of my sump. Before I dosed my Phos was at .07. I'll test again in the morning to see how it worked. Then tank is just a shade cloudy, but then again its hard to decipher since the diamond goby is on a sifting spree.

I just drip it into the skimmer section. If you want to do it into the sock or the body of your skimmer, that's fine too.

Ok, do you think I should drip it into a Felt 200 micron sock?

Do it after lights out when the fish are asleep.

Thanks for the clarification. I am going to dose 32 drops.

Six drops of Phosphate Control will lower your phosphate by .5ppm for every 10 gallons (37.9L) of water.

It should bring them down .5ppm, not 1ppm. If your tank is measuring .04 now, you don't need to dose that much. However, if you did use 6 drops per 10g of water (72 drops), it will bring them down to 0 without any risk since you aren't bringing it down nearly as much as .5ppm would. That being said, why not use 3 drops per 10g (36 drops) and see how the tank measures the next day? It should still read 0, mathematically.

Marc - you don't need to hatch brine. Just go straight from rots and start weening onto Otohime A at 5 days. I think they would be ok for your time at MACNA as long as you arent staying an extended time or they are extremely young. I would increase your water volume and get an autofeeder (I used Eheim and it worked well for powder sized feed). If you have a dosing pump you could rig it to dose a Cloram-X while you are gone.

If the water volume was big enough, they may be okay as it wouldn't get as polluted. But... is that realistic?

melev my biggest concern with leaving baby clowns for a couple days is the fouling of water from the inevitable death of whatever the survival percentage is of baby clownfish

It's pretty easy to do. And I may be hatching some again soon because I'm getting ready to start breeding some clownfish very soon. I have too many projects to do at the same time. Just bought my plane ticket to MACNA tonight, and that's less than 2 months away. Will baby clowns be okay with me gone for a few days? Hmm.

i actually have not done that in about 4 months but I used to do it about once every couple of weeks and I am thinking of hatching them again to feed to corals. The entire set up is fairly inexpensive and they are ready to feed to the tank fairly quickly.

If the tank is 48" long, I'd think 48" bulbs would be best.

Yea i'm not really for certain but, I had extremely good luck with my retrofit 6 bulb T5 system. My water chemistry is good.

All was well since 2011 but in the past few months you're seeing a decline? LEDs purportedly last 50,000 hours. That's about 15 years if you run them 8 hours a day. I'm not certain about PAR drop-off, that's not what I've heard.

I have a LED fixture over my frag tank that is three years old and the corals continue to grow and grow.

You may be dealing with something else entirely.

There are 600 drops in a bottle, and that is the only product I use to keep PO4 out. I highly recommend it, and because I use it in my reef I sell it in my store. http://melevsreef.com/catalog/blue-l...a-phosphate-rx

I have a big thread about it on Reef2Reef, here: Tired of Phosphates?

Thanks Melev, I will give this a shot!

Cyano is always present, but we don't like it when it blooms and is visible. If you have to treat a few times a year to get rid of the red blanket-like presence, my motto is to just resolve the problem and move on. Some people seem to put down using RedCyano Rx or Chemi-Clean, but I've never been in that group. You can always dose more bacteria to replace what was lost during the treatment process - although it never was something I could measure / verify. I was just happy the cyano was gone.

To feed your LPS, I'd suggest you wait until lights out. Thaw some fish food in a small cup of tank water, and pour some of that flavor into the tank to elicit a feeding response from the corals. After 10-15 minutes, turn off the flow, grab a flashlight and feed the LPS corals one by one. Set a timer, 5 minutes later squirt more food at the waiting polyps. Set the timer again so you don't forget to turn your pumps back on. Do this at least twice a week, and you'll probably see some improvements.