Blog Comments

Ok, so I have ordered a gallon of Kent Tech M Magnesium supplement and what I have decided to do is document results and Magnesium levels with pictures and posting on another blog. The Tech M should be in later this week some time so once it comes in I will start the process. I have found a lot of posts and information about people doing this but no real logs with pictures that show results relative to magnesium levels/dosage of the Kent so hopefully I can get this together to help others decide what is right for their tank rather than just reading "do it because it worked for me." If anyone has any other thoughts or suggestions please let me know and hopefully in about 2 weeks I will no longer be ashamed of my full tank shot!

Upon a little further research I think I will attempt to boost my magnesium up little by little to see if I get any good results, but I refuse to go past a comfortable dosage in which case I will be looking at a foxface still so my questions still stand as for as compatibility with the yellow tang, odds of it eating the algae, and odds of best friends with tang with them having sleepovers and holding fins skipping and singing songs?

i would re add them, unless you truly don't think you need them?

......My wife just woke up and.....yes it was something she cooked it was not from my tank, Thank you for the response and help anyway Midnight. Apparently Chinese chives was the culprit in this crime. On the up-side I did some reading and research on H2S and learned some things I would not have known otherwise! but if anyone else does have any suggestions on what to do should this ever truly happen to you and it not be a drill I would still like to know and it would be nice to have that information documented for that poor soul who is running around sniffing all of his fish water and equipment.

I do still have a question, should I go ahead and dump all the rinsed biopellets back into the reactor? or should I just wait it out a bit and add slowly over the next few weeks?

Morning Midnight, Yeah I smelled what my brain perceived at the time to be a rotten egg smell. I am running a reef octopus 150 skimmer and also my power heads are breaking the water surface so I shouldn't have an oxygen deficiency, not saying I don't but shouldn't. My reactor output is right in front of the skimmer so once again theoretically that should also be ideal.

I am not able to smell today again due to allergies (I probably should consider moving out of the south one of these days) but briefly I have attempted to sniff in here with the tank and haven't smelled it at all. Today still the tank occupants look happy, these Xenia is pulsing about, I have even kept the millepora frags I got in Thursday alive and happy with their polyps out for longer than any other acropora species with the same conditions, normally they would be bleached and dead by now. I have not seen my cleaner shrimp this morning but I believe it may have molted last night so I don't really expect to see him till later today......scratch that Eddy the cleaner shrimp just made his appearance so everything is alive an well.

I don't have an ORP meter of any sort and I do not think I could find one locally for emergency I would like to clarify that this was not a strong overwhelming scent of it but enough to smell, I have smelt H2S in old stagnant water before and it will make you puke, there is questioning what that is, but in that case it was equipment that was off line and away from the tak and the water smelled of it. In this case I smelt the tank water and it did not have that smell I smelt in the canopy, smelt water that was on my hand from the tank, smelt the sump, and smelt what was coming out of the skimmer, also when I took the reactor apart I smelt inside of it and the bio pellets and I did not get even a hint of H2S thats another reason I was unsure if I even had a problem.

Are you saying that you smelled a sulfer or rotten egg smell. I am not sure what you mean my hydrogen sulfide? I agree that you cannot over dose the pellets, however you can shock your system. The pellets are only used by what bacteria are present which means there are nutrients there to support them. So robbing the tank of these nutrients too fast can cause a decline in certain things like xenia. Also if you are not skimming out the bacteria they can use up too much of the tank available O2. If you have a way of checking your O2 that would help. I wiki'd your H2S and found that it is generally caused by bacteria and low O2 can be the culprit. You do have a large skimmer right?

on the top picture you can see the setosa to the right, it really it a nice pretty bright color in person my Iphone doesn't do any of these corals any justice. the bottom picture are of all 4 millepora, as U can tell right now they are not under direct light off on the side of the tank I am hoping that by taking plenty of time to acclimate them slowly they will thrive in my tank . last night I also started feeding my corals (at night rather than the day) and witnessed several corals eat/respond to cyclopeze that had never done that before (the branching hammer coral seemed to close around food, as did the candy coral, the duncan got fed without cleaner shrimp harassment.) The newest additions also seemed to show what people are considering a feeding response, now does this mean they are eating? i don't think anyone truly knows the answer to that but they showed the response that is talked about.

I will try to post some pictures when I get home, I promise they won't be the best quality but they will be posted

does anyone know what I should be looking for so I know if I NEED to place them a little higher in the tank? as in browning, hairless, they shouldn't bleach being too law should they just dull right?

Would like to see pics please. I love Milli's, but I haven't owned one yet because I've never see one yet in the LFS. Lol

@melev so for the fish that I currently have stocked what else could you see adding to that list and how many? I am just trying to get a good idea of where I stand and also an idea of fish to possibly add in the future. I have some very well behaved inhabitants right now in fact almost too well behaved as I can't seem to get them to destroy or remove my xenia, hair algae, caulerpa, or kenya tree lol. I have worried about territorial issues in stocking up to this point so I have been hesitant to add anything else that could potentially hurt any of the livestock that I have had for years.

Now that I think about it I guess i could attempt to modify the current canopy, remove the top (if I can I am at work not by my tank at the moment) add a "shim" on the inside off the canopy where the legs of the lights would rest. Since at that point removing the entire canopy or going through the top would make maintenance and feeding difficult I could see about modifying the front of the canopy so that it folds up and out of the way....I have no idea if i could do any of this with the current canopy but I can always look at it when I get home

Though if i were to make I taller canopy I would probably just hang the lights in it and have doors in the front and sides of the canopy for access......hmmm things to add to my list

No, because you only have one big fish. The rest are relatively small, bioload wise. You have to look at their mass and the amount of food you have to offer to decide what your load is.

For the canopy, could you remove the lid and leave the four sides in place, using cross bars to keep it up there for a test run? Just a thought. Or you could make a taller canopy - yay! A new DIY project to start on.

A couple of my fish like to jump at inopportune times (the female clown is my best example) so I am a little scared of removing my current canopy for an extended amount of time to raise the fixture. I should add that since my son goes through therapy I have nurses, visitors, and therapists in the room all through the week and my wife hates it is I leave a bucket by the tank to mix salt in I would hate the think what she would do if I took off the canopy and diy'ed a light shim into place, lol. I used to have class tops over my tank but I still experienced losses with sps So I think I will just allow them to acclimate as I have had montipora in my tank for a couple of years now and after watching it get outgrown by some of the softies I moved it to the highest point in the tank and it loves it (though it is hard to kill a monti cap) so I am assuming (hoping) it is more a acclimation thing then anything.

@Melev I had read some of your other things that had talked about having plenty of fish for sps and I know that in some your older smaller tanks you have had what would be considered to some an "overstocked" tank as far as fish are concerned. Obviously in a perfect world we introduce fish one at a time and hit a limit we have preset in our minds as to what is good but I don't put a lot of stock into the inch of fish per 3/6 gallons of water statement. So for instance right now I have one cleaner shrimp, 2 clowns, one yellow tail damsel, yellow tang, clown goby, and fire fish. Would you personally consider that maxed out for a 75 gallon reef or almost perfect?

On a slightly related tank update: the new skimmer and biopellet reactor have been running for about 2 weeks now, I have not seen any cyano blooms, cloudy water, or diatom outbreaks and I have as of last monday installed the rest of the biopellets into the reactor (500ml total) and have a great tumble. I also have increased my salt content of the tank since calibration to 1.024 from 1.020 with adding salt to the top off water and water changes (didn't realize the refractometer was off) and all inhabitants seem happier with this especially the corals. The color of the water seems clearer as of this morning than I have even seen before before it seemed there was a slight yellow ting to it and now it just seems....clean? I also have finally (after 2 years of owning it) secured the branching hammer coral to a permanent place in the reef (right next to the xenia so that outta keep that stuff in check) rather than me having to re wedge it in between rocks daily and it seems happy with the decision as well.

Here's the thing, you've seen what's happening in your tank with the bulbs at 3" off the water. Now try putting corals down low and see how they do. If you can create even a temporary support out of wood to get them up to 7", that should help.

A buddy of mine put me on the idea that the bulbs were possibly outputting UV, but never had the money & time to get a UV meter to measure it. It's another device sold by Apogee. Higher up should help. Or a sheet of glass between the bulbs and the water could help eliminate it, just like it does for DE (double ended) metal halide bulbs.

Good stuff here. I had been contemplating using LEDs for the longest time. Then I saw my friend's tank. He also has a 75 and used a 6x54W fixture to take care of his colorful array of sps coral. So, 7" above the water... seems awefully specific, definitely tagging along to find out why.

thanks for the response melev I believe I remember reading you talking about t5's being about 7" off the water before in an article but i couldn't find the article to double check. Unfortunately that wouldn't really be very possible at the moment (a big reason i didn't get MH or LEDs was because I was unable to hang them) so i guess I need to start them at the very bottom even half in the shade? I also got my 35ppt calibration solution in today and found out my salinity in my tank was off so i have added a concentrated amount of salt to my top off water and did about a 10 gallon water change slowly this afternoon to start raising it up without shocking anything in my tank.

I had read that people who were successfully running all sps tank on T5's were getting strong penetration out of the 54 watts up to 18" down in the tank and were capable of growing sps from the tank bottom all the way to the top. I also read of people actually removing some of their bulbs due to them frying their corals. I imagine though that they took their time acclimating their sps to the higher portions of the tank. I had also read though that one very successful sps t5 reefer recommended the very colorful acro's no less than 10" to the top and the brown's and greens no less than 12-14" I believe. So how do I know if an acro is unhappy at the bottom and will there be time to save one from being fried if I just move it lower if bleaching starts to occur?

Yes, you need to move all corals to the bottom of the tank, and raise the T5s to about 7" off the water. That will help significantly. You can move corals up a few inches once a week and see if they can acclimate to tolerate the intensity and UV those bulbs give off. (UV is really more of a theory since I don't know anyone that has tested it yet)

i disagree with almost all the third paragraph....and there are some declorinators contain compounds such as EDTA which will chelate heavy metals and other molecules,on the other hand it does mean it will also chelate mg and ca

other than that i could not agree more!!! if you dont have a RODI dont bother....stick to betas lol sorry pepper'scove i dont really mean it

i would like to add that the bulbs have individual reflectors and am I just underestimating the power of these T5 HO's?

Good points. In the end, our tanks rely on what we put in them.