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cyano

Just a little about my setup

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by
cyano
, 05-18-2011 at 01:06 PM (1817 Views)
Well, I guess since this is my first entry I will tell a little about my tank. I started saltwater with a nano tank I acquired from a friend a little over a year and a half ago, it didn't take long to cycle since it was still used when i got a hold of it just far out of parameters. after about a two month cycling process I added a small CUC and a yellow tail damsel. One week later my first coral was added, a frag of green star polyps about the size of the tip of my pinkie finger, it had begun! soon afterward I had added a branching hammer with one head, kenya tree, two monti frags orange and green, xenia, and a galaxea coral. Couple months later an ocellaris clown was added and I realized I am going to need a bigger tank to fuel this addiction and to comfortably house my livestock. The 75 gallon had begun.

I began swarming the forums for information on what to get, what to do, how to do it, everything a beginner would need to know (here's where I give a shout out to Melev for his website and numerous others for already asking the questions and getting the answers for the rest of us ) since any type of biocube does not teach you about setup, watts per gallon, sumps, refugiums, ect..... I got my taxes back and began ordering and looking out the window for the delivery trucks, tank stand, 100lbs of live rock, 100 lbs of sand, 48" NovaExtreme Pro 6x 54 watt T5 HO Lighting, and a HOB 65 gallon skimmer (ok I know...but I was running out of money and to be fair I have a low bio load in my tank, but it did/does produce skimmate) the tank cycled for 1 month before I registered nitrates and was able to put in livestock.

The tank is just over a year old now with a sump, stock is as follows:
corals
xenia
montipora capricornis (orange and green)
candy coral
mushrooms (blue ricordia, orange spotted, and green spotted)
galaxea
green star polyps
zooanthids (green, orange, yellow with red, pale whitish, deep blue/purple)
brain coral (came on the live rock and went through the cycling process bleached white and colored up a week after I started using the lights)
blue snowflake polyp (everywhere)
rose millapora (half bleached hoping it will pull through, I think it was the difference in lighting jumping up to mine from the lfs)
kenya tree (stays in my sump where it can't take over my tank)

Fish/invertebrates
yellow tail damsel
ocillaris clown fish x2 (they sleep in my zoos)
yellow clown goby
red fire goby
rose BTA (new addition to the tank less than a week old)
standard CUC (snails, crabs all "reef safe")

I do have plans for this tank and projects for it in the works, currently I am waiting for my RO-DI system to be delivered (today sometime) and waiting for my pump and scwd to convert over to a closed loop system, 1200 gph pump on the way for that so I can get rid of the possibility of chopping up the rose BTA with my Korelia 4's. not sure how well it will work in my 75 but we are all about to find out together as I post my experiences on here with it. aside from that I hope to get my red slime under control (thus the reason for the ro-di unit) and I hope to find me a magnesium test kit to try and figure out why I can't seem to stabilize my ph quite the way I would like to be, this latest batch of salt seems to not let my ph stabilize so well and I believe that is the reason why.

I look foward to learning from everyone here as we all feed this addiction of ours!

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Comments

  1. DJ in WV's Avatar
    curious as to the type of salt you used
  2. Midnight's Avatar
    And how you are testing PH? really all your parameters, that way if something sticks out we can help. also some pictures of your gorgeous tank so we can ohhh and awww.
  3. cyano's Avatar
    lol, as soon as I can pry the camera away from my wife i will do so, all of our memory card are full of pictures of our son (not complaining about that mind you) but I tried grabbing the camera yesterday and she said "your not taking any pictures till I take care of the ones that are on there" so yeah....

    anyway I am using instant ocean right now DJ I am about halfway done with a 5 gallon bucket of it before I bought this last batch I tried a little research on a different salt and with so many pros and cons and no one I could find really agreeing on anything I just stuck with IO one more go around so I will gladly take alternative suggestions there.

    I am using both the reef test kit I have had since beginning this hobby for ph as well as a constant monitor on it through my reefkeeper elite (calibrated weekly-biweekly) also with my ph I try to test about midway through my lights cycle for the day when it is at it's greatest and alternate my light times between my display tank and my sump to try and stabilize ph (so when the sump lights are on the dipslay is off and visa versa)
    and the test kits on everything else except magnesium as thats the only kit that is aparantly non-existed in any lfs around here (I asked one of the stores if they had any chaeto the other day and after explaining to them what it was they said "we have that freeze dried algae thats flat in a package.....")

    my parameters are:
    salinity 1.026 (tested with a hydrometer)
    ph 7.9-8.3 (really need to fix this one)
    ammonia 0
    nitrite 0
    nitrate 0
    phosphate 0 - 0.25 ( I am fighting cyano right now as well and believe it is whats holding it to undetectable levels but i have seen 0.25 after vacuuming all the cyano out of there)
    calcium 480
    kh 11 drops = 196.9 ppm km
    magnesium ??

    and another question has anyone ran any type of red slime remover in their reef tank with success that has softies, sps, and an anemone? it is really a last resort type of thing where I know i have to solve the problem of why it is coming back but I am really tired of looking at it and once I get my rodi unit set up (started to last night and somehow broke a fitting I bought coming off my hose bib.....and i used to be a plumber ) I will be using that for all of my water and plan on doing a few water changes a week, so my thought process was "if that is my problem and it is fixed and I am manually removing the phosphates rather than waiting on all the cyano to die i can kill it, vacuum it out do some more water changes and be happy to have white sand again" so anyway chime in on that idea as well i am off to the store to replace my broken splitter
  4. Midnight's Avatar
    Mag test can be odered from just about anywhere. Chemi-clean works well and has been reviewed by marc on this site. Flow and nutrients are the keys to fighting cyano bacteria. Also people who carbon have sometimes believed it to cause cyano breakout. Chaeto can be ordered through several places including eBay.
  5. DJ in WV's Avatar
    there are snails you can add to the cuc that eat cyano. I use to use IO salt, I switched to seachem reef salt this go around and getting good results, I had some phosphate trouble last time i was useing IO.
  6. cyano's Avatar
    thanks guys for the input I will definitely look into everything, midnight it was my understanding that they believed carbon may disperse enough phosphates into the water to cause a cyano outbreak but I may be mistaken, though if this is true could that mean that there may be certain proven brands that don't cause it, seems like it may be worth looking in to (I am currently nor running carbon but I do from time to time)

    also have you successfully ordered chaeto online before? I am always leery of ordering anything living online, bacteria or not.

    hmmmm dj, I wonder if it my salt rather than my tap water that has the phosphates, if so my water changes even with RO water could be fueling it rather than eliminating it.....I would not be a happy camper if that was the cause, guess I will have to do more tests and look at this in a whole new light, thanks a lot
  7. cyano's Avatar
    oh and a quick update, I did just finish getting my RO-DI system hooked up, no leaks, a little modification, and 14 small holes drilled into my wall trying to locate studs later (my washroom used to be in the garage that was converted into a den so whoever did it used sheet rock then decided they didn't want to mud, sand, and paint it so they put a really back wood siding over it so they really didn't want me to find those studs) after flushing it and all that preliminary work I am currently seeing how much water I can get made before I have to go into work. now all i need is for everything to get here for my closed loop system