Snorkeler's Cube

I decided to test a new LFS that recently opened in the neighborhood, http://www.danisfish.com.br. The guys seem nice and knowledgeable, they have a good set of products for sale, and they are very close, which always helps. In fact, they're the closest LFS to my home.

So I hired them to do a one time tank maintenance, involving general cleanup of pumps, glass, scraping algae off rocks (only a small patch left), doing a partial water change and measuring water parameters. You might ask "why pay for that? you should be doing it!"... yes, I know, but I haven't been able to dedicate time to do it and a little lazy to do all the water tests and cleaning , so... I normally also learn something from these cases.

So I worked "home office" today morning, and at 11AM they were supposed to arrive. 11:20 and nothing... humm... not good... I call them and to make a long story short they were late because of an emergency at another customer but got to my apartment at 11:40.

Maintenance went well, I liked the way they executed the cleanup. Careful and complete. The return pumps were very dirty , and they cleared up a piece of my skimmer air intake which I didn't know needed periodic checking. It started to produce much more bubbles and extract more skimate after that. Just learning that I guess paid the cost of the maintenance... That was positive.

PWC was of 60L, of 250L total system, about 24%, more than I normally do. I normally change 20L at maximum.

They took a bottle of water back to the LFS to do the water tests, which is OK but I would have preferred if they had done them at my home. They also didn't send me the results by email, I had to stop by at the end of the day after work and ask, and they didn't seem very organized with my data to be honest... that was negative.

The parameters are bad, according to their measurements, which is what I expected:

• Ca: 320ppm
• Alk: 6dKH
• PO4: 10ppm
• Salinity: 1.024

Now, I was expecting them to measure more parameters, which was a little bit disappointing. Lack of NO3 and Mg was a negative point, specially Mg which is a pain to test.

Not 100% sure I trusted the measurements I took out my test kits, a few maybe too old I admit, and tested, resulting in:

• Ca: 250 (can't be... that's too low)
• Alk: 6.4dKH
• PO4: 0ppm (probably not...)
• Salinity: 1.023
• NO3: 0ppm (probably correct, as my tank has lots and lots of denitrification and little bio load)
• pH: 8,4
• Mg: <850 (not sure I trust this one, but, I was expecting very low)

Ended the day adding 60ml of Red Sea Success Coral Buffer to try to raise the Alk, and I'll be considering adding other stuff to bring Ca and Mg up later. Just need to decide what products to buy to do that. I have a few leftover Mg and Ca buffers from the past, but since I never succeeded in raising Mg for long periods I'm a little weary to use them.

The LFS guys recommended Tropic Marin Bio Calcium, but I never used it so I'm not sure I believe it will be good.

In the really long term I'd like too have a Balling method setup, but that will need to wait until I get the water back into normal levels first....

Snorkeler