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90 gallon budget reef
- Thread starter art13
- Start date
i love acans, just don't have the budget for them right now, lol. I'm not sure if its a fluke or testing error, tested twice though. ph has been higher now for the past 5 days and my dosing on alk has been pretty dialed in though low for what i would say is a decent amount of sps. i was dosing roughly 12ml a day. my dkh was straying around 8.4. well, i measured today and it's at roughly 7.3. i'll keep an eye on it for the next few days but if that number is correct my dosing just went from 12ml a day to about 70ml a day. I tested about the same time yesterday and it was sitting at around 8.4, i'm kinda hoping the measurement is correct, i would love an explosion of growth.
Well, i ran the calcium, that has been steady at 440 every test, and is now showing 430. The PH is reading about .05 lower at its peak now, everything is pointing to increased uptake, and if this is correct, about 6x the uptake, i guess the low ph in the tank really did stunt the growth of everything. Guess i'll have to do a large change to my dosing after i get some more conformation of the new uptake.
To give you an idea of where my tank came from, here is a shot from around april of this year. Tank was up for about a year at this point, i sold off my coral around october the year before as i was having issues with them (found out later was due to low salinity, i was calibrating the refractometer with ro water) and i had a baby on the way, didn't have any time to focus on the tank. Bryopsis took over. April is when i corrected the salinity issue and started the bryopsis battle. First 3 months i did manual removal along with keeping nutrients low. That didn't work, went to hydrogen peroxide, pulling the rocks, dowsing them with it, spot treatments in the tank with the pumps off, and full tank dosing. Worked for a bit but came back in a few weeks. What finally did it was heavy tech m dosing for a week and a half. Finally won the byropsis battle about two months ago. With the ph corrected and everything starting to take off, the tank is finally at a good point.
Very nice frags, I like them.Two new additions, been waiting for a long time to put them in, blue vermiculata and ice fire.
yup, echinata takes the cake for the priciest frag i've bought at this point, now i just have to figure out where i want to put them, lol. Oddly enough i these are my first true blue coral, i have others with hints of it, and blue is my favorite color. Thought i had placement all figured out, they get here and now i have no idea anymore, lol.
Well, just a small update at this point. I've noticed as my friend pointed out to me, black bugs on my sps. I always thought something was slightly off with them. I just added Sentinel at this point, half a pill. I've already noticed some bugs gone that were there all morning. The other update, i can't seem to keep a blue acro in my tank, lol. I don't know if the blue vermiculata or ice fire are going to make it, i seemed to have stopped the recession but only time will tell if they heal. If everything goes will, i may also be starting a new build thread by January for my 135g DSA tank finally, only took 1.5 years of it sitting in my garage.
Well, roughly 5 hours in and i can not locate a bug on any of my sps, i'll take that as a good sign. I have not looked for any of my hermits or crabs at this time, but everything else in the tank is just fine. I noticed some skin loss on a new red dragon due to something eating it, so if that heals up that will also be a good sign. I took my green stag and moved him to the top as well so he can get his green and blue colors back, along with the bluish white interior color instead of the green and brown he is now.
Crab lived, still no sign of any bugs, just have to let my tank balance out again and adjust my dosing in a few days. borealis it taking off, chopped up a couple corals and moved them. Also, so far its been about a week since i've ran a reactor besides the last 12 hours or so after the meds were in, no more gfo or carbon for me, gonna see how that works out. Currently the only filtration i now have is a skimmer and the rocks/sand.
I've had the bubble algae for a while, i had two emeralds that made short work of it, they for whatever reason both died on the same day, i have no idea why. I picked up another about a month ago who doesn't seem to care for it, he would rather play batman at night (He perches on my acro high up on the rocks like he's looking over the tank). Either way it grows in some parts and then dies in others, its not an issue for me right now to worry about, if it starts to get worse i'll try some more crabs. I did forget to mention i do carbon dose, i wasn't really thinking about that when i mentioned actual filtration though.
apparently my red sea alk kit has been lying to me, my alk on the hanna is at about 10dkh, tested twice, red sea was showing about 8.4, so now to let it sit for a few days and let it come down. Also, just ran two phosphate tests with the ULR hanna, one showed 1ppb, the other 6ppm, Might as well be zero. Thats .006ppm, well short of the .03 area, and i feed heavily. Next up is the nitrate test.