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Basement IM 100 EXT
- Thread starter harthag12
- Start date
Quick update on the tank. I've added my light fixture finally. Aquatic life T5 with 3 Kessil A360WE. From the picture you can see I'm having issues with the T5's. I tested the fixture back in August when I purchased it, worked fine. 2 bulbs I received were cracked however so I sent them back & got replacements. While I tested the first two bulbs I didn't test the replacements. I hung the light & turn it on and can't get the front set of lights to turn on. I can get one to briefly flicker than off so I think I might have a bad bulb. Annoying. When I had the back set of T5 bulbs running no Kessil's my clowns started acting crazy. I think maybe they can see their reflection, not sure but the more aggressive one (Sparky) got even more aggressive nipping Nemo & really bullying Nemo so I've left the T5's off. The Kessils don't seem to affect them however. My Nitrates remain stupid high despite weekly 25g water changes & Chaeto. I do believe my Chaeto is growing though one of my two Dragons Breath isn't looking so hot. I still can't get the skimmer dialed in correctly albeit I haven't tried much. Today I receive my first corals, 13 frags $20 frags from Pieces of the Ocean; I also receive 9 fish from FishyBusinessAquatics; and pods & Phyto from PodyourReef plus more test kits, 2 part ect from Marinedepot so it's an exciting & hopefully not to disastrous day. I plan to put the livestock in this morning, do a water change at night, test all my parameters & go from there. On a side note my 65G JBJ finally finished cycling so that will start to get slowly stocked. Here's a pre new livestock shot.
Yeah it's a gamble but in my head I have a reason, sort of. 5 Cardinals, 3 lyretail Anthias & 1 Esquisite Fairy Wrasse. My nitrates have been high since setup despite weekly 25% water changes. My tank is dry rock & super sterile with the lights off so I have nothing growing in the tank except now Chaeto in the sump. Feeding my 2 clowns in 100g of water was sort of an issue. Initially if I turned off the powerheads I could feed them with out much waste however lately the more aggressive was getting all the food to the point that the other wasn't trying. I found if I put the pumps on the less aggressive got really aggressive chasing stuff but I have to feed more for them to actually find it. Also because of lack of algae I can't get a huge cleanup crew to take care of uneaten stuff, kind of a catch 22 on things. Hoping with corals & more fish I can feed the tank with pumps on and have more eaten. I'm closely watching Ammonia incase the tank can't handle it & added more bottled bacteria this morning just incase. In other news after my water change I measured my DKH & it was 6.7, feels a bit low for fresh water. Will test again tonight, see if I did it right. I did buy Bionic 2 part so I'll have to mix that up and give it a go if it is that low.
have you tested your phosphates by any chance? its a fairly new tank so swings in PO4 and NO3 will happen constantly and you can find yourself in a situation were PO4 and NO3 ratio is out of wack. If PO4 is extremely low or non-existent this can cause NO3 to sky rocket and stay there.
Good question iTzJU & not one I have an answer to. I got a Hannah Phosphate checker in the mail yesterday because I'm concerned all the manmade dry type rock might leach it. I plan to test that tonight as well. I have Rowaphos? I believe coming as well so if it's bad I can atleast do something about it. I can't really do something like Biopellets for the nitrates since i can't seem to get this skimmer dialed in yet & I read that it's important to have a functioning skimmer. I also got a Salifert Calcium test kit yesterday so I'll be testing it all tonight. (yesterday just got to full)
I dropped 1 bag of Tisbe & 1 of Tigre in the sump & 1 of Tisbe & 1 of Tigre in the display. The fish loved it. Feeding a bit of Phyto to the sump each day. I did have my first losses. 1 Lyretail Anthia didn't make it. I'm not surprised, I saw 2 swimming around a bunch and after the initial day I never saw the 3rd. Found him attached to the Pulse 4 this morning. Also lost a Cardinal which surprised me because they all seemed to be ok, hope he was sick & didn't just goto sleep and get sucked into the powerhead.
Bit of an update. Went to Rap NY, picked up a bunch of frags. Lost the the Cardinals, not 100% sure why but they just slowly died. The Anthias & Wrasse however are growing as are the clowns. I added a few weeks ago 13? Gobies from KP Aquatics. They're tiny but all alive and growing well. All the corals from Rap are looking good with the exception of a torch coral. It really hasn't wanted to open this past week. I've moved it to my newer tank as the first coral in which has less flow, hoping it opens there. Today I added 10 black Mollies to my tank. They're brackish so I've read that they can adjust. It's only been 7 hours but so far they look ok, they're schooling together & a few mavericks made real attempts for food so I'm cautisouly optimistic though I do expect losses. & now onto a few photos.
