So I picked up a calcium and magnesium test kit because of the sps and lps. Guess what. Im way off. My calcium is down at 300ppm. To slowly raise it to just over 400 is going to take me 10 days of 1/2tsp a day of seachem calcium and magnesium additive. When i get it up to the right level im going to calculate how fast its used up so i know exactly how much to dose and how often.

I knew IO salt was low in this stuff but geez.

IO actually isn't low unless you're using an old bucket. http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1714505 The new values are pretty good and right around where I target. Of course there still can be some variation between batches... but those should be minor.

Shouldnt be old. I just bought the stuff a few months ago. Maybe a bad batch?? hmm
In any case its only been a 1/2 hour and guess what i see. zoas starting to open up :) Just a little but its still more than before. I guess they do need some more calcium and magnesium. Poor guys.

Also SURPRISE! my hubby came back with my fishie surprise hes been talking about. Its my absolutely most fav fish EVER!!! Coral beauty. Stunning fish. So far she (im calling it a she) hasent picked on any coral. Just the rock work and sand. She stole my peppermint shrimps home lol and loves hanging out with my clowns who have just recently laid eggs!!! mmmm free food. Shes a pig and is a pretty calm one so far.

Have you tested your newly mixed up saltwater or just your tank water? Your tank water is obviously going to be lower if you haven't been supplementing simply because its been getting used up.

omg duh. thanks i totally forgot about checking the fresh salt mix lol.

So i havent taken any pics yet like i normally do because i dosed the tank with prazi pro for my Coral beauty angelfish. The tank was quite cloudy. It cleared up for a day but Im also turning off the skimmer on weekends and feeding coral those days and using selcon and garlic extreme. Skimmer gets turned back on for the week. The tank hasent really cleared up yet but it is much better.

I also tried cleaning off my zoas again which only opened for a day when i recieved them and havent open since. Ive tried dips, and scrubs. They havent really worked. So, I tried putting them in a higher flow area which in turn is actually higher up in the tank and much closer to the lights... guess what... the brown film that was coating them is going away and they are slowy starting to open up. YAY! Hope they open up all the way but i wish they would survive on my sandbed so they are easier to frag. Now i dont know if it was the stronger flow or higher light or both that are making them happy. Im wondering about getting another powerhead to put along the sandbed for a higher flow.... but my mushrooms are happy with the flow so im also wondering about doing a total re-plan of my scape.
Im thinking all rics and mushrooms of any kind at the bottom of my tank. LPS at the uppermost part of my tank and zoas in the middle to top.

How can i frag zoas without cutting off the rock they are on too???? They look like they would be hard to peel off unlike gsp. The rocks they will be remaining on will not be able to come out of the tank for fragging either. *Sigh* How to do it???

tank ended up being super duper cloudy. I couldnt see to the back of the tank. I added activated carbon. Feeding a lot less (Im afraid of starving animals in there now), running skimmer 24/7 and guess what i have now... green water.
In any case I have too many organics in the water. My pod population went way way down after adding the prazi pro.
Stupid thing said it was supposted to be safe in the display. I guess its not. Never again!

All params are still good. The corals are suffering a bit now because of the lack of light due to the cloudyness.

Im going to try another WC to see if it temporarily helps but all i can do now really is play the waiting game until the green water goes away. In my planted tank it took almost a month (2 years ago) but then it was super crystal clear.

So now my tank is clearing up. I can see to the back of it now. Its still cloudy but not anywhere near as bad as it was previously.
Go figure my zoas are all open and looking good where as when the water was clear they were closed and unhappy and wrinkley covered in brown slime. hmmmm

Anyway All the other corals are not happy, my mushrooms are white and my green with orange spot mushroom is almost gone. My lps are shrivelled up. Rics have no colour to them anymore. Macro on the other hand is BRIGHT RED!

I guess it was too long with minimal light (about a month) so now i dont expect many of my coral to survive :(

Is there a reson you treated your whole tank with prazipro? Someone else should chime in but I think that stuff kills alot of things such as pods and inverts. Was it for a flukes treatment? You may have had alot of die off in your tank that could cause the nitrates. Not the greatest idea to add chemicals like that in your display tank. More for quarantine tanks.

Prazi pro says its supposted to be safe in display tanks and causes no harm to inverts, corals, etc. Yes it was for flukes
Well my inverts are completely fine but my pod population is at almost nothing. So, im guessing thats what helped cause the green water.

in any case its getting much better now... despite coral loss from lack of light

Water is almost clear YAY!
Coral loss:
All monti caps (4)
orange spot green mushroom
green spot mushroom and its babies


Coral almost gone but may recover with superb care:
frogspawn
candycane
superman rhodactus
blue with green skirt rhodactus


coral unaffected or doing way better than before:
zoas (5 frags)
green sinularia
baby blue rhodactus
brown ish rhodactus
blue mushroom
rics

we need a picture. I dont have any of the tank yet but maybe this halloween pic of my baby will do
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a2...eenfriends.jpg

So, I went shopping today at the lfs looking to get a small piece of LR to put some pods in my tank; since my population went to pod heaven.
I ended up buying 2 rocks. 1 which had red bubble algae on it, very pretty as well as a bunch of calpura; grape and razor? I need to look it up. which i didnt want but oh well. second rock had a hawian feather duster on it. I took it home and found it had way more feather dusters on it. It has a few red ones and a few blue ones on it. Very cool. Lots of baby ones in red and blue that are under the rock right now. Im hoping they grow and stretch to the front where i can see them. Right now I can only see the hawian feather duster and the back of the blue one.
I also picked up another candycane coral. It has 11 heads on it. I got it for $34. I really love how they fluoress under my lights.

Anyway still no pics yet. Ive been super duper busy. Im hoping I will take one within the next couple of days.

That really is a sweeeet photo, I think you'd do really well if you entered it in a cutest baby contest, or even a pet contest. Really adorable. Oh and glad to hear your tank is turning back around to the good for you.

YAY i have a picture to post YAY.
Its a pretty bad one and its still pretty cloudy but its mountains away from what it was. It still has a long way to go but im optimistic.
PS I recieved some more macro algae from JLA :)

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a2...vember2010.jpg

Back from PG and got a lot of new things for my tank. I visited Russell and got some nice corals from him. I traded him for some mushrooms, macroalgae, xenia and zoas.

I also went to an awsome fishstore. The owners name is Alan and his store/buisness is called "All Clear Aquarium services" His prices are the best i have seen locally. I picked up some salt from him and coral snow. I wanted to get some coral too but i didnt have room in my cooler as it was full of corals from russell :)

Anyway I strongly suggest people go check out All Clear Aquarium Services in PG. allclear@telus.net

Im a fan and will be going there again next time im in PG. OH and Russells tank is sooo nice in person. Very nice set up.

Oh and if Alan reads this. You made me want to get a LED lighting system now. Thanks for making me dig deeper into my pockets to try and find the bits of whatever that i can to get one. LOL

Thanks for dropping in, helping me create some more space and introducing me to your relative. I contacted his employer and they may hire me in a week or so which is great.

Woo Hoo!!!. I hope you get the job. :)
Enjoy your trip down south.

well its been a while so heres an update. My water went super green again. I added a fluval U2 to my tank so i could add carbon and other medias easily. Well it worked for a few days but went back to green again. I thought it needed to be changed more often so ive been doing that. No go. Ive fed A LOT less... no go. I started using coral snow... no go. Ive been doing huge WC. It helps out a bit but then the water goes back to green. *sigh*

So anyway. I did some more reading about green water. It could be either of two things. Phyto or algae. Im thinking it may be phyto because i have no algae issues in my tank other than the green water. Its green all the time. It doesnt get less or more green throughout the day. Carbon and Polishing filter floss doesnt help. WC dont really help.
Soooo, Im currently trying to buy a UVS.

Im hoping that a UVS will solve the issue.

Ive had a few coral die on me because of lack of light :( very sad.

If you get an adequately sized protien skimmer you wont have phytoplankton problems.

So you think my tunze 9002 isint good enough? Maybe I need a bigger one ?

So I purchased a coralive turbo twist UV steralizer to help with my green water problem that wont seem to go away no matter what i do. Its been 8 days since the install and wow what a difference. I can see into the tank easily now. The water is still a bit cloudy so im going to leave the UVS on for another week at least until the tank is crystal then take it off and see how it goes.
Most of my macro algae is dead and you know what... thats ok. Im thinking that im not going to force my tank any which way anymore. If it does not want to be a macro algae tank then it wont be. I will focus on what does well in my tank.
My candycane coral is beautiful and has split a lot. I was quite surprised. My rics are doing beautifully as well as my mushrooms. One of my rhodactus mushrooms split and i now have 2 of them. YAY!
My zoas are doing good although some have completely dissipeared. The rocks they were on, everything gone. I cant find them anywhere.

This year i will only be able to put in one coral order. We are now living on one paycheck. My mat leave is over, and i have no job to go back to anymore. I am a teacher and requested that when i am called for subbing that i be called at least a day in advance so i can find a baby sitter. The response to that was that i will not be called very often then. As it is my other substitute teacher friends have told me that they have not been called very much either. To top it all off one of the schools will be closing which puts more teachers out of work and me lower on the seniority list thus giving me less chance of getting called in for a job.
My husbands paycheck has been reduced by 20% for sobattical leave in 2 years for a family reunion in Newfoundland.

My tank is going to grow very slowly it seems lol
I am going to focus on easy care coral like softies.
I am going to try for a collection of different xenia, zoas, mushrooms, rics and yumas. Any macroalgae that mixes in there is fine by me. I love cloves and gorgs but it seems like they dont enjoy my tank.

Hopefully a job will come up for me and life will be easier. We have a lot of renos that NEED to get done. Plus a new little person here with us that demands certain things.

Oh well, life goes on and a clear tank with growing corals is very comforting :) And my little man (my son Logan) Loves to stare at the tank and talk to the fish.

Tank is beautifully clear now. However im fighting off cyano. Blah. Looks kind of like red hair algae thats easy to remove.
Ive been spot siphoning daily and adding coral snow daily as well. So far Im not making a dent. It just keeps comming back. Any other suggestions?

Photoperiod is 12hrs with 2x39w T5HO. Should I reduce it?
any other options??

Try Boyd Chemi-Clean. It has always worked for me with no side effects.

http://www.jlaquatics.com/product/bd...allons%29.html

12 hours sounds pretty excessive if both of them on are on for that amount of time. I'd cut back. Also, how old are the bulbs? I always get cyano when my bulbs have exceeded their useful life. There are a lot of threads on this site about cyano problems. Have a look and I'm sure you'll find your solution.

My bulbs are almost a year old so im thinking that is more than likely the problem because ive never had this problem before. Ive read a bunch of threads about cyano and mine seems to be the low nutrient loving cyano that looks like hair algae but very whispy and pink/brown. Its very easy to remove manually. Coral snow isint doing a thing to it. Im going to try dosing it at night when the lights are out.
Im putting the lights back a few hours too.
Im going to order new bulbs soon as well.
At least my corals are looking FAB now. Im in love with them. :)
I was reading somewhere that it helps if your rock is 60% covered with coral. hmmmm well im putting in 1 coral order soon with Carrera75 :)

I dont want to add anymore chemicals to my tank after my last experience with it. My tank went green for months. Its only clear now because of UVS i got from thegrizz.
Adding anything will be an absolute last resort.

*sigh* Life sucks sometimes.
First my dad passes away suddenly from lung cancer July 6, 2009. 7 months later my grandpa (Vavo) that helped raise me passes away from diabetes (kidney failure). My uncle passed away this valentines day from a sudden heart attack and brain anurism (the doctors know both happened at about the same time) and now my grandma (Vavo) whom i was very close too and also helped raise me is in the hospital dying. Her heart is very weak and they are expecting heart failure.

I feel horrible for my mom. Her husband dies, then her father and now her mother is going to go all within the span of 3 years. I cant take this anymore. So many emotions and family politics.
My familys history is all leaving us faster than we would have liked. There is still so much more i want to learn from my Vavo. She was supposted to teach me how to make octopus stew on the weekend :( Im the one carrying on the portuguese way. Its just my mom and me doing it. No one else in the family is or wants to carry it on.

Im so lost.

Tank update. I did take a pic of my nice clean and clear tank but i havent uploaded any pics from my camera since valentines day. The family has been in a bit of turmoil.

I decided to pull up some of my grape calpura from the sandbed and a big plume of green mushroomed into the water column. greeeaaat.
So guess what. Green water once again. I pluged in the UVS and after a few days i saw the water slowly get worse... hmmm
I checked the light and found the uv light wasent working. I had to tinker with it a bit and i found that its very tempermental. I moved the uvs to the back of my tank so its not im my direct view. Its working now but its going to be at least a week before my tank clears up again.
This time im seariously considering leaving it on and i will just replace the bulb every year.
Now however i need to put in a background to hide that ugly piece of equiptment. I really liked my grey wall neutral background. Now i dont know what to put there. It needs to be paper thin. I know i dont want blue. Black is okay and is usually my default but i wanted a clean look.
White may be too white. Maybe mirror paper?

Any suggestions?

Im still looking to add more macro algae this time i dont care what kinds, calcium suckers or not im dosing calcium weekly and params are stable.
Ive started dosing KNO3 again to get my macros up to their former glory. I wish i could try red gracillera again (long stringy and bush like... kind of purple) I loved it. The sargassum was awsome too but i dont think i had enough light for brown algaes.

I am also looking for mushrooms of various colours and patterns. I had a really nice green mushroom with orange spots and a nice orange rhodactus that didnt make it through the green water outbreak. My other mushrooms are doing very well.
Does anyone know where i can get the following colours (red coral online has some of them but i cant afford that big stunningly beautiful rock or the shippping for it)
green marbled
green striped
green with orange spots
red with white stripes
red with blue dots
blue dot


I also really want to try cloves again. The blue cloves i always ordered never came to me alive.. well one did but it was on its way out.
I am also looking for different varieties of xenia to attach to my back wall.


I wish my corals would grow faster. My lps are growing very well but my mushrooms are very very very slow. Only one has split.

So when are you coming to PG? I have been holding on to that frogspawn for you.I also have some shrooms if you'd like them. My clove polyps are slowly going away from from main tank but I have a very large rock that i took out and put in my refuge. It still has alot on it. LMK

I would think twice about xenia. I had it for a while, but found it too prolific.
I like blue or black for a back wall.

Well, my bulbs finally came in and i just installed them. WOW what a difference. You never truly appreciate the change in spectrum until you re install new bulbs after a year.
I thought my lights were still putting out an okay spectrum... minus the cyano that has been slowly spreading through my tank. But now with my new bulbs. Holy Blue Batman! My old bulbs went white/pink on me by comparison.

Im hoping now that this will help with the cyano bacteria fight.

tank is getting more stable now. I turned the uvs off again. Its been off for almost 2 weeks and everything is going well. I pulled a bunch of green grape and now i have a bunch of white buds (new growth) My dragons breath is suffering but im hoping that it will come back.
Im thinking of getting another light fixture. Either a single or a double fixture to put some 6500k bulbs for my macroalgae. Im looking into an LED fixture too for the plants. I wonder what will work.

I remember when I switched from the old Coralife bulbs that the previous owner of my light hood had to KZ coral 1, 2, fiji purple and blue+ and I could barely look at the tank it was so intense, haha.

[Edit] Oh, and I have Botryocladia macro if you're still looking for it, but not sure how to effectively frag it if you were interested in some. Mine is almost big enough to split up.

Picture update. Please be gentle. Much has died since the green water. However things are looking up now and I hope to have things nice and lush again in a couple of months :)
I finally figured out what caused my green water... ammonia spike from dead peppermint shrimp that i could never and still have not found.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a2...a/DSC_5892.jpg
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a2.../dmushmay3.jpg
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a2...a/DSC_5898.jpg
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a2...a/DSC_5915.jpg
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a2...rhmushmay3.jpg
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a2...shmay32011.jpg
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a2.../rmushmay3.jpg

Well I guess when you do enough research you can find the solution to your problem. My problem is i really like gorgs but i couldnt keep them in my tank. A few months ago I found a post on another forum saying they need light that is able to handle sps to thrive. But how much is that? Some need more than others. A few days ago I stumbled upon a few threads as well as a macro algae site that explained gorg lighting care. They need a minimum of 3wpg and do best at 4-5wpg. So, that means I dont have enough light. Im at about 2.2wpg. Ive been tossing the idea around of getting another hagen glo fixture. So, I bought one yesterday. I just need to wait for it to come in. In the meantime im going to research bulb combos.
I know i need a 10,000k bulb and another in the range of 5000-7000K (sunlight), And another that is either actinic or with actinic properties. Then I will need 1 more bulb. I need to do more research to find out what bulb that is.
Once its all set up im going to try gorgs one more time. :) Not to mention the extra light is good for my macros.

OH PS.
I ripped out about a pound of green grape calpura. Im going to take more out once the dust settles. Quite a learning experience. I really should manually mix the sandbed more often. My corals seem to really like it. Im guessing extra nutrients are released?? In any case the day after it was done they were all happy happy.

Photosynthetic gorgonians also like really strong surging back and forth flow and some amount of feeding (rotifers seems to work). With SPS you can use random turbulent flow or surging, it doesn't necessarily matter as much because they grow out in many directions anyways. Some gorgonians on the other hand can begin to look really weird in time if kept in random turbulent flow because they begin to do the same and loose their flat shape.

My Pterogorgia I've had for 2.5 years now and all of those things have worked alright for me (intense light, semi-surging flow, and occasional feeding). However the Gorgonia ventalina only lasted a year. I don't think it was a lighting issue with it. I think instead it didn't have enough flow and the food that I was offering was of too large a particle size. But until the ban on their collection is lifted again we wont find any available anyways...

I had the gorgs eating reef roids and coral frenzy because thats what the owners i got them from ate. Im hoping the problem was just the lighting for me. We shall see.

IM NOT A FRAG VIRGIN ANYMORE!!!!
I fragged all 3 of my rics. We shall see how it goes. My green ric with blue skirt and my yellowey green ric with pink mouth were just cut between mouths (in half) and my blue ric I ended up cutting between two mouths and cutting one half of it off the rubble it was on and put that piece on a piece of rubble. Im hoping it attaches. Time will tell. They actually look really good thus far.

I changed my dosing a bit to see how this goes.
I am now putting my fertilizers and additives into the top off water containers. I need to top off every 3 days, about 1 gal a week now so putting the powder additves into my TO water makes things much much easier. Im putting in calcium and alk (baking soda) in the TO storage bottles. I havent added KNO3 or KH2PO4 in the bottles yet. However with the extra lights, daily feedings for both the fish and corals I am noticing a big difference. My red dragons tongue is comming back to life. the plants closest to the light (3 inches away) are RED with orange tips again. Stunning. The ones farthest away from the light are still just pink but are starting to colour up.
I pulled most of the grape calpura to make room for new macros and to help reguvinate the calpura.

Im picking up a few more corals (mostly mushies). Im also trying to find some more macro. Im on a waitlist at JLA and Im in contact with a few other people but nothing is solid yet.
I would really like to find some purple gorgs or other somewhat colourful or nicely shaped photosynthetic gorgs to put in my tank. I have an awsome spot for them.
Im also looking at sun corals again. Some people feed them with only coral frenzy and they fair very well, although im thinking that coral frenzy and reef roids are too small. I may abandon this idea.

I moved some of my coral around because some didnt like the bright light and are now much happier at the bottom of my tank. Kinda funny how some light requirements are totally backwards for some of the inhabitants in my tank.

We shall see how things go over the next couple of weeks with the new changes.

I never knew how much builds up and inside powerheads until today. I decided to pick the macro algae out of one of my koralia's and I noticed some bubble algae inside it so; I took the whole thing apart and noticed it was FULL of bubble algae. It would come off easily so I dipped the entire powerhead in vinegar for 30min and the stuff came off very easily. Pretty much melted. Now im doing the other powerhead. The flow increased tremendously. My macros will love it.

Note to self: clean powerheads yearly at least.

I went to feed the fish today with my son because he loves watching them swim around to eat Well, the tank seemed kinda empty. I was looking for my fav fish and I found it... floating in the corner by the heater. :(
Bye bye my coral beauty. I wish I knew why you died. It was so fast and you seemed perfect yesterday. I can only assume it was my fault. :(

I MISS YOU!!!!