Thanks for the input and the interest in my struggles. hfp75 I'll attempt to touch on the points you mentioned
- 75% of the year there is no direct sunlight on the tank, though in mid summer it does get about 15 min in the evening
- skim darker skimate... Not sure how to address that one, my Aqua C Remora's only adjustment is the height of the collection cup, and that pretty much only changes how much water it pulls out of the system. Lower and I get more watered down skimate, higher and it really doesn't pull much of anything.
- the Rowa I'm experimenting with. Currently running a TLF 150 half full, this is the 3rd batch that I've put in it in a few months. I'm still learning about measuring and removing phosphates, hence my other post regarding measuring phosphates for the purpose of algae prevention
- I will look at red slime remover. If its anything like chemiclean I have done a couple treatments of that, the first one cleaned up my tank very nicely but despite big water changes after it turned into wicked algae growth followed by more cyano.
- yes I have a sand bed, fine sand (but not the sugar), about 1-1/2" deep on average. There is not a lot of turnover there, only really done by a few smaller nassarius snails and the occasional mischievous fish. I would love to have a sand sifting star but I don't believe the system is big enough to support one. Same thing with a sand sifting goby, the display tank is about 35 gal (30" x 24" x 12") so I worry about starvation.
- no I've never considered running a bio pellet reactor, but I will now
- snails have always been a challenge for me. The most success I've had have been with the nassarius snails who live in the sandbed unless they smell food, followed by astrea and cerith snails, but it seems in both my tanks the astrea and cerith eventually die off after a few months presumable due to lack of food (because the algae gets covered in some other pest). After the recent outbreak of hair algea I brought in a lawnmower blenny which gorged itself on the algae at first, then slowly was eating less and less and eventually perished after about 6 wks, approx. the same time the latest wave of cyano came on again. The latest wave, more brown color, didn't respond to the Chemiclean like the first and heavier reddish wave did.
- lighting consists of a 250w halide and 2 24" t5's. I've been running a couple different 10k MH lamps because I like the mid-sunny day look (reminds be of being under the wanter in Hawaii), but recently changed back to a 14k lamp, though it still looks pretty close to 10k. The T5's are on for 12hrs a day, the halide about 8. The fixture is a good 18" above the tank at the moment. 300w is a lot of light over a 35gal shallow reef but I wanted to have a lot of light for when I could get things back in order and safe to have clams again. The tank used to be the same footprint at 30" x 24" but it was 24" tall and when I downsized I re-used the light fixture and just lifted it higher above the tank to reduce intensity.
- yes I run RO/DI, but if I skip the carbon isn't that just asking for premature wear on the more expensive RO membrane?
Hope these details will be helpful. I've been at this so long it would be nice to finally have a clean tank to work with again. Thanks again
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