Field Trial of Ultralith System as of May 24/10

[fencer]

Oct 22
Added another 25% of Ultra Rock to the reactor. Notice a fillm of bacteria(?) on side of reactor. No changes in dosage or effects to the tank. Will discontinue UltraBio for 1 week.

[fencer]

Oct 30
Resumed UltraBio today. Did a 10% water change(Thank the power company for that one). 3 hours no sump circulation, monti suffered a bit and I noticed a nice film on the front of the tank. All corals still showing good polyp extension. One of the pink Catspaw is turning brown. One coral is slowly RTNing on me. Haven't decide to frag it yet...hoping it will stop.

[christyf5]

Just wondering why you discontinued the ultrabio? I thought the film was from the ultrabak/ultraminS. The film results from an excess of food that the bacteria aren't using. In order to get rid of the film you need to continue to add bacteria (so they can eat it) and reduce their food.

Just a thought. My feeling on the various issues I had after replacing the stones was that I wasn't adding enough ultrabio to seed them and the tank had a bit of a "crash" that way and I lost a few things.

[fencer]

The manual required I discontiuned bio for one week...not sure why...keep you posted

[fencer]

Nov 3

I have altered the water path so as to more efficently disperse the "bacterial snow" from the reactor into the tank. Certainly the tank is much more cloudy after I flushed the Ultralith reactor. This also allow direct dosing of the Ultralith in the reactor. Today i have lost one of the more interesting SPS's in the tank...it was the dark Navy blue one to STN(I think)....I do not believe this was due to the Ultralith program. Both pink pocillopora's(sp) are turning more brown.

[fencer]

Nov 6
I have added another 25% of Ultralith to the reactor. I have noticed that the SPS are growing. But I am not convinced that they are growing any faster than before Ultralith program. A whitish film is appearing on the tank glass. The frequency of cleaning the glass is a little more than I usually do. I will continue to monitor this, but I will still be dosing Ultra products at the 1ml /day rate for another week. I will then decide if I need to cut back on dosage of Ultra product. My yellow polyps are being decimated, I have no explanation why this is happening. I noticed in the forum that some zeo users are not shutting off their skimmers. I am not shutting the skimmer down either while applying the Ultra porducts. I feel that (the way I have setup the return system) there is enough residence time for dispersion of the Ultra additives.

[fencer]

Nov 19
I have added the final amount of Ultralith to the reactor (1 l) I will now make a zeolite change of 50% every month. When I blow the reactor every night I do notice increased feeding activity of the corals. My main indicator is a small acan colony. I made a carbon change this month as well. One of the control corals is starting to show blue/green colouring. Both contol pocillopora's starting to "brown" out on me. The polyp extension on the green birdsnest is very good. I added 2 more control corals last Sat, mainly because they were going to expire at some point in the stores tanks. I also started adding trace minerals to the system again. I read in the Ultra manual the zeolite's tend to take out some of these elements. Growth in the tank is good. I still am thinking about adding some fish to the system. I wil get some tank prams when I get some free time.