Michika's 28g long nano-esque tank!

[michika]

Originally Posted by adidas

you could always take out the few bad rocks and let them dry out and die, clean em off and re-seed them later?

is that a possibility anyone? or a stupid idea? lol

Its a possible idea, however I have no where to let them dryout without stinking up my place. Unless you have a super non-stinky way of drying them out!

[michika]

Thanks Tony!

I'm thinking mostly of doing zeo/polyp labs as a last resort before complete tear down. As well my problems aside I've seen some really nice sps systems using these products, and it does add to the draw.

I'm measuring PO4 with a Hanna Phosmeter, but I agree with you about verifying everything. Its nice to have the meter, but its frustrating not to know if what you're getting for a result is correct.

The tank has what I estimate to be 60 to 65lbs, with 25lbs being in the sump. Thinking back this tank has never produced any coraline algae. That rock that you are referring to is new to the tank from December.

As for the Ca & dkH, I didn't see any better growth (in the sps and coraline) then I was getting measurements of 500ppm and 10dKH. I think I need a more happy medium like what I was getting two weeks ago. The dKH is up to 6 (cusp of 7) now that I topped off for the day. I'm looking at changing how I top off, and how my Ca reactor is working within the system.

I guess my next steps are to get out some of the "bad" rocks and replace them with newer ones. I am also going to tweak my reactors, I think I've turned them down too much trying to fix the 500/10 problem. Does that sound right to you?

[Delphinus]

Yeah, I have this whole idea that it's offensive to buy the Merck/D-D test kit (it's not cheap) after spending the big money on the meter to begin with, but the lack of consistency in my results is something that really troubles/puzzles me. Have you tried taking 3 tests in a row with yours? When I do this I get three different numbers. I've finally figured out that at least one of my cuvets is suspect - if I zero out the meter, then immediately take a reading - I get an "underrange" error. (Consistently.. I tried it about 20 times.) I would expect it to be zero, or at the very least, "not always" underrange. With the other cuvet I can zero it, and get a zero reading. I wonder if the sensor or the LED emitter might have dust on it too but it would be impossible to clean those I think so I kind of hope that's not the case.

Yikes, 500ppm seems for sure too high, I would have backed off the reactors as well! Might need to be upped just ever-so-slightly now just to find the happy medium..

Wow, 65lbs of rock, that's a lot more than I thought there was in there.