Dez' Tank Journal

[Navarchus]

Hi
My pleasure

The thing with zeovite method is that you are walking on the edge. By starving the zooxantela you eliminate an energy source from the corals. Instead you have to supply the corals alternative energy and freed them daily. As far you starve the zooxantela the better colors you will get and the edge is getting slender wich means no room for mistakes such as missing a coral feed.

Take in mind that to get good results you must keep your alkalinity around 7-7.5 dKH. By doing so, you will make it more difficult for the coral to precipitate CA, and instead of investing its energy in growing the coral will invest it in protein which enhance the color of the coral.

[Dez]

Originally Posted by Navarchus

Hi
My pleasure

The thing with zeovite method is that you are walking on the edge. By starving the zooxantela you eliminate an energy source from the corals. Instead you have to supply the corals alternative energy and freed them daily. As far you starve the zooxantela the better colors you will get and the edge is getting slender wich means no room for mistakes such as missing a coral feed.

Take in mind that to get good results you must keep your alkalinity around 7-7.5 dKH. By doing so, you will make it more difficult for the coral to precipitate CA, and instead of investing its energy in growing the coral will invest it in protein which enhance the color of the coral.

My alk is about 7 now, but the calcium is a little bit high for the zeo method, it sits at about 480ppm now. I will gradually lower it through the weekly water changes. My thought is "who comes up with this stuff?" That's a such a vast amount of stuff that goes into the tank and who actually took the time to try different stuff out and test it. But hey, if it works, then it works. I'm gonna try to stick with it. I've already drawn up a chart for my dosing so that I don't have to rely on my memory to remember if I dosed that day or not. Are you running zeo? Or have you just done a lot of reading on it?

[Delphinus]

The nice thing about Zeovit is you can go as far into it as you like. You don't HAVE to go all-out with all the Zooxanthellae killing additives (which is the basic gyst of some of them - zooxanthellae is brown, so take away the brown and what you have left is theoretically just colour - but is the equivalent of an anorexic runway model). But if you just go "basic 4" there are benefits enough - 1) the water clarity (and to me it's amazing how fast this works - the day after I first went Zeo, I was wondering what was wrong with my lights because they seemed way too bright all of a sudden - but it occured to me that it was the water clarity was just THAT much more, that the lights were penetrating way deeper. Literally, the next day). 2) It depletes your tank of NO3 and PO4 like crazy - so you can feed more, which is always a good thing. 3) The sloughed off bacteria, and the coral food additive itself, is a good food source for corals so you get bigger polyp extension, more or less all the time.

So it's almost a slam dunk for a system. I say "almost" though, because, truly, Zeo isn't for everyone and you don't really know what's right for you until you try it. I'm on the fence about going with it in my new tank - I have the equipment ready to go, should I decide to - but two things that don't sit that well with me are, 1) the constant need for replacing the zeolites (it's not like it's a huge cost burden, but still, it's annoying to me), and 2) the inevitable problem of training up your tanksitter for when you're away (vacation or work site trips, whatever the case may be). A lot of Zeo folks, I found, just "let it slide" in these times but that's not always good either - sometimes "things just happen" and then you have to spend all this effort resetting your tank into a happy place when you come back and in the meantime you may be losing corals.

FWIW, I don't run zeo on my cube tank, I run a strong UV instead and it gives me near to the same water clarity that Zeo does, the chaeto fuge does near the same job at scavenging NO3 and PO4, and it's a less maintenance intensive tank as a result. But like I said, each person has their own comfort levels and one methodology isn't really a slam dunk over another - in and of itself anyhow, since a big part of the difference are the users themselves. And there's no rule saying you can't mix and match (ie., I still use Coral Snow and Sponge Power on occasion).

Anyhow sorry for the unsolicited thoughts on the matter - just wanted to talk reefs instead of sitting down and starting the mammoth coding I have ahead of me today. Dez, ultimately I think you will initially like Zeo an awful lot. Have some fun with it, it will be interesting to hear what you think down the road.

cheers

[fishytime]

Dez....tank is starting to fill in quite nicely indeed

[Dez]

Thanks for the comments Tony. It is quite encouraging. Looking forward to seeing changes. Although sometimes changes are so hard to see without pictures. Dang, my camera is out of batteries right now and cell phone pictures always suck. I'm glad that you think I'll be pleasantly surprised with the results. My corals were already growing quite quickly, so hopefully the colours start "popping". That is the main reason I went sps dominant tank actually - the colours! Although now zoas are more readily available in fancy colours at a better price than when I first got into the hobby. Anyway, thanks for talking reef with me.

Doug, yes, it's already getting quite full. I know that I'll need to harvest some out later but for now I'm just wanting to see what colours up and what grows well. What an exciting hobby.

[Dez]

A little update. With the zeovit method it requires more frequent SMALLER water changes. I set up my system to do water changes once a month - a 75 gallon water change takes me 15 minutes.

But to do 5 - 10% it didn't work too well, cause my system was designed to drain the entire 75 gallon tank and mix the salt and add the additives in that tank. But if I only drained 1/3 to 1/2 the tank for a 5 - 10% water change, then I wouldn't want to be mixing the salt in that tank cause it would wipe out any beneficial bacteria in there.

My solution was to get a smaller mixing tup and still have everthing hard plumbed to make water changes easy.

Now my small water change process goes like this.

1. Turn pump on from 75 gallon RO tank to pump into cylindrical tank.
2. Add salt/additives into cylindrical tank
3. Let mix.
4. Shut my water change tank off system via valve, then drain however much water I need out of that tank via my "toilet hose"
5. Check salinity of new water and turn a couple of valves to direct water back into system.
6. Turn valve back on to get system running

Fairly simple and still takes about 15 minutes.

(It is a 40 gallon cylindrical tank)
Here are pictures of the new cylindrical tank and plumbing:

[Lance]

Nice set up.