lastlight's 404

[Zoaelite]

Originally Posted by lastlight

It's Snappy's green polyp toadstool... the thing has full extension but is nearly all white right now. Not sure I'm not too toadstool savvy.

Change your carbon recently? My stools always hated that.

Any little coraline spots forming yet?

[lastlight]

Yes I did actually good call.

Yeah I'm running the magnet every 2 or 3 days on all 4 panes and still finding that the coraline forms. It's all over the new rock as well.

Have dull/brownish hair algae 'tufts' in a few spots on my rock which hopefully doesn't get too bad. My sand is also fusing together in a few spots where I feed (and where the fish all seem to poop) and it looks a bit ugly. I never vacuumed the 97g and the goby took care of all of it. This time around the Kole won't allow him inside that area for very long. Sorta funny but yeah it's showing!

After only 2 waterchanges (things looked rad) I tried skipping a week and saving money going with one every other week. I'm already seeing the downside to this (or it's part of the whole 'new tank' thing which some people blame). Might have to go back to weekly. My changes are on the small side already for a system this size (50g or so) so maybe I shouldn't complain.

[The Grizz]

Well you have enough salt to last you a year or better down there so quite being cheap & stick to what worked for you in the past.

[fishytime]

thats one thing most people dont think about.....everyone thinks "ya, I wanna huge tank!"....they seem to miss the fact that operating costs go up exponentially as well.....I know of one guy here that has a 500g display and he does a full bucket of salt(180g) every two weeks.....Laurie does 50g a week on her 700g system and I dont think that is enough....she should probably do 100g a week but that would be quite expensive .....

[The Grizz]

Exactly Dougster!! That is something I still have to figure out how to acomplish weekly as well on the 300 when it's done. Really hard to do on a septic system but I have a few iders

[Parker]

I go through a bucket about every six weeks or so, depending on how lazy I am.

[lastlight]

Here was fence 1:



I then proceeded to split that compartment with another fence (he was hiding in the rear rock pile) and as I was zip tying the inner fence (no pic due to rage meltdown) he slipped between a gap at the front of fence 1! I tried scaring him away when he was nearing it and the bugger calmly swam past. He was nipping my smooth skinned acro before I had fence 1 removed. Broke a few corals along the way

Fence 2 on other side:



Fence 2b:



Got him on the back half of this partition but he slipped into the front half after all was zip-tied. Took ages to dismantle the inner fence and lift it and scare him back to the much simpler (coral and rock) side.

I spent 5 hours removing colonies/towers and breaking stuff for a 1" fish. I had heard he was a risk to my LPS perhaps and I decided it was worth the risk. In the end he nipped my gorgs and SPS (when he really got into it we're talking a nip every 2 seconds!)

I re-learned I don't have a lot of patience. LESSON LEARNED!

[lastlight]

I'm not sure about other salts but reef crystals says 160 gallons on the bucket. Then you factor in the fact that that's for 1.022 or whatever. I'm not getting even 3 changes out of a bucket so i guess a bucket won't last me a month which sucks. If I'm realistic I have maybe 6 months worth leftish.

[The Grizz]

Ya I think @ 1.025 - 1.026 you only really get 140 gal ish.

[Parker]

For me, it works out to appox 17% every two weeks for a 160 gallon bucket. That's with H2O, I'm seriously debating changing to a cheaper salt to save some cash as well.