Back to town :D

[mrhasan]

Hello everyone,

Just got back from home country after a tiring 42 hours flight + no sleep (for some unknown reason, I always fail to sleep in planes unlike almost everyone else :|)

My room mate did great care of my tank (top offs + cleaning the skimmer + feeding). But within 20 days, the nitrates shot up to 40ppm :| I don't know why but I guess he might have overfed. I run a rio nano skimmer (and it works :P), 20 pounds of live rock, an aqueon 20 with carbon + phospad and another aqueon 20 with two pouches of chemi pure elite. I thought the nitrates wouldn't shoot up that high since I got enough chemi pure but I guess I was wrong. Should I add a bag of puregen? Will that help after WC to keep nitrates under control? Its a 20 long.

Alongside, I came home and the digital pH meter was already delivered and like the API was saying, my water rested at 7.8. Will that be ok for everything? I am thinking of adding a cleaner shrimp, a tuxedo urchin, few emerald crabs, a maxi-mini and few lps frags + some sps to test my light.

My refractometer is in the post office and I will be collecting it tomorrow morning.

So far so good. Atleast my room mate took good care of my tank, no crash and the coraline algae is already showing up

[gregzz4]

Glad you got home safe and the tank is doing OK

I'd hold off on the extra critters until you get your Nitrates down below 5ppm and have them stay there for at least another week

Do a WC, rinse all your HOB sponges in the old tank water ( squish them in the bucket lots ), and then test your NO3 again after a bit - hour or so is plenty

pH of 7.8 is low. Calibrate your new meter and test again
You will have happier critters if your pH is 8-8.3

If you can't get your pH up that high with surface agitation, try opening some windows

I had trouble keeping my pH above 8.0
I added an airline from outside to the intake of my skimmer and it solved my issue

[mrhasan]

Yah I will be doing a WC tomorrow after collecting the refractometer. And then I will be getting the critters

Yah I was also hoping that my pH should be above 8 because I have lots of surface agitation and have proper ventilation too. Maybe the meter needs re calibration. They did send two calibration salts (4.01 and 6.86) but the meter is only accurate upto 1dp so I guess it is missing the points plus the solution is very sensitive to temperature (that's what I found from the back; even two degrees can make the solution go 2 dp offs). Any suggestion on the calibration? I was thinking of taking it to LFS and calibrate with their system.

[gregzz4]

My hand held pH meter is very disappointing
I calibrate it and use it once ... it's fine
I store it in RO water and the next time I use it it's already off by .5

I follow the instructions on mine and all is good
Using your 4.0 and 7.0 cal solution @ any room temperature is OK between 75 and 85
I rinse my hand-held very well with RO water between solutions and it's always been good to go
But, as I said, it doesn't always last long

[gregzz4]

Don't buy any critters yet !!!

Get your tank clean and stable first
A week won't hurt to wait and see you have no more Nitrates

[mrhasan]

Mine is a $10 pH meter so I can't blame it if it's 2/3dp off :P

And oh the waittttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt :'( This is the worst part

[gregzz4]

It's all part of the hobby ...

Only bad things happen quickly