Stone's 225 Carbonate Factory

[Stones]

So in order to help combat my nitrate issues and to hopefully prevent further instances from happening, I decided to give a new product a try about 8 weeks ago.



I've never used any of the Brightwell products before but their price point was much more competitve than probidio or zeovit so I thought I'd give it a shot.

I'm not running their full blow zeolith system but simply using a combination of the Xport-NO3 media and MB7 dosing to keep the beneficial bacterial populations well stocked and diversified. I also picked up some amino acids to dose as well as some marine snow as I've heard that it can help prevent cyano.

Here is a close up of what the Xport-NO3 media looks like. First thing I thought of was that they look almost exactly like the bite size mini wheats.


Prior to ordering, I wasn't exactly sure whether or not this media acted like a sponge and absorbed nitrate from the water column or if it was simply an inert substrate meant to be colonized by beneficial bacteria as their product description is a bit ambigious.

After seeing the product in person, I'm assuming it's just an inert substate with tons of surface area for bacteria to colonize. However, there are these little yellow "chunks" embedded into the media as well which I'm assuming may be some sort of bioplastic used as a food source for the bacteria.

Prior to first use, you are required to "seed" the media with a mixture of tank water and microbacter7 for 24 hours. After this has been completed, you can then add the media to a filter bag or reactor.

Here is the media inside the reactor downstream of my carbon and GFO. You can sort of see the yellow chunks I was speaking of earlier in this pic.



The product instructions also state to replace a 25% of the media every 3-4 months which doesn't make much sense to me if it is simply meant as a substrate for bacterial colonization. If for some reason, nitrate levels do not seem to be dropping after a few weeks, Brightwell also recommends adding a carbon food source for the bacteria which they offer in the form of Katalyst (biopellets which I'm assuming should be run inline prior to the Xport NO3 media) or Reef Biofuel (liquified bioplastic similar to Instant Ocean Nitrate Reducer).

After running the Xport NO3 for ~8 weeks and dosing the MB7 whenever I'm home from work (at least once per 10 days) I have noticed a substantial difference in the health of my corals as well as nitrate level in my system.

Prior to running this product, I was using only biopellets and despite this, I was still getting readings of 10-20 ppm nitrate using a titration based test kit. The test kit was very expired however and my other test kit usually showed nitrate levels <10 ppm. Now I'm reading zero on both test kits and the SPS are all starting to show signs of color darkening. Hopefully after a few more months, their color will recover to the extent they were prior to the tank crash last April.

[Stones]

Quick update, tank is back down to zero nitrates and phosphates thanks to a combination of microbacter 7, Brightwell Xport NO3 and biopellets.

Cleaned the glass and everything was looking so good I had to snap a few pics. I'm still having major issues getting the white balance set correctly as the blues and purples in the pictures are not nearly as dark or intense as they are in person. I tried using a piece of grey rock in the tank to balance the WB but 99% of my rock is deep purple from corralline.

Does anyone use a piece of white or grey plastic that they can submerge in the tank to set their WB? I need to figure out a way to get the WB set consistently so I don't have to waste half my time fighting with it before finally settling on a mediochore result and snapping some pics.

Cali tort



Rainbow monti


FAL mystery Millepora


Efflo


Unknown tabler. Anyone have an idea on species?





Another mystery FAL frag

[kien]

Nice. Looking good man.

Your mystery tabler looks like a Loripes to me. Also, your mystery millepora looks like a "sunset" or "christmas" millepora.

[lastlight]

What's FAL stand for? Glad you've gotten things under control! Those colonies are just huge nice work.

[Stones]

Originally Posted by lastlight

What's FAL stand for? Glad you've gotten things under control! Those colonies are just huge nice work.

Thanks Brett, its slowly but surely coming along.

FAL just stands for Frag-a-lot. I've got most of my nice pieces from Burc over the years. Some come in looking pretty hot but most require some serious TLC after they are forced to endure Fedex shipping from TO to Regina.

Originally Posted by kien

Nice. Looking good man.

Your mystery tabler looks like a Loripes to me. Also, your mystery millepora looks like a "sunset" or "christmas" millepora.

Thanks Kien. That mystery mille came in deep green and has morphed into having a peachy golden orange base color. It's definately one of my favorite pieces in the tank right now.

[Stones]

Here is one of my favorite pieces that I lost when I had my pseudo-crash last April.

A good friend of mine was kind enough to give me a frag of it back and it's slowly starting to come around after a rough start back in the tank.






ORA Red Planet



A. granulosa


Snappy's purple valida. Started out with 1 frag and now I have 6+ colonies spread randomly throughout the tank.


Rainbow Monti again


Backside of Cali tort colony

[Stones]

Another shot of the efflo







Close up ORA red planet

[Stones]

And here is why I've come to hate mushrooms



They seem to just gravitate and move toward SPS. The one on that colony of Snappy's purple valida started out at the base and crawled up to the center of the colony before splitting into 2 lovely mushrooms. I'll eventually have to frag the colony into tiny pieces to get them out of there. Don't know what I'm going to do with that granulosa/loripes frag as the frag plug is thorougly stuck in the live rock.