Magic Kiwi's Tank Journal Thread

[Kryptic4L]

Cool story bro.

It's amazing how many people never end up with the fish that got them motivated in the hobby to begin with. Congrats on getting your tang and your in before the export ban

[kien]

Indeed, a great story. My son who is 6 has had a fresh water tank in his bedroom for a year now and he has started to ask me when he can convert it to salt

[Dearth]

It is always good to follow your childhood dream and you finally got to make it happen....



On a side note

FTS PLEASE!!!!!!!!

[Magickiwi]

Originally Posted by Kryptic4L

Cool story bro.

It's amazing how many people never end up with the fish that got them motivated in the hobby to begin with. Congrats on getting your tang and your in before the export ban

I get the feeling that a lot of our hobby may be "in before the ban". I try to buy ORA fish where I can because I have a strong belief in what they are doing and I recognize the possibility that fish farms may in the future be the only way for us to get exotic fish. And rightly so, if the technology and husbandry techniques support it.

Thanks for hearing my story guys It's the small things in life that make a difference to a person's well being.

[Magickiwi]

It has been a hard week at work. More than a week, a couple weeks now... I get home after work and someone knocked over a bunch of my coral. My frogspawn was resting on its side, my acans were almost upside down, etc. I grab my CA glue and get more miserable by the minute as I'm gluing the errant coral back in place. Stupid rock won't stupid stick to the stupid glue BAH!!

Finally all coral is moved into place and I stand back to look at it when down to my left I see my RBTA has climbed up a bunch of my rock work and my GSP frag is in danger of nem warfare. Oh look it's also stinging my favourite zoas. They are just brown and orange swampy tidal pool zoas but I call them Cleveland Browns, after my favourite NFL team.

As I'm glaring at my RBTA there's a flick of movement in the edge. As I clue in to what I've been staring at it dawns on me. My pink skunks are playing in the RBTA! Hot damn!!! I've been hoping for this as they don't show any interest in my Haddon's and there they are playing and bobbing along. That's great! I look around at the rest of my tank and wow my torch coral polyps are getting long. That rock anemone is the most gorgeous banana yellow I've ever seen! Hey look my yellow tang Maui is actually eating nori for the first time! A colony of the prettiest pink and purple zoas that I think look like Utter Chaos even though they most likely aren't.

So cheers to my pink skunk clowns and even my RBTA for making me smile and brightening my outlook after a rough couple of weeks.




P.S. You can see my Cleveland Browns just to the left of my RBTA and pricing starts at $500/polyp.

[wmcinnes]

Originally Posted by Magickiwi

P.S. You can see my Cleveland Browns just to the left of my RBTA and pricing starts at $500/polyp.

hahaha, this made me laugh!

[Magickiwi]

Originally Posted by wmcinnes

hahaha, this made me laugh!

A bargain at twice the price!

[Magickiwi]

So I’m still doing battle with my Hanna Colorimeter Phosphate LR checker. The first one I got from Eseasonsgear.com (don’t shop there; they are TERRIBLE) was broken out of the box but I managed to get a reading of .18ppm of phosphate. All my chemical tests say almost zero for phosphates as does the growth of my SPS and LPS coral. My Ponape birds nest is branching and growing despite my green brittle star crawling on it at night. The polyps I have are growing pretty slowly (zoas, daisy polyps, GSP, palys, etc.) but they are growing and splitting etc.

Chemical tests I have used:
API – Would not indicate any phosphates
Salifert – Would not indicate any phosphates
ELOS – Would not indicate any phosphates
Seachem – Gave a color that is just starting to show on their scale (<.01ppm)

As I am fairly confident that the checker I was sent had already been returned to this company for being broken, I went to a LFS and bought another. The readings the first checker had given me (all ranging between .09-.28ppm for my tank) don’t agree with the new checker, which also reads high (.08-.24ppm).

Since using the first colorimeter I replaced about 250ml of Rowaphos that was just a few days old with 250ml of PO4x4 and then again with 500ml. And yet my phosphate levels are either staying high or increasing, all according to the checkers. My carbon/GFO reactor is taking water from my sump and returning it to the sump. The carbon is full blast (Rox.8) and the GFO chamber is just fast enough to make the surface boil.

I did a 20%ish water change yesterday with freshly mixed RO/DI water which caused something in my tank to release a huge amount of offspring. Which in turn were promptly consumed by anything that could move. I stirred my sand last night which no doubt released a bunch of phosphates into the water column. The water is very bright and sparkles like diamonds under my metal halides. I haven’t tested today but I’m suspecting that the colorimeters will show very high levels again. My ozone generator is plugging away and only produces ozone when my tank's ORP reading is under the set point (currently 350).

Yesterday I ordered a Hanna ULR Phosphorus colorimeter and will do the conversions to PO4 based on those values. From what I’ve heard the phosphorus checker provides much more reliable readings than do the phosphate checkers. Also I ordered 1L of Rowaphos since it looks like I’ll be using that stuff up like it’s free… I also ordered 5 new 10” inserts in case my GFO cartridge isn’t letting the water flow properly (it’s a long shot).

Does anyone out there have any insight in to why/how my phosphates can read so high for a colorimeter but not for good quality chemical tests? And if they are so high then why are my corals and livestock not pushing up daisies?

[lastlight]

Can't comment too much on your readings but I will say that I previously always got zero readings in my reef using the phosphate checker. i'm happy getting actual values to work with with my ULR although the darn reagents are much less common.