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#1
12-14-2014, 06:25 PM
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Things are slowly recovering, enough that I've felt comfortable buying some new frags to fill in holes left by my old corals.
My biggest issue recently has been keeping my macro elements up, however. I've been extremely time poor recently, so I've only been testing once a week, before a water change. If the levels have been low, I up the dosing rate, do the water change, then test again the next week. I know i should be testing before and after the water change, as well as testing the newly mixed water, but I'm getting tired of every single Saturday being taken up by this tank, and have other things I don't have time in the week to do in my house as well. Grrr. This week I was floored. By yesterday morning my levels had cratered: dKH: 5.9 Calcium: 303 This is after doing two water changes last weekend (Saturday and Sunday), and upping the dosing rate. My magnesium test is well and truly expired so I don't trust it, but it claims I'm in the 1250-1300 range. I adjusted the alk up in to the low 7's, and calcium up to 360, then did a water change. I also upped the dosing volume by 15 mL/dose, then did a water change. I'm up to a grand total of 600 mL of Tropic Marin Part A and B balling salts PER DAY, mixed to the concentration specified on the box. I'm going to have to switch back to less expensive bulk chems. This morning, (24 hours later), alk is still good, dKH of 7.11, but calcium was back down to 303! These levels are too low and too balanced for me to be having a precipitation issue, the only thing I can think is that this batch of H2Ocean has absurdly low calcium. I'll have to mix up a batch to test it. These wild swings can't be helping anything, and I've got some STN at the base of an A. abrotanoides that I think might be a symptom. Anyway, here's some crappy pictures. I dropped my new iPhone and cracked the camera lens, but won't replace it until the case I want it released in Canada. I'm notoriously hard on my phones. These pictures are blurry, and the colour balance is WAY off.   Thankfully my Pink Lemonade frag never had any damage through all this and is now a mini colony  The lime green stag on the left used to be a colony that almost left the water, that's all that's left, but it's growing. The purple battered looking thing is all that's left of a plating acro from walt smith, but it's started sending tissue out over some of the dead areas again. The rest are frags I bought to fill in the worst hit part of the tank.  These two frags are all that's left of a dinner plate sized colony. They were the underside of the old colony, so they were brown and have never been exposed to light. It was touch and go for weeks, but they turned purple in the last couple of weeks, and there's the tiniest hint of growth. I'll move them up in to the rocks soon  This poor guy.. I don't know if he'll ever be the same. Before this disaster the stalks were glowing white, with neon green polyps, and electric blue tips. It's growth pattern is all messed up as new growth tips start at odd angles from where things died. That monti is out of control  Nearly lost this guy but it's got all sorts of new growth  Randomly, this guy never even slowed down, grew right through that disaster as though it ain't no thing.  Only thing I can think that explains my trouble with the chems is those montis everywhere. They weren't damaged by what happened at all, and have EXPLODED. I stupidly put pieces of that big red monti cap that I broke off doing normal cleanings in a couple of places and it's turned in to a major weed. I just throw those pieces out now. I can't imagine how much calcium and alkalinity it must be sucking out of the water to grow that fast alone. Last edited by asylumdown; 12-14-2014 at 06:30 PM. 
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#2
12-15-2014, 03:05 PM
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nice to hear a positive update adam! hopefully the new year is going to return the tank to its former glory. i still think your colours are really nice i wish i could match them.
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#3
12-15-2014, 03:30 PM
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Looking good Adam! How's my frag doing that you've been holding for me ?
 Seriously though, you may be onto something about that cap. My cap totally took over as well during my last round of issues and I totally think it crashed the Alk by agressivly consuming it!
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#4
12-17-2014, 08:40 PM
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Just felt you should know that I spent the better part of my day at work today reading this entire thread. Love the tank..and its ridiculous how big your cow fish is getting! Still praying to god that I never have to deal with ich issues like yours.
I just bought myself a Radion so I'm glad to see you've been having success with yours. Out of curiosity, could I bug you to post your daily schedule from Ecosmart Live?
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#5
12-20-2014, 07:21 PM
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Quote:
*sigh* Quote:
Quote:
If you pm me your e-mail address I can send you the schedule I use, but it's set for the diode colours in the gen 1 radion.
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#6
12-29-2014, 05:36 AM
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RAAAAAAAAAAGE
I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle with these parameters. And Murphy and his stupid law. I can't for the life of me keep alkalinity over 6. Unless my dosing unit is a lying liar who lies, I'm now dosing 315 mL of Tropic Marin Part B a day. Calcium seems to have stabilized between 395-400, but alk and mag are in the toilet. mag won't budge over 1170, and I'll manually raise alk in to the mid 7s, bump up the maintenance dose, only to find it in the mid-low 5s again 3 days later. Any suggestions? I had no intention of spending yet another entire saturday fiddle farting around with this fickle foe, and yet another 5 hours of frustration seems to have vanished from my life. Other news - I was away for 7 days, came home around 6 last night to everything being fine (except for alk brushing the high 4s), didn't touch a thing in the tank and immediately went back out to a party. Came home at 11:30 to the skimmer going Krakatoa-nuts for no reason that I could see, and a SG of 1.020. Rage. Thank goodness it didn't happen a day earlier. Decided to switch salt mixes again because H2Ocean is killing me. I get 4 water changes out of an 80 dollar bucket. Decided to try Fluval Sea again, as I've had part of a bucket kicking around for the better part of a year and used the last of it to bump the salinity up out of the danger zone last night. New bucket today mixed to a solution that just smelled... wrong. The smell had none of the high, almost sweet notes I'm used to with freshly mixed H2Ocean. I don't know how to explain it. It also mixed VERY cloudy and wouldn't clear. Within 20 seconds of adding it to the tank, my elegance coral's tentacles shrivelled up like they'd been burnt, and every polyp on every coral deflated and retracted. Not sure what's going on there. I spent the next 5 hours testing, bumping up levels, repeat. Today was the first day in a long time I've seriously considered not having a tank of any kind.
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#7
12-29-2014, 03:17 PM
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Well, serves me right for trying to save money. The corals that got the angriest after yesterdays water change all look like they're done for.
I know there have been swings in parameters lately, but everything before the water change was healthy and growing. within seconds of the cloudy new water from that salt mix entering the display, this happened:  Overnight some acros have bleached out completely, some have browned out, and others have taken on a crusty appearance to their tissue that I've only seen preceding STN.
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