My 110 Gallon Peninsula SPS Tank

[Sunee]

Your photography skills are incredible! Glad to see the corals are recovering. What is the coral in the last picture! Thanks.

[sweet ride]

Originally Posted by lastlight

Certain folks on the board have their own characteristic look to their photos. I always enjoy staring at yours you shoot and process some sweet pics =)

as always thanks for the kind words lastlight!!!

Originally Posted by kien

ZOMG those polyps are going to eat me!!

LOL watch-out!!!! only wish your were around the area as I wouldn't mind getting a few frags from your collection!

Originally Posted by mseepman

Wow, those shots are amazing! Makes me want to quietly delete every picture I've ever taken of my tank and start over.

Thanks for compliments mseepman! don't delete them just keep taking more photos, sooner or later I will be asking you for some photo taking pointer!

[sweet ride]

Originally Posted by fishytime

are you baking your sodium bicarbonate?........

Actually I use Sodium Carbonate (Soda Ash) from BRS.

Originally Posted by Parker

Those are recovering corals? Well now I'm depressed....

don't be as am sure the rest of your system is doing much better than mine!

Originally Posted by Sunee

Your photography skills are incredible! Glad to see the corals are recovering. What is the coral in the last picture! Thanks.

Thanks for the kind words Sunee!

The last photo is a picture of Meteor Shower Cyphastrea. when this was given to me in the beginning of the year there was barely 3 polyps!

[Myka]

Originally Posted by sweet ride

because am using sugar size sand, vacuuming it is out of the question. I have tried this several times and because of it's size all the sand just end up in the bucket with the water.

any recommendation in helping me raise the ph without affecting the alk or ca?

You can still vacuum sugar sand, but it takes good technique. Use a short hose so you can put your thumb over the end, or use soft hose so you can pinch it (you can get different wall thickness, thin is easier to pinch). Buy a vacuum with a small hose, like 1/4" ID so the flow isn't so fast either. Then just shove it into the sand, and as soon as the first bits of sand get a little way up the vacuum pinch it off so the sand settles, you can play around with it like that and get the detritus out without the sand.

I bought a vacuum (I think Hagen..?) that uses a 1" pipe for the vacuum part. I bought a 36" piece of 1" pipe (it's used for undergravel filter uptakes) and cut the pipe to be just a tad shorter than how deep my water is. Looks really well. The extra length helps to get the detritus out while leaving the sand in the tank.

Low pH has many causes. The most common being either high bioload or too much CO2. Do you ever open the windows in your house for fresh air? Check for an oily film on the water surface. Pretty much any skimmer works well for off-gassing CO2, but if the house has concentrations of CO2 then all the off-gassing in the world won't help. Bioload also lowers pH as fish poop is acidic, and there are also acids released when organics are broke down through the nitrogen process. Sometimes if everything is "good" simply dripping kalkwasser at night as part replacement for calcium and alkalinity dosing will keep the pH from falling so much at night which enough to keep the pH higher during the day too.

[Madreefer]

People actually vacum the their sandbeds still? Why would'nt you just get a proper cleanup crew rather than disturb the sandbed? The less your hands are in the tank or anything else disturbing things the better. Your tank looks awesome, i'm no expert but just leave things as is. The ph is'nt that bad. Theres lot of threads on here that discuss that very topic. With most of them ending with "if it aeint broke dont fix it"

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Madreefer

People actually vacum the their sandbeds still? Why would'nt you just get a proper cleanup crew rather than disturb the sandbed?

What do you mean "still"? Clean up crews aren't "new". I have plenty of critters in my tank that help keep things clean, but they don't make up for the fact that the tank is a tiny closed system, and not a giant open reef. As far as I am concerned the sand is purely aesthetic. Stuffing a few animals in the tank doesn't make up for what I consider to be good maintenance practices.

I used to leave the sandbed alone. I practiced that for years...ok a decade at least. Now I vacuum...

[Madreefer]

Sorry. I'm so silly. Should have never questioned an expert.

[Myka]

I'm not an expert. Haven't written a book yet.

[Madreefer]

Well you just about got one written in your signature. Good info but some of us lazy reefers do things different. oops I huess were kinda hijackin. Maybe the moderators will clean it up for him.

[Myka]

Being lazy is exactly why I wrote those! Then us lazy reefers can just provide the link and say "go read this".