Dez' Tank Journal - Page 37

bignose · #**361** 10-20-2009, 02:31 AM

Hi Dez thanks for the tour of your tank. It's always a pleasure to meet new reefers. I was very impressed with your setup and had a great chat.

Dez · #**362** 10-20-2009, 03:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bignose

Hi Dez thanks for the tour of your tank. It's always a pleasure to meet new reefers. I was very impressed with your setup and had a great chat.

Not a problem. I'll make up for the size of your frag when my stuff grows out later. Sorry as I had to frag a frag for you since my system is so new. Always nice meeting new reefers as well.

Dez · #**363** 10-24-2009, 05:13 AM

A little bit of an update today. I removed a couple of large-ish pieces of rock from one side cause I though the corals were too high, this gave me more room for corals surprisingly. I don't have a full tank shot yet as the tank is cloudy now due to an addition to my tank.

I hooked up a calcium reactor that has been sitting in my garage for a while. It's a deltec. I dug up my CO2 bottle and gauges out from storage under the stairs in my basement - and voila, I have a calcium reactor hooked up.

I started at one bubble/sec and effluent at 2 drops per second and will test ph/calcium tomorrow.

Here are pics.

Thanks for looking.

leducreef · #**364** 10-24-2009, 07:20 AM

thanks for the frags dez
was cool to see the tank again

Dez · #**365** 10-26-2009, 04:26 AM

Did a little bit of work on the tank today. I received my zeo reactor a few days ago. I traded someone some lights for a reactor so I will venture out and try the zeo system out. Here is the reactor in the sump now.

I signed up on zeovit.com and asked for a starting dosing regime. It seems simple enough so far. I will go out and spend my hard earned $ tomorrow on the starting bacteria and stuff for the zeo system. I also took out my kalk reactor today based on the recommendation from the zeo people. *keeping fingers crossed that everything will be good*

Here are a couple of pictures taken a few minutes ago on my crappy cell phone camera.

Den side:

Living room side:

Clown hosting in the green star polyps:

Thanks for looking

Navarchus · #**366** 10-27-2009, 03:36 AM

Cool pic's very nice tank!
be cereful withe the zeovit

Dez · #**367** 10-27-2009, 05:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Navarchus

Cool pic's very nice tank!
be cereful withe the zeovit

Thanks for the nice comments Navarchus.

Have you tried zeovit? I know that overdosing can be detrimental. I'm just going by what the zeovit forum recommends (to start it's quite a bit less than what it recommends on the bottle. *Keeping fingers crossed*

Half of me says "why fix what ain't broke".... but as I look at before and after pictures etc of zeovit users, the colours do seem to "pop" more.

I was considering vodka dosing, but I ended up with a free reactor (well, trade for lights I was not using...so I decided to give it a try.

Wish me luck!

Navarchus · #**368** 10-27-2009, 11:03 AM

Hi
My pleasure

The thing with zeovite method is that you are walking on the edge. By starving the zooxantela you eliminate an energy source from the corals. Instead you have to supply the corals alternative energy and freed them daily. As far you starve the zooxantela the better colors you will get and the edge is getting slender wich means no room for mistakes such as missing a coral feed.

Take in mind that to get good results you must keep your alkalinity around 7-7.5 dKH. By doing so, you will make it more difficult for the coral to precipitate CA, and instead of investing its energy in growing the coral will invest it in protein which enhance the color of the coral.

Dez · #**369** 10-27-2009, 02:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Navarchus

Hi
My pleasure

The thing with zeovite method is that you are walking on the edge. By starving the zooxantela you eliminate an energy source from the corals. Instead you have to supply the corals alternative energy and freed them daily. As far you starve the zooxantela the better colors you will get and the edge is getting slender wich means no room for mistakes such as missing a coral feed.

Take in mind that to get good results you must keep your alkalinity around 7-7.5 dKH. By doing so, you will make it more difficult for the coral to precipitate CA, and instead of investing its energy in growing the coral will invest it in protein which enhance the color of the coral.

My alk is about 7 now, but the calcium is a little bit high for the zeo method, it sits at about 480ppm now. I will gradually lower it through the weekly water changes. My thought is "who comes up with this stuff?" That's a such a vast amount of stuff that goes into the tank and who actually took the time to try different stuff out and test it. But hey, if it works, then it works. I'm gonna try to stick with it. I've already drawn up a chart for my dosing so that I don't have to rely on my memory to remember if I dosed that day or not. Are you running zeo? Or have you just done a lot of reading on it?

Delphinus · #**370** 10-27-2009, 05:03 PM

The nice thing about Zeovit is you can go as far into it as you like. You don't HAVE to go all-out with all the Zooxanthellae killing additives (which is the basic gyst of some of them - zooxanthellae is brown, so take away the brown and what you have left is theoretically just colour - but is the equivalent of an anorexic runway model). But if you just go "basic 4" there are benefits enough - 1) the water clarity (and to me it's amazing how fast this works - the day after I first went Zeo, I was wondering what was wrong with my lights because they seemed way too bright all of a sudden - but it occured to me that it was the water clarity was just THAT much more, that the lights were penetrating way deeper. Literally, the next day). 2) It depletes your tank of NO3 and PO4 like crazy - so you can feed more, which is always a good thing. 3) The sloughed off bacteria, and the coral food additive itself, is a good food source for corals so you get bigger polyp extension, more or less all the time.

So it's almost a slam dunk for a system. I say "almost" though, because, truly, Zeo isn't for everyone and you don't really know what's right for you until you try it. I'm on the fence about going with it in my new tank - I have the equipment ready to go, should I decide to - but two things that don't sit that well with me are, 1) the constant need for replacing the zeolites (it's not like it's a huge cost burden, but still, it's annoying to me), and 2) the inevitable problem of training up your tanksitter for when you're away (vacation or work site trips, whatever the case may be). A lot of Zeo folks, I found, just "let it slide" in these times but that's not always good either - sometimes "things just happen" and then you have to spend all this effort resetting your tank into a happy place when you come back and in the meantime you may be losing corals.

FWIW, I don't run zeo on my cube tank, I run a strong UV instead and it gives me near to the same water clarity that Zeo does, the chaeto fuge does near the same job at scavenging NO3 and PO4, and it's a less maintenance intensive tank as a result. But like I said, each person has their own comfort levels and one methodology isn't really a slam dunk over another - in and of itself anyhow, since a big part of the difference are the users themselves. And there's no rule saying you can't mix and match (ie., I still use Coral Snow and Sponge Power on occasion).

Anyhow sorry for the unsolicited thoughts on the matter - just wanted to talk reefs instead of sitting down and starting the mammoth coding I have ahead of me today. Dez, ultimately I think you will initially like Zeo an awful lot. Have some fun with it, it will be interesting to hear what you think down the road.

cheers