My 55g 2.0

So my coral seem to be happier. This is one of the ones i was concerned with a while back and figured i was going to lose it altogether but has really rebounded.


This picture was taken April 23rd. The color actully looks the same as it did before my phone just can't really capture the color but the coral seems much happier than it was 2 months ago and there was a dyno outbreak irritating it not very long ago.

 

Was taking a look at some pictures from April, I did notice some growth but nothing you wouldn't really have to study the photos to see the growth so no pictures today.

 

I'm glad things are doing good. I've had some corals slow down recently while others exploded. That's reefing

 

I really don't get a lot of growth on my corals - I don't keep sticks though.

 

I am thinking i should try steroids for them. Get them to bulk up!

 

So the arrow indicates when I ran my skimmer air line was put outside the window. As you can see around July 19th the highest it was prior to running the line outside, the pH at this point was 8.36 at 8:11pm and exactly 12 hours later it plummeted to 8.09 at 10:11 am.

The skimmer air line going outside with a little filter on it is the only change made at that time. So you can see it is not nearly as "shaky" and has a tighter high and low limit. At this point, I highly recommend running that line outside.

 

Has been a while since I really updated. I lost one of my favorite corals, Hawkins again, and not really sure what happened to it other than RTN. I tried to break off the bad parts but it still continued but has stopped shortly before getting to the encrusted portion, not sure if it is going to recover or not at this point. Growth had pretty much ceased on all corals for some reason. I had made no changes at all.

After this, as some may have guessed from the reactor build on the homepage, I started running Zeo products in my tank. Currently I am running zeolites in a reactor on 3 hours off 3 hours, zeobak, zeofood, zeostart, and now using sponge power.

The coral seem to be responding well to the zeo products but I have been having some issues with a couple other things.

Of course when I need heavy skimming for the zeo, my skimmer starts to malfunction. It was overflowing within a minute no matter how I had it adjusted. I seem to have it dialed in, again, at this point and it is pulling out some almost blackish skimmate so i am pleased with it until it malfunctions again.

I had been having issues with my water quality coming from the source. My source water has a ton of CO2 in it and therefore was burning my DI resin before I could get 30 gallons of 0TDS water from it. So i built a degasser and have been struggling with it but i am past 30 gallons and still 0 TDS for now so hopefully this will continue to work. My water was coming out at about 10 TDS and therefore my rodi water from my reservoir had a nitrate reading. My system does not. So hopefully this will make a difference since I am not adding nutrients to my tank any longer.

Currently I am having an issue with my lighting not working properly with the timing and the dimming leaving me not knowing what power my lights are at and having to manually unplug and plug them in.
PITA.

Hopefully things will start to turn around for me here. I will keep everyone posted.

 

Hawkins can be touchy. It's one of those Acropora I have not been able to keep successfully.

I am sure it will turn around for you. You'll find the balance.

 

Couple updates.

Was at the LFS the other day and saw these and couldn't resist.

Much bluer not through my camera.

The surviving Rastas and the new polyp are doing well.

Just wish more had survived.

Have been wondering about the flow in my tank so I added one of these the other day.


So far I love it! Still have some things I need to learn about how it works but I am thinking i will end up buying the Icecap so i can hook it up to my RA and have full control over it.

I have a couple corals not doing so well. Both montipora, a plating and Undata, the plating has had a steady decline and the undata lost a lot of tissue fast. I did a lugols dip on them yesterday so I will see how this goes. On the other hand, the surviving echinata is looking better other than the skeleton part on top, should I remove that part?

Everything else is looking good. I had an issue with my sump trickling water while I was at work one day and it drained my ATO. Surprisingly, the alk did not spike, but the pH did go up into the upper 8s. This may have contributed to the Undata declining. This also lowered my salinity quite a bit which i am still working on raising back up to 1.026, it was 1.021.

Not much else has changed.

 

So the Gyre has done wonders in my tank. The corals look noticeably healthier from the increased movement. I have tried to use the wp25s with the gyre and have only accomplished moving the sand from the bottom of the tank to the top of the tank. So those may just come out all together soon.

I recently made a purchase with RapidLED to upgrade my lighting to full spectrum which I hope to have completed by monday night.

No new additions for coral so therefore no pictures, I know right, worthless post.

I recently bought the Red Sea Coral Color test kit. So I can now test for Iodine, Iron, and Potassium. I have found that the Iodine is low, Potassium is good and my Iron is virtually non existent. I don't know if this means my coral are using it all up or if my salt mix simply doesn't have enough in it but it does seem to be a limiting factor in my tank. Nothing really to follow up with on this aspect just thought it was interesting that I only have an untraceable amount of iron in my tank.