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 State
of the Tank: 1/04
(cont.) |
I
also do 'blow outs' of
accumulated debris on a pretty
regular basis, employ macroalgaes
in my fuge, dose kalk and run Phosban
24/7. So I decided to address the high
alkalinity issue first and turned off
my calcium reactor and kalk doser for
about three days. As predicted, my
alk (and calcium) dropped like a hanged
ma…like a stone. Once it hit
about 8.8 dKH (still a little higher
than NSW's 7-8 dKH), I began
the process of restarting and dialing
in the reactor again. I'm now
running the ARM media at a 6.7 effluent
pH at approximately 120 mL/m and my
tank's alk level is between 9.3
and 9.8 dKH. Calcium runs around 420ppm.
More importantly to me however, is
that upon making this simple change,
my 'rtn' actually seemed
to stop in its tracks. So maybe sometimes
less really can be more; at least when
it comes to 'older' reeftanks.
And on another matter entirely, I believe
this month I added a new Frogspawn
 . Obviously I steered clear of
any acros for awhile. So by the end
of the month, the tank looked like
this: |
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| I DID
go a little nuts this month however.
Somewhat buoyed by the stability of
the tank and yet annoyed by the look
of it, I added quite a few new things.
It seemed that this event affected
most of…well actually, ALL of
my larger staghorns, and without the
dimension of height, the reef looked
to me a little like an LFS's
display tank. So between a few small
colonies and
several frags, I tried to put
together a look |
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that
should come together quite nicely.
I realize this will take some
time and right now the uppermost
structure looks a little like
a discount hair transplant but
if I've
learned anything from this hobby,
it's patience. The details
and photos of these new additions
will be covered in the Acropora
category of the 'SPS' section.
But the current overall look
of the tank is right here: .
Those of you who are particularly
observant may note that my Crosshatch
Triggerfish may no longer be
seen 'pacing' nervously
along the back wall. That's
because this is also the month
that I came down one morning
to discover that it had jumped…not
just out of the tank, but headlong
into one of my filter sock bleaching
buckets! It was not pretty. It
was somewhat amazing though considering
the closed tank hood probably
only leaves a 6” gap (at
a very oblique angle) to maneuver
through… and that the
fish itself was 4” long.
But
now that I was comfortably assured
that my 'rtn' problems
were behind me for the moment,
I began to focus my attention on
what I consider to be the 'weakest' area
of set up: my sump .
As you know, I've never really
liked it. Lately however, its inefficiency
has really begun to disturb me.
First of all, it's much too
small for the tank at about 75
gallons. Originally, I estimated
it was in the neighborhood of 125
gallons, but I was wrong. And due
to the way |
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