Nitrate and Phosphate dosing stuff came in! Raised nitrate and it has stayed at 2ppm for a few days. Brought phosphate up but it seems zero within 24h. Put it on dosing pump dosing .06 ppm with everyday. Let’s see


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Current reef tank challenge: Lack of Nitrates and Phosphates in the water has created a vacuum for dinos and cyanos to grow. As exhibited by the pink film over the sand bed.

Plan of attack: lowering photo period on cheato didn’t have much effect and heavy feeding also didn’t do much. Going to try dosing directly.

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New additions entering quarantine.

Black clown fish. Hopefully my purple/gray hammer coral will host them.

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Adding some creepy crawlies today.

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The tank survived a week without me. Automated feeding, dosing, ato, and lights all worked. Had one polyp of frog spawn die, lack of flow perhaps. Other then that good growth. My foxface even got a little fat on rich pellet diet.

Hopefully this opens the door for more vacations as Corona situation improves in Europe.

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Epic German tank https://youtu.be/gM221J5fbSc

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So far maintaining a stable alkalinity in the reef has been a real challenge. I only have three small corals, 5 fish, and rock but somehow I lose 1 dKH per day.

I’ve started with manual daily doses Red Sea part B to keep it up to the recommended 11/10 dKH. Quite a ways from the 5ish dKH of my RODI water. Daily testing and dosing was a pain. I learned 10 dKH for my system is just not practical. Maybe some day for accelerated SPS growth but for now 8 dKH of ocean water would do.

Next I tried Kalkwasser, complete with a diy dripper. Unfortunately it make quite a mess and didn’t maintain and alkalinity of 7 dKH. 🤷‍♂️. My theory, not enough co2 inhibiting carbonic acid + calcium hydroxide alkalinity raise.

Now I’ve gone back to the RedSea Part B but this time slowly dosing it via a Aqua medic Evo 4 dosing pump. After a week of tinkering I’ve got it maintaining a pretty close to 8 dKH with a loss of .1 dKH per day. 👌

In the coming weeks I’ll try to stabilize that even further and automate my calcium dosing as well. All in prep for more sensitive corals.


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My third coral, a Rhodactis mushroom. In this clip it’s trying to eat a shrimp molt with a snail close by.

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Slowly building out my coral collection. This is an Euphyllia, frog spawn I believe.

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Time to trim back the chaetomorpha. Goodbye nitrates.

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Ich habe Spuren von Kalkrotalge gefunden!

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Ich habe sie bei HP-Aquaristik gekauft. HP ist mein Lieblingsaquaristikladen. Er hat saubere Becken und gesunde Tiere. Der Laden in der Nähe von München, aber sie haben auch einen Online-Shop. https://www.hp-aquaristik.de

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Es ist eine Flötenkoralle oder auf Englisch "candy cane coral". Wissenschaftliche Name: Caulastraea furcata. Sie ist einfach, aber weil es eine LPS-Koralle ist, braucht sie gutes Wasser. Alkalinität, Calcium, und Magnesium müssen korrekt sein.

Während der Reinigung / Korallen Vorbereitung, ist die Koralle geplatzt. Ich mache meinen starken Daumen dafür verantwortlich. Das nächste Mal werde ich Werkzeuge benutzen.

Heute haben sich die Polypen geöffnet! Die Koralle ist noch nicht gesund aber, hoffentlich bald.

Mehr Infos gibt es auf https://www.meerwasser-lexikon.de/tiere/680_Caulastraea_furcata.htm#

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Tidal Gardens hat ein gutes Video über Flötenkoralle.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Su_uRh24-c

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Meine erste Koralle.

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Lights ✅.

Two AI Prime 16s.

Install involved borrowing hammer drill from the neighbors to bore into concrete ceiling, fun stuff. Then when I was testing the lights I set one down on the velvet couch not realizing it was on and burnt a series of small holes 😭. Not exactly a smooth process but everything is up and working.

I’m nervous about algae so I’ll be running the lights at low output for 8h a day, scaling things up in the coming weeks. The rock has been in salt water since 26th of December and with fish for over 2 months so I’m confident the initial cycle is complete. Last test 1ppm Nitrate. Cheto in the sump is growing like crazy so levels should stay down. But still, algae will come. Hope the foxface eats most of it.

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The reef will soon have light! Ordered two AI Prime 16s with ceiling mounting kits. 💶💶 My bank account hurts but looking forward to first coral soon after.

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After more pondering I’ve decided it was the crappy Sera brand heater. It was not heating very well so I cranked it up to max to try and hold near 27-28. I think in the night it managed to hear all the way up to 32 🥵. Already replaced it.

Not sure if I’ll go for another Scopas tang at this point.

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Unfortunately the Scopas has died. Still figuring out the exact cause. I raised the temperature slowly to 27.5 in order to speed up the ick cycle but other then that no changes, good salinity, no ammonia, little nitrates, decent dkh and ph, enough food.. 🙁

Not sure if I'll try again with another tang right away. Either way I'm going to run the QT tank for a 1.5 weeks at 28 deg with just the cleaner shrimp and snails to git rid of the ick.

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Scopas tang has ich. 😔. This is why we have quarantine routine. No other fish affected. I’ll start treatment this week with Cupramine if I can find here in DE.

Not sure what to do with the skunk cleaner shrimp and 4 snails 🐌🦐 that are currently in the quarantine tank. Apparently raising temp to 28-29 for a week in tank with no fish will take care of ich traces. So I guess I’ll treat the scopas in a bucket 🪣... not sure yet.

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