Tank Journal - 135 FOWLR

[chipmunkofdoom2]

I would cure it separately if you can. I got a huge 50lb piece of dry dead rock from my friend and broke it up into still pretty hefty pieces and found all sorts of dead sponges and detritus caught inside the nooks and crannies. If you cure it separately, there's no chance ammonia will get into the display.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Seventh cleaning 1/17/10

Did a gravel vac of the areas I could get to, which wasn’t done since 12/28/09, and a coat of algae has formed over the top that was exactly like it was before, adhered to the gravel and thick enough where it wouldn’t get sucked up the vac tube. I guess I am going to have to hurry up and get him some snails and hermits, or stir the gravel a couple times a week.

I will also admit something kinda stupid on my part, especially since I’m an engineer and should be able to calculate volume pretty easily. The tank is not a 135, it’s a 125 Long. 72x18x20. I don’t know where I came up with 135. I figured it out when I was calculating how much water to remove. Here’s how I do that, in case anyone is interested:

1 cubic foot of water = 7.5 gallons (7.48, but who cares).
1 cu ft = 1728 cu in
Inside dimensions of125L is 71-1/4 x 17-1/4.
Overflows are 7” on a side, ¼ round, so 2 of them I just called 7x7, when you subtract that off the interior, it’s about 1180 sq in.
1728 / 1180 = 1.46 in (= 7.5g).
So removing 80 gallons would be 80 / 7.5 = 10.66 cu ft, or 18432 cu in.
18432 / 1180 = 15.6 inches.

When I measured that, I figured out that I was not correct on the size of the tank. Oh well. That means I’ve been doing a little higher % of PWCs, which in turn means that the Nitrates and Phosphates are being produced at a higher rate than I previously thought, and also that the initial Nitrate level was probably higher. Now take a breath, because I did a backwards calculated what the Nitrate level was before I started anything by taking the latest reading and extrapolating what the Nitrate level would be at prior to that water change, all the way back to the beginning using the formula (NO3 after water change) divided by (1 minus the percentage of the water change) to come up with the Nitrate level before the water change. For instance, if I tested 80 ppm after a 53% water change, then 80 / (1-.53) = 170. Those are the actual test numbers and PWC %s from the test on 1/12 and PWC % on 1/11. Going backwards, PWCs were 36%, 36%, 36%, 27%, 25%. If you plug those number in, the Nitrate level was originally 1169. Of course, Nitrates were probably being produced, but those PWCs were all done within a 30 day period starting 12/13/09 and ending 1/11/09. So they couldn’t be increasing that fast!!!

Pics and test results tomorrow. Ciao!

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Pics 1/17 to 1/20 and Test Results

So here’s test results from 1/18/10

pH 8.3
KH 11.5-11.8
Salinity 35.5
Ammonia 0
Nitrate 50-60
Phosphate 2-3

And a set of pics, the first is from 1/17 of the open side of the tank, half cleaned and half not. Guess which is which

Pics on 1/18

Flash pic of full tank

No flash

One thing to note here, I fired up his 225 Cichlid tank, and that had the exact same light fixture and bulbs, but was only a year old or so, so we swapped the fixtures, and oh what a difference. Still probably should replace the bulbs, but this is better than the old ones!!

Closeup of right (open) side

That stuff grows a skin over the top layer of substrate and I can’t siphon it off without taking the gravel. Gotta get the Nitrates and Phosphates down and get that skimmer in, I’m losing this battle.

Pufffer

Pics on 1/20, 3 days after cleaning

Substrate on right (open) side super close

Rock (non-reef, slate rock) with green hair algae

And, the red cyano is growing on the overflows again. And everywhere else. I’m gonna get some ROWAPHOS and see if that helps. They make a nitrate remover for freshwater, why not for saltwater?

 

[GreatWhiteShark]

Nice work!!

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Clean-up Crew - looking for input

I am going to buy a clean-up crew for this tank from reefcleaners.org. Here's what I'm considering, based on what they have available. I think this will be a good start, and probably will be some food for the puffer, so we'll see how it goes:

5 assorted hermit crabs
20 dwarf Cerith snails
5 nassarius snails
20 small to medium Nerite snails
10 large Nerite snails

From what I've read, it's suggested 1 hermit per 4 gallons, 1 nassarius per 3 gallons, and 1 per gallon for the rest. This adds up to about 85 gallons worth of CUC.

The only concern I had was with the Nassarius snails, they suggest a 4" deep substrate since they burrow in it. This tank only has 1", but it's plenty dirty, so I figured 5 would be more than enough, considering the massive food source there (it looks even worse than the last set of pics, a skin of red cyano over all exposed substrate).

Any other suggestions or ideas?

 

[bwhit1406]

your making progress in the battle. Keep up the good work

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Algae taking over

There is definitely a problem with this system. The algae is out of control. Here are some pics from today.

Right side of tank

Close-up

Rock on left

The green hair algae is easy to identify. However, I wonder if the red stuff is algae or cyanobacteria. If anyone can tell me which it looks like for sure, it would help me remedy the problem appropriately. I bought a 250ml jar of Brightwell Aquatics Phospat-R resin and will be putting half of it in there ASAP and monitor the phosphate levels to see if I can get them to 0 and for how long.

Pulled more water for testing, will report as soon as I can on that.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

2/2 - Another major cleaning

The cyano and green hair algae got so bad, and it had been a few weeks since the last water change, I decided to do another major cleaning. 80 gallons and I pulled all the LR out and scrubbed the green hair off, then gravel vacuumed the entire tank. The gravel vac does little to actually remove the cyano. I think the major downfall of the Python is the shutoff valve and the faucet connector both reduce the diameter of the hose, and the flow rate is significantly reduced, so it can’t suck the little bits out. But it does get all the gunk dissolved in the gravel bed at least, and it turns everything over.

Got all the rock back in, I left out the non-LR slabs (2 of them) and….drum roll please…

THE FROG LOG IS DEAD

I threw it out after giving it a quick scrub so it didn’t stink up the place. Scarily enough, I found Frog Log’s twin brother under the bar sink. He actually got 2 of them!

The skimmer is finally on the way, something got hosed up with shipping. It just arrived in the state today, so with any luck it will be there tomorrow.

The clean-up crew was supposed to be here today, but yet again shipping problems. It got sent from Florida on Tuesday and here it is 10 degrees in Iowa and it’s sitting somewhere on a truck or in a sort facility. The guy at reefcleaners.org said there’s been some issues lately and he was tracking it down. I hope they’re alive when they get here.

Gotta go test the water tonight and I’ll take a few pics. The water tested at 100 ppm Nitrates before the test. I added about ¼ to 1/3 of a 500mL jar of ROWAphos on 2/1 and that stuff works a heck of a lot faster than the Brightwell stuff, it dropped the Phosphate from 3 ppm to about 1.5 in about a day. The BA resin didn’t seem to do much, I figure that stuff is good for maintaining and long term, and the ROWA is good for a quick knock-down.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

I forgot one thing to ask: I scrubbed and rinsed off about 45 pounds of the 110 pounds of the dry base rock I bought from Craiglist and put it in a tub with saltwater, powerhead, heater, covered up in basement. How long do you think I need to keep it in there and test for ammonia before I can be relatively sure that there's no decaying organic matter - a day, two days, a week?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Well, I just tested the water and WHOA. I'm glad I didn't just drop these in his tank. I put them in at about 3pm yesterday, and now at 10am the ammonia is way up on the scale, not at a readable color, but it's WAY up there. What happened? Did I start the curing process?

The first thing I'm going to do is change the water and see if that gets a spike. If it does, I don't know what I'm going to do!! I wasn't planning on curing all this rock, but I might have to.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

I hate API test kits sometimes. The SW ammonia color card doesn't match the color of the test tube, even on a 1/4 strength test. My best guess is that the 1/4 strength test is about 1 ppm, meaning 4 ppm in the tub.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Skimmer!!!

The skimmer showed up today while I was testing the water, so it’s finally installed and running!!

Tank after cleaning

Cyano already taking hold again

Nitrates at 40-50 after water change

Phosphates around 1 ppm – better than 2-3 like it was before. Will have to continue to monitor it, hopefully the ROWAphos isn’t used up already, that would suck!!

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Last night I rinsed the rock off with RODI water and then refilled with fresh SW. This morning, the Ammonia was somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0 ppm, so I think it's safe to say that most of whatever was decayed and dead has been dissolved out. It's only in 8 gallons of water, so if you extrapolate that out to 140 gallons, worst case it will throw 0.05 ppm into the tank water. Even if I threw it into the tank before doing this, it would only have thrown it less than 0.5 ppm, so I guess that would have been 'safe' but I'm glad I soaked it first.

Clean-up crew got lost in the mail. West Palm Beach USPS says they just got it yesterday (Thursday), even though John @ reefcleaners.org (VERY nice and helpful guy by the way) dropped it off on Tuesday. He said there have been problems with USPS and his shipments, so it's time to crack some head at the USPS. He also is going to re-ship the whole shipment. How about that for customer service!!

 

[Tru2nr]

geeze i just went through everything here thats pretty crazy, i have to say cyno algae is sticking because of not enough flow and the algae is also coming from that HUGE store front window letting in all of those good red light spectrums feeding the algae, the skimmer will go along way though that is for sure good luck

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Clean-up crew & base rock

I added all 45 pounds of base rock and all the CUC today. And the puffer did think it was Christmas I believe. Within 10 minutes, he went after 2 of the big Nerite snails. I have to tell you, it is WAY COOL to see a puffer try to do this. He swam over to it (on the glass) and you could just tell he was like "that's for ME!!!" and pulled his mouth closed and back, then lunged at it. He didn't get it, but he's sure trying!!

I ordered 40 of the Dwarf Cerith snails, but I'm pretty sure he sent me about 120. 5 or 6 hermits (puffer tried to go after one of those too) and about a dozen large Nerites and over 2 dozen small/medium Nerites, and about a half-dozen Nassarius (I put those on the substrate). So the hope is that they will last a while, at least long enough to see if they will get the cyano and green hair algae under control. They were pretty inexpensive, so even if I have to get more that's ok!! Here's some pics

Full tank

And close-ups from right to left

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Well, time will tell on how the CUC does I guess, the green hair algae is already coming back. I've got Brightwell Phosphat-R and ROWAphos in the sump, and Purigen, plus the skimmer now which I cleaned today and it was about 1/2" of almost black with a hint of green liquid, and the inner neck was coated with brown sludge already. On the reef tank I also maintain it takes weeks to form that sludge. I wanted to adjust the bubbles up, but decided that I better just leave it alone for at least another week and monkey with it then to make sure it's broken in fully. Saturday when I tested Phosphates they were about 1 or maybe 1.5, so they're staying where they are but maybe coming up slightly. This tank I think is loaded with them, whenever I did a PWC in the past, the phosphates were down immediately after, but the next day shot right up again. On the ROWAphos instructions, it says that phosphates will get leeched out of the substrate, etc, so I'm guessing that there is some kind of equilibrium point, and if I removed the phosphates out of the water, whatever is in the substrate gets leeched back into the water until a new equilibrium point is reached. If this is the case, I might as well put the rest of the ROWAphos in that tank and just let it run it's course. Heck, it might be worth investing in a phosphate reactor, or just making one DIY. Can't be that hard.

 

[bwhit1406]

If The Cyano keeps coming back you should try Slime away. It's not a permanent solution but it will help in the short term.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Tested today, the important notes are Nitrate between 35 and 40, which is stable or even slightly less than it was when I tested both 7 and 10 days ago. I have made 2 minor (2 degree?) turns on the skimmer and boy howdy is it producing the green-black crud like crazy!!

I am still losing the Phosphate battle, however. It was down to 1 or 1.5, now back up to 2 or 3.

KH has dropped to about 10.2 on Salifert - this is from a high of 11.5-11.8 in mid January after a 55% PWC. Before that, is was below 8.0. That's probably due to the fact that I haven't done a PWC in 2 weeks, but I'm going in tomorrow to do that sometime.

The Cyano doesn't seem to be coming back quite as vigorously. This could be due to the change in the light cycle, lights are only on during lunch and dinner hours, 2-3 hours at a stretch and several hours in between. I also picked up some backing to block out the side and will install that tomorrow as well.

Several snails are obviously dead and will need to be removed. I'm considering a total substrate change-out if I can't get the phosphates under control, but before doing that I suppose getting a handle on the feedings is in order also. On this note, he has cut back to feeding every other day, so there's less uneaten food I believe. All this mat contribute to the low Nitrate production also.

 

[GreatWhiteShark]

Good to see the skimmer is working well for you. Phosban is an excellent product and I have have not had a problem with phosphates since I've been using it. Keep up the fight!!