Quote:
Originally Posted by duromega
Beautiful tank
Good job [emoji122][emoji122][emoji122]
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Thanks.
Greetings from snowy Sheffield. I hope you are having a good Christmas if you are celebrating it.
It is update time.
My tank is doing fairly well. Corals are growing, water chemistry is "stable" (KH = 8.00 dKH; Ca = 415 ppm; pH = 7.92-8.16). Coral coloration is still not as optimum I would like. I have plenty of light over the tank with the right spectrum and intensity. I have no complaints on lights anymore. I think that I need to do more work on the water chemistry, especially on reducing organics. I still have some cyano despite having brief spell of success in the past. Clearly certain things are still not in balance. I have started to fluidise Rowa Phos. I am also using Rox 0.8 passively in a 200 micron bag in my sump. I have no sign of micro algae on rocks or glass. However, I have to clean the front glass every day. Cheato growth has slowed down significantly after starting to fluidise Rowa Phos. I am going to experiment with KZ coral snow and KZ zeobac in the new year. I need to break cyano's dominance somehow as reduced organics in the water column does not seem to be working. When I dosed white vinegar last year for a period of one month, the cyano completely disappeared when the dosage amount reached up to 12 ml per day. Clearly encouraging the growth of heterotrophic bacteria broke cyano's dominance at the time. Unfortunately, I had to abandon carbon dosing as all my acroporas started to suffer from STN. I still do not know why this happened. I have no intention to repeat this experiment in case STN reoccurs. I dread it as much as I dread AEFW. Moreover, I have started to dose limewater recently to bind phosphates and heavy metals in the water column. I dose approximately 3 litres every day. I have had to reduce two-part dosing in return. I am dosing limewater manually at present, but have plans to automate it. I was going to purchase a kalk stirrer, but have then decided to dose it from a container using a peristaltic pump, which will be connected to a digital timer. I will stir calcium hydroxide once in a while to ensure that its potency is maintained.
Here are some pictures I took a few hours ago:
