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Unread 06/03/2018, 12:40 PM   #7
Newms118
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Join Date: Sep 2013
Posts: 364
Quote:
Originally Posted by Subsea View Post
Gravel vac the surface. Get appropriate sandbed detrivores that eat detritus not other detrivores. Cerith Snails, micro starfish and bristle worms will keep your sand bed functioning with your help as the Master Gardner.. I did not say clean. For long term success (10+ yrs) recycling sandbed nutrients thru complex food webs to produce live food for corals and fish.

GAC is granulated activated carbon. I would discontinue chemipure as it is much more than just GAC. Amongst other things, chemipure has ion exchange resins that are claimed to remove nitrate & phosphate. Your macro and coral both require nitrate and phosphate to exist. All organic organisms require nitrate and phosphate to exist.

Nutrients is too general of a word to use at this point in the conversation. Phosphate and nitrate are specific minerals that are fertilizer. Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is a by product of photosynthesis and is not one compound. It is a mixture of many differrent organic biochemical processes that will fuel nuisance algae. Leave the nitrogen & phosphate in the water for macro and corals to uptake. Both macro and coral produce DOC during photosynthesis. If left unattend, DOC often gives water a yellow tint.

I could not find a tank thread to better understand your system. I think your should discontinue the use of your protein skimmer as it is very ineffective at removing DOC. Ken Feldman has peer reviewed articles on Advanced Aquaria about the long term effects of protein skimmers contributing to “Old tank syndrome”.

Using DOC as control parameter data showed:
Protein skimmers removed at best 35% of DOC
GAC removed 75% of DOC
Biofilter removed 50% of DOC
For the Sand bed I have two giant brittle stars (diameter bigger than my hand), which have spawned and created tons of tiny brittle stars. Those are all over the place, and Ive even brought some down to clean up the sump that has my other plants in them. Ill include a picture of the refugium so you can see what that looks like:



With both refugium lights on (the other one is full spectrum: TaoTronics Full Spectrum Grow Light)



Also got a mangrove growing in there:



Heres some other pics, one with snails in the refugium, the full tank.





And here is this weird orange bacteria growing on the bottom of the tank. Its different from cyanobacteria bc I have a little bit of that growing and its the normal red color.




For snails, I have bought at least 3 orders from GCE. At least close to 60 small virgin nerite snails, 20 nerite snails, 10 astrea snails, 40 dwarf cerith snails, 10 cerith snails. So far I'm down to like 3 or 4 astrea snails (I watch huge bristle worms I have in the tank go into there shells and kill them if they got on the rocks), maybe 10 virgin nerites, one or two nerites, and two or so cerith snails in the main tank. The rest all end up disappearing or dying off. So I don't know if its the say that they are added or what but they just don't last in my tank, and you know I have plenty of algae and junk for them to eat. I read the best way to put them all in is to just temp aclimate them for 15 minutes and dump them in, so thats what I do. And if you think the bristle worms don't kill the snails, the ones in the refugium don't seem to disappear, its only in the main tank.

So for GAC and a gravel bed cleaner, can you recommend any brands or the ones you use so that I don't just go buy some junk? Ive had to add more nitrate and phosphate into the tank bc I've been detecting low levels, either from some cyano thats coming back (despite me using chemiclean to get rid of it), or from the GHA slowly creeping back. I really hope I can out compete the GHA with the other macros bc the 24 day flucanozole treatment does end up hurting some of the macros (codium started to deteriorate and the red grape plant died completely).


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