Blog Comments

Thanks, it's a lot of fun. Just have to save up some money for another dive trip this year.

Thanks Marc...one of our powerheafs had died and the new one just showed up
I made dure to point it towards the surgace and thatdid it.
Congrats on you recent scuba certification! Something
I also hope to do:-);-):-)

A powerhead pointed at the surface helps a lot. You can peel it off by laying sheets of printer paper on the surface, then lift it off carefully and the stuff will stick to the paper.

Stangchris is right on. Make sure your alk, mag, and calc are in their proper ranges and walk away. My pH floats around 7.9 no matter what I do, and only gets slightly better if I prop the windows open on the few days in Texas where the temperature allows for that.

How are you measuring pH? A meter or a test kit? What are your other measurements of salinity, alk, ca, and mg? And how are you measuring all of these specifically?

I would stop dosing additives and possibly do several smaller water changes through the week if it is really worrying you. Also what buffer did you use and what buffer did you switch to? I am just curious about that

never chase ph leave it alone!! so many factors in ph swings, oxygen levels in house and other things. what was low to you. i run a 150g sps tank full of colonies and my ph was 7.4-7.5 with no real probs then it started dropping to 7.0 stressing stuff out. so i added a kalk reactor and now i hold steady at 7.7-7.8 abnd all my coral and fish are fine. what im saying is unless its extremly low let your tank do its thing, stability is better than parameters swinging around.

can we get some more specifics about your tank? what size is it? how long has it been running? what is the calcium and alkalinity at currently? also what is your maintenance schedule like?

Do you have a picture of these?

I would say that if it is a rock that can be removed and has no other things you want to keep alive in/on it then just take it out and soak it in some hydrogen peroxide for about 20 minutes. Then take out the rock rise it really well with some RO water and put it back in the tank after everything falls out of the rock dead.

There are various carbon dosing methods to reduce nitrate in the water. The vodka dosing article touches on sugar or vinegar dosing as other types used, and even how some people combine all three into a single mixed dose. Be sure to read up on this topic before trying anything new like carbon dosing.

Originally Posted by melev

Every water change will bring it down. A 50% water change will take it down by 50% each time.

Biopellets, vodka, vinegar, sugar, Seachem Matrixx - all products to reduce nitrate.

Sugar? What is the process for dosing sugar?

Just feed less twice a day

Thanks melev everything I have read says to feed what the fish will eat in 2-5 minutes and they gobble this up easily in 2. Should I go twice a day or only once? They are always happy!!!

So 10 cubes per day? Yes, that would be polluting your water. Big water changes weekly would help, and back to back ones every other day for a week or so would get them down to very low levels. The balance is to feed enough to keep your animals happy and not overload the system (food or their waste).

Thanks to all. My tank is a 125 with25-30 gallon fuge.
rodi water change 20 gallons every two weeks
I might hav been over feeding so I am going to try to
cut back a little . There are about12 fish total
Two 4" tangs and 10 1 1/2" varied.
I have been feeding two times per day
what they eat in about2-3 minutes
Its about 5 frozen cubes and they seem to eat it all up
should I feed them half that twice per day
or that much once??? Thanks again. Marc!

Thanks to all! when I cleaned it I only cleaned the skimmer cup itself... I took the skimmer apart and only took off the part to clean
the impeller wheel and didn't clean inside at all .
Then I raised it up by 1 1/2 inches and it seems to be working well!
about 1 " of skim ate overnight .

Yea I will second Marc on the barometric pressure. When the pressure drop mine skims more. It had me scratching my head. Also when I start mine back up I have to turn it back till it settles down or it over skims

I don't have a tank at the moment, and I'm currently debating wheather or not to have one right now. But I'm convinced to have a successful reef you need some method of continuous nitrate and phosphate export. The algae scrubber worked well for me, the guy I gave that setup to reports that it's still working well for him. But as Marc said, there are lots of other techniques that work too.

Phil

Every water change will bring it down. A 50% water change will take it down by 50% each time.

Biopellets, vodka, vinegar, sugar, Seachem Matrixx - all products to reduce nitrate.