Blog Comments

sometimes its the simplest things that cause the most annoying problems, glad to see you got it fixed

Nice Marc glad to see you flushed out the problem in the end.

Hey, look on the bright side, your toilet is looking and working real good!

Nice! Congratulations.

I will do that! Hey Marc, i'm about to leave to go get my 75g RR. :-)

Blow off those zoanthids in some strong flow. They may need a little extra cleansing.

I'm glad your Hammer made it Marc! Do you think that cyano can get in the heads? Because I have one small zoa frag with about 6 heads on it covered with cyano and now that the algae is gone they just don't look right. I wonder if that could be happening to mine. Hmmmm

LOL - The webmaster made that for me and I thought it only appropriate for this site. It's my profile picture. My avatar is to the left of this entry.

Hello again and Fantastic! ...wish I could say the same about your new avatar

Thanks Marc for the information.

Originally Posted by Hat39406

Hey Melev, did you are do have any article on water chemistry on Melev's Reef?

No, I don't. I keep my parameters on this page, which gives some guidelines and links to a couple of my articles. And it looks like I need to get some current measurements on that page stat!

http://melevsreef.com/parms.html

Originally Posted by GoinAcropoora

Marc, This is really fascinating to physically see phosphates, particularly that it is a phantom amount that causes menacing algae. Looking forward to seeing if your readings will demonstrate same effectiveness between the both methods.

Do you also employ media (GFO/Rowaphos/Aluminum Oxide), or is the vodka & BLUPC enough to do it?

It definitely works. I just tested a few minutes ago to give you the good report, but it isn't quite down to 0. I siphoned out quite a bit of detritus from my sump today, so I may have unleashed a little bit of the stuff into the water. Or maybe I should have dosed more that night.

I only use this product and dose vodka. I have a skimmer, refugium with macro algae, and a calcium reactor. That's it.

Hey Melev, did you are do have any article on water chemistry on Melev's Reef?

Marc, This is really fascinating to physically see phosphates, particularly that it is a phantom amount that causes menacing algae. Looking forward to seeing if your readings will demonstrate same effectiveness between the both methods.

Do you also employ media (GFO/Rowaphos/Aluminum Oxide), or is the vodka & BLUPC enough to do it?

Algae needs two basic things to grow, nutrients and light. The nutrients come in the form of nitrates and phosphates, remove the nutrients or drop the levels and the algae will go away.

Can that help with an algae problem? If it can how? I really want to learn the water chemestry of salt water reef tanks. It will definitely help me with my tank.

Very interesting and information for those who may have algae problems with their tanks. I will now have to test my water for phosphates which I have not done in a long time since our tanks do not have any algae issues.

We would be waiting a while for results from my skimmer...lol.

No, not as fast as the phosphate solidifies. When I drop in 10 drops in my skimmer which probably holds 9-10g of water, the reaction in the skimmer is almost immediate. I can't see it turn cloudy, but the froth bubbles up quickly and the sludge is proof.

For your skimmer, it would be interesting to see what would happen. It could only take one or two drops since it is so small.

Marc, wouldn't the skimmer actually remove most if not all the dose you put in it. After all that is what the skimmer does, remove imperities from the water, right? If the dosing chemical is similar to zeelite which works like a magnet to remove calcium and magnesium in a water softning system, then what you see would be phosphate being removed. Just some thoughts.