Fish Room in Progress...

[Landon]

I got a new rack for the new hardware from Menards. Works great so far. The top two shelves will be for 15G Long's. One for freshwater, one for saltwater. Gonna drill in a few bulkheads so waterchanges should consist of a flip of a couple of ball valves. I plan on mounting a powerhead in the sump that is gonna go to a floor drain. Should make things easy.

I got my Ranco temp controller all hooked up and love it so far. Hardware is running smoothly. Now its time for some stony corals.

[CUNAReefer]

So are you going to give tours of your fish room to MARS members when your done

[meisen]

How well ventilated is your basement? A lot of them arent and become a sink for CO2 (poorly vented water heater, furnace in winter, people breathing etc).

A quick test to see if your pH is CO2 limited: test your tank pH. Then just take a cupful of water outside, swish it around for a few minutes and retest. If it jumps up more than .1 or .2 you are definitely surpressed and should consider ventilation solutions. Otherwise you are probably just high in organic material and low in alkalinity. Dripping Kalk and/or adding in some buffer solution should solve that. Trying to up your protein skimmer's output (larger pump, more flow, cleaning it etc) can often help as well.

[Landon]

So are you going to give tours of your fish room to MARS members when your done

Anytime! I would love some visitors on the weekend! If anyone is ever passing through the Fort Atkinson area and would like to drop in shoot me a pm.

How well ventilated is your basement? A lot of them arent and become a sink for CO2 (poorly vented water heater, furnace in winter, people breathing etc).

A quick test to see if your pH is CO2 limited: test your tank pH. Then just take a cupful of water outside, swish it around for a few minutes and retest. If it jumps up more than .1 or .2 you are definitely surpressed and should consider ventilation solutions. Otherwise you are probably just high in organic material and low in alkalinity. Dripping Kalk and/or adding in some buffer solution should solve that. Trying to up your protein skimmer's output (larger pump, more flow, cleaning it etc) can often help as well.

I would say the fishroom is not well ventilated. It does have a window but it remains closed almost always.

I tried the test you mentioned and the ph did raise by about .2. This could get interesting. I dont feel its a problem with a low alkalinity as the calcium reactor keeps the alk steady at 11.2 dkh.

Actually the last couple of days things have been looking a bit better. Seems ph is hanging around 8.0.

I will try opening up the window all day tomorrow and see what happens. Thanks for the advice!

Landon

[Landon]

OOOOHHHH LA LA!

Check out these babies! Fresh from Live Aquaria!

The whitish ones are actually peach colored with purple rims.

[Carinya]

Purty.

[Slakker]

So when are you going to be fragging them out?

Everything looks so great....I can't wait till I have the place to set up a larger tank.

[Landon]

I'm hoping to have a bunch of frags ready around christmas time. I should be able to grow a few polyps of everything by that time.

[Fishtankdon]

After you left my house Landon. I went out to work on the truck with the diamond cutter on the grinder to cut a bolt. Needles to say, It bounced off the bolt when the blade chipped, caught my shirt, twisted up spinning cut my chest and the handle put my tooth threw my lip. I should have just stayed inside lol. So it sucked, but I hope your coral is doing good that ya got. Had to share this with you.

[Landon]

OMG thats nuts! I know that kinda stuff happens so fast its scary. I cut the tip of my finger off with a pruning shears while I was talking with a customer a few years ago.

The corals are looking good. I will get a few pics up as the open up over the next couple of days. Thanks for letting me poke around and check out all of your stuff.

Don did the service of setting up a group buy with Zoanuts.com so far the PPE looks real nice! All of the stuff that I saw from the order looked real great.

[Landon]

Got a new Vietnam Bubble Tip Anemone for Living Art yesterday. Seems to be doing real good after acclimation. The clownfish tried him out right away. RBTA is something I have wanted since day one of the hobby. He moved a bit after I put him in but seems pretty settled in atm.

I also got some great frags from Fishtankdon this weekend. I'll get a couple of shots up when they open up a lil more. I got a chance to see his setups. Very very impressive Zoa collection Don.

[Mike]

I'm glad he stayed where you put him. The coral is opened up in my tank and is doing fine. Thanks for the chat and info we exchanged it was very helpful and for the tour of the setup. Very nice.

Mike

[Landon]

Glad to here the polyps are doing well. Nice to have a visitor. Thanks Much!

[Landon]

Pretty suprised tonight to see that my PH meter is reading 7.56. It has been hanging around 7.8 to 7.9 with the calcium reactor running. I think I'm going to have to really start adressing this.

I tried taking some water outside and swishing it around for 5 minutes. The meter in the tank read 7.58, after swishing it read 7.59.

Alkalinity has been a very steady 11.2. Calcium steady at 430.

I have tried additions of Kalk in slurry form as suggested in Calfos Book of Coral Propagation. After adding kalk slurried in ro water in an amount that raised the ph by about .15 it falls back down after about an hour.

I really would like to take steps to correct this low ph problem. Raising it with a buffer has only proven to be a very short term fix. Anyone have any suggestions?

[BraenDead]

First question, how long has it been since you calibrated the meter last?

Bob