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 Lighting (cont.) |
| I'm
sure the corals appreciate the extra
little kick in intensity and as long
as I take the time to wipe off the
bulbs and reflectors every few days,
the salt spray doesn't seem to
be an issue. What I HAVE noticed
however, is that there is quite a bit
more evaporation going on now: About
7 gallons a day. This keeps both
my chiller and even my 44 gallon DIY
kalk top off doser working overtime. It
has also necessitated the addition
of vinegar to the kalkwater to keep
the pH down. More about that
in the Water Treatment section. |
| Circulation & Plumbing Go! Just
the additions of the Sequence Pumps
I mentioned earlier. They rock! |
Water
Treatment Go! Also
as stated earlier, I have brought
my Alkalinty back down to 9.8
(from 12.8+). My
calcium now rides
around the 410ppm mark. I've
also gradually raised my
s.g. to the 1.025 mark; everything
geared toward more closely
approximating NSW levels. I've
been advised that my
corals may not grow quite as fast,
but they wont have'rtn' events
quite as often either. Sounds
fair to me.
|
| By
the way, I've had to take to
adding vinegar to my make-up water
to help keep my pH down. According
to Randy Holmes-Farley, it does this
when the kalk/vinegar solution enters
the tank by the conversion of the
vinegar's acetate to CO2 by
bacteria. It is the CO2 that
lowers the tank pH. |
|
The recommended dosage is
12mL/L, which works out to
about 45mL/g, but I started
at about half this dose and
slowly worked my way up. And
while my pH was no longer hitting
8.5, it did swing wildly from,
say, 8.4 right after dosing
to 8.11. I was advised
to back off a bit on the amount
of kalk powder added to the
top off water and fine tune
with the vinegar from there. By
the way, the animals show no
signs of stress from this swing;
it just may be me being a bit
too obsessive. Still
though, I'd like a bit
more stability here.
|
[Update: By
effectively halving the previous
dosage of Kalk AND vinegar, I
am maintaining my tanks pH at
between 8.05 and 8.20. This
is much more comfortable to me.] |
(A
note for those of you who want
to try this: Use the plain
old distilled white vinegar;
should say something like 5%
acidity and it looks like water. It's
basically found in every kitchen
in America except those of single
men. Do NOT use any colored
or flavored vinegar or you run
the risk of crashing your reef. Consider
this my disclaimer.) |
As
for the Phosban, it's really
nice to see a product actually
do what it's touted to
do for a change. In tank
cyano is practically gone. And
now that it's in its own
Myreef 'reactor',
it's also |
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