Infinitereef

The Coralline is taking over the back tank wall now. At the time when the pics were taken, the coralline have not spread to the glass yet.

Another pic from the left. You can see the snails and the Scarlet I added at 2 months time to help me clean the detris and nuisance algae. I have an Emperor 400 just for circulation. Throw away the filter floss that come with it. The reason i have Emperor is that I got it very cheap and I can use it to put my Carbon. You probably can't see it from the pic, I have a Aqua C Remora with Maxijet1200, and 1 Maxijet 1200 on the right, 1 Maxijet 600 on the left. Total circulation = 400+295+295+165 = 1155 gallons/hr in a 46 gallons tank. So the only mechanical filtration is the skimmer. Will try to get the whole tank shot. But my camera skills is still amateur that everytime when I shoot the Full tank shot, I can't see any details of the tank.

Pic view from the right. You can see from this pic that I have some Cyano on the sandbed. This is again 2-3months ago. *pic removed - please repost in 800x600 max

Some pics of my LR. these pics are 2-3months old. Does not have the YT yet. I will take updated pics some time this week to shows the sponge developing, and the Fan worms.

Good for you. Unfortunately for me, they use 2 days to ship the LR to my place and most of the stuff is dieing off. Once it started the die off, it takes a while to get the LR back into "alive" again. But surprise to me, my tank water is "cycled" after a week.

This is what I thought. Thanks for clearing this up.

Thanks for the compliments, I intend to let it go for 1 year before I add anything to see what I can get from my LR. I actually a little bit regretted to add the YT recently as its starts to nibble at my Macro Algae too much too early. Maybe, will do a nine months wait on my next tank.

I had started another 46g tank 6 months ago and one of my goal is to be patience and let the LR do it wonder to turn my tank into a reef. Nothing much has added to the tank (except skimmer and power head for circulation) and just let the tank take its course with LR and some snails. I let the tank go through the Algae cycle (Diatoms, cyano) with little intervention and do regular water change as a good husbandry will do. 6 months later, the LR has not disappoint me. There is a sponge starting to grow on the LR. One Feather duster spring out from nowhere (about 3 inches tube). Two other red clown fan worms is growing. And few days ago, start seeing a branch of some sort is starting to take shape (I believe it to be some kind of stony coral). No supplement has been added to the tank and I just rely on the salt. The purple/red/maroon Coraline has start to take over the back wall and the LR. My LR and 1" sandbed had been free of algae for a month. I added a Yellow Tang few weeks ago and the fish is as healthy as it can be. Its munching on those Macro Algae that grow out from the LR and I just need to supplement a little nori to keep him in shape. I guess patience is indeed the best advice in this hobby and I am reaping the rewards of it and saves a lot of money I am planning of waiting out for a year and then starts to add some corals to supplement it.

Can you explain why you come to this conclusion? Kalkwasser is Calcium hydroxide. The hydroxide will turn into carbonate that helps your alkalinity. Left with calcium to boost your calcium in the water. If Kalkwasser does not increase Ca level, then why will someone drip Kalk to replace the Ca that is loss. Dosing too much Kalk will defintely make your Ca level go over the roof. Will like to hear your explaination.

The bio-balls has its place depend on your tank setup. It should not be generalized as outdated. But LR is a much better filtration system than any man-made ones.

If you just want a maine magazine, I like http://www.coralmagazine.com/ They only out with their 1st copy now, but the picture quality are super and not a lot of advertisement.

Do a 25% water change to reduce the ph swing. What happens is that by turning on the filter pump and skimmer, you are putting more oxygen into the tank for the AzNO3 to produce more carbon dioxide.

Put 2 powerhead opposite at each other and have the current collide in the middle. Play around with the powerhead placement to create the best random current for your setup.

How long is your DSB. The black region is the Anaerobic region and build up hygrogen sulfide. It was told that this is the one that is responsible for tank crashes with DSB. I personally does not have DSB and cannot tell you experimentally. One thing for sure is that it is not good if this layer is expose to the tank. Right now it is still ok in a sense that the top sand layer covered it to prevent it from leeching into the tank. I will use a small suction tube (those that came with your test kits), poke it into the black area and suck it into the tube slowly. take it out and smell it. Does it smell like rotten eggs. Remeber to do the ###### slowly so that it does not release much into the tank. Do you experience some algae problem??

What make LR the best filtration is that as Jun Hong said, there are oxygen depleted area in the LR that will do the denitrifying job of converting Nitrate back to nitrogen. The nitrifying bacteria is mostly on the LR surface and the denitrifying is in the LR. You will always see that LR release air bubble, that is nitrogen gas. Any important thing is that you want good water movement throughout your LR. Thus it is more beneficial to have LR loosely pack and not against the wall. The water movement will move the nitrate rich water into the LR and have the denitrifying bacteria do the job.

http://www.coralmagazine.com/ I subscript to this magazine here in US. The picture are amazing and it is 100% Marine. The quality is super.....

Yes, the baking soda is the one that they use for making cake. Make sure that it is pure Sodium bicarbonate on your ingredient list. Not any other thing. A good brand is "Arm and Hammer". Washing Soda which is the one for your washing machine can use it for calcium supplement. Again "Arm and Hammer" brand is recommended. As your hobby progresses, isn't it funny that you visit your LFS less and less and you visit the Groceries store more and more. You began to be busy at the kitchen looking for Garlic, Ginger, stealing baking Soda, and next time maybe Beer I may steal the white chopping board from my wife and use it as the "sand" replacement for my next tank.

Kalk is Calcium Hydroxide while I believe the Seachem one is Calcium chloride. The Hydroxide will reacts with your water to form carbonate that will buffer your water and thus increases your alkalinity. While chloride does not. So the key point is if your calcium is low, but your Alkalinity is high, then add just calcium chloride. If your alkalinity is low, but Calcium is high, then add Baking Soda (Sodium bicarbonate). If your Alk is low and Calcium is low, then add Kalk. If both are high, don't ever add any of these. Let time do it part to bring it down. Most importantly, add only if you test your water first. What is your corals bioload? how often you change water? If you don't have corals and change water regularly, don't have to waste money adding additives.

Are you feeding heavily? You may like to have more frequent water changes. Twice a month maybe? If you employ any kind of power filter or canister filter, you have to clean it very often eg. every week. If you have little LR, buy more LR will help with Nitrate. Check your new salt mix for Nitrate in case your salts have nitrate.

Depend on your livestock, 15X may not be enough. I have 25x on my tank. But very important thing is that you don't want to create strong Laminar water flow. Water that go in one direction very strong and cause your fish to stick their back on the wall. You want turbulence, random water flow like what you experience when you go scuba diving. But unfortunately, all power heads is creating Laminar flow. So the trick then is to put 2 power heads opposite on each other and have the water collide at the middle and thus create chaotic, random water current. This turbulence, random current is very beneficial and crucial to the health of livestocks especially Inverterbates. For my tank, I have 4 pumps with intake at different location and have their output collide on each other thus create random current. Also, I place my power head such that the food never have the chance to settle on the sandbed, it will move around on by the strong current and it left uneaten will be filter out by my protein skimmer. This strong random current helps to keep my water quality up. Hope that helps. there is really impossible to create too much water current compare to the nature.

From my experience, it is better to observe the fish in the LFS for a week before buy it. You don't know the source where the fish is from and how they catch them. Some irresponsible wholesale catch the fish by using Cyanide. Those fish that is exposed to this chemical will eventually die after about 1 week. Also, from statistical results, 90% of the death is during the 1st week of the transportation. Again, it is how much risk you want to take. Not only the money for the fish but the time to QT, or worst till, without QT, it may crash your whole display tank My LFS allowed me to hold the fish for 1-2week and give me time to observe them. Depend on your relationship with these LFS, they should do this favor for you to keep long term business partners.

Adding chemical is treating the problem and not the cause. Unless you found the cause and fix it, if not you going to keep spending money. Tell us a little bit about your system? Does it have LR? How much and how many times you keep. Are your using some kind of Power filter with the filter cartridge? Do you have protein skimmer? What is your Bioload? Water flow?? How often you change water? What kind of Salts you use? Etc, etc.....The more details you gave us, the more we can pin down the cause.

Can you puts it in a friend tanks or any reef club members tanks temporary? I am not in Singapore, if not I will volunteer my tank for you. Anyone there can help?? I can feel your pain and frustration.

I will not worry about it now. I have a bunch of those on my glass. But normally those is on the glass and not on the branch of the hammer.

Those are good filter feeder. Nothing to worry about. Are you sure the one on the branch of the hammer is the same one on the glass?? I am assuming it those on the glass does not move right??