newdamsel

The best indication of whether it is nitrogen or not is to notice where this bubbles come from. It would be more oftenly nitrogen bubbles if at the front panel of your glass, you can see pockets of air trapped at about 1 inch below the surface sand. Usu these are the N2 bubbles, whereas those bubbles at the very surface are quite usually co2/o2 bubbles released by ammonia or nitrite reducing bacteria or simply microscopic algaes and thrives on the sand...

When pouring kalk in large quantity, becareful to only pour the clear solution and not everything in.... the white residue powder after mixing the kalkwasser in the solution, when get into your tank, will be a source for calcium carbonate precipitation... it might cause sand bed clumping... so beware... however some ppl in rc prefers this method number 1 is because they have very large tanks.. so pouring even 2 liters of kalk soln in doesnt really affect their pH, number2, pouring kalk in a high flow sump can precipitate phosphates in your water which is good... so it realy depends on how u use it... storing of limewater is alright so long it is air tight. As lime water absorbs carbon dioxide over time, it makes the soln less and less useful. Hence to fully optimize your money, best is to prepare fresh..

Hi linkin park, From my experience in dosing kalkwasser, unlike calcium additives, which completely dissolves in your water and can calculate more accurately...there isnt a formula for you to calculate how much does a teaspoon of kalk be it reefez or seachem or rowa. This is because the amount of alk you gonna get greatly depends on the amount of co2 that is in your water, your drip rate, the original amount of carbonate and bicarbonate concentration in your tank water, your water pH and etc.... its almost impossible to calculate in such a complex environment... Usually for what i do, b4 i add the saturated solution, i measure alk and ca levels first... then after abt 3 days later when the drip finishes, i measure my increase in alk and ca... if lower than initial readings, i need to drip more and vice versa... Hope this helps..

Becareful of the mixture though...too much of vinegar added, in the end you only get the calcium part of product and loose the capability of kalkwasser to raise maintain or increase your alkanlinity, making it like a calcium solution only. If your alkalinity is already high but low calcium levels, I would use calcium chloride instead as it is more potent in raising calcium levels.

I would recommend actinic for night viewing.... it brings out the flourescents in almost all your corals...

Sun coral should be placed at dark places, and usually these buggers open only at night when your lights are out. You can get it to open by target feeding it, ie bring a few pieces of brine shrimp near it....

I have a rather small cuke in my 2 footer... been surviving for 9 months already eating on sand. But main hting is, your sand must really be matured sand in order for it to survive...

Hahaha, maybe one day i should go get some normal looking mushrooms and keep them in the dark for a month and sell it to you guys.. tsktsk...

I guess to check how often you drip it, is to measure. You will never know how much water you add to a cup unless you can see it. So test your tank water with calcium test kits, before you drip. After dripping, measure it again to see how much has the calcium level risen. If its too little, it implies that you havent really added enough. However, do also check your pH levels, as excessive addition may cause your pH levels to rise abnormally. Sometimes, when you you do not have the desired alkalinity levels, calcium doesnt increase as it should be. Magnesium levels do play a part in the calcium level too.

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The former is correct. Feed the majano with kalk paste...

My guess is a nudibranch, if it moves like a slug and looks like a slug, then it is a nudibranch. Wow, but the red is nice man, if you do not want it, princess will be very glad to take it.. heh heh that thing might be feeding on your buttons...

If you scrapping them off, make sure you do it cleanly, else any left overs will turn into a new majano~!!! So if bits and pieces floats about, they might turn inot baby majano too~!! Treat it like aiptasia, best way is still to inject kalkwasser paste to its mouth and let itself swallow it down

I have been keeping my reef tank at 28degC all these while, havent really encounter any problems with any corals or clams. But i do notice that maidens hair need low temp to survive...

Add salt to a pail of water... dissolve completely, use a hydrometer to measure its salinity, should read abt 1.023. Pour into your tank and sump until full...

From my experience with sorts of algae, ferns are the worst which can turn 100% asexual within 10mins of your time, making your water super murky. Sea lettuce on the other hand needs rather strong lightings to make them grow. I've been using 18W PL for a depth of about 7inch, they dun seem to grow at all. The best so far is still our so called "bryopsis", green strand algae which looks like your pipe cleaners. These will turn asexual abt once a month but slowly when your lights are out, usually only the tips are white. So not that bad, but after when you turn your lights on, they fully absorb everything back. Fast growers IMO

Why is there a life span to bioballs???? They degenerate??!! Nah, bullshit talk to get you guys to buy more of their bioballs... heh heh.. bioball is a large surface area piece of plastic so that large amounts of bacteria can grow on them. Its so call a nitrate factory cause if used without any pre-filtering, large pieces of detritus or food pieces will get caught in between these balls and rot away efficiently thereby creating lotsa nitrate. If you think that your bioballs are too dirty, its alright to wash them BUT not under freshwater but your tank's old water. What i normally do, is during water changes for my tank, every abt 3 months, i will empty the canister's content into the old water. Swish and swash everything clean and place them back into the canister. This would not really harm the beneficial bacterias. If you are using canister, you must have the discipline to at least wash them once every 3 months. Just my 2 cts.

My guess is your reef builder thats playing your water foul. Decrease or stop dosing that at the moment until your pH gets back to 8.3. If you have a problem with this level of dkh, get a calcium and dkh test kit to test your water parameters. Your dkh needs only be maintained between 8 ~12 dkh and calcium levels at about 420ppm

That should be a britttle star that you are talking about... aiptasia doesnt move~! Brittle stars are actually good for your tank.

Hmm looks interesting, how much are they selling in the pharmacy for that 100g ?? You have any idea of whats the purpose of them selling it for?

1)diabolus - st 42 2)harris - st 42 oso 3)coralreef - Teban - -consider Jurong right? 4)ming - st 65 .. next blk from mrt boon lay 5)ReeF LoVeR - st 61 6)Clownfish - Taman Jurong 7)Fireclown - West Coast (between jurong and clementi, still the same larh) 8)Jason - i also Taman Jurong 9)jinners - beside boonlay mrt 10)shiraz - st 81 11)seahorse - st 81 12)newdamsel - st71 Nur or ngh71 where are you??? Catfish???

Note that seachem reef advantage does raises your calcium levels. But note that it raises only the calcium part with no regards to the alkalinity part. Kalk raises both 1:1. If you always add reef adv without reef builder, overtime w/o water changes, you might have ionic imbalance as in chloride ions much more than sodium... important thing is still test your water parameters first and know what u are adding and the effects of adding them. For me, when calcium and alk is both low due to high consumption rate of the calcium in my 2 feet tank, i add about 4 "chicken rice spoon" of kalkwasser to 8 liters of water. Started using reefez also, no complaints so far, cheap is the main answer.. heh heh... If calcium is low while alk is high, i would add calcium chloride or reef adv. If calcium is high while alk is low, i would add bicarbonate or reef builder. But these seachem pdts are not cheap, so either u get a cheap source or do large water changes~!

It is a kind of sand anemone... anyway usu no clowns will host this kind of anemone...

Just not to frighten ppl, 2ft 15gallon tank with 3 powerhead and 85W of light does not boil if you have fans. Mine is kept at 28deg C. From my experience with 15 gallon, with 3 surgeons, and a damsel and a clown, first is nitrite spike if the fishes is introduced in a cycled tank. That can kill alot of stuffs in return creating more ammonia... IMO, its overstocking, condolence... exercise more caution the next time you set up... dun let this disheartened you )

haha.. okok.. sorry for the trouble Tanzy... real thanx~!