newdamsel

10~20 teaspoon~!!!! i using those chicken rice disposable spoons leh~! Maybe thats for a 4 ft with lotsa sps maybe??... mine is only a humble 2 footer + 2 footer sump.. like you said, water change might be easier... but i just wanna know why such things will happen... sigh...

dkH is at 9, and pH is at ard 8.2... dunno leh, have been adding a teaspoon every other day, but still it stays at 330.... when i mean no testkit, is that i do not have a alk test kit and a magnesium test kit... have been dripping kalk for 2 weeks, not one. typo on the other msg, after the 8.6 incident, did a 50% water change... thats why i suspect got magnesium problems

Been dripping kalk for a week,... initially had problems controlling the amount to use for top up and got a emergency situation when pH shot to 8.6 so becareful really. However, I saw this on seachem's calcium label " Unlike limewater (kalkwasser), reef advantage calcium does not have a caustic pH and will not deplete magnesium." I do have problems perking up my calcium levels recently, no matter how much calcium i add in, it remains at 330....issit really due to the reason that kalk depleted my magnesium? I do not have a test kit though....

I'll be glad to share with you coz i need some too

it sounds more like a nudibranch to me, anyway its still a kill order~!

I'm abit off here, but anyone selling his or her prizm due to upgrading? Please PM me

These are real good contributions~! Slurp Slurp, give me more~!

I do not think the cause is the powerhead... I got 4 ph and when i do not run my fan the temp is abt 30 w/o lights. heat generated by 1ph is minimial, anyway whats your ph rating? should be less than 20w. Breeze in the house do play a important part in keeping the temp down.

Haha CKS, you seem to be the guy who collects worms and bugs.. heh heh.. interesting.. )

Blueterror, FL cant be hotter than PL. My guess is that your PL is using eballast while the FL, you are using a normal ballast and thats why.

yes cedric is right, builder raises carbonates which can be measured from your dkh test kit. Not calcium. to add calcium, there is seachem calcium or you can add kalk.

lona, My dkh is about 12 for 2 days already coz i have been dripping reef builder everyday. To crop up your dkh, get reef builder, not reef buffer. Buffer only stabilises the pH value, carbonate is the thing you wanna add to increase your dkh. If i dun drip for a single day, it will drop back to about 9... at this rate, my carbonate is gonna be finished real soon~!

I guess its rather pointless to have responsible buying addressed to sps as a topic, as like what you said responsible buying is supposed to be practiced across the board not only for sps, but even mushrooms or cauliflower, or leather or fishes and so on. So whats the agenda? On the concern of ppl throwing money into the drain, I guess this would be a self correcting issue, as in at $60 a piece, if these buggers cannot sustain the corals, soon they will realise and feel the burn and stop buying. Furthermore, at that sort of prices, i guess only people with certain amount of experience will buy a piece to try... I hope i'm not making too many assumptions here. Anyway, if we are that kind to think for their "wasted" money, these money spent are actually injected into the already weak consumer market and WALA, they have done some good by strengthening the economy... My point is this money stuff can be an issue but NOT the issue here. perhaps one of the attributes to impulse buying would be the hype that is created when beautiful specimens of sps are "promoted" to "entice" ppl into sps keeping when there was a vacuum of sps? I guess the accumulated fuel once lighted now would be hard to extinguish, prices are going to stay and numbers hard to get. Perhaps the embarkation on the extreme difficulties in keeping sps elaborated, might be a better way to put some of these implusive buyers off, for example, the cost of the electricity bill for the kilowatters lifesupport systems and the difficulty of acheiving zero nitrates. But even so, whats the real concern of impulse buying here? Disappointed would-be sps owners? Cruelty to SPS? Whats next? We know the reason deep down, dear. Before AVA or whoever loosens the reign, late night queues at lfs would be inevitable for would-be-keen-to-get-sps-reefers.

calcium, dkh, alk, nitrate. pH should be the basic ones.

Hmm... i said skimmer coz the skimmer isnt pulling out the excess organic nutrients in my tank.. so its like these nutrients are not removed for like a few days liow, and the accumulation of these organic nutrients breakdowns to ammonia, then to nitrite and thereby nitric acid... at least that is what i'm postulating for now for the origins of acids... Skimmer needs to return water to the tank of coz~! Returns foamed cleaned water... else why foam a column of stagnant water? draw water from tank - foam the water- return back to tank... perhaps i misunderstood your post?

I have that aqualux 55w also.. it turns much more yellowish as days goes by. Its been operated for 2 months+ now, and it has turned more yellow than my 5 month old 6.5k FL~! Is there any other 55w PL brand, that we can turn to? Anyone advise?

lona, i'm having a damsel, a clown and a dottyback in a 2x1x1 tank with a 2x1x1 sump, so i guess it isnt that much of overstocking i guess... but i think the cause would be the nitric acid which tanzy talked about coz my skimmer is still in the process of running in and maybe thats why such things happened... same like you, the carbonate-kalk r/s is not clear to me too, how does kalk derives the carbonate in a 1:1 manner?? .... Tanzy can explain??

Oh, gee doesnt that means that i have to throw away my ph buffer, reef builder and calcium additives???!!! gee.. wasted man... perhaps after i finish the carbonates firsts.. its running low anyway... Hmm... but anyway thanx Tanzy and AT for your opinions~!

Sorry after reading the post again i realise you are talking about light acclimitization and not water acclimitization.. paiseh....

Heard that it uses borates to maintain the required pH level. Am i correct Tanzy? I'm remembered he said something like that, yes its good in maintaining pH levels, but IMO if you can maintain dkH levels above 8, your pH level should be rather stable? I'm using that and pH has been stable, but now worried about ionic imbalance kinda stuffs.

Oh ok, my pH is stable because I have another additive the pH buffer. Calcium is at 400 and nitrate is at about 20ppm. Alot of acids??? Hmm... could it be the bryopsis?? I have two bunch of them in the sump~! i switch off the sump lights at night~!!! could they be the culprits to use up the oxygen and generate lotsa carbon dioxide, thereby bring down the carbonate level? acid + co3 2- wouldnt that create even more co2??????!!!

Maybe you have caught me there~!!! Leathers have to be acclimitized like fishes and shrimps also??? OOPpss

Hi all I have been using reef builder and calcium to perk the levels to 12dkh and 420 respectively. However accordingly calcium should be used in a 1:1 ratio in the tank, but it seems that for my tank, dkh can drop overnight from 12dkh to 9dkh, and every morning i have to prepare the reef builder solution and top it up. However what i notice is calcium level only drop minimally. So what is reacting with the carbonates? I was wondering also if instead of adding calcium and carbonate separately, i use kalk. And if still carbonates is used up more than calcium, wouldnt that cause a ionic imbalance in the water (calcium ions accumulating over time)? Do i have my concepts right? My pH is always at 8.2 if that helps.

souphamster With that kinda loading, even if your butterfly and trigger do not eat up your corals, your nitrate level will kill all corals in your tank. Did you test your nitrate level? How long has the fishes been in your tank? 3 days? For a 2 footer and that much fishes, prepare to see deaths in say 1~2 months time. Maybe water changes of 30% everyweek may be able to help you...

So how much food does fishes need? As we know overfeeding will cause nutrients problem.. i have heard that ppl who feed their fishes once a week, while some feed three times a day. The damsel, clown and dottyback in my tank can finish so much food in a 3 minutes interval that i doubt these greedy fish need that much. I guess maybe there's no hard and fast rule for these, but maybe you guys want to share how many fishes you have and how much you feed. For me, I have 3 fishes now and i feed them about once twice daily with about something like 20~30 pallets each time. Mine is a 2 footer.