Are you going to turn that barrel into an algae scrubber?
Dmitri's 1000 gal DT journey!
- Thread starter Dmitri
- Start date
He said the barrel is going to be a giant kalk stirrer.
Those lights are going to be impossible to adequately up grade.
Ok that is just as impressive
@ichthyoid Do you think carbon dosing would help Dmitri? I still think a fuge or ATS is needed but carbon is a definite option.
So what made the difference?
Could of additional filtration units:
1. Borrowed Algae scrubber from Adam (huge thanks!
2. C36 chaeto reactor
3. Replaced h380 with 160s, 380 were doing great until they stoped working... I need to open them up and clean them what kessil said.
4. My tank drinks vodka
it’s all big mess right now until I mount everything properly this Sunday hopefully.
Algae scrubber from Adam.
c36
And finally ....
don’t judge me
So is it one shot for the tank one shot for you? Glad to see things are working out
For the last couple of months I’ve been battling phosphates issue and forgot about nitrates. My nitrates were always between 10-20 so Ive stopped testing for about a month. All this algae issues I was having, my thoughts were it’s definitely phosphates. Stupid assumptions and no testing cost me dearly.
Four days ago I’ve decided to test out this new Hannah nitrates kit. Prior to this test I was using reefbot for nitrates with Red Sea kit. Results would come at 20ppm, I didn’t think much of it.
Anyways I did Hannah nitrates test and it came over 50ppm. So I tested two more times thinking it was an error. Same result...
At this point I realized that this was main main issue why a lot of my coral were browning out..
First thing I did was massive water change. Unfortunately having 1400 gallons system and 200 gallons premix salt, water changes were limited. Over the next 48 hours i did around 409 gallons change. While doing these water changes I looked around to see what could possible be the source of these nitrates and phosphates, after all skimmer is running wet and full power, additionally have refugium, algae reactor and a scrubber. I couldn’t figure it out, all my tank are bare bottom.
So while doing water changes in refugium I was doing some cleaning. On the bottom of refugium (75 gallon tank) very little flow, all detritus was settling in over last 17 months. I never cleaned it once... There was about 1” thick layer of detritus. When I started vacuuming it was clear to me that this was the source of all problems with phosphates and nitrates.
it’s been about 24 hours since I vacuumed it. In addition to water changes I’ve set up another reactor, sulfur reactor. Hope after this nitrates will never be a problem again.
I‘ve been dosing vodka to combat nutrients also, I’m on week 6 of doing. Upto 16.2ml per day
My tank has been running for almost 19months now, fighting nutrients has been the biggest challenge so far. One thing for sure, with big systems unless you have huge amount of water on hand ready for emergency water change, very hard to flatten the curve. It’s like a freight train..
In the near future I’m planning to invest in 6-700 gallon wall/water tank for the emergencies purpose.
little bit of vacuuming left to do here, this picture is after I vacuumed 1” thick of detritus from the refugium.
Here is a picture of calcium / gfo and a newest addition sulfur reactor that I could fit all together side by side. There isn’t much space left here.
Here are some pictures of casualties. I do hope some of these colonies will recover. Most expensive corals seems to always die first...
Currently phosphates are at 0.06ppm
Nitrates last test was at 50ppm. I’ll be doing one more water change of 75gal to clean refugium completely out then test again.
Four days ago I’ve decided to test out this new Hannah nitrates kit. Prior to this test I was using reefbot for nitrates with Red Sea kit. Results would come at 20ppm, I didn’t think much of it.
Anyways I did Hannah nitrates test and it came over 50ppm. So I tested two more times thinking it was an error. Same result...
At this point I realized that this was main main issue why a lot of my coral were browning out..
First thing I did was massive water change. Unfortunately having 1400 gallons system and 200 gallons premix salt, water changes were limited. Over the next 48 hours i did around 409 gallons change. While doing these water changes I looked around to see what could possible be the source of these nitrates and phosphates, after all skimmer is running wet and full power, additionally have refugium, algae reactor and a scrubber. I couldn’t figure it out, all my tank are bare bottom.
So while doing water changes in refugium I was doing some cleaning. On the bottom of refugium (75 gallon tank) very little flow, all detritus was settling in over last 17 months. I never cleaned it once... There was about 1” thick layer of detritus. When I started vacuuming it was clear to me that this was the source of all problems with phosphates and nitrates.
it’s been about 24 hours since I vacuumed it. In addition to water changes I’ve set up another reactor, sulfur reactor. Hope after this nitrates will never be a problem again.
I‘ve been dosing vodka to combat nutrients also, I’m on week 6 of doing. Upto 16.2ml per day
My tank has been running for almost 19months now, fighting nutrients has been the biggest challenge so far. One thing for sure, with big systems unless you have huge amount of water on hand ready for emergency water change, very hard to flatten the curve. It’s like a freight train..
In the near future I’m planning to invest in 6-700 gallon wall/water tank for the emergencies purpose.
little bit of vacuuming left to do here, this picture is after I vacuumed 1” thick of detritus from the refugium.
Here is a picture of calcium / gfo and a newest addition sulfur reactor that I could fit all together side by side. There isn’t much space left here.
Here are some pictures of casualties. I do hope some of these colonies will recover. Most expensive corals seems to always die first...
Currently phosphates are at 0.06ppm
Nitrates last test was at 50ppm. I’ll be doing one more water change of 75gal to clean refugium completely out then test again.
Things are starting to pick up, I did a few water tests today
Phosphates .02ppm 1st test 0.03ppm 2nd test
Not use to number that low, had to verify it
nitrates 40ppm (went down from 50ppm)
Vodka dosing seems to be working along with everything else...
alk , solid 8.5dkh (I’ve got my calcium reactor dialed in to where 35 dkh coming out of it)
Dosing and kalkwasser are still secondary
Magnesium 1380ppm, I’m gonna to raise it to 1440 over next day or two. Higher magnesium helps with less algae growth
calcium - 450ppm
Here is a short video of my diy algae clip
Phosphates .02ppm 1st test 0.03ppm 2nd test
Not use to number that low, had to verify it
nitrates 40ppm (went down from 50ppm)
Vodka dosing seems to be working along with everything else...
alk , solid 8.5dkh (I’ve got my calcium reactor dialed in to where 35 dkh coming out of it)
Dosing and kalkwasser are still secondary
Magnesium 1380ppm, I’m gonna to raise it to 1440 over next day or two. Higher magnesium helps with less algae growth
calcium - 450ppm
Here is a short video of my diy algae clip
Yup, 9 days to drop 1400 gallons 10ppm I'd bet in the next 9 days it'll be closer to 20. You may bottom out PO4 too.
How is the ATS looking?
How is the ATS looking?
Slowly but surely, you’ve seen the picture
Other day I’ve added new skimmer to the system, hopefully it will help bring down nitrates.
Just some experiance notes, careful with the vodka amounts. I was chasing lowing phosphates and ended up having to dose nitrate to feed the bacteria enough to finish off the phosphate and dosing a LOT of vodka. I had a bryopsis and was trying everything to kill it. I ended up with bacterial blooms that would clog everything up. And no change in algea since it was feeding off what was leaching out of rocks.
Id recommend using the vodka to lower the numbers but try to utilize other stuff to keep them down. Just something to think about.
Id recommend using the vodka to lower the numbers but try to utilize other stuff to keep them down. Just something to think about.
Thanks, good info. I’m trying to balance it between that and ATS/ chaeto. Eventually, I want to stop using GFO and just rely on ATS and vodka/ skimmer. Currently my phosphates are being on the lower end where nitrates seems to be the problem. As soon as I get nitrates down to about 10ppm, I’ll try to take gfo offline and control nitrates/ phosphates with balancing vodka and algae reactor etc..
I can’t grow much algae because of limited phosphates at the moment. However if I let my phosphates go just a little bit, because of high nitrates algae grows crazy all over.
The amount of tangs in that tank!!!! So jealous
