New Additions and Updates on Old

First the new Additions. Not sure what these three are yet, but I got them for a really good price.

And updates on old. The Green Birdsnest is looking a little thin. It looks like some of it may be bleaching out. I made the mistake of touching it when I had to re-seat it in the epoxy.

The Blastimossa is looking much happier in it’s new spot. It looks like I had it too close to the lights in the old spot. I also moved the Favia thinking it might like a spot with better water flow.

These Zoas have really started coming out and started spreading in the tank some. They were hitch-hikers and I never expected them to make it.

Lastly, I’ve started seeing a lot of these white dots all over the tank. I think it’s just coraline algae starting to spread, but not sure.

Temperature control

Wow. It might still be too early to tell, but initial results show that adding the fans to the tank seem to help quite a bit.

The tank went from regular flux to holding steady.

I’ll probably add some logic to the circuitry to turn the fans on/off based on tank temperature. I don’t want the fans lowering the temperature too much at night. Maybe I’ll have them come on at 80 degrees and go off if the tank drops below 79. Then, if the fans can’t keep up, the chiller will kick on at 81.

Cooling Issues

The tank has been doing quite well. The chiller cools the tank, but it doesn’t do it as quickly as it should.

This morning I added two fans to see if evaporative cooling may help the situation. I’ll give it a week or so and then I’ll compare graphs to see if the chiller is cycling on/off less.

It’s my typical, use what you have approach to adding the fans.

Stabilizing pH

Ever since I started adding Kalk to the tank, I’ve been getting quite large pH swings.

To help combat the swings, I decided to put my refugium light on a reverse-daylight cycle. Currently it was running 24×7.

Looking at my pH graph for the last 6 months, you can see the point that I started adding the Kalk (the first jump up in pH for the top-off water). Prior to this point, both pH probes were in the tank and usually shadowed each other +/- .1 pH.

Around 5/1 I put too much Kalk in the top-off and it raised the pH in the main tank.

Where you’ll see the difference in the tank swing is in the last week or two since setting up the reverse daylight. The pH only swings a few points. The large dip is right after a water change. I’m not sure I let the salt-water mix long enough to have it properly oxygenated.