Christy's Reef

Ahh the joys of reefing. Last week I discovered that while my calcium levels are maintained at a steady 400-410 my alk was in the toilet, hovering around 4.3. Lovely. In April when I moved the tank I had discovered a new type of calcium reactor media that looked like bits of dead coral. After doing some research on various reef boards it seemed to be fairly popular and was a success for many people. So I took the plunge and went for it. The ARM media I had previously used got very sludgy at the bottom of the reactor and no doubt made it difficult for water to pass through. This new media supposedly allows for better flow through etc etc. Anyway, I threw some on there and away I went.

In the advent of discovering a new website, http://www.tankprofiler.com/, that is an online program to log your tank parameters, purchases, equipment and livestock, I've been keeping track of my various parameters (they have a bunch you can choose from). I selected Ca, Alk, Mg, SG, Temp. So every time I do a water change, I log on and record those parameters. Granted I'm not always interested in hauling out the test kits but it was a bit of a novelty so I thought I'd follow along.

Surprise surprise, my alk was dropping fairly rapidly. From its usual about 8.3 down to 7.8 and then hovering around 5 for awhile (I lent my test kits out for a bit so I didn't keep track for awhile). I thought it was just a matter of dialing in the reactor again, sometimes it can be a bit fiddly. So I cranked up the CO2, that would help get the alk up, but this was not the case. WTF? More reading indicated that this media was designed for high flow reactors so tonight in a last ditch effort (before I switch back to ARM) I removed the sponge at the bottom of my reactor (stops the ARM media from getting into the pumps) and replaced it with a mesh material that will allow for more flow through. I also reduced the output and left the CO2 where it was at. Theres a crapload of algae growing in my tank right now and I'm not really sure where its coming to but I'm not feeding it CO2! ;) In the interim, I've been baking up a storm making "washing soda" out of baking soda. A few teaspoons and I'm back up to 8.1 over the past few days. I hope I don't have to do this too often!

So while measuring all these parameters I also noticed that the magnesium which used to be always at about 1350 or so was way down to 1050. Sheesh! More research (yay internet!) revealed that Instant Ocean salt sucks for Mg levels. I measured it today and lo and behold it came out at 900ppm. LAME!!! Frig me, I can't win. Kent doesn't mix in and IO sucks for Mg levels. Calcium was 380 and Alk was 9.6 dkh which wasn't so bad but jeez. So now I'm investigating Mg supplements as I used a whole bottle of Seachem Reef Advantage Magnesium today and measuring it tonight got 1050 ppm yet again for Mg. I never measured it beforehand but it must have been pretty low. Hmm reading the directions I shouldn't have used that whole bottle. Oh well. My bad. I've found some stuff online (stumbled across it in a forum somewhere) called ZeoMag. You put it in your calcium reactor and it maintains magnesium without any side effects as its pure Mg not MgCl. Should be interesting to see how that works out. That way I can keep using IO salt. Well at least finish off this bucket and the one I have sitting out in the shed. Not sure whether I'll stick with it or go back to Kent. Nobody else had any problems with their buckets, it was just me (never mixed properly and made the tank cloudy for ages).

Tomorrow I'll post some pics of the tank and some new frags I've gotten. Ahh, new frags. What fun!!!