Christy's Reef

Waterchange/Tank Maintenance Day!

Today was no holds barred. I did my normal waterchange with RBS. I'm gonna test my parameters later on once the tank has mixed it up well. I'm not sure what my hourly turnover is but I'll give it 4-5 hours to get good and mixed. I also cleaned both the Tunze 6060s. The lower one was totally gunked up with this crappy red algae that really adheres to the plastic grill on the intakes. I had to actually scrape it off with a knife. I also switched the upper and lower powerheads as the top one is usually cleaner. I couldn't believe how much the flow has increased for the bottom one, makes me wonder if that has contributed to my cyano problem. Of course I did that after I did the water change so of course it blew crap everywhere and the water isn't even really that clear anymore. :( I also cleaned the skimmer and added some media to the ca reactor which was down by a half and was mostly the zeomag. I just noticed that I filled it in June, it really hauls.

Anyway, theres a bunch of detritus in the sump that I'll have to attack next weekend during my next waterchange. Its quite icky down there, I'm not sure how that happens as I use a filter sock. I guess my fish are just really good at making detritus.

I'm just about going into week 5 of zeovit. I should have changed out the zeolites on Thursday but I was too busy and I'm soaking the stones in water for a couple of days. I guess you don't really have to but I'm not tempting fate. I'll put the new zeolith in tomorrow. It says to keep 10% to seed the new stuff. I hate that, I'd rather change out like 50% or something. Seems like changing out that much you'd be pretty much starting from scratch every time. Guess I'll have to ask some of the people who have been using it for awhile and see what they think.