wasp

Hazymranch ca of 500 is too high. Probably not fatal, many of us have accidentally gone that high with no losses. Calcium will not just automatically precipitate out if it gets too high, levels of 600 are not unknown. Many organisms will adapt to higher levels no worries, but some will do better with NSW levels. It may well be that the high levels are giving your LPS an added boost though! Once you get your multimeter let's know the outcome, I for one would be interested. I've also recently lost some coral to TN over the last few days & have not yet found the reason. So if you get to the bottom of your problem with the frags, post that also I'm wanting to learn more about this.

Just a thought, Hazymranch, have you actually added any calcium? If not, a result of ca 480 will likely indicate that your water has concentrated itself quite a bit, NSW in NZ has a calcium level well below that. If this is the case your salinity may be considerably higher than your hydrometer is telling you. Any locals around with a refractometer who could double check for you? This would be the ideal way to make sure.

Could be the shock of getting dropped into a totally different salinity from what they had been in before. With some of the more sensitive stuff I check the salinity they came in now, to see if an adjustment period is needed.

Sounds like the frags are screwed I'm afraid, but still leave them & just see what happens. You say your salinity is 1.023, NSW. NSW in NZ normally has a salinity around 1.026 to 1.028. I am wondering if your hydrometer is giving you the wrong reading. If it is, no worries, just know how far out it is & then adjust mentally. IE, you may know that when it says 1.022, the salinity is really 1.026 ( for example ). Your calcium is also too high should be somewhere aroung 400 - 420 or so, although this alone would not have killed your frags that quickly. Bear in mind that if you discover your salinity is too high and dilute your water, this will also dilute your calcium.

They have what amounts to one line from Onehunga to Penrose. They have had 8 years to sort this. Telecom incompetent? I'd beg to differ, in fact it is the system that is wrong. As things stand at present, Telecoms management is working for their shareholders, and is charged with making the maximum profit they can. This they have done with extreme efficiency. Theresa Gattung is judged by how much profit she makes and that is what her job is. So, under the existing ( or recently existing ) system, her job was to extract the maximum possible money from NZ, and distribute it to mainly overseas shareholders. If it was nessecary to strangle internet speed, kill new competition, screw customers with 70 dollar charges for a service that cost 20 cents, and generally hurt the NZ economy to achieve maximum profit by leveraging monoploy status, then that was their job. It was inevitable the government would have to intervene, only thing I don't understand is why they didn't do it years ago.

Whatever you do, don't ask Layton!!

Well I'll concur Layton, you have certainly put tremendous effort over the last few days, and have learned a thing or 2 about the EXACT extent of the "swing". :lol:

Yes it's power going out on a really hot day, when I'm not around, that has me worried.

Wow out again? That's crazy!!! When it went out for a couple of months in 1998 I lost major money, my staff could not work on certain locations but I still had to pay them. Did I recieve any compensation? Not a cent. My lawyer told me they had made a decision to fight each claim to the max, on a case by case basis, and his advise to me was to forget it. I thought Telecon were bad but I cannot believe these guys have made little effort to improve infrastructure since 1998. They should all be fired and forced to get a real job where they have to perform.

Normal baking soda releases some carbon dioxide when added to the tank water, causing a temporary dip in Ph. If you bake it, this Co2 is removed & then when added to the tank there is not a temporary dip in Ph. All depends wether you are adding enough that it will be an issue, but if adding baking soda, 1/2 way through the lighting period would be best to minimise how low Ph will go.

Well I used to have major drama trying to mix it. In the end I used to have water boiling in a pot, take the baking soda out of the oven hot, stick it in in spoonful sized doses all the while stirring the crap out of the pot, and by the time it was all done I was absolutely ready to give up using 2 part. Then one day when I had some stuff that had cooled, I gave it a shot using my fingers, and it just dissolved easy as, and did do from then on. Couldn't believe how much work I'd been through doing it other ways. Surprised it doesn't work for Chimera, perhaps he has a different finger technique :lol:

Dude, something wrong there, I still mix a little every now & then, easy. I just dump it all together, and mix with my fingers. & it is baked. Same stuff that drove me to distraction trying to mix it any other way.

The best plan will be to glue the frags to a small rock, if they are not already, as it looks like you may be moving them several times. And should you move them? absolutely, as soon as possible, to lower light. BTW, you have not mentioned your salinity, and calcium levels. You should check those make sure they are OK. Also make sure they are not getting blasted by strong, direct flow from a pump.

If you find it hard to mix try this, works for baked baking soda also. Put the baking soda & the water in a bucket, and knead the baking soda with your fingers. Will dissolve easy as. Prior to that I went to all sorts of trouble heating water etc. My wife got so crappy about the whole thing I could only do it when she was out. It was hassles like that which was one of the things that induced me to give up 2 part mix in the end, way too much work.

Just the k rating. you will be safe with the 10,000k. However $500.00 is VERY expensive. This may be of interest http://www.customaquatic.com/customaqua ... ID=lt-rmhb I have bought bulbs from there myself.

If they are absolutely white they are probably dead. But if they are still alive but quite white, it is likely they are under too much light, best if you can, to move them away from the light, then gradually move them back towards it over a few days. A photo would be helpful if you can.

Back to that effluent pipe clogging question, here is what I did to solve it. My reactor is a Deltec, which use a very fine media and actually keeps it fluidized. So as a result if pH goes too low the media softens and easily loses fine particles as it get tossed around, the water goes milky, and these little particles can start to clog the pipe. Due to my own ignorance of ca reactors I made this problem worse by positioning the reactor so the effluent pipe was about a meter long, and had to go uphill about 30 cm to get to the top of the tank. That, combined with a slow drip rate, was perfect conditions for matter to settle out in the pipe and block it. So, to solve this 2 things were needed, the first was to change the position of the reactor so the effluent pipe was as short as possible, it is now about 20 cm long, and also has a fall of about 10 cm on it. But the main thing is the chemistry inside the reactor. By coincidence I now have 2 reactors so have put them both inline, the first one is an aquamedic, which uses large size media and does not fluidize the media. The second one is the Deltec and is doing the job of a degasser. So because there is now a total of quite a large volume of water, and of media, in the reactors, relative to the volume of the tank, it is now possible to have a very low bubble count relative to drip rate, and correspondingly relatively high-ish pH in the reactor. ( Because there is not so much Co2 in there as normal ). As a result the media is dissolving slowly, but because there is a lot of it, there is still enough to come out in the drip & keep the tank levels right up. The water in the reactor is crystal clear, no particulate matter is in it at all, and the pH going into the tank is high by normal reactor standards. Doing all this, where I used to have to unclog the pipe fairly regularly, this set up has been running several months with no clogging, and in fact nowhere even close. I am still not 100% sure of all the chemistry that happens in a reactor, so the explanation I have given is why I THINK it works, ( doesn’t clog ), but if anyone can chip in with any useful comments / improvements on my explanation, please feel free. I won’t be back at the PC for a while for any further comment though.

Craig, Joe is Steve :lol:

Steve, no time now I'm afraid but I'll post re the clogging thing after the weekend. I don't know anything about your brand of reactor but I'm sure the principle is the same.

:lol:

Yikes! At this time of night I don't actually have enough IQ to read all that, but I may wade through it tommorrow, or next week! :lol:

Yes, I had ALL those issues when using 2 part mix, in fact it was funny reading what you said, it mirrored my experience EXACTLY. :lol: Just something I learned, a tip for people who are using 2 part mix, the baking soda is real hard to dissolve. Try putting the water in a bucket, adding the baking soda, then knead the baking soda with your fingers. You won't believe me till you try it, but you'll have it dissolved REAL fast. What kind of reactor are we talking about Steve? Deltec? My experience when starting with it was very similar to you, a lot of difficulty & I started to despair that I had ever bought it! However I do have it sussed now, and there is no way I would now go back to all the hassling around with 2 part mix. The issue of the effluent tube clogging, I've discovered how to solve that also, I'm not saying mine is never going to clog, but it's certainly been a few months now & still clean as a whistle ( well nearly! ). IMO anyone starting with a ca reactor should get an experienced user of the same brand, to help them set it up. This way all the anguish can be avoided and the new operator can move straight to the part where you discover just how sweet life can be with a properly running ca reactor. Not knocking any of the other systems though they are all good, purely depends on what suits a person best.

"abstraction of the controlable variables" Ha Ha! It's technospeak Puttputt, a device used to make a simple thing like adjusting 2 knobs, sound complicated. :lol: :lol:

Yes, I am aware of all that, perhaps it's why Chinese were not included, no doubt a test could be devised compatable to their environement, but checking it is on a par with the European countries would not be an exact science. Still interesting though.

Thanks Duke.