So yeah I told some of you recently, but think it wouldn’t hurt for everyone to hear it or to discuss it here. I screwed up TWICE in the last couple months with my tanks and seriously damaged them.(well seriously in my mind, more later)
FIRST I tested the Mg and it was way low, I didn’t think much of it as I hadn’t tested in a while so I started dosing a little bit at a time over the course of a week. I should have known it wasn’t that low. A week into it I started noticing some corals not super happy and my first EVER cyano bloom in YEARs. I tested a new batch of BrightWell salt and he freaking screwed up and didn’t add enough Mg… well no I tested a brute full of Tropic Marine pro and it was low as well. My test kit was bad and I over dosed my tank and likely significantly harmed my microfuana.
[quote=“Marchingbandjs, post:2, topic:2878”]
but mine is not too low how low was your?[/quote]
What should have been ~1300 was testing at 975ppm… so enough that if I were to try to correct what was wrong it would significantly change things.
My SECOND big screw up was in forgetting to calibrate my refractometer. I switch back and forth between mixing salt in 5 gallon buckets, 30 gallon brutes, and 44 gallon brutes. I also have, due to my former job, switched back and forth between reef salt and FO salt. Bottom line is I wasn’t used to how many scoops it takes to mix up a bucket of salt… I had a feeling I was using less salt, but well yeah I was. Once I calibrated my refractometer I realized when it was telling my tank was at 1.025 it was actually…… drum roll… 1.019! verdict_in
FOR THOSE WHO REPEAT WHAT THEY HAVE HEARD ON THE FORUMS. Know your source and really get to understand the information before you start to spread and repeat what you’ve heard others said. It is NOT proper practice to calibrate an instrument via what you’ve heard on the boards vs what it says by the manufacturer.(ok not sure exactly what it says in the directions as I haven’t read them either, but regardless) For your information my refactometer read 0tds RODI as 0 and it read a 1.025 calibration fluid as 1.019. Had I only relied on checking my instrument with RO water and not using the calibration fluid I could have seriously screwed things up attempting to maintain my tank any longer at that low level.
I used a hydrometer for a little while after getting my refrac. Truth is I never once trusted it and every time I used it I ended up checking things right afterwards with my refractometers. I now own two refractometers and actually just found my hydrometer for the first time in two years collecting dust in storage.
Well despite the mistakes none of my fish got sick and just about all of my coral survived. Well ok all of the colonies survived, but I’m still not getting full polyp extension or color on my ORA green birds nest frags.(which were all doing great, I have about 50 times the amount of polyps as I did when I first got a frag from Ellen a little over a year ago) When I first discovered my salinity was off all of my zoanthids were “ticked off” and 90% were completely closed up. Just about all of my zoas are open and seemingly happy now.
I do have no doubt that I had bacterial die offs and other losses in a microscopic level that I don’t have the ability to test or see. I believe the cyano bloom is evidence of that. I’ve moved some rocks around from other systems and I’ll be keeping an eye out for sand swaps to increase my bacterial and microb diversity.
If reef animals are kept in constantly healthy conditions for a long period of time they can withstand a good bit of trauma. My main frag system has well over 100 species of corals in it from touchy xenia, to Zoanthids, to Acropora, Leathers, Duncans, Fungia… bottom line it is a truly mixed reef. Sh!t happens and when you have as complex of an ecosystem as we’ve created with as many working motors and electrical components and such diverse micro fauna… something is bound to go wrong at some point, but if we do our best to limit mess ups, build in redundancies, pay close attention to our animals are learn when they are “happy†or not, and do what we can to keep a healthy environment… well they can live through a lot of life’s mishaps. My tanks are certainly a testament to that.
From my research and experiences I had found that too much mag (reasonable) wouldn’t have negative effects, aside from getting your mag to high will run your SG high. What did your Mag end up getting up to?
I 100% agree with watching your animals to judge your tank, I honestly test way to infrequently, but unhappy animals are usually the dead giveaway something is off in the chemistry.
My guess would be the Mg was likely up around 1775 or more. Not sure exactly to be honest. Speaking with Chris Brightwell he agreed this might cause a bacterial crash. It is possible it wasn’t that high and that the issues I was seeing was more of the beginning stages of my salinity issues.
[quote=“Marchingbandjs, post:10, topic:2878”]
I test everyweek, but i normally know what the tests are going to say before hand by what the corals and coralline look like[/quote]
Your just saying that because of last nights presentation. Just want to be a cool as Jcling.
Glad to hear things are surviving. guys on RC often run higher Mg levels, like 1400-1500 . and say its ok. but who knows. its best to keep things near the mid range of ocean water. remembering that there is a range of SG around the world. so mid range is fine. but you bring up a good point. without the right SG, any individual test will show a big deviation from the desired level too. too low an SG and the Ca, Mg and Alk levels will test way low. when you bump them up individually, you change the ratio in the mix to other salts, like sodium chloride, and that can cause problems too.
[quote=“Ento_Reefer, post:14, topic:2878”]
I am glad everything made it Jon. I think our corals and fish are tougher than we think sometimes.[/quote]
Thanks and I certainly agree. This is sort of related to what I’ll post in a moment in the clove thread, but the thing I think that what matters most is the conditions they are kept in 99% of the time for years before hand. If things are kept stable and the corals are doing well and actively growing they are hardy. If they are not growing, and just barely hanging in their then they can’t take being looked at the wrong way. Corals that have been shipped around the world and kept in LFS can literally dissolve into nothing in 10-12 hours. Corals kept in natural conditions, either in the wild or captivity, can be exposed to air for hours or dunked in fresh water or deal with… a lot of variety of poor conditions. A healthy coral can be fragged one day and growing the next. All depends. Just have to learn what your particular animals.