Reducing Nitrates

I haven't performed a water change for about a week and a half and nitrates are still around 2.5 ppm as measured with a Salifert test kit. It's hard to see in the picture below but the sample color is closest to the 2 ppm color.

From Paul's Reef

One thing that is really nice about the Salifert nitrate test is that once your sample is <= 10 ppm you can use the kit in low range mode. To do this you simply match the color my looking through the side of the vile and then simply divide the number of the closest color by 10. In the example below the closest color is 25. So my nitrate level is 2.5 ppm.

From Paul's Reef

Getting my nitrate to this level has taken a long time. I'm still not sure what finally worked. Was it the deep sand bed, the Chaeto algae, the algae growing naturally in my refugium or the new light bulbs? The most recent change was the lighting. After I replaced my bulbs is when I saw the nitrate level drop below 10 ppm.

One other variable I forgot to mention is that I ran out of Kent Marine Tech-I that I was using to supplement Iodine. I ran out about a two weeks ago, about the same time I replaced my bulbs. I originally started supplementing because my Xenia were not looking good. Right now they are pulsing faster than I have ever seen and rapidly dividing on their own. I will not add iodine again unless I see things degrading again.

Tomato Clown

From Paul's Reef

I purchased a small Tomato Clown over the weekend. I'm hoping that it will host my Bubble Tip Anemone. So far he is ignoring it. I also have an Ocellaris Clown that also ignores the same anemone.

The anemone itself doesn't look great. He has shrunk considerably since I purchased him last December. He probably suffered under my dimming lights. I also never fed him because early on it seemed like it would move if I fed him. I started feeding him yesterday after doing additional research.

Quite the Week

There was a lot of action in the tank this week. Here is the week in review.

I upgraded my lighting.
I may have observed my Tooth Coral spawn.
My nitrates finally dropped to under 5 ppm.
I divided my Colt Coral and a mushroom.

It's been a while since I posted. Here is an overall tank picture:

From Paul's Reef

Divide and Conquer

My Colt coral has grown huge. After giving my two sons haircuts yesterday I decided it was time to prune back the coral. Hopefully I can get the clippings to grow on some rubble.

I pruned a few small branches back with scissors. Actually, they are the same ones I used to cut my kids hair. I then stabbed each cutting with a round wood toothpick and secured each of them to a piece of rubble or live rock.

Here are a few of the clippings:

From Paul's Reef

From Paul's Reef

From Paul's Reef

And here is where one of the clippings was cut from its mother:

From Paul's Reef

I think on a few of the clippings I may have stabbed the coral too low. The toothpick looks like it has been pulled through the base of at least one of the clippings allowing it to float away. Hmm, looks like I need to develop the technique a little more.

I also divided a mushroom. I sliced the head off of one and secured it to a piece of live rock with bridal netting and a rubberband. Look for a picture soon. The mushrooms have begun taking off in the last few weeks. They started growing more rapidly before I upgraded the lighting,

From Paul's Reef

Finally!

My Nitrate level has finally dropped! I measured it at 5ppm yesterday with my Salifert kit. I remeasured this morning and got a reading between 2 and 5ppm. Finally!

So what finally got the Nitrates to drop?
1. Reduced feeding to once per day. I have been doing this for months so probably not too likely.
2. Deep sand bed. The deep sand bed was installed the first week of August. Does it really take three months to cycle?
3. Chaeto algae in fuge. Hmm. It's only been in there for about a month.
4. The lighting in the fuge. The lighting is causing algae to grow on the glass. All of the algae is full of bubbles. Could this be nitrogen? Also now seeing some bubbles in the sand. I saw this earlier when I was keeping the fuge lit. The bubbles went away when I stopped illuminating the fuge.
5. The lighting upgrade for the main tank. Can there be a relationship?

My Frogspawn, Xenia and mushrooms are doing very well. My Xenia keeps splitting on its own. I now have about 4 stalks on both sides of the tank. They pulse like crazy even with current flowing across them. My open brain has not been opened for months. I'm hoping that the combination of improved lighting and lower nitrates entice it to open soon.

Spawn or Just a Burp?

So perhaps my tooth coral is digging the new lights. Perhaps it was happy that I fed it a few Mysis shrimp. I'll never know for sure. One polyp of my tooth coral (the right one in the picture below) let loose a cloud of something last night. Was it sperm, eggs or just a big burp?

From Paul's Reef

I noticed this last night as I was observing my tank. The 12000K fluorescents had turned off about half an hour earlier and just the actinics were on. By chance I happened to look at the tooth coral and saw it let go of the cloud. Before it let it go it looked like there was some material hanging out of the mouth. Afterwards, the polyp shrunk down a bit.

New Lights

How often are you supposed to replace your light bulbs? After a year I started to suspect that perhaps my problems are not entirely due to elevated nitrate levels but instead due to reduced lumen levels. I have an Odyssea 260W power compact fluorescent fixture. I decided I needed to supplement my lighting so I decided to purchase some 4 23W 6500K spiral compact fluorescent fixtures from Lowes along with 4 the clip on shop fixtures. Unfortunately a metal halide fixture is not in the budget at this time. I mounted these on the back of the tank. The additional light that these provided was very significant. In fact they seemed brighter than the bulbs on my PC fluorescent fixture. So I searched the Internet and found replacement bulbs from Aquatraders. The Odyssea replacement bulbs were about $7 each in 4 packs. I purchased 4 12000K bulbs and 4 Actinics. I received the bulbs in a little under a week last Wednesday the 29th and installed them.

I replaced the right half only and did a comparison. There is no comparison between the old and the new. The old 12000K bulb was much more yellow than the new bulb. The old actinic was much dimmer and so much less purple than the new. I replaced the other half and reset the timers to reduce the on time to avoid shocking and bleaching the coral by changing the light intensity too quickly.

I know have 4 timers. The bulbs are turned on and off at different times to try to replicate the changing light intensity throughout the day.
Timer 1 - Actinics - On 9:00 am, Off 9:00 pm
Timer 2 - 12000Ks - On 10:00 am, Off 8:00 pm
Timer 3 - 6500Ks - On 12:00 pm, Off 4:00 pm
Timer 4 - Fuge 6500k - On 6:00 pm - Off 9:00 am reverse light cycle.