If one sump is good...

The 20 gal tank I had planned to use for mys sump will indeed fit under my stand. Unfortunately, there is no way to get it in there. I can slide it vertically through one of the stand doors but there isn't room to tilt it down into position.

Plan B
I need to do this as inexpensively as possible so I'm not buy a pre-made acrylic sump nor am I going to take the time to custom make an acrylic sump that will just fit into the stand. The largest tank I can place into the stand turns out to be 10 gallons. I feel that a 10 gallon tank is too small. Once I add the deep sand bed and allow room for the water to rise in a power failure there won't be enough water volume in the tank. So, I'll use two tanks. It so happens that I have two of these already.

I will connect the two tanks together with PVC plumbing and bulkheads to allow the water to flow between them. One tank will have a deep sand bed and will serve as the refugium. The other tank will house the protein skimmer, sump and return pump. Water from my overflow box will flow into both tanks and I'll use valves to set the flow through the refugium. The output of the refugium will flow into the chamber that houses the protein skimmer in the second tank. A baffle will set the water level for the protein skimmer and refugium. Water from the overflow box that didn't go directly into the refugium will flow into the skimmer chamber. A set of baffles will eliminate bubbles as the water flows into the sump that houses the return pump. I'm also going to add a Durso Standpipe to my overflow box to cut down on noise. I am also going to add a float valve in the sump to handle automatic top offs. I'll post a set of plans soon and pictures when I complete it.

I can't wait to get started on this. My nitrates are still high and I need to do something soon. I'm losing my tongue coral. My glass hole saw and bulkheads are on order from glass-holes.com. Creative name, huh?

Vacation

Last week we rented a cabin on a lake on the border of Wisconsin and Michigan about an hour north of Rhinelander Wisconsin. On the way home we stopped at the Doctors Foster and Smith outlet store in Rhinelander. They were selling 160 gallon mix buckets of Reef Crystals for $29.99. I bought one bucket. I would have stocked up more if the van wasn't already bursting at the seams. Usually, the stores around here are selling Reef Crystal buckets for $60. I'm assuming that Doctors Foster and Smith are making money too so the LFS must be marking it up by more than 100%. By the way they charge $9.99 for shipping. So for $40 you can purchase this online and save $20 plus taxes over your LFS.

I also purchased a PF-800 overflow box and 40 pounds of live sand while there. These will be used for a refugium I'll be building out of an old fish tank in the base of my stand. I'm still undecided as to whether or not I'll add macro algae. I'll probably see if the live sand alone will reduce the nitrates.

One More Nitrate Factory Removed

According to my Salifert test kit my Nitrates are at 25ppm and I have not been able to get it to drop below this. I then remembered that at the bottom of my protein skimmer's overflow box/bubble eliminator is a small sponge filter. I removed it but it really didn't look that dirty. I'll have to see if it makes a difference.

I just got the Salifert test kit this week. It measures Nitrate differently than the API and it has much better resolution at the low end. Unfortunately one of our dogs decided that the boxes for both Nitrate test kits were something it should eat. Fortunately they didn't eat any of the chemicals. However, the little syringe in the Salifert kit for measuring 1 ml of water got destroyed. I'll have to figure something out to measure the water volume.

I Lost My Brain

Over the last few weeks I've watched my beautiful rose colored open brain coral slowly die. As soon as I brought it home I noticed that part of its skeleton was exposed. I blogged about this back on April 28'th. I was worried then because I read that corals with such injuries rarely recovered. However, this one was doing really well. Here is how it looked one month ago. It was fully expanded and doing quite nicely.

This, as it turns out, would be the best I would ever see this coral. As I was battling my nitrate problem the health of this coral declined. I noticed that the area of exposed skeleton was expanding. First to the right side and then to the left.

Here is how it looked on July 10'th.

The green area at the far back is the are of original exposed skeleton. You can clearly see more exposed skeleton on the right side. You can also see some on the in the middle of the left side. The exposed skeleton became overrun with the red algae that you can see behind the coral on the sand bed. I blew it off with the current from a power head.

I knew at this point that this beauty wasn't going to make it. I didn't realize how quickly it would die. One week later, yesterday, it looked like this.

The only flesh remaining was on the section closest to the bottom of this photo. Here is a close up view.

I thought it was odd to see the stringy webby material all over the last remnants of the coral. I hadn't seen that before. I read about this today and it matches the description of Brown Jelly Disease. A highly contagious bacterial infection that attacks LPS corals. Some articles I read pointed out that it can spread quickly and finish off a coral in a day. Indeed, when I came home from work today all that remained was a calcium skeleton. A paper weight.

Incidentally, for the last week or so, my green open brain coral has refused to open. It's as if it senses the disease in the tank and is cowering in fear. I hope this guy lives. Here is how it looked yesterday.

So far there is no exposed skeleton so I am holding out hope. I've increased the current across it as recommended.

In other grim news, my torch coral doesn't look good either. It is no longer expanding completely. My red scooter blenny is also MIA. It was looking thin last time I saw it. After I bought it I realized it was a member of the dragonet family. Like it's cousins, the Mandarins, they are supposed to be difficult to keep because they only eat live food they find on the live rock and sand bed.

Looking on the bright side, my Xenias are still doing well. Pulsing away seeming oblivious to the the demise of their tank mates.

Xenia update

I've done countless water changes over the last few weeks to dilute my nitrate levels after removing my Bio-wheels. I can't tell what my nitrate level is now because the color for 5ppm and 10ppm look identical. What I can tell you is that my Xenia look a whole lot better. They are growing, the polyps are full and they are pulsing like crazy. And perhaps most importantly there is a little baby Xenia between mom and dad. This baby is growing where the connecting piece had stretched out between the main coral and the one that branched off. You can see it in the picture below.

Royal Gramma

I haven't seen it since May 29th when it was sitting on the bottom covered with white spots and breathing laboriously. Pretty safe to declare him dead. The spots are gone from my Yellow Tang.

I've done 4 water changes in the last 5 days. I changed about 16 gallons in each water change which is about 20 or 25%. My nitrates have dropped. However I can't tell how low. The color for 4ppm and 10ppm look the same to me for the API kit. I'm guessing I'm around 10 ppm now. I'll have to find a better kit to use that has more resolution.

I also increase the water flow in the tank big time. I put my two Koralia 3 power heads back in. Each of those is rated for 850 gph if I remember right. So between my Koralias and my two Emperor filters (400 & 280) I should have 2380 gph of flow in my tank. I also have two smaller power heads with unknown ratings. So my water is turning over more than 33 times/hour. This should help deliver water to the live rock and sand for filtering. Hopefully this will help with the nitrates.

Goodbye Biowheels

I've done 3 water changes in as many weeks. I went out and bought an API nitrate test and found my nitrates are indeed 20 ppm. I have a really old kit that was measuring around 5 ppm. However the new kit confirms the results of the LFS from the other weekend. I also tested my RO/DI water and found the nitrate level is 0 (or darn close to 0). If I can assume that the Coralife salt I'm using is indeed nitrate free then they must be produced within the tank.

I have 3 biowheels running in this tank in addition to all of my live rock. It is likely that these are the source of the nitrate so I'm pulling them out. I'll need to rely on the live rock to perform all of the biological filtration from here on out. If this coupled with more water changes doesn't lower the nitrates I'll have to add a refugium with a deep sand bed and macro algae.