JiaEn

When I installed a DO probe to monitor the variation of DO in the aquarium, the results was rather interesting. When the skimmer is on at night, it does increase the DO as expected. But having the skimmer on during light hours, actually lowers the DO.

Do take note this is not an amino acid product. Although it contains amino acids, it also contain plakton suspensions and other ingredients. While these are good food for coral, they will introduce both nitrate and phosphate into your system. If your intention is to raise nitrate selectively, you would probably do better with a "pure" amino acid product. Like polyp lab color, or fauna Marin amin. Most of the brands have some form of straight up amino acid.

Nice write up! It appears that ciliates are associated with many coral diseases. But the question is, are they the cause of the disease, or are they just proliferates when the tissues become necrotic. It could also be the case of increased pathogenic bacteria population at the disease coral, which provides food for these bacteriaphagic ciliates Great start for more discovery!

Mi phone More impressive (and fake) if use orange filter

Most of the modern skimmers are well designed with appropriate pump to skim effectively. The choice of skimmer boils down to the size of the reaction chamber. The larger the skimmer chamber is, the better it's gonna be at skimming. There are also numerous quality of life features from different brands. However, the skimmer chamber dimension，which have a big impact on contact time of air and water, is still the key. This is very true, being able to find replacement parts easily, is very important.

A "pure" amino acid product will not contain any phosphates. Liquid coral food, on the other hand, will be a different case altogether. IMO using amino acids to increase only the nitrate is very effective, provided the system is able to metabolize them quickly before they start to fuel undesirable growth of bacteria/algae. This is very true. Especially if the food fed to the fishes is of high quality yo begin with. Choose the fish food with the protein content in mind (which metabolises into nitrogenous compounds). Also try to select food with lower % of ash content. As for nitrate solutions, you can try hydroponic supply stores.

The dt-sump turn over does not need to be excessive. It's always more economical to make use of WM to provide flow for the DT. The reliability of a HOB overflow box, that's another issue altogether.

IMO, one key idea of tank cycling is to match the three important aspect of the aquarium: Livestock Feeding Biofiltration Ideally these three factors should build up at around the same pace. If any of these lags behind, or increase too fast, it's inefficient and may cause some problems . As for the ugly stage, be patient, it will pass. Allow it to expend whatever excess nutrients/elements in your aquarium, and you will have a good foundation for the build up.

Do take note a bean animal style overflow can take up a significant space due to the number of pipes used. Therefore for a 20G aquarium, it may or may not be practical. Is your aquarium pre-drilled? Or are you going to make one?

Nice and open rock work! It will look great once covered by corals! I can't agree with you more! It's a hobby and the enjoyment part is so important. If hobby becomes a source of stress on a daily basis, then it's really not healthy. Look forward to your new updates!

My Acropolis today Actual tank looks much brighter. HDR is needed to capture the details of bright and dark places. (Just like how it is outdoors)

But... I don't do Regular Water Change I'm not an advocate for no water change, but I do believe that reefers need to understand the value of their actions. If the nutrients in the aquarium remains stable at the desirable level, and the reef building elements are stable at the desirable level. The benefits of water change becomes greatly diminished. Trace Elements? In many aquarium, the trace elements are poorly measured and understood. Other than dosing of trace elements, the food we feed, the products we use, all contribute to the trace elements in the aquarium. ICP gives us a glimps of the amount of trace elements in the aquarium. However, it's limit of detection for many elements does not paint us the full picture. Fortunately, slightly elevated trace elements levels dose not immediately cause problem in our reef aquarium. In the Long Run We can managed the nutrient level, as well and the reef building elements reasonably well in the long run (years), but what we can't do, is to prevent thr slow build up of some unknown substances after a long period of time. Take for example, the pellet may contain some trace additives, in the long run, these may accumulate in the aquarium system. So although I have no plans to do regular water change at this moment, I would probably do a 50% change every other year.

Regular Water Change Many new reefers are drawn to the idea of no water change, and tries many different methods while fixated on that goal. In my opinion, is misguided. Regular water change with RO/DI water and a quality salt mix is one of the most fool-proof ways to maintain the water quality of an aquarium. Reefers today are blessed with reliable salt mixes which are easy to mix. Many of them are even batch tested with ICP to ensure the macro, micro and trace elements are right where they should be. When properly mixed, this water is a good foundation for the aquatic lives we keep. When using RO/DI water to mix the new water, we avoid introducing additional elements: copper rust from pipes, residue bacteria, or any of the trace elements already in our utility water. This ensures the final mixed water is exactly like the manufacturer intended. By doing this water change regularly, aquarists attempts to shift the water parameters of the aquarium closer to the salt mix, and in doing so, improve the water quality. In many aquariums, regular water change can help the aquarist manage the nutrient levels. Just like a much needed nap in the weekend, water change removes some excess, accumulated, nutrients. It also replenishes, or better still, adjusts the trace element levels, and nudge it closer to the ideal ranges, without even needing any expensive water tests. Limitations Just like any tool in the reefer's arsenal, regular water change has some limitations. If the nutrient level is significantly elevated, a small water change of 10-20% does not meaningfully corrects the problem. Secondly, in many reefs, one cannot count on using water change to replenish the reef building elements. If the consumption of those elements are high, they need to be supplemented on a daily basis. Topping them up once per week through water change is not ideal. Having said that, regular water change is still a cheap and effective method for reefers to upkeep their aquarium.

Interesting point because reefers mostly don't assess the organic level of their aquarium. So if there are aquarium with low organic level, and starts a dino bloom. That would be interesting to study. Thank you. What I find even better is this kind of discussion. Which is much more valuable than just my one person's perspective.

I would avoid using the word trigger, because they do not just "come into existence" once the organic phosphate reaches a certain level. What happens is that a higher proportion of organic phosphate causes a shift of "algae" population such that the proportion of dino becomes much greater. That's the dino outbreak.

What I was saying is when the aquarium have higher amount of organics, the orp tends to be lower, and dino/cyano thrives better under this conditions. Not the other way round. N and P are both needed for all sort of algae to grow. Just that different algae have different(additional) mechanism to uptake the said nitrates and phosphate. For example, cyanobacteria can fix dissolved nitrogen. On the other hand, many species of dino takes up organic phosphates effectively. P. S. The first cited article also show how the nutrients level of the system can affect the proliferation of some species of algae.

Yes. Correlation does not imply causation for sure. But in this case, I would think they increase rather than decrease oxygen levels though. There are many researches on how dinoflagellates are able to utilize organics phosphates (Yang,2020) so there is basis to this hypothesis. Not directly, no. But it can adsorb dissolved organic compounds, leave less available for dinos or cyanos. One has to realize it's unlikely going to be a situation of quick resolution. Dino and cyanos are extremely adaptive, and share many similarity with bacteria and algae alike. so an aggressive approach can also disrupt the other parts of the ecosystem. It's the deliberate shift in the aquarium enviroment which work for me every time.

To make it clearer, it is not a case of "trigger", but more of a case where the environment allows some algae to outcompete others. Therefore one observes a "spike"

This is thru my observation and testing in my aquarium. In every instance of cyano and dino occurance, my aquarium have low orp levels, likely indicating that organic levels in the aquarium is high. Taking measures to address these organics, for example thru the use of enzymes, or by increasing the amount of activated carbon, has significantly reduce these growth. Same goes for brown algae, I observe the algae growth is more "brown" rather than "green" when the phosphate level is higher. And when the nitrate level is elevated, I do see more green algae. So these are my observations. Not conclusive of course, but I think it's something worth considering

Algae and Nutrients In the previous post, I discussed how reducing nutrients is not the key to algae management. But if we over-generalize and think that nutrients management is not important for algae control, then we can't be further from the truth. In order to apply grazing pressure on algae, we need to introduce herbivores. But if these herbivores do not graze on the algal growth, then all is for naught. We reefers know well enough that fishes do have a preferences, as well as avoidance for centain food. Therefore, getting the aquarium to grow predominantly the correct type of algae, is the key to herbivorous control. An example is the venerable yellow tang. Yellow tangs readily graze on green hair algae. It use the spade like teeth to cut the algae as it feed. However, if an aquarium has a sudden disruption, and has an outbreak of cyanobacteria, we can observe something interesting. When cyanobacteria covers the green hair algae, it's no longer palatable to yellow tangs, and the grazing stops. The Algae Bender Therefore to keep a pristine aquarium, the aquarist need only to manipulate the algal population in the aquarium, so that one or two species is dominant, then ensure there is the corresponding herbivores to keep these algae in check. So how do we manipulation algae population? It's not as if we go around buying hair algae and bryopsis to throw inside the aquarium. We do that by managing the nutrients. Nitrate and phosphate, in their organic and inorganic forms. Different nutrient level gives advantage to different algae. Generally speaking, higher organics contents gives rise to more bacteria-like algae such as cyano and dino; higher phosphate tends to courage growth of brown algae. At the end of the day, manage the nutrient, manage the algae.

The Algae Algae is one of the "pest" reefers tries to control. How to deal with excessive algal growth in the aquarium? This is one of the challenges which many reefers face. The conventional wisdom (if you read through my posts, you will know I'm not a fan of blinding believing in them)is that, one must tackle the algae problem at its source. By addressing the underlying nutrient problem, we can overcome the algae problem. To many, this means reducing nitrate and phosphate in the water. I, however, think that this view is missing out on the bigger picture. Algae in the Reef Just like the corals, algae evolves to take advantage of the sun light, and produce their energy supply through photosynthesis. At the same time, they require inorganic nutrients such as nitrate and phosphate in order to build its biomass. So, suppose if we can deny the algae of these nutrients, by lower the nitrate and phosphate to very low levels, surely we can control the aglae growth, right? It's not that simple. Unfortunately, algae evolved to take advantage of the environment where coral thrives. They can survive, and thrive, even under very low level of nutrients, such as that of a coral reef. So in the blind rush to drive down the nutrients, one often realise that the first to suffer is corals, not algae. Therefore, dealing with algae by driving down nutrients, is probably not the best direction. Algae NOT on the Reef Having said all these, we are face with another interesting fact: natural reefs are not overrun with algae. This is not because algae cannot grow in the reef, but because herbivores residing in the reef place a grazing pressure on those growth. Tangs, foxface, angelfish and various inverts continuously prey on the algae, and keeps the population from overrunning the reef. Therefore, the key to algae control is having a sufficient population of herbivores. And that's the natures' way to keep algae in check.

This is true and very important. unlike baking cakes, follow recipe to the letter in reefing is often more problematic than good in the long run. @tetelestai777 If you want to jump right in and learn "on the job" I would say redsea ecosystem is quite comprehensive. However I'm sure along the way, you may feel like tinker with it. That's how many of us learn.

Thank you. Yes. The mantra is: do it properly, or don't do it at all. This applies to all things reefing

Very true. That's why the goal is to tune the system such that sps can out compete coralines easily

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