I greatly appreciate you not taking offense to my comments. Everything is meant to be constructive criticism, simply my judgement of the situation as percived by my humble self. When you've been in this hobby/business as long as me (58 years), you are grandfathered into a position of assumed authority. Dear god, please don't take me too seriously. However.........
When it comes to anything concerning reef/fish aquariums, I am passionate to a fault. Why? Because I've made those same mistakes in years gone by. The techniques used today were not available or unknown back then (first salt tank, 1966). We learned by reading the latest books, subscribing to the mags of the time, experimenting, failing, researching, changing our methodology until gradually we became more successful. We graduated from being failing hobbyists to, what I like to call, budding Aquariologists. I like that word. It implys that we have accomplished something. We've earned our degree in Aquariology. We've become a better, "Keeper of the Reef". When we have a couple of years experience and continue to make the same mistakes, like trying to rush things, we are earning a failing grade in Aquariology. Like any good teacher, I don't want to see anyone fail. But, the student has an obligation, too. The student must realize they lack the knowledge and skills necessary to be successful. These must be learned and earned as in any skilled profession. You learned to roll-over, then crawl, then walk, before you ever ran. There's very little difference in learning to keep a reef tank successfully.
I had a teacher, Mr Harris (Boomer Harris), in high school, He taught Phy Ed, was the football coach, the basketball coach and taught Sex Ed too. What a combination, eah? He had a saying that helped many a kid, including me. It was, "There's three ways to play this game, the wrong way, the right way, and my way. You're not going to play it the wrong way and you're not going to play it the right way. You're going to play it MY WAY!" We did learn to play it his way, which turned out to be the right way, the winning way. There are many trophies in that school bearing his name as "Coach".
If I could be anything in life, it would be to be a good "Coach" to you budding Aquariologists. NOW....
If someone doesn't jerk this soapbox out from under me, I'll go on forever. I warned you I'm passionate about this subject. It's in my blood, in my heart, actually.
__________________ Amphibious
Reaching my 70th BD, I realize that I cannot help but grow old. However, I refuse to grow up!!! My wife would tell you, "He may be 70 but, He's going on 17". Life is wonderful with a woman like that.
Just wanted to give a quick update. The red slime has started to lift off the sand. I redirected one of my maxijets to give more flow to the area affected the most and it seems to be working. I did this about two hours ago and already one big chunk has broken off and gone down the overflow. I installed two filter socks under my drains to catch the slimy stuff. I will begin feeding my fish tommorow ( 2 days without). I am planning on a large water change this weekend. I hope I can get rid of this stuff without using Chemi-clean. So in the interest of fixing my mistake, what do you think should be my next purchase?
Cabbage, I agree with Coach as far as going slow, let things even out let the bacteria in the tank catch up to the load. I would like other thoughts on that large water change, maybe a 5% water change would be better. How is your skimmer doing make sure that it is running at peak perfomance. IMO I would let nature take its course here, we all have gone thru cyno in a newer tank at some time.
Live rock would me my answer, but make sure it is cured before you put it in the tank.
Good luck.
__________________ To be or not to be. -- Shakespeare
To do is to be. -- Nietzsche
To be is to do. -- Sartre
Do be do be do. -- Sinatra
---------------------------------------- Fibber's Cay
Wow, did I write that up there? Thanks for your patience with me, I tend to rant.
Okay, cabbagehead, if those were my only choices, I would do the LR because of the cost savings and I think you could use more. Get Fiji premium cured if at all possible. If you can't, check with me tomorrow. I'm in the process of setting up an account with Walt Smith, the main LR importer. I have a toll free number (888 745-0449) for you to use. Call me either way, I want to be sure you are familiar with the procedure of introducing rock into your tank under these conditions.
Keep us informed.
Oh by the way, you're cool cabbagehead, for the "Thanks Coach" thing. Made my day!
__________________ Amphibious
Reaching my 70th BD, I realize that I cannot help but grow old. However, I refuse to grow up!!! My wife would tell you, "He may be 70 but, He's going on 17". Life is wonderful with a woman like that.
Ok, time for an update! The cyno is still lurking around on my sand. It has gotten stringy and now seems to have stopped growing. I have noticed an area of my sand bed that is clear that once was covered with red slime. This is the area that my two maxijet 1200's have been aimed at for the past three days. Water parameters have not changed. I am going to get live rock as my next purchase followed by new powerheads. Until then I will bypass the wavemaker and let my powerheads run 24/7. As for the rest of the tank I had a little landslide last night and woke up to find one of my derasa behind my biggest piece of live rock. So at 4:30 in the morning I was moving rock to rescue the little guy. My fish seem to be more hyper now that I am only feeding every other day. They are up for longer periods of time and go crazy anytime you walk by. I finally got a chance to listen to the "naming corals" podcast and got a little scared when I heard the piece about the leathers and frogspawn. I have a Yellow Figi leather, devils hand, and finger leather as well as a frogspawn. I saw the responses to the podcast and my mind is a little bit more at ease. It does make me wonder about how close my monti-cap is to my assortment of leathers. I think this was one of the most informative shows thus far. I am going to try to get some carbon running in my sump. Has anyone used a Phosban reator to run carbon? I might have the chance to pick one up at a reasonable price and was wondering if it might help. I'll try to get some pictures up tommorow as it is my first real day off in weeks.
Jack
I've used Phosban as a temporary fix for a few problems I had (derbesia mainly). Derbesia can be a pain...and the Phosban worked...as did reducing my fishload (and feedings). Gotta reduce the nutrients somehow!
-Jon
Here are some updated pictures of my tank. The first set shows the place on my sandbed where I had the most cyno. The second is my clam that I saved from it's diving expedition behind my rocks. The third is a picture of some new monticap frags I got this weekend(upper right corner). For the most part my tank is doing fine. I am a little concerned that my ALK has dropped to 9. PH is steady at 8.2. and Calcium is still high at 480. I am probrably going to switch salt from Oceanic to either Instant Ocean or reef crystals. I only have one bucket of Oceanic left which I can use to slowly make the change. Nitrates are remaining at 15. Looking forward to getting some more live rock to help that problem out. I have cut back the feedings to 1/2 a cube of frozen food a day (Mysis, Reef blend, and Formula 2 switching everyday). Hopefully this will also help my nitrate issues. As for flow, I have spent some time playing with the direction of my powerheads and returns and have gotten some better results in spreading out the flow to get to those hard to reach cyno factories. Enough blabber here are the pics!
Before dcp_2172.jpg
Hey cabbagehead, that's looking a lot better. Congrats! Nice clams.
__________________ Amphibious
Reaching my 70th BD, I realize that I cannot help but grow old. However, I refuse to grow up!!! My wife would tell you, "He may be 70 but, He's going on 17". Life is wonderful with a woman like that.
Well I know it has been a while since I updated this thread. Part of the reason is that I have decided to let my tank develope a little before I add any more life. My cyno problems are over for now. The sand in my tank is clean and the water parameters are stable. I still have not been able to get my Nitrates below 15. I have been doing 30gal water changes every week. I did find some faults in my system that could have contributed to the Nitrate and cyno problem. Last week I ordered all new filters for my RODI. I was changing them out when I noticed a problem. My RO waste water was going through my DI and my clean RO water was going down the drain!!! I also had my inline TDS meter hooked up incorrectly. I know that the unit shipped completly asembled and it was my fault for not checking the connection before using it. I have contacted the company who sold me the RODI on ebay and they have never had this happen but said it could have been possible. I bought a new RO membrane and DI resin and after all was said and done I now have 0 TDS. I estimated that I used about 1100 gallons of this tainted water before correcting this problem. Hopefully with some clean water changes I can finally get my nitrates under control. I also did powerhead maintenace yesterday and found that one of my newer powerheads had not been working due to a large piece of salt creep( i think) that got in the magnet. After cleaning them thoroughly things are moving a lot better. I will post some pictures as soon as I can. Sorry they won't be exciting but I am having a birthday soon so that may change
Jack
good stuff. that sucks to hear about the RO/DI unit being set up wrong on delivery. first time getting into your journal. tank looks great. and yea i would love the clam too.
question i do love the stand. and i will be building one soon. do you have any background in woodworking? or you just very handy? or had any help?
will continue to read this thread. keep us updated.
__________________ learning more and more, day by day.
Dear god, please don't take me too seriously. 
However.........
