Tank Journal - 135 FOWLR

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be sure to be there when he does the first feeding or two. It's so easy to overfeed mush and so hard to take it back.
 
So how much would you recommend? I figure 1/2 cubic cm twice a day would be plenty, as long as it all gets eaten. Right now, every time I go in there, there's uneaten shrimp at the bottom of the tank. He's not very diligent about removing uneaten food. He says they pick at it and most of it gets eaten eventually, but I disagree with the practice.
 
How often do you go there? If it's more then twice a week I suggest that you feed them until you get it right! No more then they can eat in 3-4 minutes every other day is more then enough.
 
Floyd, in the wild they must travel long and swift currents to get most of their food. In the AQ. they only sit around and get fat. That, my friend, is more then likely where your high PO3 is coming from. If you let him continue to feed the tank you will never get it under control. More then just "My opinion", it's a fact.....
 
Let's see....Is it because he is retired? Hahahaha lol
 
2/2 - Another major cleaning

The cyano and green hair algae got so bad, and it had been a few weeks since the last water change, I decided to do another major cleaning. 80 gallons and I pulled all the LR out and scrubbed the green hair off, then gravel vacuumed the entire tank. The gravel vac does little to actually remove the cyano. I think the major downfall of the Python is the shutoff valve and the faucet connector both reduce the diameter of the hose, and the flow rate is significantly reduced, so it can’t suck the little bits out. But it does get all the gunk dissolved in the gravel bed at least, and it turns everything over.

Got all the rock back in, I left out the non-LR slabs (2 of them) and….drum roll please…

THE FROG LOG IS DEAD

I threw it out after giving it a quick scrub so it didn’t stink up the place. Scarily enough, I found Frog Log’s twin brother under the bar sink. He actually got 2 of them!

The skimmer is finally on the way, something got hosed up with shipping. It just arrived in the state today, so with any luck it will be there tomorrow.

The clean-up crew was supposed to be here today, but yet again shipping problems. It got sent from Florida on Tuesday and here it is 10 degrees in Iowa and it’s sitting somewhere on a truck or in a sort facility. The guy at reefcleaners.org said there’s been some issues lately and he was tracking it down. I hope they’re alive when they get here.

Gotta go test the water tonight and I’ll take a few pics. The water tested at 100 ppm Nitrates before the test. I added about ¼ to 1/3 of a 500mL jar of ROWAphos on 2/1 and that stuff works a heck of a lot faster than the Brightwell stuff, it dropped the Phosphate from 3 ppm to about 1.5 in about a day. The BA resin didn’t seem to do much, I figure that stuff is good for maintaining and long term, and the ROWA is good for a quick knock-down.
 
I forgot one thing to ask: I scrubbed and rinsed off about 45 pounds of the 110 pounds of the dry base rock I bought from Craiglist and put it in a tub with saltwater, powerhead, heater, covered up in basement. How long do you think I need to keep it in there and test for ammonia before I can be relatively sure that there's no decaying organic matter - a day, two days, a week?
 
The ammonia will be 0 when there is no decaying matter (please correct me if I am wrong). Are you testing the water the LR is in?
 
No the ammonia will be 0 when the nitrifying bacteria can convert the ammonia from the decaying matter into nitrates from ammonia and nitrites. 2 weeks at least Floyd, 3 for safety. Just keep testing.
 
Please reference posts 34 through about 43. I am not curing the live rock. I am just soaking it to make sure there isn't any organic matter that would cause an ammonia spike by placing it directly in the tank. My question is related to how long I should wait during this soaking time for an ammonia spike to occur if there is some kind of dead organic matter that would re-hydrate. I currently have it in a covered 14 gallon tote with a powerhead and a heater and it's maintaining about 74.5 F.
 
I just don't see a week or two - I'm not curing the rock. I just want to determine if there was any decaying organic matter that would cause an ammonia spike. I could have just put this stuff directly in the tank, since it's dry base rock, but since it was in someone's tank before, I'm doing this as a safety precaution. So anyone care to chime in on how long I should wait to see an ammonia spike? I wouldn't think it would take more than a day or two to appear if it was going to happen. It something that just needs to dissolve into the water, no bacteria needs to grow to cause an ammonia spike.
 
Well, I just tested the water and WHOA. I'm glad I didn't just drop these in his tank. I put them in at about 3pm yesterday, and now at 10am the ammonia is way up on the scale, not at a readable color, but it's WAY up there. What happened? Did I start the curing process?

The first thing I'm going to do is change the water and see if that gets a spike. If it does, I don't know what I'm going to do!! I wasn't planning on curing all this rock, but I might have to.
 
I hate API test kits sometimes. The SW ammonia color card doesn't match the color of the test tube, even on a 1/4 strength test. My best guess is that the 1/4 strength test is about 1 ppm, meaning 4 ppm in the tub.
 
:) my gf mom has a frog log similar to that in her freshwater tank,in their tank it actually looks decent lol not for me tho lol my tang hides enough as it is :)
 
It's to bad the owner is actually working against you so much. Seems like he can't comprehend what he's doing. He's gotta be just trowing food in there like crazy to make those kind of water parameters. That's gotta be the hardest part, to get him to listen instead of doing what he always has done. You could completely redo everything every single week but if he keeps it up it won't yield a healthy tank. And on top of that he'll probably question your skills on why it is that way. I feel bad for the fish.
 
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