my unexpected 125g build

[pea pufferzilla]

Thank you, greenmaster. =] he spends enough of our money on fish. I think we could handle mating our own fish instead of paying double for an eharmony matchup. =]]

 

[stouty6969]

Stouty give me a bit to put together a list and ill post it for ya, update wise, my trates have crept up to between 30-40, gonna need to do a decent pwc, have my protein skimmer dialed in and running, have also throttled back on the lighting for now due to cyano... Do need help however, my huma-huma seems to be flicking himself off the rocks repeatedly and swimming from end to end....never seen him do this, is this behavior normal at night?? Please help cuz I'm slightly worried

Okay thanks man...and I'm not sure about ur huma huma but to me personally I don't think hr should be doing that I'm not sure if it but it doesn't sound right

 

[Gti_Leo]

Thank you, greenmaster. =] he spends enough of our money on fish. I think we could handle mating our own fish instead of paying double for an eharmony matchup. =]]

its always nice to have a hobby, can't just sit through life liek a hermit doign nothing but watching tv

 

[huma-huma]

I'd have to agree leo, but in all honesty she does put up with my obsession fairly well I just spent an hour and a half re-doing ALL of my wiring and organizing inside the stand.... The jobs never truly done with ones tank. Have any advice about using algone to clear up cyano and bring my trates down?? I'm mainly focusing on the lowering of trates, because I'm running low on salt and have to wait till payday. (Utilities come first)

 

[scottayy]

Do you have fish in there yet? I can't recall..
Anyways, even if you do, I've read your trates can be fine even up to 80.
Also, if you kill your cyano or it dies off, there will be an ammonia spike which would be much more worrysome than a nitrate issue and would require a pwc.

 

[huma-huma]

yep got a few fish in already I knew that of the three, trates are the most flexible in terms of raises without killing, but I'm super paranoid about my tank and what to head off any potential problems before they affect my fish.....even though my niger trigger bit me today I decided imma do a decent pwc tomorrow morning to help keep down the trates. My ammonia and trites are perfect, as is my ph and alkilinity. I think I'm just more worried about running out of salt for pwwc's and not being able to stop the trates from raising too high....

 

[carey]

How do your trates get so high? Youre running a sump with skimmer right? And doing pwcs? I'm just curious cause I've only ever seen high trates and that was once when I bought a used tank and setup, the sand was so disturbed it raised the trates to like 80. Luckily I had no livestock in there at the time. Are you messing with your sand at all?

 

[hackteck]

i'm confused wasnt your name something else? i thought i remembered another member making this thread with another name maybe i was wrong didnt know you could change your username

 

[carey]

Yeah he was neglient inmate. Mods can change that stuff for ya

 

[huma-huma]

I used the old sand that came with the tank plus a 50 lb bag of play sand, I spent 2.5 hours alone cleaning the sand (both old and new) so that way it wouldn't release any unwanted chems. I've done 1 10% pwc so far and that was only after the trates jumped up, before then, they were somewhere between 0-10.... I'm about to do a 20-30% pwc to try reigning it it. I also have my skimmer and refugium running 24/7 to try and help out...needless to say I finally got my skimmer truly dialed in. Results in a few

 

[carey]

Ok, sounds like you have a solid plan.

It takes a bit of tweaking and all but you can get those trates down to 0 eventually.

 

[huma-huma]

Yeah fortunately for me, I joined this site before I acquired this 125g, when I was upgrading my 20l.... Thanks to the members of this site, and more importantly a few specifics I'm happy to say that I feel I've got the processes down to a t... But I just used up the rest of my salt and don't get paid till next friday so its more of a waiting game. I just finished a 17.5g pwc....so I'd imagine it should help a bit. I'm thinking once I get my trates back down to 0 and my refugium back to 100%, I shouldn't see anymore spikes like this....hopefully thanks a ton for all the help

 

[huma-huma]

Ok so I have Red Sea liquid test kit and the test strips, just outta curiousity I tested with the test strips after the liquid test. My liquid test is somewhere around 40 for trates, the test strips say I'm around 20.... Off to petco to have them test my water

 

[carey]

I'm not surprised, the test strips are so unreliable. The red sea nitrate test is actually pretty accurate, I used to use it.

 

[huma-huma]

I'm about 95% sure the strips are wrong but I'm hoping for this once the liquid test is wrong somehow, good news is I just realized I have more money than I thought heading to petco for testing and to pick up a 50g bag of salt

 

[huma-huma]

Ok so petco used the 5-1 test strip, I know they are unreliable for the most part but their readings were as follows
Ammo-0
Trites-0
Trates-20 (the color was identical to both my test strip kits)

Either way I picked up a bag of salt so I've got enough for 4 pwc's if needed, it needs to last me a week....I think I'm ok now

****edit**** Carey I def have to say I'm sorry again about your fishies, this is a minor issue in terms of problems but it had me soo worried, I don't know what I'd do if my fish started dying..I'd be hysterical...I couldn't do it

 

[carey]

Good deal.

I hate when the stores use those strips, it's like yeah, I know what mine said, but I wanted an accurate number from YOU lol.

I think youre set with 4 available pwc's for the week. Covers you in case of some tragic occurrence.

 

[huma-huma]

Yeah I def agree, but I can understand where they are coming from when using strips, obviously a lot cheaper and faster for them

 

[huma-huma]

Here's a pic of my left stand door... Decided to organize it and make places for eveything..sorry for the sideways pic...don't know why it went sideways...oh well

 

[huma-huma]

In the above pic you'll notice that there's a piece of paper, that's my color-guide for my power cords. Used nail-polish to color code all of them..a lot easier now to pick out a needed cord. Below is obviously my left side that I cut and place a 2x4 shelf in, gonna paint it black just so it blends in.comments, as always, are welcome