The Puffer Forum

I replace my bulbs about every 2 years. I have no heaters on those tanks.

For a more ascetically pleasing look, I suggest taking some of those corals off their plugs & gluing them directly to the rock.

I love LED lights. Check out http://www.reefbrite.com/

I would suggest the Led strips. I have one on my FW tank and its stunning. I want to. do a reef tank just because ive seen how they treat corals. My 48" light cov er s the 51" tank fully with no
black spots, great effect and I paid 250$ for mine. Yours would be cheaper

Pretty lighting, do not necessarily grow pretty corals.

I got my puffer today, finally I'll be posting pictures here shortly

My newest corals came in today as well and I'll post pictures of them once they're better adjusted and I'm able to.

The first two brain corals I added to my tank, lobo and trachy, were apparently very happy this morning. During PWC and some maintenance they both inflated to the largest size I've seen so far and extended their feeder tentacles. Pretty neat!! The wellso inflated and extended its feeder tentacles almost as soon as I placed it in the tank after acclimation. Odd though that my other corals, mainly softies besides the hammer, were closed up after the water change while the brains were at their happiest. The hammer began to open up over time today, not to its fullest though but the ricordias, mushrooms, zoas, have stayed pretty closed up. The leather did straighten up but I didn't see any polyps today. I've done several water changes since I've had most of those corals with no incident before. I did do a little more maintenance around the tank; cleaned off light fixture and took off the skimmer to clean it. Water parameters tested fine (still waiting on alk, mag, cal kits) including salinity, temp, and the nitrates are not at around 20 (been slowing lowering these with more often water changes. I also removed the sponges from the skimmer and believe this very well may have been at least part of my problem. I didn't test pH, skipped over it for some reason, but again I didn't go about anything differently from the regular water change besides the maintenance mentioned above. I'm just surprised its the softies upset and not the LPS. I don't know but it worries me.

Pufferpunk wrote:I replace my bulbs about every 2 years. I have no heaters on those tanks.

For a more ascetically pleasing look, I suggest taking some of those corals off their plugs & gluing them directly to the rock.

I thought they had to be changed out more often, like at least once a year if not before.

I only have two that are on a plug,all the others were attached to rock. I was kinda afraid to take it off though. Any suggestions on going about that? It'll certainly look better thats for sure.

defool89 wrote:I love LED lights. Check out http://www.reefbrite.com/

I would suggest the Led strips. I have one on my FW tank and its stunning. I want to. do a reef tank just because ive seen how they treat corals. My 48" light cov er s the 51" tank fully with no
black spots, great effect and I paid 250$ for mine. Yours would be cheaper

I've actually ordered mine but thanks for the suggestions. I went with two 24in strips and a controller so that I'll be able to dim, along with other features. Definitely excited to get them

Congratulations on the new puffer! Can't wait to see pictures

You can use a razor blade or wire cutters to get them off the plug but I actually use coral cutters: http://www.marinedepot.com/miscellaneou ... ls-ap.html

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=32573

Pufferpunk wrote:You can use a razor blade or wire cutters to get them off the plug but I actually use coral cutters: http://www.marinedepot.com/miscellaneou ... ls-ap.html

Thank you. So far the only corals I have that are on a plug is the blastos and platygyra.

Zoas?

defool89 wrote:I love LED lights. Check out http://www.reefbrite.com/

I would suggest the Led strips. I have one on my FW tank and its stunning. I want to. do a reef tank just because ive seen how they treat corals. My 48" light cov er s the 51" tank fully with no
black spots, great effect and I paid 250$ for mine. Yours would be cheaper

I have both blue and white LED lights and my hard and soft corals are growing very well. Everything I've heard it's the way most are going, for many reasons. Just my 2 cents

I wanted to remind you to start testing for alk, Ca & Mg, now that you have all those corals. Post the results here. I also highly suggest dosing vitamin C. How's your skimmer working?

Pufferpunk wrote:I wanted to remind you to start testing for alk, Ca & Mg, now that you have all those corals. Post the results here. I also highly suggest dosing vitamin C. How's your skimmer working?

The only thing that is keeping me from testing those is that my package is in the process of being shipped. I believe the estimated arrival date is the 19th.
It contains the test kits for alk, mag, cal, and my new powerheads.I certainly wouldn't think the levels could be that low, not yet anyway. Since I've been doing the water changes at least once a week and sometimes more often here in the last couple weeks because of nitrates. They were reading at 25 after the water change yesterday. I'm preparing more water for another change. I still haven't figured out what got the levels up like that in the first place but increasing the water changes has been bringing them down slowly.

I still have to read that article on Vitamin C, I know I saw it on this site somewhere, it slipped my mind after the last time vitamin C was mentioned.

I believe the skimmer is doing a great job, at least it looks that way to me but it being my first experience with a skimmer who knows. Its the Reef Octopus BH2000 and rated for 100 gallons on the BRS site. It started producing skimmate almost immediately. There was some diatoms starting to form in a couple areas and since I had the time I went ahead and cleaned it out last night. I also removed the last sponge that was residing in the skimmer, it was nasty so I'm sure that didn't help with the nitrates.

Just took this photo and the skimmer was cleaned early yesterday morning.

Pufferpunk wrote:Zoas?

They've all been on rocks actually.

PufferMe! wrote:

defool89 wrote:I love LED lights. Check out http://www.reefbrite.com/

I would suggest the Led strips. I have one on my FW tank and its stunning. I want to. do a reef tank just because ive seen how they treat corals. My 48" light cov er s the 51" tank fully with no
black spots, great effect and I paid 250$ for mine. Yours would be cheaper

I have both blue and white LED lights and my hard and soft corals are growing very well. Everything I've heard it's the way most are going, for many reasons. Just my 2 cents

Mine has both blue and white also.

They were reading at 25 after the water change yesterday. I'm preparing more water for another change. I still haven't figured out what got the levels up like that in the first place but increasing the water changes has been bringing them down slowly.

You may already know this, but here was my experience with nitrates. Despite lots of LR, I too was getting nitrate readings of 40ppm after only a week past a WC. I was dreading this, because of the expense of salt etc. Even after a WC my nitrates were like yours at 25. I met this great, knowledgeable person who explained to me why. I got rid of my canister filter (the worst of all apparently) and my HOB, and got a tank with a refugium. He told me to not put any bio balls, sponges of any type, and only run it with LR in the chamber and chato algae. It was like magic. Even moving my substrate over, I still have readings of 0 nitrates, after 5 weeks. I've still have not done a WC I'm feeding everyday now, and before I was feeding every other day. Plus I've added two fish! Think about what you can keep in your filters beside sponges. They are nitrate factories

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Excellent advice!

VITAMIN C DOSING CHART
Here are the directions:
Use this product:
http://www.iherb.com/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=10178&at=0
$10 off coupon code: LUL789


To figure out how much to use, decide if you want to simply improve coral growth, spread, and color. If so, then you should dose around 5 ppm twice daily (down to 2-3 ppm works also). If you are having problems with coral or fish health, dose up to around 30 ppm twice daily.

Calculate the total net number of gallons in your tank (minus rocks, sand, etc). Enter that number here ______.

You will now need to do a little math. The amounts below are for 100 gallons of water so if you have 50 net gallons, cut the amounts shown below in half etc.

Dosing amounts using Iherb product:
1/4 tsp=1112 mg.

For every 100 gallons:

5 ppm ----- 1892 mg VC
10 ppm ---- 3785 mg VC
15 ppm ---- 5677 mg VC
20 ppm ---- 7570 mg VC
25 ppm ---- 9462 mg VC
30 ppm ---- 11355 mg VC

After you have figured out how much you want to dose at each dosing, enter that number here _____. This is your dose to be used twice a day.

Notes:
*Be sure your pH and alk are within normal reef limits before starting. Adjust if needed. Monitor weekly.
*Shoot for a ppm of around 5 or lower if only dosing for improved coral growth, coloration, and spread, also for better health/coloration of your fish. Shoot for higher amounts up to 30 ppm if you are having melting zoas or closed zoas and look for the causes of your problems as you dose. Higher doses of as much as 100ppm (for about 2 weeks) for fish illness. Check for high nitrates, pests, zoa pox, predators, and unstable water conditions.
*Dose low amounts and increase the amount slowly over the course of a few days to a couple weeks.
* If you notice an algae bloom (white stringy stuff) or increased scum on your glass then cut back by half until it disappears.
* Watch your skimmer, it will start to skim more.
* Dose the amount twice a day in a fast moving area of your sump or overflow. You may dilute the vitamin c in ro/di water then pour into overflow. If adding to sump, try and add the vitamin c after filtration such as skimmers and reactors. *Keep your Vitamin C bottle in the refrigerator. * If you have a question, ask here. I do my best to check these threads daily.
* The instructions in this guide and throughout this thread are based on using pure Sodium Ascorbate, not vitamin c pills and other non-buffered forms of vitamin c.

Be sure to take some "before" pics!