James' 120 Gal Reef Trials and Tribulations

A few days ago I decided I wanted a DSLR. After a little bit of research (hopefully enough I won't regret my purchase,) I bought a Nikon D90 kit, with the 18-105 AF-S VR lens. I know next to nothing about photography, but I really thing this will be something I can enjoy for a long time to come. I originally set out to buy something like a d60 or Canon XSI, but after holding the d90 in my hands and snapping off a few shots I fell in love. It seemed very user friendly, felt nice and sturdy, and nearly all the reviews I can find on the camera are good. In the past 2 days I have snapped off somewhere around 400 photos. I could post those but today I remembered the video feature, and decided to make a tank video. The video does not have autofocus so I dont plan on using it much as it is nearly useless. But the camera takes tank videos just fine, as long as I don't try to zoom in and out or move the camera around. I am uploading to youtube now. It's a half a gig so its taking a while to upload, I'll post it here when its done. But for right now I need to do some d90 manual reading.

 

I am still trying to figure out how to upload a video to youtube in HD.

Last week I tested phosphate, something I have actually never tested for, and never even worried about. I saw my glass getting a nice thin layer of algae every 2 days so I thought phosphates may be a bit high. Well yes indeed they were high, somewhere between 1.0 and 3.0 (salifert makes you guess in between there). I bought a phosban reactor and some rowaphos, I received it 2 days ago and installed it. After 2 days it is already down to somewhere between .03 and .10 (again a guessing game between those values.) I hope this doesn't shock the corals too bad, it is a good thing yes but shock is still stressful.

I also Purchased two icecap e-ballasts and reeflux 20k bulbs to go in my lumenbrights. They are less blue than I expected, but I also read reviews beforehand where people said they looked about the same as the 12k. Which they do, basically exactly like the 12k. I also took down the 250w DE pendant with the phoenix bulb in it. I think the 2 lumenbrights with the 20k reeflux's will do just fine without the other 250w bulb I had running with the 175w 12k's. Time will tell. I connected one of the 20ks to the older blueline ballast for a day to compare colors with the blueline ballast vs. icecap. The icecap ballast burns the bulb much more white and crisp. It is a good look IMO, but I did expect they would be a bit more blue. With the blueline ballast, they were dimmer and a little more blue. The next day I hooked up both to icecap ballasts now it is burning exactly the same brightness and color as the other icecap.

After a little more reading of my owners manual of the d90 I hope to be taking some amazing pics soon, which my acrylic as in better shape, been debating alot more lately about using the Everclear Magnet Kit that I bought when I got the tank used.

 

This is the best I could do, be sure to click the link on the bottom right corner to "watch in HQ" also if you click the video it will take you to youtube where you can view full screen in HQ. It is still not that great quality, I can't upload it without compressing, deinterlacing, and lowering the bitrate.

 

Big problems lately. A few weeks ago my GSP died off, well it closed up and hasn't opened again yet so I am going to say its dead and not returning. Also my green acro rapidly died, over about a 3 day span all the tissue receded. A few days later my toadstool leather and colt finger leather won't open. It's been about 3 days now, and the toadstool tried to open today but decided not to come out.

All this happend after adding a phosphate reactor and a carbon reactor, I wonder if it was shock of the phosphates going from around 3.0 down to nearly 0 over less than a weeks time.

Also to note, before I added the phosphate and carbon reactors, one month ago I added a new skimmer octopus pro 300. My tank went from getting skimmed very very very poorly to the new skimmer skimming everything out of my tank (probably including some of my trace elements that I would like to keep.)

After adding my skimmer I slowly started to see my cheato die off, I didn't think anything could kill cheato. Now I have very little cheato left in my fuge trying to hang on. But without the excess nutrients in the water its malnourished, good thing??? Well maybe, but too much of a good thing could be bad. I could be skimming off more than I want to. Plus now my pods dont have a place to live because all their cheato is gone, it was really turning into a pod factory now I can barely see any. So recently after advice from tangster I cut back the skimmer to skim the driest skimmate I can get and still actually get skimmate.

Where am I now? Nitrates and phosphates are undetectable. Alk is a bit high 12-13dkh (I cut back the co2 to my cal RX), calcium 450, ph 8.3 at lights off 8.1 in the morning. Last week I did a 15 percent water change, doing another 15 percent tonight.