May have made a mistake, worried.

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ThatNewFishGuy

ThatNewFishGuy

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I finally got my hands on the BRS dual media reactor. I went to the BRS site, used the calculator, and without thinking added the full recommended qauntities of GFO and carbon (which came out to about 23 tbsp of GFO and 9 tbsp of carbon for my 92 gallon tank). Im not too worried about the carbon but I have never used GFO before. Was I supposed to build my way up to 23 tbsp(about 2/3 of the canister)? It's been running for about a day. As of now the lights are off so I can't really tell about the corals. As far as my fish, my yellow tang is acting odd, he seems to be hanging around my bubble coral and then has these wierd, wild swimming bursts...

Couple questions, should I stop running the GFO? Can GFO or carbon sit in the reactor without water going through it or will it go bad?
 
greech

greech

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Yes, that is way too much to start with. I know there stuff is not as aggressive as others but I would recommend that you take that reactor offline ASAP and don;t turn it back on until you check your alkalinity. You should be ok with it only being on a day but it would not be a horrible idea to have some SW mixed up in case a WC is in order.

23 tbsps still sounds like a lot even if it isn't their high capacity GFO.
 
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ThatNewFishGuy

ThatNewFishGuy

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I've left the reactor off for now.

I did some param testing and have more questions now. I came up with an alk reading of 11.8 dkh. I think that is a little high. Is this because of the excess GFO?

I also did a calc and mg test. Calc came up as 400 ppm, Mg was so high that it was off the scale. I am using the Red Sea reef foundation test kit and for Mg it only goes up to 1600 ppm. Is this really high Mg level bad for the tank?

I dont understand how it's so high. I have never dosed any kind of supplement to the tank. I do water changes with instant ocean reef crystals but even then I dont understand why I have such a high Mg level.
 
greech

greech

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GFO did not cause that. If anything alk should have gone down, at least for a brief period before leveling off).

My first guess is that your specific gravity may be higher than you think it is. If you are not using a calibrated refractometer, I would suggest you take a sample of your water to someone that does have one. Hydrometers can be way off sometimes.

My 2nd guess would be that Mg is an error. Are you sure you followed the instuctions? The Mg test only needs 2 ml (some need 4 ml) of water. I have found that the color change to blue is best viewed top-down over a white piece of paper.

Alk is a little high but not terrible. As long as it is stable, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Again, this may be a result of a higher SG than what you are measuring. You do not have to buy a refractometer. All you need to do is test your water with a trusted instrument and your hydrometer at the same time. Once you know the difference, you can "mark" the desired value on your hydrometer. If you are using a refractometer, make sure its calibrated and test it again.
 
ThatNewFishGuy

ThatNewFishGuy

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greech said:
GFO did not cause that. If anything alk should have gone down, at least for a brief period before leveling off).

My first guess is that your specific gravity may be higher than you think it is. If you are not using a calibrated refractometer, I would suggest you take a sample of your water to someone that does have one. Hydrometers can be way off sometimes.

My 2nd guess would be that Mg is an error. Are you sure you followed the instuctions? The Mg test only needs 2 ml (some need 4 ml) of water. I have found that the color change to blue is best viewed top-down over a white piece of paper.

Alk is a little high but not terrible. As long as it is stable, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Again, this may be a result of a higher SG than what you are measuring. You do not have to buy a refractometer. All you need to do is test your water with a trusted instrument and your hydrometer at the same time. Once you know the difference, you can "mark" the desired value on your hydrometer. If you are using a refractometer, make sure its calibrated and test it again.
Click to expand...
WOW that would really stink if my hydrometer was giving me incorrect readings this whole time. Especially cause I'm careful to rinse and dry it out before I take another reading. I'm pretty sure I followed the directions as listed and I've had prior experience with titrating. Regardless, I'm gonna run all those tests again today just to see how precise I can be. I'll be sure to get a water sample to my LFS to see what they say.
 
greech

greech

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You could buy 4 new hydrometers of the same make and easily get 4 different readings. Some may be off by .003+. 1.025 on my hydrometer is actually at 1.0275. I had a lot of issue in the beginning as a result of this and I think this is a fairly common issue that gets overlooked. Every once in a while, I will take in a sample just to have it checked against my LFS's refractomter and I also have a friend that checks it for me too. I suppose I should buy one myself one day but this has worked for years :).

I actually hope this is your issue beacuse it is an easy fix. Just don't swing your SG to rapidly if there ends up being a significant enough of a difference.

When you are ready to restart the reactor, I would cut it in half. I know that BRS says that 23 tbsps is the recommended starting point but you couldn't get me to do it that quick. BRS is not going to pay for dead livestock. Also, keep in mind that you don't have 92 gallons of water in your tank due to displacement from the rocks. Do you have elevated PO4 currently or are you adding the reactor as a preventative?
 
ThatNewFishGuy

ThatNewFishGuy

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That's crazy that hydrometers can be that off. I thought as long as you kept it clean, they were pretty reliable and good to go. I havn't been able to get to my lfs yet but if its way different I just might buy a refractometer so I dont have to deal with the hydrometer becoming even further off or something like that.

Good point about the rock displacement. I dont have the PO4 test kit yet(debating weather I should get it or now, I've heard people say they're notoriously hard to use), but my tank was suffering from lots of nasty brown fuzzy algea everywhere. This was about 4 weeks ago. Since then, I've taken out alot of the rocks, opened up the back for more flow, used a turkey baster to blow off rocks before water changes, rinsed and strained the mysis before feeding...and I've seen some improvement. It's not completely taken care of though so that's when I decided to buy the reactor. Probably should have bought a while back as a preventative though :headshake2:
 
greech

greech

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The red sea and salifert tests are both titrations and not any harder to test for than the Mg.

Consider adding more flow and stop feeding mysis daily.
 
ThatNewFishGuy

ThatNewFishGuy

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Gotcha. Is there anything you recommend to feed on the days that I dont feed mysis?
 
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