Image: It's been another month.  The 400g has been running for 5 years and 7 months as of tomorrow. I've been dosing 40 ml of Nopox daily for 58 days. It looks like nitrate is finally approaching 10 ppm (looks like 15 ppm today via API), down from 50 ppm.  Phosphates measured .1 ppm (Elos) api-no3-15ppm.jpg Other parameters: 33.4 PPT (1.025sg) Hanna Alkalinity 9.45 dKH Trident  (Elos comparison 9.5 dKH) Calcium 496 ppm Trident (Elos comparison 400 ppm) Magnesium 1496 ppm Trident Elos comparison 1400 ppm) Temperature 79.7°F Apex pH 8.02 Apex ORP 33 ..read more

Image: Eight weeks ago, I installed the Trident automatic tester to my 400g reef. It is made for the Apex controller.  Four times a day, the machine whirrs to life and measures alkalinity, calcium and magnesium.  I tend to check the numbers constantly, and know the results are usually less than six hours old.  It's allowed me to be "lazy, yet informed" and I love it. With the information it provides, I can decide if I want to adjust the calcium reactor's internal pH level higher or lower. When the pH in the reactor is higher, it melts less media and reduces the dKH of the effluent. Conversely ..read more

Image: Years ago, our club's president handed me a coral dip sample from Fauna Marin.  Turned out to be gold in a vial but I couldn't get more of it.  I remember it working so well, but I figured it must have been a one-time thing that picked up zero traction and never made it to market.  Fast forward a decade or more, I stumbled upon one of those vials in my massive aquarium-related stash of things. I was in cleaning-mode and threw out a lot of stuff that I'd been hoarding far too long, due to my "what if I need this some day?" mentality. Admittedly, I do that a lot.  And it has come in handy ..read more