Themastaa
Active Member
Hi my name is Robert. I am from south jersey outside of philadelphia. I am 30 just got back into the hobby this Christmas. Bought my girlfriend a Biocube32 we got the stand from Coralife and the protein skimmer. We are almost 3 week into having it setup. We used caribsea bahamas oolite as substrate 20lbs. We got cured live rock from out LFS(aquarium center Blackwood,NJ) 17 lbs. We are using the stock pump, koralia nano circulation pump(264 GPH). We have the protein skimmer and heater in chamber 1, chamber 2 chemipure blue 35gal, marine pure biofilter media gems, and bio pellets. The Coralife filter pad on top. We used 3 4.4gallon nutrisea and the rest instant ocean reef crystals for water. I mixed the instant ocean salt with distilled water since we have city water. Day 1 added sand rock water and api bacteria and a dead shrimp. Day 2 tank cleared ammonia 1ppm. Day 3 took shrimp out. Day 4 probably a dumb move but bought a clown from Petco. Started having problems with low ph starting 2nd week. May be from Biocube hood? 7.8ph. 2nd week ammonia went down from 4ppm to 1ppm and nitrites started to show 2ppm. Stood still for few days then end of week 2 cycle ended 0 ammonia 0 nitrites. 20 nitrates. Alk12 calcium 440. Mag 1340 phosphates 0 p.h 7.8 salt 1.025. I got my alk to 12 from p.h buffer trying to raise the ph did not know it raised the alk. We are keeping the tank at 78. After the the tank cycled I did a 10 gallon water change( instant ocean reef/distilled). Waited a few days checked water all was good alk went down to 10 calcium 440. I tested the p.h of the water I mixed before adding to the tank and it was 8.2 our tank water was 7.8. It did not change the p.h at all. 2 days after water change we got our first zoa frag, a baby orchid dotty back, and 1 electric blue hermit/ 1 blue hermit.(our clownfish is still alive and doing great) we also got red sea reef foundation abc+ and red sea coral color abcd for supplements. I been feeding the clown and dottyback pellets and mixed frozen brine/shrimp/pods occasionally. The coral, hermits and fish are doing great. Water still good 0 ammonia, nitrites, phosphates, although p.h 7.8 Went back 2 days ago got another zoa frag and gsp frag. All corals are opened and doing good. My current light schedule z1(blues)12pm-1am z2 2:30pm-9pm z3 4pm-9pm. We have brown algae and green starting to grow so I changed the light schedule. Hermits did a great job at cleaning the diatom algae. I plan on doing another 10 gallon water change this weekend changing the chemipure blue and adding more biopellets. I will post some pictures when I get home from work. Lol me and the girlfriend got addicted to reefing. Would like some advice concerning the 7.8 ph. We ordered some cheato algae in hopes that would help and I leave the feeding door open in case it was the hood causing the low ph. Also may want to do a sump/ refugium. Or we may decide to take the hood off and go with kessil led. Not sure yet. Any question or advice or criticism would be much appreciated, Thanks Robert and Lauren
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