About to ditch ZEOvit!

[malx]

Hi, All.

So just a quick status here. Pulled the reactor last friday and the nitrates crept up to 5. Phosphates are still 0 but my plating montipora looks like it's getting its color back. Going to keep doing what I'm doing and see where I'm at after the week.

[jda]

The phosphates are likely binding to the aragonite. Lots of people get fooled here and think that they don't have any - you have some. Keep on with your water changes to export them. If you stay on the water changes, then the aragonite will never stay full - your water change will lower them (a bit) and the aragonite will release them back to equilibrium.

Eventually, the aragonite will fill up. This is no bueno, as you can imagine. Doing water changes regularly and early is key to long-term success.

I am glad to hear that stuff is looking better.

[malx]

Originally Posted by jda

The phosphates are likely binding to the aragonite. Lots of people get fooled here and think that they don't have any - you have some. Keep on with your water changes to export them. If you stay on the water changes, then the aragonite will never stay full - your water change will lower them (a bit) and the aragonite will release them back to equilibrium.

Eventually, the aragonite will fill up. This is no bueno, as you can imagine. Doing water changes regularly and early is key to long-term success.

I am glad to hear that stuff is looking better.

Thank you for the tip! Yes, it's very easy for me to do 6% water changes every 3 days because of how I make my salt. I know it's not much but that's what I'm going to do for now until I have another problem because it appears like things are stabilizing.

Cheers,
Joey

[mike810]

Originally Posted by Horace

I think you are thinking about this wrong. You dont remove filtration because you have too much. There really is no such thing. You just ADD FOOD. More food equals more growth. The more/better filtration you have, the more you can feed while keeping Po4/No3 in check. Just feed more....its pretty simple man. You are overthinking this.

There is such a thing as too much filtration, Zeovit is very good at stripping the water of all nutrients. Then you have to feed a sh*t ton of food just to get some nutrients back into the tank.

[malx]

Originally Posted by mike810

There is such a thing as too much filtration, Zeovit is very good at stripping the water of all nutrients. Then you have to feed a sh*t ton of food just to get some nutrients back into the tank.

Yeah and also I have an Omega 150 Skimmer and a Rollermat so the ZEO reactor is really unneeded. I could still use the products if they yield benefit with out the reactor but since I pulled it, I had more space for 20 more lbs of live rock which can only help.

[purplereef]

I love your tank malx. I was a former zeo user.

[malx]

Originally Posted by purplereef

I love your tank malx. I was a former zeo user.

Thanks. I wish my corals liked better but you love and learn!


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[Lord,Darth Bane]

I have been using zeolite methods (Zeovit and Neozeo) since the very early years about 10 years ago but I ditched them all and went back to simple Berlin method in 2012.

They did work very well to clean the water (and deplete all nutrients) and you have to keep adding them back (AA, food, K, B, St, I).....just too complex and time consuming. I have had a time that I didn't keep up the nutrient level, then many corals such as SPS and LPS went terribly pale. I spent about 8 months to have it recovered.

Now I only use skimmer and Ca reactor, and the Prodibio to add bateria and carbon source every 14 days. Some food and additives of course. But much more simple and easy.

[ryanrid]

Here is the last zero tank

[malx]

Originally Posted by ryanrid

Here is the last zero tank

Looks great!


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[Randy27]

Gorgeous aquascape! A big green slimer stag would look great in there, just slightly off-center

[malx]

Hi, Everyone.

Hope everyone is doing good. Corals are holding on and I'm seeing some growth. Small amounts of hair algae, and cyano which is good!

Attached is a Triton test and you can see that my phosphates are around 0.015.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3_...lxeEd3dlk/view

Here is my current dosing:


3 Drops ZEOBak Every Other Day
3 Drops Sponge Power Every Other Day
2ml K+ Strong Every Other Day
And
3 Drops Coral Vitalizer Every Day

5ml Coral Snow + 5 Drops Cyano Clean 1x Weekly
1.2tsb ZEO Zym + 5 Drops Bio Mate 1x Weekly.

Going to do this for another few weeks and see how the corals do.

Now I don't want to go and treat any numbers, but if anyone looks at that Triton test and sees anything they would change let me know!

Thanks!
Joey

[malx]

Well, my friggin corals are at it again and starting to Pale. Luckily this time I noticed. Not sure what to do. My nitrates are 5 and phosphates are .05. I should be in the sweet spot for SPS. The only thing I can think of is that I got a professional water test and the Iodine in my tank is minimal. Anyone think adding iodine will help?

Let me know!

[jda]

Dr Holmes Farley has opined that iodine, in it's many forms, does not really do anything. He used to dose it and quit and never noticed anything. That being said, if you dose the right kind in the right concentration, then you cannot probably hurt anything... just get a test kit. You will get some anecdotal posts that iodine helped some folks and plenty more that it did not do much - however, you really need to find out what kind that they dosed because some kinds get skimmed right away, others bound to organics and never used and other kinds will float around for possible use.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2003/3/chemistry

Just changing a bit more water will bring this back to normal. It will also reload your iron which the chaeto probably depleted a bit.

The sweet spot for SPS is NSW parameters, IMO. I know that some folks like to raise nutrients, but I get the absolutely best color out of .01N and .005P, or very close to natural seawater. I would never let my P get over .01.

Like I have kinda posted before, you are going to need to pick a method and go with with. If you want to go pure Berlin, then stop dosing stuff, change your water and let the tank be and bring that fuge back online to get those nutrients down. If you want to go Zeo and add in nutrients and also carbon, then go full scale and do it 100%. Nobody can really ride two horses with one arse. I am not sure what you are doing now, so my apologies if you have done something like this.

Lastly, remember that young tanks do have ups and downs... so until you get to a year or more, then this might just be a blip and you might want to just push right through it. It might take even more than a year for a tank like yours with minimalistic rocks to get really stable with anoxic and oxic zones in the rock and sand to keep the N on the money all of the time.

[Lord,Darth Bane]

Do you have any recent photos? Both main tank and sump? The old photos links on Zeovit forum do not work anymore....

IMO you need to rebuild the N-cycle in your tank. If you ditch Zeovit then you need to rebuild your tank in Berlin way. From your last photos on Zeovit forum you have too few live rocks for a Berlin system. You have to give the bacteria some media to grow after you ditch the Zeolite reactor. Try to add a few fresh live rocks, and perhaps 2L Sera Siporax in the sump.

My main tank is the same size or yours, 36"x20"x20". I have more live rocks than yours and about 5L of good media in the sump (Sera Siporax, Eheim Substrat, etc)

A mature system would have 0 (undetectable) NO3 without keep dosing carbon and bateria. Dosing carbon does help, but it cannot replace N-cycle in a mature system. All you have to do is wait, and be patient. In the old school way it was advised that corals can only be added after running a new tank for 3 months, but the Zeovit way said only 14 days. lol

And think about if there is any unnecessary dosing that you can stop. Personally I will only keep CV, or maybe SP and Zeobak. And stop all the others.

3 Drops ZEOBak Every Other Day
3 Drops Sponge Power Every Other Day
2ml K+ Strong Every Other Day
And
3 Drops Coral Vitalizer Every Day

5ml Coral Snow + 5 Drops Cyano Clean 1x Weekly
1.2tsb ZEO Zym + 5 Drops Bio Mate 1x Weekly.

[Sam2832]

My setup is quite simple: dosing, +- 10 gal water change per week, some bacteria over the last year (newly cured rock) and lately flatworm stop to give a boost to the acros and coral snow to clear the water.I do run a small amount of rowa and passive carbon.My sump is really basic with no divider.


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[malx]

Thanks all for the advice. Currently my dosing has been basically reduced some of the basics of ZEOvit.

3 drops ZEObak every other day
3 Drops Sponge Power every other day
3 drops aminos and coral vitalizer each day
ZeoFood twice weekly

I added live rock to my sump when I pulled the reactor. I'm running about 30lbs of it right now in a 56 gallon tank.

I got a professional water test and the only thing that looked off was Iodine


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[malx]

Originally Posted by malx

Thanks all for the advice. Currently my dosing has been basically reduced some of the basics of ZEOvit.

3 drops ZEObak every other day
3 Drops Sponge Power every other day
3 drops aminos and coral vitalizer each day
ZeoFood twice weekly

I added live rock to my sump when I pulled the reactor. I'm running about 30lbs of it right now in a 56 gallon tank.

I got a professional water test and the only thing that looked off was Iodine.

My iron could be low too it's at near zero. Will post pics of corals and sump soon


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[malx]

Pics..



















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[Bpb]

Originally Posted by Sam2832

My setup is quite simple: dosing, +- 10 gal water change per week, some bacteria over the last year (newly cured rock) and lately flatworm stop to give a boost to the acros and coral snow to clear the water.I do run a small amount of rowa and passive carbon.My sump is really basic with no divider.


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I'm really enjoying your light spectrum in that pic. Did you white balance it digitally to warm it up or are you running that low Kelvin or lighting? It looks fantastic.


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[Sam2832]

Thanks Bpb!I'm old school for the lighthing,still running mh+t5.2 x 250 w de megachrome coral,2 actinic+ 54w,1 actinic 54 w,1 aquapink(for the sump only headlamp lol).

[mike810]

If I were you, I'd cease all dosing of zeovit until your corals stop with their stn. You might even find that your corals might look better without the zeovit system. This was the case for me. I tried all the blue bottles along with the zeolite rocks. The system was just so so and to me was considered a failure. I started neglecting the tank and ceased all dosing, after a month or two of neglect, corals looked better than it ever did while on zeovit.

Edit: I'd also make sure your parameters, especially alkalinity is as stable as possible throughout the day.

[Lord,Darth Bane]

System looks great, though your rocks look very clean. Those newly added live rocks in your sump, how fresh were they?

May or may not be the cause for pale corals, but I would add a few FRESH live rocks to seed them. I wouldn't hurt either.

Your red digitata looks great, but the monti looks pale/grey. Or is it just the photo?

If you are uncomfortable of your iodine level I'd try dosing and start with a little amount. Or maybe arrange a few bigger water change to correct it.

Stop adding new corals and wait for your system to mature and handle your current loading first.

Currently I am also raising my NO3 from 0 to 5ppm. Some SPS do look better but some have less PE. It has only been a week and we should wait and see.

[malx]

Originally Posted by Lord,Darth Bane

System looks great, though your rocks look very clean. Those newly added live rocks in your sump, how fresh were they?



May or may not be the cause for pale corals, but I would add a few FRESH live rocks to seed them. I wouldn't hurt either.



Your red digitata looks great, but the monti looks pale/grey. Or is it just the photo?



If you are uncomfortable of your iodine level I'd try dosing and start with a little amount. Or maybe arrange a few bigger water change to correct it.



Stop adding new corals and wait for your system to mature and handle your current loading first.



Currently I am also raising my NO3 from 0 to 5ppm. Some SPS do look better but some have less PE. It has only been a week and we should wait and see.

Thanks. The rocks in the sump are fresh live rock that are a combination of a year old and a few months. The rock in the tank looks clean because I have an urchin that goes to town on them. Yes the monti is pale... that's part of the problem!


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[Lord,Darth Bane]

I'd also try dosing potassium. Just read your Triton test that it was a bit low at 356ppm. My tank is battling SPS paleness as well and G. Alexander suggested me to check K. I just checked it yesterday to find it at only 320ppm.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2646708