29 gal FOWLR, eventual reef

**Dave66** · 02-26-2012, 06:37 AM

NSW = Natural Sea Water.

And it is true, the clams can metabolize the Nitrate, removing the last two Oxygen atoms from it, resulting in Nitrogen gas.

Dave

**Ashurbarnipal** · 02-26-2012, 03:48 PM

Oh, I took some pics of my tank after I adjusted the light a bit.

Does this look right to you, labnjab?

**Ashurbarnipal** · 02-28-2012, 03:36 AM

So I went ahead and ordered a crocea from Live Aquaria. Also got a bunch of kent liquid calcium.

Gonna test daily for calcium for a while, lol.

This is the specific one I got. What's the ideal nitrate range for one this young? (it's two inches) I know it's low, but I've heard they actually like SOME trates in the tank.

**labnjab** · 02-28-2012, 04:02 AM

Ive always had 0 nitrate and our clams have always done great, even the small ones.

The lights look a lot better, not quite the same as mine but it could be your camera too. I thing if you remove the wood resting on the tank, our trim it down a lot, youll get rid of some of tge shadows.

I found an android phone takes the most accurate picture if you turn the white balance to cloudy

**Ashurbarnipal** · 02-28-2012, 04:06 AM

I had my whites set to fluorescent 3. Using a sony cybershot. 10 megapixels.

I'll try taking some pics with the settings on cloudy tomorrow, see how that comes out.

Also, you can't really see it, but I sanded down that wood thing you're talking about around where the lights are, but maybe I didn't sand it enough, I dunno. Either way, I'm happy with how it looks now, so long as the light works as labeled.

I mean, it should get 500 par at the bottom of the tank!

**Cliff** · 02-28-2012, 05:21 AM

Just a word of advice, if your going to start testing and dosing for calcium, you might also want to start testing for alkalinity and magnesium. The reason being is that if your calcium gets to high, it can actually lower your alkalinity. When calcium and alkalinity become greatly unbalanced, it can stress out corals and clams alike. Magnesium will help to maintain your calcium and alkalinity stable which will also help to keep your PH more stable as well

I'm sorry if this was already mentioned in you journal but I just missed it.

**Ashurbarnipal** · 02-28-2012, 02:22 PM

Oh yeah, I don't intend to start dosing unless it falls under 400 ppm. Thanks for the advice, though. I'll be sure to keep an eye on alkalinity too!

Currently I don't have a solid magnesium supplement, but I do dose coral-vite once a week right after my water changes, do you think that's enough?

**hockeyhead019** · 02-28-2012, 03:19 PM

definitely be careful dosing those three haha dose in very small increment so that you can add a little and monitor to see how they react, don't do anything crazy until you've gotten your feet wet here (pun intended lol)

other than that I like that color look to the tank!

**Ashurbarnipal** · 02-28-2012, 04:10 PM

Yeah, I always try to dose in very small amounts. Learned that with discus, lol.

**hockeyhead019** · 02-28-2012, 05:02 PM

This is in response to a couple posts ago lol....

Have you looked at the cost of a calc reactor? They're rather expensive imo... I'd be careful you don't go too deep too fast to be honest... have fun with you're tank now and learn it well before you start introducing a bunch of different variables and things to manage

More things to manage means a steeper learning curve meaning more chance for a crash and nobody wants to see that happen to anybody.

Just some words of advice since I sense a little be of impulse excitement since things are going well with your tank lol... however if I'm wrong and you've looked into all of this just make sure you keep in mind that calc effects other params and too much calc is bad. Dosing pumps w/ a controller are the more bang for your buck from what I've read. Take a look at Cliff's journal/blog he has some info up there that might be helpful