20L setup

[mredman]

To verify accuracy, fill a one or two gallon bucket with water. Then add salt until you achieve a specific gravity of 1.025. Then test this water for calcium and magnesium. If you achieve the same off-balance measurements, then you likely have a bad test kit. Another possibility most of us don't like is "pilot error". Are you certain you are following the proper directions and using proper reagents?

Mike

[mredman]

Another idea is to take your water to your LFS. They can also test the water. Mike

[mredman]

Keep in mind your LFS may be less sophisticated than you think and they only test for specific gravity.

Mike

[Crush]

I'm fairly certain. With the API kit you only have two bottles. That one is really tough to screw up. I'll try out your suggestion but this time I will also test calcium with the API kit the same time.

[Crush]

I do see your point, the Red Sea kit can easily be goofed up

[Crush]

I either go to fish gallery or that aquarium place.

[Crush]

I just tested with both kits.
api ca test=340
red sea ca test=200
while they both are reading differently the Red Sea was reading consistently

[Crush]

Mike I just tried your suggestion. I mixed up two gallons and tested with the Red Sea kit and got 420 for calcium. Since I mixed some salt I went ahead and did a two gallon water change. I'm thinking of dosing, it would be easier than constant water changes. I would really like to find the cause of the drop though.

[Crush]

Got the koralia nano 240's in today. Installed only one of them, that's all it needed. I'm a happy camper, and so are the fish. I also removed some frags from their plugs and got them glued to the live rock. I couldn't help myself and picked up two heads of torch coral and 3 heads of frog spawn. They look stunning waving around. I would post pics but photobucket is having issues.

[Crush]

[Crush]

Early morning pics, zoas havnt even had their coffee yet...lol

[nvy]

What white putty did u use?


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[ptran]

Cute!

[Crush]

I used fluval epoxy stick

[Crush]

been a bit of a rough week, it seems the frogspawn had brown jelly creeping up one of the smaller heads. By the time I figured out what was going on all the heads of the frogspawn were infected. We lost two heads and almost lost the big head, I managed to use the power head to blow the jelly off. That did the trick however that may have been the demise of the torch coral. lost both heads of the torch coral yesterday morning, though I did not see brown jelly growing on it. It just receded and the arms just started rotting away. that happened in one day, I don't understand that one. Iv kept a pretty close eye on things and checked perams constantly but I missed something. One thing I will now do in the future is dip the coral before adding them. Its expensive to loose coral that costs 20 a head not to mention it was irresponsible of me to not take that precaution. Luckily no other coral was affected, all of them yesterday were looking really good. the zoo's are multiplying and the brain coral is spreading. Did a water change the day before yesterday and calcium rebounded to 420 but then yesterday it dropped back down to 400. Every time I do a water change I clean the filters and this time I left out the carbon just to see how that affects the perams overnight. I wondered if the carbon was removing calcium from the water, from what I can tell it does not remove any calcium. something else is soaking it up. I picked up some liquid calcium by kent to dose till I can troubleshoot where the calcium is going.