Sunday, April 19, 2009

I have finally found the cause of the chaos in my reef: The skimmer overflowed and caused a large salinity increase which screwed up my ATO (automatic top-off). The salinity increase caused a calcium and alk precipitation. I tested today and my results were not good.

Salinity: 1.025 (I got it back to normal)
Nitrate: 0
Calcium: 325 (was 450 when I left)
Alkalinity: 4.5 (was 9 when I left)

When I got home here is what the tank looked like (I topped off though) (New anemones circled in red, but are hard to see as they moved into a cave.)
These results prove my theory correct. Surprisingly enough almost all the corals looked fine, maybe even good. I think the BTA split because of these changes, this is relatively common reason for a split. It has a better chance of surviving if it splits. It is currently recovering in a cave, which I hope it will emerge out of soon. I have significantly adjusted my dosing plan to raise the levels. I am both sad and happy over the split, but I am exited to see how it will turn out.
I have lots more news and some stuff that should be arriving this week that I will post about so stay tuned.
Here are some tank Pictures
Birdsnest:

M. spoggodas (need a spelling lesson in latin, not sure if I spelled it right).
A cool pic with my cool logo

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