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Coronal Mass Ejection Carl

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Everything posted by Coronal Mass Ejection Carl

  1. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Sorry, but people ARE dosing well above 2 (or even 4) ppm nitrate in reef tanks. One of many examples: You're relying on a study on salmonids where 443 ppm nitrate had some effects on one species. How do you go from that to arguing that 20 ppm will cause nitrate intoxication in most/all other species? There are people who start with >20 ppm in their tap water and have been keeping fish for a long time. Eggs (which are much more sensitive to nitrate than adults or even fry) were exposed to 100 and 125 mg/L NO3-N (443 to 533 ppm nitrate) for 3 months. Yet that somehow supports keeping adults of most/all species at levels below 20 ppm. OK... Here's a handy list that doesn't include recent studies: Nitrates Toxic? WWW.AQUATICPLANTCENTRAL.COM Aquatic Plant Central I would also cite Camargo whose table of LC50s for fish has many well over 1,000 NO3-N which is >4,400 ppm nitrate. In Nitrate level safety to Amazon River shrimp juveniles, the maximum recommended chronic exposure is set to 10% of 96-hr LC50. That results in numbers in the hundreds, not 20 ppm. Sorry, but I never heard of your website until now. Speaking of studies to back up every point, let's go over your article with a fine toothed comb: This is just an opinion and not one every hobbyist would agree with. I'm sure plenty of people have kept those fish above 10 ppm for extended periods. This diagram is incorrect. The vast majority of nitrogen excretion is ammonia diffusion through the gills not ammonium. Huh? Make up your mind. Plenty of reef tanks are doing fine with nitrate >2 ppm. Citation, please. Gills, not skin. Seachem Stability is not a remineralization product.
  2. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Probably well over 400 ppm. The Davidson study using Atlantic salmon grew two groups at 44 and 443 ppm nitrate for 8 months. There was no difference in feed conversion rate, mortality, or bloodwork.
  3. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    The numbers from that article are whack. Below 2 ppm for reef aquariums? People are dosing nitrate well beyond that in reef tanks. As evidence it cites a study where rainbow trout exhibit "side swimming" at 100 mg/L nitrate-N or 443 ppm nitrate and calls this swim bladder disorder. It's not the same thing. The author of that study said certain variables such as potassium levels weren't controlled. A few years later a similar but more thorough study is performed using Atlantic salmon and he noted that none of the side swimming or other abnormal behavior occurred. There's also no evidence for the claims that nitrate levels can cause spinal deformities. The nitrate LC50 for most fish species is in the thousands (4,000-8,000). Chronic exposure limits are usually determined by taking 10% of that value.
  4. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Envision Acrylics WWW.ENVISIONACRYLICS.COM Envision Acrylics is an acrylic fabrication shop specializing in kreisel tanks, aquariums, vitrines, and museum cases. We are a full service acrylics shop They're considered the best. I reached out to a certain outfit in the midwest first but they didn't seem to really want my business. They expected me to know exactly what I wanted but I haven't designed 300 gal aquariums before so some input would have been nice...but no.
  5. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Well, kanamycin is supposed to be dosed at 50-100 mg/L per Noga's Fish Disease and Diagnosis book. Kanaplex is 31.7% kanamycin so to get to 50 mg/L requires almost 6 g per 10 gal. If treating with metronidazole every other day, the dose is 25 mg/L (also per Noga) or 946 mg per 10 gal. API's instructions are one packet (250 mg) per 10 gal every 48 hrs.
  6. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Most of the recommended doses are lower than what's recommended in veterinary literature. Kanamycin is under-dosed 17X in Kanaplex. Metronidazole is under-dosed almost 4X in GC. I don't think there's a point to removing medications after the treatment is concluded. Most drugs have a limited lifespan in aquatic environments so they'll disappear on their own. If the goal is an abrupt drop from therapeutic levels to zero then the fish need dialysis because plasma concentration, not water concentration, is what you need to focus on.
  7. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    I recently bought an AC powered vacuum off of Amazon made by Upettools and it works well for vacuuming bare bottom tanks. It would probably work equally well on sand.
  8. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    The Eheim one is weak. It might be able to suck up debris off a bare bottom tank or sand but you can't really vacuum gravel.
  9. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Step 2: go to sci-hub's Wikipedia page to get the latest URL. Step 3: enter the article's DOI to bypass the paywalls.
  10. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    In the US we spend a bunch of money on medications that don't work.
  11. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Oh yeah, each test method has an MDL (minimum detection level). My Hach colorimeter's method for ammonia has a limit of 0.01 mg/L. It's much more sensitive than API in that it will be dark green at 0.5 mg/L. The hope is that the MDL is lower than what's dangerous to the fish. That's why the 0.25 mg/L reading that a lot of people normally get with the API is so aggravating. Is it 0.25 or is it less? 0.25 could be harmful at higher pH. Or maybe your tank is at a lower pH but your bio filter is on the brink of malfunctioning and you don't know if the 0.25 is an early warning or not.
  12. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Yeah, >100% is definitely possible but with an air stone at <1 meter depth the steady state dissolved oxygen level should be no higher than 100%. My tap water comes out of the tap at around 120% (and I'm sure it's not just oxygen but nitrogen and every other atmospheric gas). I did measure oxygen levels in my water change water storage barrel once. My usual process is to fill it with cold tap water, plug in a few heaters, add dechlorinator, plug in a circulation pump, loosely cover the barrel and wait for it to reach 75-78 F. Even with all that I noticed it took about 24 hours to go down from 120% to 100%. Since you recently filled the tanks they may be supersaturated in a similar fashion. I would continue heating and aerating them and see if the oxygen levels decline to some steady state level that's ~100%. Do you have fish in the tanks? If not, that's when I would acclimate the fish to the tanks. You do need some oxygen demand otherwise there may not be significant differences in oxygenation methods. I'll be doing a water change in 1-2 weeks. I would sometimes measure dissolved oxygen because I found that levels could get quite low quite quickly especially when water levels were low. My plan is to water change like normal but wait and see if steady state oxygen levels can be achieved at various water depths. I normally refill in stages using a pump on a timer in the aforementioned barrel in the basement. I might be able to get some steady state oxygen levels vs. water depth data from this. Several things could go wrong though. My fish panic when the water level is too low but usually settle down when it's >6" deep. Also, if the oxygen levels get too low I'll have to turn on the oxygen concentrator.
  13. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Isn't 13.2 mg/L over 100% saturation? I can't get anywhere near that. My main tank was dipping below 4 mg/L during some parts of the day and struggling to get over 5 mg/L despite a wet/dry filter that should be one of the best types of filters in terms of oxygenation. Dissolved oxygen was between 6 and 6.3 mg/L after adding the air stone, Temperature ~77.5 F.
  14. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Safe Start and clinoptilolite zeolite would be my choice. I don't trust Prime to detoxify ammonia. Also test pH since a low pH or kH will stall your cycle.
  15. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Stability contains heterotrophic bacteria instead of true nitrifying bacteria so it's no surprise that I often hear of it not working or even prolonging the cycle.
  16. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    I might be able to get some data during my next water change. I usually drain the water down until the backs of the biggest fish are exposed. I thought about just raising the air stone during normal operations but it would probably involve kinking the air tubing and add uncertainty to the experiment. My fish do panic when the water level is too low so some data points might to be disregarded. It's not a lot of extra work though as all I have to do is calibrate the probe before the water change.
  17. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    One of my UPS packages was out for delivery and then went dark for a week before being rescheduled for delivery and actually being delivered. Two of my Amazon orders also got lost at the same time. There are dry format pH calibration buffers. I believe they have longer shelf lives. They certainly take up less space. You mix them up with 50-100 mL of distilled water when you need them. pH 10 solution has the shortest shelf life so if a 2-point calibration is all you need that's the one to skip.
  18. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    12.6 mg/L dissolved oxygen? What's the water temperature?
  19. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Americans typically use 80-100 gal per person per day which dwarfs what most people's tanks use. I have a toilet float valve that sometimes doesn't shut off. I bet that wastes more water than my tanks use. You could always use old tank water to flush toilets.
  20. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Water is usually a fraction of a cent per gallon. If you changed 115 gal/week at 0.4 cents per gallon that's less than $2/month.
  21. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Fish uptake calcium and magnesium from the water. It might not be a good idea to place them in unnatural water where calcium and magnesium have largely been replaced with sodium.
  22. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Might need a slate bottom tank but glass might work. Acrylic, definitely not.
  23. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Ammonia is never really zero, just lower than what your particular test is capable of detecting. For API, the limit seems to be around 0.05 mg/L. Left: distilled water Right: 0.05 mg/L aquarium water The same water with a Hach test. And it will read it for you, too (0.04 NH3-N is 0.05 NH3 mg/L).
  24. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Calibrated digital thermometers are $200-600 and require annual recalibration that costs $150-400. I think a high quality glass thermometer only needs recalibration once though. Probably about $800 total.
  25. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    So this isn't how they're supposed to work?
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