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ZEOn00b - Advice needed.
Greetings!
I'm new to the forum and what a fascinating place it is! Seems I have the ZEObug and I'm ready to go but I need guidance from the sane and wise among you. Best I can tell is that you have to be careful or the tank'll be down the proverbial
This is the score....
1. Gross water volume of your complete system (incl. sump etc.) – 310 litres incl. sump
2. Net water volume (incl. sump etc.) – 260 litres (20% allowance made for live rock and sand in main tank)
3. Are you using a CaCO2 reactor or other technique – Korallin C1502 Ca reactor running ARM media and 10% Mg chips
4. Are you using a PO4 reactor (how long, how long ago, etc.) – Fluidised RowaPhos reactor – I’m thinking of converting it to a fluidised carbon reactor once ZEO is up and running but I see the recommendation is for passive use. What do you reckon?
5. Are you using Ozone – Used to 24/7, but now only 6 hrs/day. Will stop when ZEO starts.
6. Are you using UV - No
7. What skimmer are you using (type, rated water volume) – TurboFloator 1000 but, until only 3 months ago, a Berlin Classic which has now been sacrificed to the reef gods and reborn as a ZEO reactor
8. What are your actual PO4 and NO3 levels – PO4 @ 0.008 and NO3 undetectable
9. What are your actual Ca, Alk and Mg levels – Ca @ 420 ppm, Alk @ 9-10 dKH, Mg @ 1350 ppm
10. What filtration method do you use (refugium, DSB, Miracle Mud, etc.) – Live rock and 2 inch coarse aragonite sand in main tank, skimmer – that’s it.
11. Type of light (Watt, color temp, how old, etc.) – 2 x 150w 10K BLV’s (7 hrs/day) and 2 x 40w actinics (14 hrs/day) - all less than 3 months old
12. What corals do you keep – now mainly SPS with xenia, shrooms, gorgonia, a few LPS
13. Tissue color (light or dark) – dark-ish
14. How long has the tank been running – nearly 4 years
15. Why do you want to use the ZEOvit system – better colour, to tackle a bryopsis problem and manage NO3 & PO4 generally
16. Any supplemental dosing (type, amount, why, etc.) – 3 drops of Lugol’s per week. Erm….should I stop that?
17. Live rock (how much, how old, etc.) – 120 lbs mixed Fiji, Tampa Bay Saltwater and aragocrete, all about 4 years old
18. Any present problems – bryopsis, slow SPS growth, some acros slowly stripping from base (suspected combination of high dKH, pooled nutrients caused by the hopeless Berlin Classic, maybe lighting as the acros are in the middle of the tank, not directly under the halides) and, err, oh yeah… bryopsis again.
19. Problem description (tissue loss tips, tissue loss base, diatom bloom, algae, etc.) – See 18
20. What test kit do you use (how old, recently switched, etc.) – Salifert for Ca, Mg and dKH, Interpet tablets for NO3 and Merck for PO4 – all less than 3 months old
21. Present dosing, amounts and intervals (ZEOvit, ZEObak, ZEOfood, ZEOstart, ZEOspur2, etc.) – I have the basic 4 (incl. Start2) with the amino acid for SPS but not started dosing yet.
22. Other water parameters and water stability (salinity, temp, etc.) –
• Temp runs 25 – 26.5OC over an average day (up to 28.5 in summer)
• Salinity 1.024 (stable with auto-top-up – RO/DI)
• pH 7.9 – 8.2
see it at: Zen Reef
Based on what I’ve read so far, this is the plan (Phase 1 in red)
ZEOvit 360 ml / first 6-8 weeks @ 20 gph (90 lph) …… and thereafter ...... 550 ml / 6-12 weeks @ 28-55 gph (125-250 lph) dependent on nutrient load
ZEObak and ZEOfood 2 drops daily for first 2 weeks then 2 drops every 3 days for next 4-6 weeks (until change out) and thereafter ….. 2 drops every 2-3 days for 2 weeks then 2 drops twice weekly for 4-10 weeks dependent on nutrient load
ZEOstart 0.5 ml daily for 2 weeks, 0.25 ml daily thereafter until stable then 0.2 ml daily (how do you measure such a small amount?)
Carbon 250 ml every month
Amino High 2 drops daily
Have I got it all horribly wrong? Help greatly appreciated!
Si
I'm new to the forum and what a fascinating place it is! Seems I have the ZEObug and I'm ready to go but I need guidance from the sane and wise among you. Best I can tell is that you have to be careful or the tank'll be down the proverbial
This is the score....1. Gross water volume of your complete system (incl. sump etc.) – 310 litres incl. sump
2. Net water volume (incl. sump etc.) – 260 litres (20% allowance made for live rock and sand in main tank)
3. Are you using a CaCO2 reactor or other technique – Korallin C1502 Ca reactor running ARM media and 10% Mg chips
4. Are you using a PO4 reactor (how long, how long ago, etc.) – Fluidised RowaPhos reactor – I’m thinking of converting it to a fluidised carbon reactor once ZEO is up and running but I see the recommendation is for passive use. What do you reckon?
5. Are you using Ozone – Used to 24/7, but now only 6 hrs/day. Will stop when ZEO starts.
6. Are you using UV - No
7. What skimmer are you using (type, rated water volume) – TurboFloator 1000 but, until only 3 months ago, a Berlin Classic which has now been sacrificed to the reef gods and reborn as a ZEO reactor
8. What are your actual PO4 and NO3 levels – PO4 @ 0.008 and NO3 undetectable
9. What are your actual Ca, Alk and Mg levels – Ca @ 420 ppm, Alk @ 9-10 dKH, Mg @ 1350 ppm
10. What filtration method do you use (refugium, DSB, Miracle Mud, etc.) – Live rock and 2 inch coarse aragonite sand in main tank, skimmer – that’s it.
11. Type of light (Watt, color temp, how old, etc.) – 2 x 150w 10K BLV’s (7 hrs/day) and 2 x 40w actinics (14 hrs/day) - all less than 3 months old
12. What corals do you keep – now mainly SPS with xenia, shrooms, gorgonia, a few LPS
13. Tissue color (light or dark) – dark-ish
14. How long has the tank been running – nearly 4 years
15. Why do you want to use the ZEOvit system – better colour, to tackle a bryopsis problem and manage NO3 & PO4 generally
16. Any supplemental dosing (type, amount, why, etc.) – 3 drops of Lugol’s per week. Erm….should I stop that?
17. Live rock (how much, how old, etc.) – 120 lbs mixed Fiji, Tampa Bay Saltwater and aragocrete, all about 4 years old
18. Any present problems – bryopsis, slow SPS growth, some acros slowly stripping from base (suspected combination of high dKH, pooled nutrients caused by the hopeless Berlin Classic, maybe lighting as the acros are in the middle of the tank, not directly under the halides) and, err, oh yeah… bryopsis again.
19. Problem description (tissue loss tips, tissue loss base, diatom bloom, algae, etc.) – See 18
20. What test kit do you use (how old, recently switched, etc.) – Salifert for Ca, Mg and dKH, Interpet tablets for NO3 and Merck for PO4 – all less than 3 months old
21. Present dosing, amounts and intervals (ZEOvit, ZEObak, ZEOfood, ZEOstart, ZEOspur2, etc.) – I have the basic 4 (incl. Start2) with the amino acid for SPS but not started dosing yet.
22. Other water parameters and water stability (salinity, temp, etc.) –
• Temp runs 25 – 26.5OC over an average day (up to 28.5 in summer)
• Salinity 1.024 (stable with auto-top-up – RO/DI)
• pH 7.9 – 8.2
see it at: Zen Reef
Based on what I’ve read so far, this is the plan (Phase 1 in red)
ZEOvit 360 ml / first 6-8 weeks @ 20 gph (90 lph) …… and thereafter ...... 550 ml / 6-12 weeks @ 28-55 gph (125-250 lph) dependent on nutrient load
ZEObak and ZEOfood 2 drops daily for first 2 weeks then 2 drops every 3 days for next 4-6 weeks (until change out) and thereafter ….. 2 drops every 2-3 days for 2 weeks then 2 drops twice weekly for 4-10 weeks dependent on nutrient load
ZEOstart 0.5 ml daily for 2 weeks, 0.25 ml daily thereafter until stable then 0.2 ml daily (how do you measure such a small amount?)
Carbon 250 ml every month
Amino High 2 drops daily
Have I got it all horribly wrong? Help greatly appreciated!
Si
. Should I tone down the levels of zeo I'm currently using? I did reduce the ZEOstart2 down to .4ml 2x's/day as I was getting a brown film on the sand. It's still there a bit so I'm thinking about dropping that to .25ml 2x's/day. I've not started dosing anything else at this stage although I have the amino acids for SPS ready. 
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. Temp swings of 2-3C over the summer although usually only 1-2C but the rot set in before the summer. Salinity is spot on 24/7. Occasional hiccups with dkH when the reactor's buggered up but nothing drastically out of range. 
The zeolite quantity for your system should be 700-750ml with the flow rate of 300 l/h. Be sure that your flow is not greatly beyond this, as too harsh a flow through the zeo-reactor can cause coral consequences. A few suggestion that this time for coral color intensification:
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