Rappin' With ReefBum
Guests: Claude Schuhmacher & Mike Paletta, Fauna Marin Bolus Method
(upbeat music) Rapping with Reef Bomb is sponsored by Polo Reef, Champion Lighting and Supply, and GHL. Hey, what's up everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Rapping with Reef Bomb. I'm your host Keith Berklehammer. So this is a very special episode on tonight's live stream. I have both Claude Schumacher, who is the CEO of Fauna Marine, as well as Mike Paledo, who has written Reef Keeping articles, books. And Mike, you're now blogging for Polo Reef. Is that happen yet? - I'm basically writing for them, blogging and doing podcasts. We're gonna start in the fall. - All right. Mike is also a frequent speaker at Reef Keeping conferences. We are going to be talking about the Fauna Marine Folis Method tonight. Yes, we are. And before we start chatting with Mike and Claude, I wanna take care of some business and thank the sponsors of this show. My sponsors are really important because they make this show possible with their support. And that means a lot since I wanna continue to bring on awesome guests to help foster a learning environment on this show, Champion Lighting and Supply. Besides being a place for hobbyists to purchase saltwater aquarium supplies, online Champion Lighting is also a wholesale distributor for many popular brands. If you own an aquarium store or an aquarium service company, contact Champion Lighting through their website at championlighting.com to set up a wholesale account. Todd and his crew will be at Reefstock Chattanooga on August 24th and 25th, so stop by and say hello. Polo Reef, make sure to check out Polo Reef's new YouTube video that drops us Friday. In the third episode of the Polo Summer Relaxation Series, Polo Reef gives us a moment to relax as they dive into the 17,000 gallon reef. Also don't miss their video from last week as they take you on a behind the scenes journey of all the crazy projects going on this summer and actually gonna have Andrew on next week. So we'll talk more in depth about those projects. Make sure to subscribe to their YouTube channel at Polo Reef for video drop notifications. Finally, GHL. Personally, I'm using all the GHL products like their pro-flux dosers, the controller, the dosers, the miter's lights, cage director, et cetera. They produce high quality German engineering products. For more information on how to purchase their stuff, you can visit aquariumcomputer.com/USA and also sell their products on reefbomb.com. All right, Claude. So you've had a pretty hectic scheduler of late. You've been in China, Korea, and yet you're up bright-eyed and bushy tail for this live stream. I think it's one o'clock in the morning in Germany. You're back in Germany? - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah, well, good, go ahead. - Coming in the morning yesterday late and now back to here. So I don't know in which jet lag I am now. (laughing) - How long does it take you to come back from a trip like that? How long ago you get your all your timing right? - I need this time I need 'cause we fly over Hong Kong. So it took like 26 hours to come back. That's a far away and usually one, one, two, three days. So it's okay. - So hold it, have you gained a day in your life or have you lost a day in your life? - No, you gain if you go there. You lost one and then you gain. - All right, so it evens out. - It's over, yeah, it doesn't matter. So it's normally I go in two US and then back. So, but flying back is more worse than coming. So in this case, flying back is better. - All right, so Claude, you've been talking a lot about the bolus method on the Quantum Marine YouTube channel. You've also been on some other channels to talk about it. This is a brand new thing from Quantum Marine. But it's based on a method that is not new. So for those that don't know what the Quantum Marine bolus method is, can you give everyone a basic overview of what it is? - It's a kind of dosing method. So an idea how to dose sodium bicarbonate to increase or to look for a calinity into the aquarium and a pH control. In the early days of reef keeping, we didn't had that much possibilities like we have today. So there were not companies there with a lot of bottles. So we worked with carc water, we worked with sodium carbonate, we worked with bicarbonate. And what we have, Mike, the carbon reactor was not there. Yeah, we have these two possibilities. So that's it. So in Germany and of course, I worked in these days with Mr. Likens when I was young. And so I was at the beginning of the carc water method involved. And over the time and over the years, we see some issues of that. And the boiling method would be developed over the time, which works with sodium bicarbonate. So and weed and all myself, 'cause I wanted to have more built for aquarium and the way how we work, I constructed about then the boiling light system, which is a different way how we, those trace elements, according to the needs, a skeleton and a colony into a system, and that's called the boiling light system, which is at the end, one of the first complete care systems for reef aquariums, which was developed as a whole system. So together a few months later, then the boiling plastic method. Before that time, I built a large aquarium tool to about 10, 15,000 gallons. And as I said, that we had no possibilities and even for such a, it's not a solution 'cause you need too much space for that. We worked with these carbonate stuff and cutting chlorides, so unhype us and it creates some issues. So we see the pumps are blocking and we have the applications and all the things. And so we go step by step after we test it out, everything was tested out in during these days. We go down to the sodium bicarbonate and it was usually that we dose it once a day, mostly in the morning, 'cause we come in the morning to the stores and it was not planned or it was not an idea, but it happens 'cause we go to the morning, we had the first test of a colony. So we just, we test the colony and then we know, okay, two jacks of the carbonate we have to dose into. So that was a few pounds for the aquarium and then we put it into the tank in the morning directly into the sun, but that's it. And the thing's running quite good. And now over the years, I don't know why, this is why I make this video 'cause I said, I have no idea why we changed that system at the end. You know, workers would come here, the company grows and then we install all those in pumps and we start to dose it all over the day. So, and it happens that we said, we have to do that 'cause we need stability. And if you run a lab like we do, with that amount of tests, what we do, you see more and more the issues coming if tanks go older. So then there was a word created like, old tank syndrome is coming and large lazy ass reefer syndrome. And now you work and try to find out what's going on. And about this problem with the precipitation in the tank, we know very long time about it. We have the Swiss card water. Everybody knows that we use longer that you have all these calcium carbonate around the pumps and the glass and you feel that. And so we do the testing about how many trace elements going down, what happens in fact, if you dose different ways into the aquarium. So for that, the lab is quite helpful. And this ended up with a good friend, this is from Staktoit, who is from Frank Farm in the UK. And he's tested out his system very long time. And we talked about it. And like I said, we said, "I have no idea." And he said, "Then let us do it like earlier before." So that was more a joke at the end. 'Cause we talked with something which is not like this like it was before. So I missed something, but I cannot tell what it is exactly. So then we tested and we find some very interesting things out, like we have very stable a colony. And then we really start to test it out. And now we do some work for explanation for bullish part two, where we explain exactly till to the deep of the chemistry, what happens, why we have this broken buffer system when we work with carbonate, when we work with stock water, what are the disadvantages, what are the advantages. And on the same time, why I choose or would recommend to work with the bicarbonate and in relation to right trace elements to avoid this precipitation and to make a tank stave out running for many years, not for a few months. So that works always. And or if you are very disciplinated or as we have a sample from core farmers tell these that they said, "We work with stock water." That's amazing that the coral farm is no decoration, which is not a lot of bioavailable surface and cleaning every day, something totally different than a reefer come at home, like Mike also knows. So you have rocks, you have surface. And then all these discussions and all these things with people telling me about bollows, the most of them never run a coral farm. So they have no idea about a practical using of their things and they don't have a lab. So it's sometimes curious what they have for ideas without have effects and the data. I would say, yeah, okay, then we need to write it down and to make it more explainable until the deep chemistry way. But for us, we change our tanks on this bollows way, which means at the end, we dose half an hour before the light starts, we dose all a colony based on sodium bicarbonate, what we need. We dose it once and then we don't dose it till 24 hours and at the next morning, we dose again half an hour before the light starts and we start a light with a strong push. So no long ramp time. So we start immediately with full power of the light. We can go up about, we say, 120% of the formal light power we use then for two hours, then for three hours on three and then we go with the light so it can slowly down. And that increases the photosynthesis, that increases and stabilizes the pH and gives a super stable a colony level over the day, which is more stable as we could be the bicarbonate over those incomes over eight times 24 times. And we still, we are still working some fine tuning on the method by self. So of course we do testing now in every how the precipitation is reacting, how many stuff they're taking out and what happens in exact if you dose CAD water or carbonate and we have to myth there with some damaged say that it's only happened that only magnesium hydroxide will be produced and they will go back into dilution and be sure to prove that it's totally wrong. So we have a lot of producing of carbonates and in this high pH or with a walnut release back into the water and we have the problem that deaths for us is the cause of the old tank syndrome that we're producing this precipitation and during that producing we take all the nutrients, trace elements and stuff out of the water and push it to the surface 'cause none of them looking in the theoretical way, they are correctly but in the practical way in the crime we have a total difference area and we have a huge surface which is full of organic and full of biological effects like we have precarious producing debt, producing organic assets and this is creating the problems in these aquariums over the time and our system is to make a perms running for a long time that's what we need in farms like ours which is running now 18 years to make it 18 years later not for one and a half years, that works with every system but after this one year, one and a half years so many people have problems to give stability there and the good thing is Mike, no step that we started in his tank and he likes to play around, this is a crime so this is a crime he really knows about up and downs but gives him a great knowledge so that you have also to say and I think he can also report what happens in his tank over adjusting the trace elements a little bit right getting down the organic compounds and what happens now with the animals and he has these exactly that results getting also even if the tank is old which cooks them a bit longer that we expected there so this is both yeah it's an old system make new and do a little bit fine tuning on them it's not new at the end old reefers like Mike and me knows that we do that earlier all the time before 'cause we don't have those in farms and nobody stays to the tank eight times a day - So Mike, why did you sign up for this? What was the reason behind it? - Well, one, in talking with Andre Mueller from Moon Shiners and talking with some other people one of the things that was always a problem in my tank was a ton of precipitates floating around and when you would dump in soda ash water for alkalinity boost you could see the precipitate forming almost immediately and one of the things that caught my attention when Claude started talking about this is that you don't get to precipitate with it and he later showed in one of his videos that you compare the two and dump in soda ash versus baking soda water for lack of a better term making it simple you don't get to precipitate and since switching over to this three or four months ago the one thing that I've noticed a lot is there's significantly less precipitate when I do a water change I'm not taking out a ton of stuff and when I use a turkey base or to based off the rocks or a powerhead there's not the level of precipitate that I got that was one thing and two I agree with Claude I remember and I've been asked this by a lot of people why does it seem that when we did this in the early years of the hobby things were much easier and much simpler why are things more difficult now? I mean now people have more problems with dinoflagellates more problem with looking at the bacteria a lot of different problems that we really didn't experience early on you know some people say it's 'cause we used metal halide lights and they produced UV or we did this or we did that but the reality is we used to dump everything in once in the morning before we went to work the lights came on they were metal halides we couldn't really adjust them or do 15 different patterns and the corals thrive I mean I have tanks from 1992 where the Acropore and other SPS corals were literally growing out of the tanks one I didn't mess around with the tanks as much then as I have in the past say five years but also it was a very simple system now I'm not saying that the other systems don't work or there's problems with other systems there's lots of people that are being successful with calc-voss or there's lots of people that are being successful with soda ash but over time and I don't look at this as a television set that I turn on look at it and that's it I'm gonna look at a one-on-one year program I look at it for five, 10, 15 years I don't wanna be monkeying around 15 years so now I'm having to break down a tank because there's so much to try this another garb which is accumulated in the tank so I found this to be a much simpler system I'm following his basis and between that and emoji dosing I started using this about six months after I started doing ammonia dosing I've seen a significantly faster heel time for corals if I take a frag off of a mother coral I see it heel up and usually less than a week to 10 days where before it used to take two weeks to three weeks so in that regard I'm seeing faster growth I'm seeing brighter tips which is what you wanna see the brighter the tips the faster the growth the more colorful the coral all those things are what we're all looking for we're all looking for as colorful the corals as we can get we try not to think that okay the best looking and most colorful corals are also the fastest growing corals so we're always trying to expedite color and growth this seems to be doing that along with like I said I'm also doing low dose ammonia dosing daily and between the two I'm finally getting the response that I wanted So Claude on your website there is a I guess a manual user guide on the bolus method and it cites some overall observations and feedback that you guys have been getting from early testers like Mike and I think Mike addressed one of these increased rate of calcification of corals and a significant increase in the tanks demand for the for bowing light better color definition stronger basal disc growth better polyp extension Mike have you observed all that stuff? And yeah, I was just gonna add to that one of the things that I noticed first was the alkalinity and calcium consumption doing just the ammonia dosing I got about a 25 to 40% increase once I started going to the bolus it had more or less leveled off at that higher rate I got another 25% increase in needing the dose to keep the levels consistent so I can only assume since I'm not taking out precipitate that it's going into the corals growth Mike were you doing a calcium reactor and a caulk waster? Is that what you were doing before bolus? I know I was I had done a calcium reactor then I went to a calcium reactor and caulk waster then I went to dosing over the course of the day with a camera doser and caulk waster and now I've gotten rid of the caulk waster and now I'm just going to the bolus dosing so one of my goals as I get older is to make things simpler and easier so this has done all that because I've taken off a lot of things that typically when I went on vacation those are the things that broke the calcium reactor tubing died when I was on vacation or the pump died or something with this it's all pretty simple and straightforward and even if I'm not here it basically all runs itself at this point I can be gone for two weeks and it's totally automated and simple and there's only basically two moving parts and you must maybe say one thing which is very important in this case that we did we do with that kind of dosing on the pallet light that you add your necessary and in relation calculated trace elements which is mostly halogen based on the colony jar that you dose them also together so in the beginning of the day we put a lot of halogen into the tank so which is used for the whole day and the sense behind is also a little bit to see what happens during the night normally in the reef coral is eating during the night a lot of day they take particles out of polyps are open they take particles out of the water a very small one because the sea water and the reefs is full of particles then they eat so they are full of elements they are full of vitamins they are full of food and then the light is starting so they have to protect agents like flurites and halogen works like that so the flu are the bromine and the iodide and then we can push the lights on it so and nowadays I was really also surprised myself I must say I talk with my friend Doug there and he said what do you think how people using the ramtams nowadays with the modern LED and I said half an hour so why should be the ram time longer than half an hour and we do we do a survey and the most say we had a day we had an average ram time of one and a half hours so that means from beginning on the photosynthesis and the and the metabolism of the coral will not be started as is as it should be normal so and I know always on my time that I have maximum ram time from let me say half an hour I have no idea why I should take them for two hours long and if you if you give the coral photos and testing from beginning on you will have an effect for the whole day and the most important thing is to stop up to five and five and a half six hours with the full lighting and go slowly down is to show the core that there's no more light coming so she don't she did not need to put energy into protecting against too much light because after five and a half six hours the most photosynthesis work is done so then this then she starts more to go into protective there is still photosynthesis running that's not the point but they need to protect against too much oxygen and too much radiation and this energy can go into growth and into color and not into protecting stuff because there's also a little bit of myth some said then yeah but they need protective for the UV radiation the point is its radiation so if UV will be reflected from the surface from from the core you cannot see it it's not light UV is radiation light is that what we see in radiation is everything which is on the other side and that's why it makes no sense that to let her put a lot of energy in protection which you don't need because most cohorts which live in deeper than five meters 10 meters they don't have UV in that amount as we thought if we have from the surface on the water um prefix go ahead a couple other things a couple other things Keith one of the things whenever you start to see this consumption going up you get a lot of you're dumping a lot of chloride and calcium chloride and you're dumping a lot of sodium so your salinity will start to go up one of the things I found that I really wasn't hadn't looked at before is that my sulfates fell off a cliff they started consuming them and I had to bump them up but whenever they got really low my gania porous and my mushrooms were basically shriveled up and I lost some of them as a result of the sulfates getting very low so if you do this bowling system and you start really having to add some make sure you keep track of what your sulfates are because you can't have problems if your sulfates fall off a cliff how how often uh mike are you doing iCP tests i'm doing once every two to three weeks there are two three weeks quad is um what's the recommendation for people on bolus for frequency of iCP tests when when you start when you have an older system and you start the recommendation is the first few weeks doing two three tests to get uh to get the notice where I stay how much I have to increase and after that usually it's every month one test is quite okay and so you can do at the beginning the short test because you can do that the alkalinity test sample you can do quite simple yourself so you don't need an iCP for and for an alkalinity testing so I recommend you can we have two type of tests so the small one uh with a three five C.P. and the total test which have all the parameters in could flow right you do every three months then so if it's settled for the first few weeks it depends a little bit what your works before uh it could take more than a few days till you get the stability and then I recommend every ten days or before every two weeks then to do a testing till you get your your balance and in the most aquariums the balanced you will reach even if you work before with cut water always the carbonate stuff within four weeks some other tanks which has a lot of organic material there they can keep a bit longer till they get the stability uh shallow reefing I didn't know the correlation between sulfates and ganis my sulfates are low in manganese my ganis started to perish quickly there you go uh reef exotica by luisa seves uh just received my balm baling light uh cis set from chris cap going to try bolus method in one of my tanks moonshiners on two tanks is a bit overwhelming um john right uh reap on my think people are looking for perfection and aren't happy with their stunning tanks we already have why not just enjoy what we have achieved what do you guys say to that uh comment complacency I agree with that wholeheartedly I mean as the master tinkerer but I or after doing this for 40 years I still try to learn stuff and then share what I learned like I just did with it sulfates but one of the things I have come to appreciate are people that grow the corals into just large colonies they can be brown corals but a brown colony of a a nice beautiful colony of a large coral to me looks much better than a pinky sized frag of a Walt Disney I'm sorry but I don't sit this far from the tank so I can see everything I sit six feet back so when you see these nice big large colonies they're just spectacular and I mean I do miss the old guy corals because that's one of the things that are missing in a lot of tanks you don't see blue corals in a lot of tanks anymore yeah because the blue lights wash them out so I mean I I'm currently also running LEDs and halides in my tank as part of the bolus system so when everything kicks on it kicks on I only run it for three hours but it does really pop in terms of the amount of light that everything's getting up maxing out at about 550 par now where most of the corals are so Mike at the end you're a hardcore refurn that means you have you cannot stay a few weeks without doing any changes in that your wife will be annoying because you have bad mood so you need to play around metella's are true you know you you cannot stop so you need you heard something and then you need to to test it out and try it out so and and yeah because but this is learning so we learned walking through that before and stand up again and that you can do really good so what about you know if you've got considered considering when I started clawed everything was trial and error it is hard to get that mindset out of my way because it's always been okay let's try it oh that was bad and I made many stupid mistakes over 40 years which is kind of sad but it's also hopefully helped a lot of people learn not to make those same stupid mistakes I said sometimes heroes in Europe that I learned it not because somebody said how it goes I learned it because I put a chance of dead animals out and be frustrated that no idea what it don't work so I remember really good my my first SBS core coming and we had a question oh it's hard so when we put this core we used a tank which have green hair alleys because green hair alleys means that's the best water quality we had and in the next days I was wondering why they come from brown to white and ask why did you turn they turn the color because we didn't know before of soft colors it's so and after that and this was really aquariums I think you remember also the canop skimmers so we had we have tons of carbon filters with a completely filled with carbon completely filled with with cover gravel and then these wooden skimmers with air pumps and wood skimmers and all our tanks has has green hair alleys and green hair we were happy when the objects are growing because we said this is good water quality so no no idea about magnesium nothing else and we put them in and we lost them at the beginning the one by one so when we started here cloud we actually started with the dutch mini reefs where the tanks were full of calerpa and a calerpa would grow literally around and strangle even the soft corals you couldn't keep starting corals because the calerpa would grow over them so fast and we used trickle filters which produced so much nitrate that we could it was like fertilizer we may as well have peed in the tanks five times a day because how much nitrate and ammonia was in the tanks from these trickle filters so yeah I do remember all that and I used to build my own skimmers because there weren't commercial skimmers here I used to build about a schedule 80 PVC you could throw them off your roof they wouldn't crack because that PVC was so thick you remember that you built the skimmers from from coke farmers yeah i don't remember that we built off from what he's talking about yeah we we have these two liters i don't know it's about in how big they are but five liters coke bottles and so you if you cut them and you put some wooden air stones you can you can build your own skimmer for that so yeah i get a hack and i got a japanese magazine where they use little glass bottles and put a cork in it put an air stone in the bottom put a little cup on top and let the firm go over the top for little nano tanks yeah yeah and we had life rock yeah you don't need to forget life rock and sometimes it's asking how many life if you need so you have you have a 500 gallon tank means oh it's about two it's about 400 pounds of life rock and people putting this life rock into the tank like you have a wall of a hard wall so there was no space for any water anymore and then they and you know but it was also different so our clients when they come at this time so they start they put the life rock we put we put the light on it let it everything it grow the algae disappear and then was the perfect time to set up the cords and then they go in and they said i take this forward this cord this cord this one this one this one this one so and they go out of of the shop with about nearby 10 pounds 20 pounds of cord mass in soft cords so and later than what we do is that we put some little stacks so we we start a tank with perfect technology with a lot of light which no idea about the thermostat is very less nowadays life rock only with the artificial stuff and then we put about the 0.5 grams of biomass into the tank and i'm wondering why everything is growing in instead of the chorus if you compare it to to earlier time and the light it becomes more aggressive like we have at this little hillock yeah so so quad in this day and age we talked about live rock and dead rock almost 10 years ago cloud if you remember because we were all having problems because everyone was switching over to dead rock and we couldn't figure out why it was taking a year 18 months for the tank to stabilize i remember talking about that in Italy yeah that was the reason why these producers of of granulated iron hydroxide was getting rich because everybody needs tons of its own which we never had before and it and we didn't have the issues about unbalanced nutrients due to the mass of life reviews but you know now it's 2024 so and we have to deal with that what we have now because it becomes really difficult to get live in europe so it's easy i had a question i'm sorry that yeah sorry i could say that um in this day and age you have minimal uh aquascapes what what are your thoughts in terms of having more rockinacism versus less is is uh does it make sense to set up a cryptic zone i see um rich colombo said mike i added honor gallons to my system by plumbing and a frag tank and drop my nitrates i use ammonia bicarb to get them back up i noticed more public sense and so forth so the question is does it make sense to set up some sort of remote some to um add some live rock if you can get it to a system that has a very minimal aquascape on a display tank does that make sense yes to me yes anytime you can add good live rock and good biological activity and good bacteria from good quality live rock you can still get some out of florida some of the stuff that's not been in the water for a significant number of years is close to what old florida live rock would be but i mean i grew up in the day where there was a guy that used to go down with an old school bus to florida pick up literally tons of live rock drive back into school bus with it all circulating with air and you would buy the live rock like it had just come out of the ocean it was amazing what was on that rock obviously that guy was probably run off the road at some point but he would bring literally three or four tons of live rock up from florida up the whole east coast and if you'd let him know he'd stop in your town and sell live rock it was like an old fruit guy selling fruit out of an old school bus if you think they make it today it's rocks i can't believe it so i'm i'm absolutely uh pro live rock cause um whatever we try to produce in kind of bacteria dosing whatever we are way far away of that that we can produce that so it is it depends not only on the bacteria it depends on that the rocks have a very good relation about a little bit of nutrients which they give up to the water so it starts to become an equilibrium between the rocks and the water and uh so the aquarium can start way smoother because there is not absorbing of nutrients like we have today with the ceramics or with the artificial rocks that's the most the problem what we have today that we have two low phosphate two low nutrients and then the people starting to dose these nutrients into but at the end these ceramics are working quite sane like at solvers too and we in europe we have even no more coral sand so it's very hard to get so we have also artificial sand which is cuts and carbonate from uh for mines and that means that they absorb a lot of um there we have this problem also of the precipitates we have also the problems of that we get all the organic and and all the dirt going into the surface and this will come back as soon as uh fast as as soon as uh earlier soon is that bacteria biofilm is producing and they are producing also acids and these acids watch all the nutrients back and which then it's kind of over for the relation of the corals then so i'm absolutely for the life of but very important is and uh is that i say take care that you have enough corals in the tank and not that much decoration so i'm i really always wondering why people say we're doing hardscape no we don't do hardscape we put a we put a few rocks into the aquarium and then we try to get escape with the corals so totally different than the freshwater guys who can make a hardscape and then play around with the plants i think this is not in that way possible due to the core grow what we have and the corals make the design at the end so very important how more parts you have how less decoration you have how better the tank is running um so Claude you mentioned the um back in the day the um brick wall of live rock and tanks i think the general rule of thumb back then was two pounds of live rock for every gallon of water which was it's quite different today yeah sometime what would you guys say is a is a good called at the fruit stand effect claud it looks like a fruit stand in a produce section in a market it just went back and you had your corals laid out so they were like good pieces of fruit in the market so what would you guys say right now is i was going to say what would you guys say right now is a good um amount of rock per gallon of display or system water let's say let's say for system gallons what would you say uh a pound for every system gallon it all depends on what the system is what the flow is and what you're planning on putting in it if you're mike stops now mike is stuck it's too much rock so let me answer that on on that way sure it depends uh it depends on what you want to do but nowadays we make a very um the most people nowadays they do a lot of for a day of water lot and take time to make a nice decoration which i see very often that they become it's very uh good space for current and and the water can move and so i would say five percent of the whole system in rocks in weight in kilos so that means let's recalculate now for the gallons um yeah five percent of of of life should be enough but okay well if you have 200 gallons you do about 20 pounds that's it wow okay um so we're trying to get uh we're trying to get mike back here he um he is uh frozen right now i just i messaged uh mike and and hopefully he got that message because i don't want to screw up the whole live stream by um trying to um stop the uh the current skype call here and restart it i uh i hope we can get uh mike back um i wanted to say thank you to rob of state New York man for that very generous super chat smash a like button and keep those these great live streams and guess i appreciate that uh very much so um Solomon Islands live rock is apparently going to be uh coming into the market which would be uh a very nice thing as long as well as i think there's live rock from indonesia something correct me if i'm wrong on uh on that yes oh we can get them from Indonesia at the moment your back mike how to get oh now i can't hear you mike there we go how's that we're you got we got mike back okay yeah sorry my internet connection dropped we lost everything oh no there's it's it's 70 degrees 75 and sunny so i have no idea what's going on gremlins no me and technology the technology and i do not like each other i make new diet so we're i just mentioned mike that um it seems like rock from the sala mount Solomon Islands are going to be coming in and got indonesian live rock so there'll be some more uh some more potential sources yeah wall test some of the rock and fiji it's not old fiji and rock but it's rock uh you know uh terrestrial rock he's head in the water there for a while and there's also florida rock and there's also australian rock although it's crazy expensive but you can't get live rock i mean if what i tell everybody that's starting off with dead rock try to get at least three or four good pieces of live rock to put in the bacteria to put in the microphone and to put in everything else and to try and get some that has sponges on it because one of the things that i found is that it once you start getting good sponge growth the corals do much better if you have no sponges for whatever reason the corals don't seem to do as well that's just anecdotal but that's what i saw in my own tanks until the sponges just took off the corals didn't really take off when i used dead rock makes sense um just answering a question here probably just yeah there's some questions coming also some reports there's some somebody Alexander goes back into the theoretical view of the bottles um i know he's reading some of our first manual and but that's a typical thing what we have over many many many years and michael's and knows that whatever we do it will be it is always the problem of the of the pure theoretical view of a chemical reaction so it was starting with the with the former boiling method it's the same it's to say i put this i put this this goes together this is the end and that we have to increase and then we and then it goes even in a in a closed lab system it doesn't work 200 so we have side effects and in a in a system which is so different from the theoretical view of fresh water we talk about seawater and even the dosing of a chemical creating and totally different process if you put it in seawater or in fresh water and everybody the most who today and even if they if they study the chemistry they they study the wrong chemistry because they don't study aquatic chemistry which they cares of seawater and also they don't study biochemistry because there's so many biological things going on that affect chemistry it's not just you know a plus b but there's also influences from d c and e that gets you to f it's not just straight line and you know we have chemical effects we have the physical effects by let me say pumps so bringing water under pressure bringing water under heat which we have done a different reaction and then the next thing is we have the effect of the surface so the effect of the precipitation what we have with the dosing of carbon of the others was viewable for many people as long as you use the cock water together with the cock reactor it's it's a quite good system and the cock water by itself has a good effect definitely that's not the point but the side effect of it over longer time it reduces your it reduces your your trace elements it gives a great sink which we can also see in the iCP from the US which is way way deeper the element levels like we have an average in in euro and there is no system which is which is closed and in relation so we don't those together the right trace elements so this is they this is a playing around which maybe i dose this bottle i dose this bottle but not the knowledge about hey what my system needs so like you can do it individually if you use the bottle it's matter together with the burning light because every tank can be dosed individually about the needs about the power of lights the mass of cords which are in and all these theoretical guys they they never see the whole picture and the whole picture is that in the moment we dose something into the tank we have an immediately reaction on that what happens and we have a reaction over minutes and hours so there's a lot of precipitate happens up of the minutes and hours and they also can go back in in dilution but during that time also the magnesium hydroxide which is also creating in the things is absorbing a lot of elements a lot of organic compounds a lot of stuff which so at the end you dose a lot of more so and in in 18 years now 20 i i do this now since 84 and core farming since 95 about that um it was the easiest system to get the most stability and it's especially that we don't go on 8.5 or 8.6 or 8.7 pH level because how high are the pH is how more precipitation i have and this is proofed and i'm i'm really famous say this is totally butcher there's no precipitation there is it's proofed you can see it on University of Hawaii whatever is reported that things what happens if you down carbonate into seawater so and they explain you exactly that we have a lot of carbonate we have a lot of other minerals creating on there and in this case they they lay down on your surface and the surface is then full like a fertilizer cause these precipitates are not white they're brown and they are black and that means that a lot of organic compounds have a lot of stuff and when i read nowadays the discussions about dot testing and about organic testing not see and that's what that's once again the theoretical view again so something is read we write it down which maybe can happen into a closed system but now we have an aquarium where we wear every dosing effects every test which is not filtered every bacteria affects it every surface affects it and every kind of rocks we use and decoration we use you cannot go there and say this number is okay and it's not because we don't know the effect at the end and even it's the same with with the bacteria testing them we doing so much bacteria testing and at the end we have no idea about because they change the core change the the micro boom within of minutes and and hours from one day to the next so and it is really a challenge to creating the specific numbers or specific systems where you know to keep the course healthy and what means healthy so what is for you a healthy core so what you see after you you do the polis you see that that the points do do react it so the course reacting and they get another surface another glow so on your words so what is for you then the increase in health and viewing on the course for me it's when i see larger and brighter growth tips the fast the more growth i see the healthier i know the coral is uh one of the things i've also been one of the things i've been looking at for probably the last year year and a half is coral nutrition in that in my basis for that is uh Jamie Craig's's work looking at getting corals the spawn that's not my criteria if i can get enough nutrition into the corals where they start producing eggs and sperm and i can find them in their branches i feel i've provided adequate nutrition and the coral is healthy a coral will not produce eggs and sperm unless it is growing and healthy a sick dying coral isn't like a clam that that spawns because it knows it's dying corals from my point of view don't do that so i look at how fast are they growing some people look at polyp extension unfortunately i typically have picked me angel fishing on my tank that tend to picket things so i don't get and i have orange spotted file fish so i didn't get don't get polyp extension but what i do get are nice nice growth tips and encrusting the faster a coral and crust the faster it grows and the brighter the growth tips i know the corals are healthy when i'm seeing that if i'm not seeing that then i know okay i'm missing something and before i go on one of the thing one of the kudos i want to give to clawed is one of the reasons why i use his icp test i also use oceomos but i mainly use clawed is because clawed also provides a relationship between some of the elements it's not just okay your bromine level is here you don't have to change it but you're bromine in relationship to three other things this is where the relationship this is where we're starting to get a much better understanding of the trace elements and how they interact with one another rather than they're just a static thing right here okay i have a perfect level of iodine but i'm off on four other things well that iodine level is wrong then because it has to be in a relationship to everything else and that's why i like his icp test is that they provide that clawed do you need to have uh quantum reina icp test to do the bolus method or can use other icp uh providers and you can use um other icp providers but uh they're not a lot on the market who knows how to deal with see whether correctly let me say it on that word um they're a few but not uh but not okay um mark uh full and weeder if i'm pronouncing that correctly how does the long-term cockwasser precipitation issues negatively negatively impact coral health i will answer that very soon i would uh shortly say something to the icp the reason of the icp is exactly the same uh problem what we have in a lot of things in in briefkeeping and nowadays also for the people starting new and don't have the history like mike or sanjay half uh which they learn about the failure and the same was in increasing of the icp the the major issue is that the people buying the machines according that they are super super super uh sensitive of trace elements but exactly there we don't need that so it doesn't matter if you have five percent plus and down of sync or of molypdenum or whatever uh it's important that the machine is getting a really good stability so and you need to know so that means that guys who are running icp uh properly they have mostly a very long experience in coral so they can see the difference what happens in the coral if the world is okay and we need years to find out the right method for aquarium water as soon as you run on seawater and you run into chump in reefs and take their water out and try to get this what is in the reef you make a big mistake because the difference between an aquarium and the reef is that they that the course they have to eat they have food they have in masses food we are not able to provide that food in an aquarium it's impossible so that means they have to trace elements what's about the food so why they should take it out of the water there is nothing in the water if you clean seawater and you make it really really clean you get nearby zero levels so but not when you calculate the food as soon as they eat a phytoplankton of a carrier even a shrimp the shrimp before eats another bakira day bakira eat the phytoplankton so that the elements and the trace elements and the nutrients they be concentrated into the food and then the coral eat it so she had it in that means the the providing of the right elements is in in nature way better as we have in an aquarium so we have to go the way which is not directly yes we have food but we cannot provide it the whole day or the whole night so that's why we go over the water and that's a total the total different thing and that was so important in the increasement of the systems like bolos so when we do something what an effect have this then what is the best effect and um how does the how the how the most goes with the tail that the thing's wrong is that even the time when i those place a big role it's a total different if i dose it at the morning half an hour before the lights come at the lowest pH level or when they're dosing at night at the evening when i dose bolos at the evening i will not have the effect because the page is just high it has an effect because the behavior is at the night a little bit lower and then i have the stabilized effect and then has also the tabletop effect which we find out which nobody knows before we were also a bit surprised about this tabletop effect that they are coming to see you those ones you dose two point or three point alkalinity at the morning and short after that you don't find it so you find one or one point five so the first was the question where's the other part of the alkalinity so and then we see that it's not lost but it comes later back and that takes us that we have to look way deeper into these thermodynamic things and physics and chemistry of the alkalinity in sea water which is really not not easy and see that with very small precipitates going to the organic surface going back into the water also the gain between CO2 and if the pH is high we have no more CO2 we have carbonic we have no carbonic acid so it goes up and down the things create these very stable tabletop top effect and the more stability in these alkalinity overall but this is what we work out now step by step to explain it chemistry extremely detailed at the end the most customers they don't care about a very detailed chemistry explanation they're only a few who wants to know if they're right or not um about the things but as a farmer as a current farmer I can tell you that we have a total different view about some levels so we look at the core if the if the shining if the polyps are there if the skin is clear if the grow is well if they if the SDS have these pattern on the surface all these very detailed things to look for and that's the important thing whatever then the ICP said we have to know so we turn the bottle on the other side so we look it on from the other side everything and if you if you be a chemist then you open a lab and you follow the standards then you have the standards how you have to detect a surface water and that had nothing to do with a groundwater something totally different I want to thank go ahead back on that two things Claude said one of the first things you'll notice if you go to the bolus system for the first month or so you won't see what Claude was talking about in that you do the bolus you do a test an hour or two later and you wondered why the alkalinity hasn't skyrocketed it pretty much stayed stable and then later in the day for some reason the alkalinity bumps up it's not right afterwards it's six or eight hours later and it kind of confuses you the second thing that he talked about is one of the problems we have in this hobby is thinking that a reef tank is a like a natural reef it has nothing to do with a natural reef the biomass is a zillion times higher in a reef tank than on the ocean the amount of nutrients are typically significantly higher the amount of food for the corals is significantly lower but the reason a corals can survive on the reef even under these conditions is they're constantly bathed in this we tend not to think of it that way we tend to think of all this is like a mini reef that was one of the bad names that this hobby got was I'm keeping a mini reef we do not have a mini reef in our homes other than that three million liter tank you talked about that's actually probably a mini reef but even Andrews 18,000 gallon tank is close to a mini reef as it is if you're out diving and you're on a reef and you see how much water is around the reef it's not it's it just blows your mind how large the surface area and quantity of water is per amount of coral there is a reef tank is not a mini reef and we have to stop thinking of it that way we have to start thinking of it is this is its own entity and that's how we have to assess and manage things that it is its own entity that it's not it's close but it's not a small portion of the reef and now I'll get off my soap box absolutely not you see one wave is coming so the reef have every few seconds of 100% water change and even the power of the of the of everything comes in so the light is way stronger than what we normally adjust over the tanks the power of waves the power of current is way stronger what we usually do if if we use the same power of course we've been stripped off because we we don't have that laminate flow goes through the reefs too right when the wave blows across the reef it typically produces one focused light beam of light it's like having a magnifying glass it goes over for a second a millisecond and then it's gone so the corals get this bright flash of light and then it stabilizes and then another wave comes and it gets hit again it's not like a reef tank you may have glitter lines from your haylines in your tank it's not the same and anytime you've been diving on a reef you can't you're not still it's not like a pond you have to fight for every inch you have there because the waves and the water motion is so strong people don't understand that I mean I'm a big stressor of you need adequate flow in the tank because you can turn your skimmer off for three days the corals are fine you can turn your lights off for three days the corals are fine turn your flow off for three days see what happens you have a big smelly mess uh so flow is far more important than we tend to give it credit for and flow in every part of the reef tank and that makes it very difficult so how more rocks we have and even if you have no rocks in like we run today our coral farms we have always spots which are not good float so that we concentrate particles we concentrate the shit into the tank and which we have to move because it goes every everything goes goes back into the aquarium I know and what we also don't have my gist of the problem what you don't have is the mass of bacteria the mass of food the mass of organic substances the good ones which will be flow into the reef every minute every second yeah honestly bathed in a small concentration rather we give them a bolus dose of food corals don't have Thanksgiving they're not used to one big meal they're used to a zillion little meals they're constantly snacking most of them snack at night and most of us are sleeping so we don't put in the food at night I and we just do things a lot of things wrong and we still are successful showing how hearty corals are relative to what we thought they were we have some we have a lot of questions going on just let go on before you do that let me thank reef exotic about louis has a vase for that super chat shout out to the fauna icp got an email with the pro-analysis of my tank analysis was spot on with the issues i'm having helpful to intermediates all right go ahead man so there's one interesting questions from Dustin will i precipitate out and call with bolus if my alc is 9.5 and 1000 is 480 the sodium bicarbonate will also produce some of these precipitate but they go slowly most of them go slowly back this situation has something to do with the very interesting effect of the bicarbonate if you dose bicarbonate the pH goes slowly down at the beginning and then it raise up and in this process these smaller grains of precipitation goes back into the solution and will not be they balance big like you have it if you have a high pH level like if you dose the carbonate because carbonate takes up the pH immediately and 480 of calcium is not a good idea um it should be around 420 so if you have 35 salinity you should take care of the economy you can have the things of battery that's okay but uh for 40 for 20 for 40 calcium should be the maximum everything over it uh raise up the precipitation always so that's no matter because this happens in every tank don't Claude did you want to answer any other uh questions in the chat there is so many questions for you that uh you might not get you might not get you might not get the sleep tonight you might not get the sleep tonight Claude yeah sleeps over radar right Claude that was his your time so Mike is talking so much oh it's my turn yes your turn though you uh all right so um early you mentioned the halogens and uh i know one of the things that you guys claim with the bolus method is that uh there is going to be an increased demand for the halogens particularly uh fluoride and bromide um also an increased demand for metals uh particularly the dynamic ellens which are zinc vanadium copper nickel a little bit little bit of them i always get tongue twits on that that's a hard one um why are the halogens bromine iodine and fluorine so important for coral growth uh they're not only important for coral growth i think uh if you look today for um elements they talk you yeah it's be for for the skeleton uh but they have way more effects um about uh the skin so there's i see the halogens more as a protective agent against too much but there are growth against algae growth and it's stabilized the system uh and doing anti-oxidation work on into the course and on the system so which is very important for that we need this iodine fluoride but if you look in detailed papers there are for several hundred enzymatic processes biologic processes are they necessary so our view on it is too short but it makes us not sense to look on every process where these elements been what we find out is that the the best um that we have recommended level on the iCPs where we show on this area you have a quite um yeah let me say a stable effect and the next thing is um if you do data analyzes about so much tests and you see what is the causing the issues if people have cyanobacteria dino-flagellates whatever you see uh that nowadays is talking a lot about oh i have low nutrients yeah that could be an effect but it's not an automatically effect because we have with the COVID method example we have tanks with they have massive low nutrients on zero zero and we have no dino-flagellates so what was the reason the reason is that the halogens was very high and have the protective agent for the cords which they do the anti-oxidation about also the lights so it was not necessary to release uh these amount of sucks and tells them out of the water there are several reasons for dino-flagellates also for cyanobacteria but at the most is a lack of a proper elements and a proper relations of the elements which causes that issue because then the cords cannot do their biochemical work which is done and the halogens are also a good protecting against uh bacteria and um anchoring platforms and brown jelly disease if if we all see that we always find out that the the fluorine level is sample if it's go over 0.9 we have no more stability in iodine so fluorines stabilize iodine out um and as soon as we go up we never have brown jelly disease or something else and we don't need antibiotics and that things to bath them all the time we have a check that we dosing the elements included the bali light system how we do it is bolus or an standard together with calcium and the carbonate in a in a fix relation and adjust that according to the iCP test so it's not a single element all the time it's only two bottles you put it into the economy and that's it and that helps the corders there's a specific relation between fluorine sulfate and strontium so um cords creating molecules in their body to prevent against parasites or against the bacteria disease and they're using that three elements also to creating this anti-parasitic anti-bacterial molecules in their body um these these elements was not tested when they doing the recipes for valuing of other trace elements because they only tested the bone the skeleton and but not the whole body from the cords about the need and they also they make also the same mistake that they look only at one point they don't see the whole picture and the whole picture is the core and the bacteria what we have in the reef tank so a group care system takes care of the biology of the reef so that the bacteria can grow that you have that you have a good carbon source that you have to trace elements on it and then you bound the trace elements onto organic compounds that everybody in the tank can use it so all right i got another question for you um over the years i've used um two part of my reef tanks you know alkalinity and calcium dosing and i had really good results with it i uh i liked it because it really helped to um you know keep my ph elevated and uh but i switched to calcium reactor and caulk waster you know because the two part got very expensive i had a lot of corals in my tank and it just was a lot of dosing in terms of parts one and two i was using the the the esv bionic dosing system is the bolus method going to be too expensive for large tanks with a heavy demand for calcium and alkalinity like sanjay's tank you know he's got a huge amount of corals in there is is that going to be cost prohibitive or no i come from a i come from a german area uh which we are well known for that not keep any money for anything so keep everything for us and finally no at the end not because it's a very simple thing if you have a large tank um you can buy the chemicals in bulk and then they are way cheaper so it is clear if you have if you buy it in a small package they are expensive due to the production and and chemistry will absolutely but we have the most many many and the most famous core farms here in europe they run with bolling light but they get it as a pallet which is then way way more cheap pallet and you will also buy it in 50 gallon buckets keith and it's relatively reasonable when you buy it in 50 gallon or 50 pound buckets it's it's not bad it's i i ran i ran a big calcium reactor and i was spending proud well i was probably spending about 10 percent more on doing the bolling light versus doing buying co2 to keep the calcium reactor going and you must also calculate well the first thing is you have the energy cost which is very expensive in europe so some of us still pay about a 40 cent for kilowatt hour um so the pump is running the pump make heat on it and you have also not the stability in the calcium reactor so at the beginning they're strong and that they float up um you have more possibility um you have more possibility to individualize your dosing with the bolling light system because you can with every iCP you can change your trace element dosing into the canisters so even if you have your your canister done you can add and you can remove the trace elements as you need it so you have all the time an individual solution so that's why i hate calcium reactors on my side because i hate the noise and i i hate to clean them so i really don't care if i spend some some money more to save me hours of that shit cleaning of the calcium reactor and you know when when i start with calcium reactors they were new on the market so all of them broke yeah so none of them is working for years now i have my 25 uh 50 gallon uh chars and we mix it once a month we mix the solutions doing the trace elements on it and put it then in and that's it so i have no space i have no noise i don't need to buy gas and i hate these these these gas bottles when they corrode it when they're nearby of seawater so everything getting rusty and i hate this i don't want that so but that's my personal approach yeah i mean listen i've got i've got several sealed two tanks in my house and it does kind of scare the bejesus out of me if like uh something happened and there was a uh you know some sort of explosion or something but nothing happens also if you look at the cost of a calcium reactor up front versus what it costs you to buy a doser and two gallon jugs it's going to take you a long time to go through that much calcium to bring up what the cost of a calcium reactor are i mean i've used calcium reactors i had success with them but there was always something always went wrong i've gotten to the point where i try to have as few moving parts as i can on a system it's just the simpler and easier it is the more likely are to fix it and keep it running any any simple as better as you get older any any risk law in terms of that big dump of uh you know alkalinity at the beginning of the day if you got a large system is uh is there a limitation that um no limitation you have always you have always the same relation so it doesn't matter how big the tank is so it depends on the relation how much alkalinity at the end you need and uh we have reef tanks they're running with about five dkh a day which is in my opinion a little bit too much uh because the more than three three and a half should be not necessary even if a tank is gross really fast so it depends a little bit on the stability and on the um relations the magnesium calcium and the colander stays together into main dkh so also from plods from plods bolus directions when you do the do the bolus you dump it into where there's good flow and a large volume of water you don't dump it directly onto the corals themselves i mean i have 180 gallon sump of which it's approximately 120 gallons of water when i do the bolus it dumps to the far side of the reservoir so it takes a while for it to get all the way back into the tank so it's already dissolved in in solution rather than dumping it into the tank itself per se so that that's one of the things with a large tank but even with a small tank if you have a 40 gallon sump you still have 30 gallons of dissolve and you're not going to be adding a liter of uh part one every day so let's let's talk about my uh my systems clud you say that um you know in in in your uh right up on bolus that the uh the target pH to to do bolus should be 8.2 at the start of your lighting period i use uh so i'm using calcium reactor and caulk washer and you know my tanks are doing well which you know it scares me you know because you know the more i hear what you guys have to say the more i'm like hmm i'm gonna i should be trying bolus but uh and that scares me because things look good in my tank you know the corals look good and i always hesitate to change things when things are yeah go ahead my i mean we're not we're not telling you to change it's just something that may be better if your your tanks have basically hit a plateau and you want to move them to the next level but it's obviously not going to be for everyone because people are having success with what you're doing and probably 20 other different methods but if you're looking for something that has been proven in clod's tanks in my tanks and a bunch of other people that we know it's it's something that take you to the next step is it the only way there is no only way in his in his hobby people think that there's one perfect system if there was what i'll be doing it there's a million different ways this may work perfect for your system this may work perfect for my system it may work perfect for clods everyone is different and you have to take that into account and you also have to do everything slowly you can't just go you know what i'm going to switch everything over because like saunji seeing after you ripped out six boxes of corals the corals that were underneath everything they're suddenly getting exposed to uh eight hours of uh eight channels on it 100 percent or bleaching out they weren't used to it if it had brought the light down to 25 or 50 percent those corals might not have been quite as stressed but as we talk about all the time stability and doing things slow is the way to go in this hobby so chris from aci agriculture what's happening mr meckley uh says if it's not broke don't fix a key um this is making sense so currently in my systems my pH from both of those systems ranges from a low of eight point two on the reverse light cycle and goes up to about eight point five you know during the light cycle uh you know if if my pH is eight point two at the beginning of my light cycle am i already getting most of the benefits you know utilize in that calcium reactor on cockwash so that you would see with bolus look if you're if you're happy with the system and it's runs now and you get an instability to let it run because the first rule is ever never run never run uh never change a running system um like mike said there's a lot of systems out of the market don't run that or have some problems and have no more idea how they can get back into the into the game and then bolus or running light system could be a very interesting uh possibility or before you buy uh expensive calcium reactor and you don't want to deal with two solutions at once um i we never said that uh the problem when we go up is with bolus it created some very harsh effect and some uh also very uh not very friendly reaction of some people sometimes after 50 minutes or they cannot read everything and they even try to to to describe uh without having an only term sometimes if every single was wrong we have hundreds of a prime of thousands of a prime running dead and have the same effect and surely there are some of them which is not working at the beginning as they expected which is with every system uh in the world so the bad thing is if you have a running system now you're happy you're not run it and if you have your page the bell over the over the time and if you want to play around you can play around and you will see some some increases in the effect of the way all you're doing it's also the way how to iterate elements are supported there and how the accordingly will be stabilized over the day so but as long as the system's under the pool it's all good it ain't broke don't fix it no i i i i get what you're saying it's um but i think what what what what a big takeaway for me is what mike said at the beginning which is that um you know the uh the precipitate doesn't uh accumulate over time you know utilizing the bolus method so that's that's something that um you know certainly seems to be an advantage the most effect also you will have if you start with LPS code so they react at the beginning most so you get amazing uh polyp extensions on the on the LPS them if you run out like you all right right yeah i gotta grab the right i thought i was hoping that's is what it was i sit too long i'm hoping you're having a heart attack that's a this would be the most watched podcast ever if i had a heart attack on the podcast go ahead cool yes we have something yeah um mike or can you can you double check your um we're getting in a little bit of an echo it sounds like it's okay now yeah i know i know i know i know oh there it is again yeah yeah yeah yeah let me let me get off and come back yeah mike throwing a few curveballs there how's that that's better okay somehow i had managed to double the system oh this cramp is killing me um i said magnesium is the good uh point of against these against the cramps i take magnesium every day just for this and i still get them when i sit too long i think it's the wrong one so you you need to you need to use the maclicinate ones and not uh um sites drink more drink more fluids yeah the drinks are bullish and that's what i'm drinking drink some bolus that's a it's a cure all yeah uh hey if it would work for these cramps i would take bolus right now because this really hurts um clod talk to us about um a broke a broken buffer system bolus is supposed to help with this what's a broken buffer system and how does bolus help with that i think that was one of these uh creating some some very big discussion so as one we're not scientists so we don't sit there and do two years of study and trying to find for everything uh complicate chemical word for it the broken buffer system is a description of a situation which you find out after we uh taking care a little bit deep going deeper into bolus or other systems with advantages and disadvantages also we create um the wording about a broken buffer system so in fact you can read books you will not find it yeah so there's no wording of uh of broken buffer system above a system and there's also not the we'll also not find the wording of a salinity line or whatever it's a wording which you can use to make the things easy explain for normal reefers and not for chemical scientists or whatever um the broken buffer system describes the situation as if you dose cock water or if you dose the carbonate all the day you're creating a high pH value you're creating these precipitations and if you stop it or if you reduce it you will have a pH crash so it goes fast down it looks like that your buffer system is not longer active now we find to find out and try to find out what exactly is the reason for that so what happens in this system and the point is it has something to do this is our point this is our way where we have to detect it actually um what is this type of precipitation Mike what the hell is going on it got a level live stream this i don't have a sponsor but i'm using this there it works it's the only thing that works to get rid of the cramps so i won't have an aquarium sponsor but i'll have a medical sponsor okay that's good so go back to the level system so have people be right back we run long time co2 scrubber who they run long time uh pack water or carbonate water and be not very disciplinating so and so over over the time these uh precipitation settle over the other surfaces and the bacteria who get rid who try to get rid of these so who do the processing creating a lot of organic assets which keeps the pH down so now you dose every every time all the time you need to dose that the liquid the chemicals to keep the pH high and this you can do but how long you do it how more elements you need how more precipitation you do how higher the pH is if you stop that now then immediately the system crashes down so you go very deep sometimes it goes down to 7.27374 pH and this we find out after we do the changes so uh we find out that when we do the changes you use the biling light or you use the the bicarbonate base system and we change this to bolus we have three four days a little bit uh and not stay by a calinity level and then it stabilized and it was done but it was a total difference when we had um dark water or CO2 scrubber or carbonate so then the system crashes down and that's what we find out so it was happening in in a lot of three things and that we describe as a broken buffer system so if it I know that if you look it on uh on a standard chemistry lessons and um as maybe somebody's looking for that we have people in our company who has studied they have the PhD in chemistry and they're a really really good one so it's we don't need higher than we have them yeah even if I have no idea about chemistry but they have and they can explain me sometimes the very things are good um the point is that we find out these situations and give them a name and the name of spoken buffer system so that's it that's all and after and we see that the bolus need longer time to stabilize it again and now at the moment we write down in uh we we're creating a specific paper on it what exactly happens and what exactly is the reason so there are some other people around with a good networking and the major point why this PA crashes down then is due to the precipitation and precipitation taking organic amino acid food stuff uh fennels everything out of the water and put it on your rocks on your surface in your sand in your refitiums wherever and due to that situation that more and more bacteria is coming to reduce that in this case they're producing organic acids and these organic acids making H+ and that brings the pH down that pressure so you can prevent it if you dose all the time these high pH concentrate solutions but it means you have to dose more and more and more and all the time too which is not necessary at the end if you dose it with a bicarbonate because it bicarbonate directly different in seawater that's why you don't create this much precipitation which keeps your tank running longer and if you run a core farm and you have a lot of stuff there and you clean that you know every week you make a water change and you remove all the precipitation all the stuff then you can run the system for years that's not the point this is the question if it's necessary to go on that risk and for a standard aquarium at home where you cannot reach every single point on your aquarium so cleaning the sand cleaning the refitium all the things so all there the particles and the organics will be collected and they will go back into the water like every equilibrium will do over the time even when the biophones and that's what they don't what they don't think about it the biology effect of the surface and the surface is huge so I make a nice video about it I should do that in English about the relation between the surface and the water volume what we have so when I take my aquarium and everybody knows that what you think how much surface this aquarium have where bacteria can settle what do you think it's bigger than a football field so your surface so that means in fact even let us take a football field and take your you have for 400 gallons right 600 gallon total okay but doesn't matter so put the 600 gallons on the size of a football field that means in in fact you have an aquarium with one two millimeters height of water that's it and the rest is surface and that's why the surface has so a massive and so a huge effect on our chemistry in our way how our system's running it's totally wrong what we see with our eyes because we turn the water all the time around so I say very often we turn the shit around it is superb in the reef you have a wave the wave of 100% water change maybe 99% whatever and then it comes back 10,000 years later and we reached clean full of food and that's it that's the difference between a slum and and the five star hotel so that's why I would not compare these two things to each other it's a total different thing and these big surfaces and the active surface due to the bacteria due to the production of acids that's what creating these problems if you fill that with precipitation and especially if you fill it with precipitation producing magnesium hydroxide because magnesium hydroxide is a absorber it takes all the things out very fast even if it goes later in solution theoretically yes it does but not when they creating compounds together with calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate and there will be there's a proof for that if you look in aquatic chemistry and not in standard chemistry and see water then you will find it easily then it goes into the surface and that will have the effect and that's at the end of the point we have a high organic we have a lot of precipitation we have low pH and that's the old tank syndrome that's also creating these these stupid things about algae growing about all things if you go in relation and you keep the tank clean you will not have this not over 15 years or 16 years the tanks becoming more and more stable just just anecdotally every six months I clean the sump out I take the skimmers out and clean the whole bottom and I did that right before I started using the bolus method and I just changed out my skimmers after three months I got rid of my tons of my reef octopus and went with a big bubble king so I had everything out so I cleaned it the amount of precipitate I took out after three or four months compared with what I took out at six months was significantly and when I say significantly I mean significantly less than what I had been taking out every six months so from my point of view I saw significantly less precipitate since I switched over to the bolus method versus using the two part and calc visor so you know and I didn't know about the precipitate until halfway through watching cloud stuff but that's the one biggest thing I have seen is significantly less precipitate precipitation occurring within the tank and the problem is not the carbonate by itself well no it's a it's a brown precipitate it's not just white snow it's it's do you know exactly do you know that the gravel will be sold as sand from karypsia sample coming from the Bahamas these these oleights sometimes they sell it as aragonite which is the natural chorus end but it's coming up from chorus so this very exactly what happens in the Bahamas the Bahamas we have a situation that the water evaporate faster as in these in this area of water can flow back from the dendic ocean so the the aragonite the aragonite the calcium saturation set point is higher so the water immediately due to the waves that the car water and lay down on the bottom as small grains and that happens because the calcium level raise up the temperature raise up and they have some kinetic effect to the waves so and then the saturation point will be a little bit over the saturation point so and there is no organic in this water water is very very clean so that means they fall down and they are quite white it's pure calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate and and small other elements in so it's a very good material if we have a nice aquarium with a very good water that should be also white but it isn't it's always dark and brown and black and that's it's the problem what we have according to that that we take out all our phenols our amino acids dirt everything which is in the aquarium we put into the surface and this will come back and will over fertilize our system that's the reason why we have to try to get rid of it and this works with disciplines or cleaning everything absolutely but it works also with the right to use the right method and not going on these on these concentrated levels of carbonate which can create it so Claude getting back to to my system in terms of utilizing calcium reactor and caulk washer for a tank like mine or for a system like mine what kind of steps and you know and I run kind of like on the high side with calcium or 7480 what kind of transition would I need to do to get on to the bolus method nothing nothing big so at the end you prepare the solutions which is to to how many gallons you have in your tank I've got one system that's 349 gallons the other system 446 gallons 1 1000 to do so it's uh it's uh you and your gallons almost also so if you use a 10 gallon you use a 10 gallon you don't have to give me specific numbers but I mean is there anything that I should be doing to kind of make that transition between caulk washer and calcium reactor to bolus should I be taking it off line slowly and transitioning to bolus slowly no you flip in a switch exactly you can do that very simply the only number what you need to know is how much alkalinity I need by day so that's the that's the first dose so if you know you have a consumption of two points of alkalinity a day then you give the consumption of two a day so at the first day you start then you check how the alkalinity will go and they will go deeper than during the night but it does no matter as long as calcium magnesium keeps quite stable cost it that you dose according to the calculators and then the next morning you you reach up your set point so you go in 8.5 or 8.5 alkalinity and you dose that amount of alkalinity there usually in this combination caulk water with calcium reactor the caulk water is not that has not this disadvantages cause both they have they are both side on effect so you have too much CO2 to the to the to the caulk reactor and the caulk water they do the consumption so that it has both both negative effects to do the mixture are done and that's why I expect three four days the calinity can swing a little bit and then you have to have the stability and the standard dosing is after you get the stability it's one part of the calcium solution and it's four point five parts of the alkalinity solution which you have to do so I'm basically go ahead and that's it so that's a quite simple thing if you run only caulk and if you run with CO2 scrubber it can needs a little bit lower here you can get so sometimes it's also necessary to raise up the calinity set point a little bit to get faster back to the right pH level but it could take sometimes 30-40 days till it gets stability if the tank is if you have a lot of precipitation a lot of stuff and it's then also helpful to have a check on the elements so that they are compared because most of these tanks shows that they have very often high on the titanium but low of all the others and half of this balance then so sometimes this makes sense before to go some of the elements before to switch so to get going I need the bowing light set I need the bowing trace one two three it all comes in the set it's all in the set you can also use the bottom ring color elements green blue blue purple red purple one should you be using those the color events are on top so the base idea of the bowing light system is to create a system which goes in limitation so that means we have calcium magnesium and carbonate if you have a good salt you don't need the magnesium part the trace elements and the macro elements so that's not only trace elements there carbon solution side trace elements inside and macro elements like strontium example so then we have key elements like strontium and iodine in the in the first bottle is the strontium the key element in the bottle two is one of the minimum the key element and then the three is iodine the key element that is what we look for and after that we do the dosing all other elements are in relation about the biology and top tiptic the core growth needs so then you start with 25 depending on your system if you fully stock maybe with 50 milliliters on a 5-liter on a 1.2 6 1.2 5 gallon bucket so that's that's the ground recipe you can adjust and can reduce the amount of water which you prepare and we prepare a stock solution so and that's the key so we prepare a stock solution which is always the same and then we give the element dosing into the stock solution due to the higher concentration of the stock solution the elements and the carbon source and everything which is in in the trace elements keeps they about then we dose this after one week after 10 days we do a iCP test and let me say we see that we have the half amount of iodine that means very simple we double the dose so after a few weeks even on a microgram step by step you see at the system that the elements stabilize each other so the relations come back to that where they are and how old the tank is how long it needs but at the end mostly if you go really further on it and you focus on it and you don't don't do any big changes i might between that way it could go also a little bit faster but at the end you will achieve a very good stability between the levels and that's it so and after a few tests then you know exactly that your individual dosing of the elements is maybe 28 milliliters to 48 milliliters and due to that situation that you dose it immediately into the tank you have for four weeks or six weeks you dose nothing anymore into the tank so now you have the stability and now you want to play around a little bit with coloration a little bit with i won't have more blue or red or i want to have more this and then you use these top-off elements like the color elements or like the single elements depends on how you like it and don't expect to see something like overnight i love these people that are online i added this and the tank suddenly exploded in growth the next day it's it's not going to happen the first week the second week it's going to be like when you take an aspirin for a headache it's just a gradual reduction here it's going to be a gradual improvement but if you take pictures before in the middle and after then you'll start to see where the changes are occurring what about the specialty mates also that not as i'm sorry keys it's especially made not to do it fast because that's the same like farming with plants if we do very fast changes it will have always a negative side effect on the course so this system is is creating for long success and not for short success if i want to have short success i increase the amount i put some sugars or whatever you can or start or whatever you you can put today in in such a product and to get a fast viewable result but that means always that you do like you like if you have plants that you do over for donations or plants grow fast but after some weeks they die and that's where we have to take care of the course because uh they like limitation but they don't like over nutrients or overfibulation it doesn't matter if it's elements or nutrients so that's what they kill um over the time getting back to pH what what if you have a um you know a very tight room windows are shut tight there's not a lot of you know co2 that is um able to escape you build up an access to co2 right so i mean i've got an air exchange unit and that helps you know me elevate my pH and uh you know people use co2 scrubbers is is there a certain level of carbon dioxide uh clod that you should try to shoot for and in terms of that uh that level in a room now no cost bolus is working uh bolus becomes more strong as lower to ph is but that's why we doze it in the morning it does not work and it will not increase the pH if the pH is high this is this is exactly right so some um some doing a test so they to show and to make the proof that sodium bicarbonate uh did not increase the pH and there were some some rumors on the way that every across snow that sodium bicarbonate cannot increase the pH yeah it's right if you run over freshwater system in a closed system then yes it's correct in a seawater experiment the pH is low exactly the the the opposite happens so that's why we doze it in the morning you will have a very short point where the pH goes a little bit down and then the pH raise up why because you producing co2 the co2 is leaving the water over the simmer over the surface you get the equilibrium and in this case it takes more co2 out as it was there before and slowly step by step and you can see on the graphs step by step the pH goes up then so it's it's not a point that you put it in that carbonate and immediately you have 8.8.6 and then you have to stabilize it all the time it you start and then step by step the the proof of system will increase the proof of system will be cleaned and then it raise up your pH higher and then it does not matter even if you have a high co2 in in your room which means at the morning then you will have a lower pH then both is is more strong as if you just be at a high pH level that's the genial effect of of bicarbonate what they have that they react a little bit different than the carbonate but it has these massive huge into seawater and that's why we what we always need need to talk about it because the Germans talk about fresh water we have a frying water and we have the surface effect and that makes everything totally different in the pure in the pure chemical view under the usual way how they learn it under it's a closed system and that also you see in some videos so they do the test with the bicarbonate but they put a point and you will also not lose a co2 in a bottle of of water with gas as long as it's closed to see if you stay stay in the water as soon as you open it automatically the extra billion will go down and if you push the bicarbonate it will increase your pH not that evening at the morning all right one last question then we're going to let you go to sleep okay i'm okay i'm gonna marathon after this because this is what he does oh you got another podcast to go to their quad no absolutely not because now it's short before three o'clock in the morning and tomorrow 10 i have to be in another town for a meeting so i should go sleeping yeah to be better uh one last question temperature you know that's an important parameter is is there a certain temperature range that uh you know would be ideal for the bolus method or does it not matter absolutely the standard so the standard temperature would be what we are you have to Fahrenheit things so i need to so in in south this is about between 23 and 27 it's quite okay okay guys um i want to thank any any final thoughts before we uh sign off in this live stream no i i've enjoyed it this is this is different than talking to sanjay cloud at least knows what he's talking about oh you're gonna have to answer that mic in a few weeks i'm sure he's going to miami soon so he'll be unhappy and relaxed he's not watching this tonight but there are many greetings you you know i really love him the absolute great guy but he's he's always a skeptical every time he's so sick well we'll ask him about the bolus method when we have him on we got uh we got mike son he uses a he uses a calcium reactor he wants not gonna do with the bolus like alkalinity is done no actually he's he's adding he's actually adding two part and a calcium reactor because his consumption is so high and his corals are so thick he can't do it with just one if that is any system running on that way and his system runs on this way great and then he should do that that's another point i mean it is growth rates in the past year and a half or i mean i've followed up sanjay and i've been friends for 30 years i've seen his tank once a year at least for the last 30 years his growth rates have never been this quick and he's always grown corals faster than anyone but he maximizes light he keeps nutrient levels high his temperatures warm and the corals love it so yeah but you need these specific uh what some he also took getting and you know he fights for many years uh with instructing with his tank before he before he finds the way well he has ammonia dosing there was a amount of dosing it was not a amount of dosing because i have you know the good thing is if you have a lot of icps and people send it icp to you you have a lot of data and you see a lot of things so and uh i i i remember that we talk about it and say here you have some levels which you really need to increase or without that doesn't matter then they starting with water change and the most people don't see how many things they change so here's something then cleaning the sump is a you change a lot doing a new sand on it and the ammonia dose was in this case for this aquarium maybe the right way but it does not meant that but it's the same as the bolus you will find at the most people it will work but they're only a few percent always left which does not work does not have the effect then you have to what is the reason so it means not that the system does not work if there are some which have a different experience that's in that was never different in reef keeping we had people they they they install a cartoon reactor and the effect in the reef tank was not good why others was perfect and it seems that is the same system but if you go really deep in the water chemistry and into the analyzes you see oh no there's a different fluoride there's a different and sulfate sometimes many different elements and if some enzymatic effect cannot work anymore that's the same with the sulfate now that's a typical thing which it makes so difficult in the reef keeping the enzymatic processes which need sulfate needs so less sulfate that even if you have a low sulfate level you have tons enough of sulfate but the practical use showed that it makes it different if you run a high sulfate or low sulfate which makes no sense at the moment so for what reason the core is really needed for what reason we need that high amount of sulfate in the reef tank if you look on books on the biological we need some micrograms of sulfate for the all these enzymatic effect which we know we have we have hundreds of milligrams there so 10 000 times more as we normally need so at the moment we really don't know exactly why this happens it had maybe something to do with the bacteria on the surface is there and it means also not that in every tank who has a low sulfate level that problems comes it is only happens in the last one and a half year that sulfate levels all over the world go down we find the source what happened and then at the same time we see that the increase of some bacteria problem problems with with i feel your stuff with brown jelly disease and we see then if you look under 10 000 or 50 000 20 000 of tests you see that people report more problems when they have the lower effects of fluoride strontium and sulfate and the most say it when we have strontium low and sulfate low so also you come out and say hey guys it would be better if you increase the sulfate because tons of people say that they have a better result so why i should wait for five years to give that information out if i find somebody who will study that and then i have the problem that you have a young study guys they have not experienced in reef keeping about playing around with the course so they look at mostly on the theoretical way or under specific circumstances in the empty aquarium which is not the same like you have at home that's why we share the information as soon as we have it and as soon as we have enough data from the lab and with about 500 tests a day we have a lot of data which we can use so we have sometimes 10 000 50 000 aquariums where we can have a check on it and if the people they give us the report back what they have for problems and the AI what we have in our analysis they share each other so i show please show me all the guys who have who who tipped out that they have for cyanobacteris and showed me the disrelations and the AI will provide me that within of seconds they say we have 86 percent of all the people's honors have this one is low or have this specific which we maybe can talk a few minutes about is the organic factor what we use about the PO4 and p testing so of course that's actually in and you add a little bit of discussions about the organic compound and what we do since many years is that we detect the organic compounds over phosphate and phosphorous so that we use two different machines we taking one is the p level so means the total phosphorous where iCP testing in the other is the autophosphate and the relation between the two shows very good how much organic i have in my system so you can see it on the total refiCP total test kit there are some relations under it under total phosphate to phosphate and there should be a level of one it's a factor and every time when we have the factor over two nearby three the tank is full of organic compounds and which means we have then organic and the good thing is against of SAK 254 or other testing is that we don't have the problem that we only detect the part so SAK is a quite good method but only detecting the double the bending organic compounds while the phosphorous taking everything out so but this is detailed so we can use both of it but you just have the organic testing in your in your reef total it's just inside since many years so that's why we have a lot of data between that and the organic compounds and then the point is how more organic you have in your system how more precipitation you have caused these high organic load and see what are also creating high precipitation doesn't matter which system you use so you'll be at twice good in a good way if you have a low organic compound not less so no zero but on the other time not too high and to using a bicarbonate system like the balling light system that you can create a stable effect in both cases so low organic and a good a good value of trace elements and decarbonate data one last quick question salt doesn't matter i got to sneak that in never ever let clod go to sleep huh it's okay it's um oh good salt electric salt guys salt mix clod does that matter so i would say one one very simple thing i'm i'm sometimes i'm really curious to see how many money is spent on lights on skimmers fancy decoration a best of the best will be by and then they buy a salt which i don't know if it's even the name it's verse four that's the same that you like a race car or a Porsche car and then you buy the cheapest tires from from uh from uh yeah whatever it is uh woolmars or whatever you have you can buy tires in the u.s and then more woolmars that's what's exactly that okay it's time to go to that warmark the cheapest the chinese tires from warmark and then you're blaming Porsche that the car don't drive wall so and that's exactly what i don't understand the skimmer the the care system flow light and a good salt are the absolutely needed base which means to have successful reef tank and to save there to a few bucks cost you later hundred of bucks of their pores but nobody takes care of it and a good salt cannot be cheap because um if you you know nowadays if you put um dangerous chemicals like fluoride bromide um or expensive metals like lisium and others into the salt it is very complicated to bring that in a top quality together and at the same time to protect your workers also against these dangerous chemicals if you handle that in tons so you cannot spray around fluoride um to your workers because there will be a big cancer after after some months if you do that so you have to protect everything which makes the cost higher but on the other side a good salt a stable salt and a good produce salt you can see immediately on your course so ever if you have a store or not um don't ask any more questions we have to get the bet you can have a speck on is the fauna marine salt the best solution for the uh bowing light system you could be honest yeah okay yeah but there are also two three adequate salts on the market so that's okay you you can see it you do a proper ICP testing and you can see it if the salt is very well mixed balanced grain size is great uh the elements are sprayed on it and if you deluded you don't have any dirt and dust and whatever and some weird um sometimes we find very weird uh situation so it's no lisium in or too less potassium so all these expensive elements they're not there then I would get rid of as fast as possible so we got charles del beak that just joined uh late in the the stream but we'll have charles back on with mike and sanjay and julian sprung in a few weeks so that's going to be a very entertaining episode i know he just tell me yesterday so he's he was also very interesting about the the china trip because he also know these guys from ocean kingdom here from uh from south china and so uh i have to talk with him uh charles if you hear so i don't i didn't forget it i will give the report and tomorrow yeah charles you can call him right now he's not going to sleep he's not sleeping he's he's just gonna get a snack now all right guys well listen i want to thank you so much and and i really appreciate all the time and and all the insight it was uh very educational as uh usual cup everyone enjoyed it Keith always a pleasure thanks guys i also want to thank my sponsors one more time champion lighting supply besides being in place for hobbyist to purchase salt water aquarium supplies online champion lighting is also a wholesale distributor for many popular brands if you own an aquarium store or an aquarium service company contact champion lighting through their website at champion lighting dot com to set up the wholesale account it's got an echo going um yep that's my answer tanya's crew will be at reef stock chadonuga on august 24th and 25th so stop by and sail out uh polo reef make sure to check out polo reef's new youtube video that drops is friday in the third episode of the polo summer relaxation series polo reef gives us a momentary lax as they dive into the 17 000 gallon reef i also don't miss their video from last week as they take you on a behind the scenes journey of all the crazy projects going on this summer as i mentioned andrew will be on the live stream next week and we'll talk about that stuff in more detail make sure to subscribe to their youtube channel at polo reef for video drop notifications and finally g hl personally use all the g hl products including their proflox controller the metros lights the delicious case director they produce high quality german engineering products for more information to purchase their stuff you can visit aquariumcomputer dot com slash usa also sell their products on reef bomb dot com um a big thank you to paul um as well as uh greg carol for the the moderators and i appreciate them very very much they're both presidents of our local reef clubs and local reef clubs are very very important to this hobby so thank you the eyes um finally one last thing tomorrow i have an article dropping on polo reef on the unsung pioneers of the hobby so i talk about all the people from the last 40 years they had a lot of people that have only been in here the last five years have forgotten so hope you enjoy that article i'll be looking out for that um also want to know that all episodes of rapping the reef bomb were available as podcasts and spotify apple podcast book podcast stitcher and amazon my next rapping with reef bomb will be next tuesday july 30th 7 p.m i will have andrew on from polo reef you can check out the full upcoming schedule of guests on reef bomb dot com under the youtube section until next time be safe and be well