afgun

Prof took 'em home after we moved my tank and stand a couple of months back...

I have a used hammerhead motor available. I converted to a VFD and three-phase motor, so I no longer need the one that came with it. Make me a reasonable offer, plus shipping from 78664 or you pick up.

Here's a FTS and an interesting crab that TBS put in the order for us

I bought some CFL floods and hooked them up over the refugium. We tossed in some halimeda and chaeto that we got from RCA and a couple of bottles of tigger pods. The fuge is currently home to a couple of gorilla crabs that we found (unfortunately the rest are playing hard-to-get). Several snails have made the trip down the overflow and are also in the fuge now. Ones I find in the sump get forcibly relocated back to the tank but I leave anything in the fuge.

A couple of days ago we found THIS bugger (he's an inch and a half to two inches across!) had hitchhiked in with the rock somewhere:

Our attempts to corral him have not gone the way we hoped. At least his claws appear to be blunt...

Things have started to settle in nicely, and we even have what appears to be a lot of snail eggs recently laid.

Unfortunately, the condis for the most part haven't really found a place that they like yet, and have been quite mobile. One got sucked into the closed loop intake the other day. I thought that the multitude of small (1/4") holes would prevent that, but it seems that the suction was enough that it got pulled in. I also pulled several small hermit crabs from the holes. Not sure if they were happy to be removed or not, but at least they're free.

Water parameters have been pretty stable; ammonia is at 0, nitrites are at 0 and nitrates slowly creep up until we do a water change when it hits 80 or so. Since things seem to have settled down, we picked up a few fish and some frags yesterday:

That's a bar goby, and 3 of our 7 blue chromis. We also bought a coral beauty, but it is quite shy and it darts back into the rockwork when I am aiming the camera towards the tank.

We're still aquascaping, so no recent FTS, but we finally have our reef!

Update time... the BTAs are really Condis, and the 4 "other" anemones appear to be flower anemones.

My wife posted some pictures to RC awhile back, and here they are:

Thanks, Robb. We wound up getting 2 brittle stars, 2 serpent stars, 4 bubble tip anemones, 4 other anemones (carpet?), a big honkin' starfish, a ton of hermit crabs and snails, a kickass decorator crab, several fans and sponges, 4 shrimp, a tiny fish of some sort, and a bunch more sweet live rock. On tap for today is a water change to bring nitrates down.

Quick update as I'm still beat from a late night... but the second part of our TBS "package" arrived yesterday evening, and we worked for 3 1/2 hours to clean the rock and get everything situated. We did a rough placement of where we want the rocks, but we haven't aquascaped everything yet. Anyways, here's a FTS from last night:

And L/M/R closeups:

You can get more cooling if you direct the fan to hit the surface of the water (if you aren't already) through evaporation. I'm going to be adding a couple of controlled fans to my hood to better control temps too...

We believe that the hitchhiker is a red mithrax crab; we (I) took a chance and put him in the tank today. He isn't very happy right now, having been relegated to the sump for several days.

Our NO2 hit zero today, indicating hopefully that our second bacterial colony is fully established. NO3 has been in the 20-40 range for almost 3 days (we controlled it before then with some water changes) and it's solidly at 20 now, so hopefully the third bacterial colony is on its way to taking hold as well.

We rockscaped a couple of days ago too. Here's the results:

Unfortunately, a large portion of the sponges that were on the rock have died off; we understand that's fairly normal, but we're still sad about it. So we're looking forward to the second half of the rock and cleanup crew to arrive now.

The auto-topoff is working perfectly, and the semi-automated water change (hey, at least no buckets!) enabled a couple days of 50+ gallon changes as nitrates spiked. Time to fire up the skimmer, I think...

Found us another hitchhiker... we hadn't discarded the bucket of water that I used to clean the rock in, and look what was hiding in the gunk at the bottom!

It's hairy, which we think means bad, so he's living in the sump right now. Ideas on what he might be?

There was a lot of water in each bag; the rocks were largely submerged. We did the "sniff test" and only found a few small sponges that smelled bad enough to warrant scraping off.

First batch of rock arrived! No aquascaping has been done yet as we just finished cleaning up after going through the rock and placing it in the tank...

First of all, we have another sea urchin hitchhiking in... looks like the same kind as in the sand

We found this crab, and aren't sure if we should put it in the tank or not... advice? It has some markings like it might be a young porcelain crab, but we are a bit wary. ID?

We were quite surprised to find a fish had secreted himself in a rock; we didn't notice him as we cleaned the rocks in 2 separate buckets of saltwater!

And I know you've been waiting for a full-tank shot... here you go, in the dark under the lights. Remember, no aquascaping yet. Lots of color, a TON of sponges. Very nice looking rock!

Thoughts?

You probably want to run the RO cartridge without DI for 10 minutes or so to clean out the preservative that they put in it. Then attach your DI bed, run for a few more minutes dumping the permeate, and then you're good to go. At least that's what BFS recommends.

We bought large barrels specifically to use the 50-gallon salt packs in the buckets. Works great!

Yes, sorry 'bout that. They call them "quick connect tubing" and yes, the parts are all Watts.

You need a hose bib splitter and an adapter from hose bib to 1/4" John Guest. I have a spare adapter since I hard-plumbed mine, and you can buy the splitter at Home Depot/Lowes. If you prefer to buy from BFS, look here: http://www.buckeyefieldsupply.com/showproducts.asp?Category=187&Sub=133

I was only able to get a tiny additional amount of water out of the carpet today, so I'm just going to keep running the fan and crossing my fingers.

As promised, here are a couple of photos. We found a fair number of different kinds of snails and a sea urchin that hitchhiked with the sand!

The only Southwest direct flight from TPA to AUS today had its cargo booked, so we're crossing our fingers that they'll find room for cargo soon and bring us the rock.

Aaaaaaaaand rookie mistake on my part (filter sock hung over edge of sump) allowed untold gallons of water to quietly spill out of the tank today. I am just glad that I heard the auto-topoff filling the reservoir for much longer than it should have and investigated. Thank goodness my wife had a steam-vac; I have been using it for hours to dry the carpet. I have to throw in the towel for tonight though as my back is killing me. Back at it tomorrow in the am to get any straggling moisture out of the carpet. The fan will have to do for tonight...

Any recommendations on a water alarm for my watertight (but overflowed!) stand?

--andrew

That's the plan; the dust from the live sand will hopefully settle today or tomorrow... pics coming soon! We have counted at least 4 snails and an urchin that hitchhiked with the sand so far...

Funny you should ask; we just dumped in 200# of live sand from Tampa Bay Saltwater... first order of live rock should be here this weekend.

Fair 'nuff. I'll be buying one then. And it will be available for loan.

I was going to get one myself... if you end up pulling the trigger before I do, would it be too much to ask if I could borrow yours?

Your flush valve should only be open when flushing the system; otherwise it should be closed, forcing all waste water through the flow restrictor. You may have to adjust your restrictor so that you get a 4:1 waste:permeate flow rate.

Don't worry about low water in your DI media; it will fill up over time.

I have eggcrate... a full sheet plus some scraps. Scraps for free, sheet for $5.

So, still waiting for the tank cycle to really get going. NH3/NH4 has dropped to 1ppm finally, but it's been there for a couple of days now. I keep dosing bacteria too. I'm too anxious!

My RODI was running about 45 PSI at the membrane. When I added a second piggyback membrane, water pressure dropped to 35 PSI. I think there's a problem with the housing. But I got dissatisfied with the vendor... Not nearly enough pressure to be efficient. I'm now running a single membrane from BFS with an 8800 booster pump. It can easily get a 75 GPD membrane up to 90 PSI (which I think is the max recommended pressure). The pump can be had for about $120. The transformer is about $25. You'll probably want a pressure shutoff switch, which is probably another $20. You can reuse your existing auto-shutoff if you have one (doing this now) or switch to an electric cutoff switch, which I have on order.