jestep

Yeah, nothing like putting a magnifica in my pocket. I can explain the rash honey! Was that too much? [emoji23]

Would definitely be difficult to explain considering half the anemone would likely still be stuck to your arm. TSA would be a trick as well.

The damsel has't chased everything away...?

Or the mixture of moorish idols and schooling bannerfish.

I've still got a ton of that dinner plate size green cap from a few years back in case you get sick of acros...

Oh, I remember that green monti cap. Super bright green!

Yeah, it's a really bright colored one. I swear I find a new 3 or 4" piece every week that broke off and went crazy where it fell. For the life of me, I bleach all the red caps I put in the same tank though.

I've still got a ton of that dinner plate size green cap from a few years back in case you get sick of acros...

I wouldn't worry about the cyano, just rinse or shake it off before putting the chaeto in a sump. Cyano is already in your tank but I'd definitely take steps to make sure you don't get an aiptasia infestation.

Have been toying with this idea instead of sand or BB. Has anyone local done their tank like this? Seems like it could be a huge pain to keep clean though.

Picture is from RC thread in the above link.

Really want to avoid this:

You'd never be able to leave this thing for more than a few days unless you invested heavily into automating it.

Talk about being a slave to your tank.

That's like saying you wouldn't buy a mansion because you'd have to clean it, or a ranch because you'd have to run it. If you have the money to build that tank, you have the money to pay someone(s) to keep it running.

It's no longer a hobby when someone else is running your tank. It becomes a piece of furniture and another bill that has to be paid. The joy of the hobby is in the building of the system and the satisfaction success brings. Mansions aren't sold because they become a little dirty, but tanks are abandoned every day as the hobbyist loses the fight with any number of pests or outside factors. There are many different kinds of slavery and many of them we enter into willingly.

Yeah, when I was a kid I always liked building legos more than playing with them. Luckily with a fish tank, it's always a work in progress but I doubt I would have a tank if I wasn't doing it myself.

Watched the entire thing. I do wish there was a little more behind the scenes footage but the tank is so amazing that it would be hard from a production standpoint to focus on much else. Based on the incredible amount of maintenance I'd much rather visit one of these tanks than have one of my own. You'd never be able to leave this thing for more than a few days unless you invested heavily into automating it.

That's crazy. Probably an easy hundred thousand in fish alone.

~110 total volume

3 Clowns

2 Springer's Damsel

1 Talbot Damsel

1 Royal Gramma

1 Assessor Basslet

1 Yellow Tang

3 Peppermint shrimp

Feed about every other day. Alternate between spectrum marine pellets, YFS spirulina soft pellets, and Rods, but the rods is more like every other week.

YFS pellets are awesome if anyone is sick of dealing with sheets of nori.

How old is the sand? If it's <6 months, it might just be a natural progression that the tank will go through and should clear up on it's own.

What would the evidence be of phosphates / nitrates being too low? my acan / lord and about half of my palys are not as puffy as they usually are.

Yet I still have some brown algae on my sand bed..

my hanna checker says 0.00 but I am dosing vodka which I believe is / or should be consuming all the phosphates before the algae can get to it.

The vodka dosing most likely won't facilitate the full transport of PO4. For the most part, I've never seen a tank using a carbon dosing method that didn't end up with needing to use some form of PO4 removal after a period of time. In my experience it is usually 4 - 8 weeks before the PO4 buildup surpasses the bacteria's ability to remove it, but once that point is hit, it doesn't seem possible to get back to an equivalent export of both NO3 and PO4.

As far as the 0 reading goes, PO4 is actually a bit of an existential problem. There's technically 2 main types of PO4 in a tank, inorganic and organic, the later being PO4 bound to other compounds that release it into the tank. Organic PO4 will not register on PO4 tests however it still is usable by algaes, cyano, dino, etc. It also breaks down into inorganic PO4. The real trick here is that organic PO4 is what's actually exported via skimming, whereas inorganic is not. So, we test for inorganic PO4 and actually remove organic PO4, kind of makes PO4 control more of a watch, observe, and adjust than actually scientific...

As far as the actual question, too low PO4 will normally result it coral that aren't growing, and possibly STN depending on the coral. In my experience LPS usually fare the worst. My acans, chalices, and wall euphyllias typically retract and don't inflate well. If I drop PO4 too quickly, they do it even worse but generally LPS and softies don't like being down near zero. You could probably even say that no coral except certain SPS like a very low amount of PO4. The easiest to spot for me is that you'll typically have very little algae growth in the tank at the same time. Film algae on the glass is usually the easiest to keep track of since you know how often you clean it. When I get my PO4 near zero I can go 6 weeks without cleaning the front glass, otherwise it needs it weekly.

Is that first picture blurry or did you put a week of cleaning in it?

I'm typically not a huge fan of hex tanks, but that looks great with the lighting and open scape.

Jestep, is all those concerns about aluminum leaching from marine pure something to worry about?

I haven't had any issues that I could attribute to the brick, but I'm not testing for aluminum either. I do believe it is denitrifying as I lost my biopellet reactor several times in the past few years and even once of about a month, still didn't register any NO3. I have something like 20lbs of non-porous cerameco as the only live rock in my tank, so the brick was originally just a backup to make sure there was sufficient surface area for normal nitrifying bacteria.

I've read a number of the reports about aluminum and most seem to be anecdotal at best. Not saying it isn't happening, but I would definitely like to see something more than reports of red poly filters and triton test kits reading high Al.

How the the BTA die? Just want to make sure it's the cause and not a symptom of something else.

I use a 4 x 8 x 8" marinepure ceramic brick as well as biopellets. Both are effective at removing NO3 in my observation, but the brick is huge. It does make a good skimmer stand though.

I have a hard time believing the siporax media does anything more than nitrification. To achieve denitrification, you have to establish completely anoxic zones in the filter media. It's not about surface area, it's about no oxygen, which is difficult in small media because everything is close to the oxygen rich tank water. Same reason why DSB's have to actually be deep, because it's difficult to get away from oxygen.

It might be worth a shot, but I would definitely have reserved expectations. At the very least, if these actually do support denitrification, you can expect it to take several months before any denitrification occurs as there's going to need to be a number of changes in the media and bacteria on them before there's any chance of internal anoxic zones developing.

Yeah ^ Same thing with email addresses. You post one publicly and you're going to get spam in a matter of hours, emails are way worse than phone numbers though.

Welcome. Looks like a great start and you already have some future reef addicts.

Welcome

Np. Also, assuming you have normal bulkheads, but the thick SCH80 bulkheads require larger holes, I think 42mm is for 3/4 on the SCH80's.

I'd switch your existing media to the new reactor. If you are planning on running both chambers with PO4 media, start with roughly 1/2 the recommended amount and alternate replacing media so you basically have a 2 week overlap and never are replacing all the media at the same time.

I'm currently using 4 reactors. Each one has GFO for a month but they're all on a schedule a week a part.

Doing it this way reduces the bouncing PO4 that you get with a single reactor when the GFO is exhausted and replaced all at once.

For normal sch40 or ABS bulkheads, 35mm is the standard size for 3/4, and 30mm for 1/2.

Use Manzanita or another wood and tie plants to the end of the branches with fishing line. Anubias, Java ferns, and other plants that grow from a rhizome are usually much more suited for growing like this.

Last one I received in my email was the 11th of January. It's gmail, 100% sure that it's not going to my spam.

Same here. I normally log in enough to notice, but I missed a few by a day or two in the past few weeks.