DerrickH

Those 72" lights are actually 73" lights!!! Ask me how I know LOL.   (off to build a new canopy)

They are silly bright though and that pop!  Thanks

I'm here...well should I say Im now back!  Been away for 8ish years and now making a comeback lol  FB groups have taken over, and while thats ok, sure is better to have a solid build thread or q&a thread that can be found later via a google search. 

Welcome to the ATX.  Im in Jarrell but still central TX.

Timfish is active and a few others are coming back to the hobby from what I hear.

Wish my tank was cycled, I'd be taking quite a bit off your hands.  

Marking this.  IF theres any left, I will need some as well.

Looks like we are both making come-backs at the same time.  Been a long time for me as well.  Congrats on the business adventure.

Yeah a fellow reefer that managed some tanks at a dental office reached out a few years ago.  The dental offices had installed those battery powered air fresheners in the waiting rooms and bam...all of them had dino.  He messaged me and low and behold, same issue. 

I noticed that C02 scrubbers have become quite common with newer homes being built tighter.  My buddy was fighting low PH for the longest time, he put a scrubber on his skimmer intake and his PH stabilized.  I was having similar issue, so I ran the skimmer air tube to an external source and my pH finally came back up as well. Weird how these issues pop up and a simple fix takes care of it while many spend many thousands of dollars putting a bandaid on the issue. 

Put in a hefty order with BRS so I should be on my way soon.  Have to visit RCA and a few others to get some rock/sand.  Is Prof still around?  Does he still sell dry rock?

Ive been away for quite a few years now.  Last go at this, I lost the battle to dino twice and said deuces to the hobby.   A few years ago I built a pico AIO and it did great for a year till you guessed it...dino...but wait theres more!  After a few days it cleared up all on its own!  Well that cemented my thought about the aerosol propellants being the root cause.  Turns out my wife and her friend getting all blinged out for dinner one night, spraying their bath and body works spray caused the dino in the pico.  Once her friend went back to OK a few days later, it all disappeared. 

So many years later, I am giving it a go once again.  125g this time.  Softies/Zoas and a few LPS.  Wish me luck.

(ps: holy crapola, the prices on the stuff has skyrocketed)

how large is the small one?   My clowns are mad since I had them plucked from aqua tek....

5g AIO so  have to be very careful with what I put in

I made the mistake of boiling a small rock that had palys on it......lesson learned. Didnt go to ER but was **** lucky. 

TTT

wait, you removed some cheato? that seems backwards lol

Hope your fight against dino ends faster than mine...Im still in the ring...

Very nice build. Looks like its been a long journey.

dosing one tablespoon of baking soda in my ATO. Seems to be working.

Would yall consider this stable? Note the scale on left and days on bottom.

The weather feature is reserved for the PWM feature that the AI lights use. Ive tried every configuration I could find and none work with the apex and 48D drivers. The drivers just cannot dim fast enough via 0-10v port.

From what Ive read, the response time on the drivers prevent the lightning feature in the apex from working. Cloud cover can be simulated (I got this to work...) but thats it. I just use 4 different ramp modes. Ramp up blue, ramp down blue, and ramp up/down white. I dont have as many colors though lol. Your right about the users just blasting the tanks with lights. I did the same thing when I got mine. Now I run my blues up to around 75% and whites never exceed 40%. Corals are much happier and sps is growing well.

How are you controlling these?

Suddenlink blocks all but 3 ports. It took about 15 phone calls and online tech support to get them to admit it. Then I had them remote into my domain to see what I was doing. They then gave me the 3 ports that they dont block. olaggie, YGPM. Lights are working perfect btw!

Well Im at work at 7am...which is unusual as Im only required to be here at 8am and I love sleep. Well my little one woke up at 5am and was hungry so my GF got up to feed him and then came back in and said "your tanks making a weird noise"....so I proceeded to going into the kitchen only to find about 15g of water on the kitchen floor. Thank god for tile....well a bazzillion towels later and I still havent a clue wtf was or is leaking. Im out of salt and my sump is **** near empty. I filled up my ATO reservoir last night as it was empty and sump was a couple inches low and walked away. After cleaning up all the saltwater, removing the ATO reservoir from the stand, removing the skimmer overflow tank from the stand and a quick inspection. None of my plumbing is leaking.....strange. The sump had about 4" of water in it with the skimmer running and the return pump was cavitating and blowing air into the DT. Whats weird is my skimmer overflow tank was completely full and I emptied it yesterday. Its about 3 gallons. Not sure wtf is going on but today when I get off work going to pick up some salt so I can fill it back up. Only thing I can think of is the skimmer filled up the overflow and the water came out of the vent on the overflow tank which in turn drained a ton of water out of my sump, or the dang sump is leaking. There is water under my sump but after cleaning it all up, adjusting my returns downward (submerging them about 5" under DT surface and then killing the return to let it siphon back and fill the sump back up, NO WATER leaked out of the sump. This makes no sense. If the skimmer overflow is the problem, when the water level got low enough in the sump, the skimmer should have quit filling up the collection cup so that cant be it. To me only way for the sump to loose water is 1) if the pump pumped it out...2) sump is leaking. Before I fill it back up tonight, Im going to drain the sump out, pull it out, and take it out into my garage and fill it up and see what happens. This sucks!

lol sounds like an apex in in order heheheh j/k

Guess I need to get a heater....ph follows temp pretty good. I bumped the temp setting on in the apex and my chiller hasnt come on since.....I'd like to keep the temp more stable to help prevent the ph droops. I know my photo period has a lot to do with it but with warmer water my ph stays up even without the lights on.

So the concensus is that porting my skimmer to an outside source has completely cured my ph problem. Now that my corals are back in, the ph gradually was declining from 8.1 to 8.0 over the course of a few days. My calc test got ruined being in my garage heat so Im not sure where the CA level is. Will have to pick up another test kit. I did dose a tiny amount of calcium hydroxide and my ph jumped back up to 8.1 and has been holding solid. When I was dosing this CA before my green slimer really took off. Being in a "softie" tank for the last couple weeks it has browned out a bit but appears to be returning its color in just the last couple days.

System seems a heck of a lot more stable this time!

Well all my old corals except my milli are back in and happy. My welso is HUGE now! Couple additions from hydro and Mr Cobs as well. Hope this time it goes smooth. Any new corals will be dipped for sure. My old ones have been in QT for a couple weeks and showed no signs of dino on them! Woot woot!