Drift Monkey

Alright...so a lot has happened since my last update...I officially rebooted the system a couple weeks ago. Long story short, I took in a RBTA from a friend that was breaking down his tank and it committed suicide while I was away on vacation. The tank stayed pretty nasty for a while (no equipment failures at least), but I finally decided I needed to do something about it. So I drained her, cleaned everything out (feels like this took about an entire day), manually cleaned and peroxided the rocks, removed mats of algae , and now I have this.

BB, no fuge, skimmer cleaned and back online. I'm thinkin' of trying my hand at SPS this go around? Inverts too, of course...

Do you have any fish right now? My diatoms went away on their own in about a month and 1 water change in my pico tank. It's fishless through so not much nutrients going into the tank. You may be able to just wait them out. They're definitely a natural stage in a tank regardless of the stocking.

Nope, no fish. I'm about to do a water change right now though...just for prudence. Yeah diatoms usually the signal of the end of a cycle...I usually add CUC after I see 'em.

On another note...have any red macro you can spare me?

The shrimp james showed in the picture is different from the ones I always saw in AT, now that I know what one looks like I know the ones I saw had more white spots and no blue. They were easily overlooked when on a maxi or standing a the base against the white sand.

The only other kinds I've seen (also at the dome) are these guys:

The orange zoas are finally opening up!

Diatoms? About time. I guess I need a CUC now...anyone have an abundance of snails they wanna get rid of?

The hammer is happy as ever...

This is the anemone shrimp I recently got at the dome. It was a few weeks ago, but they had a few in the tank:

That's basically exactly that I'm looking for! I may have to buy up all the rest...

Remember how much ya paid?

I saw the nem shrimp at aquatek almost every time I went

Any idea if it was the fatter, white spotted ones or the more elongated ones?

The dome usually has porcelains, and occasionally has the anemone shrimp.

I haven't seen too many pom pom around locally.

I've gotten my last porcelains/anemone shrimp from the dome. I'll have to check 'em out sometime soon. Thanks!

Hopefully they don't have a mischievous personality. "ok everybody, look happy, he's here!"

Anyone know where I should be looking for inverts? I want anemone shrimp (Pederson's, Venus, etc), pom pom crabs, porcelain crabs, etc...anywhere local carry these guys?

The hammer is really open now!

Either it's lovin' its new home or really good at faking it.

The reef was under investigation of possible terrorist actions.

So after a week of re-acclimating myself to life in the States (ugh)...I finally was able to meet up with Zack (nanoreefer11) and grab a couple frags from him. Mostly zoas/palys (most of which I have no idea what their names are, but Zack does ) and a small hammer frag. Thanks again Zack!

The hammers seemed no have no issue (as advertised) and are already opening up.

The only frag that didn't open for me this morning is the orange zoas...I'm sure they'll come around though.

These guys were awake and open before the lights were on, beautiful and resilient!

Crappy picture of these zoas, but they opened up just fine this morning.

Everything seems to be happy...so I guess my parameters are decent enough afterall.

Day 21:

Ammonia: ~.25 ppm

Nitrite: ~2.0 ppm maybe 5 ppm

Everything seems to be stuck at these levels. Anyway, this is the last test before I leave for Vietnam for tomorrow. My RO/DI reservoir is topped up and confirmed to be operational! Hopefully this thing will cycle through while I'm gone.

The next posts I'll make will likely involve pictures from Vietnam!

what is your ammonia source? are you getting any nitrates? if your nitrates are going up then the cycle is still progressing, so i'd be testing those every day, too.

i am far from an expert on skimmers (know nothing, really), but would turning that off help? it just seems that if you are pulling your bacerial warriors out of the water it may be working against you. eventually your rock and substrate will house most of your bacteria, but now? and if it is pulling nitrates out of the water it may make it more difficult to track the results. just seems to me that during the cycle you want the water as dirty as possible. but, hopefully someone that knows about skimmers will chime in.

My only source is the pure ammonia I added almost 3 weeks ago. The only other possibility is a bit from the live rock rubble that I thoroughly cleaned. Haven't bothered with the nitrates because I'm expecting the ammonia/nitrites to go away first...namely the ammonia.

From what I've read, it shouldn't matter if you skim during a cycle. Besides I added the ammonia and bacteria quite a while ago and haven't started skimming until last week. Doubt it's pulling any nitrates out of the water.

Day 19:

Ammonia: ~.25 ppm > < ~.50 ppm

Nitrite: ~2.0 ppm

No real change. Ammonia might have gone a smidgen, but nitrites are still holding at 2 ppm.

~50% water change done.

Ammonia: ~.25 ppm

Nitrite: ~2.0 ppm

Levels went down...but not as much as I honestly thought they would. Hopefully this gets my cycle out of a rut. I'll test tomorrow to see if anything changes.

Day 18:

Ammonia: ~1 ppm

Nitrite: ~5.0+ ppm

I'm fairly certain my cycle is stalled. I'm doing a 10 gallon water change now to lower the nitrites back down to readable levels.

Fun night ahead...

That's a SCA 301, correct? Might want to keep it a bit lower. You should be able to get it dialed in so it's skimming some mud looking stuff unless you want to skim really wet.

Correct. Well the issue before it that it would fluctuate over time (wet bubbles) and started to wet skim on its own. Now that it's making thicker foam, it seems much easier to set.

The other thing to mention is...there is basically nothing in there to skim besides some slime in the sump. I don't really expect to see mud stuff until I start stocking.

That's basically how I've been doing it...the skimmer stays on and barely play with the settings unless it's running too high.

Cycle update -

Day 16-17:

Ammonia: ~1 ppm

Nitrite: ~5.0+ ppm

No change at all. I may have hit a wall here...but I'm just gonna leave it be. I'll do another test tonight and continue to check the parameters everyday until I leave for Vietnam for 2 weeks on Saturday. I just hope it's done doing its thang by the time I return...

I do wonder if the high nitrites are stalling the cycle out though...

A week later...I'm getting some uber thick foam from the skimmer. The microbubbles seem less... but either way there are absolutely none in the display. It actually pulled some skimmate throughout the past week.

It might be a tad fuller than it should be because I think it fluctuated and ran high for a bit. It's not that dark or anything, but I'm really just surprised it pulled even that out.

Now I'm trying to figure out how high the foam should be since it is now a completely different consistency. I guess it's wet skimming at the top of the outlet and dry skimming at the bottom of the collection cup...

90 gallon rimless, coming soon...

You transferring all this to a 90 gal?

I like it better, too. The one on the left looks like a snake skull in the first picture.

I like it. Very minimal.

Appreciate it fellas. Now it's time for another cycle update...

Day 13:

Ammonia: ~3 ppm

Nitrite: ~2.0+ ppm

Not sure wtf happened here. My ammonia shot back up to about 3 ppm...but the nitrites are steadily climbing...with this API kit, it's hard to tell exactly how high...but it's pretty bright purple. I do wonder if these readings have anything to do with my rescaping endeavors...

So I was moving the MP10 around yesterday to see if I could go 100% percent without blasting the sand around...and it turns out I mostly can. There were a few spots where the sand became uneven so I stuck my arm in there to level it out. Bad idea. I ended up knocking my scape over, but that got me thinking...I should probably make it a bit more stable.

Next thing ya know I'm re-scaping the **** thing.

Hours later (and lots of cussing)...I came up with this...which I actually like better than the original.

I dub this: The Broken Arch.

Pretty impressed with the camera on my HTC One...it's certainly better than my old iPhone 4S. The angle is super wide too.

The new scape from the left.

From the right.

It's much more stable this way and I managed to reclaim a little bit of vertical space on the left side with this arrangement as well. Plus, the overhangs just look cool to me.

What do y'all think?

Lovin' all the red macro!

It may work for seeding it and making it cycle faster. Not sure how much faster, though. Or if it'll arrive before it cycles on its own. That's getting beyond my experience level pretty quick. But you clearly already have the bacteria since you are getting nitrates.

Right...I can get it shipped in 2 days easily. Leaving it as-is for another week won't hurt though.