nuxx

Easier to take the sand out than add it down the line. Adding a new sand, might cause a little cycle.

Sort of like the element of an added buffer and also placing some coral directly on the sand and not on a rack.

I have this same sand in my display and don't get sand storms with a lot more flow.

Not doing Kessils or expensive lights on this tank.

Doing:

1 - Current Marine Orbit 48-60" LED for coral that don't need as much light...
1 - Cheap Chinese LEDs 48-60" LED with 3 watt drivers for SPS.

The Current Marine have a nice built in ramp timer.

The Cheap Chinese LEDs have a remote and can dim, etc... but default to off when you turn them off, meaning that a timer will only turn off the lights. I'll have to power them on with the remote in the morning. Not the end of the world, but annoying with how used to automation I've become...

I used a lux meter on my phone to see the difference 3" under each light. Sorry I don't want to figure out the conversion to par.

Current Marine (100% 3"): 8,000-12,000 lux
Cheap Chinese LED (100% 3"): 35,000-52,000 lux
Kessil A360WE (80% 10"): 50,000-80,000 lux

I think the Cheap Chinese LEDs will do just fine at 12-16" for SPS.

Looking good!

How come you decided to run with sand in the frag tank?

Hadn't really thought about until Seth mentioned it.

Looked more into and since it's not plumbed into a display thought it would add:

- Little more stability / buffer

- Reflectivity

- Place for inverts.

Will still have a few fish in the tank, so basically it's own tank, just focused on coral.

Did some work last weekend

Hoping the skimmer will work, but Reburn is probably right that it won't really be the best fit...

Nuxx, after my arm almost fell off refinishing this tank, I would never call someone lazy for not wanting to do it. It was a serious undertaking.

One time I used a slightly more aggressive cleaning pad on our acrylic and didn't noticed I scratched the whole front panel.

Used the mighty magnet kit, every level of sandpaper...

Took me two days to clean up a 120x31" panel.

WAS

NOT

FUN

Still have some faint scratches only I can see, but 95% are gone.

I'd say just get a 100 gallon Rubbermaid tote from Tractor Supply (~$70) and start curing your rock.

Lost interest because of things out of my control.

Ended up wanting a much larger tank by the time all the issues with the 240 were over...

Stunning tank Shawn and great work!

Had a 135 scratched to hell and decided to just sell it then do the work. Yes I'm lazy.

Had a 240 next, but the build took too long and I lost interest...

Have you decided on full reef, fowlr etc... ?

Stocking list?

Equipment list?

Looks great Dana, can't wait to see the build

Thought our skimmer was big

Yeah they work great

Lol!

5. Buy Salifert

Really digging the Rea Sea Nitrate Pro kit.

Also the Hannas are great.

4. Toss in the trash.

Seth's API kit worked.

My old API kit worked.

My newer API kit still shows ~ 0-5.

That's awesome! Don't strip the phosphates too fast! You can have some negative effects of that too! I'd go half the recommended amount in the reactor and then slowly ramp up!

Yeah was going to start at half. Then probably change out every week. Reburn approved...

How's the tank looking? Numbers are looking much better!

Looking fine, fish seem happy.

Frogspawn stopped dropping heads and is expanding. I think the Acros were too far gone to really look any different. Some haven't fully been nuked...

Got our nitrates under control and lowered the Phosphates as much as they're coming down with water changes.

Now sitting at:

Temp 78.5
Alk 8.8
Salinity 1.026
N03 8 pmm
P04 0.18
Calc 490 ppm
PH 8.13

Will start up our GFO reactor tonight.

Also added a lot more lighting to the fuge... hopefully the Chaeto takes off...

200 Gallons later:

Temp 78.5
Alk 8.8
Salinity 1.026
N03 8 pmm
P04 0.18
Calc 490 ppm
PH 8.13

So basically P04 went down .01 and Nitrates went down 2-4.

Hooking up my GFO reactor tonight

Now that your nitrates are much lower, why don't you just run some GFO to scrub the phosphates lower? They would keep you from having to do anymore water changes for the immediate future. Just a thought.

Yeah I have everything just sitting around in the dining room. Will do two more and put everything away.

Just bought a Phosban 550 reactor, GFO and a small DC pump. Will start up the reactor this weekend.

That's a lot of work. Hopefully it will all be worth it soon.

LOL yeah...

Well after:

150 gallon change

100 gallon change

100 gallon change

100 gallon change

100 gallon change

I'm sitting at:

Temp 78.5
Alk 8.8
Salinity 1.026
N03 10-12 pmm
P04 0.19
Calc 490 ppm
PH 8.15

Guess I have 1 or 2 more changes to do >:0

Me too

So far I've done one 150G change and one 100G change.

All I've measured so far was nitrates.

Ty and Seth both recorded 64 ppm.

I'm seeing between 16 and 32 ppm now. Let's just call it 25 ppm.

Going to do two more 100G changes and see where Nitrates, Phosphate and Alk are at.

GFO reactor was backordered so I ordered a different one... should be here mid next week....

Looks promising and the Frogspawn has opened up a bit more.

Thanks again Dan

Everyone's looking good!

Frogspawn seems happier today, not as pulled in...

Making next 100 gallons now, should be ready to start mixing tonight for change tomorrow.

I'll check Nitrates and Phosphates after that.

800 gallons of salt should be here tomorrow... poor UPS guy...

LOL now I'm tired

Got the salinity up to 1.025 from 1.023.

Stupid 100 gallon tank had a little leak. They didn't thread the bulkhead. So going to fix that and do the 100 gallon change.

Will measure nitrates, phospates and alk after the next change...

About to do the first 150 gallon change...

I'll then do 100 gallon changes as fast as possible...

Is it a saltwater pool

LOL yeah...

She always just gets me back if I bring up the costs of the pool with our car payments... she's got me on that one

Pool uses more

I can give Tina crap about the water and electricity bill because the pool was her call

That's not so unusual for newer tanks. We're already on our 4th box of Reef Crystals which means we've done about 800 gallons so far, and it's only had water since late March. Considering you have over 2x the volume as ours and you've been running a lot longer, 2k gallons would seem within a reasonable guess.

LOL meant when we hypoed the tank. Taking the salinity down and up again was probably around 1500-2000 gallons in 2 stints.

Ha! Fair point. Although I thought it was looking pretty good when I saw.

I'm still blown away that it's reading 0. Seems like that has to be a manufacturing defect or something?

Yeap threw everything off with the Carbon dosing...

Thought it was really working well... even started feeding a bit more haha

Happy it's something easy to fix... I've done 1000s of gallons of changes on this tank already...