Grog

Full tank shot under the new halide and T5 actinic and I did some rearranging. I hate the look of frag racks in a DT but... I need this little egg crate one for a bit while I'm acclimating all these things. I have a conch in the tank. They sift the sand like nothing else and have a tendency to burrow under frags and knock them over. This is kind of a preventative measure against that happening. (I suspect the conch will still find a way to mess stuff up.) After the light change and acclimation is done, I'll permanently attach the frags somewhere.

This I do not doubt. I was doing some chalice reading the other day and went down this rat hole of huge Hollywood Stunners. There are some big ones, and everyone says, "Oh this is after two years." Lots of stories like that. And since it grows radially, it is going to get more square inches per month for sure. Now if that Proud Leopard grows anywhere near that fast, it will be awesome. Very cool colors and the halides bring them out. I'm quickly becoming a chalice fan. The 250W halide bumped my temp up 2 degrees in four hours. So, I bought a small fan to run on the surface. I'll mount it where the Kessil arm was. I'll get an updated FTS tomorrow when I have the halides on. Just rnning them for 4 hours a day right now to adjust everything to them. STRONG is a word I would use. Very happy now. Tank has a good color and that shimmer that I love. Proud Leopard under halide. Ignore that bit of algae on the glass on top of the chalice left bottom.

This thread is about done as the 75 is getting upgraded next week. Battling some serious hair algae right now due to the heavy fish stocking. (Zero coral in this tank other than one rogue anemone.) So, I got a pair of sea hares. They are fist sized. Way larger than I expected. Cool mouths and antennas, oddly cute. Hope they do their jobs! These things are surprisingly fast. They get around in the tank. Maybe that is why they are called sea hares?

I'm being spammy today after being off for the holidays. New stuff came in today. I made a big order for myself as a birthday gift to me and told them to hold off on shipping till after the New Year. Box of love came in today. New corals are: Purple photosynthetic gorgonian 3X Neon Stylos Blood Pool Montipora Proud Leopard Chalice Alien Eye Chalice (moved to frag tank. Too similar to the Hollywood Stunner in looks. Will go in the 180 and look awesome under good lights.) Starry Night Cyphastrea All came in great shape and large frags. I'm happy with the way Pacific East Aquacultre handled everything. They even called me at noon to see if everything was good. Proud Leopard was the show piece, on a 4" frag square. Now I have to figure out how to arrange everyone. My pics are a little different color than normal. The T5s take photos easier than the Kessil did but the colors are not the same. Plus, I'm at the tail end of some algae issues. FedX just dropped off the box with my halide fixture. Good day for Groggie. Enough rambling. You want pictures. Most are just starting to open. Alien Eye (Different colors due to frag tank) Starry Night Purple Gorgonian Monti and Sylos Proud Leopard FTS

I'm just glad I was home when it happened and I wasn't off shore chasing tuna.

Seems like tank maintenance is becoming a twice a month thing with this tank. Parameters are stabilizing. Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate: All 0 PH: 8.0 Phosphate: .15 Calcium: 380 Temp: 80 First time testing Calcium. Petco had it for $4.00 and I have Vital Care so I got it for like $3.75. Tank looks pretty good. Had a bit of a fright with my lighting over the holiday. Seemed like the left side was a little darker. Didn't think much of it. Come Monday it was OBVIOUS that it was not the same. Did some looking and ugh. Several of the LED on the left channel of the Kessil AP9X were totally fried. Never would have noticed but there were a few on the right fried too. Maybe 3 or so. Luckily, I'm at month 10 of the 12-month warranty. Emailed them and they are sending me an RMA and another unit. I'm impressed with how responsive Kessil was. Super-fast responses and didn't give me a bunch of run around. Very good of them to honor the warranty but I'm not going to keep them on the 40 anymore. If and when the new unit arrives, it will be listed at $500 on Craigslist or $400 here for members. (Over 50% off of MSRP.) I've already purchased a metal halide and T5 combo for my system, and just want to break even on what I paid for the MH fixture and bulbs. Someone can get a good deal on an AP9X. I'm just not trusting it again. Fortunately, I had a T5 fixture with new lights for the 180 and I was able to get some lighting over my corals. New MH will be 1 250W bulb and 4 ATI True Actinic. NOTE: This post is NOT meant to be a slag on Kessil. I liked the light a lot. Their support and response were great, but I want something on my tank I can depend on. I'm out of town a lot, and don't want to leave failures to my wife and or pet sitter. That was a big part of what killed my last tank. Going for what I know is rock solid, with redundancies in case of a single point of failure. Here is what the LED damage looks like. Pretty awful.

Raining today so I slacked some. Played around with lights. ATI actinic and stock Odyssea on left. All ATI true actinic on right. So much better coloration. Leaving the stock bulbs in for now to test and compare. Second picture same on left. ATI actinic with the LEDs on about 70%. Definitely strong! Can't wait to hit this with a PAR meter. I'm liking how the T5 hides the disco ball look. I think the nem will be happy.

Got braces added today, and a skin for the top and back. Only using 3/8" as it is not load-bearing, just to help with torsion. Left a gap in the top and bottom of the back piece so I can route cables etc. Was good and cut holes in the top for the drains. Tomorrow I'll work the sump tabletop. It will be doubled up to support the sump. Then I'll start working on trim. And yes, the center brace is not square. That was resolved after the image was taken.

haha I actually saw a power compact fixture for sale with a full aquarium set up the other day. Did some digging and you can actually still buy bulbs for them. Haven't seen anyone using those in a long while.

I've been all over the place about lighting for this tank. Do I want to do LED, or T5, or halides, or .... I pulled the trigger and I'm going at least partially old school. Hear me out. I love LED they have their place, but I don't think they do everything. T5 have good diffusion and don't have the shadows that some LED can create. No disco ball with T5. I think the LED can provide the punch for this build, and the T5 can provide the color pop and broadcast coverage. I like halides but they were not right for this application. So, I'm going to use some T5 and some LED. The T5 fixtures are locked in but I'm still toying with which LED I will use. I got two of the Odyssea 4 bulb fixtures adding about 320 watts of T5 for the tank. The picture below is with the sub-optimal Odyssea bulbs that ship with the fixtures. I have some ATI bulbs coming in. No LED in this picture. (This is 4 36" bulbs on each side so 8 36" bulbs total.) End game, I'll probably run 4-6 true actinic, and 2-4 mix of purple plus and coral plus. Likely 4 actinic, 2 purple, 2 coral plus. FWIW: The Odyssea bulbs aren't as bad as I recall. These look OK. Not sure what they changed. Good to keep as spares. For LED, I'm debating on using the existing SB Reef fixtures I have or using some bar lights. Not sure. (Need to see how the tests Tim and I run end up.) As far as the new Odyssea fixtures, I'm impressed with the Odyssea improvements. They were VERY well packaged. Bubble wrap, inner boxes, film over the acrylic lenses, etc. The fit of these is way better than their older products. No rattling. No wobbling. No vibration. They've improved. The reflectors work well. I noticed that when I was unboxing, and they beamed my dining room floods into my eyeballs. Not the most exciting update but it is forward motion. Tomorrow I'm devoting the day to finishing the stand, or getting it mostly finished.

Is that the flame hawk peeking out in the third picture? Cool coloration on that fish.

Monthly check in on the tank. Hollywood is growing. Galaxea opening. Palys coloring up and getting new growth. Stunner really took off. Wonder if it will have some downward growth or if that sag area will fill in and become thicker. Who knows? Lol. Either way its growing. I can't get the night time sweeper pics but at night it is insane the length and quantity of tentacles on this thing. I've been feeding a small bit of food at night about 10 PM so this guy and the candy cane get some extra oomf. Toadstool and zoas Galaxea, which I think is growing. I need to do more pictures and measurements. But looking back I think it is larger. I like the sweepers though. Paly Grandis has good colors and extra heads. They eat pellets from my observations. I'm not target feeding but when I toss pellets in, they catch them, close up for a bit, then reopen. Maybe why they are growing so well.

One green mushroom on a frag plug. $20 Ignore the zoas, they are not happy as I just had my hand in the tank.

closed

I've gotten a lot of porcelain crabs from TBS rock, but I have got a few bad guys too. Gorillas and the rock crab. And pretty much every shipment of bulk rock I get a mantis. If they are little spotted guys and waving their arms in the air, they are the porcelain crabs. They have little mesh arms that grab stuff from the water column. Very cool and reef save. For pithos, look at reefcleaners.com. They have them at good prices. I'm down to one rock in my 40 with hair algae and I'm doing what Tim recommended, water changes, steel straws, etc. I keep moving my urchin over to that rock but he ain't having it.... If you do get a 'bad' crab in the tank, don't worry. They are pretty easy to get out, same with the mantis shrimp. Bad shrimp and crabs are way easier to deal with than sargassum or bubble algae issues.

Today was a rough one. The only good thing about today is that I'm declaring the leak test successful. 72 hours later and no leaks except for at the bulkhead plugs. Passed! *puts an official stamp on it* I drained the tank and will work on making the stand pretty over the next week or so. Other projects and the day job are competing for my time. Blah! Used the Sicce return pump to drain the tank. That thing moves some serious water.

I've used the emeralds and the pithos crabs for algae control. IMO they are both good at hitting the bubble algae but the pithos are really good. They come out at dusk/night, and I even see them scrounging on the sand bed. My bubble and hair algae are both about gone thanks to those two crabs. And good pics! Glad someone else is still here BTW I have the same zero phosphates issue and same checker. Ugh.... You reminded me that I do need to check and dose tonight.

These guys needed their own post. This colony of Palythoa Grandis has been passed around over the years. I had it way back when, in maybe my second marine tank ever. Not sure how long it has been in the club, and who else has taken care of them, but they have been around for at least 10 years and maybe more. Here is a picture of the colony in 2013, 10 years ago. Brown, but they were cool back then! Here is a picture of it today, with 22 heads, colored up with brown, green, blue, and white. Love this coral! Special shout out to Tim for safe keeping these guys while I was on hiatus from the obsession! This shows what lighting and other climatic conditions can do to a coral. Amazing to see the difference. FWIW: I think this is their happy place. IMO they should look like this and are prospering. They are growing and additional heads have appeared. I expect them to take over the top of the rock where there is space in the next few months. I will grow them until their next caretaker needs to take over.

Leak check in progress. Buckets under the bulkheads. Small leak there but that is around threads on temporary plugs in the bulkheads, not glass issues. Looking good so far. Gonna leave it till like Wednesday then drain. 🫰 I'm a lot more optimistic than I was this morning.

The plan is three cross pieces on top and bottom for sure.

Leaving it be was my main option. Thanks! Cool looking either way.

Galaxea glued to a piece of live rock. Put it in the tank and I noticed this white stuff. At first, it was in the area where I glued it, so I was like whatever. Its super glue and eventually coraline and zoas and Galaxea will cover it. Ignored it. But I took a mental note. Now I see the white mass below the Galexea is spreading. Now you can see it in the zone A in the image. It has spread to another rock. It was not there a week or two ago. And I notice the nodules below in the white mass labeled B. They look very similar to the base of this Galaxea. Is this mass of webby material Galaxea growth, the start of a skeleton? Or something else? Should I move the zoas? (Galaxea is far more important to me than zoas. like totally.) Marked up and non-marked up images attached.

Some real progress today. Assembled the frame for the stand. It still needs crossmembers, skinning, and a sub-deck for the sump. I may add a tabletop to the stand as well. Still debating that in my mind. Not sure it is necessary as all the tank will really be resting on the edges due to the tank rim. But this is good enough for leak check. Decided I'm NOT doing magnets on the side for the access panels. I'm going to install a runner on the base and attach the panels with twisting pieces of wood, kind of like boat hatches. Will be easier, cheaper, and quicker. Also, decided to go with center braces. Kept it simple with 2x4 construction and added center braces. This will make it easier to have two front access panels and prevent the center of the span from sagging. Not going to do anything else to the stand for now though. Leak check is next. If it passes, then I'll circle back to making the stand complete, not just functional.

A few updates. I got all of my coral out of the 75 and it is all in the 40 now. With the exception of some gulf native colony and an anemone that came with the live rock. Hollywood is growing nicely. Image below shows how much growth. Second picture you can see the rock it is mounted to. Today's picture you cannot see the rock at all. Basically, doubled in size in 6 months. FWIW this picture is a better representation of the actual colors. I'm actively working to get it to a bluer coloration. Lights have been ramped up weekly and are at about max right now. If you notice the little gaps in growth, that is where there was a small dowel shading the light it was receiving. I've moved it to a central location without any shading and the gaps are filling in. And the FTS after rescaping. The stylos are in here now. I've added a mushroom, and some additional zoas. The paly grandis are coloring up nicely. I'm happier with th this layout.

Their semi regular 50% off sale on tanks is going on now. Good time to grab another tank, or get yourself a bigger sump. Something I didn't know; the really cool rimless cubes are also part of this sale, and come with the rubber 'leveling' mat.