Sascha D.

Coral Update:

The Frogspawn and Hammers haven't opened fully and I'm beginning to think the silicone is to blame. Perhaps 48 hours isn't enough cure time? Has anyone else had this problem? I added some carbon yesterday afternoon and within a few hours more polyps had opened up than before. I checked the corals this morning while the lights were out and noticed that few corals had sweepers out. It's especially unusual for Trumpets and War Corals to be as closed as they have been. I may have to take the sump down and let it air out for a week to see if that helps.

Sorry I was joking that the color of that coral is similar to the "blue dress" picture that has gone viral. In the first pic it is white and gold a color some people see and in the second pic the coral looked blue and black which is the actual color of the dress. I was just checking if I was seeing the right colors in your pics.

A lot of times a healthy coral loses it's coloration in transit and appears to be pink or beige. Not to be confused with white. After a few months in a good tank the coral will start to develop different colors based on the zooxanthellae that it grows. There is almost no way to tell what it will look like beforehand. Some will turn out to be solid greens or reds, but sometimes you get one like Ty got there. It's very exciting!

Love the growth pics. Good job!

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

I was surprised at how expensive the acrylic was at Lowe's. BRS has one from Digital Aquatics for $24 + $9 s/h.

Thanks Ty. I appreciate the gesture. I originally got the Undata from you when I helped move your new tank. I'm afraid it turns out that I haven't treated it very well. I won't be introducing anything new for quite some time. It may be months. I'm going to have to wait for the water quality to improve. I'm also going to have to wait until the calcium reactor is back online and functioning properly. Hopefully the algae blooms go quickly, but I'll be playing it by ear until all of these conditions have been met.

So next steps...

Tank

All in all I have changed out about 50% of the total water volume while cleaning the sand bed and the sump. Some of the water parameters have fluctuated and the tank is showing a glimpse of ammonia and nitrates. Algae growth has been steady. There is no phosphate input since there aren't any fish in the system, but I expect a miniature cycle as the available nutrients get used up by the algae. It's going to be hard, but I need to avoid messing with the system while it works everything out. After that I can add some CUC and allow them to establish.

Equipment

The last piece of equipment I need to hook up is the ATO. I have the controller and the float switches. Now I just need to order a bracket. The cheapest one is at BRS, but the shipping is 30% of the cost. Sheesh!

Fish

I really liked my fish and I'm sad that they are gone. Some people are never happy with what they have, but I really didn't want for anything new. Anyone have any suggestions on fish? Right now the possibilities are open because there aren't any fish or inverts in the tank. I may leave it fallow for 6 weeks but I don't see the point as I didn't have a problem with Ich before. It may be time for an Emperor Angelfish. I would be open to an Radiata Lionfish or Miniatus Grouper, but I am afraid of them knocking over corals or otherwise making a mess. A Wrasse tank sounds pretty cool as well.

Corals

The corals have had a stressful week and most have not opened up fully. The polyp corals do not seem to be affected and most of the LPS have good colors. The SPS are hit and miss and most have bleached. My largest Montipora seems to be getting some color back, but the Jedi Mind Trick, Tri-Color Undata, and Rainbow Montipora look completely gone. The three Stylophora are holding on by a thread. The Acropora look like a mixed bag with the Cali Tort and Tri-Color Valida doing the best. Some of them have completely bleached and started growing algae on the skeletons. In my experience that is a sure sign that they will not come back. Some people say to take a toothbrush and keep it clean but I've never seen one come back once the algae has started to grow. I will give them a few weeks to see if any recover but I do anything to the tank.

I let the silicon cure for 48 before I water tested. I made due with what I had, but I probably should have built a whole new structure from scratch. I was worried about going to long without filtration. The corals are already stressed as it is.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

Week 86 Update:

If you had asked me a year ago where I would be around week 86, then this would not have been my answer. Trying to find the upside is hard when you're watching everything deteriorate right before your eyes. Seeing as how I don't have anything else to lose, I decided to do some housekeeping and maintenance.

The first thing that I would like to do is get all of my equipment into the sump. To do that I have to redesign the manifold to give me some more head room in the first chamber. I hate plumbing! I went to HD and Lowe's to get some of that 1" blue pool/spa tubing and it turns out they don't sell it anymore. Ughh I hate plumbing! All they had was 1 1\8th tubing and that didn't fit my 1" barb. I ended up having to use the braided tubing because the vinyl tubing I had before kinked in the bend. Did I mention I hate plumbing?

The next thing I have to do is remove the baffles and re-install them with a better spacing. Chamber one has to be larger to incorporate the calcium reactor footprint. I would also like to make chamber three larger to fit the media reactor.

Silver linings right?

I checked the reactor and it started right up. Definitely something with the regulator.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

Agreed on the clog that is how I would test it.

On the regulators I don't fix them. I just drop them off at round rock welding supply, Texas welding supply or airgas or just buy new ones. The solenoid is easy to check. If it still clicks it's probably working. You know how to test this. Gas flows when it's plugged in and shouldn't flow when it's turned off. A gauge failure wouldn't have caused unrestricted gas flow so if they are working they are fine. Needle valves are a bit harder to test but I have never heard of one blowing out either, they generally stick in the position they are in and won't open or close but chances are it's probably the diaphragm in the regulator body itself. I'm not going to lie I would be over my head replacing one. I'm sure I could do it but I haven't in a long time and not ever a Milwaukee only victor, I'm not sure where to even get parts. If the diaphragm doesn't get set right it can blow right back out or leak. With what places charge to repair regulators in not sure the Milwaukee at $90 new on Amazon and $100 on BRS would be worth it. I would bet it would take $40 and a week for some shops to fix it.

Thanks for all of your help today. The solenoid turned of yesterday when I unplugged it so it must be the regulator. I'll check the lines tonight.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

Today is the first day that the tank isn't cloudy and I get to see the rock work. I think it turned out well. Most of the hard corals are white, but some are showing life. The softies are open and the LPS look damaged but alive. Almost everything in the sand will be sold as soon as I know its safe.

I have a fish!!! I'm so happy to see this little guy!

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

I'm not even sure how to check to see if the regulator is working. The first step is going to be checking to see if there was a clog. I'm going to plug in the circulation pump and open the gate valve on the manifold. That should fill the reactor with water and start the effluent. If there is a clog then water will not fill the media chamber. If the calcium reactor operates normally without the gas then the problem is a bad regulator combo and I'm just going to replace it.

Should I replace the whole thing or just a part? The regulator combo is comprised of the pressure gauges, flow control valve, solenoid and needle valve. If in doubt I'll just buy a complete new system.

I checked it on Saturday and the incident happened on Wednesday. I check the effluent and water levels every night because I've had it clog before. I agree that 10bpm is low and that shouldn't have caused a problem in a 16 hour period. There must have been something else that happened in conjunction. The empty bubble counters would be consistent with the high gas flow and it's likely the regulator is bad. I will probably have to replace the solenoid as well, if even just to sleep at night.

Thanks Reburn. That is what I think may have happened as well. I won't know for sure until I take the bubble counter a part and see if there was a clog. Since the reactor is hooked up to the manifold, it could be possible that something got sucked into the return and ended up clogging the reactor. If that is the case then the equipment may be okay and it was just a fluke accident. How do I prevent this from happening? Run a pH probe to the tank and have it shut off the solenoid if the pH drops too low?

My bubble count was 10 per minute.

I have a Milwaukee MA957 Regulator and I followed the instructions here.

The instructions say to use the regulator knob to adjust the bubble count and to use the needle valve "as a last resort". I adjusted the bubble count over three days until the pH in the media chamber read 6.5. After that I tested my Alk and made adjustments to bubble count and effluent drip until my daily usage was stable. The needle valve was not used and remained open. The solenoid was plugged into the controller and set to turn off if the pH reading was less than 6.5. I've been running it like this for about a year or so.

Here is a picture of my calcium reactor. You can see bubble counter with yellow and red lines connected. The red line is CO2 gas, the bottom yellow line is input from the manifold and the top yellow line goes to the circulation pump. The blue line is effluent out.

If the effluent line wasn't underwater any gas that escaped the effluent line should have off gassed harmlessly into the atmosphere. Which means any co2 that made it into your DT should have been dissolved in the water.

My guess is that the ph probe failed when the reactor started dissovling too much c02 causing the solonoid not to trip off. Either by simple equipment failure or by the probe tip going dry causing inaccurate readings. This caused super saturated c02 water to make its way into your DT. The reactor having air in it when you found it was simply an aftermath of the water being maxed out on co2 saturation. The damage was done while the reactor was running still pumping out water. The air pocket that formed in the reactor was being pushed out and just off gassing into the atmosphere. The co2 bubble rate exceeded your feed rate and dissove rate which is what caused the air pocket to form but by the time the air pocket formed the damaged had already been done.

I hate to say it but it seems that you may have been victim of multiple equipment failures at the same time. First the regulator and needle valve and then the PH probe.

Again I'm very sorry.

Wow! Thank you for the very detailed response. It sounds like the perfect storm of catastrophe. The CO2 was definitely entering the tank through the manifold because the bubbles coming from the return stopped when I unplugged the solenoid. The water and gas both enter the reactor through a bubble counter. If it got blocked then the gas wouldn't enter the media chamber and the pressure may have forced the gas through the feed line. In that case the controller wouldn't have turned off the reactor because the pH in the media chamber still read an acceptable range.

Could this problem have been caused by the effluent line being under water? It is possible that the ATO failed and raise the water level high enough to submerge the effluent line. My question is if that would rule out any other equipment failure or if the regulator and/or needle valve definitely failed. If not then I definitely need a new regulator setup.

Where the effluent line discharged into the tank was that end underwater?

Did your PH probe tip ever come out of the water or did it stay submerged?

The effluent line is not long enough to reach the water level of the sump at normal operating levels. The only way it could be submerged is if the water level of the sump raised higher than normal.

I'm not sure on the pH probe. The water level was low but I'm not sure if it was below the end of the probe. I could check when I get home.

Sorry bud for the rotten luck! That's awful!

While I can't frag any fish, if you need help restocking some of your corals that died, just hit me up when you're ready.

If you have any interest, maybe I could swing by sometime next week and take a look at that CaRX with you and see if we can troubleshoot it and find out what happened.

Let me know if I could be of any help otherwise. Know that the ARC community is feeling the pain with you.

Thanks Ty. I appreciate the offer and advice yesterday. It's too early to tell which corals will make it. A lot happened in a 24 hour period and there were rapid parameter swings. I expect it was too much for some of the more delicate corals. The new aquascape has about 30% less LR in it than before so there is less room to mount corals. I will remove the ones that don't pull through and readjust the ones that made it. I also have a few rocks covered in corals that I will sell to make room on the sand bed. I expect it to be at least two weeks before I do anything.

Thanks Reburn. I had thought that may be the case with the dry bubble counter on the solenoid. I'm not sure the model number, but I'm running a 2 year old Milwaukee solenoid. The effluent line was not submerged and was dry when I got home. The reactor was also 80% full of water, where it would normally be 100% full. The part I find odd is that the pH of the media chamber was 6.5. If gas was dumping into the reactor then the pH should have dropped to a crazy low level and been shut off by the controller. Somehow the gas never touched the media chamber and went directly into the tank.

There isn't always good news to post. I am very saddened to announce that I came home to a disaster on Wednesday. I walked through the door and looked into the tank to find every fish dead. The return was shooting a massive amount of bubbles out. It's normal to see bubbles in the return line when the return chamber is low, so I checked and it was near full. Right next to the sump I saw that the calcium reactor was also bubbling in the media chamber and the bubble counter was dry. I immediately went to the back and unplugged the solenoid and all of the bubbling stopped. I checked the reactor pH and it was still 6.5.

I'm not 100% sure what happened except that it has to do with the CO2 gas. I can only assume that a gas leak either cause the pH in the tank to drop or dropped the oxygen levels too low. The fact that the bubble counter on the solenoid and on the reactor were dry is curious. There is a check valve in between the solenoid and the reactor that will not allow backflow, so the water in the reactor bubble counter could not have escaped through the gas line. The only way that water could have escaped is through the feed line since the effluent line was dry. That line runs from the manifold to the reactor. It is possible that a large amount of gas entering the chamber could pressurize the reactor higher than the return pump pumps water into the reactor, reversing the flow. The excess gas would then go into the tank as if the bottle were hooked up directly.

How could you prevent that? Maybe put a check valve on the feed line? Would the gas from the tank leak into the reactor until it breaks the seam or would it just stop when the gas line reaches a certain amount of pressure? I guess leaking into the air would be better than leaking into the tank.

Anyway, my next thought after turning off the gas is to try and save what's left. I set up a QT and started doing a water change. Ty had the great idea of pointing my circulation pumps to the top of the water to help with gas exchange. Unfortunately, only 4 of 18 fish were accessible from anywhere I could reach. I would have to start taking out rocks to find the bodies before they spike the ammonia and nitrates. Things got from bad to worse after I removed about 30 pounds of the loose rocks. The left tower fell over! The rocks were still attached with acrylic rods, but the structure wouldn't stay up and I had to remove it. Before I knew it I had had 150 pounds of rocks on the floor in tubs and buckets. Truly a disaster.

I did what I could Wednesday night and finally went to bed at midnight. The water was too murky from all of the sand stirring to see what I was doing. The next day I spent the whole day trying to clean up the mess. Everything had a fine layer of murk on it so the first thing I did was take out the remaining rocks and do another 25 gallon water change. By this time I had changed about 30% of the total water volume and cleaned the sand bed every second I could. The problem with disassembling any structure is that you have to remember how it goes back together! Of course I couldn't and so I had to recreate my aquascape. I broke out my handy-dandy drill and masonry bit and went to town. The result you see below is the new tower structure.

After careful consideration I decided to pull out the worst rocks and go to town on them. After about an hour I had a bucket full of stuff. The largest rock that introduced the Valonia to the system was so bad that it would have taken me hours to pick everything off of it! Even then I couldn't be sure that I had gotten everything and it likely has spores still inside. I removed the corals from that rock and plan to either cook it, kill it or sell it. It's a really nice rock, with good shape and size. After I was done with the other rocks they were rinsed and put back in place. I'm sure that I will still have to remove one here or there, but 90% of it was done last night.


I got all of this out of three rocks in about an hour.


Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

I set up some Gfo last week so hopefully that helps. So far I've done two water changes this month and checked my filtered water to make sure its still producing zero TDS. Nitrates are zero and I prune the macro regularly.

The bubble algae had been in the from the start but I've been manually removing it. I didn't notice it very badly until now. Most rocks are clean but a few have sprouted heavily. The main problem with bubble algae is that it can grow in the shaded areas under rocks or in between corals. Valonia can also grow in low nutrient systems once introduced by spore.

As far as nutrient intake, I feed mysis Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I thaw the cubes in a cup, drain the water, and feed with a net. I feed Pellets on Tuesday and Thursday and I feel Nori on Saturday. I feed the pellets slowly so that they all get eaten and none touch the ground.

The dinos are nearly gone and the GHA has reduced by half.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

It looks like we had almost everything set up correctly. The home and away connections were good, but the firewall IP pass through had the wrong port. After I had changed that then everything works great. To get my app labeled correctly, I had to label all of the ports on the portal and then entered my away IP into the settings. After that I went to my settings, clicked labels, and then imported them from the website.

Thanks Jim,

I have set up an account on the portal and I have downloaded the app. So far Brian helped me get the internal IP and the external IP. The phone app works while I'm inside my house, but it does not update the portal. From what I read on the forums I have to use the external or "away" IP to update the portal. The forum mentioned opening the port on my modem, but I haven't figured it out yet.

It's been a busy week!

The aquarium controller has been an interesting experience! Setting it up to do everything that you want is super easy. All you have to do is open the installation wizard and follow the instructions. It would have been super cool if the instructions told you about the wizard though. I'm glad that Brian dropped that little bit of knowledge on me or else I would have spent an hour trying to find it. I'm still having a bit of trouble with the wifi. It connects using my home network, but to monitor it remotely I need to connect to the outside IP. There was something about opening the port. I found a link today but I need to be home to use it. It's pretty much above me so I'm probably going to fumble around in the dark until I find a light switch.

The basic controller comes with a pH probe, four temp ports and a temp probe, two ATO ports, two light dimming ports and 8 relay slots.

• Relay 1 - Display Lights: I have set the display lighting to run on a similar schedule to what I currently have. I'm not really interested in dimming or running actinics separate from the day lights. Turn on at 11am and turn off at 9:20pm. Done.
• Relay 2 - Refugium Lights: The refugium lights will run on a reverse photo period. If you're going to run a lighted sump, then a reverse lighting schedule provides the most stability in the system. I've had the most luck with this schedule.
• Relay 3 - CaRx: The pH probe is measuring the calcium reactor chamber. I have manually tuned the gas and the effluent to maintain a 6.5 pH. The relay is set to turn the solenoid on at 6.7 pH and turn it off at 6.5 pH. In the future I may change this relay to a feed pump that will turn off the pump in the event of a solenoid failure.
• Relay 4 - Return Pump
• Relay 5 - Circ Pump 1: Relay 5 and 6 have the wave maker potential. I currently run 35x constant flow in the display. In the future I may want to add another WP40 and run two on a wave maker with one constant flow pump. Right now they are set to constant on.
• Relay 6 - Circ Pump 2
• Relay 7 - ATO
• Relay 8 - Skimmer

The temp probe will likely be set to read the return section of the sump. I never have to worry about the tank overheating since the LED's give off so little heat. I do have to worry about the tank getting too cold without a heater. The tank's deep dimensions keeps the water temperature fairly constant. Therefore, the place that I want to take the temp is the return chamber, which is the smallest water volume in the system.

Feeding Mode: I have both circulation pumps connected to the feed mode. Turning the pumps off will help reduce waste by giving the fish more time to eat the food without it blowing away.

Water Change Mode: The circulation pumps, return pump and skimmer pump are connected to the water change mode. Turning off the pumps will reduce splashing. The SCA-302 skimmer operates in 6-8" of water and I currently have it set to 8". I have it set to turn off during water changes so that the skimmer won't go crazy if the water level fluctuates.

Overheat Mode: The tank is unlikely to over heat, but I may as well use the function since it's there. The tank does not have a heater to malfunction so the only possible way it would over heat is in the event the room temp reaches extraordinary levels. If the water temp reaches 86 degrees then the lights and circulation pumps will turn off. I don't want the return pump to turn off since that is the major avenue for gas exchange. I thought about having the skimmer pump turn off as well, but I don't think it would make much difference.

ATO: The automatic top-off system is the last thing that I have to set up. The controller comes with float switches and the capability to implement the top-off system. I plan to run the ATO pump on relay 8. I'm not entirely sure how to hook up the float switches and so I have saved it for last. I also need to find a reservoir that will fit into the stand.