BornToHula

It had been awhile, but I justed tested and its 1.025. Unfortunately the tip die off continues to get worse. I'm going to do another water change and run some carbon afterwards.

Has anyone experienced only the tips of acros dying? On about half of my acros the very tips are dying off. The rest of the coral looks fine, with good polyp extension and everything. Everything had been looking and growing really well until the last day or two. I do have a decent cyano outbreak, could that be an issue? I tested for everything tonight and everything seems to be okay: Alk: 8.1 dkh, Ca: 435 ppm, Mg: 1490 ppm, Nitrate: 5 ppm, Phosphate: 0.02 ppm Any ideas? I plan on doing a couple large water changes to help things, I'm just not sure of the root issue causing the tips to die.

My overflow was growing a lot of algae too. The cover helps quite a bit, I definitely recommend making one.

I've been having a much harder time increasing my phosphates than I thought I would. I've been trying to raise them to .05ppm to help battle the chrysophytes. At first I tried to raise it naturally by feeding more. I went from a 1 cube and 1/2 a sheet of nori a day to 3 cubes, full sheet of nori, and added reefroids coral food. I still couldn't get any readings on the Hanna Checker after a week of increased feeding. I didn't want to increase the feeding further so I went ahead a bought some Seachem Phosphorus to start dosing. After 3 days of dosing between 5 and 15ml each day, along with continuing to feed the increased amount I finally got a reading on the checker! I'm going to keep dosing the phosphorus and keep the increased feeding until I get to .05ppm then watch the levels closely to see how they change. I hope I can wean off of dosing the phosphorus and just keep the increased feeding amounts. I had always been very careful on how much I feed, but I guess at my current tank size vs stocking ratio its almost impossible to overfeed. I have seen some cyano pop up, and haven't seen a decrease of chrysophytes yet, but I'm hoping I'm on the right track.

Probably true, but he was the first saltwater fished I ever purchased, so he will get one more final shot!

Look who decided to come out and join the party for the first time this morning! (Sorry for the bad pic) All three Assessors were out and about swimming with the other fish and eating. They are still pretty small compared to the other fish, but they were swimming around with the tangs (my largest fish) just fine. Still no sighting on the other firefish. I'm not holding my breath on him. I wonder how the current one would react if I added another? Strongly leaning that way. The science on the filtration capabilities seems pretty solid, and worse case, even if it doesn't filter much everything in it will look super cool. Still need to do a bit more research on how to properly set it up to make sure I can properly implement it. Me too. I'm wondering it would help if I make a little acclimation box for the pistol shrimp so the goby can get used to it before I release it. If he kills a 3rd one, he'll most likely get traded in so I can get another pair.

Long update on the tank... FISH The golden assessors, chromis and fire fish are the display tank as of last week. The chromis are all doing fine. One of thefire fish is active and acting like normal. The other one is MIA. I haven't seen it since I put it in the tank almost a week ago. The two smaller golden assessors are also MIA. I briefly saw the large assessor for a split second. I think the assessors are just shy and hiding, the firefish I have my doubts on. Not sure what happened to him. During the move my tiger pistol shrimp did not make it. He was paired with a Pink Spotted Watchman Goby. I've since tried twice to introduce new tiger pistol shrimps to the goby, but he has killed both. I'm not sure why he has decided he no longer wants a shrimp partner. I still may try one more time, because I love watching the pairing. I also purchased 5 Carberryi Anthias from Reburn that are in QT. Will be doing a copper treatment for a preventative ich treatment then they will be put in the tank. REFUGIUM I FINALLY got my sand in for the deep sand bed refugium, got a really good deal on them but they took a long time to get here. The UPS man did not like me, 7 40lb bags of oolite sand. For the refugium, I was planning on doing a deep sand bed with straight from ocean uncured live rock, but I have been researching and thinking about using half of the 75g refugium as a cryptic zone instead. The other half would still be for growing macro algae. Steve Tyree's speech at last year's C4 got me thinking about it, and I recently saw a cryptic zone set up on another member's tank. From what I have read, a deep sand bed does not need to be lit to function property, so the portion of the bed that is in the cryptic zone wont be affected negatively from not getting any light. I'm about half way done with Tyree's book on the topic and will decide what to do once I finish it. CHRYSOPHYTES I am still battling chrysophytes in my tank. After posting and asking a few questions on Reef2Reef it was recommended I need to raise my Nitrates and Phospates (both were always reading zero). So I have been dosing stump remover and have consistently raised my nitrates to 5ppm. I drastically increased my feedings, but the phosphates kept reading zero, so I have purchased some Seachem Phosphorus that I will be dosing starting today. Goal is to have 0.05 ppm phosphate. I don't fully understand how this will help get rid of chrysophytes, but there were 3 people saying that it helped them get rid of it on their tanks. It was recommended to do manual removal of the chryso every day as well, but the work has been wearing down on me after doing it for a week straight with no results as of yet. There have been reports of some different methods also working for battling chrysophytes. They include: 3 day blackout, dosing vibrant and skimming VERY wet during those 3 days. I have already tried vibrant and blackouts, but never together. Running an oversized UV filter. This method is the most expensive, so I don't want to go this route unless all others have been exhausted. Dosing fluconazole. People mainly use this for bryopsis, but there have been people who tried this for chrysophytes. There was never any updates on whether or not it worked for them or not but there doesn't seem to be any harm in dosing it. RODI & SALTWATER HOLDING TANKS When I drilled the water tanks for bulkheads I drilled the holes too low to properly install the bulkheads, so I had to go with uniseals. One of my holes seems to even be too low for the uniseals because it developed a very slow leak in it. I tried a new uniseal and had the same leak, so I have caulked the seal with silicone to see if it will stop the leak. It has been curing for 24 hours so I will be filling the tank with RODI tonight to see if the leak has been fixed. Fingers crossed, or I'll have to buy a new tank.

All the fish in QT are doing well... *knock on wood*. The 3 basslets will be going into the tank on the 23rd if they still look ok. The 2 firefish and 3 chromis will be going in on the 25th which is when the ick treatment will be complete. These will be the first fish additions in about 10 months, so I am pretty excited. I also did some work on the fish room. I mounted the RODI system and installed a booster pump to raise my psi from 45 to about 90. Painted the water tank stand with some waterproof paint: Made a stand for and moved the 75g to the fish room. This will be the deep sand bed & macro algae refugium. Still need to clean it and install the plumbing (which will be a challenge).

What is your plan for treating the brook in the current stock? Formalin?

Received a trio of golden assessors today from Diver's Den. They are smaller than I was expecting (I got these sight unseen after a shipping mishap on my initial order from DD last week) but I think they should do OK. I was going to order a 4.5" blue throat trigger, which would go in the same 40g QT tank, but I may hold off since these guys may fit in the trigger's mouth. I could maybe split the QT with lighting diffuser material, but that wouldn't necessarily stop the assessors from wondering over to the wrong side.

An example of the difference the gel filter makes. Top pic in the last post had no filter. Here is the same angle with the filter on.

My view in the evenings: I got some gel filters for my iphone camera, they seem to work well at taking not-so-blue photos.

I considered building a 5" wall on the front and sides of the overflow cover to prevent any fish from jumping on it, but I have screen lids I made that go to protect against jumpers. The screen lids would need to be re-worked to be compatible with a tall overflow cover. There is about a 3/4" gap between the overflow cover and screen lid that I probably should address. I'll probably just add a lip to cover up the gap.

Have a few fish in quarantine. Going to start an ich treatment (ich shield powder) and PraziPro. I considered doing the tank transfer method for ich treatment, but the cost for doing it on 40g tanks adds up quickly. (Sorry for the blurry pics) Also I wanted to prevent algae from growing in the overflow - its pretty hard to clean back there with the canopy on, so I made a cover out of acrylic. I still need to adjust it a tad bit, but it turned out pretty well for a 20 min project. I should have done it sooner!

I managed to get the effluent rate coming through at a pretty consistent rate at different drip rates. The secret is to adjust the needle valve very slowly. I did notice my regulator's solenoid is switching on an off fairly often. Is this normal? My CO2 bubble rate right now is 10 bubbles per minute. Apex is set to turn on CO2 at 6.7 ph and off at 6.6 ph. The current settings aren't quite keeping up with my tank's alkalinity needs so I will need to adjust some things. With how fast the ph drops in the reactor at 10 bubbles per minute should I just increase the effluent flow?

What kind of pump do you use for your reactors?

The needle valve is built into the reactor at the feed line. The knob marked with the red arrow shows where I adjust the flow.

Got the calcium reactor up and running. Only issue so far is I'm having a hard time getting a constant effluent flow. The reactor is fed from my return pump manifold. I'm shooting for 30 drips a minute, but once I crank the needle valve on the reactor lower than about 120 drops a minute it tends to stop flow completely. Maybe not enough pressure from the manifold?

Awesome build! What brand of sump is that? It looks great.

Found the specs online. It doesn't say it is food grade, but It's made from Polyethylene which I believe is reef safe in the high density form. Maybe someone else can chime in with info. Obviously I thought they are reef safe which is why I bought them. We have been using similar tanks for years for drinking water for cattle and quail we raise. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Can you post a link? The guy at tractor supply told me they could be used for long term drinking water and were food grade. I didn't check the specs online.

Bought them at Tractor Supply in Liberty Hill.

I hadn't either until I saw a few build threads of people using them on the nano-reefs forum. The rock looked great in all the builds. Their website and facebook pages look legit so I figured I'll give them a try. Not having to pick up the rock at the airport is nice too. I'll be sure to update when I get the rock, I'm probably a week or two out from ordering it.

Tank is up and running at full speed. Now that that's done, time for the fun to begin! I have an extra 75 gallon tank sitting around that I am going to implement as a refugium in the fish room. I plan to put in some straight from ocean uncured live rock, growing macro algae, and possibly setting up a deep sand bed. Some thoughts on it... The refugium tank currently has a glass-holes overflow, but I don't like that there is only a single drain (no emergency drain). Even though it has worked for years, I have been thinking on doing a DIY overflow box and using a herbie overflow. Not sure if I am going to do this or just leave as is and use a leak detector as a backup. Probably be lazy and do the latter. I've been going back and fourth on running a deep sand bed in the refugium. Besides cost of the sand and being careful that I don't disturb the sand bed I don't see any negatives on running one. Plus if it goes wrong I can shutoff flow to the refugium and remove the sand. 90% sure I am going to go this route unless anyone can give me a good reason not to. I also want to grow macro algae in the refugium. I have an BuildMyLed light that was made for freshwater planted tanks. It can grow freshwater plants like crazy, so I hope it will work well as a refugium light. Using dry-rock when I set up the tank left me with no pest, but also a severe lack of diversity in the tank. That's why I am getting about 20 lbs of uncured live rock from KP aquatics. (https://www.kpaquatics.com/product/aquacultured-live-rock/) While there is a higher risk of bad things coming in, I'm not going to hook up the refugium to the main tank until I'm reasonably sure there isn't too many bad things lurking in it. Also this came in today! Cant wait to get it set up this weekend.

Thanks! I'm really enjoying the 240 and excited to get things rolling again now that it has been moved. I bought the Northern Lights from FarmerTy, I'm sure he knows the specifics of it. Its green at the base and the new growth is the light blue color. Unfortunately it did not survive the move, I'll have to get another piece one of these days.