BornToHula

How do I put this all back together again???

Got the tank moved to the new house last night. If I ever have to move it again, I'm going to need to invest in some hydraulic dollys or something. My back can't take any more lifts like that . I have the livestock in the temporary tanks currently. I more than likely wont be able to get the big tank running again for several more days, so I am going to have to look into setting up some temporary lighting for the corals. The only loss so far has been the pistol shrimp, which I have a feeling the melanurus wrasse thought looked like a good snack. I probably should have made a better place for him to hide. I also got my water mixing station up and running. Once the 240 is filled I'm going to pull the stand out a paint it with some waterproof paint. Just didn't have enough time to beforehand.

In preparation for the move I built a stand that will hold two 40 gallon tanks. The plan will be to put the coral and fish in these for a couple of days while the 240 is moved and set up again. All the other live rock with no corals will be put in a brute trash can. If the tank move takes more than a couple days, I will need to make a stand for one of my powermodules to sit on to get the corals some light. Hopefully I can move quick enough not to need that though.

I am going to continue until the bottle runs out, about two more doses. I have been dosing weekly, but haven't noticed any effect.

This thread is worse than Ty's tank build thread! You could use some pvc piping and live rock to create the cliff, and utilize that dead space underneath as a crypic zone. Steve Tyree did a speech on it at C4, seemed very interesting and he had a lot of good research on a crypic zone's benefits.

After 4 doses, vibrant doesn't appear to have an effect on this stuff. Once the move is done I'm going to have to come up with a new game plan. Speaking of moving, the tank should move to the new house sometime the week of the 20th! Here is some pics of the room the tank is going in and the room behind it.

Hah, didn't mean for it to be creepy. That vibrant looks interesting, I'm going to give it a try.

Those amps seem about right, the EB8 will be able to handle that fine as long as the big one is plugged into 4 or 8. The only bad thing about the 4 & 8 plugs is they make the popping sound when they come on. I have two 300w heaters currently that do fine until the inside of my home gets below 67. After that a 3rd 300w heater has to kick in.

Dang, how many amps are your heaters pulling? If I remember correctly, on the EB8 each regular plug can only have 5 amps on it, but plugs 4 and 8 can have 10 amps. The EB8 can handle total of 15 amps overall.

Wow time flies! Thought I would do a much needed update. Our new home is nearing completion, we are scheduled to close on 3/15. It'll have a semi fish room behind the tank with a utility sink, water source/drain for the RODI filter, and separate drain for saltwater that ties into the water softener drain. We are beyond excited to move! The tank is doing okay. I still have a big issue with the golden/clear algae, to which I am admitting defeat for the time being. I'm almost certain the issue is Chrysophyta, which seems to be a more uncommon problem. There are a few threads of reef2reef about it that I have been following but so far no consensus on how to get rid of it yet from what I can tell. Here is a video of it, I only showed what grows on the glass, but its on the rock too. These pics were taken at 900x with a children's microscope. The colors and focus were impossible to get correct, but I guess its better than nothing. The conclusion so far is the algae doesn't care about nutrients. I reduced and maintained nitrate and phosphate to undetectable levels for over two months with no reduction. The side effect of this is I lost several corals to the low nutrients and the ones that survived had a major reduction in color. The lights out didn't seem to have an impact either. I didn't black out the tank with cardboard on the sides though, so I may try this again. After the tank move I plan on: Set up refugium with macro algae Add some actual live rock to get more bio-diversity into the tank Possibly: dose hydrogen peroxide and/or add UV filter Add a lot more fish and corals to the tank!

Thanks. I need to get a black paint pen for the eye, a sharpie wouldn't work. And no, no tassled filefish! Unlike your band saw, mine will defiantly cut fingers! Thanks!

Not tank build related, but with building our new house I wanted some decorations to go in the office that will have the fish tanks. I tested this design and style out and think it turned out pretty good. I want to do one for each fish I have. I'll need to invest in a scroll saw, cutting the smaller parts on the band saw was a little dicey!

Is Jecod the new name for Jaebo? The pump I received today is different than the one I ordered, but I think it may be the updated DC-12000 pump...

So the issue is heat from the build up on the pump shaft again. The issue has to be a bad o-ring, so I will replace that. Then the Vectra will be the backup to the Jabao

Didn't even know there was a new one!

I've been planning on doing that for awhile, just haven't gotten around to doing it. I need to make a bracket for the float valve. Maybe I can come MacGyver a solution for this weekend.

Thanks for the offer. I have a Lifegard pump that will get me through the weekend if I can't get the Vectra running again tonight. I think its the build up on the shaft again so once I clean it, it should be good for the weekend. I caught it before the skimmate bubbled out of the sump, so the mess wasn't too bad. Thanks, the float valves work good so far.

Another Vectra failure! This was the final straw, I ordered a Jaebo DC12000 to replace it for now. I'm thankful the failure happened to today and not tomorrow, I'm heading out of town for the weekend!

Finally got the Seneye up and running. For some reason its not compatible with a Surface Pro 3, I had to bring out a 10 year old laptop that it works fine on. While playing around with the meter, I noticed there is a significant difference in PAR based on if the Gyres are running or not. I think the surface of the water getting choppy when the Gyre is running causes the difference. I took these readings with it running which is why there are some pretty big ranges. I also need to make some kind of holder for the Seneye. Its very unwieldy to hold it in the tank and try not to block any of the light. I actually broke a big piece of my digitata off trying to get a reading From what I've tested so far the absolute minimum par is 275 at the bottom of the tank. The top portions reach up to the 700's when the Gyre isn't running too hard. The LEDs are set to 70% at peak and are at peak for 6 hours with a 2 hour ramp up and ramp down before and after. The T5 are on for 8 hours. The readings were taken at peak light time.

I decided it was time to bite the bullet and get a par meter. I figure since I have invested so much in the lights and coral frags, it is pretty easy to justify the cost of a par meter to identify when I need to change out the T5 bulbs and ensure the corals are getting the light they need. While doing research I looked at the following 3 par meters: Apogee SQ-520 Pros: Designed to accurately read blue light, most popular hobby grade brand Cons: Most expensive Apex Par Monitoring kit Pros: Comes hidden in some fake live rock so you can monitor par long term Con: Comes with the last gen apogee meter Seneye Pros: Cost, very accurate when compared to $2,000+ equipment (see Bulk Reef's videos), option to use it as an ammonia monitor Cons: Doesn't seem to be very popular, hard to find reviews from hobbyist on the par meter It really came down between the Apogee and Seneye. During my research I watched Bulk Reef's videos where they compared the readings from their high-end par meter to the Seneye and the results were almost identical. The accuracy plus the low price of the Seneye convinced me to go with it. The Seneye should be coming in this week, I'll be sure to post how it works and what I think of it.

I agree, he wasn't actively eating it. I was surprised that he was even picking at it after being a model citizen for the past 2 years. I am more worried that he may not be getting enough to eat and is "trying" new things. Last year I had a little acro eating crab that came in on a maricultured piece that took out about 2 inches overnight. I had to stab mine with a toothpick to get him off. The emerald crab is no danger at all compared to this bugger.

There is some damage on the coral today from it, nothing bad, just a couple of spots. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and just wait to see if it happens again.

Last night I couldn't sleep so I took a look at the tank around 1:00 AM and I caught my emerald crab eating the flesh off one of the acros! Never heard of an emerald crab doing this before or seen this one doing it before (I've had him for about 2 years), but he was definitely eating the flesh and not picking off algae or something else. Maybe he is starving since there isn't much algae for him to eat anymore? I would throw him a piece of frozen shrimp, but I never see him during the day. It may be time to trade him in to the fish store.

Red Planet EC Strawberry Shortcake Darth Vader from Reeffarmers I think this one was a Rainbow Millie from Reeffarmers He said he would write down the name of it so I didn't have to.... I have no idea what this says lol Overall I am happy with my haul, got lots of nice pieces! I feel that the corals from reeffarmers lost quite a bit of color between C4 and my tank. Hopefully they will gain some color once they settle in

Here was my haul from C4: Aussie Golden Torch. It still hasn't fully come out, I don't think he's liking my tank. I've been moving him around too much and am going to let him stay here for a few days to see if he improves. Didn't write down the name of this goni. Northern Lights Hawkins Echinata FHC Boli Tri-Color