BornToHula

A friend was nice enough to let me jump on their free shipping and 15% off at Live Aquaria so I ordered the ORA Laura's Purple polyp acro I've been coveting since they released it last year.

It didn't disappoint!

I thought you were done getting new frags? Hope you triple dipped it!

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.

How'd you cut that up? Band saw?

Hah nice. I thought about bringing in my bandsaw from my woodshop when I fragged my frogspawn. Mine's not near as portable as that one though!

How'd you cut that up? Band saw?

Personally I like option 1, that way you can sell off or use the Tunzes somewhere else. I forget, yours is a 6ft tank right?

He looks big enough that he may accidentally damage the coral, but I again don't think it's intentionally trying to eat your acro. I probably should have documented our nasty acro-eating crab when it happened. Would have been useful for others to see what that looked like. I actually had to stab him with tweezers to get him out. Lil stinker was running from 1 acro to the next beating up on them.

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.

I don't think he's eating the acro, he's just looking for algae. They aren't exactly smart. We had an acro eating crab and trust me, you'd know if it were eating that coral. The tips would all be mangled up and what not. You can see in the video that the crab is gently trying to scrap algae with his claws, not smash the acro to get tissue.

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.

Awesome work man, that sump setup is sweet.

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

My reaction when I come back to Ty's thread:

What are you using the BRS dosing pump for? Magnesium?

Are you trying to make be buy a new monitor? I only have 1440p

That's sad to hear but at least you we're there to troubleshoot. I've never really gotten calcium buildup on any of my return pumps over the years. Usually when I do annual pump impeller cleanings, it's just bacterial growth that can be easily wiped off.

Did you ever overdose alk or calcium with new tank?

No overdose of alk or calcium. But like we discussed at C4, my dosing pumps do drip into the same chamber as the pump. I'm going to move the dosers to a different chamber and see if that helps solve it.

I have the camera+ app. I can get slightly better pics than the default iphone camera in camera+ by going to the advanced settings and turn on the white balance control. Then when you take the pics you can adjust it up and down to get pics that don't look so blue.

Had a problem with the Ecotech Vectra again tonight. Around 8:00 my water level alarm started going off. In the past this had meant that the Vectra's controller failed and needed to be reset. Luckily this was not the issue again - I just received and installed a replacement controller board last week.

This time the pump was still running, just no water was actually being pumped through it. I went in to check the pump and the whole thing was super hot! Not burning hot, but hot enough that it was uncomfortable to touch it for long, and this was under water!

I turned off the pump and gave it about 20 minutes to cool off, then opened it up and find this calcium build up causing the pump to fail:

I cleaned it off using vinegar and some elbow grease. This was the first time I opened it up, so I'm not sure if the o-ring wasn't properly installed at the factory or if this will be an ongoing occurrence. It seems to be working OK now but I'll have to keep an eye on it.

This pump has only been running for 3 months and already caused a ton of headaches. I'm just glad it happened when I was home so it didn't cause any issues.

Interestingly, now that most of the brown stuff has died off, my phosphates and nitrates still read zero. I wouldn't think there is enough algae taking up nutrients to still read zero. Maybe I should cut back on water changes/GFO?

That looks great.

Yeah, nice work on the float switch holders!

Thanks!

Great craftsmanship there! Now come over and make me some!

Thanks! I can make you one for the cost of materials + a frag or two .

Looks like you are in the home stretch!

Finished the dosing pump reservoir! Doing a water test before it goes under the tank.

Hey! The urchin stole my zoas off the frag plug last night.

I had that fuzz a while back, I added an urchin and he cleaned all up for me.

Interesting, my tuxedo urchin doesn't seem to like the stuff too much (or maybe he is too small to make an impact). Astrea snails seem to work the best on it out of all my clean up crew.

Made some progress on the dosing pump reservoir! I decided to go with 4 chambers. That way I will have room for both magnesium and amino acid dosing if I want to go that route. Each chamber is about 1.5 gallons.

Also the battle against the mystery brown stuff continues to improve. This is the worst spot in my tank currently.

Compared to how it was just a couple weeks ago:

I see. I have pods, so the brown stuff isn't killing them in my tank at least.