BornToHula

Figure it is time for a tank update! Still struggling with diatoms. I think part of the issue was me feeding 3 or 4 times a day to keep the Sunburst Anthias healthy. Unfortunately they did not make it and now I am dealing with the algae. Lesson learned: wait until the tank matures to add difficult fish! I have heard of a remedy for diatoms using Baker's Yeast to remove it, but I will probably give it another few months to run its course before I do anything drastic. Corals are still looking healthy and most are growing quite nicely. The tank's still looking pretty bare, C4 can't come quick enough!

I agree with Gig em, 4 weeks may be a bit soon for a full cycle with dry rock and live sand unless you have been using some additives that specifically speeds things up. I just did a cycle myself with dry rock/live sand and used a product (Red Sea Mature) that helps cycle the tank and it still took 7-8 weeks. Definitely get your water tested though! If your tank hasn't fully cycled they will be able to tell you what stage you are at. Its hard to be patient at this stage but it pays off later

In my opinion ARC is by far the most welcoming & helpful reef forum (or any forum, really) I've ever been to. On many other sites, both national and local, you have to put up with way more negativity to get though a conversation. While a couple of members may have had some issues I bet the vast majority of members, new and old, would agree. Keep up the great work.

Yep, I'm going to be loading up. I've been holding off buying frags until c4

Got everything out of the 75g besides 3 anemones that are refusing to deatch from their rocks! One of the 3 are going into the 240, the other two will be traded in. The live rock has been dried out and will be getting an acid wash this week to remove the vermatiid snail skeletons and other dead organic matter. I seem to have lost some of my better pics, but in its heyday I was pretty proud of my 75g considering it was my first reef tank. The 240 looks bare in comparison, I need more frags!

Vermatiid snails have a special place in hell, right next to green star polyp

I don't consider the snails a nuisance but I understand your position. I think as long as you disclose it when you sell them, should be no problem. That or just take them to the LFS and trade them in for some credit to buy new fish/corals for the 240-gallon. Not a bad idea. I will probably just manually remove the snails that I can and trade them in for a little credit. That way I wont be intentionally killing corals which seem wrong. As for them not being a nuisance - we'll have to disagree! They did a good job of trashing this tank, which is why I am being super careful on the 240g about them. Once they started reproducing it was a losing battle from the start.

I am finally breaking down my 75g this weekend, but I'm not sure what to do with some of the corals that are in the tank that won't be coming over to the 240. I have some frogspawn, a big piece of live rock that has zoas covering most of it, a big piece of green plating coral with brown polyps - that I cant remember the name of (edit: Spongodes!) , and some small others. Nothing very valuable. The problem is everything is covered with vermitid snails. So I am wondering, should I trade in or give away these pieces with the disclaimer that they have the snails in them - or should I just nuke them when I acid dip the rock? I would hate to infect anyone else's tank with the snails.

That blue PVC looks awesome. Do you have any struggle getting the drains working with the horizontal runs?

Yes! It was hard to determine what all goes in without wasting too much money or hurting the resale value. For example a waterproof floor with a floor drain got cut from the storage room - too expensive to justify it. You can bet there will be lots of leak detectors though.

Looks pretty cool! If I had to guess my bet would be on some type of anemone.

I have really fallen behind on updates for this tank! Now that I have gotten the tank pretty much all settled and leaving the "new tank" stage... its time to move! I just put a contract down on a to be built house in Leander. I'm not looking forward to having to move the tank at all, but the good news is I will be building a quasi-fish room behind the tank! The tank will be going into the study room, right by the entrance to the home. The study & storage room will have tile - not carpet like the plan says. We are adding additional windows on each side of the study door so the tank will be visible and not hidden away in a room. In the study there will be a vent with a humidity detector installed above the tank, along with two 20amp GFCI circuits for the tank to run on. Behind the tank there will be a storage room - which will have a water source and drain for the RODI filter, a utility sink, and room for water storage tanks. There will be a 15amp GFCI circuit for this room. Since the tank was designed to house all the equipment underneath the tank, I don't plan on moving the sump or anything into the storage room, but I will likely run a RODI line to the top off storage under the tank. The house wont be done until early next year - but I am looking forward to not having to drag water across the whole house for a water change! Moving the tank however - I am dreading that a little bit

You have to start a heat ticket and they'll trouble shoot. I was un successful getting someone on the phone unless they called me. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Good to know, I hope to be able to take off a couple hours early today to take care of it.

I've been having some major issues with the Vectra L1. Whenever I even barely touch the cables the power cuts in and out, sometimes it cuts out on its own . I woke up this morning to my ATO level alarm going off because the pump lost power. All the connections are tight so I can only assume something is wrong with the wiring. I just have to jiggle things around and it will come back on. Guess we'll get to see how good Ecotech's support is!

OK, thanks for the info.

Thanks for the input everyone. I think I will be going the muratic acid route to remove the vermetid snail's shells and then re-cycle the rock. Are these necessary when using the acid, or are the cheaper paper-like respirators good enough? http://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-Medium-Professional-Multi-Purpose-Respirator-62023HA1-C/202080144 I know most people's vermetid snails problems eventually go away, but they have been in my tank since I got it about 2 and a half years ago. They have slowly been increasing ever since, to the point where they literally cover everything now. Its probably an issue of not being able to run good mechanical filtration on the tank to remove particles in the water, or perhaps there is just too much junk on the live rock that is keeping them alive. Because of this I am very paranoid about them coming into the 240g. I would rather be safe than sorry and just nuke the rocks.

You could go to a glass store and get glass pieces cut to size. Use a plastic hinge to connect them. If you don't feel like going DIY, Planet will make glass lids for their aquariums too. (Or at least they did for mine even though I didn't order them!)

I'm throwing in the towel against the vermetid snails in my 75 gallon tank. I was hoping to starve the snails out and then transfer the rock to my new 240g tank, but after 1 month of no feeding and implementing mechanical filtration it doesn't appear to have affected them. I think I would eventually win the war but it would take longer than I want. I think my best option is to just kill the rock and start over. I will lose some sponges and other life I wanted to keep, but the last thing I want is another vermetid infestation. I am deciding if I want to go the muriatic acid route - after some research I am still unsure on a few things: With muratic acid, do you still need to cure the rock afterward to remove any phosphates from the dead organics? Or are they completely dissolved away? Do you think the acid would remove the vermetid snail tubes from the rock? How do you dispose of the acid once you are done?

Are those made in house by Reef Savvy too? Looks really nice.

I think It was just an error on my part somewhere. The past two days have been normal in regard to calcium usage. The dosing pump is working fine and the Apex Code is working as expected when I tested it last night.

Post the coding Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Its pretty simple, I just adjust the times to set how long it will go off every 30 mins: Fallback OFF OSC 000:00/000:30/029:30 Then ON

Water change interval is a 10% change (~25 gallons) once a week. Tomorrow is the scheduled waterchange day.

Okay, we are getting somewhere. Yesterday the Ca results were: Red Sea: 440 ppm - a drop of 5ppm Salifert: 445 ppm - a drop of 10 ppm Each test was done twice to try and eliminate human error. So something is either wrong with the dosing pump or apex coding. I'll be looking into it tonight. No calcium solution appeared to be siphoning out of the pump so that's not the issue.

That sump looks almost too good to be stuffed away in the cabinet!

Well the mystery continues. I tested calcium again yesterday. No calcium was dosed during this time period. Red Sea kit read 445 ppm - a rise of 20 ppm Salifert kit read 455 ppm - the same as on the 18th I think the issue could be one of or a combination of the following: 1. Human Error in my testing. Yesterday I ran each test twice and came back with similar results each time, so this should give me a solid baseline. I will be testing again tonight. 2. Test Kits are reading off or I contaminated the kits somehow. I don't think this is very likely since both are pretty much brand new. 3. My dosing pump is either siphoning calcium solution into the tank or my apex code is wrong and the pump is running when its not meant to. I completely unplugged the dosing pump and removed the output tube from the tank to a cup to see if anything comes out. 4. I just don't have enough corals to have an effect on the calcium levels yet. I don't think this is the case because alkalinity is being used fairly rapidly. If I left the dosing pump for Alk off for a couple days my corals would be in trouble. I'll be testing again tonight to see what the deal is. Its probably just me being a bonehead and messing up something simple haha