JasReef

Thanks for the info. I found it the day it ran out and it was on a Saturday after business hours so I couldn't get it refilled until Monday. I couldn't believe that such a small swing was able to start a cascade of STN in most of my acro's and also a couple of montis. Bummer but iI guess it's part of this reefing game we play. Your tank looks good by the way.

Your tank looks great!

Wow Ty, I shouldn't be surprised by how awesome your tank is but I always am! You are a master water keeper that's for sure.

Hey everyone, it's been awhile since I have been on here. I have had lots of ups and downs with the reef but I am in it for the long haul. The tank pretty much runs itself with automation and I only have to get involved with things every month or so. Almost all of the acropora I had died when my co2 tank ran out and the alk swung down for just 2 days, really a bummer because i can't afford to replace them all right now but I am just trucking along with what lived. No fish deaths for 2018 so pretty happy about that. If you have any questions ask away if not I hope you enjoy my non professional video. Thanks and happy reefing to all!

Thsnks! About a 25 on no3 and .07 for po4. Po4 will drop if I don't feed frozen everyday. Sent from my ONEPLUS A5010 using Tapatalk

I warned you not to in the description. All the default stuff is not very good. Sent from my ONEPLUS A5010 using Tapatalk

Sent from my ONEPLUS A5010 using Tapatalk

I agree with the fish. I have been thinking of rehoming most of my large fish and then change to the smaller cryptic fish. I have a chalk bass I love, out all the time, and a red stoplight cardinal I see once every 2 months. Your tank is amazing! Those corals are impressive! Sent from my ONEPLUS A5010 using Tapatalk

My house is 10 years old. They say the ducting is good, I hope they are right. I am going with a 16.5seer rating on the new model and the old one is 13. I hope to see a decrease in the electric bill but not counting on it.

The A/C will be out until we replace the entire system on Wednesday. The tank topped out at 84F. and usually runs between 78-80F. I think it will be good and maybe the increase in heat will cause some fish to spawn. I always keep some water bottles frozen just in case so I was putting those in the sump. The PH topped out at 8.5 and usually runs 8.05-8.3. It was a good thing it happened now instead of the middle of summer. On a side note how much would you expect to pay for a good central air conditioning unit for a 3200 sqft. house?

Can anyone guess based on the picture what happened in my house on Saturday?

I love the schematic and set up of this system. I see it working similar to mine. a dual with 2 x1.5" drains. I did not tee off my main drain but I can see the advantage of sending a little bit over to the fuge. Very elegant with letting gravity due all the work and not having to plug in a pump to feed an external fuge/frag tank. I just ended up running a pump from the return section of sump to feed a 40 gallon tank. You have done a great job of maximizing space under there.

Some pics from tonight. All montis except one oddball in this pic. Also not permanent placement of the monti cap. Love the colors on this Male Blond Naso tang. He is my first tang, bought him almost 3 years ago. I am worried about him clipping corals, fast swimmer and large. Jedi Mind Trick ( the trick is this is a green coral with red polyps and a blue/purple edge but we still love them) I don't think this is a branching setosa montipora. It is some kind of encrusting variety. Super slow grower compared to the setosa. Current location of clam. Branching Monti setosa under and competing with a spongoid monit.

Very nice. Nothing seems to beat algea better than good old manual removal. Also, urchins rock! I know Tim you are big on no skimmer, did you permanently turn it off? Do you see a correlation to algea and skimmer use or was it just incidental that you turned it off? Regardless the tank looks great. I know your clients are happy!

It has been a while so here are some updated pictures of the tank. The left side of tank. Middle Right Side In the last picture you can see that the urchin is taking the clam for a spin around the tank. The clam is now all the way on the left side of tank but it seems happy so who am I to judge their friendship? Clam stopped to take a selfie with the rainbow ricordias. I imagine if it had hands it would be throwing up the peace sign with one. Happy Duncan Trying a gonipora. Blue light. Flashlight I still use Zeovit rocks, Start, Food, Sponge. The only thing i dose outside of that is an iron/manganese supplement and potassium as needed. Those combined with the giant skimmer and calcium reactor are keeping my levels great. Average numbers are: ALK = 155/ 8.7dKH - Ca = 420 - Mg = 1280 - NO3 = 10 - PO4 = .02 - K = 390 The fish are thriving. I feed a mix of hikari pellets, the S and A sizes, 4 cubes frozen food and a large sheet of nori everyday. They love that red algea you can see growing on the bottom and some rocks on the right hand side especially. Most of the coral have great color for me but some of the acropora are much more stubborn about growing and/or coloring up. I feel like I am missing a secret ingredient or something, probably patience. I hope you all enjoy and as always like and subscribe.... oh wait, i watch too much youtube.

It is just some coral gum for attaching frags. Thanks for the compliments on the plumbing Wade. I bought the blue PVC from BRS. As far as getting it to look clean test fit every pipe and make sure they are tight, so I basically put it together twice. There is a Hayward true union ball valve right below the OM. It has an orange handle.

The algea patch, which looked like bryopsis, had to be covered. It doesn't look great but I have used the method before to cover/kill small patches.

I agree the pukani is great for frag plugs. I also use a power drill, chisel, and hammer to make lots of caves. the fish love it. Just be sure to clean or cook the rock, it always has a lot of gunk inside those holes.

My chromies are slowly being wiped out by a killer. This guy didn't make it. Now there is only 1 left so if it doesn't die I guess maybe it was the killer. I know they have a reputation for culling themselves. His side was all discolored white like it was bashed into and that pectoral fin was completely immobile. Poor fella.

I am thinking about changing out my water mix station with some larger tanks. If anyone knows where to find some 100g for cheap let me know. I'm looking for something like the picture below.

Jolt, we have been so busy that I haven't had much time to comment on things or even read the forums much lately. The first year of a babies life is a gigantic happy black hole, lol. Bobcat, that is a rainbow Florida ricordia I bought from Austin aqua farms, it was my first group of corals I ever bought. The tank is set up so I only have to spend about 10 minutes a day on average to maintain. My numbers stay spot on as long as I keep my routine steady. This was the way I wanted it knowing the kids have baseball, gymnastics, piano, kids camps, audiology visits, play dates, fun mud runs, ahhh! [emoji1] The most unstable thing I am doing is adding more to the scape. As I watch the fish I realize a lot of the conflict comes around night time when it's time to sleep and a mad dash for the rocks. I needed to add more caves and such to lesson the stress. I have been making some rocks or more sculpting and gluing together existing rocks to fill in as needed. My goal is as little rock touching the bottom as possible while keeping it solid. Also, I have my first patch of visable algea in this tank but I think this giant white stripped hermit is going to use it as a salad bar. If not I will cover it with some coral gum and kill it.

Its been a little while soI figure it is time for an update. The tank is doing great, nice and steady. I have been slowly collecting corals again as time permits, it feels good to see a growing tank. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

IMG]https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170423/1fec97ff0b3fec414e230ccb1304be0d.jpg[/img] Well, its that time of the year again. Beautiful Texas sunsets and all the things that take me away from my tank. Fortunately it is in a nice growth and color mission from stability. Its this new old thing i found and seems to work pretty well. I hope to have it bottled and ready for sale by the next frag swap. Its pretty simple but I always find a way to mess something up. Well, no longer are those days thanks to stability. Alkalinity (dKh) is the control center, so you could say stability is a control center, in a bottle. Of course the bottle of stability is a joke. I have fallen for a few, its easy to do. If you want stoney corals check alk at least every other day. Any time I slack more than that bad things happen. But I don't spend a ton of time testing. I spread out No3 and Po4 once every two weeks. This means i have to spend some observation time on the tank (darn) keeping an eye out for signs of elevated levels. I want to see some algea growth, it keeps my tang dominant tank (TdT) grazing which keeps the chasing down to a minimum. After a 4 month hands off period I felt the need to try a product called vibrant. The thread i read was as amazing as any shamwow commercial and I ordered one post hast. I put half the recommended dose into the tank. The next day it clouded up a little and in the next couple of days I slowly saw what happened. It did what it said it did. Vibrant had really gone to work on the short brown stuff on rocks and back wall of the aquarium. It was all white and decaying into its basic elements, the ones we don't like. Just 2 days before that algea was feeding the kole tang, which if I haven't said it is the hero/hardest working tang hands down. He scrapes everything and was making a good living on it because he is nice and fat, suspiciously so until you realize how much he was eating. with all that gone the ecosystem that hadn't had anything but food put in and aggressively taken out took a hit. It's been about 2 months and things have came back into a better balance. If you plan to use it really observe what happens to your tank, not just the nuesence algea. It did work on bubble algea. None of the hair or bryopsis. So I can say it does something but I'm not sure how to use it as a tool. One thing I did note is it is very easy for cyanobacteria to take hold. I am not sure the method of interaction so I would say it's a correlation or maybe a string of coincidences, I don't know. Calcium and magnesium get checked monthly or as needed. If the corals are growing you can see that edge and if it looks healthy I tend to not test for those 2 as much. Potassium I have it kit for but it always tests 400 so I don't do it often. I now will tommorow because I am thinking of it, the only reason is it can be a limiting factor in a ULNS. In the quest for better growth I will entertain the notion. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

Rainy day pics. 3 zebras un actual size order, lol.

Hey, I've been so busy between school and the kids, namely the 7 month old, that getting on the forums was to much of a time sink. You know how it is, "Oh, a update on the forums, I'll just check it...and I just lost an hour looking at corals." haha The tank is running smoothly, after a disaster with my alk and not getting recovery on about 80% of my stock. I was on a smooth run until the tank transfer in Oct. I lost many to a mix of fast and slow necrosis. I think what happened was a two-fold problem. First, the alk was around 180 in the new tank when they were normally in a 135. Second, the nutrients were far to low to help feed the corals properly. Well I do things slow when i can so the last three months have been wait and watch. There are two separate systems and i have just been trying to get a nice stable balance so i can transfer more coral back in the large tank. I just took some pics so heres where i am at. It's a good place with fat healthy fish and corals recovering color. Lots of coraline as well. It predictably prefers the over flow box and the bottom, which are both plastic materials. These pics are at night and back lit by the fish room. I will get some daytime pics later.