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Jimroth's Big Ol' Tank
- Thread starter jimroth
- Start date
With the frags I added, I figured I would soon need calcium supplementation so I brought my Kalk Reactor back on line. Then I modified my drain intakes, which made the level in my overflow rise and the level in my sump drop. That caused my topup water to be added, and since that is now 100% Kalkwasser, I got some really high pH readings, 8.6, even 8.8, which set off my Apex alarms. In the words of The Fixx, One thing, one thing, leads to another....I'm hoping that the pH probe just needs calibration. In any case, the water levels have stabilized and so has the pH. One advantage of 100% Kalkwasser top-up is it supports the pH at night, I have been holding around 8.27.
What I did to my drain intakes is kind of clever I think. The drains are 1.5" bulkheads, and they have street elbows stuck in them which point down into the drain trough. They only clear the bottom by a couple of millimeters, so there's no screen required, and siphon is maintained. The downside to that is that anything larger than a piece of sand is trapped against the slot and changes the level in the overflow. What I did was to dremel some 1/8" slots in the bottom of the street elbow, kind of crennelated it (made it look like the top of a castle). Now a little more water can get through but still no fish.
Algae contiunes to diminish, and I'm stating to get coralline agae coverage on the starboard bottom. My glass is plagued with a tough green algae, maybe a kind of coralline algae, that only a paint scraper will remove. It laughs at the mag float, shuns the flipper, and is hard to remove even with the steel-bladed kent scaper. Only reaching in the tank with a HD paint scraper really does the trick.
What I did to my drain intakes is kind of clever I think. The drains are 1.5" bulkheads, and they have street elbows stuck in them which point down into the drain trough. They only clear the bottom by a couple of millimeters, so there's no screen required, and siphon is maintained. The downside to that is that anything larger than a piece of sand is trapped against the slot and changes the level in the overflow. What I did was to dremel some 1/8" slots in the bottom of the street elbow, kind of crennelated it (made it look like the top of a castle). Now a little more water can get through but still no fish.
Algae contiunes to diminish, and I'm stating to get coralline agae coverage on the starboard bottom. My glass is plagued with a tough green algae, maybe a kind of coralline algae, that only a paint scraper will remove. It laughs at the mag float, shuns the flipper, and is hard to remove even with the steel-bladed kent scaper. Only reaching in the tank with a HD paint scraper really does the trick.
So, interesting problem. As part of my rebuild, I switchged from some pretty big external AC pumps to submersible DC pumps. Now, it's starting to get cold in the garage where my sump is and my heaters are having trouble keeping up. Guess what those AC pumps were also doing? Throwing off a lot of waste heat and also heating the water. DOH! I need to get the sump fully insulated before my temps drop below 75!
Scored a lot of corals "fragolonies" from an old friend. One was even a corals she got from me and kept growing for years. I love when that happens! I'll post some pics once they're all settled.
Scored a lot of corals "fragolonies" from an old friend. One was even a corals she got from me and kept growing for years. I love when that happens! I'll post some pics once they're all settled.
I insulated the sump with pink styrofoam ("Foamular") from HD. Much better, temps are holding. Additionally insulated the back door to the garage with several sheets of the same stuff. I won't be using that door until spring anyway. The big sheets cut easily with a stanley knife. The small project sheets are 24X24 and easy to work with. Headed to Hawaii in a couple weeks, no more changes till I get back.
One thing that has me tickled is the appearance of large numbers of copepods and other micro life. My rock was 100% dead, and while I did seed the setup with stuff from two other reefs, I didn't think it would happen so fast. The rocks are full of pods, and I see the skeletons of larger pods floating around. No mini brittles yet, not sure if I should seed them. I will not have asterinas again, if I see them they die. Hundreds at one point in the last go-round.
Back from Hawaii! Left the reef for 12 days, but able to check it with my Apex system and my son's iPhone doing video calls. FUNCTIONALLY everything did fine. All the corals and fish were fine when I got back. But here is a cautionary tale: After a week or so, temps in the system started to drop a lot. Then pH dropped. There wasn't anything I could do about it, so I said oh well. I had my sone pick up a couple extra 300W heaters and install them in the tank. Then a couple of days before we were due to come home, salinity dropped to zero! This is a bad sign. But it also told me what had happened. The topup system failed, the siphon broke. As water in the new, bigger sump evaporated, all pumps worked fine but the probes for temp, pH and finally salinity came out of the water! Since my sump is now surrounded with insulation, the tank sitter didn't see it. Fixed that right up, good as new. I ended up replacing one heater, which had condensation inside. Also, the power supply on a vortec failed after like 5 years. These are the things which happen if you go away.
If you can, go to Hawaii. I did some scuba diving, but even snorkeling off the beach you can see tons of live coral, bounties of tangs and butterfly fish and moorish idols, all the familiar fish from the LFS in their natural habitat. The Puako tidepools in the big island were great, as were some of the beaches we snorkeled off of in Maui.
Everything still going well. Went to set up my old MRC calcium reactor and found the CO2 regulator had issues, waiting on a replacement part. My switch to my other calcium reactor, one I never set up. In the mean time, dosing a little two-part.
In honor of my Hawaii trip I added a Kole tang. A great utility player.
I did an order with Pacific East Aquaculture (Dr. Mac). Everything came in strong, got a couple acro frags (Candlelight and Green tip blue stag) which are doing fine and starting to color up. Also a trio of nice acan frags and a weird orange and green psammacora (?). One of the acans came off its plug and disappeared. @#$%!!!
The only other mishap was the orchid dottyback I ordered with the corals. It jumped out of the bag during acclimation straight into the tank. It showed up dead a couple days later, don't know if that's the cause.
My ORA frags are starting to encrust off the plug, I see a large Red Planet colony in my future.
Only coral I'm having trouble with is Cyphastrea, it's struggling. I don't know what the secret is to success with that guy.
My trochus snails bred, I saw it happen, and now I have hundreds of tiny trochus, a good thing. Except they can easily go into the sump and get into pumps, so I have to keep up maintenence.
Kind of jonesing for an anemone. Probably should stick to bubble tips, but my LFS has an H. Magnifica which somehow survived shipping....
In honor of my Hawaii trip I added a Kole tang. A great utility player.
I did an order with Pacific East Aquaculture (Dr. Mac). Everything came in strong, got a couple acro frags (Candlelight and Green tip blue stag) which are doing fine and starting to color up. Also a trio of nice acan frags and a weird orange and green psammacora (?). One of the acans came off its plug and disappeared. @#$%!!!
The only other mishap was the orchid dottyback I ordered with the corals. It jumped out of the bag during acclimation straight into the tank. It showed up dead a couple days later, don't know if that's the cause.
My ORA frags are starting to encrust off the plug, I see a large Red Planet colony in my future.
Only coral I'm having trouble with is Cyphastrea, it's struggling. I don't know what the secret is to success with that guy.
My trochus snails bred, I saw it happen, and now I have hundreds of tiny trochus, a good thing. Except they can easily go into the sump and get into pumps, so I have to keep up maintenence.
Kind of jonesing for an anemone. Probably should stick to bubble tips, but my LFS has an H. Magnifica which somehow survived shipping....
Thanks Nikki, maybe after the holidays! I keep thinking you guys should see what I did with your beautiful branch rock. So if you're up this way and would like to stop by, give us a shout. In the mean time, I'll put up some new pix soon.