Addiction wins, 450 gallon system begins

[Hop]

Well it was a strange week. The aforementioned power issue, my DSL was down for four days and my skimmer was giving me fits. I have a ton of catching up to do here reading threads!

I did get so frustrated with my skimmer that I completely tore it down last night. I'm still not sure what the issue was, but after putting it back together, it seems to be fixed now. I just could not keep a constant water level in it. If I got it set, an hour later it was either 2" too low or overflowing the collector... I'm sure something was letting air in somewhere and thankfully it's working now.

Nothing much to post, but I did get a couple new pics. I'm still trying to learn this camera. I'm having a time getting the white balance down and I seem to be able to take pretty detailed shots that are too blue or fuzzy shots that are similar in color to what I see. I don't know I have plenty of playing left and I'm beginning to do some research on a good camera. You know, one for my wife, for Christmas, that would take really good shots of the kids and her horses. You know, one that I could maybe borrow once in a while to take pics of the tank

As far as the tank goes, nothing major to report either way...

 

[jnarowe]

I think my Father pulled off the All-Time Greatest Gift: When he and my Mom returned home from a Valentine's Day outing, the drive was ringed with pink balloons, everything was decorated beautifully with the garage as the center of attention. They got out of the car and he offered her a small jewelry case. Inside was a pink "fob" with a set of keys.

When he rolled up the door, there was a Vintage Pink Harley Trike, which of course, he borrowed occassionally! Funny **** really, especially since they lived in a completely private community on the water in CT where everything appears to be stitched up very tight, and then he goes through the gears ripping around the neighborhood. What's that saying..."loud pipes save lives"?

I AM not worthy.--J

 

[Hop]

I'm going to get this camera figured out if it kills me. Or the camera is being swept into a dust pan in little tiny pieces:O

Still not as sharp as I know the camera is capable of. I can take macro shots of things outside the tank and the sharpness and color is incredible. The instant I point the thing and the tank, it vapor locks....

 

[jnarowe]

I think the photos are good. Don't forget that you are dealing with motion too.!--J

 

[rjwilson37]

Awesome Frogspawn! I just love green frogspawn like that, here is a picture of mine from the front and I don't even have as much water movement as you.

 

[jnarowe]

Totally sweet! I love those!

BTW, started my own thread so I won't be hi-jacking HOP's all the time!

jnarowe's 1000g+ Reef System --J

 

[Hop]

rjwilson37: I have to admit that they are certainly one of my favorites. I really like the coloring. Thats a great shot you snapped there as well!

jnarowe: See you had to go and start you own thread Now this one will most likely fade away! JJ

I already hit the subscribe button

 

[Hop]

So I got home at 6am this morning from a twelve hour grave-yard shift and went for my morning once over on the tank before bed. When I got to the wetroom I saw that one of my hermit crabs had decided to abandon the fuge and got into the sump. There he was caught in a tsunami under the intake for the skimmer pump spinning at like 300 rpm. I could see that he was hanging on to his shell for all it was worth, with his little claw, the only thing visible outside the shell, clamped on to the edge. I have to admit after a particularly boring night, I lost it, laughing my head off. The little sucker could have been trapped in the tornado of death for over thirteen hours. Well I fished him out of his little situation and plopped him back into the fuge. It took him a few minutes to gain his composure and I'm pretty sure he gave me a little french gesture as he tried to go back to work as usual. I noted that he's been walking around in clockwise circles for the past half hour, but seems to be no worse for wear:fun5:

 

[jnarowe]

Hermits are really funny. Since I removed the hairy crab, they have all gone below to check out the rest of the rock. So my plan worked...I used them to draw the HC out, nabbed him, and as far as I can see, maybe only one got munched.--J

 

[Dudester]

Just curious, Hop, why would you want hermit crabs in your fuge anyway? Especially now, since you've already had an episode where one could have "gotten away." Even worse, couldn't a hermit crab get into your return pump, block the impeller and cause a flood? Forgive me if this is preposterous, and I may be being overly cautious, or simply too ignorant to understand why nothing's wrong with this scenario.

 

[Hop]

jnarowe: Stupid crab. Just caught me wrong this morning and I lost it. I guess it could be the sleep deprivation

Dudester: Well out of the few crabs that are in there.... Two found their way by hiding on rock as I moved it into the fuge and the one I call Sammy the snail slayer was banned to the depth of the fuge for slaughtering my snail population. I know it sounds like a real accident waiting to happen, but in reality they can make it out of the fuge and into the sump, but their journey ends there. I have strainers on both the skimmer and return pump inlets. I had thought about putting them on the overflows for the fuge, but the possibility of a clog was higher here and there was no failsafe I could employ to avoid a flood

 

[Dudester]

Gocha.
I guess I'm influenced by my work. I'm always thinking - what's the worst thing that could happen in this instance? Glad you've already considered this as well.

 

[Hop]

Sorry this is not an exciting tank update or incredible microshots. I'm still working on those. This is just a quick "proud papa" moment. Quick background is that I'm mostly Cherokee and my wife has a streak of Cherokee with Lumbee in her. So our kids have a bit of a native American flair to them. Each fall our daughter who is schooled at the ranch where we board our horses has pictures taken with the other kids in era replicated scenarios (hence my avatar). I got a few new ones today and just felt I needed to share a bit

So we now return you to your normally scheduled reef programming. Thanks for looking:rollface:

 

[NexDog]

Aww, she's so cute. My little girl is 6 now - half English half Japanese.

 

[bulkhead]

I lurk this thread, nice set up by the way, but I had to chime in here to comment on the WONDERFUL pictures..... I absolutely love this picture....

Keep up the good work.....

 

[Hop]

Thanks guys. I just loved getting these tonight. Really made the evening something special. Someday I'll have to get the boy to quit riding his bike and sit still long enough for some pictures

 

[melev]

That picture Michael quoted is the one I liked best as well. Frame that.

Does the blue handprint mean anything?

 

[Hop]

Thanks guys! And yes that is her handprint.
The meaning of the hand print is a little long so I'll try to sum it up shortly. According to legend during the land rush the Native Americans were not allowed to partake in the land auction. The Lumbee Indians at the time were not listed on the national registry of recognized tribes, so my wife's great-great grandfather (I think or great-great-great) put in for land in the south-eastern portion of Kansas. Long story short is that it came between he and another man and the first one to lay claim to the land by occupancy etc would obtain the acreage. So to mark the land, he apparently cut his hand off and left it on the property. So this is the LEGEND and a red handprint was entered into my wife's, mother's side in the family crest. But they didn't have any red horse-safe paint so it wound up being blue

This is actually not one of our horses, we have two quarter horses that are retired cutters. This horse, Pawnee, is a retired ranch horse that is more of a pet and took to my daughter a couple years ago. This horse has protected her in the pasture when a Mustang stud got a little too aggressive with her. As my wife picked my daughter up, Pawnee stepped in and started kicking the snot out of the Mustang. This horse also gets physically ill when my daughter dosen't make it to school, just stares at the county road waiting for my wife's car to drive up, won't eat or drink. They have some strange bond, the horse realizes she's a child and takes the most precautious, gentle temperament with her.

 

[gkarshens]

Well Hop, I just breezed thru your thread (2 hours) and have to say I can only dream of having a set-up like yours. I will follow along as you build your tank up.

 

[Hop]

gkarshens: Thanks for the comment and hopefully there will be some updates soon.

I thought that I would do a quick update on how the tanks doing.

Parameters: Seem to be doing really well. Everything except ammonia is good. Nitrates 0, nitrites 0, Po4 0, alk good, PH is a steady 8.47. The ammonia test keeps reading that there is 0.25ppm. My gut feeling is that the test kit is flawed and I'm going to run a test on some RO/DI tonight to see. I just don't see how it can be this high.

Tank: Did my first waterchange yesterday. It was not as smooth as I was hoping. I have to make a few tools to help get detris out of the cracks and such, I may work on this tonight. Also for the ease of the change, I have to make a couple plugs to block flow from the fuge to the sump, so I can completely drain the sump and wipe it down. Otherwise the design for the water changes was pretty good. Drain water, put hose in sump, open valve and a few seconds later, done

Additions: The only thing I added was a clump of Cheto to the fuge. The way that the sump is designed, it kept blowing the clump to the bottom of the fuge, so I found a large plastic strainer (the kind you drain noodles and stuff in) that floats and I put the cheto in there. It seems to work pretty well floating around the sump and the mass of algae has grown by 1/3 in a week.

The Q tank: The Naso and Foxface are doing really well. I change 1-2 gallons a day and 10 gallons a week. Here is a little tid bit of info for those doing research:
I read that there was no link between garlic and the stimulation of apatite. Well.... If I soak Nori in garlic and put it in the tank, it is instantly devoured. I literally have to yank my hand out of the tank quickly, as I'm not certain what a fox face sting feels like, but I don;t want to find out. If I put Nori that has not been soaked in garlic in the tank it takes them a few minutes to work their way over to it and they generally just pick at it over several hours.

I don't think that it's ground breaking information, but information just the same