archway reef build

[easttexas]

the BRS reef saver rock is very, very porous (although some I got wasn't, I buried those), I just rinsed it is all, and added it to my existing rock. it is all on the bottom glass, waterweld'ed together, and some foam; then the sand poured in. I started the change over by pulling my old rock, and building the rock work. I used the ideas from the aquascaping thread on hear for the 3/5 rule, but the tonga branch kinda ruined it. the right side is shorter than the left, the trench in the middle is offset to the right, and I connected the foam overflow wall to the left rock pile with a large bridge, the fish love it!

family room side closest to overflow

my kids call this the volcano, the fish can go into the structure in like 20 places, and come out the top

 

[easttexas]

here ya can see some of my closed loop outlets. the 2 on the end of the tank are foam/fiberglass/sand ones made over the pipe. the middle ones I fit into the rock as good as I could then foamed them in.

another view

I plan on making zoanthids/palythoa mounds out of them

This guy seems to like the LEDs, hopefully the 2 green ones I have will come out like this guy, they haven't been happy with me since I got them.

my 2 toad stools look great for a day, them bad for a day? guess they are just settling in. the brown one has like an 8" head and loved my old 75, but didn't like his 4 months in the temp tank. he's coming out more again. the green one is happy more than closed up in the new tank. the rest of my corals seen to be fine. I fragged my green palythoa's and spread them around the lower rocks. the zoanthids are opening up, but not standing up, probably just getting used to the light, I only had a cheap Chinese 4x48"T5 fixture before, and it was not very bright. And yes, a Par meter is on my wish list

parameters the day before the move:
salt 35ppm; ammo.1 (always is, think its a bad test kit); trate 0; trite 0; phos 0; calc 425; DKH 11.65; mag 1100; PH 8.1

and a week after the move:
salt 34.5; ammo .1 (again); trate 0; trite 2; Phos .2; calc 410; DKH 14.7 (?) mag 1220; PH 8.1

I don't get the high DKH?

for the move. I took my rock out, moved it, glued it, put my prepped 40 gallons of SW in then as much old water as I could get out of the temp tank (65+sump), figured about 55 gallons, then transferred the live stock. only filled just over half way. I have a mixing station in the garage, and a hose to run it into the house with a 44 gallon brute ro/di and another salt mixing brute powered by an old LG MDXQ5 (super loud!!!). I mixed up another batch, mixed it for 24 hours straight, added to tank, repeat until full.

I was allowed to order my Apex gold for fathers day, and the wife is going to allow me to order my tangs for my birthday in august. We don't have a local fish store, but I have an internet distributer that opened up a couple years ago about a half hour away that my FedEx driver told me about. I contacted him today to see if he can get me 2 yellows, a purple, and a sailfin tangs, all 2-3 inches was my request. he has most of them now, but I told him early august please. I will have my quarantine set up by then. the plans are to get a $100 - 29 gallon kit, chunk the lights, use the power filter, heater and add my old remora pro skimmer to it.

Currently I have :

2 blue/green chromis (had 6 but they whittled themselves down)
2 yellow tail blue damsels
1 4" scopas tang
1 male lemon peel angle (blue markings)
1 mandarin dragonet,

I have had them all for over a year, some longer

The first add I think should be the tangs because of aggression, and I think I should add them all at the same time

2 yellow, purple, and sailfin


then slowly add the following:

naso tang
anthias
blennies
gobies
then 2 pair of clowns and anemones


Damn I hate when it logs you out while your typing!

 

[easttexas]

oh, I promised to talk about how load things are. The loudest thing in the system by a long shot is the tumbling of the bio pellets. there are 4 DC pumps in the sump, and they make a very slight hum together, but can hardly be heard away from the stand. I also have 3 WP40 that you can hear them hum as they ramp up and down, all told, its just a whisper, doesn't bother me in the TV room at all, and the tanks only a couple feet behind the couch. if they were in my bedroom, they might be too load

 

[easttexas]

UPS just came

fathers day came a little early

the next phase could take a while

 

[lluv24]

Looking really good;-)

 

[easttexas]

Thanx lluv, I see you've a 180 as well. I wouldn't mind a pic or 2 of your set up for ideas. did you ever figure out your skimmer issue. I haven't been able to plug the cup drain on this one yet. even on its lowest setting it just constantly overflows, turning it up make it worse, and I've tried raising and lowering it. raising it helped with the bubbles in the output, but did nothing for the overflow problems. I have it running in 7 1/4" of water, right in its recommended range.

as for the build. I'm trying to source an Ethernet gamming wifi adapter locally, but will just program it off the tank for now to get started.

 

[easttexas]

well, I got the apex going in like basics mode. I will continue to customize it, but for now I got it running, and a few safety features built into it like lights off for high temps, and the controller controlling the fans. I can't seem to keep the tank under 80. its been running between 79.4 and 80.4, the rooms running a 77-78 so that's not too bad, gotta convence the wife to let me lower the AC.

I also figured out what was up with my KH being so high, I was using 5ml of SW instead of 4, guess I should read the directions a little better. 5ml syringe, 4ml SW

todays test
salt:35ppm
ammo:.1 (always is, must be the API)
Nitrate:0
Nitrite:0
Phosphate:<.1 (again, API, can't tell, but it not 0)
Calcium: 400 (trending down 10 a weekish, not seeing and coralline algae on the new rocks yet, and no hard corals yet)
KH: 8.8 (did it right this time )
Magnesium: 1150 (again trending down slightly)
PH: 8.07 (Apex now, I ran the test kit, it looked about closest to the 8.0, so I believe the Apex)

I have a small diatom bloom going on, but it is mostly gone in the morning, and grows back during the day, I just need to let it run its course.

On another note: my Zoanthids still aren't "reach for the light", but are open. the old green Ricordea's are getting bigger again, the orange one looks great. The toad stools still aren't happy. Do you think they need more light? more flow? direct feeding? or a coral dip? they were dipped when I got them in, but that's been quite a while, something could be irritating them?

and what bothering me the most: I still can't get the RO DCS200 to skim, it overflows even on the lowest speed, and I have it at the bottom of the recommended water depth (7") I know that there's just not that much organics per the new water volume (280 gallons ish) but man, its been over 2 weeks, Am I going to have to get a neck extention to be able to use this thing????

AARRGGG

 

[easttexas]

oh, I promised to talk about how loud things are. The loudest thing in the system by a long shot is the tumbling of the bio pellets. there are 4 DC pumps in the sump, and they make a very slight hum together, but can hardly be heard away from the stand. I also have 3 WP40 that you can hear them hum as they ramp up and down, all told, its just a whisper, doesn't bother me in the TV room at all, and the tanks only a couple feet behind the couch. if they were in my bedroom, they might be too loud

 

[easttexas]

update.

Got the Apex up and running and mostly programmed. got the Apex controlling both the wp40 in the main tank, and the closed loop pump. I like it much better than just using the Jeboa controller. I was manually turning it down by the variable voltage power supply every night. Now it runs random blast, wave pulses and ramps down at night on its own. I also have the DC 12000 CL pump running 30% @ at night, ramping up over an hour in the morning, oscillating 30 to 100% every 30 minutes (Yes it will do that), then ramping down at night. the wp's do give my bean animal overflow fits when they makes waves, but its not bad

temp is stable to within 1* PH to with .06, orp stays over 360 now that the skimmer is working.

The RO skimmer finally kicked in. After reading up on what was making it go crazy, they recommended removing the skimmate anyways, and changing the carbon weekly, well after only 1 day and one carbon change, it went to working normally, and pulls some nasty, stinky stuff. apparently, it was the epoxy and glues that was messing with it.

I found out why my zoanthids weren't coming out. I had ordered 8 more color morphs from an online sale, they all opened up good in the frag tank, but after I put them in the main tank a week later, I found my Lemon Peel angel ripping polyps of the rock one at a time and eating them (thought they were poisonous ) he doesn't seem to go after the larger Polys, just the smaller zoa's. I popped them all off the rocks and glued them back on plugs and put in the frag tank for the time being. several still aren't opening up. anyways, I ordered a trap this morning, and got the LFS to give me credit for him once I remove him (feels weird calling an angel 'him', but he is.) He was my favorite fish for the last year, very active, bright yellow with blue rings fins and eyes, oh well, I want corals, so he's gonna have to find a new home

I also put a test SPS in the tank (all new corals were dipped) got a green slimmer frag, came in about an inch with 2 branches and another forming. The polyps are coming out, but its not 'fuzzy' like some of the pics I've seen (do Slimmers get fuzzy?)

while I was dipping the new frags, I decided to dip my old green toad stool, it never stayed out since I got it a few months ago, after the dip, now it never closes up! guess something was bothering it, so I dipped the big tan toadstool, it was ****ed for a couple days, now looks like he did when he was in the old tank.

I also set up my QT tank yesterday. I've got a biowheel in the main tanks sump 'cycling' and will put like 5 gallons a day from the main tank into it and replace for a water change. I plumbed a valve off the frag tank just for filling the QT tank. it will still take 2 people though, one to handle the QT valve, and one to control the new SW from the mixing station hose. I may just overfill the sump then drain it back down into the QT I guess.

that's the update for now. feel free to comment

 

[rs1831]

Everything looks great!! Are you still liking the LUMENTEK PRO?

 

[easttexas]

Thanks for checking in rs

I like the fixtures fine, they have too much red in my opinion, and some of the colors need to be replaced with blue, I am currently running them with a mid day off 25% color channel and 75$ blues, looks like about 12-14K to me. the 6 UV's each really make things pop. I have a test green slimmer in the tank that is doing great under them. now for the bad. Of the 3 I ordered, I had one that the controller didn't function properly, and it took me 3 weeks just to get in touch with them, and some of his emails got kinda testy with me. The biggest problem with this company is communication. When I put in the request for info, he called me within minutes, we talked and I purchased, he call back a couple minutes later and thanked me, and everything seemed fine, 4 weeks later I still got no lights, and he won't answer email or his phone. Finally I got a group message sent out to all his customers explaining a damaged shipment and what not, so in the end it took 9 weeks to get them, and he excuse for not answer emails or phone msgs is that he had nothing new to report. I was honestly fixing to go thru the pay pal process of making a claim on him. The lights are real nice, but I'd recommend Reef Breeders first, he seems to have his S*** together much better.

on a side note, the new lumintek's can be ordered with apex control right out of the box now, I'd much rather had programmed a simple ramp in the apex than go thru and program like 150 individual times of 3 each (30 minute changes is what I got now)