DivingTheWorld's Custom Leemar 80g Rimless Reef

Yeah I'm really not a fan of the eshopps frag racks. They have tiny holes and I had a hard time with typical plugs in them,ended up drilling them out with a unibit and using stronger magnets on the one I had years ago.. It has since been donated to others =)..

I second that the pic looks like it's rusting already.. Not good if it is..
 
Dapg8gt said:
Yeah I'm really not a fan of the eshopps frag racks. They have tiny holes and I had a hard time with typical plugs in them,ended up drilling them out with a unibit and using stronger magnets on the one I had years ago.. It has since been donated to others =)..

I second that the pic looks like it's rusting already.. Not good if it is..
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Yeah, it was like that out of the box... What do you guys recommend for frag racks? I'm not looking to hold more than 10-15 frags max. I don't plan on becoming a seller, just a trader from time to time.
 
Alternative reef has some really nice stuff. He just made a bunch. Go to reef (2) reef . Com and look under Gooch

Just dont buy the ones I am eyeing ;)

Bryan
 
I really appreciate the suggestions guys! That Frag-a-rack looks good. I think it's a little bigger and blacker than I'm looking for though. I found a custom builder who makes some nice ones. I can specify things like extra strong magnets and sealed magnets both inside and outside. I'd like to be able to install it on my overflow if I feel like it. I'll post an update when I decide on a rack.

This weekend I decided to tackle two things I've been too lazy to do yet, dosing and labeling.

My wife may need to do something with the tank since she often works from home. Also, my father or a neighbor will watch our house from time to time when we're away, so labeling is critical. I don't want to be on the phone with someone saying, unplug that big thinger that looks clear and black on the right side, lol. So I labeled a bunch of things. These labelers are a little addicting for anal folks like myself...

Next I started tackling the dosing. I got my dosing containers installed and hooked up all the tubing. Went with red, white and blue because hey, I'm a red blooded American! Everything's now zip tied and magnetized. Now I just need to do a little manual dosing to get all my parameters in line, then I'll calibrate the dosers and program them in Apex.

Pics or it didn't happen...

jEZ1MHR.jpg


DHtFV0u.jpg
 
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Well, I had some coral acquisitions this weekend and finally have a decent amount of corals in the tank. I picked up a few new Zoas:

Red Hornets
ATL Tequila Sunrise (Pali?)
Tubbs Blue
Keds Reds (Pali?)
Eagle Eyes

Not sure if a couple of those are Palis or not. Let me know if they are and I might be interested in a trade!

Ok, now for the really good stuff (SPS):

Rose Millipora
Bali Tricolor Acropora
Cali Tort
GARF Bonsai
Jedi Mind Trick Undata
Limelight Acropora
Oregon Tort
Red Dragon Acropora
Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort

All are in the tank and looking good currently. I made an adjustment to my lighting, going totally dark from about 10pm to 5am. With my dosing I have my Cal & Alk fairly solid, but I'm not totally sure what it means for them to be balanced. I assume it's ok for them to go up and down a little each day, but how much of a swing should there be? Here's some examples of my testing:

01/17

Cal 444
Alk 9.744

01/18

Cal 421
Alk 9.52

01/19

Cal 446
Alk 9.576

This is with dosing 15mL/day each for 89g system volume and using Hanna to test both. Is this a normal swing or is my tank still leveling out? I'm assuming I'm going to see a little swinging with all these new SPS.
 
That swing is perfectly acceptable. In fact, it looks great. Since you added a few new frags, you might see the alk go down a bit, but I would leave your dosing where it's at for now. Since they are frags, they probably won't take up too much CA and ALK for awhile. I would keep testing every few days and adjust accordingly.
 
Maximus said:
That swing is perfectly acceptable. In fact, it looks great. Since you added a few new frags, you might see the alk go down a bit, but I would leave your dosing where it's at for now. Since they are frags, they probably won't take up too much CA and ALK for awhile. I would keep testing every few days and adjust accordingly.
Click to expand...

Awesome, thanks for the confirmation!
 
Thought I'd give a quick update. I am not avoiding the pics request, I swear! I've been suffering a bit of a Cyno outbreak and decided to try the "lights out for 3 days" fix. It ends this evening, but honestly it doesn't appear to have made a difference. In fact it seems to be spreading even more with the lights out...

Anyways, I'm still checking Cal and Alk each day and making slight adjustments to my dosers to try to balance them out. From everything I've read, it seems that Cal and Alk should be consumed at he same rate. However it seems that in my tank the Cal is consumed at a greater rate than the Alk. I was dosing 15mL/day Cal and 14mL/day Alk and I just switched it to 13mL/day. The Alk keeps creeping up. I calibrated the dosers before first use, but perhaps I need to calibrate again...something seems off.
 
DivingTheWorld said:
Thought I'd give a quick update. I am not avoiding the pics request, I swear! I've been suffering a bit of a Cyno outbreak and decided to try the "lights out for 3 days" fix. It ends this evening, but honestly it doesn't appear to have made a difference. In fact it seems to be spreading even more with the lights out...

Anyways, I'm still checking Cal and Alk each day and making slight adjustments to my dosers to try to balance them out. From everything I've read, it seems that Cal and Alk should be consumed at he same rate. However it seems that in my tank the Cal is consumed at a greater rate than the Alk. I was dosing 15mL/day Cal and 14mL/day Alk and I just switched it to 13mL/day. The Alk keeps creeping up. I calibrated the dosers before first use, but perhaps I need to calibrate again...something seems off.
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Don't worry to much about having them exact some tanks consume more of one than other so it's pretty normal. But alk depletes faster than cal also so you should be able to drop the cal down to the same effluent rate as the alk and it should stay stable. Does your calcium drop a lot if you lower them equally?

Here's a good article if you haven't already seen it.. But from your history of research I'd guess you've already read it =)..

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-12/rhf/
 
So here's a quick picture update of the tank. As you can see, I'm having a bit of a cyno attack. I've made some adjustments to my lighting schedule so we'll see if that helps.

I've also installed two new MP-40's. I need to figure out a good program, right now I just have them on alternating pulse at 20%. It's excellent flow in the tank, but I may up it a little more. The nice thing is that at 20%, they're near silent. I should also comment that hooking my Radions up to my Apex was a pain, but hooking up the MP-40s was ridiculously easy. I swear it took about 2 minutes and the programming is super easy to use in Fusion.

I also just received a new frag holder. I had it custom made with smoke gray acrylic with super strong sealed outside magnets. This was so that I could mount it directly to my overflow, leaving the sides of my tank unobstructed. I really like it. It's far stronger than the lame eshopps one and has tons of flow through it and around the plugs.

So here's some pics. I caution that I suck at tank pictures and the cyno is not as bad as it looks in the pictures. I swear! lol

4F7mVTv.jpg


oDHug0f.jpg


sFrnCtG.jpg


Most of my frags are doing well. It's going to be a while before I have a nice grown out coral tank, but so far so good. I've tried Milli's twice now and both times they RTN'd to death. I can't figure out what my problem is with them... Zoas do fantastic in my tank, although I was really only planning to have them be added color. I'd like it to be primarily an SPS tank. I think one problem was my flow, but I finally solved that with the MP-40's.
 
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Here's my current Radion Graph for anyone interested. I am no expert by any means and hope to figure out a good Graph that I'll stick with at some point.

A9KAwi3.png
 
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A couple of updates:

Yesterday I added a Black Cap Gramma or Black Cap Basslet depending on what you want to call them. Super cool looking fish and my LFS made me a deal I couldn't refuse. From what I've read here and the details on LiveAquaria, it seems that it won't be a problem fish. I wanted a Purple Dottyback, but I know from personal experience that they can become aggressive. So we'll see how this little guy meshes with the rest of the crew.

I also decided to make another attempt at calibrating my Apex Salinity Probe last night. I tried on three different occasions, the last when the tank was about 2 months old and I've never been able to calibrate it. Last night I went ahead and tried again and wham, it calibrated perfectly. I verified it against my Tropic Marin Precision Hydrometer and it's dead on. So the best I can figure is that the salinity probe needs to seasoned in the sump for MONTHS (4 for me) before it will read properly. But frankly I'm just happy it's working. I forked out a couple hundred for the module, probe, temp probe, calibration solutions, etc. For it not to work was a huge bummer.
 
DivingTheWorld said:
I also decided to make another attempt at calibrating my Apex Salinity Probe last night. I tried on three different occasions, the last when the tank was about 2 months old and I've never been able to calibrate it. Last night I went ahead and tried again and wham, it calibrated perfectly. I verified it against my Tropic Marin Precision Hydrometer and it's dead on. So the best I can figure is that the salinity probe needs to seasoned in the sump for MONTHS (4 for me) before it will read properly. But frankly I'm just happy it's working. I forked out a couple hundred for the module, probe, temp probe, calibration solutions, etc. For it not to work was a huge bummer.
Click to expand...

The issue in the past is that the salinity probes need constant calibration, so much so that they become useless because the numbers they generate can never be deemed accurate. Hopefully Neptune has worked out the kinks. I'll be following your thread closely to see how it works for you. I've always wanted to add a salinity probe to my saltwater mixing station so that I can someday have automatic water changes.
 
SWBeginer said:
Orchid Dottyback is not aggressive. I have one in my tank and don't see any issue with other tankmates.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-12/fish/index.php
Click to expand...

I had one in my last tank (29g) who harassed to death several new tank mates. Just too risky for me to add based on my previous experience. Described behavior is similar to the Black Cap, so we'll see how that works out...

The tank's getting tight with fish. The only others I may add is a couple more female Bartletts to increase my harem.
 
Dapg8gt said:
Nice idea with the wood pieces as a guide.. I think I shall steal that one =)..

Tanks looking good and I really doubt your going to regret selling the photon I have a friend who has 2 of them over a 120 and he is also thinking of swapping them out. As he puts it "they work but I know there's better and won't look like a rave in the tank".. What did you get?
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If you guys need to increase a hole size in acrylic the safest way I have found is to dril the correct size in a piece of wood, line it up over the acrylic hole you want to enlarge and then use a router with a nice flush trim bit and you get a perfectly cut hole. I know this post was a while back but just wanted to let you know of an easier and safer way.
 
I'm now dealing with some cyano in my tank with a Gen3 radion also, I turned down the greens and reds and it has helped considerably. It's on the same system as a t5 tank that has zero algae issues. Maybe this could be it
 
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