Getting back in--- deep

[BigDave]

I added some more livestock to the tank over the weekend.

I added 1 of each of the following:

* Bi-color Blennie
* Golden Headed Sleeper Goby
* Engineering Goby
* Skunk Cleaner shrimp

The Citrinis Clown Goby has been much more active since adding the other fish. He's been following the engineering goby around the tank. I don't know if he's being territorial or just curious. He came close to the other fish a couple of times, but I haven't seen him nip or anything.

The Bi-Color blennie does what they always do... he's camped out on various perches watching the other inhabitants in the tank.

The Sleeper goby immediately swam into the rockwork. He's since been busy building a tunnel from the front to the back of the largest rock. He was out sifting sand shortly after making his new home.

The skunk shrimp went into the rock work as well. I've seen him out a few times, but he's mostly staying out of view.

I've been able to find my peppermint shrimp using a flashlight during the day to peek under some of the rocks. I don't know how many are still under there from the original 3... mostly because I don't know if I keep seeing the same one, or different ones.

On a side note... Freezes are REALLY bad to water setups outside. I need to rig up some time of pump to circulate water in the storage containers when it drops to freezing. Right now I have the salt-water mixing pump running, but I don't have anything in the fresh water. It got above freezing just long enough yesterday for me to get 10 gallons of water out of it for the top-off tank.

When I opened the doors to my outside storage, I saw that the freeze caused two of the canisters on the RODI to freeze and break. I'll have to order new ones. I'll just take the canisters off and bring them inside when it looks like it's going to freeze.

 

[BigDave]

Got my 3d printer a week ago. Still troubleshooting the build and trying to get test prints completed. Once done, I'll be redoing some of my designs that are currently on the tank.

 

[BigDave]

It took all last week, but I am finally getting decent prints from the 3d printer. I was able to get the re-design of the power supply holder printed and installed on the tank. I hope to print the controller holder this evening.

 

[BigDave]

Finally finished the re-design of the Pump Controller. stl files available here:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1850704

 

[BigDave]

Finally going to go pick up some frags tomorrow!

Neon Green Birdsnest
White Favia
Red Monti Cap

The gentleman I'm picking them up from says they're all 2-3" frags.

Will take pictures once I get them home.

I'll need to trim the GSPs back as they've about filled up the one rock they're on.

I also used Kalk to get rid of a bunch of the aptasia. The lemon juice didn't seem to work, but I haven't seen them come back where I used the kalk. I did have slightly elevated pH for a few days after going hunting, which is to be understood.

I've been working most weekends, so I still haven't had a chance to dismantle the wave maker and clean it up. I hope to get that done on Saturday.

All the fish and shrimp are doing well. I think the hermit crab is starting to get too big for his shell. He keeps swapping shells with one of the empty ones... walks a few inches, and then goes back to the smaller shell. My daughter first noticed that he was doing it and she actually got to sit there and watch him go through the entire switchover.

I also caught the cleaner shrimp cleaning the Golden headed gobie's mouth and gills the other day. That was pretty cool.

 

[zachxlutz]

I also caught the cleaner shrimp cleaning the Golden headed gobie's mouth and gills the other day. That was pretty cool.

Awesome... new frag day is always a good day.

I love watching little things like seeing the cleaner shrimp do his job or seeing a hermit crab switching shells. It's the small things in the tank that really get me sometimes.

 

[BigDave]

We have Corals

We have Corals

I went and picked up my corals last night. I got one of each of the following:

• Neon Green Birdsnest
• White Favia
• Red Montipora Capricornus
• Blastomusa

So far they're looking pretty good, but it's only been the one night. I'll leave them on the bottom for a few days and then slowly move them up to their final resting places.

 

[BigDave]

Got a full day off from work, so decided to get some changes done to the tank. I started adding kalk to the top off water. I'll monitor ph and parameters this week to see how that goes.

I also put together a little chato cage for the sump. I went the home Depot clip on light route for lighting. It's a very small amount of chato, but it's all the aquarium store had. It'll grow.

My real question is... Do I run the light 24x7 or do I try to put it on a timer? If on a timer, do I make it on during the day or at night?

Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk

 

[zachxlutz]

Got a full day off from work, so decided to get some changes done to the tank. I started adding kalk to the top off water. I'll monitor ph and parameters this week to see how that goes.

I also put together a little chato cage for the sump. I went the home Depot clip on light route for lighting. It's a very small amount of chato, but it's all the aquarium store had. It'll grow.

My real question is... Do I run the light 24x7 or do I try to put it on a timer? If on a timer, do I make it on during the day or at night?

Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk

I'm running mine 24/7 at this point. I was running it opposite to main lighting schedule when I had the red macro in the fuge along with the chaeto. Now that it's just the chaeto and it seems to do fine under 24 hours of light.

 

[BigDave]

I've been spending a lot of time just enjoying the tank lately. One of the chairs in the living room sits perfect for relaxing and staring up at the tank.

I've also been working on the redesign for the aquarium controller. The one I have in place works... works really well actually, but it's not very configurable. I can tell it what I want to have start up when it powers on and I can tell it what time to turn the lights on and off, but I can't really add new outputs or functionality to it very easy. It would require taking the entire controller off of the tank in order to make any changes.

The new controller is going to be modular. I got the idea from another reefer here on the forum. I'm using a DIN rail mount. Each box has 1 specific function, and then all of the boxes will link up to one master controller. Each module will run independent of the master with the exception of the Light controller. It will rely on the master to tell it when to turn the lights on/off. The only reason I'm doing the lights this way is it keeps me from having to program a RTC for the arduino. Plus having lights not go on/off isn't as big of a deal as say... the temperature going haywire or top-off not working.

I start with the temperature controller. So far I have the code working and I'm almost finished with the 3d printed enclosure for it.

I also made things a lot easier by removing the touch screen from the master controller. I'll make it web based and just use my cell phone if I need to turn something on/off. Worse case, I can always reach under the stand and just hit the switch to kill the entire power strip. I find that 9 times out of 10, I typically just unplug whatever it is I'm working on instead of using the touchscreen to turn it off anyways.

The master will have a 20x4 LCD for at least showing the last time values were updated and the current tank temp and pH.

Here's a picture of the temperature module. Most of the modules will look identical to this, two inputs, two outputs. (top-off, temperature controller, pump controller, 'generic' controller). There will be two other modules that will just have either 1 input or 1 output. I may go ahead and design one last module with 4 outputs for a DIY doser using the BRS dosing heads. I'd have to order more of the Arduino Beetles

 

[BigDave]

Looks like my tank is going through a little diatom bloom. Finding dusting on the glass and a little on the rocks. Will do a water change this weekend and just wait it out.

 

[BigDave]

Wow. not sure if my eyes are deceiving me or if the chaeto in the sump is helping already, but it looks like the diatom bloom might be over already.

I actually first noticed the diatoms on the rock sometime last week. I've had the refugium running for almost a week now. The Chaeto chunk is larger, but I can't really tell by how much.

 

[VGT]

It took all last week, but I am finally getting decent prints from the 3d printer. I was able to get the re-design of the power supply holder printed and installed on the tank. I hope to print the controller holder this evening.

Cool to see another 3D Printer here. I got mine last week and have been printing stuff for mine. I have a thread in this section too "VGTs 105 Build". I like your Power Brick holder - mine's a different style, but the light bricks get a bit too warm for my taste - yours looks like a nice design.

 

[BigDave]

Looks like you have a nice build coming along.

I put a sheet of 3/4" plywood under my tank. This gives me plenty of room to screw stuff directly to the bottom of the tank.

The 3d printers are a lot of fun.

 

[BigDave]

Just another maintenance Day.

finally got the montipora cap glued down Friday night. Accidentally touched it and you can tell it wasn't happy about that. There's a small white spot where my thumb pressed down The rest of the corals are still looking pretty good.

I've stopped leaving the night-light on. I think it's too bright and keeping the corals from fully doing their 'night' thing. I haven't noticed the Favia sending out it's tenticals like it was when it was totally dark in the tank.

Did a 10% water change. Finally looked at the bucket and discovered the dirty water bucket I use is 6.5 gallons (and I don't fill it all the way up). So two trips should get the job done. The last two water changes I did, I only did one bucket.

Ran some tests on the tank water right after the water change.
<<<<
Manually Measured Data:
date = 2017-02-12 16:59:57
temperature = 79.5
ph = 8.07
salinity = 32
ammonia = 0.15
nitrite = 0
nitrate = 0
calcium = 450
alkalinity = 7
magnesium = 1260
>>>>

My Salinity is just a touch low, but my water-change water is high, so it's only a matter of time before it finally gets to where it needs to be. I think my Alk, Ca, and Mg might be on the low side. I can probably bump up the amount of Kalk I'm putting in my top-off water.

 

[BigDave]

More 3d Printed Stuff.

The Blue LED light that I bought was way to bright to be used as a Moon light. I printed some clips to cover most of the LEDs on the fixture.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2105818

 

[BigDave]

I've been adding Kalk to my top-off without fully understanding how it works.

I did a bunch of reading yesterday. One thing I read and thought was interesting is that the pH of Kalkwasser is 12.0 at saturation. For the fun of it, I took one of my 2 pH probes and stuck it in the top-off bucket. Sure enough, it shot up to 12 right after I stirred the mixture.

I'm still not sure if or how this will help much. For now I'm just monitoring it, but I may be able to use the pH of the top-off to somehow tell me when I need to stir the mixture or even add more Kalk to the bucket.

My coworker thinks I could use this to automate a pump to mix it for me.

 

[scubadan206]

I have a 20 gallon top off tank. I put 6-8 heaping teaspoons of kalk in the water and I have a small pump that turns on for 3 minutes every three hours. The kalk will develop a film on the water surface that will protect it from CO2 getting to it and lowering the PH. The pump is not strong enough to break the film on the surface, so the PH stays up. My tunze ATO does get clogged periodically and has to be shaken out a bit to keep the water flowing.
If you want to put in a PH probe, it will be more like an experiment to see how well you can protect the water from CO2 contamination.

Daniel.

 

[BigDave]

Cool. That's pretty much what I'm doing. I have two probes on the system already one was going to be for a CA reactor that I ended up not getting. Might as well play with it.

 

[scubadan206]

Keep an eye on PH. Kalkwasser doesn't add much calcium or alkalinity, but depending on the system volume and evaporation you could spike the PH.