swapped out the iwasaki15ks for a new set of reeflux12Ks, even though they were only 3-4 months old. i think the iwasakis were too intense for my corals in their weakened state from the move and stuff, and i knew i was going to get the reeflux 12s for my next bulb anyway. now that i have good sets of blues and whites, i can swap them back and forth to experiment once things settle down. see if corals prefer megapar or mellow blue.
also got a new return pump, the eheim 1260 was too loud for me. not loud-loud but a low-pitched hum that seemed to resonate just right to be annoying. probably could have fixed it with better padding under it but didn't want to bother since i saw it as temporary anyway. went with a velocity T2, which is known to be silent, but heats the water more than other external pumps. i've been riding the edge of a heat problem so i was a bit worried about that, but i was betting that a hot external might still beat a cool submersible. temps seem to be pretty much the same, maybe 1/2 a degree higher. but it's well worth it for the step towards silence, and it's also *alot* more flow than the eheim put out so it's not an apples<->apples comparison. gallon-for-gallon it runs much cooler than the eheim. the new pump also makes so much more flow in the tank that i *really* want to get a wavey-sea (kinda like a sea-swirl) to swing it back and forth. but any more action on the credit cards and they'll melt. the vortechs are neat and can make lots of flow, but with only 3' i can't turn them up enough to fill the whole tank with flow without stirring up sand directly across from it.
i also recently got a new pump for my calcium reactor. it was using a cute little eheim 1048 that many calcium reactors use, but i feel it was too weak. plus any grit that formed from breaking down media too fast (ph getting too low) wore the impeller hub too much. with the panworld 30 i got, it has *plenty* of power and the shaft/hub are ceramic so it shouldn't wear as easily. the scary part of this swap was i wanted to bump up the plumbing from 1/2" to 3/4", which meant drilling out the hole in the pretty lid. i also drilled another hole in the lid for a pH probe. i also ordered a flow gauge for the effluent, but it's not here yet.
skimmer is still giving me fits. the pump that hummed weird seems to have settled down, though it still goes back to humming at around the same time every night for an hour or two then back to quiet. the other pump however has started chattering again. it had done that just a few times before when it was brand new, but just tapping the airline for a second would make it stop and i figured it would go away completely as it broke in (which it had seemed to until recently). i think it's not sucking enough air. when i blow into it, it stops making noise. i've never been able to run the airvalve on this pump because any restriction would make it chatter like this. i've gone through all the obvious cleanings but still chatter. so i'm only running one pump right now, which should be more than enough but the neck is sized for twice the air i'm pushing though it, so it's not doing anything at all other than blow-off the co2 from the calcium reactor. once i get the pumps working right i'm probably going to try to sell it so i can drop down to something smaller.
i put some rowaphos in and dropped my po4 from .07 to .01 in just a few hours. a little faster than i would have guessed or even wanted. though i do think the people who make it say to not let the po4 drop so fast say that as a boast ("our product works *too* well") and also an excuse to distract you from the real issue of dropping alk too fast, since it does that too at first. i was dripping reef builder anyway at the time, so no alk drop and corals all look fine. better than fine actually, they are getting exponentially healthier and happier every day. it's back.
tried to take some pics but they all came out way weird blue from the new reeflux 12Ks. i'll have to fiddle with stuff to get good pics. i generally don't believe in using white balance on blue bulbs (2 reasons- 1:why would i want to tell the camera something should be interpreted as white when it looks blue to my eyes? and 2:white balance on a blue bulb makes fluorescence look like real color so people use it to cheat), but the reeflux bulbs come out several times bluer on my camera than they look in real life. so i think i'll have to compromise and do something.
Somehow it reads better when it comes from people I trust :thumbsup:
