JBNY's 270 Ver2.0
- Thread starter JB NY
- Start date
JB NY
Active member
Tanks Kevin!
Daily: Dosing, Triton Base Elementz, KNO3, Zn, Mn, I (all on automatic dosers), top off water via ATO.
Weekly: Blow off the rocks, Clean the Skimmer cup. Test Alk, and NO3
2 Weeks: Clean ARID reactor. Add Special Blend. Add Strontium. Change Carbon (every 2-4 weeks, 1/2 cup per 100 gallons)
90 days: calibrate pH probe. Siphon detritus from sump and frag tank.
6 Months: Change out DI resin
10 Months: change T5 bulbs.
11 Months: change MH Bulbs.
12 months: change RODI sediment and carbon filters.
Usernam Invalid
New member
Nice video joe what anthias are in there now they look great
JB NY
Active member
Me too, it's always great when you don't know how it will look when it grows out!
Thanks! I have 6 lyre tails and 13 Tukas now.
JB NY
Active member
Thanks, I think there are around 55 fish in there now!
Two kinds of Anthias in there Lyre Tails and Tukas.
JB NY
Active member
I am feeding them mysis and cyclopeeze (cyclopeez knock off, but same stuff). 3x a day the whole tank is getting fed right now. Total of 13 cubes of mysis and 3 cubes of cyclopeeze. As soon as I feel all the anthias are eating mysis I'll cut back on the feeding. Almost three weeks of the tukas and they are all eating something. So far so good!
bdsage
New member
icecap doser
icecap doser
Nice score on the frags. How do you like the icecap doser?
icecap doser
A new piece of equipment I am trying out, the icecap doser for my KNO3. So far so good, setup and calibration was very easy. Right now I think I am dosing about .4ppm a day.
Also I had a quick impromptu get together with some reefing buddies two weeks ago and Sanjay dumped a big box of frags on me, and Laura from ReefGen gave me a bunch of corals as well. Ended up with about 25 frags, so score for me!
Me being like "All these frags are for me!" Sanjay being all sad that his frags are leaving him.
Sanjay explaining what he thinks is in each bag. I was only able to remember like two of them.
Bad cell pic of all the frags when I put them in the frag tank. I'll get some better pics of them soon, I'll be moving them up to the DT soon.
Nice score on the frags. How do you like the icecap doser?
JB NY
Active member
Mindy, I got a pickachu from March.. No telling it's got any lineage but just so you know..
Maybe it came from Thang.....
That Pikachu coral is really something in person too.
Thanks! I like the icecap doser a lot. I just bought another one today! At first I wasn't too happy with having it not controlled by the apex. But I am only using it for one shot dosing, and now that I have had it a while, realize there is no real point having something like that on the Apex.
JB NY
Active member
Few changes in the system. I changed out my skimmer back in June. I put in a Ultra Reef Akula UKS-200. I had had my Beckett Skimmer online for over 10 years. After I swapped out my main pump with a DC pump, I decided to look into getting a new skimmer based on a DC pump, so I did not need to have a large pressure rated pump to run my skimmer.
I looked at a number of skimmers. The main points I was trying to hit were, small foot print, quiet, efficient, powerful and easy to maintain. After speaking and IM'ing a bunch of friends I narrowed it down to the Vertex Alpha 250, Reef Octopus Regal-250INT, and the Ultra Reef Akula UKS-200. In the end, I liked the Akula for it's size, the pumps they were using and their craftsmanship. My biggest concern was that is might not be strong enough. Not very many people are running this skimmer in the US at all, so I was relying on people I trust to give me an honest option whether the skimmer would perform the way I wanted it to.
So I bought the skimmer and put in on my tank. Here is is next to the Beckett I had been suing. At this point I am a little apprehensive that it will under perform, it is so much smaller than my old skimmer.
Aftre the old skimmer was out, I put the Akula in the sump and turned it on, very quiet! Adjusted the height of the foam in just a few minutes and I was up and running. The skimmer was very easy to setup, I think a total of 15 minutes to put it in the sump and adjust it.
Here it is being first fired up with the skimmer cup on. I had adjusted the foam to be right about at the top of the base, bottom of the cup. Turned out for me to be right on target for how I like to skim.
Foam started to produce pretty quickly, this is what it looks like after about 24 hours.
This is a typical weeks worth of skim mate
This is the type of foam I go for on my skimmers.
So my test for how this skimmer performs in my tank is really to see if it helps to reduce dissolved organics which show up in my tank and nitrates. This test on my tank was pretty easy, test my nitrates and then stop dosing KNO3 and see what happens. Leaving the skimmer off I was able to see N rise slowly from 2.5ppm to 5ppm in about 3-4 days. Turning the skimmer on, I pulled nitrates down from 5ppm to about 1ppm (just barely pink on the Salifert test) in about 5 days. That was about what I was able to get with my old skimmer, so a success IMO. I also tested the wattage pull from the wall, the Akula used about 54 watts, really nice!
I have been running the skimmer about two months. In all honesty I wanted to run the skimmer for a while so I could really get a feel for how it works before writing about it. Rather than the typical new equipment post when the person has had it for 24 hours and writes about how good or bad it is. I really wanted to get a feel for how it performs over time. In the 2 months that I have had this skimmer it has really worked great. Consistent foam, even when using epoxy to glue down frags I never had the skimmer over flow. Not saying it won't but it does not seem to be overly sensitive.
It is very easy to clean. I have been cleaning out the skimmer cup once a week. I would say that it typically takes me less than 5 minutes to remove, clean, and reattached the cup and bring the skimmer back on line. Compared to everything I had to do with my old skimmer this is much quicker. The base chamber doesn't need to be cleaned every week, in fact it is almost as clean as it was when I first started the skimmer up two months ago. But I did wipe it out with a sponge last month to see if the skimmer would take a while to build up a slime coat before it skimmed, but it did not, and started skimming normally right away when the power was turned back on.
Adjusting the height of the foam is quite simple, there is a knob that you adjust to open (lower) or close (raise) the height of the foam in the skimmer. This is the only thing I thought could be better labeled, Initially I was turning the knob the wrong direction, I ended up putting a sticker with arrows pointing in the direction to open and close the valve.
You can also adjust the air intake. They give direction on how to set it up initially, and I did play with the intake screw but found that the skimmer seemed to perform best at their recommend setting.
That is about it. As I wrote there seems to be next to nothing on this skimmer so I wanted to try and give you a good run down on it's performance in my system. I bought the skimmer from Unique Corals who I believe is the only one importing these skimmer right now.
I looked at a number of skimmers. The main points I was trying to hit were, small foot print, quiet, efficient, powerful and easy to maintain. After speaking and IM'ing a bunch of friends I narrowed it down to the Vertex Alpha 250, Reef Octopus Regal-250INT, and the Ultra Reef Akula UKS-200. In the end, I liked the Akula for it's size, the pumps they were using and their craftsmanship. My biggest concern was that is might not be strong enough. Not very many people are running this skimmer in the US at all, so I was relying on people I trust to give me an honest option whether the skimmer would perform the way I wanted it to.
So I bought the skimmer and put in on my tank. Here is is next to the Beckett I had been suing. At this point I am a little apprehensive that it will under perform, it is so much smaller than my old skimmer.
Aftre the old skimmer was out, I put the Akula in the sump and turned it on, very quiet! Adjusted the height of the foam in just a few minutes and I was up and running. The skimmer was very easy to setup, I think a total of 15 minutes to put it in the sump and adjust it.
Here it is being first fired up with the skimmer cup on. I had adjusted the foam to be right about at the top of the base, bottom of the cup. Turned out for me to be right on target for how I like to skim.
Foam started to produce pretty quickly, this is what it looks like after about 24 hours.
This is a typical weeks worth of skim mate
This is the type of foam I go for on my skimmers.
So my test for how this skimmer performs in my tank is really to see if it helps to reduce dissolved organics which show up in my tank and nitrates. This test on my tank was pretty easy, test my nitrates and then stop dosing KNO3 and see what happens. Leaving the skimmer off I was able to see N rise slowly from 2.5ppm to 5ppm in about 3-4 days. Turning the skimmer on, I pulled nitrates down from 5ppm to about 1ppm (just barely pink on the Salifert test) in about 5 days. That was about what I was able to get with my old skimmer, so a success IMO. I also tested the wattage pull from the wall, the Akula used about 54 watts, really nice!
I have been running the skimmer about two months. In all honesty I wanted to run the skimmer for a while so I could really get a feel for how it works before writing about it. Rather than the typical new equipment post when the person has had it for 24 hours and writes about how good or bad it is. I really wanted to get a feel for how it performs over time. In the 2 months that I have had this skimmer it has really worked great. Consistent foam, even when using epoxy to glue down frags I never had the skimmer over flow. Not saying it won't but it does not seem to be overly sensitive.
It is very easy to clean. I have been cleaning out the skimmer cup once a week. I would say that it typically takes me less than 5 minutes to remove, clean, and reattached the cup and bring the skimmer back on line. Compared to everything I had to do with my old skimmer this is much quicker. The base chamber doesn't need to be cleaned every week, in fact it is almost as clean as it was when I first started the skimmer up two months ago. But I did wipe it out with a sponge last month to see if the skimmer would take a while to build up a slime coat before it skimmed, but it did not, and started skimming normally right away when the power was turned back on.
Adjusting the height of the foam is quite simple, there is a knob that you adjust to open (lower) or close (raise) the height of the foam in the skimmer. This is the only thing I thought could be better labeled, Initially I was turning the knob the wrong direction, I ended up putting a sticker with arrows pointing in the direction to open and close the valve.
You can also adjust the air intake. They give direction on how to set it up initially, and I did play with the intake screw but found that the skimmer seemed to perform best at their recommend setting.
That is about it. As I wrote there seems to be next to nothing on this skimmer so I wanted to try and give you a good run down on it's performance in my system. I bought the skimmer from Unique Corals who I believe is the only one importing these skimmer right now.
JB NY
Active member
A few picture from today. I think that some of the Mn Zn and I dosing I am doing is really bringing out some great colors.
This is the Fox Flame the yellow tips have really exploded with color.
This is a rainbow coral that is really got some crazy color too!
Even the blues are doing well, just wish it would grow faster!
This is the Fox Flame the yellow tips have really exploded with color.
This is a rainbow coral that is really got some crazy color too!
Even the blues are doing well, just wish it would grow faster!
