Lyle's 150H in-wall build (with pics)
- Thread starter jlylec
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jlylec
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it's the strangest thing what's happening with my pH. turns out my ATO float switch got stuck on and ended up dumping too much fresh water with kalk in it which sent my pH up to like 8.7 yesterday evening. i did a couple big water changes and it was 8.5 when i went to bed. this morning it was 8.19. i'm not sure how it can change so much, so fast? i recalibrated my probe and it seems to be almost right on. so i guess it DID drop to like 7.9 for some unknown reason.
i have an exhaust fan running constantly so i don't think CO2 was the issue but i really don't know. i'm stumped on this one! i was really hoping it was a bad probe because that's a lot easier explanation! fortunately all my fish and corals haven't appeared affected at all so i guess i'm OK. i'll be monitoring it all very closely over the next couple days.
i also am going to upgrade my ATO to this (http://www.avastmarine.com/ssc/do/product/rigging/Top-off-Kit).
it's sweet because it uses a pressure switch instead of a float and i can hook it directly to the apex. i'll let you all know how it works, but i got a good recommendation from a buddy i've gotten most of my corals from and he certainly knows what he's doing!
jlylec
New member
New fish came today! They all look great and it was almost a perfect order, but one of my Bartlett's Anthias' got stuck in a crease in the bag and suffocated during shipment. Sucks. I'm sure it would have otherwise been fine as they all look really good. Small but good!
Little bonus pic...last night I caught the exact moment this porcelein crab molted and threw his molt over the edge! I wish I had caught this on video and he wasn't in such a dark spot.
This little one LOVES the fish!
Little bonus pic...last night I caught the exact moment this porcelein crab molted and threw his molt over the edge! I wish I had caught this on video and he wasn't in such a dark spot.
This little one LOVES the fish!
jlylec
New member
LE? she is awesome and it's great that she loves the tank! my 5yo loves it too but she gets instantly attached to the fish and names them so she's already learned the cold hard truth about life and death!
jlylec
New member
LiveAquaria replaced the Anthias that didn't make the first trip yesterday. He doesn't really match the other two I got. Honestly doesn't even look like a Bartlett's but I'm hoping it's just because he's bigger than the others. Beautiful fish though. He looks a little weird today almost like he's molting a little or something. Swimming and eating fine so hopefully it's nothing. Since I have no idea what that could be so I went ahead and started my Cupramine treatment this evening. I read that sand in a QT can absorb copper and make it hard to keep your copper level up during treatment. That must have been my problem the first time around. This time I'm going to not be as scared to keep the level up. I hope all the ich died on the first fish since I doubt I had the level high enough for long enough. That would really suck if after all this I get ich in the DT again!
New anthias is the more colorful one on top.
New anthias is the more colorful one on top.
jlylec
New member
I am sorry to say but that is not a Bartlett.
What you got there is a Dispar.
oh great...so much for my trio of bartlett's! will they get along you think?
jlylec
New member
You have a very beautiful tank
Just fyi, your crab is Sally Lightfoot. They can possibly be aggressive when larger.
thanks so much! i'm strategically mounting things with room for grow in and only putting the high light stuff on the top. I know what you mean though. The towers certainly limit your coral placement, but I love the openness and swim room for the fish!
Thanks for the crab info too...I always get them confused because I bought two porcelains and two sally lightfoots at the same time. they are already pretty agressive actually. when i feed the lightfoot's go nuts and even attack my serpent star to steal pieces of food out of his mouth! it's amazing how fast they can move when they want to. Do you think they'll attack my baby anthias'? They're really fast fish so I'd hope they're OK, but who knows. first sign of criminal activity and they'll instantly be moved to the sump or coral QT.
jlylec
New member
been a month or so since an update. I need to take some new pics and share, but I've finally got my QT fish in the DT and they're doing great. Corals are still growing really well, but I've noticed my kalk is having a hard time keeping my pH up these days. I was always around 8.2 and now I'm hovering around 7.9-8.0. I finally got around to buying a Calcium test kit and my Ca is around 360. Low. I guess my corals may have gotten to the point where they're using up too much calcium? I stopped my daily auto water changes and I'm sure that's not helping keep my Ca levels up since I've probably only changed 10gal in the last month. I took the WC system off line a couple months ago for a week or so because I was changing my ATO system to Avast (huge improvement BTW) and I didn't notice any difference so I thought I'd see how things went saving a bunch of loot on salt. Clearly the long term affects aren't good. Now I have to decide if the money and time cost is less in daily auto water changes or installing a Ca reactor. Any thoughts on that?
I have space in my QT again for another fish. I'm going to try my hand ONE MORE TIME at another tang. This time I'm thinking hyposalinity instead of Cupramine for preventative ich treatment. Honestly the hypo sounds like a bigger pain and riskier than the cupramine, but from what I've read it's easier on the fish. I'm not going to do anything until after vacations this summer since I don't want house sitters to have to deal with the 2 tanks.
I'll try to post some update pics tomorrow or so. Hope everybody out there is doing well.
I have space in my QT again for another fish. I'm going to try my hand ONE MORE TIME at another tang. This time I'm thinking hyposalinity instead of Cupramine for preventative ich treatment. Honestly the hypo sounds like a bigger pain and riskier than the cupramine, but from what I've read it's easier on the fish. I'm not going to do anything until after vacations this summer since I don't want house sitters to have to deal with the 2 tanks.
I'll try to post some update pics tomorrow or so. Hope everybody out there is doing well.
jlylec
New member
Been a while since I've been on here. I've had a crazy summer!
The tank is doing really well. She's been running on auto-pilot most of the summer. I've done nothing but change about 20-30gal per month. The pump for my dual reactor went a while ago and I was real slow to fix it because I had buried the plug trying to make everything look good! I finally got around to swapping that pump out yesterday because I've started seeing more and more hairy algae growing. I really need a fish that will graze on algae! I'm going to run it for a week or so with the GFO and carbon, but I may switch to both being GFO in a couple weeks and run it that way for a couple weeks to knock down the phosphates. Everything else seems really solid and (like many will say) leaving it be has probably been the best thing for it.
I had a scare a couple weeks ago when my pH started inching up and got as high as 8.9 or something. Turns out I just needed to recalibrate my pH probe. I should probably go ahead and get a new one though at this point. I've gotten 18mos out of it.
I've only lost one fish (my gold head goby) and I was surprised he lasted as long as he did. He never looked the same after coming out of QT after my last ich scare. All the other fish are looking great and growing nicely. I just started refilling my fish QT and plan on trying my hand on some tangs again soon.
My corals still look nice, but a few of them have stalled a bit. The acro and milli and monticaps are all growing nicely. My zoas and aussie war coral look good but don't seem to be growing. I'm not sure if it's a light issue or an elements issue. I may need to try some additives or something. I probably over-feed the fish too. Not sure if that's bad for the coral? The monti I got from Hunter (cvilleH20) as a little piece is growing out of control. Almost TOO much actually. It's broken under it's own weight like 3 times now and I just keep stacking it up! It's funny how you can get parameters PERFECT for one thing and just barely keep other things alive.
I plan on doing a bunch of work over the winter on the tank...hopefully without causing any issues. I'd like to just clean everything up a bit. Salt creep, etc. I may also get another AI Sol. I have 3 now, but as my coral is growing it's really shading the bottom of the tank. Another one would let me move them a bit and take advantage of the open holes I have.
The tank is doing really well. She's been running on auto-pilot most of the summer. I've done nothing but change about 20-30gal per month. The pump for my dual reactor went a while ago and I was real slow to fix it because I had buried the plug trying to make everything look good! I finally got around to swapping that pump out yesterday because I've started seeing more and more hairy algae growing. I really need a fish that will graze on algae! I'm going to run it for a week or so with the GFO and carbon, but I may switch to both being GFO in a couple weeks and run it that way for a couple weeks to knock down the phosphates. Everything else seems really solid and (like many will say) leaving it be has probably been the best thing for it.
I had a scare a couple weeks ago when my pH started inching up and got as high as 8.9 or something. Turns out I just needed to recalibrate my pH probe. I should probably go ahead and get a new one though at this point. I've gotten 18mos out of it.
I've only lost one fish (my gold head goby) and I was surprised he lasted as long as he did. He never looked the same after coming out of QT after my last ich scare. All the other fish are looking great and growing nicely. I just started refilling my fish QT and plan on trying my hand on some tangs again soon.
My corals still look nice, but a few of them have stalled a bit. The acro and milli and monticaps are all growing nicely. My zoas and aussie war coral look good but don't seem to be growing. I'm not sure if it's a light issue or an elements issue. I may need to try some additives or something. I probably over-feed the fish too. Not sure if that's bad for the coral? The monti I got from Hunter (cvilleH20) as a little piece is growing out of control. Almost TOO much actually. It's broken under it's own weight like 3 times now and I just keep stacking it up! It's funny how you can get parameters PERFECT for one thing and just barely keep other things alive.
I plan on doing a bunch of work over the winter on the tank...hopefully without causing any issues. I'd like to just clean everything up a bit. Salt creep, etc. I may also get another AI Sol. I have 3 now, but as my coral is growing it's really shading the bottom of the tank. Another one would let me move them a bit and take advantage of the open holes I have.
WaterHazard
New member
Just checking in. Love this build, have been watching from the start. Hope all is well.
jlylec
New member
Thanks man...things are going well. I have some algae issues right now most likely due to high phosphates cause I had an auto-feeder going nuts and it took me a couple weeks to realize! And it also seems like my hermits have been eating the snails so I have a very small CUC right now. I just bought a bunch more but they're in QT for 6-8 weeks to kill off any potential ich.
No ich issues since I QT'd all the fish and ran the tank fallow for a couple months. NOTHING is going in my tank now without at least 6 weeks QT. It's kind-of a pain because I have to have this whole QT set-up in addition to the DT so it's been a bunch of work, but worth it if I never get ich again!
Tonight I'm having issues with my Apex connecting to the network. Everything in the house is working so I think it's the Apex. I hope it's not that it needs an update or something. I haven't done any updates to it in over a year. It's a pain cause I have all Apple stuff which doesn't play nice with it and it's been running flawlessly until now. It's still running everything perfectly I just can't control it with my iphone all of a sudden.
Here are a couple update shots. The coral up high has grown like crazy but looks like it's shading out the lower stuff now!
WaterHazard
New member
Wow looks great! Just curious, with it pretty much steady state, do you get antsy to upgrade things or start a new build? I would, even though I know it's best left alone sometimes.
Sounds like a tough lesson to learn, but the conservative approach to ich is obviously worth it. I certainly learned a lesson from your trials, and I doubt I'm alone in that, if it makes you feel any better about all the heartache and work ich has caused you.
My Apex seems to have trouble connecting to the network now and then, too. Like yours, still controls everything just fine, only I can't access it remotely. Seems like restarting the network (in the Apex, not my home network) gets it back eventually. Relating to updates though, my Apex choked on itself altogether once and I didn't have power to any of the outlets. It was otherwise running. I had status and control, but no true power on outputs. Curt from Neptune actually telneted into my Apex and corrected some corruption (think it was a phantom EB8), but recommended updating firmware often to avoid this type of problem. Not your issue - I know - just food for thought.
Sounds like a tough lesson to learn, but the conservative approach to ich is obviously worth it. I certainly learned a lesson from your trials, and I doubt I'm alone in that, if it makes you feel any better about all the heartache and work ich has caused you.
My Apex seems to have trouble connecting to the network now and then, too. Like yours, still controls everything just fine, only I can't access it remotely. Seems like restarting the network (in the Apex, not my home network) gets it back eventually. Relating to updates though, my Apex choked on itself altogether once and I didn't have power to any of the outlets. It was otherwise running. I had status and control, but no true power on outputs. Curt from Neptune actually telneted into my Apex and corrected some corruption (think it was a phantom EB8), but recommended updating firmware often to avoid this type of problem. Not your issue - I know - just food for thought.
jlylec
New member
It's really great to hear that my ichssues helped somebody else out. That's what this forum is all about!
I do get antsy about doing anything on the tank, but then I start getting antsy that I'm NOT doing anything and it needs some sort of maintenance! It's a wicked cycle.
I actually just made a good change I think. I had to get a new skimmer for my coral QT/frag tank and got a reef octopus because the big one for my DT has done so well. On the new ones they put water min/max lines on the sides. They didn't do this on my old one and I think I've had it sitting in too little water this whole time. The outlet was always above the water line and made splashy messes that were a pain to deal with and minimize. Now I just set it on the floor of the sump and the outlet is just below the water line and seems to be running great. I can't believe this whole time I was probably not running this properly and creating all this salt creep I didn't need to. Sometimes tinkering can be a good thing!
I also got the Apex straight yesterday too. I did the reset from the main display and that fixed the connectivity issue. Then I went ahead and updated the firmware. The new firmware and UI dashboards are awesome! I can't imagine doing another reef tank without an Apex. It's truly the single best thing about my tank!
jlylec
New member
I can't believe it's been a year and a half since I updated anything on this thread!
Things have been pretty calm. No more ich so that's good. Swings with aiptasia here and there. Knock them out with peppermints or berghia's but then they come back as soon as those guys die out. Not the end of the world really, but I do hate them!
I've been considering a full tank tear down and rebuild just to change some minor things and clean everything up really well. The problem is it's not worth risking some crash because everything seems happy and healthy.
I had a problem recently with my AI Sol Blue's flickering (one or two of the three having this issue). I researched and found it may be the power supplies as they do seem to be getting very hot. I need to call and talk to AI support about it. Apparently they're really good. In the interim though I upgraded to AI Hydra52s. They are just phenomenal and I wanted to use the new software available on the Apex to control them. In the process I also found out about Apex Fusion which I didn't know about because I'm past the build stage and things were going well. Wow...what an improvement! Neptune is a great company for this industry.
Here are a couple update shots. Not very good quality on the iPhone, but just to show the new lights and how things look in the tank. I had my Sols set TOO high I think and they were browning out my coral. Not killing anything, but things weren't growing like they should probably. That said I kinda like having manageable growth. My red monti cap was so prolific I ultimately had to throw 80% of it away and it's nearly replaced itself already in only a month or so. It's almost to pest levels!
Things have been pretty calm. No more ich so that's good. Swings with aiptasia here and there. Knock them out with peppermints or berghia's but then they come back as soon as those guys die out. Not the end of the world really, but I do hate them!
I've been considering a full tank tear down and rebuild just to change some minor things and clean everything up really well. The problem is it's not worth risking some crash because everything seems happy and healthy.
I had a problem recently with my AI Sol Blue's flickering (one or two of the three having this issue). I researched and found it may be the power supplies as they do seem to be getting very hot. I need to call and talk to AI support about it. Apparently they're really good. In the interim though I upgraded to AI Hydra52s. They are just phenomenal and I wanted to use the new software available on the Apex to control them. In the process I also found out about Apex Fusion which I didn't know about because I'm past the build stage and things were going well. Wow...what an improvement! Neptune is a great company for this industry.
Here are a couple update shots. Not very good quality on the iPhone, but just to show the new lights and how things look in the tank. I had my Sols set TOO high I think and they were browning out my coral. Not killing anything, but things weren't growing like they should probably. That said I kinda like having manageable growth. My red monti cap was so prolific I ultimately had to throw 80% of it away and it's nearly replaced itself already in only a month or so. It's almost to pest levels!
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jlylec
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I'm glad it helped you! I read a few of these before and during my build and they helped me so much I felt like I owed it back to the community. Looking back through it I wish I had included even more detail in places and extra posts, but you get so caught up in trying to get everything done! Good luck with your tank!
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