Mike's 300 Double-D

[drummereef]

Wow, crisis averted is right! A little more time and it could have become Oregon Reef part deux, dare I say it... :sad1: Most would have, like you said, freaked out (myself included) but your hobby experience showed. So glad you caught it in time and the tank is stable. Thanks for sharing the sometimes scary side of the hobby. It's stories like this that make me rethink my own preparedness plan.

 

[digitalchrisg]

Wow, glad it turned out ok.

 

[psusocr]

its always good to hear that people can learn from large mistakes yet see the positive in them, fix them, make it better and keep trucking along... Its what this hobby and life i guess is all about right?

Ive also had some major disasters but as long as we take the positive it still remains a rewarding hobby!!

Kudos to both of you!!

 

[iwishtofish]

Phew! Glad that wasn't worse! It's good you can now take steps to prevent a repeat. I'm glad your beautiful fish were ok.

 

[coralreefdoc]

M&T. Nice to see you averted that major disaster in the making

Now, in regards to the dosing of kalkwasser via ATO, I would strongly suggest you consider dosing your kalk from a still reservoir, via an automatic doser (preferably SpectraPure LiterMeterIII for reasons eluded to momentarily), in as many small doses throughout the day as possible. This is where the SP LMIII shines, as it is capable of dosing 150x per day !

Essentially, what you would do to incorporate this strategy is estimate your daily needs for kalkwasser and set the dosing pump to that volume, then the ATO, which is used solely as an RO/DI freshwater osmolator, would make up for the difference in evaporation with pure RO/DI, if there is any.

What this provides is multi-beneficial:

Allows for a more consistent rise in KH/Ca values, as the doses are smaller and more frequent. Less localized precipitation as well ...

Kalkwasser addition custom tailored specifically to essential parameters, versus being dependent on evaporation.

Exponentially more safe than dosing Kalkwasser via the Osmolator, especially when ran through a reactor !

The list of benefits/safety factors goes on, but unfortunately Im pressed for time as I promised a guy in the area (member here on RC) I would help go over his new large system and provide some needed insight/knowledge/experience ...

As you know, M&T, near disasters in this hobby often times prove to be worth their weight in gold when it comes to learning experience and determining/distinguishing how to more efficiently customize/run your system ... Hope this provides an idea with which you can build upon to ensure this, or anything remotely similar, doesn't happen to your influential/inspiring reef system again in the future.

Take care guys

 

[prop-frags]

Life has certainly gotten very busy for us lately, and while we have been keeping up with the reef, with the holidays and some other big priorities, we haven't had much time to keep up with our online friends! We hope you all had a safe and healthy holiday season.

Thanks to you all for the supportive words and advice. The kalkwasser overdose has unfortunately taken a toll on some of the corals. We are seeing STN base-up recession on a few colonies. The hope is that most of it will slow/stop, but at least one big colony looks like it will need to be fragged. The only fish loss to report is our beautiful Earlii wrasse passed away...we don't think it was due to the flood/kalk OD, since he died in December, but he was showing absolutely no signs of illness or distress, just one day fine, the next day gone. :sad1:
The good news is that Santa Claus brought us some new additions in the QT... stay tuned for pics and details!

We have continued with our system improvements coming out of the skimmer flood event in November. The Apex programming got some updates to add ATO controls, pH controls, and some better alerts and alarms. We're working on a DIY break-out-box now to be able to monitor wet-floor conditions, low-sump conditions, etc. We also now have a smartphone interface so we can monitor and control remotely while away from home. We really like CoralReefDoc's suggestion about discrete dosing and ATO, so plans are under development for separating the Kalkwasser dosing from the ATO. We'll post an update with these new system pieces once we have them built and installed. Any suggestions or links to similar DIY installs would be great if you guys don't mind sharing.

Terry is taking pics this week and we'll have some new pics (including coral casualties, and our new QT pets) coming up within the next day or so. Thanks again for all your continuing support and help.

 

[indyjaco]

Sorry to hear about the Earlii, they are a lovely fish.

 

[aquaph8]

So sorry about your Earlei, he was such a pretty fish. Looking forward to hear about the new additions, I officially feel teased.

 

[prop-frags]

Sorry to hear about the Earlii, they are a lovely fish.

So sorry about your Earlei, he was such a pretty fish. Looking forward to hear about the new additions, I officially feel teased.

Thanks guys. This is Terry... He was a terminal male when we got him and had grown to about 4" in size at the end. I noticed his posture was a bit off right before (kind of hunch backed). Our Red Velvet looked the same way before he died. The Earl's was still alive (barely) when I found him on the sand bed. I placed him in an acclimation box in our sump and he died soon afterward, but at least the cleanup crew didn't get hold of him. This is the 3rd time in a year that I've had to rescue a dying wrasse from the cleanup crew, sigh... :sad1:

I'm working on some pics. In the meantime, here's a long-overdue FTS:



-t.

 

[Newbie Aquarist]

Sorry for the loss. But on a brighter note, on a bad day your reef looks better than most reefers on a good day.

 

[egis]

Sorry for the loss. But on a brighter note, on a bad day your reef looks better than most reefers on a good day.

+1.
I love this tank.

 

[Dangerwill]

I was reading a free mag at the lfs and saw pics of a reef that bore a striking resemblance to yours, upon further investigation realized that it was in fact yours and a nice write up at that. Your attention to detail and disaster avoidance is an inspiration to a lot of us that heavily debate the choices like "do i buy a battery back up or an mp10" "do i set up redundant power zones or place large coral order...

 

[prop-frags]

Sorry for the loss. But on a brighter note, on a bad day your reef looks better than most reefers on a good day.

+1.
I love this tank.

Thank you both for the compliments!

I was reading a free mag at the lfs and saw pics of a reef that bore a striking resemblance to yours, upon further investigation realized that it was in fact yours and a nice write up at that. Your attention to detail and disaster avoidance is an inspiration to a lot of us that heavily debate the choices like "do i buy a battery back up or an mp10" "do i set up redundant power zones or place large coral order...

Thanks Will. Yes, we were recently published! Terry's picture of one of the milli colonies was even selected for the cover... it is all very gratifying, and thank you for noticing that.

There are so many simple things we can do to protect and guard against failures. Our systems can become amazingly complex and with complexity comes increased risk of failure. So while the technology is jumping ahead in leaps and bounds, it can create complacency. So it becomes even more important to frequently examine all aspects of our systems and ask "what's the worst that can happen with this?"

I just completed the work to separate the Kalkwasser dosing from the ATO. This was a fairly simple thing, just adding another pump (hah more complexity!) to the freshwater vat, and connecting it to the Kalkwasser reactor. The pump is controlled by the Apex. We are still in the process of dialing it in. Not trivial, since now the we have to adjust for separate ATO and Kalk dosing and determine the right amount of Kalk that's needed with the topoff going in on an as-needed basis.

 

[d3hree]

great article guys...really enjoyed reading that.

Why the ato change...is your evap level adding too much kalk...or vice versa?

 

[Newbie Aquarist]

Excellent article. Congratulation on being published. You among other reefers have really set the bar high.

 

[prop-frags]

great article guys...really enjoyed reading that.

Why the ato change...is your evap level adding too much kalk...or vice versa?

Thanks Matt. The ATO change was due to a near-miss we had back in November. The skimmer flooded and the ATO dumped a few gallons of Kalk into the tank. If we had not been home and caught it right away, it would have been a tank crash.

Excellent article. Congratulation on being published. You among other reefers have really set the bar high.

Thanks Wayne - as usual, you are generous with your comments. We are eager to see your build nearing completion!!

 

[prop-frags]

An update of the latest fun and follies...

Just as we've been saying about complexity and more trouble that can come of it...the other day, our Neptune Apex goes on the fritz. We noticed that the chiller was running when it shouldn't have been (water was already below setpoint temperature). So we started looking around at some details and find that there were more than a few strange symptoms: two devices on the the first energy bar had the same address, the first variable speed outlet had a garbled outlet name, and most of the outlet programs that reference the "pH" variable now had "Temp" variable in it's place. Very odd behavior, indeed.

Long story short, we tried to straighten this out ourselves, and couldn't get it back to behaving correctly, so it was time to contact Neptune tech support. They were pretty responsive to the emails. Waited around a few hours for a call, but that didn't come. So we called them (took a few hours to get through). After about a 90 min troubleshooting call we finally got the Apex back to what appears to be normal operation. We had to format the Apex's file system, update the firmware, and re-program all the outlets. This would have normally been just a few minutes, but we got seriously hung up on the firmware update. We kept getting an "operation interrupted" error during the web page update process. It turns out that problem is caused by antivirus software running on the PC that you're using to do the update. Sure do wish the Neptune guys would add that to their Comprehensive Reference Manual - it would have saved us an hour of angst.

So after all that, it looks like we are back in business, and the new 4.20 firmware adds some very slick new features. The dashboard now looks much more like the iPhone app (which is a nice app!). Check it out if you haven't already, and please, disable your antivirus while you perform the firmware update. :debi:

 

[drummereef]

Glad to hear you got your Apex issues worked out. I have had the same experience with their customer service. They're terrible about calling back but once you get a hold of them they are very good at trouble shooting and resolving the issue. Despite your recent issues the tank is still looking great!

 

[jason angel]

Awesome TJ. AMAZING TANK! None more deserving after your first disaster! Lesser reefers wouldve packed it in then and there! congrats guys!

 

[Atomikk]

I might have missed it, but do you have a quarantine for your corals? I would hate to see you post that you have AEFWs!