My 500 + gallon system. Last 13 years to now. Build, Aquascaping & more. Lots of pics

[pmrossetti]

Thanks. That's great considering all your equipment and that you store your water outside in the heat.

What temp do you keep your house at? If I may ask.
Thank you.

 

[slief]

Thanks. That's great considering all your equipment and that you store your water outside in the heat.

What temp do you keep your house at? If I may ask.
Thank you.

Around 80 during the summer. Having the sumps on the floor helps with cooling things a bit. The only thing to transfer any heat in the shed would be the calcium reactor and the RODI water for top off and the mixed salt water for the AWC. The shed doesn't get terribly warm though and I while I don't monitor the water temps in the holding tanks, I doubt it gets much above 80. The light soffet does get warm though as does the space below the tank where the sumps are so there is some ambient heat transfer.

 

[Triggerfish007]

Shark tank

Shark tank

Hi slief not sure your name but my name is Cory and I wanted to speak to you about a shark tank. im in Belize and want d to know if I could contact you on whatsapp messenger or if this is the only way I can speak to you.??

 

[pmrossetti]

Anything new Scott?

 

[slief]

Anything new Scott?

Nothing really new to report. The tank is in cruise control. Corals are growing great and the first are fat and happy. I spent hours yesterday using my metal blade scrapers to remove coraline from the top and bottom edges. It’s been too long since I did that last and the coraline was getting out of conotrl. I got most of it knocked back. Still need to do a bit more though. Also decided to kill off some hairy mushrooms yesterday from some prime areas. I have no shortage of those and they are covering some areas that would be great for SPS frags and are encroaching on other SPS so it was time to take action. I need do some fragging of my strawberry shortcake as its growing like a weed and plan to place some of those frags where the mushrooms where. I injected them with some kalk paste and boiling vinegar. I looked a bit ago and it seems to be working but I may need to do another round of injections in the next day or two. We will see if they fully die off or not. I need to do some updated pictures or video which I will likely do in the next week or so. Maybe sooner though.

 

[pmrossetti]

Thanks for the update Scott!

 

[MK3_LUV]

I just spent the handful of weeks reading through this thread when I have downtime at work and wow what a journey it has been. Scott, you have done a phenomenal job documenting all the changes that have happened, so thank you for that. Happy to see that the tank is doing better than ever before! Heres to another 25 years

 

[slief]

I just spent the handful of weeks reading through this thread when I have downtime at work and wow what a journey it has been. Scott, you have done a phenomenal job documenting all the changes that have happened, so thank you for that. Happy to see that the tank is doing better than ever before! Heres to another 25 years

Thank you very much! It's a long thread to read through! You have more patience than me! I really need to do some updates but the truth is that nothing has changed. The tank has been in cruise control. So much so that I've been neglecting to clean my viewing panes as often as I should and have some calcareous algae on the viewing panes that is going to take some elbow grease. Funny thing is though that the actual algae growth on the viewing panes is so slow that even cleaning every 2 weeks is more than enough if not for the calcareous stuff. Once I get some new algae dozer pads from Mighty Magnets and clean that stuff up, I will do another video and some pictures.

 

[saf1]

You will love the Kessils. I still love them and still have 8 of them over my tank in addition to the Mitras. I wanted more control over the coloring. Especially since I have a fair amount of SPS. The SPS grew like weeds under the Kessils to but as I said, I wanted more control over coloration so that is in large part what motivated me to add them. That said, I still think the Kessils are great lights and will grow any corals. They also do a great job of bring out colors in them so don't be dismayed by my choice to add the Mitras. I love to tinker and stay up on technology and when the opportunity came up to get the Mitras, my OCD kicked in. I expect you will love the Kessils just like I do.

I know this is an old post but wanted to ask about the Kessils and the Mitras. I believe you use a Apex if I recall so my question is are you controlling them by the Apex and if so is it off the vdm ports or does it require another module. Seems Apex is module happy and/or the off the shelf LEDs require it. Not sure which.

I'm looking at some of the off the shelf LED's but hoping to find native Apex support. Looking at Neptunes site it shows what is ready but isn't clear on what is needed or what functionality it offers. New tank that is cycling has the Apex on it. The tank that I'm moving is currently using my DIY LED's with a reefangle controller. So I'm getting sunrise, sunset, storms, etc. Would be nice to have similar functionality with the Apex (which I believe it does) assuming light package supports it.

I wasn't sure how or what you are controlling your lighting with so wanted to ask. Thanks - have a great day.

 

[AiKkz]

A lot to read, but well worth it! great build!

 

[slief]

I know this is an old post but wanted to ask about the Kessils and the Mitras. I believe you use a Apex if I recall so my question is are you controlling them by the Apex and if so is it off the vdm ports or does it require another module. Seems Apex is module happy and/or the off the shelf LEDs require it. Not sure which.

I'm looking at some of the off the shelf LED's but hoping to find native Apex support. Looking at Neptunes site it shows what is ready but isn't clear on what is needed or what functionality it offers. New tank that is cycling has the Apex on it. The tank that I'm moving is currently using my DIY LED's with a reefangle controller. So I'm getting sunrise, sunset, storms, etc. Would be nice to have similar functionality with the Apex (which I believe it does) assuming light package supports it.

I wasn't sure how or what you are controlling your lighting with so wanted to ask. Thanks - have a great day.

The Kessil’s are controlled through the Apex 0-10v. In my case, they are connected to a VDM module but that’s only because of the location of the lights in relation to my Apex and all the 0-10v devices I have. Some of which are already using the Apex’s built in 0-10v ports. The Apex 2016 and Classic both have 4 built in VDM ports.

The Mitras on the other hard are not 0-10v compatible and as such, are programmed through the GHL Control Center program which is a great program for programming the Mitras. There are a lot of advanced features of the Mitras that couldn’t be taken advantage of through 0-10v alone. Plus you can save and share light projects with others and then just upload the project file to your Mitras and have a prepgrammed light. You can also modify it before uploading it. I have no issues using the GHL interfaced for programming them. It’s a set it forget thing anyways.

 

[saf1]

@slief - thanks for the info. Appreciate it. The reading I did last night sort of indicated the module was necessary in some cases. Maybe I can avoid it which would be nice since at the moment the only use would be for lighting.

Thanks again!

 

[slief]

One of these days I will do a video update or take out my camera for some new tank pictures.. In the mean time, I picked up a few fish today from my friend Jim's. He's had these in QT for me for the last week. I got a Quoyi Parrot Fish, a Multibar Angelfish and a banded pipe fish. You don't see the Quoyi's very often. They are one of the few relatively reef safe parrot fish. They are primarily herbivores and everything I've read from others indicates that they do well in a reef tank unlike other parrot fish. They also only grow to 7-8" unlike some other parrots which get much larger.


They will be acclimating for a while to bring the salinity up to my tanks level as they are in about 1.021 right now. I will take several hours of drip acclimation to get them to my 1.024- 1.025 salinity. Not ideal but it's better than the 1.014 they came in. Jim took the last several days to get them up to the current level and that is about as far as he will go in his fish QT system. Here are a few pics in their acclimation box.

The pictures don't do the parrot fish much justice. He's beautiful.

 

[Lytehouse]

beautiful fish
they will look great in your system

 

[ReefKeeper64]

Scarus quoyi is one of my favorites and yours looks great! I’ve had one for about 5 months now. She’s a model citizen, could care less about corals, is friendly as can be and is always the star of the show. That’s a nice addition to your collection!

 

[Achilles Torben]

Scarus quoyi scratched my acrylic tank always so he had gone




Greetings Torben


Gesendet von meinem SM-G930F mit Tapatalk

 

[biecacka]

Great looking fish additions scott!

Corey

 

[albano]

Scarus quoyi scratched my acrylic tank always so he had gone

I think you just made up my mind!

 

[pmrossetti]

Beautiful fish Scott!

 

[slief]

It's been along time since I posted an update to this thread. Up until very recently the tank had been in cruise control with not much new to update. Livestock was all doing well and coral all doing well. We very recently made a decision to sell our home & move Montana and finally found a home this last December that we really like on a great 1.58 acre riverfront property in a killer location. We flew out there December 21st to check it out. We put our offer in on December 23 and found out Christmas Eve just as our plane landed back in LA (still on the tarmac) that our offer was accepted. It was the best Christmas gift ever! I already had our house out here on the market. New Year's Eve we got an offer on the house here that we couldn't refuse but the buyers did not want the tank. Livestock was sold very quickly and within a handful of days the tank was drained and removed from the wall and construction began to reassemble the fish room back into a bedroom.

This weekend we pack up the house, load the truck and drive off into the sunset to our new riverfront home in Montana just outside of Whitefish. It's long been my dream (over 30 years of dreaming) to move to Western Montana and it seems as though dreams do come true. Back in the early 80's I went to boarding school in Western Montana and I've wanted to move there ever since. This place has a great river (Stillwater river) running right through the back yard. There is lower Stillwater lake 1000' up stream and we are in the middle of the Stillwater national forest yet we have an airport, Costco, Walmart, Best Buy etc all with 25-30 minutes from us in Kalispell Mt. A ski resort in Whitefish is 15 minutes away and Glacier National Park 35 minutes away. Terrific fly fishing for big native trout and pike in my backyard and a lake packed with all kinds of fish basically next door. Cost of living is a fraction of what it is out here which will put years back on my life due to stress reduction and I get to enjoy 4 real seasons.

I've got my dream property but the house is kind of a nightmare but I knew that going in. It's a fixer upper that was priced right. The property owner is carrying us for a couple years and we put a very minimal down payment. The upside is that once we finish the remodel, we will be in a VERY equitable position on the place.The house was foreclosed on a year and a half ago and left empty for the last year and a half so it needs a lot of work. A realtor bought it last year with the plans of doing it but decided not to and put it on the market.

I flew out there this last week and remove walls drywall ceilings insulation etc. to begin the process of a full remodel and get it ready for our move in. A lot of progress was made during the 6 days I was out there but the remodel will take me several months or more to complete as I will be doing most of the work myself. There will likely be a reef tank in the future but it will be at least a year out & it likely won't be as large due to the floor plan and crawl space below the house instead of a concrete slab foundation.

I will remain active on the forum and will be here daily as I always enjoy helping others and I will continue to work for Royal Excluvis as well as my other aquarium related endeavors. You can subscribe to my Youtube channel to see what I am doing in Montana (including the remodel) and follow along on some of my new adventures out there of which there will be many.

Below is the final video of my reef tank. A video showing my new back yard as well as a picture of the house both taken this last week.

So this is my final video on my reef tank. This was taken a couple weeks ago.

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Here is a video I took last week showing our new backyard. I love the snow in case you were wondering.
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