Office Tranquility (75g mixed)

Nothing new happening in tank but I thought a follow up on the skimmer's performance was worth mentioning. Today I tore it down of a thorough cleaning to include the impeller. It has only been running for about 16 days but there algae was growing on and I like my sump area nice and clean.

Likes
Ease of maintenance (super simple to assemble and disassemble).
Easy to tune
Simple, sleek appearance
Consistent performance

Dislikes
Availability and cost
Noisiest piece of equipment in the setup
Slight pain cleaning the cup

Seven minutes after complete tear down, it is right back to work like nothing happened. This was exactly the kind of consistency I was after.
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Was checking out the tank today and noticed that the red monti has turned much more pink (a rather vibrant pink). I dont recall this being the case on the 11th but I was caught up doing other things. The Capps undata seems like it may be a bit more pale in color.

Things that are outside the norm the past week:
No carbon reactor (decided to see how things looked without it)
Light intensity increased 2% (highly unlikely to have caused any issue
Window has been closed the last week so the pH has come done to about 9.17-9.27 (should cause any issues)
Feeding has been reduced to twice a day for two weeks now (wife didnt want to over feed while I was out of town).
Alkalinity dosing was decreased while I was away just to avoid any surprises the other direction. This made a difference of .55 (highly unlikely for this to be the cause.
Moved most of the nerite snails to the sump because about five of them were on there way down there anyways (choked the main line a few times waking me up in the middle of the night on work nights naturally). A milky film collected at the top of the aquarium; I cleaned this off and the tank was cloudy the next day giving me the impression of a bacterial bloom. Cleared up on its own after two days. No other observable issues from this.

dKH - 8.68 (I try to maintain 8.0)
PO4 - .04 (I fed the tank about an hour before the test so this may explain the increase but there may be an interesting correlation with less feeding too, I'll have to check out nitrate though my test isnt very good in the low range).
Mg - 1380
 
Eesh, been a while since I posted any updates. I had two pretty rough events while I was out of town that put a serious hurt on a number of items. I lost the Capps undata (thankfully the parent colony lives on in another members tank) and three of the four across I had (including a Reef Raft Wolverine). I actually thought I lost all four but a tiny piece of tissue remained on one of them (I couldn't even see it) and it has come back strong, re-encrusting the entire skeleton and now has moved laterally across the base/rock. The red monti was in dire straights but survived and has subsequently taken off like a weed. The pipe organ, toadstool, and torch never showed any signs of distress but everything else was in pretty bad shape.

Our local web forum (WAMAS) has a loaner PAR meter (Apogee with full spectrum probe) available and after a fairly long time on the wait list, I was able to get my grubby lil mits on it. My tank is like with two Kessil A360s that run 65% color and 40% intensity (set on a parabola that peaks at 4pm). The measurements below were taken at 65% color and 39% intensity. The upper most measurements were take just under the water surface and directly under the light (lights are mounted five inches above the surface).



And here is a picture to show just how bad things had gotten (picture taken shortly before Christmas).
 
madweazl said:
Eesh, been a while since I posted any updates. I had two pretty rough events while I was out of town that put a serious hurt on a number of items. I lost the Capps undata (thankfully the parent colony lives on in another members tank) and three of the four across I had (including a Reef Raft Wolverine). I actually thought I lost all four but a tiny piece of tissue remained on one of them (I couldn't even see it) and it has come back strong, re-encrusting the entire skeleton and now has moved laterally across the base/rock. The red monti was in dire straights but survived and has subsequently taken off like a weed. The pipe organ, toadstool, and torch never showed any signs of distress but everything else was in pretty bad shape.

Our local web forum (WAMAS) has a loaner PAR meter (Apogee with full spectrum probe) available and after a fairly long time on the wait list, I was able to get my grubby lil mits on it. My tank is like with two Kessil A360s that run 65% color and 40% intensity (set on a parabola that peaks at 4pm). The measurements below were taken at 65% color and 39% intensity. The upper most measurements were take just under the water surface and directly under the light (lights are mounted five inches above the surface).



And here is a picture to show just how bad things had gotten (picture taken shortly before Christmas).
Click to expand...
Did you ever find out why it did this?
 
It was a combination of a few things; phosphates and nitrates were elevated, the foam block in the bubble trap of the skimmer backed up in the sump which caused the skimmer's water level to increase so it dumped its contents into the sump, and something else happened as well but I cant recall what it was off the top of my head. Basically boiled down to a couple relatively minor events that combined for a lot of die off. As things were recovering, I had another set back that sealed the fate of the other acros but this one survived. I'm much more diligent on maintenance before I go out of town now (I travel often).
 
madweazl said:
It was a combination of a few things; phosphates and nitrates were elevated, the foam block in the bubble trap of the skimmer backed up in the sump which caused the skimmer's water level to increase so it dumped its contents into the sump, and something else happened as well but I cant recall what it was off the top of my head. Basically boiled down to a couple relatively minor events that combined for a lot of die off. As things were recovering, I had another set back that sealed the fate of the other acros but this one survived. I'm much more diligent on maintenance before I go out of town now (I travel often).
Click to expand...

Well at least you where able to figure out what the issue was. Is ther now other steps you take that you did not befor this? Othere then just extra maintenance.
 
fishdip22 said:
Well at least you where able to figure out what the issue was. Is ther now other steps you take that you did not befor this? Othere then just extra maintenance.
Click to expand...

Nope, just make sure everything is perfect before I leave so my wife doesnt have to troubleshoot things with me over the phone. Makes for an irregular maintenance schedule but we do what we have to so everything remains healthy.
 
Couple new acros

Strawberry Shortcake


Unknown but similar coloration to the RR Wolverine (yellow with deep red polyps)
 
Added a Kessil H80 to the refugium today. Light creep has been cut way down from the CFLs so hopefully maintenance in the skimmer compartment is a little bit easier in the future.

 
Picked up a Kessil H80 to cover the refugium under the tank. The previous lights lit up the entire stand and algae really appreciated it; maintenance on the skimmer and carbon reactor were starting to become a pain in the *** so I wanted to find a solution to cut back on this. I relocated the carbon reactor to the return chamber of the sump (far right) and was able to lower the new light far enough to eliminate light creep into the skimmer chamber (far left) and return chamber completely while illuminating the entire refugium area and then some (if the mount would allow, I could drop the light four more inches and still have adequate spread).

 
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