RocketEngineer's 75g/125g Setup

[RocketEngineer]

mudskipper1, Thanks. Not bad for the 8 month mark.

I did pick up a new fish today, a citron goby. It decided to perch on my magfloat.

Neat to see.

 

[RocketEngineer]

I am officially an idiot.

I am officially an idiot.

Today I bought a royal gramma from a LFS. Once I got it home, I realized that the reason it was hiding at the store was because it had torn fins and quite possibly fin rot. Stupid me does not have a quarantine tank set up. SO, I shut down my sump to drain my refugium to set up the 10g I normally use for mixing up water changes. Drain out water until I can get the pump underwater, then acclimate and introduced the royal gramma. The fish was floating, not swimming and went where the current pushed it so I shut down the pump and just left the heater going. In the mean time, I started mixing up fresh saltwater to replaced what I had pulled out and flooded my laundry room by leaving a pump on. Took most of the towels in my house to mop up the mess. Five hours later, the royal gramma was belly up mouth open. The sump being offline caused the water where the temperature probe to cool off but the heater in the tank was still on. So now I'm scrambling to mix up enough water to get my sump back on line.

In the end, I have a dead fish, a tank thats out of kilter, and have spent all afternoon scrambling to fix a problem that wouldn't have been a problem if I had been proactive. This is the second time not having a quarantine tank has come back and bit me in the butt. I will not be making that mistake a third time.

Nothing good ever happens fast.

Live and learn.
RocketEngineer

 

[RocketEngineer]

After several months of deliberation, I have decided to start using limewater. I have been dosing two part but I don't always remember to do it and measuring out the volumes with any degree of accuracy is a challenge with the big containers I have. For the moment I will be dosing 1 teaspoon per gallon of top off. Given that I don't have alot of corals, This may be the level it stays at for the foreseeable future. We will see how things react.

 

[iwishtofish]

Sorry to hear about the accident! No losses, other than the royal gramma?

I'll be following to see how the limewater works for you.

 

[RocketEngineer]

First weekend of March update:

Acan Lord #1:

This has gone from 4 mouths to 10+ in the 2.5 months I have had it.

Acan Lord #2:

This one has grown 3 new mouths.

Anemone:

The anemone seems to have recovered from its incident with the powerhead. It has been taking mysis shrimp, brine shrimp, and cyclopeze.

Blasto:

This one hasn't been growing. I think it has too much flow so I may move it lower.

Halimeda:

This patch has taken over the left corner of the tank. Growing well.

Jawfish:

Still digging tunnels. I moved some of the rock fragments closer to its tunnel and it picked them up and put them around its tunnel. Definately a fun fish to watch.

 

[RocketEngineer]

March update continued:

Citron Goby:

This guy likes to perch on the mag float and snag food as it floats past. I wonder if these fish use the fin on their belly like a suction cup as it seems to be able to stick to the glass. It has learned that the turkey baster dispenses food. Its also neat that this fish is active at night and will follow the flashlight beam when I feed the corals.

And finally, FTS:

I think that going with the kalk was a good idea. It seems the coraline algae is growing faster then before. With the corals starting to grow, missing a dose will set me back more than when they were just getting started.

RocketEngineer

 

[dave6093]

I was just reading your thread and it seems like you are doing a good job so far. I also have a 75g with a 150 reef octopus skimmer. It is not yet broken in but I am having problems getting a good skim. My tank is still cycling so I know it's not going to be any thing blackish but I am not getting a color that I would like. I am just curious on how you have your water level set in your sump and in the skimmer..
I read that it works well if the water level in right under the neck. I tried that and it was working well but I decided to tweak it and now I am not getting a good skim. It seems like when I set it where I had it, the bubbles a barely reaching the cup.
This maybe due to just clean water since I am cycling or something else. Idk
Any suggestions will help.. Thanks
Dave

 

[RocketEngineer]

dave6093,
First off:
<img src="/images/welcome.gif" width="500" height="62"><br><b><i><big><big>To Reef Central</b></i></big></big>

The reason you are having problems getting the skimmer to skim is two fold; 1) with little/no bioload there really isn't anything to skim and 2) the skimmer needs to break in. With any new system, you need to let the bacteria and algae on the live rock proliferate to the rest of the surfaces in the tank. This biofilm is what helps the bubbles in the skimmer rise without breaking (it will also reduce the noise in your plumbing btw). With nothing in the tank, the nutrients the bacteria need are relatively scarce so they take longer to divide. It took me almost a month to get my skimmer dialed in and even then I was lucky if I had to empty the cup every couple weeks. Now that I feed both the fish and the corals, the skimmer is pulling nice dark skimmate that requires me to empty the cup every week.

For my skimmer, the line where the water/foam starts to separate is just below the transition from the cylinder to the cone. The foam forms nice vertical runs up the neck of the skimmer. Mine is set so that the foam head breaks just as it gets above the lip in the cup.

Patience. It will take small adjustments to get it dialed in and you are better off making an adjustment then coming back in an hour to see where its at. I would rotate the outlet valve handle one finger notch (1/8th of a turn) each time I adjusted it. Now that its set, I leave it alone and just turn the pump off to empty the cup.

Hope that helps.
RocketEngineer

 

[dave6093]

Thanks for the welcome!!
Yea that make a lot of sense. Thanks for the help I really appreciate it.. I am hoping in another 2 weeks the tank will be cycled. Then I can get things moving along again

Thanks again,
Dave

 

[DustinB]

Oh no, Red Planaria!

 

[RocketEngineer]

Oh no, Red Planaria!

Yup, flatworms. I have had them in my refugium since I set up the 30g. They came over with the cheato. At this point, I worry that using flatworm eXit will do more harm than good as there are so many. My yellow wrasse seemed to keep them in check but since it disappeared they have started to really show up in the display. I need to get another wrasse to knock their numbers back down. Do you know any other type of fish that would find them a good meal?

RocketEngineer

 

[TheFishMan65]

For those of us lucky enough not to have seen a red bug. Is that what the read spots are with the Citron Goby? What did Dustin see that I missed? TIA

 

[DustinB]

Yeah, my 90 is infested with them. No way I could get enough out to avoid killing everything. I'm taking my 90 down(for other reasons mainly) and restarting it. I've read that about the best way is to wait for their population to crash and then try it. Supposedly they go through periods of abundance and disappear for a while. I guess they stick around until the pods and detritus are gone, then die back.

FishMan, the red spots are Red Planaria aka Red Flatworms. http://reefkeeping.com/joomla/curre...latworms-and-other-bugs-that-make-you-see-red
You would be hard pressed to easily see a redbug with your naked eye. When I had them I only noticed from looking closely at my pearlberry and saw little specs of dust moving around. I had to get my macro lens to see what they were.

 

[RocketEngineer]

TheFishMan65,
There are red flatworms in almost all the pictures. Mostly they are on the rocks but they are also on the halemida where they stand out.

DustinB,
I identidied them by sticking my nose on the glass of my refugium and going image hunting. I need a better camera so I can snap some pictures. I have some really neat critters crawling on the glass I wish I could get decent images of so I can share. For control, I'm thinking a six line wrasse or a yellow wrasse to knock their numbers back down.

RocketEngineer

 

[RocketEngineer]

Just a few updated pictures.

Citron Goby: Very photogenic fish. Always trying to get in the shot. Or maybe just wants food.

Acan Lord #2:

Brain Coral:

I moved this over the weekend and noticed that some amphipods have taken up residence under the rim of this coral. Neat stuff.

Rose Anemone:

Most of the time its out like this but it still retreats into its hole on occasion. It seems to like several different foods so I try to feed it several times a week.

Enjoy.
RocketEngineer

 

[RocketEngineer]

Figured I would provide an update. One Acan Lord is doing good but has decided not to inflate the last few days. The second, smaller one is growing well and has several more mouths. The brain is still growing but the blasto isn't. Not sure on that front. The anemone seems to be doing just fine.

Chemistry is as follows:
Salinity: 1.026
Magnesium: 1140 ppm
Ca: 370 ppm
Alk: 7.0 dKh

As I'm using the aquacontroller to seasonally adjust the lighting, I wonder if the change is causing the issues. I will do a water change the weekend.

Always something.

RocketEngineer

 

[DustinB]

Is your alk a constant 7.0? Are you checking at the end of the day before dosing, or shortly after dosing? Your alk could be dropping pretty low. Just an idea.

 

[RocketEngineer]

DustinB,
Using Kalk for the ATO means its adding a little bit all day long. 3 days of staying retracted and now its back to being fully inflated. No idea what it was up to.

Some pictures from today:
Anemone in its hole:

Jawfish checking things out:

Acan Lord #1, the one that was all pulled in:

Acan Lord #2:

The Brains:

And a FTS:

The Halimeda is really going nuts. I have two different types with the patch in the front left corner doing great.

RocketEngineer

 

[iwishtofish]

Tank is looking great! I want to put acans in my tank, once I get some problems ironed out (flow, temp). I might pull my sand out, so jawfish won't happen.

How much do you evaporate each day? I'm wondering because you dose kalk through your topoff. I evaporate around 2-2.5 gallons/day in my 75g, and, because of that, I'm afraid I'd end up dosing too much kalk. I guess it's all about the concentration in your topoff water?

 

[RocketEngineer]

Tank is looking great! I want to put acans in my tank, once I get some problems ironed out (flow, temp). I might pull my sand out, so jawfish won't happen.

How much do you evaporate each day? I'm wondering because you dose kalk through your topoff. I evaporate around 2-2.5 gallons/day in my 75g, and, because of that, I'm afraid I'd end up dosing too much kalk. I guess it's all about the concentration in your topoff water?

I can understand about ironing out problems. I still need to get my magnesium up as well as replace all the heaters in all my tanks. I bought the Marineland Stealth heaters but with them being under recall, I have six of various sizes that need to be replaced soon. Plan to buy the magnesium and heaters at the same time so hopefully that will fix both prolems.

During the winter, the tank was evaporating 1-1.5 gallons a day. During that time I was using one teaspoon per gallon to make the kalk. With the summer coming along and the air outside being more humid, the evapration rate is right around 1 gpd but have kept with the 1 teaspoon per gallon. The nice thing about kalk directly in the ATO container is you can play with the concentrations to meet your needs. Using a kalk reactor, you don't have this flexability.