Soulpatch's build thread (ongoing)

\Clownfish/ said:
Amazing soulpatch :eek:
Can't wait to see how big everything will get in the coming months!
Click to expand...

That is the hard part in waiting for the growth. I look in the tank and see bare spots all over the place which I want filled. The back center is a perfect example and I want to pick up some gorgonians for there to fill in the dead space.

I am waiting on a few new zoas and acans to pop up that I like and I will grab those. Really the only other items I will get are more ricordea so I can have a multitude of colors on my front bottom rock.

I got a brittle star on my last SPS piece as a hitch hiker so I am waiting to see if it grows and I can see it at night. My emerald crabs have not been seen in almost 2 weeks now though who knows what they are doing. I have seen no damage to my corals so I am not on the hunt at this point if they are even still alive.


In the next month or so I will know for sure my employment situation as to whether I am staying at my current company or moving to an old vendor of mine who has been courting me. So I should know if I am staying in my house or moving within the next few months. If staying then I believe the 150 is good to go. I will go cube I believe with a 36x36 tank. No tangs or such which might be a bummer to the wife but I can do some more fish like cardinals and have specific areas for corals and anemones. Waiting on Marineland to have another deal on their tanks and for me to have a couple grand to throw into the moneypit.....er......tank.
 
Screw my lack of DSLR skills. My Note 4 stepped up to the plate tonight...

Here is my brain eating:


Here is a good shot of it reaching out for food:


My prize Acan eating:


closeup of my ricordea:


Homer here is the frogspawn you swear is a torch. HA HA:


My other frog:


Purple Stylo:


My bonsai that is healing after being fragged. The rear has more polyps out but hard to get pic:


More acans eating:


Homer this is my actual torch on the left. LOL:
 
Ok I am a moron.

I had turned off my ATO the other day with my pumps as I was feeding corals and doing some other things in the tank. I forgot to turn it back on even though I turned everything else on. I was woken up this morning to alarm after alarm on my phone for temps. Here my probe was half in the water and half out. It would register too low water temp then just above the alarm level killing the alarm. All in all I had 96 texts from my apex when I woke up. I guess i shouldn't leave phone on vibrate...

So this morning I was up and at em, looked at my phone, then ran to tank to figure this out. Saw water level in rear chamber and it hit me. So I turn on the ATO, check salinity, topped off some fresh saltwater to replace what I had taken out wet skimming, and I was back in business.

Oh the joys of owning a fishtank.


Though about an hour ago I got a heat warning from my 125 gallon fresh tank so looks like I need to address that tonight. Water changes all around.....
 
Glad to hear that it was just a fluke and not an actual temperature emergency. I've been worried since I just got back from 10 days away from my tank. I set our AC to 76 in both rooms and hoped that it would keep the room cool enough for the tank to not overheat. Fortunately with LEDs, the tank doesn't add much heat.

I have a chiller, I'm just so concerned with hooking up external plumbing for the chiller, since I don't want any floods in this rental. The question is whether us leaving the apartment at 78-80 for the dog with a chiller and 76 for the tank is a sizable difference in power usage. I only bought the chiller as insurance since our AC was on the fritz last summer.
 
luckily my tank is in a basement remodel so the room never gets too warm. The issue for me down there is evap as it is a very dry room... I lose more off of my nano then I do off of my 125 gallon and they are close to the same temp 78 compared to 76...
 
Yeah now that I see a closeup, its definitely a frogspawn. It's just in the other pic, looked like a torch to me. :D

Nice collection you got going there. I really like that acan!
 
It has been over a week since I visited my LFS and I think he is worried about me as me messaged me some pics this morning. Going to stop in today and check these out:









I have been lax with my tank for the past 2 weeks and just been in feed mode as I had other things going on like replacing a fence in my backyard. I noticed my one zoa has some algae growing within the polyps and it is ****ing it off so a night this week when I have time I will mix up some peroxide paste and treat the zoa. Otherwise I appear to be pretty much algae free at this point save for the slight brown diatoms on my sand from missing a water change and not changing out some media...
 
Right now I am putting in 5 ml if just dosing and I have roughly 25 gallons of actual water if you inclulde all my plumbing, reactor, and skimmer... So that amount to roughly 2ml/10 gal.

If I do any spot treatment via paste I downgrade to 1 ml per 10 gal and dose 2.5 ml
 
So this past week I tried bumping up my whites and mixed spectrums to around 85 ish %. It has gone miserably as corals have receeded some. I gave it some time to see if they needed to adjust but no dice. I had had them at around 80% before and thought I needed more for my SPS. It looks like I might adjust them lower tonight to give my corals some breathing room to get back in line.

I WOULD do it right now via Fusion but they came out with an update and I cant access my Apex till I do the upgrade. UGH. Not what I wanted to do with a Friday night but I guess I will survive...
 
Yeah, I'm getting nervous about increasing the intensity of my lights. My colors are fantastic right now, and the growth is actually pretty good. I'm running my RBs at 1300mah but at 35% dimming, and my colors (CW, NW, R, G, UV) at 700mah and 35%. My red planet is starting to whiten on the base that finally grew out, and this is relatively new (since I upped from 30% to 35%), so I'm thinking of backing off too. All the other corals are happy as hell though.

I'm just wondering if it's worth trying to raise RBs or whites, and which one would contribute more to the whitening/recession. Is it too much UV, so I should back the colors down, or is it too much PAR, so I should back the blues down.

I'm curious as to your opinion/experience/thoughts since we're in relatively similar boats (although your lights are all 700mah).
 
Yeah with the lower mah I would think my 70% would be closer to 35 or 40% for you??? Dont know though.

I think I might drop everything to around 60% for the weekend to give them time to regroup. Then I will slowly ramp back up to around 70% and see what all I get. I think I need to ramp everything down together and test as I go higher for a week or two to see what changes occur. I have one SPS that is very close to being yanked as it is not doing well. I have another who has receeded and a third that is stable but I expected growth thus far.

Some of this might also be due to the lack of my water change and low levels in the water but then my LPS shouldn't have receeded as well and my one Frogspawn has done so ever so slightly. So I will back things down and see what happens as well as some serious tank maintenance this weekend and testing.

It is time for swaps of media as well which might be adding to the coral displeasure. My charcoal and gfo need swapped.


The odd thing is that my acans, brain, and ricordea are thriving right now. I have some great color popping from my acans an I have at least one more coming this weekend as I am grabbing the green one in the pics above. Can't go wrong with that beast for $40...(Sorry Clown for cheap price...)

Might get the rainbow one as well for another $40 but the risk I start to get into is lack of grow out space. My iron man acan right now has some more heads coming in and I could sell those for decent price once it is ready so I have to balance that with my wants...
 
I believe that is accurate, but I'm not an electrician.

When you have a general decline like that across multiple species, I would always say do a water change first (with trusted water). Maybe calibrate your refractometer if you haven't in a while. I also imagine that the LPS you're saying who are having issues are up on the rocks, where as the happier ones are lower down? That would potentially indicate light being the issue? All corals are so unique, and we have no idea where they were collected, so it may not be an issue, some might just be better equipped/evolved to handle the brighter light because they lived higher up in the reef than other specimens of the same species/group.

Also good timing to change those media out while you're reducing your light, since fresh carbon should strip yellow and other biological compounds out of the water column effectively increasing the light level.

It's so hard to stop buying more frags and just let things grow out... And I'm starting to get some good growth too (especially from the staghorn acropora, which is really starting to bump into other frags because it grows so large).

Well, best of luck finding your culprit!
 
Hi Soulpatch - great thread. I'm thinking of doing the aurora setup as well. Question: do you think the moonlights are necessary even with control of the aurora with the apex? I was wondering if I could create a similar effect by dimming without the separate moonlights. Thoughts?
 
I'll see what soulpatch says, but I believe with the drivers that accept the 0-10v interface from the apex, they cannot dim enough for that effect. I believe most of the 0-10v drivers stop lighting at about 10%, where the PWM drivers will go lower without going out, but apex is 0-10v only.
 
I assume you could allow all of the other channels to go off and keep the blue on slightly but I prefer the 2 light moonlight. Better to spend the $15 or whatever it is and get the moonlights IMHO
 
Well I set my lights to max around 65% right now to give some breathing room for the corals to recoup. I might even be lower then that but would need to log in to check.

I did not have a chance to do water change over the weekend but will do so tonight. THat said my corals looked a bit happier with less intense lights and even my fish were out and about a bit more so i think the lighting upset them too.

Water/chemical change will occur tonight as well as peroxide pasting of a zoa which has a small algae issue. Probably do a fairly large water change due to the missed change. Take out closer to 8 gallons as opposed to my normal 5. So a bit closer to 30% then my normal 20%. Water has been mixed and is in the brute can with PH and heaters going to keep it ready for tonight.

I must say that I have switched some of my frozen food to the LFS Reef Frenzy and my fish are going nuts over it. They can't get enough. I had been using the coral frenzy already when spot feeding but the reef frenzy is also an awesome product.

I also started some supliment dosing over the weekend with red sea reef energy. I also have their color pack but I need to order in the color testing kit before I do anything with them. Have not noticed anything with the reef energy but then again any impact would have been negated by my lighting/husbandry issues.

So watch for updates this week. I should have some pics tonight of the carnage my lights have done as well as posting up some testing numbers with the red sea pro salt.

I believe I am at the stage for 2 part dosing but need to do a week's worth of testing to ensure what my consumption is first.
 
Looking forward to the updates. It'll be good to get those last bits of algae gone. What a pain that adventure has been, but I'm glad you've been able to beat it.

I dialed my RBs down 5% from 35% to 30%, and not noticing much of a change on my STNing red planet. I know it's a finicky coral. I've owed my tank a waterchange too (4 weeks now) so I'll do that tonight or tomorrow hopefully, water is ready to go, and hopefully it fixes whatever is wrong with the red planet. Rest of acros are loving the current water and are growing like crazy, so who knows.

Just be careful with chunk size in the LFS Reef Frenzy, since there was something about too large non-digestible chunks choking dwarf angelfishes. I always thaw frozen food in water before pouring it into the tank, so I can pick out large undigested chunks if necessary (hasn't been necessary yet).

Not sure how much LPS/SPS you have (new FTS?) but with my tank, using the bulkreefsupply DIY 2 part, I'm dosing about 5mL of alk and 4mL of calcium daily, split in 2 doses, one at 1am and one at 1pm, an hour between alk and calc. I have a lot of acropora growing though.

Curious about the RSRE, but I'm very skeptical. I'm dosing acropower for amino acids, and I'm skeptical of that too. Always too many damn variables going on at once with a reef tank to attribute success to any particular thing. Water changes, good skimming, and good food are probably all that are needed for real success, but lord knows we'll keep trying everything else!
 
I am skeptical about the RSRE as well but it was given to me so figured I would give it a shot.

I thaw all food as well before going in the tank. Not had any issues with larger pieces yet that cause me any concern.

I too have the BRS 2 part kit sitting in a box along with 2 BRS dosers. LOL. I just need to get on board with testing to know my consumption and then set up the dosers to combat it. I have my other DB8 that I ordered just so I could better control my dosers (ran out of space on original DB8)

I have one acro that i got from a swap and it has waned then come back slightly then waned again so I am up in the air on that one. It might simply be yanked tonight to guard against any spikes with further decay. I am really hoping my bonsai colors back up and the LFS is holding a aussie strawberry shortcake for me if I chose to go that route in replacing the SPS I will most likely yank.

The one piece I am holding a spot in my tank for is the Utter Chaos frag he has growing out. I am next in line for a frag of that which will look stunning in my tank.
 
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