Soulpatch's build thread (ongoing)

soulpatch said:
So thought i would share a few pics of the ato container and where i put my drivers. I am still battling the algae in my tank and trying to keep my mag levels up with the tech m. So far the growth has slowed but not killing it yet. I have another couple days of dosing slowly to get to the 2100 mag level though...









And here is the scroundel I am battling. Fairly certain it is bryopsis sine it is so fern like.

Click to expand...

All that in a 29 gallon cube? lol
 
Why not?

Regardless if you have a 1000 gallon tank or a nano there is a lot of time, money, and love in your project. I wanted to automate some things and as such went the route I did.

Heck in a couple weeks there will be dosers and such in the cabinet as well for my 2 part and carbon dosing...
 
rjkrejci said:
Have you tried Peroxide for the Algae? I dipped some Zoas and blasto frags mounts that I bought that had some bryopsis for a minute in 50/50 tank/h2o2 and it's now gone!

For small spot treating, this thread may be useful:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2364127&highlight=successful

For overall treating, this thread has a lot of info as well:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2082359&page=62
Click to expand...


I have not and chances are if I cant get it under control in the next week (still un certain if GHA or Byopsis) I will be pulling rock as needed to treat.

Admittedly I am a bit concerned with dosing Peroxicide in the tank. I know many have had success but it can quickly go bad.

I am hoping my current GFO and nopox treatment coupled with the Kent Tech M should combat both the possible GHA or Bryopsis.

I will give it another week though before I say screw it and get into treating the tank as a whole.
 
While reading the spot treatment thread it is interesting that he used baking soda to contain the treatment.

Thanks for that link as I might try that this weekend. I have strips around corals and others in wide open areas I can attack. Since the perocide in theory works with all algae it should be pretty spot on.

Also planning on increasing my CUC as it is rather small and I think if it were larger I wouldnt have fallen behind as quickly as I did.
 
So I got the perocide last night and will be dipping rock work tonight for what I can pull out.

I am hopefully I can pull everything in chunks as a lot of it is epoxied together. I cant dose in tank since I have Piere the cleaner shrimp and we are close. He likes to ride my arm around the tank and he eats from my hand. If nothing else though I will put him in the QT with my incoming clowns and bleny while I treat the tank if dipping doesnt work.

Keep tuned.


I will also try to shoot some video tonight of the tank and the dipping procedures...
 
Be interested to see how it works for you. Make sure you rinse the rocks really well (maybe with old tank water) before putting them back in to prevent exposing the shrimp since the cleaners are super sensitive. I may put him in the QT anyway to prevent any issues.

Looking forward to seeing it work!
 
ok so like an idiot I forgot the pre pics. Simply imagine byopsis (confirmed BTW) to be growing all of the top of the rock work. Still some remaining that will need touchups but for the most part I would say 80% is gone. The corals were a bit ****es and I might have lost a very tiny zoa frag that fell off the rock and stayed in the peroxide dip a bit long.




Here this algae was dipped and is turning white and dieing off.



This is an area that needs touched up as it was missed in the dipping since some of the base rock I left in tank. Was just easier at the time.



Close up of some of the die off


One of the two new emeralds who is there for cleanup before going back to the LFS. He has them eating bryopsis in his tank and they were eating it in mine so hopefully with the dip and crabs I should be home free in a week.



And if not clean in the tank I have 8 more bottles of peroxide ready to go. LOL.


Yesterday I ordered in my tailspot blenny, picked up my black ice clowns, and got a new tiny acan frag. Clowns are in the QT and the blenny will go in. So they should be ready for the DT on my birthday mid April.

The 10 gallon is on the floor since I didnt have anywhere else to put it and my toddler LOVES this as she lays on the floor laughing at the clowns swimming around.
 
he is still in there but for spot treatments that will occur this weekend he will be moved to the QT since those will happen in tank
 
Here are my two clowns. Forgive the bad pics as they were at lfs.

9f53f174b2b2e73a8a8ff5afb63744df.jpg
260c18d53b154db717cfab68700c85cf.jpg
 
So I have a coralife RODI system and for whatever reason it appears to have crapped the bed. It is new and has produced around 150 gallons or so of water and now can not get anything through it. It had a leak in it when I got it that i had fixed but even trying to do a manual flush I got no better flow.

Guess I should have known not to go cheap with a system so critical.

So now I have a BRS water saver unit coming my way via 2 day air so I can keep producing water for my QT and top offs. Thankfully I have about 10 gallons of water made that will last me the couple days but it is one thing or another it appears right now.

Hopefully I can get this box in without the wife noticing.
 
Well the new RODI comes today so I can get back up and running with everything. Excited about that. I need to do a massive water change on my DT as I had to skip it this past weekend with the rodi woes.

As the QT is up and running well with the clowns my blenny came in yesterday. So he went in resetting my clock on the QT. They will go into the tank for my birthday on 4/16 if nothing arises with them. I am not dosing these guys as they all look healthy and I will do so only if needed. I dont like to overly stress my fish with treating the tank unless i need to.

That all said here is the new blenny:

 
\Clownfish/ said:
I'm glad things are going well. How much bryopsis is left?
Click to expand...

Very little. Though with my RODI unit down I could not make water for rinsing and such. I will be back online in that regard tonight.

I have a few touch up spots of the bryopsis that either was not affected by the dip, was not actually dipped, or has regrown since. I will try the spot treatment method with the baking powder to make a paste that i can suck back up.

I thinik that should keep the level of peroxide in the tank to a minimum and should be ok for Piere the cleaner shrimp. Or I might put him in the QT just in case. He could clean up the leftover food in the QT at least. HA


I will try for some pics and such tonight or tomorrow after I get back up and running.
 
Installed the RODI unit last night but did not take pics due to the late hour I got around to it. I have to do a water change on everything tomorrow so I will update with pics then.

In the meantime I jumped on the BRS dosing pump sale today and snagged 2 of them for the tank. Couldnt go wrong with 2 pumps for $120.

I will probably need to buy an additional energy bar for the apex or consolidate some of my plugs into a power strip plugged into one outlet to make my life a bit easier. I think I will go this route for now to save money and plug the return, skimmer, and reactor into 1 freeing up 2 plugs for the pumps. I turn all of those on and off for feedings and water changes so it makes sense to combine those for now.
 
Great build so far, and I've gone through your thread a number of times trying to pick up any hints/tips for my (relatively) new 29g biocube build (I started in November).

I'm trying to figure out which LEDs to do. How are you liking the Aurora? I can't decide whether to do that, or their custom LED solderless build so I can tune the colors manually through changing out LEDs as I go, or get a Hydra 26 since they're on sale for ~$300 now.

Thanks for keeping this log updated. I feel bad that I never did a tank thread with this build, but oh well. I'll keep following your thread and if I can ever provide help, I'll add in.
 
I like the puck. I have full control over the blue, uv, whites, and mixed independently. Plugging it into my apex allowed for some nice sunrise and sets especially when coupled with the moon lights.

To be honest though if I were to do it all over again I would say the hell with the hood and have gone with the radion. And this is not a knock on the rapidled at all but lack of forward thinking on my part. I did not anticipate having to cut so much of the hood for the aquamaxx, then adding a reactor, and now about to add in the dosing lines. Going topless would have alleviated some of my fitment issues.

At this point though I will keep the top as the next step for me is to replace my 125 fresh water set up. I will be listing that for sale towards the end of this summer so see if I can get that moved and those funds will go towards a new 180. I will build the stand myself like I have for my other large tanks. Probably go custom with coast to coast overflow as well but still deciding if I want to incur the additional costs.
 
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