280g Inwall [Archive] - Page 3 - Canreef Aquatics Bulletin Board

Delphinus

12-06-2010, 05:37 PM

I'm thinking it's the controller because both waveboxes are controlled off the same unit. The controller powers on and you can see the little LED's switching on and off but the pumps themselves, both of them, remain off. I tried bumping the impellers in case they were just having trouble starting but that didn't do anything. To actually remove the waveboxes and take them apart will be a bit of an effort because of the tight spot they are mounted in .. but at least taking them off the controller to see if that is the problem should be an easy enough first step. If they power on and stay on without the controller in the equation then at least we know it's the controller and not the stream pumps themselves. And yeah all my Tunzes are the old style streams so I guess at this point if anything further on them goes then I just start saving the pennies for a Vortech.

Would a single MP40 be enough in a 6' tank? I think a MP60 would probably be too much? I was really hoping to get swish-swish wave effect with the polyps in this tank if/when I ever get to the point I'm comfortable trying corals in it...

lastlight

12-06-2010, 05:59 PM

Tony I think all the 6101, 6201 etc are repairable but not the 6100, 6200 series. I think it's the old hockey puck transformers that are no longer made and if I recall correctly they are part of the pump. But for both to go at the same time...that's pretty much impossible. So the red and green are coming on opposite each other...what about the other red light that says the pumps are on?

Lance

12-06-2010, 06:00 PM

michika

12-06-2010, 06:12 PM

I have nothing but sympathy for you. I hope you can fix the controller and don't have to replace it.

The vortech's are nice and all, but they do a number on your wallet.

Delphinus

12-06-2010, 06:17 PM

I can only recall two LED's, a green and a red and they always alternate. I don't recall a third LED to indicate pump status. In short the controller looks fat dumb and happy and doing it's regular thing, the pumps just sit there as if they are not getting any power. No hockey puck transformers on these - they have two cigar-box sized 24v transformers then a little 1" black square box with 3 cables attached, one is the 24V supply, one goes to the controller port (master or slave), and the last is the lead to the pump drive itself. I'm probably getting the terminology wrong I know they call some things drivers and some things motor drives or blabbity blabbity.

Lance do you just use the Vortech's or do you use other things as well?

I've never quite embraced the look of all these things in the tank, I thought I'd get over it but I can see why people go closed-loops, I'm still not buying into that idea for myself but I can see ditching both waveboxes and all 4 Tunzes and going the Vortech route if I could convince myself what that would be like on THIS tank. :neutral: It's hard to describe, I know nobody has ever regretted the purchase of them but to buy two of them is basically a thousand dollars more in cost than what I have to spend. :cry: I don't know .. I just .. I just don't know anymore. I don't know. I just don't know where to go with things some days. I'm tired.

Delphinus

12-06-2010, 06:20 PM

Ok I have to share this. This actually made me LOL:

http://www.funlol.com/15983/Build_your_own_chopper.html

Admittedly, a bit of a stretch from reef tanks to R/C helicopters, but the idea feels about right.

lastlight

12-06-2010, 06:23 PM

It's not a deal-breaker at least man. I saw the setup and you should be ready to cycle and get on with it. The wave thing would be nice but at least you can sort out that issue WHILE the tank gets it's reef on.

Lance

12-06-2010, 08:24 PM

Lance do you just use the Vortech's or do you use other things as well.

2x MP40's, Turbelle Stream2, Korallia Evo 1400, Barracuda return pump via 2x 1" return pipes. Guesstimating about 12,000 GPH or about 50x turnover. I change up the settings on the Vortechs fairly often: going with a wave for awhile and then to erratic movement for awhile. I don't really have many SPS in this tank so it's probably overkill, but some of my LPS have really grown into large colonies, so it's not really too much flow. I use the night setting on the Vortechs. I think the LPS appreciate some lull time.

Delphinus

12-07-2010, 05:20 AM

So I guess it's not the controller. Next step is get them out of the tank take them apart and see what's going on inside.

FWIW it does have the 3rd LED for "pump on" ad yeah it's indicating on.

Is all this worth it? I kinda doubt it.

Tomorrow .. I'll poke some more at it tomorrow. Today, I'm just done. Tomorrow will be the turnaround day that makes all the crap of the last 3 weeks seem like a distant memory. Or .. not. Time will tell.

christyf5

12-07-2010, 05:39 AM

Tony, is the light on on the power supply? (I think its the 24v "fuse" that lights up or something like that.) if not its probably shot, I had one go that way and had to replace the power supply.

Also you could try reversing the master and slave to see whats up there or if you have another controller, hook that up as well as it will still run the pump without the proper controller.

Delphinus

12-09-2010, 07:09 AM

So some good news and some not so good news for me. I finally got the waveboxes out and it looks like after cleaning the impellers they're both off and running again. I'm impressed by how little gunk it took to stop them dead in their tracks. I'm guessing they were probably fine when they were on and warm, but when I turned off all the pumps to add sand the other day, they cooled off and the contraction was enough to cause a problem for starting up.

So that's the happy news, they're still out of the tank on account I need two people to do the job of putting them back in and I'm never home when Linda is home and she's never home when I'm home because of the whole one parent is home with the kids all the time kind of thing wheeeeee! So yeah that's not done yet but whatev'.

The sucky news is that although I took some time and resoldered the power plug on the 6100's driver (I took pics as I went, it's a real MacGyver job - I cut up and used pieces of a paper clip to jury rig replacement pins for the plug and then soldered those in - I'll post them later) .. it turns out the broken plug was the least of the problems. Roger Vitko had suggested (about a month ago) that it might be worthwhile to replace the impeller but alas it's not the driver, it's not the impeller but it does seem to be the motor block. I've tried every other combination of motor blocks, impellers and drivers and everything works except when this one motor block is involved. Que'lle dommage. The silver lining, if it is one, seems to be that J&L has replacement motor blocks in stock (according to the website anyhow, in the meantime I've fired off an email and will see what they say back). The not-so-silver lining is that depending on which model I need (I'm a little unclear on this) it's either $255 or $270. Ouch. $325ish to buy the newer model 6105, it's almost a no-brainer not to even bother replacing the motor block.

So yeah it's not real clear to me at this point what's the better thing to do. Any advice?

Dez

12-09-2010, 01:00 PM

I would find another wavebox used. I've seen them pop up every once in a while. That's what I would do. Sucky luck man.

Delphinus

12-09-2010, 04:10 PM

Yeah, thanks, that's sort of what it's going to come down to at this point although at least it's not a wavebox that's the problem, just a stream on its own. Coleus on here had a 6100 for sale for the longest time, it's too bad mine decided to crap out a month after that one finally sold.

After poking around some more on the net this morning I've figured out the difference between the $255 replacement motor block and the $270 replacement motor block ... and of course it's the $270 one that I would need since it's the older style stream that I have. Funny that the older one is the more expensive but I think that's the explanation - it turns out you can't even get these from tunze.com anymore - totally discontinued. So the options are buy used, there do seem to be a few for sale over at RC at the moment, buy something else (Time to get a Vortech???) or buy the replacement motor block. But that last option seems like a non-starter. Check it out:

$270: http://www.jlaquatics.com/product/tz-z610015/Tunze+Turbelle+Stream+6100+Motor+Block+-+6101.015.html

$332.35: http://www.jlaquatics.com/product/tz-ts6105/Tunze+Turbelle+Stream+Pump+-+6105.html

Unfortunate timing with the holidays around the corner and a recent streak of rather expensive unfortunate luck. I'm really feeling squeezed at the moment... for now I might just have to make do with whatever I can muster out of the junk drawer. Don't be too surprised if the next FTS there are about a hundred itty bitty powerheads all over the place in the tank .. I knew I was hanging onto all those things for a reason even if said reason wasn't entirely clear at the time..

kien

12-09-2010, 04:48 PM

Let me know if you don't have enough ittt bitty powerheads. I have a box of 2xtunze 6055s (with controller), and some koralias and I think there might be a noisy 6105 in there too. Noisy as in it rattles a bit. They are just collecting dust at the moment.

michika

12-09-2010, 04:52 PM

If I was you, I'd just make due for the next little while, and then replace it with a new one. Like you said everything for it is discontinued, and what happens if you pay the $270 and something else goes a few months later?

So what if you have some extra powerheads in the tank for a while, really what does it impact aside from the aesthetics of it all?

Delphinus

12-09-2010, 05:16 PM

Yeah unfortunately the sad part of that is that the powerheads are in the spare drawer for a reason - most of them are either tiny (the Hagen 201's and 301's don't even put out enough flow for the 40g carpet tank but I use them there on a wavewaker just to shake things up a little in there - but in a 280g they may as well be eye droppers) and then there's a fairly large collection of Maxijet 12's which would be not so bad except that they almost all need new impellers. The impellers only last so long but the motor drives on THOSE appear to last forever and ever (Tunze maybe needs to take lessons from Maxijet?!)

With the sump return, waveboxes and one 6100 there's probably enough flow to get the tank through the cycle and just be a FOWLR for a little while. I can accept not having corals at this point it's not any different than what I have going on right now anyhow. Or maybe I sell one of the waveboxes after all and put that towards the purchase of something else.

Kien - thanks for the offer, I'll msg you offline and we can talk some more :)

lastlight

12-09-2010, 05:47 PM

I'm really anxious to hear some good news for a change man this sucks. It doesn't seem worth it to replace that motor block and I hear ya on feeling squeezed. Best to just make do. Even a couple Koralias new would be good for a while but sounds like Kien has you covered. There's always that evil other option and that's to shift towards Vortechs...

michika

12-09-2010, 06:46 PM

Yes, good news would be awesome!

Also you need to December FTS! How far away are you from cycling and adding livestock?

Delphinus

12-09-2010, 07:32 PM

I assume there's a cycling starting now but I haven't measured anything. My plan was to start taking more proactive steps once the sand was all in. I've got about half the sand in there now and it's still cloudy but part of the problem is the sand is all sucked into the back half of the tank because the pumps aren't all there to balance it all out.

Anyhow once the sand is all in and I have the ATO going (so that salinity is stable) then it's just waiting out the cycle. I have some time off after next week and I was hoping to have the livestock transfer happen when I'm off but we'll see how that goes I guess.

Oh .. speaking of ATO. I have this vague recollection of turning on my RO/DI last night to top off the tank and I have no recollection of ever turning it off before I went to bed. I, uh ... crap, nobody's home right now. I, uh .. yeah shoot I'm going home for a quick errand !! :eek:

lastlight

12-09-2010, 07:46 PM

I hate it when that happens! I was out once with the family...we were at one of the LFS and suddenly my phone alarm goes off. Wife asks what that was for and I reply we gotta get home FAST! Got in the door as my topoff tank was just starting to show meniscus!

Delphinus

12-09-2010, 09:27 PM

Yeah that was a bit of an "oops". There was indeed water on the floor. Turns out last night I must have bumped the RO/DI line because it was just dripping onto the floor and the sump water level was still way down. :lol: DUH! Oh well, with the tapwater being so cold right now the RO/DI's production is WAY down and there was surprisingly not as much of a puddle as one might have thought there would be for 12 hours of RO/DI dripping onto the floor.

So naturally instead of turning it off, I just put the tube back into the sump and left for work again (after I wetvac'd the floor some). In the meantime I have a really nice clean spot on the floor in the closet next to the tank room. The one silver lining is that now I know where I need to shore up the silicone along the floor to help contain floods. The front edge of the tank is completely dry so the silicone there either did the trick (or the water didn't run that way).

MitchM

12-10-2010, 12:13 AM

Tony,

I am just in the process of cleaning up my 2 6215 waveboxes to get ready to sell them. Would you be interested in those?

Mitch

Delphinus

12-26-2010, 07:17 PM

Well .. things progressed a little since last update. Every step has a minor stumbling block though. Some days all you can do is laugh.

We'll start off with a Boxing Day FTS:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1671-0.jpg

Tank is in super need of some colour. Dry rock and new sand just looks so sterile.

The lighting is in 3 phases:
1) Initial dusk/dawn is provided by the 2x24w t5's left of centre. They run 10:30 to 22:30.
2) Next up is the centre 400w and the 4x54w t5's. They run from 11:15 to 21:45.
3) Highest intensity with the left and right 400w's from 12:00 to 20:00.

All 3 halides are Radiums. The middle is a standard pulse-start (ANSI M137 or whatever it is for 400w pulse-start). The outside two are SonAgro ("HQI"). You can tell the middle light has a slightly blue hue to it, the outside two are a super crisp white.

The 54w T5's are 2 SuperActinic and 2 454's. The 454's are neat choice. Almost like a brighter-than-usual actinic, a little more blue than purple like a standard actinic would be.

The outside two halides aren't on right now because I ran out of timers. You wouldn't believe the number of timers that I've bought that are faulty out of the box. I'm up to around 3 now that I've had to return to Rona. And one more now. Crazy, they must have had one super bad shipment. Anyhow so I have to go get another freakin' timer before those lights can be on automatic. Grumble.

Some shots of the light stand with the t5's installed:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1677-0.jpg

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1678-0.jpg

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1679-0.jpg

You can sort of see the difference between the SuperActinic and the 454 here. See how there is a purplish tint to the second lamp, that's the actinic, the other is the 454.
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1680-0.jpg

Also got the ATO installed. On the advice of Chin, the ATO empties into the skimmer intake to keep it clear. This meant for the first tank in 12 years I'd use a pump based top up instead of the usual $10 Home Depot humidifier float valve (which I'll say has NEVER failed me in 12 years. I would have done the same for this tank but I like the idea of an automatic rinsing of the skimmer air intake - I find I need to clean the air intakes of my other tank skimmers about every 2 weeks, there's enough gunk buildup in those to justify doing so.)

Sensors on the left side of the sump:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1672-0.jpg
(Ignore the messiness, I want to clean the glass when I do a water change but since the tank hasn't finished cycling, I haven't yet done so. No water changes until I get a zero nitrite reading! Last night it was still at 0.2 so it has a while to go yet.)

Controller sits on the right side of the stand:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/preview_img_16730.jpg

And the mini reservoir sits under the sink. I had to use a bucket with a float valve so that the RO/DI reservoir (which is currently too far away) can drain into the bucket but not spill over, and then the pump can sit in this bucket and go feed the skimmer air intake line when it switches on.
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/preview_img_16750.jpg

Installing a top off on your tank isn't supposed to cause this:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1676-0.jpg
This happened when I was stringing the wire and tube from the top off pump over the sump area and I was cutting electrical tape to hold it all together so it wouldn't be such a gong show of a rats nest of wires and tubes. Actually you can see the scar on my pointer finger as well. That's the gash I gave myself trying to install the Zeovit reactor about 2 weeks ago. No word of a lie, I cut my finger doing that too. Well, it wasn't so much the reactor itself to blame but rather the plumbing needed modding, and the previous plumbing was glued to the pump, so I was trying to break things apart without breaking the pump itself. I succeeded in that goal if nothing else.

Guess that's about it. Well I guess I did modify my zeovit reactor so I will take some pictures of that later. I'm trying the zeovit 14-day cycle thing but I have to say so far it's not looking like it will be ready for fish in 14 days. Part of the problem though is self inflicted, between holidays and sick kids and a pet needing surgery this last week, it took me longer than I wanted to get the lights on timers and I don't think the cycle can really begin in earnest until there is light. Now that at least phases 1 and 2 happen on the light cycle, I have noticed the nitrite reading start to spike. So while this means the wait has to continue, at least there is a sign of stuff actually happening.

Unfortunately in my other tanks things continue to remind me that we need to shut down. On Christmas Day yesterday I lost another clam in my serial clam death event. This is what I hate about clams: if you lose one, unless you get it out quick enough, whatever kills it spreads to the others. I've lost about 6 in the last two months. I am hoping this is the last one. This one in particular surprised me for lasting as long as it had: over the summer it sustained a mantle injury. It had been showing signs of recovery lately but then bam, just like that, it too checked out, all of a sudden yesterday. Ugh. I'm depressed about it but I guess these things happen. I feel like I'm paying the karmic price of not having a single clam death in 5 years prior to this fall. Maybe old age is a factor? I somehow doubt it but if I pretend it is then I sort of feel a little less bad about it.

Delphinus

12-26-2010, 07:18 PM

Oh and you can see the Tunzes on the Wavysea's have been taken out. I had been leaning toward removing them for a while on account of a few reasons:

1) They sat way too far into the tank because of the Eurobracing. Apart from the obvious visual nuisance of two outboard motors hanging into the tank almost 8" off the back wall, it was ruining the scale of the tank as well. It made the tank feel really small and well .. while it's far from a big tank by many standards, it is the biggest tank I will ever attempt so long as I live in this house. (Well, ok, never say never, I suppose ... but realistically the odds of that ever happening are very slim.) I totally resented that they made the tank seem small.

2) Sand. I have sand after all. In the beginning I totally intended on going BB with this tank. But after putting the rock in, the very rough silicone edges on th bottom panel were visually disjarring so I elected to go with sand. And "lots of flow" and "lots of sand" never seem to work well together. With both wavysea combos on the back, the front half of the tank would lose all sand. So I tried moving one to the front to offset the one on the back, and this posed a few challenges, notably, it interfered with the t5's on that side of the light rack, and it had to work around the Calfo manifold. In the end I bolted the wavysea to the wall and then this transferred pump noise into the wall. The wall resonated with the humming of a running Tunze. Not offensively so, but it did take away from the goal of not wanting to hear the tank noise at all on the display side. And then after all that was all said and done, it didn't fix the shifting sand issue. Instead it created a trench in the front of sand-free area, and a second one in the back of the tank.

The final straw was this - found this on Christmas Eve:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1682-0.jpg

After moving the one Tunze to the front, apparently the wire had a constant wiggle in one spot and the insulation eventually gave way. I was watching the Tunze sweep back and forth and noticed that at the right setpoint, it would turn off and on. So yeah, awesome, I killed another Tunze. Starting to wonder if Tunze is a 4 letter word in German..

So my plan right now is to switch two of the outlets on the Calfo manifold over to Wavysea's. Figure I have them and might as well still use them.

michika

12-26-2010, 10:46 PM

I think we can all now say that your build has moved on from glacial to a brisk walk/slow jog! Its really coming together now.

Which timers are you using? I want to know what to avoid buying from Rona for the next little while.

Delphinus

12-26-2010, 11:00 PM

Ironically to me the pace has never really slowed or sped up. Every night I do something to the wee hours of the morning. I haven't had a sleep longer than 5 hours in well over a year now except when I've been out of town because I'm up to 2am or 3am every night doing something. It's just that (and you of all folks I'm sure will agree), when you're building a whole basement around the tank there's a CRAP load of other things you need to take care of at the same time. Not all of it may be tank related. :)

And of course when you end up redoing something because it doesn't work or doesn't meet your expectations, that I guess will slow things down some, but that's a combination of chance, luck, and not able to accurately forecast all potential side effects of a particular idea. And I'd like to think that could happen to anyone once in a while although I'm fairly certain I've had more than my mathematical/statistical fair share than most might, but that's not worth dwelling on.

Delphinus

12-27-2010, 09:44 PM

Which timers are you using? I want to know what to avoid buying from Rona for the next little while.

Sorry I missed this question before. The timers that were faulty had a very European sounding name, "Uberhaus" or something like that. They were round and kind of ugly but what I liked about them was that the plugs were oriented such that the ground plug was up against the wall so you can put a 3-way splitter on it and run a couple things off the timer.

Rona has a bunch of brands that sound European, they have two others that seem to be the same but branded differently, "Nordik" and I forget the other. I have two Nordik's now and the one Uberhaus that didn't need returning. The Nordiks have two plugs on them already which is nice except that they are one on each side so no matter what you do you end up taking up a lot of space over the wall plugs and end up covering a neighbouring plug. Can't win! :lol:

lobsterboy

01-03-2011, 08:37 PM

those stiches look ready to come out.

get it going Tony.

Delphinus

01-03-2011, 10:17 PM

Heh. Stitches are out, and the first few fish are in. About 14 astrea snails in there so far as well as two moon snails. I've also been stealing Stomatella snails out of the other tanks at night and dropping them into the tank.

MASSIVE diatom bloom happening. Tank looks horrendous.

Still trying to dial in flow. Having a venturi issue with one Wavysea, I tried to DIY a 3/4" inlet barb for it (came second hand and only came with a 1" input which doesn't work for me) - hoping to hear I can get a replacement part but we'll see. Haven't fully committed to keeping the Wavysea's at this point.

Also having some massive doubt about keeping the waveboxes. They literally are doing nothing in this tank. It's not the fault of the waveboxes themselves, the tank just wasn't designed to have waveboxes and the overflow is just too high. The water level sits right at the top of the wavebox. I can only hit the sweet spot if I shut the sump return off. Since I have the diatoms on the rock it's easy to tell if there's any "wave" action. With the sump return on and the other pumps on there is no back and forth, just a slight maybe 1/4" level deviation that alternates between left and right. With the sump return off there is maybe a 1.5" wave and a noticeable back and forth effect. So if the cost of the wave is no sump return I guess that's a no brainer, in that case it might be further ahead to pull them out, dial in the flow with the other Tunzes and recover the space back from the sidewall the waveboxes are sitting at. So there might be some waveboxes put up for sale soon. :lol: That's going to hurt, I think I spent $350 apiece for them a couple years ago and the current going rate is considerably less, assuming you can even sell them at all. :(

christyf5

01-03-2011, 11:34 PM

Also having some massive doubt about keeping the waveboxes. They literally are doing nothing in this tank. It's not the fault of the waveboxes themselves, the tank just wasn't designed to have waveboxes and the overflow is just too high. The water level sits right at the top of the wavebox. I can only hit the sweet spot if I shut the sump return off. Since I have the diatoms on the rock it's easy to tell if there's any "wave" action. With the sump return on and the other pumps on there is no back and forth, just a slight maybe 1/4" level deviation that alternates between left and right. With the sump return off there is maybe a 1.5" wave and a noticeable back and forth effect. So if the cost of the wave is no sump return I guess that's a no brainer, in that case it might be further ahead to pull them out, dial in the flow with the other Tunzes and recover the space back from the sidewall the waveboxes are sitting at. So there might be some waveboxes put up for sale soon. :lol: That's going to hurt, I think I spent $350 apiece for them a couple years ago and the current going rate is considerably less, assuming you can even sell them at all. :(

Tony, wait until you get stuff in the tank before you sell them. I think you'll be surprised when the tank has corals etc in it. You may not ever get "the wave" but they'll add some nice movement to the tank and you've already invested your dough in them so there is no point in taking a loss right now, just hold off for a bit.

lastlight

01-03-2011, 11:54 PM

Do you see the wave at the surface? I do with mine but the back and forth action you normally see lower in the tank is different. Not really an obvious thing but if you watch particulates in the water you can tell they're moving more erratically. I think you should keep them too. Should at least see a wave on the surface though I'd imagine? In my tank I get a weird flexing of the water. Opposite corners of the tank peak at the same time.

Delphinus

01-04-2011, 04:55 AM

If I double the periodicity (is that a word?) then I get the "twisty wave" going with the opposite corners. Guess I can try that and see what happens.

Right now it's really obvious as there is a fair bit of particulate in the water column from the diatom bloom. There is ZERO effect from the waveboxes if the sump return is on, regardless of whether the other Tunzes are on or not. There is a "not bad" wave effect if the rest of the powerheads are off AND the sump return is off. But even then it becomes a "marginal" if the Tunzes are allowed on. There must be too much interference.

I dunno I guess I'll give it a while yet before pulling the plug on them but I still think their days might be numbered. :lol: It is a very large area that they take up that maybe a MP40 could sit in instead.

Skimmerking

01-04-2011, 01:56 PM

Tony those wave boxes don't under estimate them they do work, however the tuning is the key sometimes it takes like a 1/16th of a turn to get them where you need them.

hold up little grasshopper.

michika

01-04-2011, 06:23 PM

As soon as you described the timers I knew exactly what you were talking about. We also had an issue with a couple timers we bought, not for tank purposes, that were faulty.

Now that the tank is essentially set up, how did your electrical set-up work? Did you end up having enough plugs? I'm always so worried about once a set-up is done what happens if you need to expand.

Delphinus

01-04-2011, 08:04 PM

Tony those wave boxes don't under estimate them they do work, however the tuning is the key sometimes it takes like a 1/16th of a turn to get them where you need them.

hold up little grasshopper.

Ahhhhhso grasshoppa! :lol:

I'm pretty sure the boxes are tuned correctly is the thing. I did it with the rest of the current turned off and I dialed it back and forth around the spot where the waves were the biggest and yeah the slightest little bump on the dial would cause the waves to lessen.

The problem resides with how the water level sits against the boxes when the sump return is on. The waveboxes are as high as they possibly can go, jammed up against the Eurobracing. But the water level is right up to the top of the box so the water in fact spills into the boxes from the top. What ends up happening is that the boxes do not empty and refill like they should when the pumps do their thing. They are just powerheads turning off and on. Without the displacement there is no real wave. There is a slight level deviation at the ends, you can see the water level lap up around the bottom of the Eurobracing.

The problem isn't with the waveboxes but in the way the tank was built - the overflow is too high.

I'll take some pictures and/or video tonight and show you guys what I mean. Maybe it will make more sense when you see what's happening.

As soon as you described the timers I knew exactly what you were talking about. We also had an issue with a couple timers we bought, not for tank purposes, that were faulty.

Now that the tank is essentially set up, how did your electrical set-up work? Did you end up having enough plugs? I'm always so worried about once a set-up is done what happens if you need to expand.

For the most part it was enough. I have the load split for the 3 tanks now in the basement among 4 circuits and when the other two are offline I may be able to shift things around a bit to load balance even further.

I ended up adding two powerbars in the end: one for the Tunze 6080's (AC, non controllable) although now there is only one of them so I probably don't need that powerbar any more, and then another for the skimmer (two pumps to run the skimmer, it's nice to have a shutoff if need be in case I need to open it up for any reason) and then I tagged the Osmolator, the carbon reactor powerhead, and the zeovit reactor pump off that powerbar since otherwise I'd have needed 3 extension cords to make them reach to the plugs.

I wish I could do without the powerbars since there isn't a powerbar in the world that doesn't seem to say right on it "DO NOT USE FOR AQUARIUMS! YOU IDIOT!" (well maybe I'm paraphrasing a little, but you get the gyst). But I really wanted an easy way to turn the skimmer off and on without pulling plugs out of the wall.

The electrical hookups are a huge messy disaster with plugs and wires everywhere. I wish I could think of a way to tidy it up a bit.

JonT

01-04-2011, 08:13 PM

Ahhhhhso grasshoppa! :lol:

I'm pretty sure the boxes are tuned correctly is the thing. I did it with the rest of the current turned off and I dialed it back and forth around the spot where the waves were the biggest and yeah the slightest little bump on the dial would cause the waves to lessen.

The problem resides with how the water level sits against the boxes when the sump return is on. The waveboxes are as high as they possibly can go, jammed up against the Eurobracing. But the water level is right up to the top of the box so the water in fact spills into the boxes from the top. What ends up happening is that the boxes do not empty and refill like they should when the pumps do their thing. They are just powerheads turning off and on. Without the displacement there is no real wave. There is a slight level deviation at the ends, you can see the water level lap up around the bottom of the Eurobracing.

The problem isn't with the waveboxes but in the way the tank was built - the overflow is too high.

I'll take some pictures and/or video tonight and show you guys what I mean. Maybe it will make more sense when you see what's happening.

For the most part it was enough. I have the load split for the 3 tanks now in the basement among 4 circuits and when the other two are offline I may be able to shift things around a bit to load balance even further.

I ended up adding two powerbars in the end: one for the Tunze 6080's (AC, non controllable) although now there is only one of them so I probably don't need that powerbar any more, and then another for the skimmer (two pumps to run the skimmer, it's nice to have a shutoff if need be in case I need to open it up for any reason) and then I tagged the Osmolator, the carbon reactor powerhead, and the zeovit reactor pump off that powerbar since otherwise I'd have needed 3 extension cords to make them reach to the plugs.

I wish I could do without the powerbars since there isn't a powerbar in the world that doesn't seem to say right on it "DO NOT USE FOR AQUARIUMS! YOU IDIOT!" (well maybe I'm paraphrasing a little, but you get the gyst). But I really wanted an easy way to turn the skimmer off and on without pulling plugs out of the wall.

The electrical hookups are a huge messy disaster with plugs and wires everywhere. I wish I could think of a way to tidy it up a bit.

Instead of a power bar, grab a DJ box. The ones they use for their lights etc. They normally have about 5 switches/plugs. Each plug has its own switch.

Lance

01-04-2011, 09:29 PM

Instead of a power bar, grab a DJ box. The ones they use for their lights etc. They normally have about 5 switches/plugs. Each plug has its own switch.

I've tried to find one of those but the ones I saw had a price tag that only a Rock Star could afford. Where do you get them?

Delphinus

01-09-2011, 07:14 AM

Not too much to report but some pictures what the hey. Wish I could add my name to the hat of 8' tanks that seem to be all the rage but that's um not going to happen anytime soon.

I technically had fish in the tank in 2010! New Year's Eve I got a zero nitrite reading after what felt like weeks hovering at 0.1 so I promptly went and picked up a few small chromis. A couple days later I moved over the one big chromis from the cube, they found each other and school pretty good. It's hilarious the size difference, the four new are about 1" max and the old guy is almost 2.5" so it's like seeing the mother ship or something.

Diatom bloom is abating, not all gone as yet but going away. Water remains cloudy though and has been for the better part of at least a week. Previously it would sort of come and go. I'm not sure what's up with that. I don't have an ammonia test kit but I have been testing nitrite and it's consistently reading zero. So hopefully it will clear up.

Filter socks - have to clean them out everyday. Hope that's a function of the diatoms and will settle down to something less frequent.

January 8 FTS -
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1710-0.jpg

You can see the flow pattern of the hidden 6080 on the back glass, the big brown patch. I'm thinking the 6080 is going to come out, I have some major tweaking to do with the flow still before I'm happy with what I see.

End shot:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1715-0.jpg

Other than that I've moved over some gorgonians, a baby RBTA, and added a pile of cleanup crew.

I took a picture of these guys in the bucket because I figure that's the last I'll ever see of them..
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1704-0.jpg

Going..
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1707-0.jpg

Going ... gone ...
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1708-0.jpg

Fighter meets Strawberry..
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1713-0.jpg

Some spaghetti worms from the small cube..
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1716-0.jpg

And this little guy makes 6 fish so far. Need a better photo but this was the best of the bunch.
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1721-0.jpg

He had actually been chased into the sump a few times in the cube that he ended up living there for a few months. So for now I'm not going to move any fish over to let him establish here and hopefully not be bullied. The ones I'm a little worried about are the trigger, the canary wrasse and the dottyback. I think the chasing should be not a problem once he's established and these guys become the newcomers.

In the meantime I'm dripping some more corals and some clams for introduction tomorrow. I'd do more but the cloudy water really has me a little worried. As we all know the only thing that happens quickly is disaster so I'm not allowing myself to be rushed here. The next few steps are going to be interesting: tomorrow, if all goes well, I plan to move the two clams out of the big cube into the tank. But the 2 clams in the little tank are going to go into the cube for now instead of the big tank, and then maybe they'll have their turn after another week or so. The reason for this is that they are firmly attached to their rocks - and I'm not going to remove them - but the rocks are covered in aiptasia and caulerpa. So the tangs, rabbits and butterflies are going to have a heyday cleaning the rocks off.

Caulerpa, valonia and anything else that's green for that matter, shouldn't be an issue in the big tank much the same as it isn't an issue in the big cube, since the 3 tangs and the rabbit devour the stuff if given any. Aiptasia on the other hand is something I hope not to introduce if I can avoid it since the butterflies aren't going to go into the big tank.

And on that last note I am going to be starting up a new thread for my pending FOWLR. :lol: Won't be anything too spectacular though. The cube is going to come down and be sold, the two butterflies and the golden dwarf eel will be moved into their own home. Could just keep them in the cube indefinitely but the cube has to be moved anyhow, won't really fit in the tank room in the corner thanks to the TWO corner overflows (who builds a 30" cube with dual overflows .. seriously. Anyhow, water under the bridge now) and just to hopefully keep costs "somewhat" under control it will be a bit of a downgrade. Oh well. So much for the plan to move to one tank to simplify things.

lastlight

01-09-2011, 12:32 PM

Really liking the FTS man. Looks a bazilion times better (and roomier) without the old-school tunze on the wavysea brackets. Strange about the cloudy water perhaps it gets cloudy for some reason each time your sock gets full and it's not pulling stuff out anymore?

What are those pancake mofos you added from the bucket? Funny I've never seen them before in a thread.

christyf5

01-09-2011, 12:52 PM

rofl....pancake mofos..i just loled and startled the kid. theyre sand dollars :lol:

Skimmerking

01-09-2011, 02:53 PM

Tony do those flat thingy's work and what do they do do they go through the sand bed cleaning

fishoholic

01-09-2011, 03:11 PM

rofl....pancake mofos..i just loled and startled the kid. theyre sand dollars :lol:

+1 :lol:

The FTS looks great so glad to see fish in there :mrgreen: I think you're right the small wrasse should be fine if he has a few days to settle in first.

Lance

01-09-2011, 04:40 PM

FTS looks great Tony! And as for those filter socks: I warned you to go bigger. I wish I had. I'm going to rig up for a larger sock. Cleaning every two to three days is a real PITA. Anyhow, things are looking good.

PS. Brett, only a flatlander wouldn't know what a sand dollar is. :mrgreen: Used to use those things as skipping stones on the beach when I was a kid.

StirCrazy

01-09-2011, 05:10 PM

I am realy surprised you got the sand dollars Tony, they have a very pour survival rate in tanks and will compete with the fighting conch for food.

looking good though.

Steve

Delphinus

01-09-2011, 06:49 PM

Just always wanted to try some sand dollars but never had enough open sandbed to try them so was never really an option. We'll see how it goes.

Yeah Lance I know you told me but you didn't tell me anything I wasn't already thinking. It was a matter of cost and what could be built: the glass sock holders were available for $20 each for 4" but a lot more for the 6" and would have to be fabricated. Plus all my 6" socks have broken rims so I needed to get all new anyhow and a few people convinced me to at least try the 4's. I've been using 6" for a long time now and I get a week before they need to be cleaned.

Worst case scenario I'll just stop using socks, but I'll use them for now as they help clear the diatoms. But I'll switch to a larger micron size first as that would be an easy enough thing to try.

lastlight

01-09-2011, 06:54 PM

I got lazy last week and again just ran my tank without a sock for a few days. Unreal how much better my skimmer skims but I really don't like the extra particulates in the water column.

Lance

01-09-2011, 08:08 PM

................I'll switch to a larger micron size first as that would be an easy enough thing to try.

Tony, what's the largest size micron sock you've seen? I'd be interested in acquiring some too.

Delphinus

01-15-2011, 03:40 AM

Should have answered Lance's question here instead of in HIS thread, but to anyone else wondering, bulkreefsupply.com has 200 micron bags of both felt and mesh materials and they say the mesh clogs less. I'm going in on the group buy right now and getting some of each, will see what I think, if I like them they stay, otherwise I might switch back to 8". Was looking at the 8" socks that J&L sells over at globaldesigns tank and have to say I like those a lot more than the 8" ones I'm currently using (a nicer "collar" setup).

Anyhow, real reason for this post ... and I'm hella overdue for pictures here, I realize that - will try to correct that tomorrow - but - something of a 1st milestone, my carpet tank is now officially empty! I'm going to drain it and clean it tonight. Otherwise everyone from that tank is now in the cube. Carpets, couple smaller clams, buncha LPS. I can't wait to take some pictures and post them. :)

I will probably be waiting until next weekend to get the remaining fish from the 115 g over. I moved over the rabbitfish earlier this week and it was a major tank upset with me having to remove most of the rocks to get at him, so the next fish will be all of them because there's no way I'm doing that for all of them individually. Also had a major heart stopping moment when I discovered one of the butterflies had swam into a crevasse underneath a bottom rock and then the whole structure fell onto him, pinning him underneath. All I could see was a motionless tail sticking out between the rock and sand. When I got it off him he just swam away and seemed none the worse for wear. Guess there's something good about having sand after all, it cushioned him instead of impaling or crushing him. Unfortunately I have not seen my dottyback since that day now and I'm fearing that maybe he met a similar fate but did not get so lucky. Hard to say - as a slender fish he can fit into the smallest of crevasses and get out of most - but 2 days without a single sighting is starting to get a little ominous. I'll be bummed if I lost him but I don't know what else I could have done differently.

Delphinus

01-21-2011, 01:20 AM

Got a little bit sidelined with the flu last few days. Spent the better part of the last 24 hours trying to sleep it off. So much for the flu shots!! Grumble. Anyhow I've upgraded my disposition from "would welcome death as a sweet release" to "would offer marginal resistance." So to commemorate the occasion I got the camera out.

Tank is going through a bit of a secondary diatom bloom - nowhere near as bad as the first go-round. Hopefully the cleanup crew can keep up. There are also a few tiny patches of cyano that literally hitched in on some things from the (now shutdown and sold) 40g. The Hippopus clam has a little on its shell and there's a frag disk with yellow polyps and red zoos with a little as well. I'm hoping that it will eventually just sort of go away in time.
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1741-0.jpg

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1742-0.jpg

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1756-0.jpg

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1757-0.jpg

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1760-0.jpg

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1766-0.jpg

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1767-0.jpg

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1768-0.jpg

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1770-0.jpg

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1773-0.jpg

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1774-0.jpg

Thought this was funny - can you tell where the sand dollar has been? A nice clean 3" strip of sand up against the glass ending in a mysterious mound of rubble. :lol:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/a/119946/img_1775-0.jpg

lastlight

01-21-2011, 01:33 AM

Haha that's some CRAZY pankcake mofo action there Tony! I love the gorgForest in behind the scape...adds some nice depth to the tank.

I thought for a sec you had the bottom of the tank eurobraced and I was like...I don't recall that. That mofo tricked me!

And seriously you can stop calling the thing a dang sand dollar nobody's buyin' it =)

Nems look saweet too...you must be pretty happy other than welcoming death etc. I'm sick as well...and had the flu shot months ago.

christyf5

01-21-2011, 01:36 AM

Tony!! Wouldja look at that! Awesomeness!! It looks great, congrats on finally getting to this, even if it was/is incredibly painful sometimes.

Delphinus

01-21-2011, 01:43 AM

The last week did have a few downers.

On Tuesday I picked up a new Signanus doliatus rabbitfish from globaldesigns. He went into the tank and settled in nicely. On Wednesday I caught my own out of the cube and moved him over. So for a few days there the two rabbits were in the 280g together.

Unfortunately, to catch mine, I had to remove most of the rock from the 115g. When replacing the rock, at one point I noticed that one of the butterflies had swam under a rock and it had shifted and toppled on top of him. It was a heart stopping moment when I noticed just the tail sticking out under the rock squished into the sand. But I was able to get the rock off him and he swam away as if nothing was the matter. But karma caught up to me because I think my dottyback might have been in one of the rocks that was taken out. It's been almost 10 days now and there has been no sign of him. :cry: So I think I likely killed him somehow.

The bad news doesn't end there. I had always wanted a pair of doliatus - I thought I had I read they do better in pairs or small schools. Well, maybe that's true if they're small together. Unfortunately the two started fighting badly. At first I thought, well, there's always this in the first day or two - I'll wait it out and see how it goes. In the past it's always been a sort of magic period of 3 days - after 3 days the aggression settles and things are fine. Well, sadly, on day 3, the smaller one I had gotten from globaldesigns died. :cry: So, that was an error of judgment on my part.

I decided that I could not accept the risk that the larger rabbit could haze the tangs and angels when the time comes to move them over - so I rehomed him on the weekend. The only other time I've had a fish literally kill another - was a sixline wrasse - and I don't miss that sixline in the least now that's he's passed on. Hazing is one thing (because it eventually stops) but when a fish kills another - they're done for me. As much as I love the look of those rabbitfish I doubt I will ever try another now that I know what they are capable of.

Aaaannd, I had a rose BTA in there who had a history of letting go of the rock he was on and letting the current take him to new places. Well unfortunately his luck ran out, on Monday this week I found what was left of him stuck inside one of the Tunze covers. Sigh.

So I'm not sure when I will move the rest of the fish over. Seeing as it was a major rock removing event to catch the one fish - I'm tempted to do them all at once and get the mayhem over with as soon as possible. So maybe on the weekend, I'll see if I have the energy to start chasing fish with nets and see how it goes.

To be moved are 3 tangs (Red Sea sailfin, lavender, and lieutenant), 3 angels (potters and a pair of bellus) and a canary wrasse. The butterflies and eel will stay put until their new tank is ready.

Lance

01-21-2011, 02:03 AM

Looking good my man! I like it.
I sure hope all the troubles are behind you. You most definitely deserve some clear sailing now.

lorenz0

01-21-2011, 03:51 AM

oooh digging the gorgonians

fishytime

01-22-2011, 02:56 PM

sorry to hear about the dolis Tony......you could try adding a smaller one once your tangs settle in????.....and ya, well.....nems is evil:mrgreen:.....this thing looks amazing with some life in it.....saweet!!!

Delphinus

01-22-2011, 05:08 PM

Thanks Doug! I think I'm done with rabbitfish though. The whole reason I had been attracted to doliatus in the first place was that they're one of the smaller rabbitfish and even still I think mine had become larger than my sailfin tang. After getting used the to the look of these 8 small fish in there right now (2 clowns, the fairy wrasse, the 5 chromis) and seeing them dart in and out of the rocks like you might expect to see on a real reef (it's a neat effect, I should try for a video), putting this 7" or whatever he was rabbitfish in there felt like tossing a 10lb trout into a barrell. So even the small ones are just too dang big in the end. So I think until the day comes I get an even bigger tank (which aint gonna happen soon, if at all) I think I'm OK being done with them for the time being.

I still sorta think them nems is more dumb than evil but yeah either-or I guess, take your pick. The stupid thing is I'm still tempted to try another rose, I just like the look of them even if I can't really stand the clowns that go in them. I technically have two 3/4" sized roses in there somewhere, one is completely lost and untraceable in the rockwork (guess it will show up if it wants to some day) and another in a jar. They were both hidden right in the deepest of pits in the bottom of the rockwork in the 40g so yeah talk about antisocial. Bleached to heck and starved to tiny, at least the one in the jar seems to be staying put so I can attempt to feed it and reacclimate it to daylight but it's probably a tall order to hope anything successful will come of my efforts there but I might as well try. Stupid BTAs.

andestang

01-22-2011, 08:19 PM

Well just caught up with whats been happening and really glad to see how things have turned out for you. Very nice Tony. I too love having a RBTA and just lost mine to a bad incident, had the thing for over 3 yrs so very upsetting. I had my true percs settle in it for most of the time.

fishoholic

01-23-2011, 03:34 AM

Tank is looking good :biggrin: Sorry to hear the rabbit fish didn't work out :sad: Hope your carpet anemone behaves itself. I got lucky with my RBTA it barely moved from the spot I first put it in and it's doing really well in my tank. I think it helps that it was a rbta that had split and I bought it from a canreef member.

Delphinus

01-24-2011, 06:02 AM

So, today I managed to find more basement floor (thanks again Eli!) and at the behest of Nathan, my 5 year old son, we moved over "his" starfish (a blue linckia). After getting the starfish on the drip, I thought ... well ... why not. Started pulling rock out, filled up 3 buckets and started chasing fish with nets.

I thought at first I might start with the angels and leave it at that for now. Then I thought ... oh whatever. I'm doing the tangs too. So another 10 minutes and had a bucket of angels, and a bucket of tangs. Started probing the sand since I didn't want to squish the canary wrasse and it's a good thing I did because I would have started stacking rocks back right on top of where he was hiding. So out he came too.

Staying for now are the eel, the butterflies, and the trigger. The trigger will join her friends in about a week's time - since she is the most aggressive and the fastest swimmer, she needs to go in last so that the others have a chance to settle in. I don't really anticipate problems mind you but it just seems better to do it this way for some reason. Eel and butterflies will be getting a new home and I picked up their new tank on Saturday - I'm totally stoked on that and will be starting a new thread for that in the coming days hopefully. It's a 65g tank with a black acrylic background and external overflow, 10mm glass with polished edges. No starfire glass but that's OK probably since it will be a basic FOWLR for the most part.

It was terrible to catch 7 fish to get them out of a tank, but putting 7 fish INTO a tank worked out better than I could have hoped for. They all know each other from before so the dynamics are 100% the same as before but just in a slightly different setting. They all quickly found places to hide and then gradually started venturing out to explore.

What a long journey it's been! But look! All the fish are in but one!

Here's a 10 second video I took about a half hour after they were all in:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/th_MVI_1793.jpg (http://s305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/?action=view&current=MVI_1793.mp4)

And a couple random photos:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1797.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1798.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1799.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1800.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1801.jpg

The male bellus mooning the camera:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1802.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1803.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1804.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1806.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1805.jpg

Also picked up some acan frags from CoralMaster (thanks again Greg!!!) and a blue zoo frag. Not sure where to put the blue zoos so for now they are on a rock near the bottom, under an overhang.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1794.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1795.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1796.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1811.jpg

Thanks for looking! :)

Snappy

01-24-2011, 06:07 AM

Coming along nicely there Tony. Where will you put the rumphella?

lastlight

01-24-2011, 06:22 AM

Very nice collection of fish Tony. They must be so happy...that sailfin especially is so deserving of a big tank to show off all his sexiness.

I'm so in love with my blue zoas. They're all open and getting even more colourful.

fishytime

01-24-2011, 02:58 PM

Dooooo loooove those zoas Tony.....and the cans are pretty dang sweet too!:biggrin:

fishoholic

01-24-2011, 03:20 PM

Looks great Tony, bet the fish are happy with all the extra space :biggrin:

Lance

01-24-2011, 04:13 PM

Looking good Tony. Fish look Great! Happy fish make for happy Reefers! Is the new tank going to be plumbed into the big tank or on its own?

muck

01-24-2011, 04:41 PM

Nice Tony! Will have to make it over sometime and see it in person. :biggrin:

globaldesigns

01-24-2011, 05:19 PM

Very beautiful tank Tony, well done.

Delphinus

01-24-2011, 06:17 PM

Thanks all! It's so nice to finally appreciate the tank for being something other than a "Must Get This Done" kind of thing.

The fish seem to totally appreciate it too. It was funny to see them go from "OH CRAP OH CRAP OH CRAP" mentality (of being chased with nets then having to sit in buckets while acclimating) to one of "..... oh! Hey, this is not so bad!" so quickly.

@Lance - I'm thinking on its own for now but haven't fully committed. There really isn't the space or capacity in the tank room to run both a frag tank and the FOWLR but the FOWLR is going to go in there for now to allow me to finish the rest of the basement. After that's done we may choose to take it out of the tank room and have it somewhere else but that's a while away at this point - and so too technically is the need for a frag tank so it kind of works out at least from that point of view. So I guess it's a 50/50 call to run it inline and leverage the main system's skimmer etc. in the meantime, or whether it should sit independent from the get-go.

@Greg - The Rhumphella sits at the left edge of the gorg "forest" in the back - you can sort of see a glimpse of it here behind the lavender:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1798.jpg

I haven't taken any close ups of the gorgs since a lot of them sustained heavy damage from the butterflies and although it's evident they are recovering nicely now in the new tank, there's still enough damage that at some point I'll have to go in and snip off the dead branches before they'll really start looking good again.

It was interesting to see how the butterflies would go through different phases. I was warned they would eat "everything" by the LFS, but I foolishly thought "well, surely not EVERYthing - let me find out what they REALLY eat and then I can tailor what I keep and I what I don't" - well over time I found out that although there was never a time they ate "everything", there was never a time they weren't interested in "something." At first they went to town on the aiptasia and majano and were content with that. After those were all gone they moved in on certain LPS but left others alone. But then they've moved onto those others when the first LPS were taken out. I tried a test SPS frag, they literally started mowing it within minutes. Same with GPS gets absolutely mowed. They wouldn't harrass clams too bad normally - unless the clam would fall over and show it's byssal gland - they'd go to town on that if they could. The only things that escaped their wrath are clove polyps (which is too bad because it's such an invasive and stinky pest), then I had one colony of yellow zoas that I've had all along that they left alone (although they took care of other zoas). Ok: lesson learned: "everything" really can indeed mean "everything."

fishytime

01-25-2011, 12:35 PM

Its really too bad about butterflies.....such a beautiful fish.....would love to be able to put them in a reef tank.....one question though....what are you doin puttin your GPS in the tank???:razz:

Delphinus

01-25-2011, 04:26 PM

A mistake I made a long time ago! I *thought* I had gotten rid of all of it when I shut my 75g down. But it literally came out of nowhere again and by the time I noticed it was growing in spots in my 40g, the 40g had too many other things going on that I didn't care as much (caulerpa, aiptasia, clove polyps .. etc.).

The annoying thing is I see it cropping up already in the 280g. There's a frag disk with a few yellow polyps (which might have to be sacrificed to solve this, I'm not sure - at least I have a nice colony of them in another piece in a different spot) but the disk also has a few straggling survivors of some red/orange zoanthids which WOULD be worth saving. So I'll probably have to grab the disk out from its spot at some point and do some selective scraping. Actually I took a butylene torch to another frag I moved over a couple weeks ago to ensure the caulerpa was good and gone, other than the smell that worked out well so that might have to be the ticket again for this one.

MitchM

01-25-2011, 11:21 PM

Tony,
Are you using bio pellets and anything else on your new setup?
Sorry if I missed that somewhere along the way.

Looks great, btw!

Delphinus

01-25-2011, 11:53 PM

I am playing around with zeovit on this tank. I was running pellets on the old tank but haven't yet moved the reactor over. I will probably get around to doing so at some point this week now, but I have to reload it while I'm at it since it's gotten down pretty low in there.

I've run zeovit before so have a reasonable idea of what I'm getting into with that system. When the pellets first came out I experimented with an approach of using both and then settled on just using pellets. Pellets by themselves work not too bad. Although not quite as aggressive as the zeolite based nutrient limiting methods, they definitely do pull down NO3 (and PO4 to a lesser degree) if left to their own devices, plus the bacterial film that is continually shed off as a result of the pellets tumbing is a decent source of food for both corals and fish. What pushed me back into going full on zeovit for this tank however is water clarity. I just can't get over how clear the water gets on that system. It's a little more work daily but honestly that doesn't bother me since I look at the tank as much as I can everyday anyhow and feed the fish everyday anyhow, so it's a very small step to just say "oh ok I'll pump the reactor now and add a couple drops of this or that".

The alternative to get that much water clarity but with a more passive approach would be to run UV and/or ozone and a fair amount of GFO. Was running UV for a while on the other tank and that does seem to remove the yellowing compounds in the water but I was a bit surprised how often you have to replace the lamps. Well I guess it's no worse than the T5's or the halides but it's just yet another thing you have to budget to replace every few months.

MitchM

01-25-2011, 11:57 PM

Have you considered Prodibio?

Delphinus

01-26-2011, 12:18 AM

Not specifically but I hear it's pretty good. The one thing I'm not 100% sold on is the rock replacement. It's not that it's expensive per se (probably one of the cheapest elements of the whole system) but it seems sorta wasteful to send rocks to a landfill. :lol:

MitchM

01-26-2011, 12:21 AM

Sorry, what rocks?
I thought it was bacteria, ect. dosing only.

Doug

01-26-2011, 01:32 AM

Tank looks very nice Tony. Good job. Love those fishy pics.

Delphinus

01-26-2011, 06:02 AM

Thanks Doug!

Mitch - sorry, the "rocks" in this case being zeolites. The zeovit system is so named since you put these zeolites in a reactor and I guess they're porous and thus create new surface area for the dosed bacteria to colonize (I'm sure some settles on the regular substrata as well). The instructions tell you to change it out every 6 to 8 weeks or thereabouts.
http://www.jlaquatics.com/product/zv-zvit1000/ZEOvit+Zeolite+Reactor+Media+-+1+Litre.html

I don't think Prodibio makes use of zeolites but I believe both the UltraFauna and Brightwell systems do.

MitchM

01-26-2011, 07:44 AM

Hi Tony,

Yeah, I know Zeo uses the rocks, I was just wondering if you had considered using Prodibio instead of Zeo because Prodibio uses no rocks.
I haven't heard too much regarding the water clarity and Prodibio though.
I am considering using Prodibio for my new setup.

globaldesigns

01-26-2011, 03:50 PM

Hey Tony,

I have a few bags of zeo rocks, good deal if you want them. let me know.

fishoholic

01-26-2011, 09:28 PM

Same with GPS

Since when do fish need navigational tools? :razz:

Delphinus

01-26-2011, 10:29 PM

Heh, oops.

fishoholic

01-27-2011, 03:56 AM

Heh, oops.

:lol: Sorry Tony but I couldn't resist :mrgreen:

To bad butterfly's really do eat everything, there have been a few I've seen over the years that have been tempting but I'm glad I didn't risk one since they tend to eat any and all corals.

Snappy

01-27-2011, 05:23 AM

@Greg - The Rhumphella sits at the left edge of the gorg "forest" in the back - you can sort of see a glimpse of it here behind the lavender:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1798.jpg

I haven't taken any close ups of the gorgs since a lot of them sustained heavy damage from the butterflies and although it's evident they are recovering nicely now in the new tank, there's still enough damage that at some point I'll have to go in and snip off the dead branches before they'll really start looking good again.

It was interesting to see how the butterflies would go through different phases. I was warned they would eat "everything" by the LFS, but I foolishly thought "well, surely not EVERYthing - let me find out what they REALLY eat and then I can tailor what I keep and I what I don't" - well over time I found out that although there was never a time they ate "everything", there was never a time they weren't interested in "something." At first they went to town on the aiptasia and majano and were content with that. After those were all gone they moved in on certain LPS but left others alone. But then they've moved onto those others when the first LPS were taken out. I tried a test SPS frag, they literally started mowing it within minutes. Same with GPS gets absolutely mowed. They wouldn't harrass clams too bad normally - unless the clam would fall over and show it's byssal gland - they'd go to town on that if they could. The only things that escaped their wrath are clove polyps (which is too bad because it's such an invasive and stinky pest), then I had one colony of yellow zoas that I've had all along that they left alone (although they took care of other zoas). Ok: lesson learned: "everything" really can indeed mean "everything."Tony your Gorg forest will be a real showpiece once it takes off. If you need more rhumphella or Corky finger just let me know.:wink:

Delphinus

01-27-2011, 07:03 AM

Thanks Greg :)

Delphinus

02-17-2011, 10:29 PM

Well sounds like I've had my first disaster here.

Have been running a red slime problem and it had been getting steadily worse and worse. Got to the point that I decided to do a red slime treatment although I really was hesitant to do so on account that I hate doing them, I hate how the skimmer goes berserk for a week and all that goes with it.

Well, 2 days post treatment and it seems that all my clams are dead.

Got a panicked phone call from home but I'm stuck between an emergency at work and an emergency at home. Although I suppose at this point it's no longer an emergency but rather grim cleanup waiting for me when I get home.

I hate this hobby, I hate what it does to me.

Never seen a cyano treatment actually take out clams before. I wonder what else I will end up losing.

Lance

02-17-2011, 10:40 PM

Aw no Tony. That's terrible! I know how much you love your clams. I feel your pain.

kien

02-17-2011, 10:53 PM

Damn that sucks goat nads Tony :(. Sorry to hear..

christyf5

02-17-2011, 11:05 PM

$hit Tony, thats just awful!! I've done several treatments without any clam issues. Odd.

wayner

02-17-2011, 11:13 PM

Shite Man, sorry to hear about this, I just did a treatment on the week-end with Chemi-Clean and everything appears to be fine, talk about bad luck :cry:

I feel for ya.

andestang

02-17-2011, 11:14 PM

So are we talking all clams here ? Even the big fella ? Whats with all the clam disasters lately ? I've always had a clam or two or more and never experienced any problems if we're talking Boyd's chemi-clean. I've used it several times over the years with no regrets. This is just awful, so sorry Tony :sad:

fishytime

02-17-2011, 11:28 PM

I feel for ya Tony.....really I do:sad:.....I always try and steer peeps away from doing a chemical band-aid type solutions, in favor of trying to figure out whats causing the issue......in your case I think we know whats causing it.....its a new tank.....perhaps the fact that the tank is in its infancy combined with the treatment is what caused the clamcrash?

reefwars

02-18-2011, 12:18 AM

any chance its expired or something?? sorry to hear about your little buddies i hope it gets better for you:):)cheers

Delphinus

02-18-2011, 12:28 AM

I do agree with you Doug, I was really torn on this but the thing that made me pull the trigger in the end was that it was starting to bring down other livestock - snails who eat cyano die and it was smothering the blue zoas I had bought from Greg a little while ago. I'm not sure if they're recoverable at this point.

Anyhow I'm home now and I guess karma has been kind to me today. The carnage is not as bad as what it sounded like. Definitely dead is my blue spotted squamosa. :cry: My teardrop is gaping badly as is my hippopus. Linda forgot about my small crocea and small maxima so didn't check them when telling me the sitrep over the phone but luckily so far they seem to be OK.

What's happened is when I put my skimmer back online last night, I juryrigged it so that it was sucking hardly any air because it foams up so bad at first startup after a cyano treatment. What I failed to take into account was that the ATO is fed into the skimmer intake (an idea someone told me about that keeps the venturi clear of deposits. It works well but..). I actually did unplug the topup controller thinking that this would be good enough. Anyhow, wrong. What happened is all that suction from the skimmer recirc caused a siphon and emptied the top up reservoir. So the skimmer overflowed like crazy, the 5g bucket I was draining into spilled over so there's water everywhere, smells lovely too, and the sump is filled to the top. It emptied my RO/DI reservoir but since I filled it up on Sundays, it should have no more than 1/2 - 2/3 full at this point so it should only have dumped about 20g into the tank. The salinity has definitely been pulled down but only a few points. That's probably why the clams are gaping although I'm surprised that there is a definitely death on account of the salinity so I'm still wondering if it could have been the cyano treatment.

No cyano though :neutral: yay?

fishoholic

02-18-2011, 01:10 AM

Sorry to hear Tony :sad: Hopefully the cyano stays away and doesn't cause you any more grief.

lastlight

02-18-2011, 04:23 AM

Sorry to hear this Tony. Don't give up man.

globaldesigns

02-18-2011, 06:12 AM

Ah man, real sorry to hear of the issues. Hopefully no more casualties will arise from this. Keep us posted.

give me a shout when you are ready to instruct me on your tank maintenance for your holidays. I am available when you are... til then.

muck

02-18-2011, 02:40 PM

Damn Tony... sorry to hear this.

Any update?

Delphinus

02-18-2011, 06:36 PM

Didn't really have much of a chance to do much of anything this morning before having to head out but as far as I could tell the remaining clams weren't gaping anymore, but pulled in. This could be because as far as they were concerned it was still the middle of the night so hopefully that's all it was.

Mopped up the stinky skimmer water off the floor yesterday and tinkered with the skimmer some more and it seemed to be still behaving. Air cranked way back and flow dialed down and it's still creating a tower of foam.

No idea why the squamosa kicked it. Typical case of "look fine one day" to "totally dead the next day". For all I know it's just coincidence that this happened to that clam, or it was the red slime remover, and maybe it was either the dead clam smell or 1 point drop in salinity that caused the others to gape (or it was the red slime remover but I can't even count how many times I've run one before without any incident). Despite dumping at least 20 gallons RO/DI into the tank, between the larger water volume and maybe most of it dumping out via the skimmer the SG only went from 1.025 to 1.024. I figured that if my standard water change is 24g and it takes 12 cups of salt to make 1.025 then assuming total water volume of 280g it actually needs 5 cups of salt or w/c water at 1.035 to bring that 280g back to 1.025 or spread out over two water changes to bring it up 0.0005 at a time. :neutral: Man it doesn't LOOK like such a big tank when you look at some of others out there but that sure feels like a lot of salt for not a whole lot of change in SG.

But actually what I'm going to do for now is let some of the water evaporate out of the tank and that will drift the SG back up anyhow and I'll see where things are at tonight. It was already down 1" this morning (this cold snap means some extra dry air) and only has about 2.5" ish to go before it's back to normal level.

Skimmerking

02-18-2011, 07:51 PM

Tony wow man, that really sucks I know when I talked to you about the red slime stuff my skimmer went nuts for 8 days and i had to do almost a complete water change.

Delphinus

02-19-2011, 03:40 AM

Annnnd my tear drop is toast. :cry:

And then there were 3 ... 15 a year ago, all long-term multi-year individuals some as old as 6 or 7 years ... and poof, just like that, all done. One by one.

What sucks is he's not completely dead but he's past the point of no return, I'll post a picture you can see what I mean .. but I think once you see the inside of the shell because the body has shrunk, that's really it.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place but have to go out of town tomorrow for 2 or 3 days for the sake of the family. If it were my choice I'd stay home and see how it goes because I always cling to the "what if it turns around" faint hope but I can't risk leaving it in there. So I have to do something I really wish I didn't have to do. :cry: But the reef collective is more important than any one individual therein..

fishoholic

02-19-2011, 02:11 PM

:sad: That really sucks, I've never very good at making those choices either. I always want to cling to hope, however it's better to remove it then have it mess up the rest of your tank. Albeit that's easier said then done :sad:

Lance

02-19-2011, 04:32 PM

:sad:

Jason McK

02-19-2011, 04:49 PM

very Strange Tony, Sorry to hear you lost your Squamosa but glad everything else is pulling through.
It's always odd when something like this happens. It's possible the changes and treatment where just enough to affect just the one clam. Lets hope so anyway

J

lastlight

02-20-2011, 03:30 AM

Sorry man :cry:

fishytime

02-20-2011, 03:35 AM

That makes me wanna blow chunks Tony.....very sorry mang:sad:

Delphinus

02-22-2011, 05:27 AM

So I did pull the teardrop on Saturday before leaving town. :cry: It was one of the hardest things I've had to do in a very long time as it was the largest maxima I had ever known of. But it was clearly gone.

It had been looking a little off for a little while, I had hoped that it might turn around and it had its moments where it looked fine but then other moments where I could see something was not right inside. So I think the treatment may have had nothing to do with it.

The squamosa caught me off guard I did not think anything was amiss with it but honestly it takes so little to do these things in. Again it could have been a case of it not being well for a while and just not really noticing it until the last moment.

Losses aside I'm sort of regretting not doing the treatment earlier, with the cyano gone it's evident the damage it left behind most notably in receded tips on the gorgs (they are a cyano magnet especially when shedding) and the blue zoos I picked up from Greg are toast. Darn it all.

Other than that though tank is looking nice, the red planet I picked up from Lorenzo is looking smashing killer and laying down growth like crazy, a cali tort I've got looks amazing and the pieces I picked up from John are looking awesome too.

I just wish I could take a picture of them that's in focus. They are in some kind of strange dampening field or cloaking device or something because I can take 50 pictures of them and not a one, not a ONE will look anything other than a cat barf.

So you'll have to use your imagination for now. Sorry about that.. :redface:

lastlight

02-22-2011, 05:52 AM

Glad to hear you've escaped your sps curse Tony! Looking forward to the pics... even cat barf will do =)

Delphinus

02-23-2011, 06:26 AM

Picktchoors!!!

There is a weird dampening effect over some of the corals that completely prevent a picture being in focus of them, no matter what. The tort in particular, even the photos are kind of hard to look at. Guess I need to keep experimenting to find the ideal settings. But here are some non-throwaways from tonights efforts..

Red planet!
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0001.jpg

Cali tort
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0007.jpg

Supposed to be a blue polyp stylo but seems to be slowing turning pink..
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0008.jpg

Rainbow stylo but also seems to be pinkifying..
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0010.jpg

Dunkin' duncans.. (danke!)
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0012.jpg

Acans..
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0013.jpg

MOAR ACANS!!

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0014.jpg

Lavender tang, totally underrated tang in my opinion..
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0015.jpg

Cleaner shrimp plus survivors of caulerpa damaged Stylo from my 40g. Effecting a recovery (I can see growth) and has gone from brown to .. um .. moar pink. Good think I have a thing for pink stylos!!
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0019.jpg

Male bellus angel
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0021.jpg

Potter's angel
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0023.jpg

Growing fast and darkening up (had bleached a little in a pellet incident over the summer in my 40g)
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0025.jpg

Canary wrasse
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0026.jpg

Purple sherbet! Yum yum.
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0028.jpg

Insert Monty Python accent: Anyone else have something better to do than march up and down the square! The .. PIANO?! Right-oh, off you go .... (Lieutenant tang)
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0029.jpg

And this girl needs to be moved over soon. Still chumming with the butterflies and eel in the 115g for now:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0037.jpg

Thanks for looking :)

christyf5

02-23-2011, 09:45 AM

Great photos Tony! Go SPS go!! :biggrin:

fishytime

02-23-2011, 12:45 PM

those shots are more than acceptable mang.......in fact they are bordering on kick-ass:biggrin:

fishoholic

02-23-2011, 01:03 PM

Looks great Tony :thumb: I also love lavender tangs, very pretty imo.

es355lucille

02-23-2011, 02:41 PM

I am lik'in everything you have there Tony! Wow your fish are beautiful!

lastlight

02-23-2011, 03:02 PM

Those photos look great man and so do your colors! Game on!

Lance

02-23-2011, 04:43 PM

By Gosh Tony, I think you've got it! SPS thriving in your tank. The curse is broken!

Colours look great!

fishoholic

02-23-2011, 08:26 PM

By Gosh Tony, I think you've got it! SPS thriving in your tank. The curse is broken!

Colours look great!

I have a bit of a theroy about sps keeping. From my expirence when I had a fair amount of LPS and some softies any sps (even birdsnest) would RTN within hours. I had always thought it was because maybe my nitrates were to high or something. However now that I don't have many lps or softies in my tank I am finding that I can keep sps and my nitrates haven't changed so......:noidea: maybe less lps & softies = sps alive?

lastlight

02-23-2011, 08:27 PM

lorenz0

02-23-2011, 08:42 PM

can't believe you broke the sps curse. Two thumbs up bud

fishoholic

02-23-2011, 09:27 PM

I have mostly been adding Acans and other softies and the sticks keep looking better lol. I think it's a giant game of chance and you take as many pictures as you can while you're winning. Tony you're winning so snap snap!

My old tank had zoas a large colt coral, a lot of large frogspawn, hammer, and torch corals. I'm wondering if it was something more to do with too many large frogspawn/hammer/torch corals. Not really sure but now those large lps corals are gone I can keep some sps, I still have 2 frogspawn and one torch but it's not 6-7 of them like I used to have.

Lance

02-23-2011, 10:40 PM

I have a bit of a theroy about sps keeping. From my expirence when I had a fair amount of LPS and some softies any sps (even birdsnest) would RTN within hours. I had always thought it was because maybe my nitrates were to high or something. However now that I don't have many lps or softies in my tank I am finding that I can keep sps and my nitrates haven't changed so......:noidea: maybe less lps & softies = sps alive?

No doubt there is chemical warfare going on in there Laurie. Although tricky, with sufficient carbon and adequate flow throughout the tank softies and SPS can both thrive in the same tank.

Parker

02-23-2011, 11:06 PM

Hey Tony,

Sorry to see you had some troubles with your tank but it looks like things maybe on the upswing for you!

Delphinus

02-24-2011, 12:52 AM

Thanks for the kind comments everyone. It has been very nice to see SPS gain a toehold and it's certainly exciting to think of the possibilities down the road. Disappointing about the clams but pragmatically I think these things do happen.

As for the chemical warfare, I do think this is a possibility. I do also think that fish choices may not have helped matters (I know now, for example, that my butterflies are not completely innocent in matters regarding SPS death, although you'd think munched polyps would not account for massive RTN'ing but who knows).

Still lots to learn. I'm doing zeovit with this setup but picking up some frags from lobsterboy - although the corals are doing well overall, they did not retain their colour. There is a peach milli which is brown but with blue tips - the pink prostata has stayed pink but it is not the popping pink/fuscia it was in his tank - and the yellow pocillipora and yellow acros - while still "mostly" yellow - are nowhere near the highlighter brightness that they were in his tank. Is this lighting? Or a function of different water or simply sulking that they are in a new setup? I hope to seek out some knowledge in this area. I did have SPS in the past but it's been so long I may as well be a complete noob in this area. Sooo .. let the real fun begin I guess. :)

Delphinus

03-13-2011, 04:12 AM

So today I moved over the crosshatch trigger from the cube. I've been meaning to for a while but I wanted to do it on a weekend so I could be around to deal with the catching, acclimating, and then the inevitable subsequent watching "is everyone OK???"... And then, one thing after another, weekend after weekend, never an opportunity arose. So this morning I thought, better try this now or it will be yet another weekend slip by.

I did a netless transfer using my fish trap. What a much nicer way to do this over chasing with a net, there didn't seem to be much stress at all, just maybe a little patience while waiting for the fish to swim in.

First I tried baiting it with mysis, but that didn't work out too well, too small I think. So I tried some krill and that was the magic: she swam in within a minute after adding that. I pulled out the trap and poof, 45 minutes later she was in the new tank.

First she found a good spot to lock herself in with her trigger fin. Solid as a rock, just watching the world around here. All the while the cleaner shrimp were all over her. :lol: Once in a while she'd twitch them off but they'd come right back. Anyhow 30 minutes after being let out of the bucket she was swimming around as if nothing was ever the matter and that this was her new home all along. No issues with any other fish at all, although I wasn't expecting much trouble since they were all together in the same tank before.

Here she is! In her "blue" colour mood. I'll have to try to get a photo when she's in a green or yellow mood. It blows my mind how much she can change.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1906.jpg

This one shows the red in her fins a little more:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1918.jpg

This one would have been a great shot of her but the lieutenant tang swam into view as I pressed the shutter button. Ended up being a perfect shot of the tang. What are the odds eh! If I tried to get a shot of the tang it would never work out like that.
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1905.jpg

Some random other shots since I had the camera out:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1922.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1913.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1908.jpg

Frags are all starting to take off..
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1914.jpg

One of the BTA's has shown up (way in the back there):
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1912.jpg

I had to spend a few days out of town this week for meetings for work. On the way home from the airport I decided to take the opportunity to take 5 minutes of "me" time (since I never have any free time anymore without kids in tow) and stop in at Gold Aquariums since it's not far out of the way home from the airport. Turns out they had just landed a nice shipment of corals so ended up walking out of there with a couple new things. Ran into 24storm at the store, it was nice to catch up with him and say hi.

Bali:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1902.jpg

Aussies (two of them, they are both probably the same coral, the colour isn't showing up quite right, I'm excited for their potential though, and both of them have little red acro crabs):
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1904.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1904.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1910.jpg

abcha0s

03-13-2011, 04:17 AM

Wow Tony - That's really starting to look nice.

I really like your fish trap idea. Might have to use that myself.

- Brad

Delphinus

03-13-2011, 04:18 AM

Unfortunately when I was down stateside this week my wife texted me mid-week that yet one more of my clams had died. :( Bummer. The clam was looking fine when I left but I guess that's how that goes. .. fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, dead. :( I'm down to two. No idea if their number is up soon too or if the serial-clam-death stops with this last one. I am wondering if maybe the problem is the zeovit and there isn't enough nitrate in the water for them.. No idea but I'm thinking I'm going to do some reading up on that to see if anyone else has ever wondered if there might be a correlation.

Snappy

03-13-2011, 04:23 AM

Things are looking good Tony.

Delphinus

03-13-2011, 04:23 AM

Thanks Brad! And yeah, the trap is great. Only thing is it's large-ish so a little cumbersome to work with and maneuver into a tank. I had to get it right into a corner in my cube to get it to fit right but once I had it pinned in place it worked out OK. I used a couple magnets to help hold it up, it was a super solid grip but better than flopping around in the current otherwise the fish are not going anywhere near the thing.

If you want to borrow it sometime let me know. :)

Delphinus

03-13-2011, 04:23 AM

Thanks Greg!

Lance

03-13-2011, 04:39 AM

Coming along nicely Tony, and that Trigger is a beauty. Sorry to hear about the clam though.

christyf5

03-13-2011, 05:51 AM

Looking good Tony!! I'm having clam issues as well, this is the third one to go downhill since the start of the year. Frustrating as hell :neutral:

fishoholic

03-14-2011, 07:11 PM

Lookin good Tony :biggrin:

Delphinus

03-15-2011, 08:05 AM

So I think another one of the Tunzes is starting to crap out. One of the waveboxes chatters pretty badly lately, I tried cleaning it out but I can't find anything inside the impeller assembly. It will turn for a while but eventually just sort of stutters. It still moves water but like 10% of what it should be pushing.

I might ping Roger Vitko on this but does this sound like a motor drive unit failure? It's one of the old style 6200's. Anyone with a wavebox or a 6200 on its own that I could borrow an impeller from for an afternoon so I can see if it's the impeller? I'd order a new one but if that's not it then that's sort of a waste.

Delphinus

03-28-2011, 12:52 AM

Well, got the Tunzes straightened out for now. It turns out that a 6261 which is the wavebox pump, is a 6100 but uses a 6200 propeller and cover. So I swapped out the pump for the one remaining 6100 I had in the tank and now both boxes are operational again. I replaced the 6100 with a 6105 from tinman who was selling two of them on the board recently.

Also I learned something about the waveboxes and it turns out I was doing something wrong with them. :redface: The sponge ring is not supposed to go over top of the pump cover (which makes it a prefilter in a way), it's supposed to go over the back of the pump. So fixed that up on the both of them, and wow what a difference when you do things the right way. :lol: I get about a 1/2" wave now with one running and almost a full 1" with both running. For now I am leaving both running but I'd be happy enough with just the 1/2".

Amazing the difference in polyp extension having those things running right though.

Some random pictures... I can't seem to get pictures in focus .. EVER :( But here are some that are not too terrible.

I think this is a green slimer. It was given to me as a much larger piece but started RTN'ing after a day so I fragged the tips off, attached them to the disk, and threw out the bottom part. A solid 2" of decent sized coral I threw out but I wasn't going to risk keeping it if was peeling back like that. Luckily the tips seemed to recover and are growing quickly now. The colour in the picture is off, this is a super bright yellow/green but I dialed the aperture right down so that it wouldn't show up as overexposed in the picture ... I guess I overcompensated but at least you can see the polyps and stuff.
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1944.jpg

Purple loripes from Snappy:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1939.jpg

Two toned Bali piece from a couple weeks ago .. colour settling nicely:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1934.jpg

Blasto:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1932.jpg

Cali tort starting to take off:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1931.jpg

Blue milli from Bluetang - blue for some reason doesn't show up well in the photos but it is a neat piece in person:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1927.jpg

Red Planet from Lorenzo, really taking off now and is a real stunner in person:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1926.jpg

Also here is a real quick video of the Duncans swaying in the waves. Wasn't sure how to link to it with a preview image so here's just the URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoPUEbvqbiw

Thanks for looking :)

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoPUEbvqbiw)

lastlight

03-28-2011, 01:09 AM

Holy fish poop them Duncan polyps are shaggy man! Glad you got the waves sorted out you def have some back and forth now. I guess since you're not prefiltering the water the waves are sorta dirty now haha ;)

Got some nice deep purples too which is something I'm really lacking and wanting!

fishytime

03-28-2011, 01:26 AM

sweet RP there Tony and I can sure vouch for how blue Westers millie is....

Lance

03-28-2011, 01:44 AM

Looking good Tony; and love the Duncans doing the Watusi.

fishoholic

03-28-2011, 02:20 AM

Love the wave action of the duncans :thumb: The sps seem to be colouring up nicely too

fishytime

03-28-2011, 04:44 AM

oh ya! I was gonna mention the cool Stevie Wonder motion of the duncans......but, one thing Tony.....I need a little more than 7 seconds out of my reef porn.....way to quick of a vid for me:mrgreen::razz:

Delphinus

03-28-2011, 07:15 AM

Haha.. yeah sorry. Even Linda after seeing that said "what idiot uploads a 7 second video to YouTube?" ... I had this fantasy I'd try converting it into an animated GIF so that's why I kept it short but then I kinda never got around to the "make it happen" stage... oops! Tomorrow is a new day. Surely I'll have oodles of time for that tomorrow..

imcosmokramer

04-26-2011, 09:01 PM

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1944.jpg

Purple loripes from Snappy:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1939.jpg

Two toned Bali piece from a couple weeks ago .. colour settling nicely:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1934.jpg

Blasto:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1932.jpg

Cali tort starting to take off:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1931.jpg

Blue milli from Bluetang - blue for some reason doesn't show up well in the photos but it is a neat piece in person:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1927.jpg

Red Planet from Lorenzo, really taking off now and is a real stunner in person:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1926.jpg

Also here is a real quick video of the Duncans swaying in the waves. Wasn't sure how to link to it with a preview image so here's just the URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoPUEbvqbiw

Thanks for looking :)

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoPUEbvqbiw)

Amazing photos Tony. I'm jealous!

Delphinus

04-26-2011, 11:16 PM

Thanks man, I look at them still and think, "Geez when will I ever get an in focus shot" but at least some of the colours come through! I guess I'm due for an update, that red planet is growing like crazy. Some of the others show a little bit of growth too. For the most part the tank is in that "Grow! Please grow!" phase. It's a bit agonizing to look at corals that were .75" in January/February and see that they are now 1" but hopefully in time things will fill in a bit.

One bit of annoying news, the potter's angel has developed a taste for gorgonians and most of them now have nibbled tips. I might think about removing the potter's, the damage is starting to get noticeable.

Another is that valonia and aiptasia are also starting to let their presence be felt. Going to have to do something about that I suppose..

smokinreefer

04-29-2011, 03:28 PM

Picktchoors!!!

Lavender tang, totally underrated tang in my opinion..
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0015.jpg

Thanks for looking :)

beautiful fish.
but, they sure dont look like that in the stores.
i'm guessing it is showing mature coloration? probably didnt look like that as a juvenile eh?

tank is looking good buddy!

Delphinus

04-29-2011, 04:10 PM

It might be the adult colouration? Although he's actually looked like that at the store when he was maybe 3". So if it is a juvy/adult thing then this one turned adult colours pretty early. Mind you I have seen orange shoulder tangs at 3" and you'd think they'd still be the juvenile yellow at that size so I guess adult colours can come pretty much whenever they feel like it in the fish world. :)

A couple things that I have observed however between seeing lavenders in the stores, other peoples tanks, and in Hawaii - there do seem to be two major colour morphs. A darker one like this one, and a lighter one where it's more of a pinkish grey in the body with a purple/pink/lavender border along the fins and so on. (I'll see if I can dig up a photo.)

But, lighting can play tricks on you. I've had people see this fish in person exclaim that they didn't even realize the fish was that colourful because between swimming so fast and it being hard to look at because he won't sit still, and the light needing to shine on him just right, he can appear like a brown colourless tang unless you're really looking at him closely.

Of course there's also that fish store tanks are stressful places for fish with seldom the most optimal lighting conditions to showcase subtle colours on fish, so that could be a factor too maybe..

fishytime

04-29-2011, 04:18 PM

Ya I get that with my chevron too..... Most times he looks kinda drab and plain, but when the light hits him just right you can see the color and patternation on him.....sweet fish none the less Tony

es355lucille

04-29-2011, 05:52 PM

One extreme to the next!! One min (ok maybe longer) can't grow an SPS to save his soul and now you are the King!

Love the coral selections Tony......everything looks amazing!!!

What are the two things that you changed that would attribute to this sucess?
(sorry if you are repeating this....I have had no time to read much these days)

Delphinus

04-30-2011, 05:48 PM

I'm not sure I'm doing all THAT well yet but thanks :) I've just gotten lucky on a few frag purchases.

The only thing I can really think of that can explain the difference is that this is really a complete tank reset. All new rock, plus it was dry to begin with so the starting point should be as reasonably close to clean as I can make it.

Of course, 5 months in I have managed to get valonia, bryopsis and aiptasia in there and they are starting to make their presence be felt. I need to go hunting. Tweezers for the valonia, boiling water for the bryopsis, and I want to get an aiptasia zapper for those little nuisances.

Delphinus

05-02-2011, 04:22 AM

Arrrrgh!! Looks like my third Tunze failure since the startup of this tank. I'm very frustrated right now!!!! Now it's a 6105 that's chattering. I don't understand. Is this a common failure for these things? The other two I could at least rationalize away that they were years-old second hand but even though THIS 6105 was second-hand, I thought they were still reasonably newish. Of course the fact that it WAS bought used means I have utterly no recourse (yet again) to repair or replace it under a warrantee. Yayyyyyyy.

Would just replace them all with a few Vortechs but that prospect is too expensive to consider. :cry: Why, why, why!!!!

At this point I think I would tell anyone considering the purchase of Tunze vs Vortech to steer away from the Tunzes. There clearly is a lack of proper QA being done..

fishytime

05-02-2011, 04:30 AM

sorry to hear about the tunze troubles mang....I personally have never had any issue with my tunzes......mine have all been new and I take pretty good care of them tho.......if it makes you feel any better we have a shelf full of broken vortech parts at the shop, so they aren't immune to problems either....

Delphinus

05-02-2011, 04:33 AM

Controllable or non-controllable? I'm wondering if it's the variable speed that is the problem and supposing for a moment that's the real issue then I'm not real surprised to hear that Vortech's are probably subject to the same kinds of issues..

Annoying as hell, I hands-down just can't afford to buy another Tunze to replace this one. If it's unserviceable I'm going to have to make do with less flow in the tank for a little while.

fishytime

05-02-2011, 05:01 AM

both.......mind you Ive always just run the controllable ones(6055s) full blast (even tho I have a controller for them, there was money well spent:mrgreen:)

Delphinus

05-02-2011, 05:10 AM

Well ok think I found something wrong..

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/IMG_2631.jpg

... so this probably has nothing to do with controllable/non-controllable. How bloody odd, how does a wire get a knick into it like that?

<sigh> ... <grumble>

fishytime

05-02-2011, 06:01 AM

I cant remember now......do you have a trigger?

Delphinus

05-04-2011, 03:01 AM

I have a small crosshatch trigger sporting juvenile colours still. I suspect she is a female, I have had her about 18 months and she's gone from 2.5" to about 5" in this time.

fishytime

05-04-2011, 03:09 AM

wel....triggers do have a reputation for chewing on cords..........and inverts:mrgreen:

Delphinus

05-04-2011, 03:14 AM

Just noticed your post is reply 666, so I better reply quick and get past that number. :lol:

I think she can be exonerated in this case, the spot on the cord would sit inside the propeller cover, it's also on the inside of the bend the cord has to make to get outside the propeller cover. It could be that the insulation pinched somehow but I'm thinking maybe someone used something sharp to scrape coraline off when cleaning it. This particular 6105 I bought second-hand but I can't even remember who from, it's been a few months. I do remember thinking it was remarkably clean for a second-hand powerhead. :lol:

lastlight

01-27-2012, 04:29 PM

Tony it's ridiculous that one of our flagship builds gets so little action lately. It's update time bro =)

Delphinus

01-27-2012, 04:35 PM

Oh my, nothing since May? :eek: Ok then, challenge accepted. :p New pictures will be up .. um .... as soon as possible. :redface:

Skimmerking

01-27-2012, 04:38 PM

wow a 280 gal and a 404 gal and still no updates. you guys should be ashamed......

lastlight

01-27-2012, 04:41 PM

wow a 280 gal and a 404 gal and still no updates. you guys should be ashamed......

Don't bring me into this. I shoot a new video everytime my fish take a poop. Not my fault your old-man eyes are missing them lol.

Check yaself befo ya wreck yaself Mikey :mrgreen:

Skimmerking

01-27-2012, 04:56 PM

you take a video of your fish pooping you are one sick person.
and I shouldnt talk when was the last update for me

globaldesigns

01-27-2012, 05:05 PM

lastlight

01-27-2012, 05:18 PM

Having personally seen Tony's tank of recent, I do say it is beautiful and YES, please post for the rest to enjoy.

Now Brett, I can't make the same comments about your setup, but would love to see it in person so I can.

Yeah some of the pieces last time had some super sweet colors I'm looking forward to an update. I saw a frag off his red planet at greg's and that also looked bangin.

Both you and Tony still have to swing by. I'm home all evening feel free =)

Delphinus

01-28-2012, 06:52 AM

Well .. I think you guys are too kind, I've seen both your tanks and they're nicer. :) (And I'm not just saying that.)

Here are some FTS I was able to get tonight. Nothing too special, just what I was able to get before the camera battery died, and it turns out I forgot to charge the other battery so tonight's photo sessions ended early. Hopefully better luck tomorrow.

I find my FTS shots are always out of focus and lack any kind of detail. So I tried two things: The first is a standard "darken room, stand back from the tank, take a picture, crop the top and bottom." The second and third are stitching attempts. I think this technique shows some promise but a little more trial and error is needed. Of course being darker the exposures are longer so the fish are nothing but blurs and in one it looks like i have 3 pyramid butterflyfish (there are only 2 for real :lol: ).

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_3429.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/fts1.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/fts2.jpg

I knew I had let this thread slide a little but I didn't realize it was since May already that the real troubles began. It has been, well, .. an interesting journey with lots of little (and maybe some not-so-little) frustrations along the way.

Essentially once the "newness" of the tank wore off, things started going downhill pretty bad. Sand was slimy all the time, cyano was taking hold, corals started receding. By the time summer came around, the tank was a disgusting mess and it was very discouraging. Algae over all the rock, many lost corals (mainly SPS and the gorgs).

I lived in denial about the cause for a long time because I really wanted to believe in the zeovit system and its ability to reduce phosphate. However, for whatever reason(s), in this tank, there are phosphates present in high levels. Back in November-ish timeframe I reached to the zeovit.com community for advice and was given some dosing advice by some of the more experienced members there.

What was suggested was to discontinue any secondary dosing of zeovit products and focus on Zeobak, Zeostart3, Biomate and Zeozym. Zeobak is dosed in at 12 drops every other day, Biomate is dosed in at 20 drops in the alternating days, Zeostart3 is 1ml twice per day, and Zeozym is dissolved in a tub tank water on the Zeobak dosing days but ledt to stand overnight and dosed in the morning.

Also in the fall a diamond goby was added to sift sand, and I've added some urchins. Snails don't seem to last very long, if I buy 10, I can expect 7 to be goners within a week or two. I don't know if this is par for the course or if I'm unlucky but at least the urchins seem to do a nice job of working the rock.

Following these changes, the slow transformation has been very encouraging. After a long time of nongrowing corals, I see new growth once again. The algae has been slowly retreating and exists only in a few isolated spots.

The downer of course however is that phosphate continues to read high levels for now. Tonight I did 3 tests, 2 with the Hanna checker, and the result is 0.18ppm. I have an older D-D/Merck low-range PO4 test kit so used that as well and got a reading of 0.06ppm (middle of the colour chart). Despite the wildly different numbers, the one inescapable conclusion is that PO4 is still too high. So .. this continues to frustrate me for now. I don't know how much longer I can mentally withstand the phosphate before I want to try something new. (Prodibio, GFO, pellets, or an algae scrubber come to mind as possible alternatives. Or Foz-Down or some other lanthanum dosing based solution.)

Despite the frustrations however, some hardy corals are doing well, for example and strangely enough, the Red Planet. The LPS seem to thrive as well (Acans, bubble, blastos, duncans.) I'll try to get some daytime shots tomorrow.

SteveConn

01-28-2012, 07:02 AM

Tony
I'm a newb.. but I am wondering if starting a tank using some sort of GFO would help remove the PO from the tank, bypassing some of the new tank issues you faced?

This will become a real concern to me in a few days when I get my 72g and sump. I'll be moving my 2 nanos into it along with some fresh base rock. I already have a fair selection of mostly thriving SPS.. dont want to lose any...trying to learn what I can.

Delphinus

01-28-2012, 07:19 AM

Hi Steve, if you were considering running GFO eventually anyhow then I would probably consider running GFO from the get-go. That way it will have to fight harder to accumulate, rather than you having to fight harder to reduce it.

I have a theory that part of the issue I'm facing is that I used dried rock for the scaping and was hoping it would reseed easily, plus that I tried to use fewer lbs-per-gallon to leave an open feel to the tank so that the tangs would have more swimming space. If I were to do it all over again, I would use precured rock instead of dry. I had this theory that if I used mostly (or all) dried rock then I wouldn't have to worry about introduced pests like aiptasia, majano, mantis, crabs, etc. .. and darn it all if that some of that stuff doesn't get in there anyhow (on the bottoms of frags and whatnot). So much for that theory.

christyf5

01-28-2012, 06:19 PM

Looks great Tony, although the photos could be bigger :razz:

Get some GFO in there, I don't care what they say about zeo, sometimes that schuff just don't get the job done.

Delphinus

01-28-2012, 07:21 PM

Photobucket shrunk them to 480 wide I think. I'll have to poke around with settings and try again or a different photoshare maybe.

Zoaelite

01-28-2012, 07:41 PM

Looks great Tony, although the photos could be bigger :razz:

Get some GFO in there, I don't care what they say about zeo, sometimes that schuff just don't get the job done.

Im on board with Christy here, I think GFO will work some wonders for you.

Sent from my HTC Desire HD using Tapatalk

freezetyle

01-28-2012, 09:33 PM

I have a theory that part of the issue I'm facing is that I used dried rock for the scaping and was hoping it would reseed easily, plus that I tried to use fewer lbs-per-gallon to leave an open feel to the tank so that the tangs would have more swimming space. If I were to do it all over again, I would use precured rock instead of dry. I had this theory that if I used mostly (or all) dried rock then I wouldn't have to worry about introduced pests like aiptasia, majano, mantis, crabs, etc. .. and darn it all if that some of that stuff doesn't get in there anyhow (on the bottoms of frags and whatnot). So much for that theory.

Its funny you brought this up. I also started my tank with all dry rock in hopes to avoid all of the problems you have mentioned. So far, I have aptaisia, bubble algae, and now a wicked outbreak of cyano. I just started the zeo method in hope to starve out the algae issues, But i refuse to take off the GFO, while cyano is going on

lastlight

01-28-2012, 10:30 PM

Fts look nice man I saw how bad the hair algae was so I know how much you e turned it around! The background looks cool how it's got the varying texture between blue and the darker bits. Red planet looks big too. Wish I saw more gorge in there but when you think you're ready you can have some off mine (yours).

gregzz4

02-14-2012, 07:16 AM

Tony, where did your pipes end up after this pic? Care to post a new one?
Thanks
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=547358&postcount=244
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_ujFD9DxsrV8/TIm9DGn51wI/AAAAAAAABsw/B_jUhYEb4dI/s512/IMG_1443.JPG

Aquattro

02-14-2012, 12:16 PM

Tony, as per our chat yesterday, this is the dosing schedule G. Alexander had suggested for my 200g water volume...

~1.9l of zeolites, water flow ~ 200 US gallons per hour changed at 6-8 weeks. If you have recently started zeovit I would recommend to run the reactor with a 3 hour on / off interval for the first couple of week

0.75 liter activated carbon flown passively

Dose Coral Vitalizer @ 4 drops/2 x weekly

Dose Amino Acid HC @ 4 drops/2 x weekly

Dose Zeostart2 @ 0.7 ml 2 x daily

dose Xtra @ 4ml/ 2 x weekly

Dose Zeobac @ 8 drops twice weekly

Dose Zeofood7 @ 4 drops twice weekly

Agitate reactor once daily

I'm also a huge proponent of new clean rock from the real live ocean! Rock will adsorb nutrients over the years, and using any used rock, dry or otherwise, can and often will lead to algae issues. Yes, you save a few bucks, but I find saving a few bucks in this hobby often has a cost.

I don't think the zeo system works on the more is better principle, and I suspect that it will eventually work for you, but you have a ton of PO4 to suck out first. GFO may help accelerate that, or perhaps change your zeolites more often.
Not sure about running both, never tried it, but starting with new rock (20% maybe older from previous tank), running zeo from the start, my PO4 is 0.02 or lower. I also change 25% of the water biweekly.

Delphinus

02-14-2012, 04:21 PM

Tony, where did your pipes end up after this pic? Care to post a new one?
Thanks

Hi Greg, I will take a picture under the stand and post it tonight (will be late tonight though I won't be home for a while). But in the meantime I can try to describe it. It's nothing too complicated, basically both pipes drain down into the sump just underneath. They both have small horizontal jogs to get past the edge of the sump since the sump sits inside the stand which is framed of 2x4's so the edge sits right under the bulkheads. As a Herbie style overflow the shorter drainpipe is the main drain and has a gate valve on its horizontal jog so to allow the water line to be up at the overflow teeth. I keep the waterline basically about 1" lower then the main display (basically hovering at the emergency standpipe height with a small trickle going down the emergency overflow). Anything more than 1" and you hear a waterfall sound.

Tony, as per our chat yesterday, this is the dosing schedule G. Alexander had suggested for my 200g water volume...

Cool thanks for that. Ironically though my current dosing recommendations are from the same dude over there. But I'm curtailing things back nonetheless just to see if the trend reverses. So far it's been "more zeo = more PO4" so we'll see.

I am very tempted to run GFO in conjunction but it has been recommended not to several times. I remember Dez in his thread complained about tip burn after adding GFO on top of zeo. In general however it is certainly true that a rapid reduction of PO4 is basically deadly, and the irony is that apart from a few pieces in the minority, most of my current SPS are handling 0.18 just fine. The colours could have more pop in some cases but on the list of things to complain about that's pretty minor.

I'm also a huge proponent of new clean rock from the real live ocean! Rock will adsorb nutrients over the years, and using any used rock, dry or otherwise, can and often will lead to algae issues. Yes, you save a few bucks, but I find saving a few bucks in this hobby often has a cost.

For sure. I don't remember the exact makeup of rock, some of it is BRS shelf rock, others formerly dried rock, and a good portion (at least 1/3 - 1/2) was wet rock that had been cooking in a 50g rubbermaid for a while. So while some of it was pretty skanky to begin with, after a while it cleaned up at least visually. But also true that basically none of it was "new" rock. I can see the benefit of going all new and if I ever do this again I might go that road but the flip side is that even newly collected rock will eventually become a few years old and it would be nicer if we could find ways to keep the stuff we have already out of the ocean to be useful for longer rather than planning to replace it all every few years.

Thanks for the advice though! This week is my experimental week of dosing less - come the weekend I want to see if I notice a smaller number or not.

gregzz4

02-15-2012, 04:53 AM

Thanks for the info. I should have been clearer with my question.
What I meant to ask was where did your standpipe heights end up.
You answered 1/2 of that. Now I have a starting point :wink:

globaldesigns

02-15-2012, 05:04 AM

Yeah some of the pieces last time had some super sweet colors I'm looking forward to an update. I saw a frag off his red planet at greg's and that also looked bangin.

Both you and Tony still have to swing by. I'm home all evening feel free =)

Hey Tony, what day/time do you wanna go? Lets plan something.

globaldesigns

02-15-2012, 05:07 AM

Well .. I think you guys are too kind, I've seen both your tanks and they're nicer. :) (And I'm not just saying that.)

Its funny how none of us are ever happy with our setups!

lastlight

02-15-2012, 05:21 AM

Its funny how none of us are ever happy with our setups!

Couldn't be truer right now! I just spent another two hours with a pair of scissors attacking my algae :neutral:

Why don't you guys swing by tomorrow night?

Delphinus

02-15-2012, 02:40 PM

Thanks for the info. I should have been clearer with my question.
What I meant to ask was where did your standpipe heights end up.
You answered 1/2 of that. Now I have a starting point :wink:

Oh ... sorry. The shorter standpipe on the left is still like that, the taller one on the right is extended all the way to the top of the overflow. The strainer is gone but to keep wayward fish/snails/etc out out of the standpipe there is a flat strainer instead (it's basically eggcrate). Had a work function last night and didn't get home last night until well after lights-out on the tank so couldn't take pictures. I'll try tonight.

gregzz4

02-15-2012, 10:33 PM

Why are 'you' apologizing? :wink: I'm the one with the badly worded question.

globaldesigns

02-16-2012, 03:08 AM

Couldn't be truer right now! I just spent another two hours with a pair of scissors attacking my algae :neutral:

Why don't you guys swing by tomorrow night?

Oh sorry man, just logged in, after getting home from beer and wings. Could of come tonight, but too late now.

What days do youhave open? Tony, how about you?

Delphinus

02-16-2012, 04:32 AM

Thursday this week probably the only evening, I could also maybe do Friday during the day..

lastlight

02-16-2012, 05:31 AM

No pressure guys... it'll be here a while lol. Thursday's fine if you have the time though.

gregzz4

02-16-2012, 05:34 AM

Us Westcoasters are feeling left out :cry:

kien

02-16-2012, 05:44 AM

I live 10 minutes from him and I'm feeling left out :-(

Wait, why are we talking about Brett's tank in Tony's thread?!

lastlight

02-16-2012, 05:50 AM

I live 10 minutes from him and I'm feeling left out :-(

Wait, why are we talking about Brett's tank in Tony's thread?!

dood i invited you on that other site. you ignored it not my problem!

and this thread needs a little action. why not?

kien

02-16-2012, 05:53 AM

dood i invited you on that other site.

You did? I must've ignored it.

lastlight

02-16-2012, 06:01 AM

You did? I must've ignored it.

Even went out and bought a new TLF reactor as an excuse to have you over. Guess you needed one REAL bad.

kien

02-16-2012, 06:04 AM

Even went out and bought a new TLF reactor as an excuse to have you over. Guess you needed one REAL bad.

I still need one! Just not REAL bad. Running carbon passively ATM until I get my grubby hands on that tlf.

Delphinus

03-25-2012, 10:26 PM

Thought this was kinda neat. Just uploaded some LPS shots for another thread and was looking at older pictures of the same corals. Funny how coral growth sort of sneaks up on you that you don't really see day by day or even week by week but throw a few months or a year under the belt, and "wow."

Red blastomussa:

Now:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0005.jpg

A year-ish ago:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1910.jpg

Purple/green Blastomussa:

Now:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0009.jpg

A year-ish ago:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1932.jpg

Need to get some updated shots of the Acans and a few of the SPS. The Red Planet in particular is crazy how much it has grown.

Zoaelite

03-25-2012, 11:29 PM

Verrryyy nice :biggrin:!

What growth form are you getting on your Red Planet Tony? Have any photos?

lastlight

03-25-2012, 11:32 PM

Very nice! Howzabouts a fts?

Lance

03-25-2012, 11:43 PM

Nice growth Tony.
Glad to hear you're getting growth on the SPS as well. Looks like you've gotten over your SPS jinx.

Doug

03-25-2012, 11:59 PM

Nice Tony.

Delphinus

03-26-2012, 02:17 AM

Thanks guys :)

The Red Planet is an extraordinarily difficult coral to photo. Every time I try, basically you get the edges completely washed out and overexposed whereas the inside bits are too dark. Compensating exposure in any direction makes the other worse. So I've had rather limited success with photos with a number of cameras.

Did manage this one with some random experimenting with post-processing. So this is more mangled than I usually do but at least it "sort of looks like how it looks for real."

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0013-1.jpg

Compared to a year ago:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1926.jpg

Or another way to look at it:

A year ago:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/IMG_1914.jpg

Now:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0031.jpg

"We've come a long way, baby."

Delphinus

03-26-2012, 02:25 AM

Scored this red flowerpot from Snappy a few weeks back:

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0002.jpg

Acans now:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0054.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0093.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0092.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0090.jpg

Acans a year ago:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0014.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0013.jpg

Duncans now:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0009-1.jpg

Duncans a year ago:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0012.jpg

Delphinus

03-26-2012, 02:28 AM

Squammy and a Hippopus:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0017.jpg

Clowns-n-carpets:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0016.jpg

And the rose:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0056.jpg

Delphinus

03-26-2012, 02:31 AM

Fish!

The King: Man this guys loves to pose. I'm happy to oblige. :)
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0060.jpg

Lavender and Crosshatch:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0055.jpg

Lieutenant tang (my son calls him "Lieutenant Worf.") Son of a nerd .. whatcha gonna do.
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0063.jpg

Lavender again, showing off his freckles..
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0065.jpg

Delphinus

03-26-2012, 02:35 AM

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0066.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0078.jpg

Naughty potters...
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0080.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0076.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0084.jpg

C. rubriventralis
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0086.jpg

Male bellus angel..
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0073.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0067.jpg

And his lady:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0072.jpg

S. virgatus:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0071.jpg

Casey8

03-26-2012, 02:40 AM

Oh Tony, what a tease :razz: Love all your fish, especially the butterflyfish called something mountain or pyramid there. How big is your potter angelfish ?

Delphinus

03-26-2012, 02:40 AM

These guys don't really belong in this thread but I don't have a journal for my 65g fowlr .. (I should probably fix that sometime.. oh well).

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0040.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0039.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0038.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0037-1.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0032.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0041.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0046.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0049.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0051.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0094.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn239/delphinus_photos/280g%20Reef/DSC_0109.jpg

Casey8

03-26-2012, 02:47 AM

More ... :neutral: How many fish do you have in total ?

christyf5

03-26-2012, 02:48 AM

Nice Tony, your fish are awesome! Glad to see you're having some success with the SPS :mrgreen:

Delphinus

03-26-2012, 03:07 AM

There have been a few SPS losses along the way too. I think the ones I have now are fairly resilient to elevated PO4. I've pretty much quit zeovit altogether although the zeolites are still in there (too lazy to pull them out). I pretty much quit dosing everything zeovit related however about 4 weeks ago just to see how things would go, and I was astonished at how well the tank has reacted to the absence of that dosing. :neutral: PO4 has gone up, however, so the zeovit was keeping it down "somewhat" but other than that it didn't seem to be helping the overall "look" to the tank. Weird. I'm going to switch over to GFO soon but am carefully considering how best to get on that as a sudden PO4 drop is usually pretty disastrous.

Oh Tony, what a tease :razz: Love all your fish, especially the butterflyfish called something mountain or pyramid there. How big is your potter angelfish ?

Thanks, and yeah, pyramid butterflies. I have a soft spot for butterflies. These pyramids are reputed to be among the most reef safe of butterflies so I thought I'd try them. So far they have been well behaved for the most part. I did catch them once sampling carpet tentacles once but the clowns chased them off and so far it seems that was the only incident (touch wood).

Have had the potters for a few years now, she is about maybe 3.5" long (and 2" wide :lol: )

More ... :neutral: How many fish do you have in total ?

Hmmm let's see. In the 280g we have:
2 - pyramids
3 - tangs (Red Sea sailfin, lavender, lieutenant)
3 - chromis (was 4 until this last week :( )
2 - clowns
3 - angels (m/f bellus, potters)
1 - crosshatch trigger
2 - wrasses (canary and rubriventralis)
1 - diamond goby for sandsifting
2 - mandarins (m/f)
1 - rabbitfish (S. virgatus)

So 20 I guess, wow! Oof.

In my 65g there is:
1 - C. ulietensis butterfly (double saddle back) (not the least little bit reef safe, as it turns out :) )
1 - flame hawk
1 - rabbitfish (S. doliatus)
2 - pair Hawaiian flame wrasses
2 - pair diamond gobies for sandsifting (they seem to act like a pair anyhow)
1 - golden dwarf moray

Casey8

03-26-2012, 03:15 AM

If you lived in BC I would definitely beg to come to your place to see your tank and the beautiful fish you have. They are so gorgeous and I think you feed them well :biggrin:

Delphinus

03-26-2012, 03:33 AM

If you're ever out this way, drop me a line. You're totally welcome to visit, the cost is you have to endure listening to my 6 year old talk your ears off about Star Trek or whatever else it is he's nerding out about at the time. Usually it's Star Trek however. Every so often we'll let him watch an episode and then it's 6 weeks of dawn to dusk blah blah blah blah GENERATOR CORE blah blah blah KLINGONS (the weird thing is he'll go on and on about Klingons even if it wasn't an episode with actual Klingons) .. blah blah blah blah WARP REACTOR .. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm a total Star Trek / SciFi geek myself so I never thought I'd catch myself saying this but it totally turns out there is such a thing as "too much Star Trek." On a totally unrelated note, we're going to go see the whole NextGen cast when they come to town next month LORD HELP US ALL WHAT HAVE I DONE.

I digress - what I meant to say is, "if you're ever out this way, drop me a line, you're welcome to come look at fish." :)

Casey8

03-26-2012, 03:41 AM

What a coincidence :p My husband could talk about Star Trek the whole day if I am willing to listen to him. He is a BIG fan ! I am sure he would love to talk to your little boy more than me. You will regret for inviting us to come to see your tank, because I can sit there for hours just to look at your fish and your sps corals :razz:

soaptray

03-26-2012, 03:43 AM

Looks great! I will be starting a project similar to this in the coming weeks - just on vacation now - have to set up all the details and measurements when I get home.

Jason McK

03-26-2012, 03:44 AM

Looking Amazing Tony. Great looking coral and fish.

lastlight

03-26-2012, 04:37 AM

Things look awesome especially those acans! Those watchmen appear to be a lot more confident than the last time I saw them.

Lance

03-26-2012, 04:48 AM

Everything looks fit as a fiddle Tony. I'm particularly envious of your Bellus pair; I've been looking for a pair for quite sometime now. Keep up the good work. :biggrin:

fishoholic

03-26-2012, 01:23 PM

Looks great, I love all the fish pic's :thumb:

christyf5

03-26-2012, 03:12 PM

Everything looks fit as a fiddle Tony. I'm particularly envious of your Bellus pair; I've been looking for a pair for quite sometime now. Keep up the good work. :biggrin:

The males are apparently terrible shippers. Get two females and wait it out, thats what I'm doing. Just waiting for a second one as only one came in on the last order :biggrin:

Delphinus

03-26-2012, 03:24 PM

Wish I could offer some advice on that but these guys came to me together out of a tank being shutdown.

The most fighting in the tank occurs among the angels. The male chases the female an awful lot to the point that I worry one day I'll find her outside the tank. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of damage done if he catches up to her, so I'm not really certain what is going on there. And then both the male and the female will have their individual spats with the potters, although like the occasional spat among the tangs (who aren't the best of friends but will tolerate each other for the most part), seem to only last a minute or two and then they go their separate ways.

Every so often I have seen the male do a display for the female however, and it is kind of neat to watch. He will swim sideways, occasionally flipping sides, and vibrate his tail. At least I think it's a display because he clearly looks for the female before he starts all this. I remember thinking "yeah right buddy, good luck with that. You are so sleeping on the fishy couch tonight."

Delphinus

04-05-2012, 03:33 PM

Well I finally broke down and added GFO to the system this week, and the results so far are .. well .. astonishing. Or at least, suffice it to say, I'm not sure I understand what's going on.

On Sunday I added 16 Tblsp (1 cup) of GFO to a TLF 150 reactor. Being concerned of a sudden PO4 drop (as this is reasonably well documented to be stressful to corals and can cause tissue recession and so on), I started with what I thought was a conservative amount of GFO (high capacity GFO, sourced by Eli at CaCO3Reef). Established guidelines for HC-GFO seem to suggest starting around 8 Tblsp per 8 gallons (before eventually being able to double that) so for a system with 300 gallons you'd think you'd want 37.5 Tblsp, 1 cup is 16 Tblsp so this is less than half of that so here I was thinking I was starting off with "half of the half amount for starters."

Set the flowrate to the reactor to slow (estimate maybe 50ml/min). At 50 ml/min it is basically a slow trickle. If I have my math right, it would take about 16 days to fully turnover one tank volume at this flowrate.

I thought it would be fun to test the tank PO4 and the reactor's output of PO4 for the first little bit. Doing dual tests like this should tell me a couple things:
1) If the GFO is "working" at all
2) How fast the PO4 is dropping in the tank
3) When the GFO is expended and needs to be replaced.
.. All good things to know.

Soooo anyhow, here are the results so far:

Day 0: Tank PO4=0.17ppm Reactor PO4=0.15
(I thought, oh good, it's only lowering the PO4 a little bit, this should be a nice safe slow reduction.)

Day 2: Tank PO4=0.08ppm Reactor PO4=0.18
(I thought, huh? Ok, I did some bad tests here. Try again tomorrow.)

Day 3: Tank PO4=0.07ppm Reactor PO4=0.00
(Makes me think the reactor testing from the day before was the bad result.)

So um ... Wow? Does this even make sense? That GFO must be one heck of a PO4 scavenger if it has halved the PO4 in the tank already after 2-3 days at such a small volume and small turnover.

So far there is one coral exhibiting some slight tip burn. It is very minor at this point however. It should easily recover assuming it doesn't get worse first. The piece in question is a Cali tort which hasn't actually been blue in over a year now (it did phenomenally well in the first quarter of the first year and then has been struggling ever since. It is clearly a strong coral however though, because in this time any other coral that has shown the slightest bit of distress over the PO4 eventually RTN'd at some point.)

I'm really excited to see where the reduced PO4 levels should take me in terms of coral growth and colour. I hope this is a positive step for the tank. It would be nice, for example, to see the Cali tort start to look like an actual Cali tort again. :) Oh, the possibilities!

Myka

04-05-2012, 04:05 PM

Holy crap Tony, I didn't realize you finally had water in this bad boy! I will have to read through your journal later and get up to speed.

globaldesigns

04-05-2012, 04:09 PM

Oh come on now Tony, you start things, and I have to follow! Now this? Reminds me of the BioPellet Days. Tagging along to see the overall results.

Delphinus

04-05-2012, 04:30 PM

Holy crap Tony, I didn't realize you finally had water in this bad boy! I will have to read through your journal later and get up to speed.

Hahahaha! Sadly I can't really tell if you're kidding or not. :p I know this is was one of the slowest builds ever (and the record probably still holds) but there's been water in the tank since .. um .. late 2010 or thereabouts. :p

Delphinus

04-05-2012, 04:43 PM

Oh come on now Tony, you start things, and I have to follow! Now this? Reminds me of the BioPellet Days. Tagging along to see the overall results.

I still use the biopellets on the small tank for now (which is just a fowlr). The nice thing is when I test the water in the tank, PO4 is zero, NO3 is zero, so they seem to do their job. Since the addition of the small doliatus the valonia in there is receding big time too.

Since going to larger water changes per week (about 16% now whereas before it was 8%) I've noticed an overall bounce to the tank that wasn't there before. The downside is my consumption of salt is way up (well, double, I guess, technically). It's not really something that's measurable or even perceivable in photographs but it is something I really notice myself when hanging around the tank: it just feels better.

But the PO4 wasn't going down. As you know I've been trying to follow the zeoheads advice over at zeovit.com but if after 18 months of zeovit and the PO4 isn't going down, I think it's fair to say it's not going to. They kept saying "be patient, be patient, be patient" but there's a limit to what I think one can tolerate. PO4 in small quantities is something needed for proper biology but too much of it is detrimental: you see it in inhibited growth, subdued colours, algae growth, etc. .. We've talked of this before but 2 things are becoming clear to me about zeovit:
1) Possibly more effective "per gallon" in smaller tanks (ie., less than 150gal) than in larger tanks
2) Possibly its strengths lie in "preventing PO4 buildup" as opposed to "actually able to reduce PO4 once it's there."

I still believe there are some benefits to the system so for now I plan to continue with zeovit, although at a much reduced footprint compared to before.

For me it's been a "journey of understanding" when it comes to PO4. I've finally figured out how to test it properly and get reliable numbers, and I think it explains a bit of what I was seeing. I just hope I'm not introducing too much risk for bringing it down so quickly after it's been so elevated for so long.

So yeah, you might want to consider adding GFO yourself. I'll see where this takes me but I think I might stick with keeping it for the long term, regardless of whether I stay with zeo or abandon zeo completely down the road.

Delphinus

04-08-2012, 06:31 AM

Day 6, tank = 0.12, reactor = 0.12. Looks like I'm replacing the GFO weekly at least to start with!

reefwars

04-08-2012, 06:37 AM

Day 6, tank = 0.12, reactor = 0.12. Looks like I'm replacing the GFO weekly at least to start with!

it wont stay that way, i had to use a fair amount at first changing wekkly or bi weekly then it slowly got cut down, im at about a cup changed every 6 weeks now

Delphinus

04-08-2012, 06:40 AM

Cool, that is a relief to hear!

reefwars

04-08-2012, 06:44 AM

Cool, that is a relief to hear!

its powerfull stuff and it works almost instantly at reducing phosphates, i dont think i would run a tank without it now after seeing first hand how fast and effective it is.

your corals will thank you with lots of growth and pretty colors :P

gregzz4

04-08-2012, 09:49 AM

You've got many pretty fish in there now. I'm awfully jealous.
Lookin' forward to more pics for my ideas.

Delphinus

04-15-2012, 12:05 AM

(Thanks Greg!)

Well.. second weekend of switching to GFO, so thought I'd test PO4 again.

Tank seems to be 0.09 now. GFO outputting also 0.09, so seems steady so far at replacing weekly. Still only 1 cup of GFO, however, which is like 25% of the recommended amount, so perhaps this makes sense. In fact the more that I think about this, I'm not sure what putting more GFO in the reactor does beyond lasting longer (ie., if I put in two cups would that mean it could last 2 weeks instead of 1, but the PO4 absorption remains the same in either case? If so then it just comes down to a question of how often does one want to refill the reactor.) The only thing I can think of is that if one could safely reduce the PO4 down to undetectable levels, then using more GFO maybe means you can have more flowrate through the reactor as well, thus increasing the reactor's ability to remove PO4 as it is produced ... however if you're already at or near zero then I'm not sure what additional benefit there is to doing that in the first place. In no scenario does one really get to leverage the GFO.

At least one can decisively predict the amount of GFO needed however, which is kind of nice. The only thing left to figure out is how many cups are in a lb. of GFO, after that I should be able to predict down to the week when I'm going to need more GFO.

One thing I am noticing with the Hanna tester however is that about every 2 or 3 tests, I get a total wingnut value. What is weird is that it produces the same wingnut reading every time. At least the silver lining is that if I see this value, I can pretty much just say "yep bad test", dump the vial and start over.

The Hanna tester "ULR Phosphorous" ("ULR" = "ultra low range") gives you a reading that says "ppb" (parts per billion) but what's important to note is that it is "ppb phosphorous". To convert to ppm PO4 (which is what most of us reef aquarists tend to think of for PO4) you multiply by 3.066 and then divide by 1000.

So my earlier reading of 0.08 corresponded to a value on the tester of 29: 29 * 3.066 / 1000 = 0.088somethingsomething which I just round up to 0.09.

When I get one of these wingnut values, the output reads, almost always, 55. There have been a few cases where it wasn't exactly 55 but close. So basically now if I get a reading of 55 to 59, I discount the reading, dump the vial, clean it out and start over.

What really tipped me off to this was that I got a GFO reading of 55 once which was higher than the tank. I would expect the value to be zero, or at least zero, or the same as the tank, but it should be next to impossible for the GFO to output higher than the tank. The whole reason we use GFO over other PO4 absorbers is that it's not supposed to leech PO4 once it is expended. On the second test it gave a zero reading, which made total sense.

I wonder how many others have this issue. Kind of weird.