Asylumdown's 275 Tank build

[asylumdown]

Time for an update!

tank has had a mild case of the dinos for the past month or so. It's not severe enough that anyone but me would notice it, though it did 'bloom' a little the first week of february. I had a mild heart attack at that, since I left on February 8th for 17 days for my wedding in California, but sometimes the best action is no action. My roommates took incredible care of my tank while I was gone, and while there are still dines there if you look hard enough, a change in Phos media and a thorough cleaning of the skimmer cup when I got home seems to be knocking them out altogether now. I looked at the dinos under my new microscope; I posted this in the main room, but for posterities sake, here's the pics:

10X:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps996c1ac6.jpg

40X:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps3f5bf4ae.jpg

While I was away, this guy (the tusk fish):
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsf69ccc76.jpg

Attacked this guy (the flame wrasse):http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsbe0c7abc.jpg
and killed him. My roommate fed a frozen clam as a treat and the tusk and the wrasse got in a fight over it. The tusk won. I'm going to go to a bait shop this weekend to pick up some barbless hooks and see if I can't fish the tusk out of the tank. He's spent every day since I got home chasing all the other fish. I'm going to need to think hard on what I want to replace them with.

I went back and found all my FTS since I put the tank together, and I thought it would be cool to see them in one spot together. I think I've probably posted some before, but it's a cool progression

March 30, 2012 - before water:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsfba38bed.jpg

APril 15, 2012 - Cycling
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps1706b427.jpg

June 21, 2012 - first fish (may they RIP) and first corals. Also first signs of algae problems
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsbbcea1fd.jpg

August 25th -All fish removed from tank due to ich outbreak. The capture required a total break down of rock and re-scaping. Never-will-I-ever not QT fish again. One of my radions also died (hence the dark spot)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps84eca6fa.jpg

September 10 - With the fish getting hypo in the sump and the plumbing diverted away from the display, no nutrient export of any kind happened in the display tank for 5 full weeks. This was the start of something awful.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps55b6b406.jpg

October 30, 2012 - Right around the time hypo failed (the ich came back) and I moved the fish out of the sump to a separate QT tank, something I should have done in the first place. This is what 5 weeks of no nutrient export, no algae grazing, and continued feeding will do to a tank. Coral growth utterly shut down at this point.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps8d784f81.jpg

[asylumdown]

November 6, 2012 - With the skimmer, BP reactor and phosphate absorbing media now plumbed back inline with the display tank, and with a renewed ability to do water changes, I started attacking the algae aggressively. 16 Mexican turbo snails, mass manual removal, and dosing with Algae-fix marine made pretty short work of it. This pic is deceiving though, there was way more of it in there than you would think based on this pic at this time.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps89769e85.jpg

December 28, 2012 - coral growth started to seriously take off in the low nutrient environment. I also ended up losing all my fish from before the ich outbreak on November 8th, so the tusk you see there was the first time the tank had had fish in it since August. He won't be in there much longer.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsc020e568.jpg

January 15, 2013 - Sigh, RIP flame wrasse, you were beautiful, but you didn't have big enough teeth.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps12c01e14.jpg

And today, Feb. 28, 2013 - The corals are growing like gangbusters, the dinos are going away, and the tank is almost exactly where I want it. I just need some more fuzzy sticks to fill in the holes, and the corals I do have to fill out a bit more. I had to majorly bump up the amount of calcium and alk I'm dosing when I got home from my wedding, so that's got to be a good sign. I took this pic while the feed mode (shuts down the return pump) was on, hence the low water level.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps35115217.jpg

[Aquattro]

You meant 2013 on the last 2, right? I fixed it for you :)

[asylumdown]

ph, and one more thing, I ran a power meter on my radions for 24 hours to see how much energy they're using. My 8 radion are burning through 8.9kwh of electricity per day on their current settings, which at our electricity price equates to something in the neighbourhood of $22-$24 a month to run. that's way, WAY higher than I was expecting. I've currently got the power meter testing the power bar that runs my pump and skimmer, and tomorrow I'll have it test the bar that runs my heaters and vortechs. This tank is a bigger portion of our electric bill than I was expecting.

[asylumdown]

You meant 2013 on the last 2, right? I fixed it for you :)

Yes indeed I did! thanks Brad!

[lastlight]

you've had some good growth on some of those pieces. things look good!

[asylumdown]

Underwater case for my phone arrived today, so I took some underwater pics!

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps235ab8b7.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps7fefeace.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsc3b92269.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps67bac43c.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps55aba744.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps792e3e2e.jpg

I just wish my phone's camera could deal with the LED's a bit better

[kien]

Nice. Love that abro. Did you get the LifeProof?? Those things are awesome!

[asylumdown]

I sure did! I have one on my old 4S and I loved it, but never got one for the new phone. Then the day before my wedding in Palm Springs I was walking from our hotel room to the lobby and stopped by the pool deck to say hi to my future in-laws. My dad, who was 100 feet away at the hotel restaurant tried to call me to get my attention. Hand got caught on my pocket pulling out my phone, and the it did a slow motion tumble in to the pool. Spending two hours in a US Apple store the day before my wedding getting it replaced was the exact last thing I needed to be doing that day, so I ordered the LifeProof case for the 5 as soon as we got home.

What's worse, is that I already had a different brand of water proof case for the 5, but it was such a tremendous POS, I had taken the phone out in frustration the night before the pool incident. It was sitting on the couch in the hotel room when my phone went for a swim. When you talk on the phone with a LifeProof case, you can't even tell it's covered up, the one I had for my old 5 made it sound like I was at the bottom of a very deep well.

[Zoaelite]

Those SPS shots make me want to pick up the stick addiction again :neutral:. Great to see everything is coming together for you on this tank Adam!

[kien]

Those SPS shots make me want to pick up the stick addiction again :neutral:. Great to see everything is coming together for you on this tank Adam!

Resistance is futile.

[lastlight]

Sticks look great man!

[gregzz4]

Nice pics Adam
I'm goin' got it, want it, got it, want it, want it :smile:

[asylumdown]

I swaer Canreef doesn't send me e-mail updates when people respond to this thread. Or I'm just really, really bad at e-mail.

Levi, anytime you want back in to the SPS game, you call me. For the first time in my reefing career, I am actually on the cusp of needing to frag things because of space. Also, I spent too much money at one store, and I've come to realize as time has gone on that I've actually bought the exact same species three different times for three different species. I didn't realize I was doing it because things change so much under my lights/brown out so much under store lights. I've got like 4 whole colonies that I'd happily trade away at the moment because they're duplicates.

and Greg, if you're ever in Calgary, stop by and I'll frag whatever you want!

[asylumdown]

and I know this is the main room, but I'm gonna put it in my thread because I love it and I don't want it getting lost - This is Ferdinand. Coolest. Reef. Fish. EVER.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/th_file_zpsaa654082.jpg (http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsaa654082.mp4)

He may or may not have a taste for corals. Time will tell, he's very curious. He's already taken a tiny nibble on one of my frogspawns, but since I don't care all that much about LPS, I'd happily let him eat it if he would be cute about doing it. Thankfully he didn't bite anything off and spit it out as soon as he put it in his mouth. However, he's eyed a few SPS pieces like they might be tasty, so time will tell if he's a permanent addition. The interwebs didn't mention anything about them being coralivores, so I'm going to chalk it up to curiosity for now.

[asylumdown]

way too many posts from me, I also forgot to mention that I got an order from Canada Corals a few days ago. UPS almost screwed that pooch beyond repair, but between me and the girl from CC calling them, they actually did deliver on the day they said they would.

I picked up a forest fire montipora frag, a rainbow montipora frag, an echinopora mammiformis frag, and some sort of Acropora secale frag. Considering that they were drunken saturday night internet shopping purchases, they turned out really well. I re-scaped half my tank to fit them in, so I'll post pics of it soon.

I also picked up a sebae anemone about a week ago. Unfortunately, the thing is bleached to within an inch of it's life. I keep hoping it will make a come back, but it won't last more than 48 hours in one spot before it launches itself in to a power head. I've got foam on all of them and I'm turning them off at night, but trying to nurse this thing back to life is exhausting. So far my true percula clowns are ignoring it, and tonight I had to shoo them away from one of my mag floats as it looked like they were about to spawn on it. I've half a mind to give up on the Sebae and track down a good sized GBTA, but they are such notorious wanderers/splitters.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpse808d237.jpg

[gregzz4]

Thanks for the nice offer Adam

Ferdinand is cool
Best of luck with his diet :lol:

[Delphinus]

Not sure if this helps but FWIW I found when I had a sebae anemone that it was really terrible at attaching to anything (even when it was healthy). It's like it prefers to wedge its foot into a deep crevasse and then pressure itself into place. The only place it stayed successfully was a fairly deep crevasse created by the placement of two large rocks near to each other.

Good luck. They are very nice anemones when they are healthy but they seem to only come into the hobby way too bleached.

[kien]

That cow fish is awesome! How does he manage in the flow? Does he retreat to calmer waters ? I tried a box fish once (okay maybe twice), and they just couldn't handle the flow at all. They'd get blasted around by the powerheads and when they retreated to calmer spots they were bothered by the bigger fish.

[asylumdown]

This guy is doing great, I think it's because there's so many places in my tank where there's interference so as the day progresses there are relatively calm areas. He doesn't even seem to mind the high flow spots now, as he's doing a much better job of positioning himself in them so that he controls his position instead of just getting blasted. It took him a couple of days to figure out that the sand bed and close to the rocks were calmer than right in front of the powerbeads, but he's almost (not quite) at the point where you can't tell there's current in the tank when you look at him like all the other fish.

How big were the boxfish you tried? this guy is bigger than most I've seen in stores/in people's build threads before so that might be helping. I'm really hoping for long term success with him. I never in a million years thought I could have one of these guys, then when I saw two of them at Wai's and my roommate went "Whoa! COOL!" I immediately turned to google to show him why I couldn't have one. Then Google actually suggested I might be able to have one. Now he's my favourite thing in my tank.

Honestly even if he eats a little bit of coral I might not get rid of him. I have a lot of coral, and he's cooler than most of my coral.

[kien]

Sounds like someone is attached :-). I had a fish like that once (Queen Angelfish).. Tough call between the fish and the corals.

Both boxfishes that i previously had were pretty small. Probably an inch?

[Zoaelite]

and I know this is the main room, but I'm gonna put it in my thread because I love it and I don't want it getting lost - This is Ferdinand. Coolest. Reef. Fish. EVER.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/th_file_zpsaa654082.jpg (http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsaa654082.mp4)

He may or may not have a taste for corals. Time will tell, he's very curious. He's already taken a tiny nibble on one of my frogspawns, but since I don't care all that much about LPS, I'd happily let him eat it if he would be cute about doing it. Thankfully he didn't bite anything off and spit it out as soon as he put it in his mouth. However, he's eyed a few SPS pieces like they might be tasty, so time will tell if he's a permanent addition. The interwebs didn't mention anything about them being coralivores, so I'm going to chalk it up to curiosity for now.

As in Franz Ferdinand?

[asylumdown]

Not sure if this helps but FWIW I found when I had a sebae anemone that it was really terrible at attaching to anything (even when it was healthy). It's like it prefers to wedge its foot into a deep crevasse and then pressure itself into place. The only place it stayed successfully was a fairly deep crevasse created by the placement of two large rocks near to each other.

Good luck. They are very nice anemones when they are healthy but they seem to only come into the hobby way too bleached.

Thanks for the advice, I just moved a piece of rock from my fuge up to where the nem is. I placed it in the path of the current that keeps dislodging him. It's locking in pretty well, but if the nem stays put for a day or more, I'll epoxy it in to place.

I also pried a colony of acans off the rock that the anemones tentacles could reach if the current was right. I'm sure the nem would have won if it were healthy, but I'm thinking maybe the irritation was causing it to want to wander.

[asylumdown]

I finally figured out how to fix the white balance on some of my iPhone photos. They're still not perfect, but they're waaaaay closer to real life than in the past. Ferdinand is front and centre, clearly expecting me to feed him:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsada620c9.jpg

Got some new goodies. The sebae anemone I picked up didn't work out. I think it was just too bleached. It wouldn't eat, wouldn't attach, wouldn't right itself (it flipped over every day for almost two weeks), and finally turned itself inside out. So I picked up what's regarded as a 'harder' anemone to keep, but so far in my tank is doing brilliantly. It attached right away, moved a couple inches, and settled down:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps57759cd9.jpg

And some other new goodies:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps3f633fe4.jpg
Red planet, finally!

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsaaf22553.jpg
I think pocillopora, you can also see my new rainbow monti in that pic

(thanks Argentiner for the frags!)

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps9f2badad.jpg
I got a small order from Canada Corals (didn't see the group buy, oops), that's an echinopora mammiformis and an Acropora secale. Both are pretty brown at the moment, but I'm hoping uner my lights they do something magical. I also got the rainbow monti in the pic above

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsd864d237.jpg
Terrible blown out photo of the forest fire monti, also from Canada Corals (excellent service, incredible packaging, thanks guys!)

and just some other, sort of colour corrected photos. There's still too much blue in them compared to what you see when you look at the tank, but I'm getting closer to 'as seen in real life' pictures. I'll get them perfect eventually.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsc0d23151.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps992539a9.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps1e76ecb5.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps2c89a7e8.jpg

[asylumdown]

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps914022b2.jpg
(this is the most accurate colour photo I've ever been able to get of this colony)

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps2f26484c.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps2ada3e25.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps0298129d.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps1938d4a8.jpg

[kien]

Nice scores! And wow that tri-colour looks insane!

[gregzz4]

Wow, that white-balance shot looks awesome Adam
Now you need some more Red corals :smile:

Oh, and Ferdinand is tre` kool

[asylumdown]

Nice scores! And wow that tri-colour looks insane!

Thanks man, I also picked up a birdsnest of some sort from Argentiner that's totally insane, I just didn't get a shot of it tonight. His tank is incredible.

That tricolor has been been growing like crazy, I broke the original mini colony off it's base in to 4 small pieces and glued them to a new rock. It's completely encrusted over that rock and has now cemented itself down to the rockwork underneath. It does not mind being in the brightest spot in the tank one bit.

[asylumdown]

Wow, that white-balance shot looks awesome Adam
Now you need some more Red corals :smile:

Oh, and Ferdinand is tre` kool

hehe, it's why I was so excited when I finally got some red planet. I've started breaking all my new frags in two if they're big enough and placing them in different lighting areas of my tank to see what they do. I've found some of my corals that grow like weeds in the brightest light also wash out horribly under the LEDs, but if I put a frag in the shade, they'll grow slower but go back to their 'show' colours. I moved a colony of green stag with blue tips in and put the bigger chunk of Red Planet in it's place, but I have that blue/green stag in three different places in my tank, the one frag of it that's at the bottom and partially shaded is a beautiful emerald green, while the ones that were near the top where that red planet is now had nice blue tips, but the body of the corals were almost light tan/yellow. I'm not sure if that red planet frag is going to do well that high up on the rock, so I've got another piece almost at the bottom of the tank. I want at least one of them to develop that beautiful green under-tone.

[gregzz4]

I hope you find the happiest places for your different corals

It's funny, talking about LEDs ...
Another member has recently told me he may dump his latest ones and go back to T5s. I'm not surprised
I don't have the money to play with LEDs, so I have no input ...

Here's to your red planet growing like a weed :smile:

And keep the pics coming

[asylumdown]

Yah man, they're definitely not a 100% solution. I love them because when you get enough of them, they're crazy powerful, way more powerful than I ever gave them credit for before hand (hence 8 units running at 75% max power when I really only needed 6), but I've never seen an LED tank look as good in person as some of the T5 tanks I've seen. Argentiner's tank that I saw today is T5 and his is everything I hope mine one day becomes, it was spectacular. I'm not sure if it's that I just have them way too bright for some corals, or what the deal is, but certain corals just don't hold their 'zing' colours under my lights, while others (like that tricolour) almost hurt to look at they're so electric. So far, I'm willing to trade off the colour losses when they do occur for the fact that my tank actually has a sunrise and a sunset, and how much the look of it changes over the course of a day. I can wake up on a Saturday and look at the tank in it's morning light, then go out and come back at 1pm and it's like looking at a completely different tank. I even get an hour of hyper crazy royal blue (which I wouldn't want all the time) right before bed.

I'm just now starting to play with coral positioning, and considering adjusting my light schedule to see if I can bump up the colours that I've lost without compromising the growth, but it makes me nervous to mess with a good thing if you know what I mean. I'm sure part of the issue is also that this tank has been darn near close to ULNS for months, so things are a little more pastel regardless of lights anyway. I don't think I'd ever ditch LEDs now that I've had a taste of their overall intensity and controllability, but I definitely wouldn't buy another fixture unless it had the same sort of diode mix that the new radion pro has. I think the success of LEDs is going to be when the diode colour mixes start to approach the richness and breadth of what you can accomplish with T5s. I think if I had something closer to the 'true UV', as well as a few more peaks on the deeper blue end in there, the colours would pop a bit more, and the corals that fade might hold on to some of their 'zing'. However, a many thousand dollar upgrade to radion pros is not in the cards for a while.

[asylumdown]

Also, just checked before bed - my male true perc clown is in the nem! He's wiggling around in it like a pig in mud! Here's hoping his girlfriend figures out it's there tomorrow

[gregzz4]

That's kool
Wish my captive-bred clown would play in my bubble tip, without being eaten mind you :rolleyes:

The whole lighting thing .... best of luck with your decision

[kien]

That's a good idea playing with placement. I've been doing the same thing. I have a red planet in 3 different places and all three look different! One is more red one is more pink and one is more green. I also have a bonsai in two different places and one is more blue in its tips while one is more purple. It's kinda cool to observe the differences.

Personally I think your pale/pastel colours are due to your ULNS environment. You don't have a lot of fish in there at all. It depends on your perspective whether or not this is a good or bad thing tho. Many people strive for that pastelly zeoVit look. I think this is why zeoVit has all those other bottles to play with. You strip your tank clean with the zeoLites and pale your corals out, but then bring back some colour (possibly selectively) by dosing the various additives (Coral Vitalizer, pohls xtra, amino acids, etc..). Then there are people like me who would see this as an excuse to add more fish. :lol:

[lastlight]

are you gluing your stuff directly to the rock? I also had a few corals in multiple spots but would have done much more of this had I drilled my rock to peg the corals in place.

[asylumdown]

Personally I think your pale/pastel colours are due to your ULNS environment. You don't have a lot of fish in there at all. It depends on your perspective whether or not this is a good or bad thing tho. Many people strive for that pastelly zeoVit look. I think this is why zeoVit has all those other bottles to play with. You strip your tank clean with the zeoLites and pale your corals out, but then bring back some colour (possibly selectively) by dosing the various additives (Coral Vitalizer, pohls xtra, amino acids, etc..). Then there are people like me who would see this as an excuse to add more fish. :lol:

Yah I've been meaning to get more fish, but I'm pretty sold on the tank transfer method as a QT procedure and man is it ever labour intensive. Also, it turns out there's not many 12 day stretches where I'm in the city continuously, and I already ask too much of my roommates in regards to my tank to be ok with asking them to do a transfer for me or stay on top of ammonia testing. I have been dosing Pohl's Xtra with my doser, and for a while I was dosing B-balance, but I didn't see any difference in coral colours and within a week of dosing B-balance I got my first flush of dinos. I can't say for sure they're connected, but since I stopped dosing B-balance, the dino issue has subsided dramatically. I'm nervous to dose things when I don't really know what they are, and if it can't be automated I'm also too lazy to keep up with it lol.

[asylumdown]

are you gluing your stuff directly to the rock? I also had a few corals in multiple spots but would have done much more of this had I drilled my rock to peg the corals in place.

At first I was breaking them off their base rocks, then super gluing them to new pieces of marco rock rubble, and then epoxying those rocks in to place, but that was before I was sure if I was going to keep my rockscape. Recently I've just been epoxying things directly to the rock and letting them grow over it, as you can see the epoxy for less time. I am however currently regretting that decision, as my new anemone went walkabout this morning and I've had to break 4, soon to be 5 colonies off the rocks to get them out of it's way. I'm pretty sure it's climbing to the highest point on the current rock, so I'm going to re-work things a bit to make sure that rock is an island, as I'll need to move half the corals in my tank (many of which are fully encrusted on the LR) if it makes it off it's current perch.

[asylumdown]

And speaking of the anemone - I caught the moment that the female figured it out it was home on camera:

Taking a look - when she came over for the first time, the male swam out to give her a little nuzzle. Then she inched in and pushed her forehead against the white bulb at the end of one of the tentacles.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsc331eb4b.jpg

And she's in!
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps93d84cd2.jpg

It was a total fluke that my roommate and I happened to be standing right in front of the tank talking about how cute the male was when she came down from her usual corner above the powerhead to take a look. Now they're both in there like pigs in... well, you know.

[lastlight]

great shot the orange and purples look great contrasting. i guess this means they're going to start getting nasty at you when you go near their new home lol.

[kien]

I'm nervous to dose things when I don't really know what they are, and if it can't be automated I'm also too lazy to keep up with it lol.

You and me both. Lazy reefing FTW! LOL

[asylumdown]

For such a minor change in my aquascape, that was a tremendous amount of work.

I 'cleaved' the rock work on the north side so that the anemone is more on an island now
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpscd769064.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps5c14ae0b.jpg
Kind of hard to tell in that last pic, but the island the nem is on is only touching the rest of the rock work in one place, under and overhang that anemones don't seem to like to climb under. I left everything above the nem free of corals in case it decides to climb while I'm gone. If it does make it to the other bommie of rock, my roommate has promised to move corals out of its way.

I kind of like it, it created this little canyon that I think I'll fill up with zoas or LPS once the nem gets settled.

I'm not placing anything that I pulled off the rocks in the front until I know where things are going to live for good
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps8d9a2f5a.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps0914f452.jpg

and yes, yes I know BTA and magnifica anemone in the same tank. The BTA was an impulse purchase and I just haven't had the time to sell it yet. I'm sure it's going to walk all over the place stinging the hell out of stuff while I'm gone next week.

[asylumdown]

and remember kids, don't text and rockscape at the same time:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps1b54d318.jpg

I got distracted an forgot that I had put these guys up on the lip of the tank. Found them an hour later quite dead. Oops. thankfully not my favourite pieces.

[asylumdown]

Got a new camera today. Obviously tested it out on the tank. Having a hard time because a certain someone insisted on photobombing every picture:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps2954d8f5.jpg

Oh Ferdinand. To you, I am food.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps22a242da.jpg

[mrhasan]

and remember kids, don't text and rockscape at the same time:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps1b54d318.jpg

I got distracted an forgot that I had put these guys up on the lip of the tank. Found them an hour later quite dead. Oops. thankfully not my favourite pieces.

Didn't you try putting it back after finding it out? I thought corals can be outside for hours (low tide) and won't have any problem because of the mucus they excrete. Would have worth a shot.

[Jeff000]

Tank looks great. Love that magnifica.


Didn't you try putting it back after finding it out? I thought corals can be outside for hours (low tide) and won't have any problem because of the mucus they excrete. Would have worth a shot.

Yup, I left a couple frags out overnight and they survived.

[fragbox.ca]

just awesome man

[thmh]

Omg i love your cow fish! They have lots of character...... Great addition to your tank!

-Tony

[asylumdown]

Thanks everyone! I realize it's been too long since I updated this thread. Grad school is kicking my butt.

First off, the anemone didn't work out. I sold it, and the clown fish, to someone who was going to do a species only tank. It just moved too often. After the last pics I posted it wandered around to the front of my tank and tried to kill corals worth 4 times what it cost. things are only just now starting to recover.

second, my house is going up for sale this summer, so the future of this tank is very much hanging in the balance. Best case scenario, tank gets sold as with the house as is and it continues it's illustrious life with a new owner. Or, more likely, I'll end up having to sell it's contents and it will become a closet or built in book shelf.

in any case, here's some updated pics. I've been trying to play with different camera apps to get the white balance correct so I'll post some comparisons.

Also, I added a coral beauty angelfish and 9 anthias. The coral beauty was a mistake as some of my favourite corals no longer have any day time polyp extension because it nips at EVERYTHING! Not enough to cause damage, but enough to prevent the polyps from extending ever. I bought 6 disbar anthias which are mostly working out swimmingly (one hasn't eaten in over a month and does nothing but hide, I'm basically just waiting for it to die), but the 3 purple queen anthias that I bought on pure impulse without doing any research were a clear error. I had no idea how fickle they were to get to eat, or how much food they would need until it was too late. They wouldn't eat anything larger than a cyclopeeze for the first few weeks and withered away to practically skeletal. After QT, I started dumping tremendous amounts of food in to the tank to see if anything would work, and FINALLY they're eating entire pieces of Hikari mysis (not PE mysis though, those pieces are too big). We'll see if they make it, they're not putting on weight, but they're not losing any more either. The massive dump of nutrients lead to an explosion of dinos which I had kept at bay via an ULNS. I'm slowly mopping that up with regularly changed high capacity GFO, lots of water changes, and more strategic feedings. I'm noticing an interesting phenomenon of the dino beds (confirmed via microscope) slowly being overtaken by mats of cyano as the dinos die back. I think the dinos trapped enough detritus in/under them for cyano to locally thrive as the dinos die.

Anyway, enough talk, more pics.

Poorly colour corrected FTS from the dining room
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps894d6309.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps894d6309.jpg.html)

Moderately corrected image from the office
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsdb36b220.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsdb36b220.jpg.html)
(keep in mind the cabinets are white in real life, so gauge how accurate that pic is for yourself)

An awesome pic of Tron, my doliatus rabbit. He's not that vibrant in real life, but those setting made him look like I was on acid
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps4792bb6a.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps4792bb6a.jpg.html)

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps1dad1a79.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps1dad1a79.jpg.html)

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps94084159.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps94084159.jpg.html)

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsed257da4.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsed257da4.jpg.html)

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps05378f22.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps05378f22.jpg.html)

mah frags
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsc4368f3c.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsc4368f3c.jpg.html)

Ferdinand!
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps98b469cd.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps98b469cd.jpg.html)

Lazarus! He's loving the extra food...
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpse3044d64.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpse3044d64.jpg.html)

[asylumdown]

South side
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsd94ed77c.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsd94ed77c.jpg.html)

North side
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps8a68aede.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps8a68aede.jpg.html)

Close up south
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsbf5619e0.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsbf5619e0.jpg.html)

My new anthias
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps6112e021.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps6112e021.jpg.html)

PhotoBomb!
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps48018aea.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps48018aea.jpg.html)

What a difference lighting makes...
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsaafa4c95.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsaafa4c95.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsb3844e55.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsb3844e55.jpg.html)

[asylumdown]

it took nearly a year, but this walt smith coral has finally started growing (the pink one)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps58c9bad8.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps58c9bad8.jpg.html)

I just picked up this cabbage coral.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps4cfb7854.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps4cfb7854.jpg.html)

Picked up this guy from a tank shut down (the purple table acro), seems to be acclimating nicely
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps1835926b.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps1835926b.jpg.html)

[Delphinus]

"Tron", lol that's awesome. I love doliatus rabbits. There was a time it was near impossible to land this fish in Calgary. Lately I see them more from time to time. "When I was young I had to wait years for a doliatus. And it was uphill both ways. etc. etc. etc."

Things look great overall, very nice!

PS. It's actually "dispar". I've been calling them "disbars" for the longest time and just realized a month ago that it's a p not a b. Ooops.

[lastlight]

things are really taking off. that means you can't shut this thing down ok?

[mseepman]

Tank is looking awesome. That Rabbit the bomb!! Love how your corals have really started to show their growth. Your tank reminds me each day that patience pays off so I dread when you decide to take it down. Hopefully any new owner realizes what they are getting.

[Skimmerking]

looking really good mango. love the SPS in there. the rocks are so clean what the heck no red turf bubble or hair how are you doing this.

[asylumdown]

"Tron", lol that's awesome. I love doliatus rabbits. There was a time it was near impossible to land this fish in Calgary. Lately I see them more from time to time. "When I was young I had to wait years for a doliatus. And it was uphill both ways. etc. etc. etc."

Things look great overall, very nice!

PS. It's actually "dispar". I've been calling them "disbars" for the longest time and just realized a month ago that it's a p not a b. Ooops.

Yah I love the rabbit. I rarely see him picking at the rocks, but I think he's a big reason why I've never had a recurrence of ANY algae in the display. I still get some hair algae in my overflows that I sometimes have to pull out, but nothing grows where you can see it. They're far more general in the algae they eat than tangs, as in they'll eat any kind of algae (including valonia), where tangs usually prefer one or two kinds. This guy even eats the dinos that grow in my tank. They're way less ich, aggression and problem prone than tangs so I'm happy for him to fill that role.

And Dispar hey... you know that makes perfect sense. I couldn't figure out why they would be called disbar as that would imply something diagnostic in their stripes, and they don't really have any as far as I can tell!

[asylumdown]

things are really taking off. that means you can't shut this thing down ok?

I'm working on it man. The very best case scenario is that the new owners don't want it, and we get to set a possession date that gives us enough time to buy a place where I can set up a new system and transfer stuff over. I probably won't be able to have a system this large in the new place, but at least That would let me save most of the corals.

[asylumdown]

Tank is looking awesome. That Rabbit the bomb!! Love how your corals have really started to show their growth. Your tank reminds me each day that patience pays off so I dread when you decide to take it down. Hopefully any new owner realizes what they are getting.

Hopefully they don't have to and I get to keep most of it! It will all come down to timing and logistics. I'm excited about the idea of setting up a new system (can anyone say Mitras?), but I don't want to start from scratch in terms of coral growth. A bunch of those mini-colonies were frags when I got them, and it's taken some of them 8 months to a year to get to where they are now. The one thing you can't buy is time.

[asylumdown]

looking really good mango. love the SPS in there. the rocks are so clean what the heck no red turf bubble or hair how are you doing this.

Biopellets, regularly changed GFO, and that rabbitfish. I had a problem with algae around Christmas when the tank had no nutrient export of any kind for 5 weeks, then when things were set back up properly again I started attacking it with both mexican turbo snails, aggressive water changes, changing GFO sometimes daily, and then finally dosing the tank with algaefix marine for 10 days. The rabbitfish went in right after that and I've never had a problem since. I do however have the occasional bloom of dinos, which seems to synergistically encourage a few patches of cyano here and there.

[asylumdown]

Some pics. If anyone in Calgary ever wants to come over and help me take some good quality images that counter-acts the effect LEDs have on camera sensors, I'd be happy for the help. We have a pretty good camera now (these pics were taken on it), but it's still washing everything out in the images compared to real life. I don't know what else to do!

FTS front
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps21a6bea9.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps21a6bea9.jpg.html)

FTS back
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps48e978ee.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps48e978ee.jpg.html)

South detail front
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsf5f04c0b.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsf5f04c0b.jpg.html)

North detail Front
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps4786ee07.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps4786ee07.jpg.html)

North Detail photo bomb. You'd think I never feed this guy.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps85f0a234.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps85f0a234.jpg.html)

South Detail back
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps3b22da39.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps3b22da39.jpg.html)

North detail back
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps70b4cbde.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps70b4cbde.jpg.html)

Update on the tank - I've been battling low grade dinos for a few months now. I've been trying to be super aggressive with nutrient control, but at the level of phosphate in the water I need for good coral colour, I also get expanding shadows of dinos in the sand around the base of my rocks. I'm also getting a few patches of cyano here and there. It's not getting out of control or anything though, so I haven't really wanted to take extreme measures that can upset the whole system.

I was sure my purple queen anthias were going to starve to death (bought on impulse with no prior research), but I think I'm on month 3 now and all three of them have gained weight. I'm having more troubles with my other anthias - I've got 3 females and two males. I think it's triggered one to turn in to a super male, which is awesome as he's so much more brilliantly coloured, but he's been bullying the other male something fierce.

House is still for sale, but it hit the MLS two days before the flood, and since then the market for homes in our price bracket has been pretty chaotic, so we've not had much traffic. As it stands, the tank is still mine, but I'm still not spending much money one it as I don't think it will be mine for much longer.

I've been having a heck of a time keeping my alkalinity up the past month or so, it hovered around 6.5-6.7 for nearly a month, and my birdsnest took a serious beating. My other corals are growing faster than they ever have right now though, which is why I think the demand is so high. I'm presently dosing 165ml of randy's two part baking soda solution per day, and 130ml of anhydrous calcium chloride solution. I also recently added a third dosing chamber for magnesium, and 30ml/day seems to be keeping the levels around 1300ppm. As of two days ago, my dosing schedule finally brought my alk levels back up above 7.

I'm getting so bloody sick of using filter socks - they sometimes clog and start overflowing after 18 hours these days. WIthout them, my sump design allows too many micro-bubbles to get back in to the display. I've been toying with the idea of completely re-doing my overflow plumbing so that I can have an overflow that functions on the same principle as a BeanAnimal (I have the right number of holes), but that would be a major undertaking if the tank is just going to get broken down. If the people who buy my house want the tank, I'll probably do it.

[Jaws]

Beautiful tank! What substrate did you use?

[asylumdown]

A couple growth shots:

January, 2013:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zpsf4864566.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zpsf4864566.jpg.html)

July, 2013 (coral's been moved, so this photo is badly scaled compared to the first, it's MUCH bigger)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zps2e926dd2.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zps2e926dd2.jpg.html)

February, 2013
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zps99f3a453.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zps99f3a453.jpg.html)

July, 2013 This coral photographs the worst - this is with a good camera
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zps0d225f8a.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zps0d225f8a.jpg.html)

With an iPhone camera:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zps65e4532b.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zps65e4532b.jpg.html)
In real life it's probably somewhere in the middle

Februay, 2013
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zpsb295fe7e.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zpsb295fe7e.jpg.html)

July, 2013
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zpscd20b0a9.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zpscd20b0a9.jpg.html)

February, 2013
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zps1f0aa497.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zps1f0aa497.jpg.html)

July, 20123
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zps9adddff3.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zps9adddff3.jpg.html)

[asylumdown]

February, 2013
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zps0478cfc5.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zps0478cfc5.jpg.html)

July, 2013
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zpscced8ed4.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zpscced8ed4.jpg.html)
(bottom left)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zps115ff290.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zps115ff290.jpg.html)

January, 2013
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zpseb0bf357.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zpseb0bf357.jpg.html)

July, 2013 - the coral that was to the right of the green polyped guy in the first pic has been moved slightly to the right and re-oriented, so it's now side on instead of head on. The encrusted base that got left behind in it's old spot is spreading out.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zps35f9256e.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zps35f9256e.jpg.html)

February, 2013
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zps5713d220.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zps5713d220.jpg.html)

July, 2013
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zpscc66a21d.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zpscc66a21d.jpg.html)

February, 2013
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zps8d951672.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zps8d951672.jpg.html)

July, 2013 - the blue stag coral in the back has gotten a couple hard prunings recently, so it's almost back to the same size it was in in February!
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/Growth%20Shots/file_zps9175ac23.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/Growth%20Shots/file_zps9175ac23.jpg.html)

[asylumdown]

Beautiful tank! What substrate did you use?

Thanks! I can't tell you how much I love this tank. I used Caribsea Special grade. I still had to dial my MP60s way back (I really only needed MP40s) to stop the sand from blowing everywhere, but it's been pretty good to me so far.

[kien]

Looking good Adam! It's a shame the tank may be changing hands :cry: Hopefully if all goes according to plan the new owner will find interest and take ownership of it and continue the tank's journal on Canreef :biggrin:

I would love to come see this tank before it does change hands thought.. you may even persuade me to bring my camera.. :wink:

[asylumdown]

Looking good Adam! It's a shame the tank may be changing hands :cry: Hopefully if all goes according to plan the new owner will find interest and take ownership of it and continue the tank's journal on Canreef :biggrin:

I would love to come see this tank before it does change hands thought.. you may even persuade me to bring my camera.. :wink:

haha good! That frag I made for you is almost a mini colony now too!

Can you imagine - has there ever been a tank journal that actually traded hands before?

[kien]

has there ever been a tank journal that actually traded hands before?

I don't think actual journals have changed hands, but lots of tanks have changed hands with new journals started for them. That's probably as close as it gets (has gotten). Also, most of the time the tank has had to move, which ends up changing the tank dramatically so it ends up being a new tank anyway. Your case is unique in that there's a change the tank would change hands but remain completely unaltered!

[asylumdown]

The other thing I've been struggling with is a resurgence of very large bubble algae cells. Some of them are a good 4 inches across. I came downstairs this morning to find that two corals had been completely lifted and knocked off the rocks by bubble algaes growing underneath them!

I just posted a pic of this one yesterday! This gives me a chance to check this guy for AEFW. I haven't found a flatworm on any corals other than the one coral that initially had them, but this guy was so encrusted I never pulled him out to check. It's been getting some spots on it that might be flatworm damage, but it's also been getting picked on something fierce by my newish coral beauty angel, so it could be either.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps55f03c01.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps55f03c01.jpg.html)

Look at the size of those balls!
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsb0bf0786.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsb0bf0786.jpg.html)

[daplatapus]

Them are big balls alright :D

[asylumdown]

Was playing with my new GoPro camera. It was a gift for underwater photography so I'd stop risking my cell phone with water proof cases. It's cool, but with no controls on the actual camera it's impossible to compensate for the effect LEDs have on the sensor, so these pics, like all my other pics, aren't even close to true to life. They're so much better in person.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps03be8642.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps03be8642.jpg.html)

Peekaboo!
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsa54a2140.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsa54a2140.jpg.html)

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsde7026ca.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsde7026ca.jpg.html)

[asylumdown]

I've always wondered what my house looks like to them
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps0d4d6a99.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps0d4d6a99.jpg.html)

[asylumdown]

I'm going to be doing some major chopping and pruning soon. What's the standard procedure for selling frags? Let them heal on the plug first, or sell as fresh cuts?

[asylumdown]

Well, I have been so busy since half way through the summer there's a few moments I have wished I didn't have a giant baby built in to the wall of my house that needs attention whether I have time to give it or not. Thankfully, the tank is mature enough that things inside it happen in slow motion and it largely runs itself, but I'll be honest the only reason my fish have been getting fed every (well, most) days is that I live with 3 other people who can pick up the slack for me when I'm gone for 17 hours a day.

Moral of the story, grad school sucks sometimes.

The tank has been chugging along however. The only real issue I've been dealing with is a slow and creeping eutrophication. It started many months ago with a persistent but low grade dino bloom, and since august has developed in to a creeping cyano issue. I'm pretty sure I know the reason, which is four fold:

1. I've gone from changing the GFO from once every 2 weeks to once every 6
2. I've gone from doing 50 gallon water changes once every week to once every 6 weeks
3. I've got too many fish that have all grown up so I have to feed a tremendous amount each day. My longhorn cowfish can eat half a clam and 3 full cubes of frozen food a day with room left over for pellets and whatever he finds in the sand if I let him. And he still follows me around the dining room all day begging for more.
4. I'm pretty sure my sand is becoming a nutrient sink/source. The cyano problems are worst on the sand and worst around the base of rocks and in the corners where water is either drawn via the vortechs, or eddies form at the rock sand interface.

A few days ago I spent 2 whole days working on it, removed the top layers of sand where the cyano was the worst, then did a major flush of the sand in two corners (I didn't want to do it in the whole tank at once). The amount of garbage that came out of it was staggering, and in the places where I did it the cyano has not grown back, whereas the last time I vacuumed the top layer it was back in less than 12 hours. When the water cleared my skimmer cup was half full with grey/white snot. I'm going to do that to the rest of the sand over the course of a week or two when I get home from the trip I'm on right now. It might not be as good as vacuuming the sand, but it's much faster, it removes fewer macro organisms that I want to keep, doesn't require me to remove any water (I do water changes in the sump), and by using a large turkey baster to fluidize it I can agitate more sand faster than I think i could with a sand vacuum.

Anyway, enough talk. Time for a picture dump. My phone was cooperating with me the other day and the white balance seemed to be as good as it's ever been. The sensor still blows out on the blues, so it's still not true to eye, but these are the best I've caught in a while.

Dining room side:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsab9183c2.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsab9183c2.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps290676de.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps290676de.jpg.html)
The tall green guy has grown straight up directly in to toe flow of an MP60 and it's starting to mess up it's growth pattern. I'm going to have to chop it completely down soon.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsbcecd53a.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsbcecd53a.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps4a001f8f.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps4a001f8f.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsbd0f540c.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsbd0f540c.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps09eb23fb.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps09eb23fb.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps973b226a.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps973b226a.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps0b70f8f4.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps0b70f8f4.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps14ad6eb9.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps14ad6eb9.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsbf6e4a7f.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsbf6e4a7f.jpg.html)
That hydnophora has been busy digesting everything around it. Two out of three of it's neighbouring montiporas (including the ugly brown one) hitchhiked in to my tank on the rock though so I'm not really that sad about it. It did digest half of a birdnest frag on the other side of it though, which upset me greatly, but the frag got big enough for an acropora/stylophora crab to move in to it a few months ago and the hydnophora seems to have stopped attacking it. I think the crab must clip any mesenterial filaments that land on it.

[asylumdown]

Office side:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps2b3a3f73.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps2b3a3f73.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps745c3e47.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps745c3e47.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps5919e466.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps5919e466.jpg.html)
The flow in the tank has been causing some other growth pattern issues. Namely, the fact that the vortech's are stuck in those awful corners, there's a really strong uni-directional back draft around the edges of overflow boxes. Also, on this side the outlet from my return pipes seems to hit right at the overflow box then go straight down. It's combining to make that stag horn grow all weird, it even had a branch grow straight down. If anyone has any suggestions for how to remedy this I'm all ears. Are there better return pipe nozzles that aren't so uni-directional? I recently got a WXM module for my Apex, so I've been considering have half my vortech's shut off periodically throughout the day. What does everyone think?
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpscd5cff88.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpscd5cff88.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps5e81c334.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps5e81c334.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps3aabb3fe.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps3aabb3fe.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps377337b0.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps377337b0.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps5d128968.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps5d128968.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps146326a7.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps146326a7.jpg.html)
Love this fish. My roommate named him 'Nightrider'
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps588748b5.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps588748b5.jpg.html)
Look at the growth pattern! Grrrrrr.

[asylumdown]

And finally, some of my favourite fish:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps5c684df9.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps5c684df9.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsaf6bb48e.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsaf6bb48e.jpg.html)
Seriously how cool is this guy?

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps3c148f92.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps3c148f92.jpg.html)
These guys seem to be buddies. They sleep together, and spend most of the day together

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsa236f0c1.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsa236f0c1.jpg.html)
Hey! Hey! Hey! Food? Do you have food? Are you going to feed me? When will you feed me? Is it time for feeding time?

[Skimmer Juice]

wow nice tank, finally someone with a Cowfish love those fish had one for about 6 years , I'm on the lookout for a nice little one to raise again .

[lastlight]

looks incredible and growing in quite nicely too!

[SoloSK71]

I'm going to be doing some major chopping and pruning soon. What's the standard procedure for selling frags? Let them heal on the plug first, or sell as fresh cuts?

Giving me some seems to make sense ;)

Charles

[kien]

I call shenanigans ! Didn't nobody tell you that you can't have this nice a tank with LEDs?? Clearly you missed that memo.

Also, looking sweet Adam!

[Madreefer]

Awesome tank. I love that cowfish. I wanna get me one now.

[Trocar70]

So that cowfish does not hurt your corals? just curious cause i'm liking that fish:lol: obviously he doesn't

[Skimmerking]

dude that tank is growing crazy well done

[gregzz4]

Problems aside, it's lookin' great Adam

[asylumdown]

wow nice tank, finally someone with a Cowfish love those fish had one for about 6 years , I'm on the lookout for a nice little one to raise again .

He's hands down everyone's favourite fish. They definitely need big tanks though, this guy has more than doubled in size since March and now that I've seen full grown ones in person I'm worried even my tank isn't big enough.


looks incredible and growing in quite nicely too!

Thanks! It's been a big year for them. Apparently ignoring them was just what they needed lol

Giving me some seems to make sense ;)

Charles

haha, I'm going to have to have some sort of a frag sale soon. The ones on my rack are about to start plating on to the rack itself.


I call shenanigans ! Didn't nobody tell you that you can't have this nice a tank with LEDs?? Clearly you missed that memo.

Also, looking sweet Adam!

Right?! I can't believe how many hours I wasted worrying about them not being up to the task. They've got shortcomings for sure, and perhaps I could get better colours with T5s, but they've done their job so far. I'll definitely stick with them in the future.

Awesome tank. I love that cowfish. I wanna get me one now.

Make sure you've got a big tank! Also they're slow as all h*ll so if you've got really aggressive feeders you'll need to give them special attention, and I would also argue that they absolutely require some sort of 'feed' mode with greatly reduced flow or they can't catch anything to eat. When I feed I turn my vortech's to feed mode and turn off the return pump for 5 minutes to make sure he can actually catch something. My tank has quite a bit of flow which ferdinand struggled with when I first got him, so if you get a small one you might want to consider reducing the flow until it's big enough to handle it. Also I've heard that cleaner wrasses can harass them to the point of chronic stress. They're not fast enough to get away and the cleaners apparently obsess over their white spots.

So that cowfish does not hurt your corals? just curious cause i'm liking that fish:lol: obviously he doesn't

Nope, not even a little. It took a tiny nibble out of the tip of my gorgonian the first day I got it, but he's ignored it since. He's figured out that mysis and pacifica plankton chunks get caught in the polyps of my more extravagant SPS colonies like the hydnophora, so he 'hunts' off of the corals, but as far as I can tell he's never actually taken a bite of the coral tissue, he just plucks off food that's gotten stuck. He also ignores my one tridacnid clam, but he LOOOOOOVES frozen clam on the half shell, which I feed mostly for the copperband's benefit a few times a weeks. From a feeding point of view, one of his natural behaviours is a little annoying but it doesn't seem to hurt anything. If you look at the full tank shots, you can see there's quite a few craters in the sand. Those are all from him. In the wild they hunt by blowing jets of water in to the muck on the bottom to expose the inverts that they eat. He never used to do it, but then one day it was like he figured out how and in the space of 2 days he completely resurfaced the sand bed. I rarely have crystal clear water now because he does it often enough that there's always something floating in the water. here's a video of him doing it:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/th_file_zps0d082e20.jpg (http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps0d082e20.mp4)

dude that tank is growing crazy well done

Thanks! I see it often enough that I don't realize how much it's changed. I just looked at photos from the beginning of the year and it was practically a desert back then!

Problems aside, it's lookin' great Adam
Thanks man. I'll eventually figure out how fix them, but man are they annoying to my eyes!

[asylumdown]

Wow, 12 months in 4 pictures:

Oct. 30, 2012
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps46bc7b95.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps46bc7b95.jpg.html)

Oct. 21, 2013
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps2b3a3f73.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps2b3a3f73.jpg.html)

Oct. 30, 2012
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zps8d784f81.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zps8d784f81.jpg.html)

Oct. 21, 2013
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/file_zpsab9183c2.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/file_zpsab9183c2.jpg.html)

It's been a big year!

[Bugger]

I like your tank who did the cabnetry?

[asylumdown]

The finishing carpenter that did my house built it, they're called Epic Woodwork. They did brilliant work, not just on the tank (which was awfully challenging), but on the whole house.

[asylumdown]

Was just touching up my photos in iPhoto. It looks like my photo skills still suck massive monster monkey balls. The images I previously posted are waaaaaaaay to cold.

Here's a better example of what it would look like to your eye if you were standing in front.

Kien, I'm gonna get you to bring your camera with you when you come over, cuz my skills are weak sauce.

Also, I'm trying these hosted on dropbox. Photobucket seems to torpedo the quality.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/463210/Tank/IMG_5912.JPG
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/463210/Tank/IMG_5917.JPG
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/463210/Tank/IMG_5919.JPG

[asylumdown]

I took a tutorial on correcting white balance in Photoshop and decided to try and apply it to some of my tank pictures. These are top downs I took today, not perfectly accurate to real world, but 100 times better than what my iPhone gets with the native camera app.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6149_zpscb05019c.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6149_zpscb05019c.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6150_zps750a6502.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6150_zps750a6502.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6151_zps0b5d089e.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6151_zps0b5d089e.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6154_zpsf4b81d7d.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6154_zpsf4b81d7d.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6155_zps2d0d13fb.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6155_zps2d0d13fb.jpg.html)

You can see the problem I'm having with my radions in a few of these. White diodes burnt out all over the place. I'm trying to sort it out with Ecotech.

[kien]

WOW, that's looking awesome Adam. Everything looks great!

[asylumdown]

Thanks! A couple of those colonies turned out really janky in terms of colours because the phone sensor blue washes everything, so on the phone, reds barely even register, while anything that's blue becomes indecipherable from the background. I tried a new correction in Photoshop that involves specifically setting the black value, the white value, and the grey value manually using a kind of long and annoying process, but it requires there being something that is truly 'white' in the image that isn't blown out or a reflection, and since my sand has turned mostly grey/purple it was hard to find true white anywhere in the tank that's not crazy blown out on a phone camera.

Anyway it's a heck of a lot better than the original photos, but those are the only ones I could get 'right' enough to think worth posting lol.

[sphelps]

Wow! Looks awesome, especially for just a year. And to think you did it all without T5s :)

[Doc_Polit]

Wicked looking tank! Nice work!

[asylumdown]

Wow! Looks awesome, especially for just a year. And to think you did it all without T5s :)

haha! I'm so tempted though... What with all that green grass on the other side...

[asylumdown]

Wicked looking tank! Nice work!

Thanks!

[Reef Pilot]

Tank is looking great, and very nice coral pics indeed!

[kien]

haha! I'm so tempted though... What with all that green grass on the other side...

After seeing your tank, I want to switch to LEDs! Who doesn't want a tank that looks like yours.

[Reef Pilot]

After seeing your tank, I want to switch to LEDs! Who doesn't want a tank that looks like yours.
My prediction: Keener is going to buy LEDs before the end of this year!

[Doug]

My prediction: Keener is going to buy LEDs before the end of this year!


:thumb:

[gqlmao]

This is one of the few tanks, I've seen in person that shows off how well multiple Radions can grow and color things when used correctly.:biggrin: If my corals grew as fast as yours I would be paying off my tank in frags!

[Delphinus]

Wow..

[kien]

My prediction: Keener is going to buy LEDs before the end of this year!

I already have my LEDs on order!

[lastlight]

Those look quite true to real life. Real life bring pretty damn sweet. Meanwhile my crap mitras has browned all your frags quite a bit. Time for radions or t5 looks like lol.

[asylumdown]

aaaaaan since it's gratuitous top down photo day... here's what my fish have to deal with at night. Royal Blue makes my eyes go fuzzy. It explodes my camera sensor

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6160_zps2c76fd2a.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6160_zps2c76fd2a.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6161_zpsb086b880.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6161_zpsb086b880.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6165_zps7f6ef52d.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6165_zps7f6ef52d.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6169_zps267956e1.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6169_zps267956e1.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6178_zps75fafb52.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6178_zps75fafb52.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6179_zpse3bb9695.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6179_zpse3bb9695.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6180_zps73b0c189.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6180_zps73b0c189.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6181_zpsa16de1fa.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6181_zpsa16de1fa.jpg.html)

[asylumdown]

Tank is looking great, and very nice coral pics indeed!

Thanks man. There's an art to photographing them and I am no artist that's for sure.

After seeing your tank, I want to switch to LEDs! Who doesn't want a tank that looks like yours.
I already have my LEDs on order!

Coming from you that means a lot, I have been aspiring to have a tank like yours for years. And are you serious? What did you get?

This is one of the few tanks, I've seen in person that shows off how well multiple Radions can grow and color things when used correctly.:biggrin: If my corals grew as fast as yours I would be paying off my tank in frags!

Hahaha! After my first frag sale I'm now only net minus... oh god I don't even want to think about it. The major drawback to multiple radions - no bulk discounts and the number of things that can go wrong with them is multiplied directly by the number of fixtures. If Ecotech comes back to me and says I need to pay to replace the entire light puck on each fixture that has one or more white diode malfunctioning out I don't know what I'm going to do.

Wow..
:) :) :) thanks man.

Those look quite true to real life. Real life bring pretty damn sweet. Meanwhile my crap mitras has browned all your frags quite a bit. Time for radions or t5 looks like lol.

Nah give it time! It's only been a couple of weeks. I keep hearing that the Mitras is amaze balls. They also have diodes down in the low 400 nm range that is just plain absent from my tank, and I think the whites are a slightly different spectrum, so it's entirely possible this is just those frags getting a suntan for the first time. Each one of my corals went through a tantrum after going in to my tank lasting anywhere from a month, up to a year in the case of my wild colonies from Walt Smith (I think you got frags from a couple of those). They're going to need to adjust for sure. If I were ever to go temporarily insane and replace all of my lights at once I would have a hard time discounting the Mitras, though I've been sooooo tempted by the ATI hybrid. Anyway, I need to stop trying to talk you out of spending money on aquarium equipment lol.

[Doug]

Nice pics. Beautiful corals

[kien]

Coming from you that means a lot, I have been aspiring to have a tank like yours for years. And are you serious? What did you get?


I ordered a couple of 60" strips of reefbrites to supplement my halides and T5s. :-)

I'm not sure why you would want to change out your LEDs when they appear to be doing so well for you. My tank is OK, but yours is WOW. It has that awesome LED Rave look that mine does not have.

[asylumdown]

I ordered a couple of 60" strips of reefbrites to supplement my halides and T5s. :-)

I'm not sure why you would want to change out your LEDs when they appear to be doing so well for you. My tank is OK, but yours is WOW. It has that awesome LED Rave look that mine does not have.

The sad part about LEDs is that the coral's 'best angle' is always top down, and since I need to climb up on a ladder just to get my hand in the water, it's not an angle I really get to see that often.

I will also say that any notion I had of moving away from these lights has been firmly put to bed. As I mentioned I've been having issues with the white diodes on 5 of my 8 units, and was having a mild heart attack over it as my units are well out of warranty. Ecotech thinks its a problem with the way I installed my TIR lenses and they're taking care of the whole thing as a warranty issue. Consider me a fanboy for life.

[asylumdown]

My roommates are going to Hawaii for Christmas, so Brandon bought a water proof camera. I got to play with it tonight. eek.

While it's MUCH better than an iPhone camera, it still has the same issues with blue washing and white balance due to the LEDs, but I don't care, I just took some awesome photos.

I have neither the time nor patience tonight to try and colour correct them, so here they are as seen from the sensor. I was playing around with the light mode while I was taking them, so these first few were with all channels at 0 except white, which was at 100%:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010094_zps2733fa8d.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010094_zps2733fa8d.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010093_zps58ebe538.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010093_zps58ebe538.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010092_zps427633b5.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010092_zps427633b5.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010090_zps622f1d13.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010090_zps622f1d13.jpg.html)

And these were with the blues on varying levels along with the white, as well as a couple different white balance/exposure settings on the camera. I could spend 2 hours correcting them all, but you get the point.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010088_zpsaab098d9.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010088_zpsaab098d9.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010095_zpsb85cc594.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010095_zpsb85cc594.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010085_zps0dafaa47.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010085_zps0dafaa47.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010084_zps4a0bb6cb.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010084_zps4a0bb6cb.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010077_zpsc3e841d9.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010077_zpsc3e841d9.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010075_zps9f633034.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010075_zps9f633034.jpg.html)

[asylumdown]

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010072_zpsd90eee6f.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010072_zpsd90eee6f.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010061_zps66af5236.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010061_zps66af5236.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010050_zps4d35c9a6.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010050_zps4d35c9a6.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010049_zps5b3a316b.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010049_zps5b3a316b.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010047_zps87488880.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010047_zps87488880.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010046_zps508bf25a.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010046_zps508bf25a.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010045_zps92ec6e2b.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010045_zps92ec6e2b.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010044_zps3a769e94.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010044_zps3a769e94.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010043_zps01254006.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010043_zps01254006.jpg.html)
That last one has gone from brown, to white, to blue, to white, to now a the slightest hint of rose. Adapting to LEDs is a journey for some corals. I'm hoping it gets pinker as time goes on.

[asylumdown]

and finally:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010083_zpsa56bf63c.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010083_zpsa56bf63c.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010073_zpse0c7598e.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010073_zpse0c7598e.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010004_zpsace1dc46.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010004_zpsace1dc46.jpg.html)

[lastlight]

Gorgeous corals bro. Saddens me to admit I've lost the majority of the frags I got from you. My sps troubles continue.

[asylumdown]

Really?!? Oh man what a bummer! I want to help somehow, we should get together and troubleshoot.

[kien]

once again, nice LED corals Adam! I need to get in on some of that cerealis action there !

[asylumdown]

haha, I can't remember which one the cerealis is, but it's yours!

[asylumdown]

So it turns out you actually need to be kind of careful with MB7. After dealing with a cyano issue with an aggressive dosing of chemi-clean, I stepped up the use/change of GFO and started dosing the 'start up' dose of MB7 for high nutrient tanks, which in my tank worked out to about 70ml a day. I missed a couple of days to go up north over the holidays, but otherwise I was pretty religious about it, including turning off the skimmer.

I ran the inlet/outlet lines of the BP reactor in a bucket of salt water for the first 4 or 5 days after the chemiclean treatment while I started dosing the MB7 because I have no idea what chemiclean does to biopellets and I didn't want a bunch of excess organic carbon to flood my tank, potentially giving the cyano a leg up over the MB7. When I put the reactor back online with the tank, I put about half the daily dose of MB7 directly in to the pellet reactor to get things going again.

Now, I have to say I was extremely suspicious of MB7, and bacterial supplements in general. I've used them before and never saw an effect of any kind, and I've always been highly suspicious of aquarium supply company claims in general (they use as much pseudo-scientific non-sense speak as the alternative health industry), as well as being suspicious that a bacterial product could have anything living in it by the time you bought it at the store.

Well, I suppose the proof is in the pudding -

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6441_zpsd1cd1fdd.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6441_zpsd1cd1fdd.jpg.html)

That disgusting pile of what looks like mucous is 1/4 of the goo that I had to eject from the outlet hose of my recirculating biopellet reactor yesterday. In less than two weeks of dosing large volumes of MB7, that outlet hose, which has remained clear and free flowing for nearly 2 years, clogged up so badly with that crap that water completely stopped flowing through the reactor. It's recirculating, so there was still some movement of water inside the reactor, but with the outlet blocked it slowed down enough that massive orange sized wads of white bacterial mulm had formed on the surface of the pellets that were largely stuck together.

The foam pads in my GFO reactor have also completely clogged up with bacterial mulm, causing the entire column, along with the foam pads, to rise all the way to the top of the reactor. Something that also, in nearly 2 years of running the tank, has never happened.

I've gone down to the daily maintenance dose of MB7, which if I'me measuring the volume of a 'drop' correctly, is about 6ml, so hopefully this stops happening.

[gqlmao]

Wow that's a lot of bacterial slime! Good thing you caught that, if it was to build up more, imagine if the BP reactor got plugged. :sad: I have always been dosing vodka but never any bacterial supplement, I found that even vodka alone can produce a white slime film if used incorrectly. From Sunnyx's tank MB7 looks like it can perform miracles. I'd be interested in seeing the long term results and I might give her a try.

[Reef Pilot]

So it turns out you actually need to be kind of careful with MB7. After dealing with a cyano issue with an aggressive dosing of chemi-clean, I stepped up the use/change of GFO and started dosing the 'start up' dose of MB7 for high nutrient tanks, which in my tank worked out to about 70ml a day. I missed a couple of days to go up north over the holidays, but otherwise I was pretty religious about it, including turning off the skimmer.

I ran the inlet/outlet lines of the BP reactor in a bucket of salt water for the first 4 or 5 days after the chemiclean treatment while I started dosing the MB7 because I have no idea what chemiclean does to biopellets and I didn't want a bunch of excess organic carbon to flood my tank, potentially giving the cyano a leg up over the MB7. When I put the reactor back online with the tank, I put about half the daily dose of MB7 directly in to the pellet reactor to get things going again.

Now, I have to say I was extremely suspicious of MB7, and bacterial supplements in general. I've used them before and never saw an effect of any kind, and I've always been highly suspicious of aquarium supply company claims in general (they use as much pseudo-scientific non-sense speak as the alternative health industry), as well as being suspicious that a bacterial product could have anything living in it by the time you bought it at the store.

Well, I suppose the proof is in the pudding -



That disgusting pile of what looks like mucous is 1/4 of the goo that I had to eject from the outlet hose of my recirculating biopellet reactor yesterday. In less than two weeks of dosing large volumes of MB7, that outlet hose, which has remained clear and free flowing for nearly 2 years, clogged up so badly with that crap that water completely stopped flowing through the reactor. It's recirculating, so there was still some movement of water inside the reactor, but with the outlet blocked it slowed down enough that massive orange sized wads of white bacterial mulm had formed on the surface of the pellets that were largely stuck together.

The foam pads in my GFO reactor have also completely clogged up with bacterial mulm, causing the entire column, along with the foam pads, to rise all the way to the top of the reactor. Something that also, in nearly 2 years of running the tank, has never happened.

I've gone down to the daily maintenance dose of MB7, which if I'me measuring the volume of a 'drop' correctly, is about 6ml, so hopefully this stops happening.

First, the low dosage for your size tank is no more than 4 ml per day or about 5 drops per day. Is that what you are doing? Then you can drop that in half again in a few weeks.

Also, I have never recirculated my bio pellet reactor, and not sure what that would do. The output has always gone to my skimmer. And I never turn off my skimmer when I dose MB7. Maybe that white goo includes carbon from the bio pellets that aren't being skimmed off.

Like I said before, I have never seen what you describe. In fact, only the opposite, ie the absence of mulm, and very clean reactors. Even my sand and tank in general were cleaner with the use of MB7.

[asylumdown]

First, the low dosage for your size tank is no more than 4 ml per day or about 5 drops per day. Is that what you are doing? Then you can drop that in half again in a few weeks.

Also, I have never recirculated my bio pellet reactor, and not sure what that would do. The output has always gone to my skimmer. And I never turn off my skimmer when I dose MB7. Maybe that white goo includes carbon from the bio pellets that aren't being skimmed off.

Like I said before, I have never seen what you describe. In fact, only the opposite, ie the absence of mulm, and very clean reactors. Even my sand and tank in general were cleaner with the use of MB7.

The tank is around 375 gallons when you include the sump, but I was having a hard time figuring out how much is in a 'drop' lol, so I might be over-estimating. When you work it out the low dose amount is 0.1 'drops' per gallon per day, or 37 drops for the whole system volume. I tried counting out drops in to a 10 ml syringe and got 7ml, but there were a few at the beginning which were kind of messy so I went down to 6ml. Is that still too much?

And a recirculating pellet reactor is just one design for a reactor. It lets you tumble the pellets at whatever rate you want them moving independent of the amount of actual water flow through. I'm not sure that the design will ever catch on (I think there's only a couple of brands making them still) but when I set up my tank they were touted as the next big thing. Apparently they solved the problem of pellet reactors stripping tanks of all nutrients when you pushed enough water through them to get a good tumble. They were supposed to let you 'dial in' the nitrate levels proactively, increasing or decreasing the output as needed. You can dial back the actual amount of water that gets processed per minute without risking the pellets clumping. I've had the outlet valve opened to 100% for like a year though so I'm not sure it was worth the added expense. The valves still need to be balanced though, so if the outlet line clogs up, or you reduce the output on purpose, you need to increase the flow on the recirculating valve to compensate, which is why the reactor starts to shut down if it clogs and you don't see it happening. My outlet line still goes directly to the skimmer intake.

And I'm not sure why it's happening, I'm thinking maybe there were more nutrients in my tank than I thought? One would assume that if you dose bacteria in to a system with food for the bacteria, you'd get a bacterial proliferation, which on the one hand is good because it means that the nutrients are being consumed, but surprising at how strong the response is? It's only been a couple of days at the low dose, so we'll see if it calms down. I have to feed A LOT because of that cowfish, which can only increase the amounts of everything.

[asylumdown]

Wow that's a lot of bacterial slime! Good thing you caught that, if it was to build up more, imagine if the BP reactor got plugged. :sad: I have always been dosing vodka but never any bacterial supplement, I found that even vodka alone can produce a white slime film if used incorrectly. From Sunnyx's tank MB7 looks like it can perform miracles. I'd be interested in seeing the long term results and I might give her a try.

Well I'm a convert. It's at least doing something. The only thing I'm worried about is that it might have driven nutrients too low. Some of my corals have really paled out in the past week.

[Reef Pilot]

Well, this is definitely interesting. Must be some kind if imbalance, but not sure exactly what.

I actually only dose about 2 or 3 times per week (20ml total per week) for a 230g system (I don't incl my sump, as figure I subtract that much for the live rock). Been doing that for 2+ years now, and everything has been good.

Have not opened by bio pellet reactor (to add pellets or clean) now for over a year. Seems that my bio pellet consumption has all but stopped, but my nitrates remain at zero.

And remember, when I started all this (3.5 years ago), my tank (which I inherited when we bought the house) was a total mess with nitrates up to 100 ppm, cyano, algae, detritus, you name it...

[asylumdown]

Did some re-working of my sump last weekend. Two things about my sump have bothered me from almost day 1.

1 - I have too many things that require pumps and power in my sump. The only place to put them is the water change chamber mostly, which makes it cluttered and takes up volume.

2 - My sump is a micro-bubble factory. It's U shaped, as in to say water entered and exits the sump on the same side, but since going back to regular durso style overflows I have come to realize that my design allows for a fair amount of water to basically bypass the entire sump, which doesn't give the microbubbles from the overflow time to rise and pop.

Unfortunately I don't have many pictures of how it used to be, but the changes were thus:

I previously had one pump running my GFO reactor, and a separate pump whose sole purpose was to drain water from my sump for water changes. The GFO reactor pump was VASTLY over-powered for the amount of flow I needed, and the other pump, which wasn't as powerful was taking up a lot of space for only ever getting turned on for 6 minutes every 10 days.

I got rid of the over-powered GFO pump and through some fancy plumbing, set up my water change pump to have more than one function
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6466_zps50030a7b.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6466_zps50030a7b.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6467_zpsb3c69c8e.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6467_zpsb3c69c8e.jpg.html)

I t'd the line coming off the water change pump that previously went straight to a drain to the sewer, so that when the valve you see there is closed, water flows in to the reactor. When I'm doing water changes, I close the valve on the top of the reactor, and open the valve to the sewer and that pump drains my sump. Since a failure here would obviously be catastrophic, there's a second gate valve further along the pipe closer to the sewer drain, so two gate valves would need to fail for that pump to start draining my tank. I also put the first gate valve well below the water line, because the line is under some pressure from the reactor flow being throttled. This way if there is a failure in my hoses the pump won't go spraying water all over the inside of my cabinet.

I also took a piece of acrylic and siliconed it to one of the exits from my skimmer chamber. Previously, water leaving the skimmer chamber was split by a bulkhead, with half flowing in to a skinny and long 'frag chamber' (though I've only ever used it as a cryptic refugium filled with live rock and sponges), and half flowing in to the large water change chamber. The water that went directly in to the water change chamber could then make a quick 90 degree turn and flow in to the return chamber, taking all sorts of micro bubbles with it. I don't remember my logic for thinking that the 'frag' chamber couldn't handle 100% of the flow of the sump, but with this acrylic piece in place, water now is forced to make the full journey from one of the the sump to the other.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6468_zps219a6daf.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6468_zps219a6daf.jpg.html)

Before I had to run filter socks, or my tank was a micro bubble mess. Now without filter socks, there's about as many micro-bubbles as there were with a fresh sock on the tank before. With filter socks, there's now zero micro bubbles.

And even though very little has changed because I chopped so much stuff back, some gratuitous full tank shots because I can
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010471_zps66acec5c.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010471_zps66acec5c.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/P1010472_zps3af5598f.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/P1010472_zps3af5598f.jpg.html)

[asylumdown]

oh, and you can see from the pic of the GFO reactor that my GFO is all up near the top of the reactor. Since I started dosing MB7 I've been having problems with things clogging - the output line of my biopellet reactor, the sponges in my GFO reactor, etc... I've been having to empty the GFO reactor and rinse out the sponges really well every few days or they get so clogged the whole mass of material inside it rises to the top like a hydraulic piston. I don't think fresh water actually kills that biofilm though, so last time I did it I bleached the heck out of the sponges and so far it hasn't happened again.

I've cut way back on the amount of MB7 I'm dosing hoping this will stop happening.

[Skimmer Juice]

Looks good, always feel's good to clean stuff up a bit .
Also how is the cowfish doing? Is he healing up ?

[asylumdown]

yah his tail is about 75% back to normal. It will never be completely as it was before though I don't think. Even if it manages to regrow back out to it's original shape and extent (It looks like two large bites were taken out of the top and bottom of it), there's definitely scarring in the new tissue. The fin rays aren't perfectly straight anymore.

He's getting so freaking big. He no longer fits between the rock and glass in one corner of my tank. I might have to re-scape to accommodate him.

[asylumdown]

It's been a long time since I posted. Mostly because 2014 was so bloody heart wrenching. Lots of my tribulations were played out in the main room so you all know, but the tank has gone from this in January:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6492_zps6ca6e181.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6492_zps6ca6e181.jpg.html)

to this today:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_7699_zpse4c0ff6c.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_7699_zpse4c0ff6c.jpg.html)

mystery coral die off in February that required herculean efforts to correct, then a house renovation in August that poisoned the the tank with self levelling cement and glazed porcelain tile dust.

A few things came through ok - namely most things in the montipora genus, but nearly every single acro either lost massive amounts of tissue, or died completely. I've thrown out about 30 pounds in dead coral over the last two months, but things finally seem like they're turning around. New growth tips are forming and places where I've cut away dead skeleton are starting to heal, but nothing is the right colour anymore, and I've lost lots of specimens I may or may not be able to find again.

Worst hit area of the tank was the North side:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_5939_zpsd4caabd3.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_5939_zpsd4caabd3.jpg.html)

to this:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_7700_zpsf39cf93c.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_7700_zpsf39cf93c.jpg.html)

If it wasn't for a couple very weedy, common and boring montiporas that have exploded through all of this, the tank would be awfully bare.

[Cujo#31]

Very well done. What a stunning tank. The die-off must have just crushed the spirit I'm sure.

[CM125]

Its still a beautiful tank, Im sure it wont take long to get back to where it was

[asylumdown]

Things are slowly recovering, enough that I've felt comfortable buying some new frags to fill in holes left by my old corals.

My biggest issue recently has been keeping my macro elements up, however. I've been extremely time poor recently, so I've only been testing once a week, before a water change. If the levels have been low, I up the dosing rate, do the water change, then test again the next week. I know i should be testing before and after the water change, as well as testing the newly mixed water, but I'm getting tired of every single Saturday being taken up by this tank, and have other things I don't have time in the week to do in my house as well. Grrr.

This week I was floored. By yesterday morning my levels had cratered:

dKH: 5.9
Calcium: 303

This is after doing two water changes last weekend (Saturday and Sunday), and upping the dosing rate. My magnesium test is well and truly expired so I don't trust it, but it claims I'm in the 1250-1300 range.

I adjusted the alk up in to the low 7's, and calcium up to 360, then did a water change. I also upped the dosing volume by 15 mL/dose, then did a water change. I'm up to a grand total of 600 mL of Tropic Marin Part A and B balling salts PER DAY, mixed to the concentration specified on the box. I'm going to have to switch back to less expensive bulk chems.

This morning, (24 hours later), alk is still good, dKH of 7.11, but calcium was back down to 303! These levels are too low and too balanced for me to be having a precipitation issue, the only thing I can think is that this batch of H2Ocean has absurdly low calcium. I'll have to mix up a batch to test it.

These wild swings can't be helping anything, and I've got some STN at the base of an A. abrotanoides that I think might be a symptom.

Anyway, here's some crappy pictures. I dropped my new iPhone and cracked the camera lens, but won't replace it until the case I want it released in Canada. I'm notoriously hard on my phones. These pictures are blurry, and the colour balance is WAY off.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_7812_zpsf6fe050d.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_7812_zpsf6fe050d.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_7813_zpsc9d3da98.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_7813_zpsc9d3da98.jpg.html)

Thankfully my Pink Lemonade frag never had any damage through all this and is now a mini colony
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_7810_zps923b0351.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_7810_zps923b0351.jpg.html)

The lime green stag on the left used to be a colony that almost left the water, that's all that's left, but it's growing. The purple battered looking thing is all that's left of a plating acro from walt smith, but it's started sending tissue out over some of the dead areas again. The rest are frags I bought to fill in the worst hit part of the tank.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_7804_zps311e76b8.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_7804_zps311e76b8.jpg.html)

These two frags are all that's left of a dinner plate sized colony. They were the underside of the old colony, so they were brown and have never been exposed to light. It was touch and go for weeks, but they turned purple in the last couple of weeks, and there's the tiniest hint of growth. I'll move them up in to the rocks soon
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_7809_zps0c8a6831.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_7809_zps0c8a6831.jpg.html)

This poor guy.. I don't know if he'll ever be the same. Before this disaster the stalks were glowing white, with neon green polyps, and electric blue tips. It's growth pattern is all messed up as new growth tips start at odd angles from where things died. That monti is out of control
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_7801_zps40092fc8.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_7801_zps40092fc8.jpg.html)

Nearly lost this guy but it's got all sorts of new growth
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_7796_zpsdcc2cba4.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_7796_zpsdcc2cba4.jpg.html)

Randomly, this guy never even slowed down, grew right through that disaster as though it ain't no thing.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_7797_zps4956e619.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_7797_zps4956e619.jpg.html)

Only thing I can think that explains my trouble with the chems is those montis everywhere. They weren't damaged by what happened at all, and have EXPLODED. I stupidly put pieces of that big red monti cap that I broke off doing normal cleanings in a couple of places and it's turned in to a major weed. I just throw those pieces out now. I can't imagine how much calcium and alkalinity it must be sucking out of the water to grow that fast alone.

[lastlight]

nice to hear a positive update adam! hopefully the new year is going to return the tank to its former glory. i still think your colours are really nice i wish i could match them.

[kien]

Looking good Adam! How's my frag doing that you've been holding for me ? :lol:

Seriously though, you may be onto something about that cap. My cap totally took over as well during my last round of issues and I totally think it crashed the Alk by agressivly consuming it!

[Janeallisonn]

Just felt you should know that I spent the better part of my day at work today reading this entire thread. Love the tank..and its ridiculous how big your cow fish is getting! Still praying to god that I never have to deal with ich issues like yours.

I just bought myself a Radion so I'm glad to see you've been having success with yours. Out of curiosity, could I bug you to post your daily schedule from Ecosmart Live?

[asylumdown]

nice to hear a positive update adam! hopefully the new year is going to return the tank to its former glory. i still think your colours are really nice i wish i could match them.

Thanks, we'll see if this continues. I can't keep the chems stable for the life of me and am out of town for the next week. Tested everything on Thursday before I left and dKH was down to 5.2, from the mid 7's on Saturday. Calcium seems to have stabilized around 400, but alk is plummeting like a stone now. I'm worried I'm seeing the effects of a precipitation reaction, but it doesn't seem like my levels of either are high enough for that to be happening.

*sigh*

Looking good Adam! How's my frag doing that you've been holding for me ? :lol:

Seriously though, you may be onto something about that cap. My cap totally took over as well during my last round of issues and I totally think it crashed the Alk by agressivly consuming it!

All that's left of that colony you liked are those two frags on the sand. I'm hoping they make it as I've never seen it for sale anywhere else before.

Just felt you should know that I spent the better part of my day at work today reading this entire thread. Love the tank..and its ridiculous how big your cow fish is getting! Still praying to god that I never have to deal with ich issues like yours.

I just bought myself a Radion so I'm glad to see you've been having success with yours. Out of curiosity, could I bug you to post your daily schedule from Ecosmart Live?

Thanks! and I'm still rocking the gen 1s, they've been pretty good to me. I would love to upgrade, but I don't love the idea of spending the equivalent of a decent car on this particular tank again.

If you pm me your e-mail address I can send you the schedule I use, but it's set for the diode colours in the gen 1 radion.

[asylumdown]

RAAAAAAAAAAGE


I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle with these parameters. And Murphy and his stupid law.

I can't for the life of me keep alkalinity over 6. Unless my dosing unit is a lying liar who lies, I'm now dosing 315 mL of Tropic Marin Part B a day. Calcium seems to have stabilized between 395-400, but alk and mag are in the toilet. mag won't budge over 1170, and I'll manually raise alk in to the mid 7s, bump up the maintenance dose, only to find it in the mid-low 5s again 3 days later.

Any suggestions? I had no intention of spending yet another entire saturday fiddle farting around with this fickle foe, and yet another 5 hours of frustration seems to have vanished from my life.

Other news - I was away for 7 days, came home around 6 last night to everything being fine (except for alk brushing the high 4s), didn't touch a thing in the tank and immediately went back out to a party. Came home at 11:30 to the skimmer going Krakatoa-nuts for no reason that I could see, and a SG of 1.020. Rage. Thank goodness it didn't happen a day earlier.

Decided to switch salt mixes again because H2Ocean is killing me. I get 4 water changes out of an 80 dollar bucket. Decided to try Fluval Sea again, as I've had part of a bucket kicking around for the better part of a year and used the last of it to bump the salinity up out of the danger zone last night. New bucket today mixed to a solution that just smelled... wrong. The smell had none of the high, almost sweet notes I'm used to with freshly mixed H2Ocean. I don't know how to explain it. It also mixed VERY cloudy and wouldn't clear. Within 20 seconds of adding it to the tank, my elegance coral's tentacles shrivelled up like they'd been burnt, and every polyp on every coral deflated and retracted. Not sure what's going on there. I spent the next 5 hours testing, bumping up levels, repeat.

Today was the first day in a long time I've seriously considered not having a tank of any kind.

[asylumdown]

Well, serves me right for trying to save money. The corals that got the angriest after yesterdays water change all look like they're done for.

I know there have been swings in parameters lately, but everything before the water change was healthy and growing. within seconds of the cloudy new water from that salt mix entering the display, this happened:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_7829_zps5c2d3972.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_7829_zps5c2d3972.jpg.html)

Overnight some acros have bleached out completely, some have browned out, and others have taken on a crusty appearance to their tissue that I've only seen preceding STN.

[Madreefer]

Oh crap that sucks!

I hope things get in check for you real soon. I love your tank
Good luck and don't give up

[wreck]

ohhh man....... that is terrible.
i am using the fluval salt atm this kinda worries me a bit.

[Aquattro]

Do you have enough of that left in the bin to test alk?

[asylumdown]

ohhh man....... that is terrible.
i am using the fluval salt atm this kinda worries me a bit.
have you had any problems with it? I've never seen anything like what happened, the last bucket of this brand didn't do that, but I bought it almost a year ago. I don't know how else to describe the smell - I'm used to freshly mixed salt water having a very distinct smell, it's actually my favourite part of a water change. This batch smelled completely different. It didn't smell bad, just completely different.

I'm also used to salt being a little cloudy right after it's mixed, but this was so cloudy you couldn't see through the water change chamber of my sump, even though the doors on the other side of the cabinet were open and the light in the office was on. I let it stand for half an hour with a Koralia mixing it and it never cleared. The only thing I can think is that the salt maybe wasn't mixed very well and there was an insane precipitation reaction? One of my angriest acros looks like it has white powder all over it

Do you have enough of that left in the bin to test alk?

You mean of the new water? No, I do water changes (including mixing of the salt) out of a special chamber in my sump, so 100% of what I make ends up in the tank. It's a brand new bucket of salt though, so I'm going to make a couple gallons now and test it.

FWIW, I tested alk and calcium immediately following the water change. The 48-ish gallon water change only raised alk in the tank by 0.15 dKH and it didn't change the calcium level. In perspective, a half cup of Tropic Marin part B solution mixd to the recommended concentration raises my tank's dKH by 0.36.

If the salt was mixed badly and there was a lot of carbonate precipitate in it, would that have been enough to make the corals angry do you think?

[Masonjames]

The alk drop, and lack of being able to raise it may be a symptom of running a sewage treatment plant. Aka, dirty as sh** sandbed. If that sand bed is full of garbage and the system is trying to process it the bacteria may be using alk as a carbon source trying to keep up.

[asylumdown]

freshly mixed at 1.028 (man it's hard to mix a small volume of salt water!) it tests at 10.92 dKH, so at 1.025 it would be lower, but still on the high side, probably in the 10s.

So I think I get what happened, and it was a stupid rookie mistake. The alk in the display was 6.2 when I did the water change. It was 6.35 after the water change, but that was after I let the whole tank homogenize for 10 minutes. For a good 40 seconds to a minute after the water change, the water coming out of the return nozzles would have been anywhere from 90% to 70% "new" water, so while the net change to the tank was small, the acutely localized swings would have been huge.

I don't know why I've never had this problem before unless H2Ocean mixes with a much lower alkalinity?

[asylumdown]

The alk drop, and lack of being able to raise it may be a symptom of running a sewage treatment plant. Aka, dirty as sh** sandbed. If that sand bed is full of garbage and the system is trying to process it the bacteria may be using alk as a carbon source trying to keep up.

I suppose that's possible, but I do vacuum my sand at least once a month, sometimes more. I started doing it in the spring because I kept getting ugly patches of cyano in the same places on the sand. My mind was blown by the amount of crud that came out of it the first couple of times, but it seems to be pretty clean now. I still have problems with cyano, just never on the sand now.

[Masonjames]

Ya I really don't know for sure. But all issues like that can be a good indicator of a tank heading towards "old tank syndrome". But if you have been on top of keeping the tank free of debris then it may not be the issue. Or you may be just slowly working your way out of it. To me it seems likely this could be the issue but really its just a guess.

[asylumdown]

*sigh* a guy just can't catch a break. Friday night I used the spigot on my skimmer to drain the collection cup. Forgot to close the tube and left it open to the drain overnight. Woke up Saturday morning to an angry looking tank and RTN in progress all over the place.

Bristle worms must have spawned or something in the middle of the night and drove the skimmer nuts. Salinity in the tank was 1.012. Worst. Timing. Ever.

A conductivity sensor that shuts the skimmer off would have prevented this. I suppose it's time I make the investment.

[straightrazorguy]

A conductivity sensor that shuts the skimmer off would have prevented this. I suppose it's time I make the investment.

Bummer, man, sorry to hear. I got an Avast skimmate locker with their pressure sensor. It plugs into my controller and kills the power to the skimmer when the container is full. Best investment ever!

Great tank, BTW!

[Delphinus]

+1 on the Avast skimmate locker. I have the one that is basically a lid for a 5g bucket. Works well.

You could craft your own DIY if you're crafty but they're pretty reasonably priced all things considered..

[asylumdown]

That might be an even safer alternative to the probe.

How long does it typically take to fill 5 gallons of skimmate?

[asylumdown]

And also I bought some frags to make myself feel better lol

[Delphinus]

About a week in my case..

[asylumdown]

Most recent pics:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/27BB342B-4CFC-4B88-B102-2EF724EC1163_zpsxyaotqvc.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/27BB342B-4CFC-4B88-B102-2EF724EC1163_zpsxyaotqvc.jpg.html)

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/44B9E9C5-7436-45AF-9887-F8638FA73E5D_zpsm6ok2rh3.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/44B9E9C5-7436-45AF-9887-F8638FA73E5D_zpsm6ok2rh3.jpg.html)

Still having some annoying issues with my corals. I've got this weird tissue abnormality in a few of my acros that no one on the internet seems to be able to explain, but otherwise things are doing pretty well. I keep trying to kill my whole tank by making stupid mistake - too much H2O2, not noticing that the tubing connecting my doser to the alk reservoir had cracked and it stopped dosing for an entire week (discovering your dKH is 4.1 is never a good way to start a Saturday morning), and accidentally cratering the salinity be letting an overflowing protein skimmer drain the tank for a night are just a sample of the dumb things I've done so far in 2015, so maybe the tissue problem isn't so mysterious.

I've beenh crossing my fingers that a few of my previously majestic colonies that have survived the last year of tank hell with me but in really rough shape would leap back in to health, but I've started getting ruthless about tossing things that are limping along and replacing them. Friday night I took two big rocks that were covered in caulerpa (pro tip - don't let that stuff go! it literally dissolves coral tissue!) and bleached then acid dipped them. I'm also really digging the look of fewer, but larger colonies, so rather than replacing all the stuff I'm tossing, I've started fragging things that I like and have done well no matter what I've thrown at this tank and spreading them around more.

I do have a spot to fill but I want something truly awesome and hard to come by. Something that has a dumb name like Strawberry Shortcake or something. Anyone got any ideas? I'm hoping for an acro that spreads out.

[asylumdown]

Also, all my fish have grown up and they're starting to look ridiculous. This tank is supposed to be huge, but between 8 fully grown anthias, a mature powder blue, a full grown dilutes rabbit, and near adult cowfish, the tank looks small.

Has anyone ever fished a powder blue tang out of a tank like this? Him and the rabbit have really started going at it, but the rabbit is more important to me as a herbivore.

Also if someone is like "man, I really want a big a$$ cowfish" and lives in Calgary - you just let me know.

[asylumdown]

Sad day for me :(

Ferdinand the cowfish has moved on to a bigger home. Saying goodbye to him was the hardest thing I've ever done in the context of reefing. But it was time. He's off to a 600 gallon tank where he'll have more room to move around.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/IMG_6644_zpsw0nhvgap.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/IMG_6644_zpsw0nhvgap.jpg.html)

The tank looks empty without him, but it was the right thing to do.

[asylumdown]

Slowly but surely the tank is getting back on track:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/140B607D-8EF9-4CC9-8AEB-2665A965354C_zpsdi1p6kov.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/140B607D-8EF9-4CC9-8AEB-2665A965354C_zpsdi1p6kov.jpg.html)

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/2692C55E-660D-45C1-A8F5-D582440B62F7_zps4jiejne9.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/2692C55E-660D-45C1-A8F5-D582440B62F7_zps4jiejne9.jpg.html)

Nearly lost all of these corals when things were crashing but they've hung on and are starting to grow again:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/2BD2E28E-A588-49A8-88EB-A078378870A9_zpsrizrzvu5.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/2BD2E28E-A588-49A8-88EB-A078378870A9_zpsrizrzvu5.jpg.html)

This frag is super blown out but one I'm really excited about:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/E1ACE48B-801F-4F5E-9851-E3E96C507DD6_zpswk3ieqil.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/E1ACE48B-801F-4F5E-9851-E3E96C507DD6_zpswk3ieqil.jpg.html)

These guys really took a beating over the last year, but they're making a pretty strong comeback:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/C1198A9F-7E03-4FCB-8B76-431219464504_zps1dxt6tkb.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/C1198A9F-7E03-4FCB-8B76-431219464504_zps1dxt6tkb.jpg.html)

Pink lemonade
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/9B8DD8E2-4182-4F9A-BE7B-3F17A99A8AEA_zps6lqerpxw.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/9B8DD8E2-4182-4F9A-BE7B-3F17A99A8AEA_zps6lqerpxw.jpg.html)


This rock was infested with caulerpa to the point where I couldn't keep up with pruning it back, so I chiselled everything off, bleached it, then acid dipped it. Note to the world: this works great, but the rock REALLy needs a curing process afterwards. I put it straight back in my tank and had a hideous outbreak of dinos almost immediately. It's just on the tail-end now. I decided to go more for a 'mass planting' of only a couple of bright, contrasting acros on this rock, should look spectacular when they grow in.

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/12CB17DC-A55F-42AC-8959-FE0597CC72A6_zps5fd6tmkf.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/12CB17DC-A55F-42AC-8959-FE0597CC72A6_zps5fd6tmkf.jpg.html)

I lost a teal A. scale that used to be in this spot, but I think I replaced it with something even nicer.

[kien]

Looking great Adam! Can't even tell you had issues. Recovering like a BOSS ! :-)

[asylumdown]

Thanks Kien!

I know I just posted a fts, but I got a new app that corrects exposure and white balance in camera:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/FC02424C-034B-41B4-8763-87B8AA54BB73_zpsyz8zrthg.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/FC02424C-034B-41B4-8763-87B8AA54BB73_zpsyz8zrthg.jpg.html)

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/FB2B1351-7A51-4D48-B8B0-F9921E977D9A_zpshaeoi7sw.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/FB2B1351-7A51-4D48-B8B0-F9921E977D9A_zpshaeoi7sw.jpg.html)

Also took some top downs with the lights on super blue sunset:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/9830D4F2-6D08-4B8C-A6C4-15999128D20C_zpshbyzpvpf.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/9830D4F2-6D08-4B8C-A6C4-15999128D20C_zpshbyzpvpf.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/AA7E067D-7B3A-43C8-83EF-86FE1323F792_zpsh03sxlvj.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/AA7E067D-7B3A-43C8-83EF-86FE1323F792_zpsh03sxlvj.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/1986755C-7206-429B-AFF5-861E526F7C9A_zpsr1yvcpov.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/1986755C-7206-429B-AFF5-861E526F7C9A_zpsr1yvcpov.jpg.html)
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/asylumdown/1250CEF3-CC49-4487-8EFB-5B6A2FE5FE37_zps22lc2fzg.jpg (http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/asylumdown/media/1250CEF3-CC49-4487-8EFB-5B6A2FE5FE37_zps22lc2fzg.jpg.html)