Kinda reminds me of the Neverland Ranch - must be fun

Aside from the wandering hands I usually enjoy my visits. I prefer to tank sit tho.

That is sure a lot of LEDs!!! Hahahaha. Gold.

Meanwhile..
 

Yup, it's that time of the year again..

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...psfbqpfkq1.jpg

That's more like it! :mrgreen: Who would of thought the future of reef tank lighting was in Christmas lights. It was obvious all along... white, blue, red and green spectrums

Enough with the Gundams already !
 

Don't worry, I'm a lifer :-) As frustrating as this hobby can be (mostly all the time), I can't image not having a reef tank with *something* in it. That 'something' might evolve over time, but I will always have a reef-ish tank.

Speaking of reef-ish.. I suppose it's time for an update. I hate long winded update posts so I'll keep this one real short.

It's been a busy winter for sure, family, work, life, etc. We all know how that song goes. After I got my new bulbs installed last Christmas I figured it was smooth sailing. And it was for a time, or so I thought! In about mid January I ran into some issues with the tank that at the time I couldn't quite figure out. I was starting to lose colonies to STN, RTN, FTN.. All of my parameters were good so I couldn't quite figure it out. It started to frustrate me so I naturally ignored it and proceeded to build more Gundams.

Fast forward a few weeks and things started to really look bad. Cyano had started to take hold and I knew the tank needed an intervention. But first I needed to go to Disneyland. I was hoping my tank sitter would sort out the tank for me but sadly he did not.

Fast forward another couple of weeks and I finally made the time to sort out the tank. So back in January I had noticed that the water in my RO/DI reservoir had a slight odor to it. I dismissed it at the time because I thought that maybe the order was from the basement itself and not from the water. It was pretty faint. As time went on the oder got stronger. I checked my inline TDS meter and it said everything was okay (zero TDS). What finally clued me in was when my son said, "Daddy, why does the water smell?" after I cracked open a fresh bucket of RO/DI. He was right. It did smell. I guess I forgot about it and kinda got used to it. I checked my TDS meter again and it still said zero TDS. Well, that can't be right can it? I started to doubt this. So I pulled out my external hand held TDS meter. It said zero too. Well, the water must be okay. I kept using it, even though it smelled a bit funny. In hind sight, I really shouldn't have, but I trusted my instruments. Finally I broke down and got a new TDS meter. Sure enough the the new TDS meter read a very very non zero TDS value. FRAK!

I did a couple of hefty water changes, cleaned up the sand, changed out all my media. Pretty much right away the tank started to look good again. I suppose I could have just done that from the get go. Another lesson learned. Looking back I think I just got overly frustrated because I really wanted to figure out what was causing my issues this time around. Test after test turned up nothing.

After the fact I spoke with another local hobbyst and I told him my story. He said that he encountered the exact same thing and deduced that the smell cam from bad DI resin. He has since stopped using DI. I'm considering this myself because I kind of remember now the water smelling like this once before back when I had my first tank wipe out.

Anyway, the silver lining is that it wasn't a complete catastrophe. The gold lining is that I now have more room for new corals. I lost half a dozen colonies but I can live with that considering everything else going on in the tank.

Here are some pics I took a couple of months ago but never got around to posting. I was playing around with a background because I really don't like how the photos of the see-through tank looks.

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2235/1...716b5101_o.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3819/1...27fa716e_o.jpg

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2137/1...01925ae1_o.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7391/1...0934ddc2_o.jpg

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2233/1...b2f001b4_o.jpg

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2823/1...7137757f_o.jpg

WOW.

looks freaking sick man . love that red flower pot . its huge .
nice work

Kien, sorry to hear about the mishap there. You got a fine son there helping you out in figuring the problem! I think he deserves a few more Gundams!

Glad to hear you've turned it around to minimize the loss and your tank still looks spectacular!

that background looks awesome for the fts.

i thought you told your tank-sitter they turned things around for you in your absence? :twised:

be damned if they'll throw in the bonus glass scrape next time.

Thanks :-) Tank is far from spectacular at the moment but heading back in that direction I think.

I just told him that so that he would come back at the end of March. Don't tell him I said that though. He's sensitive like that.