super cool Kien! And great photos!

Wow, you can take amazing pics. Corals and blenny look great.

Yeah you got to see his camera equipment :-) Great photos always

Your tank is amazing and a definite inspiration to my upcoming build. I have a question for you though. I saw on your videos that you have some mushrooms on one rock. How do you keep them from taking over your whole tank? I had one mushroom when I started 3 years ago, now I have 200 and they are busy killing everything they can, and that's after me harvesting them every month.

Thanks! Looking forward to your peninsula build! I think it must be the species of mushrooms. In a previous tank I had the same problem, mushrooms grew like weeds and nearly took over. Kinda put me off mushrooms for a while. Then I got back into mushrooms in my last 90gallon tank and started with that rock of blue mushrooms that you see in those pics. It has not grown much beyond its rock. If I do see it heading to other rocks I prune it, but it does not seem to do that that quickly. Certainly not plague like that I've experienced before. I also have a couple of patches of two different varieties of red mushrooms which grow/spread even slower. Very very slow. And then there's a rock of rhodactis and a couple of rocks of ricordias which are also painfully slow. So I guess in the end I am just lucky, I don't know.

Sorry that I can't offer much more of an explanation other than that. If I had to make a more educated somewhat scientific guess, I would maybe chalk it up to low nutrients ? My SPS seem to do really well so maybe they are starved ? :noidea: I do love my mushrooms but ya.. if they ever started to take over again like last time I'd be put off and try to get rid of them.

So what did you do when you had the plague? I would like to use my current rock in the new tank but there are so many mushrooms that I couldn't imagine taking that over.

Took the infested rocks out, scraped them off the rocks with a razor, put rocks back in. Any babies that tried to come back were immediately scraped clean off the rock. Was a royal pain but it worked.

Oh, they tended to shrivel when out of the water so i scraped them while submerged in a rubbermaid tub. I think i used a metal scouring pad as well to scrub the leftover bits.

The Hydor 700 Vacation Mod
 

I recently went to Mexico for a week long trip and had my sister tank sit for me. She's done it before and is generally pretty good about looking after things but she's no "Advanced Aquarist". I didn't want her to have to monkey about with the tank too much so I took some steps to make her life a little easier.

1. I had a 33g rubbermade tote full of RO/DI water as a top off reservoir which is good for nearly two weeks of top off water. My usual reservoir which fits under the tank is only 8 gallons, good for about 2 or 3 days.

2. I set up an automatic fish feeder to feed the fish once in the morning and once at night. By the way, what a great little device! I got the Eheim one. I like it so much I use it almost full time now. It plops food in in the morning only though as I still like to hand feed (my fish mush and PE mysis) for the evening feed.

3. Lastly I decided to modify the skimmer to collect a week or mores worth of skimmate. In the past I just turned the skimmer off. However, this time around I wanted to keep it on but I didn't want my sister to have to empty the skimmer cup every few days or so. The cup does fill up pretty quick. Well, it doesn't actually fill up, but it fills enough (about half way) to a point where the foam itself has no room and starts to bubble over. Anyway, here's what I came up with.

I used one of these elbows and simply chopped off one end like so.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263538927

I then drilled a hole into the base of the skimmer's collection cup the size of the chopped off end, like so.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263538978

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263538996

I then silliconed the elbow into the collection cup.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263539037

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263539054

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263539071

Then I stuck an appropriate sized hoze into the nozzel.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263539096

And voila!

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263539131

At some point I'm going to put a valve inline there. This has worked out well and I have not touched the skimmate collection since before I left. I do dump some fresh water into the cup to rinse it a bit though. I will probably be using this full time even though it was only meant to be temporary.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263539370

Also, I think I can use a slightly smaller bottle, like a 2 litre soda bottle would be fine, instead of that gallon monster I have on there now :lol:

Haha, I totally did the opposite with my bubble magus skimmer. I took off the drain line and capped the hole. The reason being is that, while this is a great idea and is good for the reasons you outlined .. there is also now nothing to stop the skimmer from overflowing your sump empty should a snail or something get wedged into the skimmer's output.

Now it used to be pretty common to use a waste collector instead of a bottle on beckett skimmers but you don't see them used on needlewheel skimmers. The reason being though is that the cup is not sealed like they are on becketts (usually flanged and bolted, with a gasket) so that air can't escape except via the drain line. When the drain line closes (usually by a pingpong ball float in the waste collector) then the skimmer can't produce foam anymore because of the back pressure. This was one neat feature with beckett skimmers that seems to be lost with the current gen needlewheels.

Anyhow it's just something to watch out for.

I think what some people are doing nowadays is just putting a drain line on their collection bottles or buckets so that if the bottles overfills it just drains back to the tank. Yeah, gross to dump skimmate back in the tank but it beats an empty sump and a wet floor (it would get skimmed out again pretty quick after you fix the issue anyhow).

Whoa! That is a very good point! Never thought about a snail ever getting into the outlet of the skimmer as the outlet is pretty darn big.

I just went to inspect my skimmer and I have a sock tied to the outlet to cut down on bubbles :-) So I think I'm safe? Anywhere else a snail could get in?

You can also keep the bottle in your sump, so on the off chance it does overflow, it just does so back into the sump.

Haha...very good and obvious suggestion that never dawned on me.

Ya, I was thinking about that as an option. Need to figure out how to weigh the bottle down so that it can sit in the sump water.. Although, I'm still having a hard time figuring out where else a snail could get into the skimmer's outlet since I have mine covered by a splash/bubble guard socky thing.

Well, snail is only one potential scenario. There may be others that I just can't dream up right now. :) I have no experience with your model of skimmer but the needlewheels I've played around with before, some have been worse than others for the occasional berserkness that causes them to overflow. The Bubble Magus is for some reason one of the worst this way for me, but I had a CSS65 on a 20g before that was just as bad and had I run that thing as hang-on as it was intended I would have emptied the sump several times. I don't know what the cause is whether it's something in the livestock taking a mondo poop or maybe a snail spawn or who knows, but it's something. But I had other skimmers that didn't do that (ASM) so .. yeah, who knows.

Instead of weighing down the bottle so it sits under the water level, you could just make a little eggcrate or acrylic (or glass) shelf that the bottle could sit on. The bottle needn't sit in the sump per se, it just needs to overflow into the sump.

It's sort of a balancing act though, if you have to tip your bottle sideways to maneuver it out of the sump then you might still be better off having it sit on the outside of the sump on a little shelf and just with a little hose that drains back to the sump.

tru dat! I guess that's why we keep you around Tony. You're full of great ideas! :biggrin:

The Lentils: Part II
 

Today Tony was gracious enough to lend me his Nitrate meter so that I may test my nitrates and see how them lentils were doing. They have been running in my Two Little Fishes reactor for a little over two weeks now. Lots of mulm production but so far no clogging. I suspect something is consuming it in the filter or they just eventually dissolve enough to escape the foam filter that's in the reactor. Anyway, two weeks ago prior to running the bio lentils Tony and I did a reading and we got 8 ppm. Here is the reading I got this evening..

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263966918

It appears as though something has reduced my nitrates in half. I have not added anything else to the tank other than the bio pellets. I have not done a water change since installing the bio pellets. I usually do weekly water changes but put off the last one out of curiosity, so it has been two weeks since my last water change.

All other parameters in case you're interested:

Specific Gravity: 1.026
pH: 7.9 to 8.3
Alk: 8.5 dkH
Calc: 420 ppm
Mag: 1400 ppm
Temp: 79-81
Phosphate: tests out to zero

I dose Alk (Baking Soda) and Calcium (from Littlesilvermax in bulk) but nothing else.

I have only been running half of the recommend amount of bio pellets but this weekend will ramp that up to full dosage. Zero nitrates here I come!! :biggrin:

Feed me!
 

The topic of nitrates might be a good seque into the process of food production and distribution in my reef.

This evening I had to make up a batch of my special Seafood a la Kien and I already had my camera out snapping pics of the nitrate monitor so I figured I'd snap some more photos and document this process in case anyone was curious. I know I'm always curious about what people put into their tanks.

So to start out, I like to buy two or three bags of mixed seafood. Here we have a bag of scallops, shrimp and a seafood medley which consists of octopus and clamy things.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263967646

I fill up a blending cup with the three parts of frozen sea foods. Let it sit for a bit and thaw..

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263967688

Then grab my trusty hand blender and blend away!

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263967725

The trick here is not to over blend because you don't want to turn it into a V8 cocktail. Rather, you want nice chunky bits that the fish can consume. It takes a bit of practice to get the blending just right. I usually count buzzes. About 5 or 6 buzzes will do the trick.

After blending you get something that looks like this.. [insert mad scientist laughter here]

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263967814

I then take my trusty reusable coffee filter and strain out what water I can.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263967920

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263967940

After that I'm left with a nice mushy fish meal and place it in a bowl. I also like to add PE Mysis to the meal so I'll thaw out a few chunks and rinse it in the coffee filter as well.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263968024

I then add the two together and inject with a healthy dose of Garlic extract.
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263968070http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263968086

Stir the whole concoction and voila! Seafood a la Kien.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263968114

I like to serve in portions and these handy ice cube trays are the perfect amount.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263968164

My reef gets a shot of Formula 1&2 flakes every morning at 10:30am via an automatic feeder. I do the evening feed by hand by grabbing a fish cube out of the freezer and thawing it in some tank water. Every other day I strap a sheet of nori to a rod and throw that into the tank as well.

Seafood a la Kien is also great of target feeding LPS :biggrin:

Little Helper
 

Here's my 2 year old son doing the evening feed.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263968470

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1263968492

Bookmarked for the day I need to make some food thanks for sharing man. Love the fishcubes and the pics of your son lol.

Awesome stuff. Interesting how it seems to be pretty consistent for everyone measuring with the N/P pellets that it seems to half the amount in two weeks (two week half life).

Fish are friends
 

Here are my finned friends that hang out in the reef.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4056/...4603769b_t.jpg http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4035/...5e687998_t.jpg http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/...53d77036_t.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2779/...b55e3590_t.jpg http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4031/...0821343e_t.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4011/...e5f2a378_t.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2698/...794173bc_t.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2802/...f92ea0d0_t.jpg http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4022/...2fc719f9_t.jpg http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4069/...01c2e8aa_t.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2694/...c3c8a628_t.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2732/...21b7cef0_t.jpg http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4040/...e2f36efe_t.jpg http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4057/...b3bf60f4_t.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2768/...62e27009_t.jpg

Feeding Frenzy!
 

Feeding time!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2682/...91a098c7_o.jpg

They look great.

Geez man do you ever sleep!

Sleep? What is that? Does it cost money ? :-)

I'm really excited to watch the lentils run their course. Looking into the reactor it doesn't look like they have depleted much at all. I'm trying to figure out now how to run the rest of the lentils. Either a second reactor, a bigger reactor or just a loose bag in the sump.. hmm..

Seriously Kien, your tank is looking good. Better and better each time i look here.

absolutely fan-freakin-tastic shots of the fish man!!!!

Awesome fish and great pictures as always.

UNBELIEVABLE! Gorgeous tank Kien...great picture taking! And love that one of your son...super cute! They love to help don't they?!:wink:

Remind me not to ask for Coffee if I visit your tank!!

Very nice Kien. Sorry this is the first time I have caught a look at your set-up. Nice work!

Brad

Thanks everyone :-) Taking pictures of fish is actually pretty hard. Those guys are fast!

So the N/P Bio Pellets have finally caught up with me! The mulm/slough finally clogged up the Two Little Fishes reactor. While I was cleaning the reactors sponges I decided that the sponges in the reactor were actually thicker than they really needed to be. Mod time!

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1264151551

So I took one sponge and cut it in half like so.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1264151574

From one sponge you end up with two!

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1264151594

I wanted them to be a little thinner still so I shaved off another few millimeters.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1264151640

After the operation I ended up with a very thin sponge, kind of like enkmat mesh.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1264151673

I then reinstalled the sponge top and bottom of the reactor like before except the top sponge I decided to install in the opposite position from where you would have it normally.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1264151746

Flow increase was dramatically increased and hopefully more mulm/slough will be able to escape over time.

Oh, I decided to install the rest of the N/P Bio Pellets this evening as well. I was debating whether or not to get another reactor or a bigger reactor. In the end I just serviced my 'fuge and overflow as reactors. I have a cluster of chaeto in my 'fuge now that hasn't really done anything (but maybe recede) over time. I finally figured out what that static ball of chaeto is good for!

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1264152069

I just dumped a couple of handfuls of NP BioPellets into the 'fuge and they fell into the chaeto net. Instant NP BioPellet Media Net.

I threw a couple of handfuls into my overflow box as well, just for variety sake. :biggrin:

Beautiful picts. This is why i don't want to make my tank thread because I feel so bad looking at my tank after looking at your tank :-)

Thanks for keep updating your tank. How is the baby? you just amaze me how you can still manage to have time taking care of your beautiful tank with newborn. My babies are driving me crazy over here :-)

Cheers

Thanks :-)

Babies are easy. All they do is eat-sleep-poop-repeat. :lol: Wait until they turn 2! Now that's a handful. Although, he is turning into quite a reefer. Not only does he roll my salt buckets, feed fish and clean the glass, he now doses my coral snow into the sump for me. :lol:

Your pictures are incredible :mrgreen:

N/P Bio Pellets: Part III
 

First of all, thanks Leah :biggrin:

Okay, so this evening marked the 4th (ish) week of the N/P Bio Pellets. To recap.. I have about 750ml of the pellets running in a Two Little Fishes 150 phosban reactor that is fed by a maxijet 900 daisy chained with another phosban reactor running carbon. I recently did a mod to the sponges to get more flow through the reactor and thus more tumble of the pellets. This has worked out quite well. I also have another 250ml of the pellets hanging out loosly in my refugium and my overflow box (just cuz I couldn't fit all the pellets in the reactor). At first I was a little worried about this but so far there have been not been any adverse effects.

Before I started using the pellets I used an American Marine Pinpoint meter to measure my nitrates and got a reading of 8ppm. Two weeks later I took another reading and got 4ppm. Now into my 4th(ish) week I took another reading and got 0ppm. :cheer2:

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1265702951

The meter reads "Lo" but according to the manual this means Zero. I wasn't sure I trusted that reading at first so I took two more readings. The second one also came up as zero while the third and final test came up with 1ppm.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1265703955

So I'm going to call it zero since the probe has an accuracy of +/- 1ppm :biggrin: Once again, just like the week two test, I have not made any changes to my system. It has been static now for over four weeks in fact. I do not run any ULN systems like zeo or ultralith nor do I use any of their additives.

So there we have it. In my application of the N/P Bio pellets there is clearly a positive result and I am sold!! Needless to say I will be stockpiling these bad boys. I have always wanted to use this emoticon and feel it appropriate to do so now..
:bananahuge:

Alright.. carry on.

There HAS to be some catch (besides the fact that I had to see that scary banana dancing)! I'll be using these on my new tank without a DOUBT.

wow i am sold on this as well. Anyone want to group order?

Thanks for being the guinea pig Kien, I think I might give them a go as well if they really work, they may help out with my nitrates when i move everything for my upgrade. From what I have been reading, even when people move existing rocks and water, they still seem to have a little bit of new tank syndrome.
Your little experiment has helped out some of us!...or well.. at least me anyways :P

It's not just Kien being the guinea pig :D