kien's 150g Room Divider Mixed Reef & Stuff

[shrimpchips]

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.

[mseepman]

Originally Posted by shrimpchips

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.

[kien]

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.

[Delphinus]

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.

[kien]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

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.

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

[kien]

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..



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!!

[kien]

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.



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



Then grab my trusty hand blender and blend away!



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]



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





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.



I then add the two together and inject with a healthy dose of Garlic extract.


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



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



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

[kien]

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

[lastlight]

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

[Delphinus]

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).