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:

1


4


While I was away, this guy (the tusk fish):


Attacked this guy (the flame wrasse):
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:


APril 15, 2012 - Cycling


June 21, 2012 - first fish (may they RIP) and first corals. Also first signs of algae problems


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)


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.


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.

[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.


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.


January 15, 2013 - Sigh, RIP flame wrasse, you were beautiful, but you didn't have big enough teeth.


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.

[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]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

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!








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 . Great to see everything is coming together for you on this tank Adam!