Blacknifes 50g Battle of SPS learning

[TheKid]

You are really dedicated, good job!

[blacknife]

Down to one tank.

Failure of the day....


looking at the plumbing of the return from the 15 gallon.. thought i put a union in it when i put the tank together after the flooding incidents of a few months ago. barely touched the plumbing... cracked the tank.

I was looking to move it so i could put the 40 tall beside the 40 breeder and leave the 15 a fuge.. but now.. i just have the 40 b. and room to build everything.


on a side note took my kid on a tour today to all the fishstores. all i got were 2 acro frags and some salt.


playing with everything to get the rock from the 15 back in the 40 messed my flow up and i cant find a spot to make my alveoporia happy. everything else is settled in and normalizing.



that sand in the 15 was pretty rank. it was nothing like that when i moved the 33 into the 40 and split the sand between the 2 i wonder why it ripened up so fast.

[blacknife]

i took a pic of milli that has stringy stuff on it, found a different way to use the camera to get good macro shots.. decided to go back and take more pictures only to discover the mj1200 fell off its suction cups and fell on some stuff and sprayed sand everywhere..


yay fun times..

[blacknife]

Everything is still growing and doing ok.
sps are growing and.. showing hints of colour but not not really colouring up.

im not sure if it has only been since i got my new lights or if it has been longer, but all my zoo's and some of my lps have been looking fairly washed out lately. looked through some of my old pictures last night and was affirmed of that. I know need to put new lights in my newer fixture but i don't think that would cause this. New lights are waiting till I'm working again.

what do i need to do to get some color back in my zoo's?

[blacknife]

Hah off all summer and no updates.
Fish come and go.. corals do good then do bad.

not sure what i had for fish before but im down to the 2 clowns, dottyback and a yellow line goby it is staying this way for now, work is to unstable dead fish make me to sad. all my blennies have either jumped or found their way into pumps.. the fish i have have not committed suicide yet so ill keep it that way as long as possible.

I'm back to work so this means 2 things.. more money for the tank.. back to less time. oh well keep trying to automate things more.

replaced half my lights a few weeks ago the rest today.

as well IO got some prodiobio<sp> to try out.
I have been battling with a mix of diatoms/cyano. most trays it looks like diatoms but some days it gets little red patches here and there, dust off the rocks and suck what i can out and call it good.
I think i need to look at getting an ro unit soon to make this problem go away for good but who knows.


Some of my spas are having a real battle.. my alk got low a few months ago.. or something else was bugging them and the birdsnests' and one of the pocks has been fighting back to life since.

the milli i got from dez ages ago finally pinked up.. i assume its a rose milli of some kind because.. i pretty much gave up on it having any color other than brown. the couple arco frags i have are slowly looking more like when i got them,


I was going to take some shots tonight to throw in for good luck but the reefbooster food made everything to cloudy for now.

I still want to add a bit more rock to the sump but i have not find the right rock at the right price yet.. base rock.. used live rock i don't care just need the right stuff.

on another note i found a small 12ish gallon classic cube<has stainless frame around it to boot. i was going to use it for mixing but instead i put a small hob filter on it .. one picee of rock.. and a few days later some of my softies. plans are to get a couple more nice pieces of rocks for it and put softies/mushrooms/ what not in it.. but right now i just watch all the pods run around on the rock doing their thing with no predators.

[blacknife]

I THINK there is less algaee growing all over the place. not sure.. perhaps the prodibio stuff is doing something.


Made some aggrocreete rocks today too. I will have to see how they look tomorrow perhaps i will make more perhaps i wont. if they are ugly they can go in the sump if they turned out good they can go in the tank.<after curing of course>


I had to spend quite some time rinsing out my old sand in a bucket that has just been sitting there it was black as black. kind of makes me think against ever doing a remote dsb bucket, after lots of rinsing almost all the black was gone and just using that sand for shaping anyways for now, had all new stuff for the aggrocrete. would having some flow over that much gravelactualy keep it from getting black?


My one other thought from the day.. i did the rock in a nice flat rubber maid container, but looking at it it would be perfect for a dsb, almost thinking building a rack above the sump for one of these and some mangroves... but one project at a time.

[blacknife]

Dammit, I am in calgary, wanted to grab a few things from other canreefers and visit some stores but have no time.. oh well.. next trip i guess.

[blacknife]

Did some de-constuction today... 15g wc with an attempt to suck up as much black nasty pockets of sand as possible.

got about 2/3 of the sand i can get to without moving the rocks around.

the new water felt a little cool compared to the tank water even though the thermometers read the same so i called it quits at that. try more in a couple days.


I changed my GFO and carbon over the weekend then came home on sunday <with a few frags from the lfs heh> to find my one milli that used to look at least kind of healthy bleaching/rtn from the tips.

assumed this was from the gfo and turned the flow to the GFO and carbon down to a trickle. The rtn has slowed down not sure if its done though. I hope that was the problem. that was the last thing i wanted to see when brining more SPS home to play with.

At the same time i chilled out the little frag tank i have been trying to make in my room, its still runing just in the dark till i can get real lights for it, the daylight cfl's that were over it were barely keeping the softies and zoo's alive. I think i might empty it drill it than tie it in to the main tank and get some real lights for it. as frag tank or larger fugue.. either one is needed heh

enough late night rambling i think changing all that water made me tipsy

[blacknife]

HOB dsb is dead. i tried moving it to the sump. turned it on.. thought it was flowing good.. looked away for a few mins and came back to wet floor.

anyone want a HOB refugium? it doesn't usually flood just have to be careful when you start it up that you get all the air out heh. price free

it was running .. i think over a month and the sand looked clean except for a little black stint right at the start by the top lip. I did use used but well washed sand mix of Crushed and fine.

the cheato tank is not doing much i think i will go get some fresh fine aragonite sand and put it in there and run the 5g half+full of sand and leave the cheato on top.

got some coral snow today too. put my prodibio dosages in early in the am.. put the coral snow in before shutting down the pumps cuz the dsb was going goofy.

left the pumps off for a bit.. and everything is covered in sliminess.. like the algaee/cyano that is there but different heh oh well i think its clearing up.

I only have a couple weeks of prodibio kicking around i think i am going to drop to just the digest and tp and supplement with the coral snow.

the reefbooster is what makes my protien skimmer gum out and not do much for a couple days after i guess there is to much fatty acids or something in it for my skimmer

[blacknife]

I guess its time to start dipping. I have seen 2 interesting critters in my tank the last few days that i have never seen before.

The first one a whitish flat free swimming ribbon, about 3/4 inch long and 1/32 or less wide, attracted to the flashlight as i looked in my tank the other night.. followed it around the tank once.. thought what was that.. lost it.. watched for 15 mins then saw it again.. found something to trap it with then did not see it for a while.. saw it and missed the trap attempt then decided it was well past my bedtime.

Last night i saw a small clear object in my fugue. shaped like a classic star trek communicator with a heart or something in the middle. I am thinking some kind of flatworm but I have not looked it up yet.

all this was prompted by noticing the pump to my fugue was not working and my reactors have not been hooked up for a couple days. My ato was kicking in regularly and can barely keep up to the evap, I swore it was leaking but i looked all over the tank and discovered that while re-plumbinng the fugue and reactors I must have bumped the return line because now it has a slow drip<not even a cup over night so i am safe for a bit> unfortunately last time i re-plumbed it i could not put a valve in between the sump and the pump so now instead of a simple fix its going to be re-plumb the whole return line. but thats ok.. its all fancy with a manifold on it im not using any more i think it will be going straight into the tank for now.

the sad part is i think the fugue was just not flowing cuz the cheap vinyl tubing had pinched.


To add to the troubles my kitchen sink drain is not working. the same one i plumed my laundry machine into. i got home early from work went to put in laundry. the girl was doing the dishes and the laundry machine was full of dishwater. laundry machine is back in the drain for the house for now. 15 ft snake ran into some junk but did not clear the problem so i went and got a 25 ft snake..which did not clear the problem either. every other drain in the house works and it is only 15-20 feet to the main drains in the middle of the house so im not sure whats going on. time to call a plumber i guess.