Poseidon
Distinguished Member
- Joined
- May 15, 2012
- Location
- SW Ontario
That's awesome! Stroke of luck we had with the timing on that eh?
Phil's 90g SPS dominant reef (aka The Electric Reef Project)
- Thread starter curiousphil
- Start date
curiousphil
Super Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
Yeah for sure!!
curiousphil link said:
Happy to see it found a new home! Polyps are out and it looks good. Not sure if you placed it in your rockwork yet, but as I mentioned to you it seems to like lower flow relative to other SPS and moderate lighting.
curiousphil
Super Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
Yeah its still in the sand, will probably move it onto the rock right behind where it is in the next couple of days.
curiousphil
Super Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
Auto topoff system is finally online as of Saturday. Using two float switches and a 120V relay to control a Tom's Aquatic Aqualifter.
And as i've been having a hard time keeping my ca/alk levels consistent via manual dosing of Aquavitro additives, I decided to get a bag of SR Enterprises kalkwasser from Big Al's. I've added two tbsp of kalk to my 5gal topoff pail, we shall see how things go! So far the only thing I've noticed is that my frogspawn is opening more, hopefully the SPS start showing a change in the next few weeks.
And as i've been having a hard time keeping my ca/alk levels consistent via manual dosing of Aquavitro additives, I decided to get a bag of SR Enterprises kalkwasser from Big Al's. I've added two tbsp of kalk to my 5gal topoff pail, we shall see how things go! So far the only thing I've noticed is that my frogspawn is opening more, hopefully the SPS start showing a change in the next few weeks.
curiousphil
Super Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
Loving my moonlights. I often wake up in the middle of the night and enjoy coming downstairs to stare at the tank for a bit while I wait for sleep to take hold again.
I added a bag of alagagen tisbe pods to the tank last night (thanks Aaron!) and I can see some out crawling around on my glass tonight, glad they are taking hold. Hopefully they stick around and I can build a good population.
I added a bag of alagagen tisbe pods to the tank last night (thanks Aaron!) and I can see some out crawling around on my glass tonight, glad they are taking hold. Hopefully they stick around and I can build a good population.
curiousphil
Super Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
Update time...
ATO with kalkwasser has been doing a great job of keeping my calcium and alk up. I've been supplementing two tablespoons of SR kalkwasser powder from Big Al's to every gallon of RO/DI water that I add to my topoff container. Keeping alk steady at around 9.
My monti frags are growing like mad, I'm thrilled with their progress. Red monti cap has been growing more than a cm per week, green cap is slowly crawling up the rock it's glued to and has started to "cup" upwards on one side. I have three setosa frags that started off as one but got broke a couple times as I tried to pick off bubble algae with my fat fingers. Each frag has encrusted to its respective plug or rock and is growing outwards maybe 1cm per month.
Most new acro additions are staying alive... but I have experienced a couple of casualties since October: Red Dragon, Orange Passion, jroovers Suharsanoi, and a tenuis mini colony. One by one they have gone, rather than all at once. The red dragon slowly STNed from the middle after I introduced it, and after trying to save it by chopping it up, all the frags went RTN within a day. The suharsanoi looked good for a good month, polyps out every day, but then I came home from work one day and found it had expelled all its tissue and only a white skeleton remained. The OP experienced a slow STN from the base up, just lost its final polyps last week. The tenuis was already experiencing relatively rapid tissue necrosis when I added it into the tank and only lasted a couple of weeks.
The acros that have survived remain in a steady state, showing neither signs of growth nor sickness. Unless it's normal for shaded tissue to pale? I have noticed that on a couple of frags. I do have one exceptional frag that is visually growing, and that is the aculeus that I got from jroovers! I have noticed that some of the tips towards the top/front of the frag have grown and actually sprouted several new polyps. I'm pretty pleased about that!
Brand new additions that seem to be holding up are a robusta acro from Aaron and a yellow efflo from Ben (Reef Hero). The robusta, I'll be happy if it just survives lol. The efflo I think will do well, it was an off-white when I added it last Thursday and has darkened slightly to more of a yellow as of when I was looking at it last night.
And for my final piece of news.... drum roll.... I gave Aaron the go-ahead to order me a JNS ConeS CO2!!! I will hopefully be installing that into my sump next Saturday
. It should be quite an upgrade - going from an archaic Deltec that pumps out 350 lph of air to a cone shaped skimmer that boasts 720 lph!! And on top of that should be far more quiet . I'll try to do a picture update next weekend.
While I'm bummed about my losses, they have been moderate... and I mostly understand why, and try to take it all in stride. My tank is still fairly immature, and a little unstable. I read up on reef tanks for months before building, and continue to read articles daily, but it's difficult to put these learnings into practice! My main struggles continue to be nitrates and alk/ca stability. The ATO+kalk has helped with the stability, and I am hoping that eventually the biopellets will help with the nitrates - in addition to the new skimmer. My tank is coming up on it's 1 year mark in a couple months, but the move I performed back in August set me back a little bit. SO I'm not sure where I am on my path to tank maturity, but purple is growing on everything and montis are thriving so I think I'm approaching an environment ideal for acros - which is my end goal. Anyways that's all for now, thanks for reading and happy reefing dudes.
ATO with kalkwasser has been doing a great job of keeping my calcium and alk up. I've been supplementing two tablespoons of SR kalkwasser powder from Big Al's to every gallon of RO/DI water that I add to my topoff container. Keeping alk steady at around 9.
My monti frags are growing like mad, I'm thrilled with their progress. Red monti cap has been growing more than a cm per week, green cap is slowly crawling up the rock it's glued to and has started to "cup" upwards on one side. I have three setosa frags that started off as one but got broke a couple times as I tried to pick off bubble algae with my fat fingers. Each frag has encrusted to its respective plug or rock and is growing outwards maybe 1cm per month.
Most new acro additions are staying alive... but I have experienced a couple of casualties since October: Red Dragon, Orange Passion, jroovers Suharsanoi, and a tenuis mini colony. One by one they have gone, rather than all at once. The red dragon slowly STNed from the middle after I introduced it, and after trying to save it by chopping it up, all the frags went RTN within a day. The suharsanoi looked good for a good month, polyps out every day, but then I came home from work one day and found it had expelled all its tissue and only a white skeleton remained. The OP experienced a slow STN from the base up, just lost its final polyps last week. The tenuis was already experiencing relatively rapid tissue necrosis when I added it into the tank and only lasted a couple of weeks.
The acros that have survived remain in a steady state, showing neither signs of growth nor sickness. Unless it's normal for shaded tissue to pale? I have noticed that on a couple of frags. I do have one exceptional frag that is visually growing, and that is the aculeus that I got from jroovers! I have noticed that some of the tips towards the top/front of the frag have grown and actually sprouted several new polyps. I'm pretty pleased about that!
Brand new additions that seem to be holding up are a robusta acro from Aaron and a yellow efflo from Ben (Reef Hero). The robusta, I'll be happy if it just survives lol. The efflo I think will do well, it was an off-white when I added it last Thursday and has darkened slightly to more of a yellow as of when I was looking at it last night.
And for my final piece of news.... drum roll.... I gave Aaron the go-ahead to order me a JNS ConeS CO2!!! I will hopefully be installing that into my sump next Saturday
. It should be quite an upgrade - going from an archaic Deltec that pumps out 350 lph of air to a cone shaped skimmer that boasts 720 lph!! And on top of that should be far more quiet . I'll try to do a picture update next weekend.While I'm bummed about my losses, they have been moderate... and I mostly understand why, and try to take it all in stride. My tank is still fairly immature, and a little unstable. I read up on reef tanks for months before building, and continue to read articles daily, but it's difficult to put these learnings into practice! My main struggles continue to be nitrates and alk/ca stability. The ATO+kalk has helped with the stability, and I am hoping that eventually the biopellets will help with the nitrates - in addition to the new skimmer. My tank is coming up on it's 1 year mark in a couple months, but the move I performed back in August set me back a little bit. SO I'm not sure where I am on my path to tank maturity, but purple is growing on everything and montis are thriving so I think I'm approaching an environment ideal for acros - which is my end goal. Anyways that's all for now, thanks for reading and happy reefing dudes.
Sorry to hear of your loses, that sucks. Good to hear that the aculeus is doing well, if I had to have put money on it, that would have been the first frag to show signs of stress, but sounds like the opposite occurred. I think you'll be happy with the Co2. So, you think the issue was nutrients? Have you been testing your alk and ca regularly, experiencing any swings?
curiousphil
Super Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
I believe the main issue has been nutrients, yes. I have battled nitrates ever since I started adding coral. I suspect that I either don't have enough liverock... I have maybe 75 lbs worth. Could also be that my skimmer is just insufficient, or that could at least worsen the situation I'm thinking. When I set up the tank, I waited until my nitrates were zero before adding any livestock. Once I started adding SPS, I watched the numbers climb. At one point last summer I was no longer able to discern what the nitrates were at, the API test kit just showed red. After my move, they were back down to around 5 which I was happy with. But then around October timeframe they climbed as high as approx 30. I'm down to the 15-20 range last I checked a few weeks ago.
But I also had fairly low alk which may have further complicated things. Before I had the ATO hooked up, I was having a dickens of a time keeping my calc and alk at the levels that I wanted to see. They were being depleted faster than I could dose by hand (I was dosing AquaVitro eight.four and calcification). My levels were constantly around 380 and 6.8-7.2. Once I got the ATO online I was able to bring those values up to 450 and 9, and that increase probably happened over too short a period.
Long story short, tank is still stabilizing. Very excited for the CO2, I think that combined with changing the biopellet reactor should set me up for some positive results in the near future.
But I also had fairly low alk which may have further complicated things. Before I had the ATO hooked up, I was having a dickens of a time keeping my calc and alk at the levels that I wanted to see. They were being depleted faster than I could dose by hand (I was dosing AquaVitro eight.four and calcification). My levels were constantly around 380 and 6.8-7.2. Once I got the ATO online I was able to bring those values up to 450 and 9, and that increase probably happened over too short a period.
Long story short, tank is still stabilizing. Very excited for the CO2, I think that combined with changing the biopellet reactor should set me up for some positive results in the near future.
curiousphil
Super Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
I'm always flush with cash this time of year.... so, time for toys lol.
Now I've got to make a PVC jig for the PAR meter and then I can start doing a map of my tank (and others in the London area).
Now I've got to make a PVC jig for the PAR meter and then I can start doing a map of my tank (and others in the London area).
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2012
- Location
- Rocky Mountains BC
lol I find I'm always OUT of cash this time of year lol.
nexusnight
Active Member
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
Ooooh toys!!!! That's always fun. If u feel like doing some par testing to play with that new toy shoot me a message!! Would love to see what my hydras are actually up to.
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curiousphil
Super Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
And I would love to see how my DIY unit holds up against Hydras! I'll hit you up sometime, next week perhaps because my weekend is looking pretty full.
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2011
- Location
- Sarnia, Ontario
yu can order the extenable wand for the par meter. its like pen size and opens to 24 inchs has a lil plastic peice at the end where yu attach to the flat side if the sensor and take the screw out of the sensor and fasten it to the wand then yur hands stay drycuriousphil link said:
curiousphil
Super Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
Got a few more violets and RB's, going to change up my layout to this:
nexusnight
Active Member
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
Sounds great!!
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curiousphil
Super Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
yu can order the extenable wand for the par meter. its like pen size and opens to 24 inchs has a lil plastic peice at the end where yu attach to the flat side if the sensor and take the screw out of the sensor and fasten it to the wand then yur hands stay dryPetercar link said:
[/quote]
I've got a plan... going to do something similar to what's in this article: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2013/9/review
Use some 1/2" PVC pipe, a couple of elbows, and a magnet. Shouldn't cost me more than 10 bucks or so. Going to build it tomorrow night.
curiousphil
Super Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
Well, even without the wand I've learned two extremely valuable facts: 1) at the height my acros sit, I'm only getting 60-75 par. 2) I have hotspots like mad. Some areas will be 60, move two inches over and I read 75. So I'm already glad I ordered more LEDs and lenses.
Revised layout.... one of these clusters per side:
40 degree lenses on the 3ups because thats all that is available, 60 degrees on all others.
Revised layout.... one of these clusters per side:
40 degree lenses on the 3ups because thats all that is available, 60 degrees on all others.
nexusnight
Active Member
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
i read an article on testing par and i tink theres some math to do. the apogee meters dont read certain wavelengths from led very well and either over or under rate the value. google it and im sure u can find it. It was all gibberish to me really but might be what u need?