MisterTang

How's the tang looking? Your setup was pretty incredible, glad I got to see it!

After all the overseas travel and uncertainty, I'm excited to get back into the hobby for the third time - and of course even more excited after attending all the cool corals being sold by copps and Pacific East Aquaculture at the meeting this weekend! Skimming will be facilitated by a Tunze 9004 DC, which I will be designing a custom circuit for so it can be modulated by my Reef Angel based on water level and other variables. Lighting will be provided by an Ecotech Radion xr15w Pro G4. Main circulation pump is a Jebao DC3000 that is already modulated by my Reef Angel. As discussed in another thread, I'm going bare-bottom with this tank, but the more I've poked around, the more I've seen this doesn't have to mean that the bottom of your tank has to be an ugly mirror. In fact, as I've found out with my own experiment this weekend, you can take it pretty far to looking realistic! I decided to give this stuff a try as the first coat: It's coming along here. The stuff is really interesting... it's not "paint that looks like sand", it's actually very find sand in a spray paint container held with some kind of epoxy. Instead of traditional paint overspray, you have to clean up the excess sand. Definitely recommend a dropcloth and to tape off areas you don't have to get sand mixed with adhesive on. Anyway, I'm excited; this is precisely the kind of look I was going for, with the individual sand pieces reflecting at different angles/rates versus a flat "painted" look. I used the entire can. This is definitely not an intended application for this stuff, and I found it was still a bit too see-through when I placed it back on the stand, so I currently have a white piece of thin poster board between the tank and stand, which makes it look great. I am debating right now whether I will stick with this or add a coat of white paint to the underside of the tank - it looks great, but I'm not sure what it will look like if the poster board ends up getting stained over time or something (due to a leak or something, heaven forbid.) Here it is with the white poster board underneath:

It's in the members discussion area here: http://wamas.org/forums/topic/81984-jellyfish-art-30-off-free-shipping-coupon-good-until-tuesday-425/

Yes, and part of me suspects that's why they're offering our club (and presumably others) discounts on the setup - to counter the number of people online that fill their jelly tanks with tap water and table salt (if they actually make it to the realization that they're salt jellies) and feed kitty kibble.

Wow GOSKN5, that is just remarkable. It never occurred to me to paint the underside of my tank... derp on my part. What kind of paint did you use that adhered so well to glass and looks so naturally sand-like? This is definitely 100% what I'm going for. Might even like to do black, because I've always heard that black-sand tanks look nice but are a PITA to clean. As always, I'm just a bit behind you Alan - on this and on the Reef Angel RF stuff . He just shipped one of the last of his RF modules to me yesterday after your thread where you got him to admit he had a couple left over. I'm hoping that getting it to work with a prospective Radion isn't a crap-ton of work.

One of the nice things about starting my third iteration of a reef tank from scratch is that I'm locked into very little but have a lot of experience. Shortly after starting my second tank and attending a WAMAS event that Copps presented at, I realized I wanted a bare-bottom reef tank. I know that "starboard" (or plastic/cutting board you lay on the bottom) is popular with some. I have also read some who prefer to just sit the rock down on the bottom glass. I am leaning towards having no starboard because I don't want detritus to get caught under there, and detritus/cleaning flexibility is my primary reason for ditching a sand bed altogether - I am not sure about the downsides of not having anything there. More likely to crack the glass on my Nuvo 38? I'm looking for opinions, advice, insults, or whatever you've got on the topic. As an aside, I don't particularly *like* the bare-bottom look, but I have a lot of rock and am hoping that coraline will cover the bottom in fairly short order. This move is purely for function, not aesthetics.

This had nothing to do with my tank, just my eternal cynicism and sarcasm. They quoted me for some top ten list nearly a decade ago.

Fun fact: I just now found out about this while trying to find an old post on here.

I do prefer the back to be "mostly-ish" watertight from the front display because otherwise it might make the skimmer/UV/filtration flow screwy. I am uncertain at this point if I've lost that seal because I haven't put any water in it yet. After your explanation and looking at some of your photos in your thread, I understood what you're talking about: there's actually a separate glass box back there that contains all the baffles and holds the filtration. None of the seals there look bad; it appears that just the top inch where the glass baffles meet the acrylic. Thanks both for the suggestions! Looking forward to being back in again.

After another overseas stint, I'm back in the USA and ready to start up the third iteration of my reef tank. Unfortunately, when I was draining my Innovative Marine 38 during takedown, I noticed parts of the rear portion of the tank (where filtering etc occurs) came "unglued". This may have occurred because I drained the larger "display" portion first and not the rear portion first, causing excessive stress on these joints. Basically, I'm looking for suggestions for repair. I believe the dark portion is acrylic and the baffles are glass, but am not 100% sure on that. My understanding is that stuff like RTV102 is only for glass-to-glass joints and wouldn't necessarily work for this sort of joint. Any recommendations for reef-safe glue or silicone would be most appreciated. Lastly, here are some photos to help explain what I'm talking about.

So are you going to start building an RA interface for this or what?

"Rupert"?

Had never heard of Zeozym before... sweet merciful heavens, that's stuff is expensive. I did a search a found a couple of other products that claim to be flocculants, including: Dr. Tim's Clear Up SaribSea Phosbuster Kent Marine Pro Clear Clarifier SeaChem Clarity Anyone had experience with any of these? I feel like periodically dosing a flocculant to increase skimmer efficacy might be an interesting test to run...

I tried it out when recommended by BRK, and it seemed to work just fine... cycled my tank in about a week with my lucky cycling damsel, with the initial ammonia spike really being more of a "bump". Did a water change at the end when nitrates were high and they leveled off after that.

The BRS one indicated there was a solution you could buy to calibrate, but I don't think I would freak out over 1 ppm...

I have been extremely disappointed with mine. It continues to stay stuck even when submerged in a couple of inches of water. Float switches can take a hike - I'm swapping it out for a Reef Angel water level monitor that works based off the water pressure in a tube. No more moving parts!

What happened to CHUBAKAH/Mark? He was pretty active until I had to disappear for a bit. He disappeared from Facebook, his e-mail address is defunct, and I'm wondering if his big setup is still running. As for fond memories, having to get rid of my favorite yellow tang and having you help me find him a good home is a somewhat bittersweet. I'm also glad that Jenn got my 72 bowfront, and even more glad that my travel schedule is a little more manageable now and can get back into the hobby.

For heaven's sake, don't put in sand. I set up my 20 tall with some nice sand and live rock rubble, all anxious to handle sick fish... and then realized when I had one that the substrate and rock precluded the addition of most medications, and that the Cryptocaryon parasite can subsist much longer in a sand/rock environment than a bare bottom. It's been months since an ichy fish was in there, but I still don't trust it. Maybe it's a hermit crab tank now Also, if you go for bare bottom, you can also try the non-medicinal ich remedies for early/less severe cases.

For how colorful, fast-growing and hardy they are, you can't beat zoas.

Thanks for the suggestion! Just got one... not sure if it's going on my tank or my server rack

This is a fascinating idea! However, after checking out the price on them... I might just build a photovoltaic doohicky and install it in my LED fixture to detect if the lights are on.

So through all my tanks, I've never had a controller solution because they're a pricey investment and it's hard for me to determine which one will do the "advanced" stuff I want. All of them seem to do "basic" stuff with a power bar and probes. I'm hoping someone who has a decent amount of experience with them and is also pretty technically inclined could help me out here... I'd like to be able to script off of a yes/no measurement of current draw on a particular power port. The Apex looks like it might be able to do this, but they don't explicitly say they can. This requirement is to support legacy devices that have their own timers, but allow me to have a decision tree on the controller that would turn off these devices if they're on and the temp is too warm or something. I'd also like a way to measure IO from third-party devices or devices I build. Measuring analog would be preferred, but I'm willing to settle for simple on/off switching. Lastly, I'm looking for a unit that will allow lots and lots of programming. I'm comfortable with most languages from asm to Python, so the more flexibility I have to write complex programs, the more satisfied with my purchase I'll be. Really, I'm looking for the most "tinkering" flexibility I can find. I would also prefer something open-source if possible.

Due to the stories of "infestation" I heard when popping BA, I tried a technique where I removed all of my rock, plucked the BA with tweezers, and then scrubbed the grow site with a toothbrush, rinsed in buckets of salt water, and then put them back in. Since I tried that, I have had a single BA cell pop up on a rock. Maybe it's just coincidence with the cycling or maturation of my tank, but manual removal outside the tank worked wonders for me.

Any reason you're not using GFO instead of dosing? Also, how did you scrub the bubble algae? In tank?

Since the last update, I received the tank, finished staining the stand, and have started the transition process from my old tank to the new IM tank. And a nice shot of my favorite zoas that I got at the last WAMAS meeting: