LanglandJoshua

Thanks to Christmas/New Years, I recieved some "gifts". AKA money, so of course it is going into my tank! Now I am trying to think of beautiful unique fish to add to my system. For a long time, everything I have added has been equipment. It's time to bring some life to the tank. So if anyone has some suggestions, please let me know! I will list what I currently have, and a couple things I plan on getting. Have 2 X B&W clowns 1 X large engineer goby 1 X watchman goby 1 X black spot foxface 1 X blue velvet damsel(going to be evicted as soon as possible!) 1 X royal gramma 2 X mandarin gobies 1 X bristle star 3 X cleaner shrimp 1 X blue hippo tang Want 2 X hoevens wrasse(pair) 5 X firefish 1 X court jester goby 1 X midas blenny I will need a couple more small guys to roam around the rock. Thanks for any info!

I think it is time for a couple videos. this RBTA has GROWN since I bought it at 1"!!! Please pardon the video quality, this was from my phone. After the first 30 seconds I tried to get a decent view of a few different things in the tank. Sadly it just made the video look worse! I wish photobucket would let me edit it... After the first couple peices of shrimp, the big guy was still ready for more! I do not normally feed more than 1-1.5 shrimp. This time I wanted to see if the anemone would accept a full second. I guess it was hungry!

OK, finally got the time to sit down and figure this out. So here is what happened. I went to walgreens and asked for some plastic 1ml and 10ml syringes. After some weird looks and a short explenation that it was for an aquarium. They gave me 4 of each. So I'm set for a while on syringes. If anyone needs them let me know, I have 'em. Today I finally got to test! I also soaked my PH sensor in vinegar, recalibrated it, and checked it against a Red Sea PH test. THEY AGREE! After sorting it all out, I am glad that it was just a sensor needing calibration. Otherwise I would have had a true headache! It also means I can get back to killing the aptasia! Here are the results, note that the tests were after the dusk dimming and only under moonlight(LED lights). So PH should be a little low, and will rise by mid day. PH 7.83 (measured by RKE sensor) Temp 78.6 F (RKE sensor) Alk 135ppm 7.56dKH (Hanna Checker) Calcium 473ppm (Hanna) Magnesium 1300ppm (Red Sea) As mentioned above in a previous post I have switched from the Instant Ocean standard mix. To the Reef Crystals, reef specific mix. Which I am hoping will raise my Alk a bit. zygote2k After seeing the B-Ionic label instructing to dose alk when PH was high, and calcium when PH was low. Both relative to the diural swings. I was thinking that calcium raised PH and alk droped it. After rereading the beginers forums sticky for water parameters here I was reminded how things really work. So I am rereading everything. It is refreshing to have read the same thing many times now. Yet every time I read it, I explore different links and learn even more than the last. My favorite thing about this hobby is that with more reading comes more questions. There is always more to learn! If I notice my numbers dropping over the next month then I will consider dosing to maintain proper levels. After my reread I do feel silly dosing so little mg. Though the container did say to start very slowly. You mentioned being able to dose several cups of mg and do no damage? Do you mean a cup of solution, or powder? Origami Great advice! I am happy with the recalibrated tests. However I will be sure to read those posts anyways, these forums are a wealth of knowledge! Jon/ Marc I was hoping to avoid that awkward moment. However, it worked! Cliff Thanks for he offer. Walgreens was a little awkward, but it got the job done. Thanks guys for the fast response, I would have prefered to test and reply sooner. But with work, family, and a birthday the tank kinda took a back seat.

I had some of those plastic syringes sitting out drying, someone moved them and now they are lost. This stuff happens all the time in my house...so now I need to find a place to buy them. I know petco and the marine Scene dont sell them, so does anyone know where I can look? On another note, my PH is running crazy high! Averaging 8.8 over the past two weeks, maybe my assault on the aptasia with "aptasia X" is the cause. I thought a couple water changes would fix it. Over the past week I have done two 35 gallon changes on a 210gal system. Should I do another in a couple days? I tried dosing alk 25ml a day for three days. Then put a little magnesium supliment in the ATO, 1/2tsp would be added to the tank over about 8 hours this way. Hoping to see if the PH settled a little bit, it didn't... Sadly since my syringes are missing, I cant test for calcium or alk. This week I swapped out my usual instant ocean salt mix for the reef crystals version to see if it helped. Yet still high. My magnesium test kit thankfully is complete so I tested it, and my magnesium is at 1400ppm. So it is a little high, but resonable. I am going to recalibrate my PH sensor on my RKE and pray that helps. If that does not work, I will get a cheap High range PH kit to double check my RKE. I even moved my PH sensor to the DT, in stead of the sumps chamber by my return pump. Something must be off, hopefully I find it before any corals fish/ inverts pay the price...if I am missing something please let me know! Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Great job!!

I hope when its all said and done with my system I can come close to the growth you guys are getting!

I like to be gentle and use a gift card to chip away a little of the rock. I also use an ice cube gently around the foot. If chiping the rock does not get this little guy off entirely, I set the rock over a bucket and let the anemone's tentacles touch the water. Just remember to be GENTLE!

For now, I am just going to wait and leave the center brace as it is. I have some full tank pics that I can post soon. If the stuff I posted for sale goes, maybe I can have more stuff worth adding... Here is a link for the sale thread, LINK

I see no problem here, so when are you going to flood your basement? I wanna scuba!

It sounds like you need to go to a crafts store and buy some sea shells! Be sure to rinse them out before you use them. FWIW, I made the mistake of buying a blue velvet damsel. They say it can only be 2-3", this sucker is 4-5" and a menace. I cant wait for my tank rebuild for him to be GONE! So, best of luck with those anthias!

An update, my father and I decided it would be too much work to "fix" the stand issues. So instead he cut the bottom off, leveled it, fixed some angles and built himself a new welding table. From there he will build my new stand entirely from scratch! So that time table has been pushed back. I am nearly done with the waterchange system. just a little bit left to do! hopefully one or two more trips to Home Depot will cure this disease of manual waterchanges! I remember someone mentioned a fake "in wall" design. That was a great idea, I almost did it. Instead I want to go with a "clean" open design, that still hides my inevitable mess. We are looking into fabrication shops who can bend sheet steel into doors, with air vents and magnets to hold them in place on the new steel stand. As well as hanging my new Acan 600-pa 18B lights from the ceiling. So we are going for the exact opposite! haha, no hard feelings. I like the idea, but being more open will allow for easier maintenance. Not just that, but I wont be spending money on plywood. Instead I can put that towards a small grow out tank inside the stand! maybe 90-120 gallons. It depends on the space we have. If it works out I will get the plumbing and lights ran, then see how much space I have and just build an acrylic tank to fit. With all of this, it will allow the focal point to be the DT. While I can open up the bottom side to view the GT, all while allowing tons of airflow! this has surely grown in planning from a wooden wonder into a metal monster! If anyone has ideas, I love input! You guys have had some great ideas! I have one question, and will put a photo up with dimensions. However my tank is made with 1/2" acrylic, the dimensions are 30"L x 60"W x 21"H. With a 3-4" lip around the outside. And for some reason a massive center brace. Something like 18" across. With this thing in the way, I cant get the lght spread I need for even coral distribution. I wonder if it would be a bad idea to just lop the center brace off, and sand it down when we do the rebuild...Or if I should just suck it up until I can have a new tank made...a very long time!

Oh dear god....upgrade from this? Ummm lets save you time building the tank, FLOOD YOUR BASEMENT! Lmao, that would be a fun tank. Snorkel under some LED lights, steering way clear of the lionfish we know you will put in there!

As with 99% of my experience with this hobby, things have changed. I havent been updating the thread lately. So in short here is the plan for my ENTIRE SYSTEM REBUILD!!! New lights arrive friday, two Acan 600pa-18B lights for my DT. I already have the one 6W skye utility light for my sumps anemone tank. This week I should have my 75 gal RO/DI reservoir and 55 gallon mix tank plumbed to the system for automatic water changes. In a couple weeks I will have my new steel stand rewelded and powder coated. I had someone else build it, we checked it for square corners and they were not square. So we are cutting them apart for storage, until next payday. Eventually I will add another MP40ESW to the tank, I'm loving the one I have. But am just too afraid to put waves in this tank while it is sitting on my old soft wooden stand!

That looks great, I may have to get one as well! Marisa, your tank is looking amazing. My coworkers give me a hard time about my tank size, and ask if I swim in it...but with yours that IS an option! *Just be ware of all the sharp, pointy, and venemous stuff!*

Wow, it looks amazing! I bet you spent more on lighting than I have on my whole system! I hope they work, for you. I am always looking for something I can use on my 160 deep. I really want some LED's. How is this lighting at the bottom of your tank? How deep is the tank?

What no OJ, no coffee? Other than that, it sounds great!

I agree chad, its a great investment. That is what I am setting up for my system now. In fact I just put the 75 gal storage tank (just a standard glass tank), and my 55 gal mix tank under our house the other day. By using float switches and an RKE I won't have to even be there to do a water change!

I have to agree, the most complicated I would go for is a large settlement chamber with power heads that turn the water in a cyclone motion every thirty minutes or so. And maybe a rotating arm to stir the stuff in the middle, like a kalk stirrer. I would have a pump export the waste during the cyclone. I like your first idea, if you go ahead with it I think it would be a fun complicated little challenge. But you know it would become known as the clubs Rube Goldburg machine!

You can use Tapitalk, but I dont care for the layout. I prefer to just go to the lower left of my screen and use the quality selection options. The standard is set at WAMAS2, I use the LoFi setting for slower devices. This also does not require a download which takes away from your phones memory.

That poor soul! I would look into using a power head to stir things up, before asking anyone to go into the settlement chamber. I use a turkey baster to stir up detris in my refugiums. Its not 100% effective, but for what your doing I don't think you need it to be, so an occasional power head blast could do the trick. I think even an occasional backflow would still allow the waste to build up in corners. But it could work. *I love how my phone always mixes up random words with what I really mean to type...*

I have no clue either, most glues need two non non permeable materials to adhere. But another idea came to mind, sandblasting. If you protect what you don't want roughed up you can smooth the lower areas. Keep the look, and maybe add traction. Without using glue. It might take a lot of blasting to get that effect though. It sounds like you have plenty of experience with this material, do you think it would work?

It sounds like you guys are sticking with the idea of cutting this slippery stone. So if traction is your worry, why not glue a similar colored sand onto the high points in a "marble pattern". Or just coat the high points with truck bed liner...just a couple off the wall ideas. No matter what you do its going to be incredible! Its been a while since your last update, and I've been wondering what you guys were up to with that monster!

Agreed! I started with a 55, then 75, now 160. Going larger is so much easier, not that I have ever ran a marine nano! But you do have to move much more water. Everything is just on a bigger scale, and a small oops is really just a small oops. Not an apocalypse! Go slow, and just take your time. Patience in this hobby can be worth more than gold! Good luck on your 10, we all want to see it become something to envy!

Wow, I'm sorry you are in this sitation. I am rethinking my system too. I've wanted to get this gadget and that, but I'm not caring for it properly. So I am drying out some rock(I have far too much!), adding a fully auto-waterchange system, and downsizing coral. For me its not that my system is anywhere near as involved as yours. But more that I need to care for what I have, before I can do anything else! We all have to take a step back and think about what is really important to us. This hobby is so incredibly involved that we all reach our breaking point, or stay too task focused. Sometimes we put to much attention on one aspect of a system, but ignore another. AT some point we all need to get our hands out of the tanks and do something else for a while. Is there anything I can do to help?

Anemones will eat anything they can catch. Sometimes even shrimp. I feed my large one frozen shrimp. I just thaw, split it into two peices, and shell it. They are actually the same size as my clown fish, and sometimes bigger! I'm sorry to hear you may be out all of your new chromis. Sometimes that is the price we pay. One time I "saved" a green mandarin goby from a petco I knew it would starve at since there was no live rock. A power head pushed it into an anemone, and by the next morning it was stiff as a board, smelly , and pinned under a rock. So now whenever I release a new fish it is let loose away from the anemones and power heads. If I have to release a fish near a pump it is always near the output and in a large portion of open water. I may be over careful. But have not had another issue like with that poor mandarin.