AlanM

Lots of people use GMX.com for their outgoing email alerts. GMX recently started requiring SSL, which Apex doesn't support, so it won't work anymore. I can confirm that Verizon FIOS does work on port 587 with outgoing.verizon.net as the server and no SSL even though their help pages don't mention this as an option. You have to authenticate with your MyVerizon username and password, though. Comcast also reportedly works.

Really nice looking. You got some scraping to do.

Thanks, Tom. It's cool to have the Apex going and be able to watch the pH changing because it makes it obvious that there are still things working themselves out in my new tank that are not included in the ammonia-nitrite-nitrate measurements. My pH is cycling up and down with a period that changes without apparent correlation to photo period or temperature. It's really interesting. I'd like to wait for it to start doing something predictable before I start putting much life in there. This is my pH the last few days of running lights from 9 to 2pm each day. It's interesting to see this cycle that doesn't correlate to lights. I did a 10% water change this morning at 10am to start using instant ocean instead of H2Ocean Pro Plus, so today's is kind of messed up.

Could you put both your heaters on one port of the EB8 with a Y splitter like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000234UFG Or put the plug that doesn't fit on one of these to get it to fit? http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002J1KRQ

Right, but I think I'll let it go for a while to see what dies off and what grows. I think my two critters that I don't recognize are small hydroids and flatworms. Nice that I have no livestock except for pods, but apparently already have hydroids and flatworms, heh.

Nitrites are 0ppm, nitrates are only 1-2 so my crop of algae must have used up the stuff generated in the cycle. Can anyone advise what these things are? They are about 1mm from tip to tip. Circular arrangement of 6-8 legs or something. Totally stationary as far as I can see, but they're spreading across the glass. There are also some bullet shaped little guys that creep with the front part of the bullet forward and are about 3mm long. Any idea what those are? Also I learned three new things today. 1) If you're doing a small water change and using a powerhead to move water from your sump to a floor drain, just because you turn the powerhead off, doesn't mean the water stops. It will continue siphoning down the drain until the return pump section of the sump eventually goes dry. Doh. 2) If you're trying to dial in your skimmer so it doesn't gush, and you hook it up to a Davy Jones' Locker and count on the Apex to shut off a gusher that fills up the locker, it doesn't work unless the skimmer outlet is set to AUTO mode. If it's set to ON, the skimmer will happily keep pumping water onto your floor. 3) After putting a water onto the floor because of number 2 above and emptying the locker and setting the outlet to AUTO mode now, if you don't put the sensor back into the locker after emptying it, the same thing will happen and you'll end up with water on the floor again.

+1 to almost all of what holedup82 said, heh. It's more complicated than light reflection and what wavelengths you're supplying with different LED colors. There are also plenty of photosynthetic pigments in the corals that absorb at one wavelength, 450nm blue for instance, and emit reds, yellows, greens, etc. You can see it when someone runs exclusively royal blue, a really narrow band of blue light, but lots of colors show up in the corals. So you definitely don't need red and green in your lightsto see red and green in the corals, and it's also a little hard to say what those colors will actually do to the view of the corals you already have without trying them out. Green has no impact on photosynthesis, red does have an impact, but has a bigger one on algae, apparently, so you have to be careful of it.

Could you just test for phosphates and nitrates and such and see if they are high before making a bunch of changes to your media, feeding, water changes, and photo periods? I guess it's possible for both to be low, though, if your algae is eating it all up.

That sounds good to me. Might try that. I'll probably run around a 6 hour each day. I don't mind getting some algae and diatoms in there at the moment. It apparently is the natural cycle of these things when first setup. Plus it will give the cleanup crew something to eat when I get back from vacation. Nitrites are down to 1ppm even with dosing ammonium chloride up to 2ppm every morning, so I think the end is in site for the cycle. I really didn't think these nitrites were going to go down so quickly and was getting a water change ready because people on other forums reported weeks and weeks at high nitrite, and then overnight they fell. I'm still not planning to put any fish into the tank until end of September, so I'll be at 2 months instead of zygote2k's 3-6 month mark.

Is that a condy anemone?

They did an amazing job with the underwater caves too. The ceilings are covered with NPS corals. Very nice enough attention even to fine details.

I approve of this build and its awesomeness.

Weird. It's actually embedded from ustream.tv or something. Does your work block that domain?

Last time I was at congressional aquarium they had a product that they apparently use on their coral tanks called "Flatworm Solution" by a company called Precision Solutions. They swore by it and all professed to be amazed at how they dosed right into the tank and the worms all fell off. I took two messages from that. 1) Congressional tanks are apparently full of flatworms. 2) Flatworm Solution seemed to work for them.

The sharks were all introduced to the new Blacktip Reef in the past couple of weeks. Blacktip reef cam here: http://aqua.org/explore/baltimore/exhibits-experiences/blacktip-reef Pretty good quality.

Orly? I had no idea it was that short. I do a 10 hour cycle on my planted freshwater tank. At that kind of photo period I would never get to see it with lights on.

Thanks, Richard. Hope I don't disappoint. It's like sticking to a diet, you have to be accountable to a reef club who could demand FTS at any time in order to not get lazy and let the tank descend into a morass of algae coated glass and brown corals. So it turns out that the folks counselling patience, Rob and Tom notable among them, were right. They must have done this before. My nitrites seem to be plummeting the last two days and are now around 5ppm. This is even with dosing 2ppm ammonia each day. Now my 10 hour photo cycle is working at generating brown patches and stringy fuzz for a future cleanup crew to eat. At least I know the diy lights are apparently able to drive photosynthesis. 8)

Redguard it! If you go blue, I think a darker WAMAS-menu-bar blue would look nice rather than the caribbean sea blue that seems to prevail on tank backs. Your internal overflow is black, right? Also, if you paint, I would wipe it down good with ethanol first to make sure any petro-residue from the plastidip is gone or else the paint might not want to wet the surface well.

Shadowbox!! http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1868825

You will need to change your board username.

Hey, thanks for that suggestion. I went and looked them up and it seems like everyone who has them is in love with them.

I will nominate this tank for TOTM!

I'm unreasonably happy at the massive numbers of teensy white specs crawling all over my glass. Looks like it's snowing in my tank if you look closely.

Motion sensing camera and robotic fishnet.

I definitely have copepods of some kind. Lots and lots of little guys on the glass even though I'm still at 30ppm nitrite with no real increase in nitrate so far. It's fun to see the seemingly spontaneous generation of life, heh.