AlanM

I have a bio-pellet reactor hooked up to my shiny new reef tank with no pellets in it. Just running empty now so I can get the tubing and wiring sorted out. I've got the pellets that i may put in there at some point to see how they move around. But I have heard all about vodka dosing as being used for the same thing as bio pellets and thought it was interesting that putting booze into the tank can make the bacteria grow and make it all cloudy when I'd always thought alcohol kills bugs. So since I don't have life in the tank except for bacteria anyway, I figured what the heck and tossed in a capful of Everclear to see what would happen. We don't mess around with vodka in our house. You're paying extra for the water that's used to cut what started out as Everclear! It was fun to see over the next 24 hours it got cloudy as heck, then got all clear now. I don't know if it did anything good except for leaving slime all over, but it was fun to watch.

You know the footprint of the tank. I figured my actual flow by flipping on the pump and starting the stopwatch when the water started coming out. Then I timed for a minute and measured the height increase in the tank. From that you calculate the cubic inches per minute, then convert to gallons, and multiply to 60.

I swear I see a copepod or something on the glass too! I can't believe that anything could be alive in there with 30-80ppm nitrite (accurate to my ability to distinguish the color purple from the color "slightly-less-purple"). Here are the dark brown spots on the tops of the rocks where it looks like burnt marshmallow. I know it's old hat to everyone, but I'm kind of excited about my tank that it looks like something is happening that's supposed to happen (diatoms).

No guarantees it wont fry anything, but it does seem to work fine to hook it directly up to the two dimmer pins from the apex. I never got the opamp to work right. Some d120s only have the pot on the little board, and nothing else. I dont have one of those, so iI have no idea how those would work. Wiring is left to the reader for now. 8)

Signs of life! Algae at least, heh. Darkish brown spots growing on formerly pure white rocks and fuzz on the rest. I assume it is the initial diatom bloom. Nitrites still too high for animal life, but I assume it can support algae. Edit: I am taking Rob's advice about running a normal photo period, which I assume is driving some of the algae?

Do folks still like anthelia or sympodium or cloves or gsp along the back glass or is that passe now like a big rock wall is?

It's amazing how quiet it gets when it's dialed in. Shocking that it's blowing that much water and you can't hear a drop of it.

You can buy Sweep 90's in at least 1.5" PVC. I used some of those with short 4" pieces of 1.5" spaflex with a coupler on each end to give the pipes a little bit of wiggle room so I didn't have to get it exactly lined up.

Plumbing looks great. Youre going to need to trim the tails of those pipes to just under the water level in that chamber for those beananimal drains, but you prob know that. Edit: also, are the baffles set a little high to leave too little room for back siphoning from the returns when you shut the pump off?

Its not something that is wise to ask for. You might be forced to develop it.

One of these is in your future after ditching the ugly black teeth on top and adding clear PVC drain and return. http://www.adana.co.jp/en/products/na_tank/cube_garden_overflow/

Hah. Thanks, Isaac, smallreef, monkiboy, and Boomer. We'll see. Right now the place it's going has 80 ppm nitrites. 8) I recognize the feelings I'm feeling of wanting to do something but knowing all I can really do is wait. It's not as intense, but it's similar to the first 4 days in the hospital with baby number 1 when his weight drops each day, and we're waiting for that first real poop and pee and for the weight to stop dropping so we can take him home.

That light looks really nice. Dave does great work. I assume the single ones between the square grids are moonlights? The square grid reminds me of the Pacific Sun Hyperion lights. I think Dave offers frosted acrylic or something like the Pacific Sun ones. Did you get that option or are you going to leave them clear?

Those are really nice looking, and it seems like they will look great in your open water tank. Did they go right in the tank or into quarantine?

I'm back with more questions. That took a lot of time to set up. 8) I'm running the skimmer at the moment and just letting it drain into the sump because it's overflowing. I have been running it for about a week with an MJ600 attached to the input with about a 1" piece of tubing, so it sits under the skimmer. The MJ600 should be around 160GPH. I have the exit ball valve wide open as far as I can tell, but it's doing this: What should I do to try to get it to calm down or should I just let it run for a while to keep breaking in? I can reduce the flow further with a valve and tee if you think 160 is too much? You say about 100 was needed for the skimmer above. Is that the issue?

Ok. Will try. 8)

I was getting a little too much "disco" from the LED's I built, so I took off the clear acrylic sheet and stuck some translucent contact paper to it. I used the stuff described here: http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/296282-great-diffusion-material-tested-only-5-light-loss-through-water/ It seems to have worked great. I still get shimmer, but the colors blend really well. I'm really happy with how it looks. It's hard to get a picture of because the LED's even on 10% blow out the camera's sensor. If anyone else has an LED build with too much disco or wants to try it on their D120 I have lots of extra you can have. It peels right off, so it's possible to try and remove if you don't like it. Also, here's the new rock arrangement Richard helped me with. He put my large flat ledge rock on the right side of the tank so the flat part is actually flat and made some shadow under it for new corals.

When my tank is set up for 30 years I'll feel the exact same way. 8)

So I'm still doing test in defiance of everyone's advice. Partially it was to learn how to use the tests well, partially because I enjoy it and have little else to do with the tank at the moment. My ammonia is still around 0 even though I added a few ammonia chloride drops last night to get up to .5 ppm. So I think those bacteria are working now. My nitrites, however, are sky high. So high that I had to do a 10:1 dilution to measure them on the scale, and I got around 70ppm. I measured nitrates with the Red Sea Pro test using their "high scale" range which calls for a 15:1 dilution and got 12ppm. So if the test isn't getting thrown off by the sky high nitrite level, then some nitrite is getting converted. I'm wondering if nitrite at 70ppm is too high for the next phase of the cycle to work. Online folks have said that with really high nitrite levels it's just too high for the little guys to start reproducing and the cycle can get "stuck" until you bring them down. Dr Tim wants both ammonia and nitrite to stay lower than 5ppm for his goop to work right. Should I try to lower nitrite with a really big water change or just leave it alone?

That looks great, but Isaac's fiancee looks a little frumpy.

Good so far. I didn't buy anything. Just really want to. I had him look at it and point at stuff and hold one big wet drippy rock while I moved some others around. We made some nice shade for new corals and some nice large flat parts for lots of little glowing things.

Ok. I do have ammonium chloride drops. Now that ammonia went to zero you think I should keep it up a bit and keep generating nitrites until the nitrites go to zero? Seems like they will drop faster if they arent being created.

Big thanks to Richard from ERC for coming out today to look at the rock arrangement and make some great changes (and add more nice room for his product, heh). Cant wait to fill it up with glowing little polyps.

Well, since I cant stop myself from testing, ammonia is now nearly nonexistent at about .3ppm just since last night. Posting here seems to have fixed that part. Nitrites high at over 40 and so are nitrates, but can only decrease without intervention if there is no ammonia feeding them. Im going to wait for them to go down over the next few days, do a water change, and let it ride for a while.

Hmm. Not totally sure what word that was that got censored, but i dontthink it was a bad one.