AlanM

BRK is not able to be at the meeting in person, but they did donate three $75 livestock Gift Certificates for the raffle! New arrivals are usually on their Facebook page and they always have a huge selection. Thanks for the donation Johnny!

CoralEverAfter.org (ReefdUp) is donating a Space Invader Pectinia coral for the Reef Bingo game. Photo attached below. Also donating acropora frag for the raffle.

Silverbook Soap is donating two soap packs worth $15 each: - One Ocean-themed pack (see photo above) - "Ocean Lovers Need Coral Soap" - "Only Clown-ing Around" - "We Need a Vacation" - One holiday-themed pack (not photographed) - "A Busy Year Needs Winter Solace" - "Pranksters Need Fruit Cake" Soap - "Family Needs Pumpkin Pie" Soap - "Stockings Need Peppermint Soap"

Nikki will be running the "Reef Bingo" game again at this meeting. Everyone will get a bingo card when they arrive and should go around and ask other WAMAS members questions to try to fill out a row on their card. The first person to fill a row will win a prize (probably coral frags). Nikki will also be there selling coral frags with her daughter who will also have some awesome reef-themed homemade soap available.

In addition to the raffle prizes from sponsors WAMAS will be auctioning off a new VorTech MP40wqd powerhead! Retail value on the powerhead is $429, so definitely a nice prize.

Justin from Avast Marine Works is donating a Plank Automatic Feeder for the raffle! It's a $209 value and some lucky WAMAS member will go home with it. Justin is coming to the meeting in person to demonstrate the operation of The Plank and will have some extra units for sale as well as the one you can win in the raffle. It's a really inventive way to keep the fish browsing for small food all day. The Plank keeps the freeze dried food nice and dry while dosing out tiny amounts into the feeding tube throughout the day. The small pump in the tube circulates water to hydrate it and lets it randomly head out the bottom to be consumed. Nothing down the overflow and no huge food dump which the fish will miss half of which ultimately ends up in the substrate. Thanks Justin for coming and for the donation!

New Raffle Item: From Marco at ERC: Four chances to win $25 gift certificates on fish! If you've been seeing his posts lately like this one: or this one: You know it's one of the easiest ways to get very healthy fish with hands-on service and follow-up. Thanks ERC!

I see a tube worm right there.

Reed Mariculture has once again generously donated some gift certificates for our raffle at the July meeting. They are the makers of the Reef Nutrition products. From personal experience, if you have a fish that's a picky eater it's practically guaranteed that they'll like Arcti-Pods. Alexie over at Reed has generously provided... One gift card valued at $100 (plus an additional $40 to cover shipping costs) AND Two more gift cards valued at $50 (plus an additional $40 each to cover shipping). These are great products that, once you've tried them, you're bound to love. Our most sincere thanks to Nancy and Reed Mariculture for their generous support!

If a member or sponsor wants to sell on-site at the meeting please send me a PM @AlanM to help us coordinate. We also plan to have a table designated at the meeting as a "Meet up spot" for advance sales to meet each other and exchange items.

Getting some more info on the summer meeting. I will start updating this post with more info about the talk and about Sanjay as well as raffle items that have started coming in.

Really interesting. I assume that you just drilled out the holes in the top of your ReefOctopus (I think?) skimmer air intake in order to run it into that container? I'll be interested in a followup of how long that media lasts.

The summer meeting date has shifted back out to July 22, 2023.

Small update. Since it connected to Fusion and was happily on the network I knew it must be something odd with not allowing local IP connections. I checked the network settings and saw that somehow the port number for running the local Apex interface was set for port 0. I set it to port 80 and it works fine. No idea why the thing was set to that. I also got the pH probe working. I had to do a manual configuration because the automatic complained about the range it was reading. I bet those calibrated offsets were vastly off as well and were zeroed out somehow. I had some long-expired 7 and 10 pH solution which should at least get the probe working since I don't really care about the exact number, just the swings. ORP is a bit harder to try to calibrate since you're not supposed to do it yourself. I'll see if I can source some solution or see if Apex phone tech support can help at all on Monday.

I got the new Pro, plugged it in, and followed the forum instructions for doing a restore of the old configuration which was not exactly seamless. I eventually got everything manually reconfigured, but there are still some hiccups. It doesn't seem to be reading my ORP and pH probes. It just always gives max/min values from what I can tell. It also doesn't give me access on the local IP address. I'm continuing the ticket with support on the issues.

Don't worry, we can satisfy that itch by sending 1000 bags and some large coral colonies to you in October so you can still do fragfest and overnight it all back to us. 8)

It seems logical to me that since the low pH is due to acidification of the water from an increase of CO2 then if the folks that worry about the effect ocean acidification on coral growth are correct it would have some effect on your coral growth. Mine doesn't have that large of a swing, but I do see the low points and high points at the same times you do.

Yep, they are trying again to ship a Pro. It will be USPS priority mail, so should get it by the end of the week. I'll just put the Apex Jr and the broken Apex Pro in the same box for RMA return. The Apex still seems to be working, and I can see the data in real time, just can't see anything in the past. It's "not the painless replacement experience they strive for" hah.

RMA replacement arrived finally. It's an Apex Jr they sent, not an Apex Pro despite the invoice in the box saying Apex Pro. Looks like it will be a while longer.

I did make a backup and will try to restore it when I get the new one in.

They didn't say, but I gave them access to my fusion account and they came back with an RMA replacement of the head unit. I think jhOU called it with the bad SD card. If it wasn't in warranty I would have cracked it open myself to try to replace it.

It's an RMA return. They are cross shipping one with deposit refunded when they get mine returned.

Would love that, honestly, but no. Once I run this tank successfully for a few years lets see how an upgrade looks. Already it's drawing more interest from the family because of the location. They like watching what's going on in the tank during dinners since it's in our dining room. I feed the fish the same time as we eat. If everyone in the house is emotionally invested in the tank, then it's a bit easier to justify financial investments as well. 8)

Yes, I've rebooted and manually power cycled it. I have a tech support case open. I thought maybe it was a fusion outage on the server, but it doesn't sound like it. SD card issue is interesting.

Here's what I see. The numbers are correct. It's connected to Fusion. It's doing the correct dosing and keeping temp steady. I can control outlets on it, but it doesn't seem to be uploading data to the Fusion graphs since about 4pm yesterday.