AlanM

Brand new hitchhiker today almost 2 months into the rocks. I found a small black urchin just hanging out on the rocks. So I've had some issues with the aquacultured rock which was fairly dense and kind of full of gorilla crabs (2 so far in just 30 pounds total of rock) and mantis shrimp (2 so far), but it is honestly really fun to see new stuff popping up. Snails I didn't add, porcelain crabs, bristleworms, limpets, macroalgae (seems like feather caluerpa) in both fuge and in main tank, and now a small black urchin.

Bring them in to work if you want. I got no fish until probably end of april so no ich or velvet. Got some aiptasia, cyano, and hair algae, though.

The main issues I had with tiger tails was that they would move the sand through their guts in large quantity and leave piles where it came out and they split fairly often I my tank. I ended up with 4 of them.

Too funny. Sounds like you need to get some crabs into a fuge or something. They are troublemakers.

I hope lots of people use it right away on release in April so we hear lots of experiences good or bad. Live Aquaria is owned by Petco now, right? We have known the folks there for a long time, and it seems like if they put out something with their name on it we should be able to trust it, assuming those people are still in charge.

I thought the microalgal chloroplast thing was a different product? I agree the two of them together there are confusing and don't seem related.

https://www.sundew.bio/products In April, Live Aquaria is going to start selling this as "Proto Pro" that asserts reef safe ich treatment in a full reef. I'm interested in seeing early reviews. I would likely not use it in a full reef, but if it worked well in QT that would already be great. Copper is pretty harsh and prazi doesn't last long enough to achieve consistent treatment concentrations from what I've read.

I admire you for sticking to it through the various issues. Such a large tank is a big beast to steer once it gets off track. So many moving pieces. Fingers crossed that the recent additions to the controllers and setup will get it working well. Reading back through the thread, on the heater power front, I ended up making a little box with a solid state relay that uses 120V AC on both the control side and the output side. The control side was wired to a plug that went to the Apex outlet which would switch the SSR on and off. That way I could have the actual heaters on a dedicated 20A circuit without drawing all of that power through the Apex power bar.

Hit me up if you want to buy a really nice tray for them. 8)

Hey, are you still local?

Yeah, 5.11 1D23 is what I was running. It was released in January and I bought it in February and updated when I got it.

Nice, worked for me too. Thanks.

Great! Did you do a soft reboot from Fusion or a power cycle?

I'm new to the new Apex platform, having done mostly reef angel in the past. My Fusion graphs are not updating since the time change last night. The Apex successfully changed time but all graphs are stuck. The realtime numerical display works fine. Any ideas from some of our Apex gurus for how to get them to update?

I noticed that my Alk was starting to decrease quickly between water changes, so I added a Neptune Dos which I'm now trying to dial in. Testing Alk each morning to see where it's at and adjusting the dosing schedule. I caught two more small white and pink gorilla crabs. They're cute, but not good up in the display tank, so they went down into the sump. They were pretty easy to catch but there was a bit of adrenaline each time. I speared some LRS with a skewer and stuck it down on the sand and would swoop in to grab their body with the long tweezers to lift them out without killing them. As soon as I put the food in there every hermit crab started running for it, so most of the activity was trying to keep hermit crabs away. The gorilla crabs can fight it out with the mantis in the sump. I assume he's still doing well. I drop some LRS in there for him every few days. I have a huge crop of feather caluerpa growing in the sump now so it's hard to see. I don't hear him snapping as much, so I hope he's just chilled out a bit rather than deceased.

My current crew is from ReefEscape too.

Josh was the most recent severe case. Here was the post where his wife jumped on to say what happened. SteveOutlaw also jumped in to that thread. There are references there too for the time Origami got hit by it.

Either of the places you mention would be good. I'd check to see that they don't have fish in their invert system. It could happen, but I don't QT them. I've never gotten fish diseases from buying inverts, fingers crossed, but as Lynn demonstrates, it can happen. Online I usually order from Reefcleaners.org and their pre-made packages ship priority mail on Mondays for free. Saltwateraquarium.com who is also a WAMAS sponsor has started selling cleanup too and they assert that it's a fishless system.

Yep. I took it down for now, but the screws are still in there for when I need to start dosing.

I am terrible at taking photos of the tank. This is with an orange filter on the phone to try to prevent it from looking super blue. I intentionally made just a bunch of rocks along the bottom so that the corals can grow up into the water volume. It all looks miniature for now, heh.

Got the meeting frags all mounted. It looks like doodoo at the moment but I'll post some pics tomorrow. I'm psyched to start getting coral permanent homes. I put the torches on one end and hammers on the other end. Anemone and sps in the middle mostly.

Yep, I think Richard is still an advisor, but he sold the business during COVID, by the way. Someone else is running it now. They're pretty good to communicate with and the airport pickup process is much easier than I had pictured, but it's expensive. If it's going to the airport for same day arrival it ends up being around $120 per shipment, so larger shipments are better. It's a flat rate up to around 100 pounds.

If you want diversity (and a mantis) for your refugium you could just get this: https://tbsaltwater.com/product/mantis-box-florida-mantis-shrimp-with-sand-rock-snacks/ It ships overnight to your house so you don't have to go to BWI to get it.

Yep. I'll add some fish in April after spring break. We are heading out of town and I don't want to make any large changes until we get back and will have a few months at home.