AlanM

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.

There are still a few crabs in the display of unknown makeup. I see one under a rock sometimes. It's small and cute (but hairy and skittish), but I assume it won't stay that way. I also saw what I'm pretty sure is a 1 inch long mantis shrimp molt in the display tank as well. If there's a tiny mantis in the display I'm impressed that it's a really good and quiet hider. The sump mantis is still kicking and doing well, seemingly. I'll try to get a natural light picture of it at some point. I put a chunk of Rod's food down there and saw him grab it and drag it away. I'm running the red/blue LED fuge light on a reverse photo cycle and the macro algae that is in there seems to be doing pretty well on it. It looks like mostly feather caluerpa and one other plant with flat and round leaves. I'm having an issue with red cyano on the sand, rocks, walls, and frag rack. It's interesting how despite getting completely live rock I'm still seeing a bit of "new tank" type effects. The nitrogen cycle is in full swing, I assume, and I measure nearly 0 phosphate and nitrate, but there are just so many other bacterial cycles that work themselves out when the livestock, rocks, and sand are suddenly exposed to a new environment. I assume these rocks and sand are getting way more light than they had been getting on the bottom of Tampa Bay. Also the nutrients that they are getting as I put small amounts of food and reef roids in there are totally different. I plan to wait until mid-April before putting in fish. I'll probably only put in a couple. Here's a current FTS. Still some rock arranging to do and then some mounting of corals.

Today on accident I noticed some kind of tiny decorator crab. It's covered with little sand and shell particles. I have no idea what it is or if it's a predator but it's cool. It's only about one centimeter across.

I'll look over that site. It's pretty loud in there, so very active. For the moment it probably has a bunch to do down there in the sump, so I'll try to keep it happy in there until I can catch it for Isaac. The only hazard will be the venturi intake of the skimmer which is relatively unprotected, but if it stays away from that it should be fine.

Great. I will see if I can isolate it in some way. It's pretty fast and goes into any little hole. Otherwise you might need to take some big rocks with it, heh.

I think I got lucky with the "premium" rock shipment which is the second of the two shipments, in a way. I honestly didn't really like the look of the "premium" rock. I think it had been underwater for a longer amount of time. It did have a bit more sponges and some kind of coral polyps that look like of like small duncans on it, plus some random stringy macro algae, but it was also kind of covered with silt and very dense like bricks. So I didn't want to put it up in the main display and I put it in the sump. A few posts above I'd made a kind of refugium containment system to just basically hold any rocks and macro I didn't want up in the tank, so I put almost all of it down in the fuge box. Well, I'd been hearing some snapping noises and I had assumed I had a pistol shrimp that had hitchhiked in, but I noticed that it was coming from the sump tonight and went to investigate. Turns out I have a mantis shrimp down in the sump among the rock I put in there. So the lucky part is that I put it underneath because it would have been much more challenging to get to it if it was up top. I'm satisfied to let it live down there for a while, but to be honest I will probably want to get rid of it at some point and it will do better somewhere else, so if someone is interested in one, let me know. It's about 2 inches long right now and looks cool when it runs around. It's hard for me to tell the color because I have red/blue LED fuge lights down there so everything looks odd. It also doesn't stick around for me to get a good look at it. Given the noise, I assume it's a hammer type rather than a piercer type.

Just wanted to say thanks to Reef Nerd, BRK, and Aquahaus for bringing setups to the meeting and to the other members selling frags as well. We consistently have a really healthy and huge pile of coral to choose from at the meeting. I know it's a pain sometimes to bring it all and set it all up, but it's great to look through even when I end up buying too much. I think I still have some room for the next meeting.

Ah, so the holes in the bubble plate on top of the box are not all the way around? That's good to know. I guess it was firing water up and into the cup.

are you sure that the "MAX" label on the skimmer output valve pipe is marked correctly? What happens if you try other positions of that adjustment? Looks to me like the skimmer is working great and making piles of foam, it just isn't letting you set the water level low enough.

Yes, and I saw that @thakki had a bunch of SPS corals that I'd had in my tank before, so I'm getting those too. I'll eventually get some torches/hammers in there, if only so that I can see what the current is doing. 8)

First coral in the tank! Guess it's not going to be nems and LPS only. My favorite birdsnest: ponape. I've always thought this one with it's pointy tips and right angle branches looks like more like an alien organism than most corals. Thanks, @flooddc