Decadence

Water tanks for RVs work pretty well.

Can't wait to see pictures. Somebody liking one of my DIY projects enough to do one for themselves is about the coolest thing that I have had happen to me in this hobby.

Tank look really good but the CBB looks a little skinny. New or just not eating very well?

You can tell in my tank which corals our tail spot blenny likes to graze on. The polyp extension is not as good as any of the other corals and the growth is stunted. We will get him out when we switch to the 300. If you don't want to get rid of the fish, have you considered setting up another tank on the system for outcasts and new additions?

Thanks Orion. Anybody is welcome to swing by and check it out.

I have tried different elements for the last two years. I have never been able to give numbers to prove that anything was doing something positive, all I could give is anecdotal evidence of corals looking better. The three elements listed I have always gotten positive results from. I have also tried dosing boron and amino acids with no noticeable results. The iron is less for the colors of my corals and more for accelerated chaeto growth, though I have noticed it start to bring out green pigments in corals which never had them before and the existing greens do look darker. Iodine has always shown me a positive reaction in red and pink corals and it makes the flesh look like it is thicker on all of my SPS corals. Potassium takes away the slight browning a the bases of blue corals and intensifies all of the blues. It also makes birdsnest and pocilopora corals look absolutely amazing. I have one line going into the aquarium and one line coming out. The line basically go to a tom's aqualifter which pumps water 24/7 and keeps the chemicals from mixing with each other and solidifying. All of the chemicals are on the input line going to the toms pump so that if a dosing tube wears out and bursts, it would suck air in rather than pushing water out.

I am not a fan of doing large/frequent water changes like most people do. I ran out of some of my dosing fluids a couple months ago and decided not to replenish them, but rather to observe the tank. In that time, I have not done a water change. All of my major elements have been very well tuned in for the last two months. I tested potassium and iodide/iodate and found them both to be low a few days ago. I added back my potassium, iodine and iron dosers two days ago and since then, my alk has dropped 0.3dkh and calcium has dropped by 12ppm. If it were't for my corals looking awesome, I would think that there was a dosing problem but I honestly believe that they are just growing that much faster. I have also noticed the flesh becoming thicker and green and blue coloration becoming more intense. While all of this has the potential to be circumstantial, I figured actually quantifying results with some measurable data may be at least marginally significant.

Anxiously awaiting the release of the midstream….. may be anxiously waiting for a long, long time.

The best thing that you could do in this situation would be to remove the flame angel.

Don't spray silicone on it and put it back on. If you want to reintroduce silicone as a plasticizer into the rubber to soften it, put the gasket into a plastic bag with spray silicone and seal it in there for a few days - clean it well when you take it back out before installing it. I don't believe that I have ever had to reseal a bulkhead after being in the hobby since 2003. How are you tightening it?

That is an extremely cool montipora but $500 can go a long way. There are some TERRIFIC large colonies that show up in diver's den on live aquaria.

The gaskets last a very long time. An old gasket can lose its plasticizers and become hard, making it not able to seal as well. You can restore it by putting it in a small plastic bag with spray silicone for a few days - clean it well afterwards. If the gasket still feels alright, there is no reason that you could not reuse it after cleaning the glass. Make sure that the gasket is not on the side of the threads, rather the side of the flange. If you put the gasket on the nut/therad side, water will eventually leak past the gasket via the threads.

Why not just lay tint on the glass and then shatter it with a center punch and pull away the broken glass? I can't imagine any other way that you would get the glass out. Once the broken glass is out, the remainder and glue can be scraped. The tint will hold the bulk of it together so it does not fall in to the display tank glass and scratch it.

Absolutely. The reflector is just a regular screw-in shop light fixture from Lowes. They are in the isle with the extension cords. There are four small holes around the edge and I stuck screws through them. I tightened each of the screws into a small piece of RODI tubing to get it to bite and put small washers on each side so that the light could sit directly on top of the bucket. You best bet is going to be congressional in Rockville but I would call and ask first.

What are you cleaning it with? If you clean it with rubbing alcohol and a paper towel and then don't touch the surface, it should stay there for a very, very long time.

I'm glad this thread has tossed around so many ideas. Another thread was discussing blackworm cultures and it has me thinking of building an all-in-one piece of furniture with RO and saltwater reservoirs, set for full automation of water changes in both the reef tank and in a blackworm culture. It actually seams like it would be a quite easy task to accomplish. I may have to take to CAD with this and give you guys an idea of what I want to do.

Thanks guys. The light cycle is 24/7. You can run in opposite your tank but you will literally cut your growth in half with chaeto.

I'm not aware of one. Congressional very well may carry them as they have a decent stock of plumbing odds and ends. Lol

Paul, when they die, it's because the bag has 1/2 of the worms already dead. I'll take out as many of the dead ones as I can but the ammonia has already done its damage and they don't last long as the live worms are swollen and brittle. When I get good worms, they never die.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see why there would be any reason that you couldn't start with 10x the black worms so that they would reproduce 10x faster? Live black worms were one of the best foods which I have every fed my tank but I stopped because it was very inconvenient to buy them every week, especially when half of the time they were dead within a day because they were such low quality.

Very welcome.

It's all 1" piping. The fittings on the side are uniseals and the one on the bottom is a bulkhead. Being fed by the overflow, the massive ball of chaeto winds up picking up air bubbles which make it stay towards the top of the bucket. The egg crate material does a pretty good job of keeping the remaining smaller pieces of chaeto from finding the overflow at the bottom because all of it is spinning around but make sure you run a mesh sock after. A felt sock will clog too quickly. It's a chaeto-growing machine but I do believe that the aggressive flow and intense light/correct spectrum make all of the difference. FWIW, I carbon dose and have no detectible nitrate or phosphate and it is still growing like crazy.

I thought I'd share a little DIY project which I built last week. I waited a week before deciding if it was a success or not and it has proven to be just that. It is being fed from the overflow through the side. The bulkhead on the bottom is where the water leaves and water height is maintained through the stand pipe on the outside. The top overflow is for safety in case the first clogs with chaeto. The outputs go in to a mesh bag to keep chaeto from clogging my skimmer pump. So far, I have gone from a baseball-sized ball of chaeto to almost enough to fill the entire bucket in less than a week. I already pruned it and gave some away today. The light that I am using is a 40w 2700K CFL from Lowes and there is a powerhead in the bucket in addition to the 90 degree elbow keeping the water spinning very quickly. Enjoy!

This is pretty sweet. Do you think that you would be able to automate this process with automatic water changes and an auto feeder so that all you have to do is harvest? Do you think that they grow any faster at room temperature or colder? I have a small chiller and have been debating growing live black worms again but would like it to be relatively maintenance-free.