Decadence

I think that it would be naive to discuss this sort of natural phenomenon without taking into consideration that our tanks do not exist in nature. We are lucky enough to be able to create absolutely ideal conditions for algae to grow remotely from our display tanks. We are also luck enough to have protein skimmers at our expense which quite efficiently remove any hydrophilic organic compounds as well as other means to control chemicals which may cause our corals to exhibit stunted growth. I do definitely believe that algae is capable of repelling SPS specifically, enough to prevent encrusting over algae in a battle for space. At the same time, I believe that a healthy, well-maintained tank will prevail. Not long ago, I had some base recession due to an error which I made in my dosing. After correcting it, algae had grown on the base of a few of the corals and the corals have now encrusted outward around the algae and are slowly encompassing it without touching it. Ultimately, I believe that the existence of algae remotely located and controlled in the system will always be beneficial because it helps to maintain low inorganic nutrient levels which are known to inhibit calcification.

That is exactly what I was looking to do! I was thinning of just getting a pair of stackable master flex heads and running them off of a simple wall timer/pump or something rather than running my RKE cables over to control two different motors. Running two at the same time should negate the problems with the ATO level. Come to think of it, I could run three lines and use one to top off my RODI reservoir and run a single reservoir which gets refilled every day and only needs minor adjustments by hand (less room for error). If I tuned my auto water changes for the same volume of my top-off/kalk usage, I would be set to run all three off of one motor. I could run just the small 2(ish) gallon reservoir and get a new kalk reactor to stick at the bottom of my dosing shelf.

They regularly surface on live aquaria in the diver's den. It is a deep water fish so it fetches around a $700 price tag.

Which fish are you asking about?

Thanks for clearing that up. You mention evaporation of tank water. What is the significance if both pumps run at the same time or if I use two heads off of one motor. I assume that evaporation would only factor in if I ran a single length of RODI tubing and pumped both directions through it one at a time. Is this negligible? Could I just turn off my ATO until the cycle is complete? That looks like an awesome system…. but for that price, I could have 100 large cheese pizzas from Little Caesars! That's the kind of setup I was thinking of. Have you had any problems with it? have you found it to be worth it?

I'm looking to add a system to automatically do water changes. The problem that I am faced with is that my whole system is confined to a single wall. I have other real-estate up for grabs in the room but there is a doorway on each side of the system. My RODI is on the other side of the room in a closet at one corner. To get to this area without making it too ugly, I would have to cross over the door frame with my hoses tucked against the trim and then back down to the moulding at the floor. Going through the ceiling in this situation is not an option for me due to the way that everything is configured, it would require drywall work which I don't wish to do. Near the RODI closet, I have a space where I could easily keep a free-standing 50+ gallon drum for new saltwater. I also have a drain into the home's plumbing. My questions: How far can I expect to reasonably run 1/4" RODI tubing before the restriction start to cause problems with a peristaltic pump? I know that head heigh makes no difference but back-pressure could wear out the tubing or the motor faster. Would I be better off using some master flex heads and rigging them to a reliable low-RPM, high-torque motor? Will minuscule difference in head height cause slight differences in water transfer when using two of the same pump due to a slight difference in load? Would I be better off using a single motor with dual heads? Will my salt water need to be circulated 24/7, occasionally, once a day, etc.. if it is sitting in a semi-sealed container for a month? I'm not worried about keeping it aerated as the water changes will be small. I'm more worried about bacteria build-up. Thanks guys

I agree it is. My whole system is a little cooky. My entire goal was to make the tank as easy to maintain as possible as we had a child on the way. right months after completion, the tank doesn't show signs of any neglect and neither does the baby! I appreciate the kind words. Thanks, it was nice having somebody over to share with because we don't get out much anymore with the baby. Thanks. If I had to remove one of the three methods it would be the dosers. While they are the easiest to adjust (which is why they dose the least and are only responsible for fine tuning), they also don't have any other advantages. The calcium reactor and kalk combo accent each other extremely well, dosing pumps are petty much just the icing on the cake because they add on-the-fly changes with ease. Thank you, next time we are going for that $200.

My all-time favorite fish is the Candy basslet… One day I will get a pair of them and make a smaller deepwater SPS tank. For the every-day hobby fish, it is rather expensive.. But at 1/5th the price of a conspicuous angel, they are on the cheaper end of what a dream fish could be.

A long time ago, I ran only kalk in my ATO. My skimmer overflowed (now has automatic shut-off) and poured water on the floor and 4 gallons of fully saturated kalkwasser turned my tank completely white. It took months to recover from that event. After that, I put a separate pump on a timer to do just kalk and the remaining small amount of top off ran through the JBJ head alone. After a while, I didn't have enough top-off for kalk alone and so I got dosing pumps. One day, my calcium doser jammed and after a few weeks, my calcium plummeted down to 320 and I lost a few corals. I have learned to not trust any piece of equipment in my tank and have layered multiple safeties as a result which is my reasoning for adding the calcium reactor to the mix. If any one of my dosing method fails, I will gradually notice that something is wrong and the corals have time to adapt. Only using one method with the amount I dose in comparison to the water volume, a simple mistake could nuke the tank. Having all three also allows me to play on the advantages of each system and mitigate the disadvantages. For example, calcium reactors drop PH and kalk raises it. Calcium reactors introduce phosphate and kalk binds and precipitates it. Calcium reactors and kalk can be hard to make small adjustments with so they can stay continuous and the dosing pumps can adjust for demand or catch-up. Dosing pumps can create a chloride imbalance over time so running the bulk of the duty off of the other methods allows you to minimize the chloride build-up while still taking advantage of the easy fine tuning. Calcium reactors and kalk don't have an accurate way to adjust magnesium levels but my dosers do it just fine…. The three are a match made in heaven.

Thank you. This is actually the second time that I got the $25 prize from BRS.. I'm shooting for that $200! So close. Thank you! Thanks He is still in there munching on my caps. We have a 300dd upgrade in the works and when the current display comes apart, he will be out. I have not yet decided if he will be banished to the cryptic zone or if we will try to find him a new home. Killing him is not an option for me. Thank you. The big acro is look is exactly what I was going for. By any chance, do you live on Ridingstable road? You're welcome to come check it out. Thank you Lol, plenty to go around Haywood! I dose according to Randy's 2-part recipe using soda ash and calcium chloride from Leslie's Pool Supply in Rockville. My magnesium dosing is five cups of magnesium chloride to three cups of magnesium sulfate per gallon, both from BRS. My kalk is also BRS and my calcium reactor media is ARM. With dosing pumps alone, my tank consumed 123ml of calcium and 127ml of alk daily. I currently dose very little form my dosing pumps, on roughly 20ml each, I can't remember the exact number. I use them for fine-tuning and the additional safety factor in case any one other system fails. My kalk is fully saturated and doses from a Tom's aqualifter for 30 seconds every 30 minutes during the day and for one whole minute every 30 minutes at night. My calcium reactor runs at a PH of 7 and drops 1.25 drips per second 24/7. Thank you. I honestly don't believe that maintaining this system would have been possible in the old configuration with the baby. I am very happy that I completed the build-out (sans doors) before Nikola came. It's finally about that time to finish everything else up and upgrade.

Thanks Haywood. You should come by and check out the current configuration sometime.

A top-down

Hello, I don't make to many posts about my tank so I thought it was time to make a new thread. I have had this system running in its current configuration for almost a year. The main display has been up for roughly two years and a lot of my colonies are over three years old as they started as small frags in my old 20 long. The whole system: Display tank: I'm in the middle of building out a new display tank stand and expanding on my vast arsenal of filtration equipment. For now, I am running a standard reef-ready AGA 90. I have converted the return inside the overflow box into a second overflow and cut away some of the weir to allow for much great flow. The return now comes over the back and T's off to 3/4" lock line from inside the overflow box. One overflow feeds a 5 gallon bucket outfitted to grow chaeto at an accelerate rate utilizing strong light and extreme flow. There are safeties in place in the form of block-offs and an additional overflow in the bucket to keep it from clogging with chaeto. The tub which the two overflows ultimately flow into holds my heaters and has a 2" bulkhead in it which runs over to the other stand and the rest of the filtration system. The display is filled with SPS colonies, most of which have been grown out from frags but some were purchased as small colonies. There are a few small patches of random zoanthids. I keep a very heavy stock of fish, some of which would be considered too large for this tank but I bought them after buying my next upgrade, a 300dd and I already have an 11ft tank which will be the next upgrade so that are good. I keep the display very well fed and aggression is near nonexistent. Over the display, I run AI hydra52s tilted backwards from the front and AI sols angled inward. I believe that this helps give much better light spread and reduced shadowing and is the sole reason for the great growth that I get with LEDs. For flow, there are three vortech MP10s and two MP40s producing a very strong and very random current throughout the tank. Detritus does not accumulate to any appreciable amount anywhere in the system as it all finds the skimmer. Second display: This tank is a Mr. Aqua 12g boockshelf tank. It holds all of the girlfriend's LPS, some softies and a few SPS frags which have broken off bigger colonies. My yellow long nose butterfly was banished to this tank as he developed a taste for a 5" leishman's tabling acro which fell victim to a dosing issue and was losing flesh. He will be in the 300 soon. There are also two blennies in this tank and they keep it pretty clean. There is a powerhead which pushes water behind all of the corals in this tank. Filtration cabinet: The 2" crossover pipe from the first sump feeds the skimmer in this sump. I built this sump with ease of maintenance in mind. I wanted all of my equipment to be accessible in the order in which it would be most frequently removed. You can see that each piece of equipment plugs into a gray PVC outlet. Each of these outlets run to places on the RKE, making the components easy to be removed but still controlled by the remotely located RKE. This was essential as it makes maintenance possible which otherwise would not be. My return pump feeds both displays, my calcium reactor and the tank to the left. This used to be a frag tank but now holds extra live rock and two tangs which are awaiting their new 300 gallon home as I did not want them with the butterfly or the other two tangs in the display. This tank also has a few corals in it which are healing in the lower light of the single AI sol. Dosing cabinet: I built this dosing cabinet in order to keep all of the sensitive equipment away from salt water. This cabinet houses my vast collection of Digital Aquatics modules, all of my dosing pumps, four of the five vortech controllers, the AI director and at the bottom, RODI and Kalk jugs. I dose kalk on a timer with a higher concentration going in at night than during the day. The RODI is used by the top-off. I find that this way, I don't have to worry about a dumb mistake causing a water leak that pours gallons of kalk into the tank. I run dosing pumps, a calcium reactor and kalk all together with split duties because they are all doomed to fail. With the duties split up, one component failing is much less likely to nuke the whole tank. I also find that each has their strengths and weaknesses which the others make up for. My calcium reactor drops my PH and my kalk raises it back up. The dosing pumps are easy to make small changes with.. It's a match made in heaven. Safety factor will always be a huge inspiration after having every possible failure take place in my previous systems. For this reason, I am running most of my major components through battery back-ups and I have a generator on stand by. Hope you guys enjoy it. Please feel free to ask any questions.

Thanks. Did you still want this guy? If not, he can probably go in the cryptic zone of the sump in my 300. I'd rather not keep it but I also refuse to kill it.

Thanks guys.

It has been quite a while since I have posted on WAMAS. We let our membership expire many months back as we were barely on with the baby and all. Baby boy is doing great: The bobbit worm is also doing great… oddly, his existence hasn't bothered me because he hasn't been eating any fish and has done only minimal damage to my corals which are growing at a pace beyond what he can ruin. I am very worried about my gold assessor basslet because his cave is very close to the opening of the bobbin's cave. Fortunately, we are finally in the process of an upgrade. We picked up a marineland 300dd a couple weeks ago. I figured I should post this all in here because it means that the bobbit is finally coming out of the tank and it is all you if you still want it Zygote2k. Most recent shot of the tank:

Chloromines convert to ammonia in the carbon block and good DI resin will remove the ammonia. Justin's filters were all six months old. I have called out water supplier in the past and confirmed that there is chloromines in our water. I gave him some new RODI filters to try out. He definitely has a phosphate problem as the hair algae and cyano are thriving. If it is coming from the source water, new DI resin should solve it. Vinegar can't be the problem because he wasn't dosing it when this started, I told him to do it to help control the nutrients as he was running a lousy skimmer. A lot of his corals are in my tank now and encrusting again and I dose roughly 45ml per day of vinegar.

Baby boy does not have pneumonia but we are not sure what he does have yet. We are back in the hospital. I haven't spent much time at the house but I did snap some PE photos the other day while I was home to feed the tank. On the bobbit front, I saw him poop and it poops my tang's logs to shame. He dropped about 30 nuggets into the flow of the water, each the size of a very swollen grain of rice. I have seen these all over my tank and had no idea where they were coming from.

We haven't had much of an opportunity to do anything with the tank at all this last week because our newborn (dec 31st) has been in the hospital for breathing problems. We are coming home today. The bobbit hasn't caused much damage lately besides for thinning the zoas and finishing off the GSP. I have been going home for an hour every day to feed the fish and do very basic maintenance. Last night, I slept at home and did much larger maintenance which has been put off since our son was born (he was a month early which we were not prepared for). I am going to actively start trying to remove him tonight as we are finally coming home. I'm going to try a 3ft section of PVC with some mysis in one end, capped off. I'll tie fishing line to the other end and if I can catch him entering it and going all of the way in, I will yank it up and cap the other. If I can get him out without killing him, you can have him Zygote, I would much prefer giving him to someone who wishes to keep him alive.

It did for a while but not anymore. They all died off when the tank temperature dropped to around 63 for a day after I unplugged my heaters searching for stray voltage and plugged them back into the wrong port. I don't particularly want to kill it, especially while it is in the tank. This sucker could be 4ft long and cause an ammonia spike if he dies in there. I hadn't thought of using interceptor but prazipro and flatworm exit both came to mind. I have heard accounts of hyposalinity or low temperatures flushing out bristle worms... If I have to tear the rock apart to get to him, a bigger tank is going up as we have slowly been building a ridiculous life-support system to support one.

He has already for too much damage to my SPS. It hasn't been anything outpacing growth but its still enough to be unwelcome. If I didn't watch him chowing down in the rim of the cap, I wouldn't believe if. He didn't just eat the flesh, the cap has the rim broken away all the way around it like someone carefully snipped it off. The same thing happens to the acros, just the tips are snipped off and the axial polyps are gone.

In the pictures, you can see him nibbling on the rim of the Idaho grape. The damage on that corals has been constant on the rim and I saw it in action last night. I have also been having the axial polyps dug out in acros constantly. I would wake up and find 5-15 branches seam like the last 1/16" of the tips were snipped by bone cutters. I watched him do this last night to 10 branches of my 6" ice blue tenius colony. He also snipped three tips from my purple/green stag last night but I didn't witness it, just woke up to the damage. He has been eating acro polyps, monti caps, zoas (not palys though) and GSP. I'm pretty sure that he is a bobbit because he has tiny legs all up his body rather than the fuzz.

Munching the rim off of the Idaho grape cap: Tangled up in our 14" wide raspberry stag: I caught him changing directions. He is over 2ft long.

This worm has been a pain. He is a bobbit for sure and has been terrorizing our SPS tank for a long time in the shadows. We have had peppermint shrimp getting ripped in half, emerald crabs with only a few remaining limbs, zoas seam to disappear at random, acro colonies have their tips dug out to get out the axial coralites. I caught him last night munching on the little remaining GSP in the tank and he "tail" was still in his burrow and he was stretched out around 18"-24". He could be longer. He is over 1/2" thick. Our poor display might have to come apart to get him out... so many rocks fused together by so many acros..

Mine was the name of my performance shop which I shut down two years ago.