Bbwebb

Thanks, appreciate the compliment. Alas, I've moved and the tank is no more :( I had quite a bit of buildup in my SW mixing container. It never seemed to hurt anything though. Once a year or so I would empty out the entire mixing station and take the power washer to it to get it all cleaned up again.

Thanks! I'll check them out. Maybe I'll hit Fintastic if it's still around while I'm there next weekend. Might inspire me to act faster.

You're not lying. Lead time is crazy!!!

Thanks, appreacite it!

Thanks Frank. Bittersweet for me and my family for sure. Half the fun is setting up the tank for me, so time for a new adventure I guess.

It's with some sadness that I will be breaking my tank down sometime in the next 4-6 weeks. The company I work for was recently acquired and I was offered a promotion that requires my family to relocate. The new job is a great opportunity and the move to Charlotte, NC will be good for my family. Unfortunately it's not all good news since I'll need to tear down the tank that my family and I have enjoyed so much over the years. Since I'll be traveling a good amount for the first 12-24 months I've decided to hold off on setting up another tank.
 
 Keep an eye out on the For Sale forum in the coming weeks if your interested in any of my livestock or equipment. I will be giving away ALL of the livestock to good homes. We are especially concerned for out fish, some of which we've had for 6+ years. Bill

Quick update. All is back to normal now. I ended up losing one frag from my frag rack, but otherwise everything looks happy. I took about 5 days to get my alk normalized, and I'm still testing everyday to ensure that my numbers are solid. I'll go back to weekly testing once I have a week or so of unchanging levels.

I tested the water 4 times with two different test kits, so I believe it. I've added 30ml of b-ionic part 1 so far. I'll get another 30ml in tonight and check my levels again.

Partial panic mode here. I tested my Alk, Ca, and Mg this morning and my Alk had a huge drop since last Sunday. Last Sunday my Alk measured 7.7 which was low (I like to keep it around 8.5), but I wasn't too concerned. I made a few adjustments on my Ca Reactor and figured I would move it back to 8.5 over the next couple of weeks. I checked it today and it was down to 5.5! In hindsight I should have checked it every day since last Sunday, but too late for that. I did some investigation and I think some air was getting into the peristaltic pump line so my reactor was not moving nearly as much water as it should. I've fixed that and will start slowly dosing b-ionic Alk for the next several days. Should I be in full panic mode with a 5.5 level? Honestly everything looks happy and I have a fair amount of SPS. Calcium was a little low at 385ppm, but not crazy low. Magnesium was at a respectable 1250ppm. pH is a little off, it usually runs between 7.9 and 8.1 for night/day. Last night it was 7.82/8.03. Right now my plan is to test every day, try to move the Alk level up a little at a time, and not over-react. Thoughts? Should I be doing anything else? Thanks Bill

The masterflex pump is just used to move water from my sump, through the reactor, and then back up to the sump. I wanted to use a peristaltic pump so that I could accomplish this from the basement fish room. The masterflex is duty rated for continuous operation and allows me to adjust the flow rate very easily. Instead of constantly messing with the pH in my reactor I normally adjust the flow rate up or down to fine tune my alk and calcium levels. As far as noise, I would say it's not silent. There is a high pitched sound that comes from the pump while it's running. It would probably be bothersome if it was in my family room, but it's not a problem at all in the fish room. My fish room is in our finished basement and with the door shut to the room you can't hear it at all. One other note, the masterflex pumps are ridiculously expensive if purchased new. If you're interested in one just keep an eye on eBay. I picked this one up for about 15% of what a new one costs.

Yep, It's a Litermeter with an additional pump head attached. Running the RO lines 25-30' was the real challenge, everything else is pretty straight-forward. The first pump head is set to pull ~2 gallons of from my sump and it goes straight to a drain. The second pump head pushes 2 gallons of fresh saltwater from my mixing station into my sump. The litermeter divides the total amount of liquid you want to move by 150 (I think) and then moves that amount of water every 3 minutes or so. I do pay close attention to my salinity to ensure things don't get out of whack. I monitor conductivity with my Apex and have it alarm if it creeps up or down too much. I also check it manually with my refractometer once a week since I still don't trust conductivity to be an accurate measurement of salinity. I recently ran into an issue where salinity was starting to drop and it turned out that I had calcium buildup and also some of residue from the Instant Ocean salt stuck in my RO line and I was no longer putting as much salt water back into the tank as I was removing. So the ATO was making up the difference. Cleaning the line out was a pain, but now everything is back to normal.

Thanks YHSublime. Still learning new things about the hobby every day.

I don't know about the engineering genius part, but happy to help out.

If you have any means of doing this, I highly recommend it. It makes maintenance some much easier, and more consistent.

Thanks for all the compliments everyone! I plan on covering some of the upgrades and challenges that I've had over the past 3 years too.