VTBig053

I really should just get a float but I keep putting it off. I set my phone alarm to check every hour until the reservoir gets near full, then I check every 15 minutes or so. Inevitably though I will be in the middle of something else and just turn my phone alarm off and forget to go check the RODI. Then I have a load of towels to throw in the dryer..... Oops!

Predator tank..... Sorry, I am no help at all.

Nice! That looks great. The branches look kinda like fox flame and pink caddy had a baby. I just got a frag of this so I am excited to hear it is a fast grower.

CUC = Clean up crew. Stomatella snails - http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/SwSnails/Stomatella.php Sounds like it is spawning in your tank. I haven't seen mine do this but I started with a single large one (must have been more I didn't see) now I have many.

It looks like a stomatella snail to me. They are harmless and pretty good CUC members. I have them in my tank but have never seen them "smoke". When you say "smoke" do you mean it is releasing something into the water?

Industrial park behind the Ravensworth Shopping Center off Braddock Rd. https://supremereefs.com/

Supreme Reefs in Springfield has a good selection. They are located just off the beltway near the interchange. Shouldn't be too bad of a drive up 95 from Woodbridge.

Thanks Issac! That little nub of WD is starting to grow/encrust pretty quickly over the past 1-2 weeks. I'll share a picture once its a little more substantial. Oof, I should have proof read that last post a little more closely... typos galore. Just to clarify, the alk/ca spike occurred once my corals stopped using these which I think happened because NO3 and PO4 actually hit zero. At least that's my best theory. I'll share some numbers once I get a chance to test over the weekend. It also looks like my memory of the timing was a bit off as I see a post from July and that was before everything went to downhill.

I just realized I never shared the photos of my fuge set up in chamber 2 that I promised back in Dec. Here they are. Light with velcro tape to secure it to the glass and electrical tape directly over the LED diodes because otherwise it burns the chaeto. Here is velcro’d to the glass on chamber 2 Here are two shots of chamber 2. One with out the basket and chaeto and one with the basket and chaeto. You don’t really need to the InTank basket for this set up. I actually only got it because someone over on Nano Reef was giving it away for the cost to ship it, which was only a few bucks vis USPS. It does make it easier to remove the chaeto when it comes time to trim, but It doesn’t really do anything to keep the chaeto from getting into chamber 3 with the return pump. That being said I haven’t had any issues with chaeto getting into the display. I’ll likely be trimming the chaeto more often than the two week routine I had been following since I recently set up and auto water changer and don’t to run my tank “too clean” my sps have been growth and color with more NO3 in the water. Last time I tested I had around 0.5 ppm. As far as a “resource” for setting this up. I’ve had lots of great advice from the folks that n this forum, plus over at Nano-Reef.com and Reef-2-Reef.com as well. That and a lot of trial and error, hah. Happy to answer any other questions you have.

Here are my standard picasso (via another club member) and onyx picasso (supreme reefs). The standard has developed a lot more black since this video was taken mid-summer. Hopefully the video works. edit: of course the video did not work! hah. Here are some not great photos (hence trying the video) from over the summer. 57763AA6-2A84-4B31-9FFB-6D2F47B12766.MOV

Wow! Been a looong time since I updated this thread. Full disclosure, I had a huge tank crash last may/june due to neglect and over tinkering (I know how do you neglect a tank while tinkering too much?). Well, My tank made it to the one-year point and it seemed stable enough, so I decided to get some SPS and a doser! Got everything set up and dialed in over a few weeks.Things were boomin’ for about 2-3 months. At the same time I had a huge hair algae outbreak. I decided to use Vibrant for the algae issue. Holy *&#@! This miracle worked! It cleared out my hair algae in about a month.... but wait, now I have cyano all over my rocks and sand, and worst of all, my Acros are dying. Mind you this was over 3-4 week period. I am not bashing Vivbrant, it worked, but it threw everything out of whack in my tank and I am convinced bottomed out my nutrients. The combination of a new doser and bottomed out nutrietns caused my sps to stop consuming, alk/cal spike. Everything died. One baby, some soft corals, a horrible VT football season, and a new autowatet changer, I am back in the game! love the auto watsr changer. Here are some new tank shots.

Sure, I’m away until Tuesday though and dont see any on my phone.

I have this tank and run two InTank media baskets in chambers one and two, with the third housing my return pump and heater. You can easily build media baskets using egg crate. In chamber in one I am currently running filter floss on the first shelf and a bag of ChemiPure Elite (really any carbon will do) in the bottom shelf. I use the media basket in chamber two to run a mini-chaeto fuge with a small LED plant grow light velcro taped to the glass. I upgraded the stock return pump to a Sicce Syncra 0.5. You have to shimmy it in there at an angle, but it fits. I use a 50W Cobalt NeoTherm for a heater because I like the low profile it has. I think using rock ruble in the back chambers would just end up becoming a detritus trap and a pain to clean, so it may not be worth your while. Also, if you plug the hole in the middle of the false wall you will get much better flow through the rear chambers. I hope his is helpful and let me know if you have any other questions.

Looks great!

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it to FragFest today. It’s my last day of leave with the new baby before returning to work, so I need to spend it with my family. Bummed to miss it, especially since I haven’t been able to make it to a meeting since the winter. I wonder if some club members might be interested in getting together for a happy hour sometime between now and the fall meeting? We could propose something in the members only forum to gauge interest.

Thanks for sharing this. I didn’t even realize WAMAS was a 501©(3) and eligible to participate in SMILE. My wife and I order so much on Amazon that we suffer from primenesia.... Glad there is new way to support the club! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nice tank and moving it from Louisiana is some serious dedication! If you don’t mind, could you provide some details regarding the moving process over such a long distance? Did you move your livestock as well? If so, how did you go about this? Buckets in a car or did you ship corals and fish? My family will likely be moving out of the area (to Charlotte, NC) in 9-12 mos time. I plan on using that as an opportunity to upgrade tank size, so I plan to have a new tank set up in the new house before moving the livestock from my current tank. Just curious to see how others have done this. Thanks!

Curious to hear how this works out for you. I’d love to find a good way to easily take better (less blue) pictures of my tank with out a big fancy camera. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks and excited to see what you do with your EVO. Funny you brought up my build thread because I was just thinking about updating it earlier today. I didn’t realize it had been so long. In Dec 2017 I decided I wanted to try my hand at creating an SPS dominant nano. I added a second AI Prime HD, dosing pump, very regimented weekly maintenance schedule, etc. Things were going pretty well until around May. I had a lot of frags that were encrusting well and a few that had even grown into mini-colonies. My nutrients (No3 and Po4) ended up bottoming out while I was dealing with algae issue. I was hesitant to accept that both were indeed true zero as the test results indicated because I still had algae growing in the tank. I believe the tank having no nutrients eventually caused my acros to stop consuming Alk and Ca, both spiked. I didn’t catch the Alk spike because I got lax in my testing. Life got in the way (expecting new baby and beginning new job) and I took my finger off the pulse of the tank. My acros began to pale and fade, and before I could get things turned around I had multiple pieces RTN and STN on me. I tried to frag up some of the larger pieces to save them but I am not sure they will make it. Anyway, with a new baby in the house and starting a new job, I thought it would be best to simplify the tank and try my hand at SPS again in the future, once I’ve upgraded to a larger tank. Sticking to softies and LPS for the time being. Here are some crappy cell phone pics of my tank as of today. FTS (the derasa clam went to a new home yesterday) Acans Some zoas abd palys Two of my RFAs Small BTA Sarmentosa, MiYagi Tort, and Aussie Highlighter mini colonies before the tank took a nose dive. All three are on life support at the moment. And new(ish) picasso clowns, lets see if this video works.... https://youtu.be/0w_0PQhCjK0 Anyways, I began dosing 1 ppm a day of No3 about two weeks ago and I finally have some nitrate registering (0.25 ppm) on my red sea test kit. Corals are beginning to look a lot better and hopefully I can salvage the remaining pieces of SPS. I’ll try to update my thread more regularly. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have two AI Prime HD over my Fluval EVO 13.5 (I know, way over kill) and I like them very much. I’ve never owned any Radions or Kessils, so I can’t offer a comparison there. I found the Prime HDs very easy to set up, program, and control trough the app on my iPhone. Pairing the second unit was very easy as well. I like being able to use my phone to be able to make any adjustments to schedule (which I don’t do very often, but still nice and easy) or change the spectrum for a minute so I can get a picture that isn’t washed out in blue. Overall I’ve been happy with these lights and would recommend them. I plan to incorporate the two Prime HDs with an Aquatic Life T5 Hybrid when I eventually upgrade to a larger tank.

Yeah, I logged out and back in to the ebay site and it started working. Thanks!

Hey Ben, this may just be me, but when I click the link to the ebay auctions in the post above, it loads the ebay site but returns zero results for available auctions.

Here is my guess... 535 - Acropora (not sure what name though) 446 - Radio Active Dragon Eyes (I believe these are a zoanthids) 433 - Leptastrea 435 - Favites or Favia (These two corals are very similar but have a slight difference in the structure of the head/polyp skeletal wall. What that difference is specifically, I can never remember.) 417 - Duncan Coral With the exception of the acro, these are relatively easy corals to care for.

I only flooded the basement floor twice last week while making RO/DI! I need to set up a float switch on my water containers....

A pest worse than algae!