180 gallon SPS focus build

ReefBeta · Jan 27, 2021

Just watched in ReefDudes live stream that, Coralvue announced the new Control XS. That's exactly what I'm waiting for the quarantine rack upgrade. A Control XS + 3 temperature probes + 3 power strip will be just enough to take care of the 3 QT tank on my rack. Each tank has a filter, a heater, a circulation pump, and a light. The nice thing on this setup will be, the whole rack is controlled together, so I can turn on feeding mode or water change mode for all of them at the same time. But each tank will have its own power strip, so I can easily turn the whole tank on or off. That's actually very important feature and was missing from my current setup, because it's rare that all 3 tanks are running. Most of the time only some of them are running. So I have to unplug all the stuff on the tank that's not running. With Hydros setup, I can push a button to turn the tank on, so much easier.

ReefBeta · Jan 29, 2021

I was wrong about having the wrong solenoid. ;Bored

I bought another water solenoid. It actually limit the air flow even greater than the CO2 solenoid. With it on, the skimmer is almost ran clear of air. With the CO2 solenoid, it can still draw enough air to make the body white.

With the CO2 solenoid, it turns on at 8.3 pH. But pH still get to 8.37. Not sure if it's actually helping prolong CO2 media life. But that seem the best thing I have so far. Oh well ...

ReefBeta · Jan 30, 2021

Have been thinking a lot lately about setting up auto dosing of phytoplankton. Main reason is the couple research papers showing that phytoplankton increase several acropora's grow rate by up to 20%, via slow continuous dose. It will also help a lot the NPS corals I had in the tank as well.

There are basically two ways. Culture phytoplankton, so that it will be fresh in room temperature, and dose off culture container. Or setup a fridge to dose Phyto-Feast. After some thought, I'm leaning towards the fridge. There are several small 6 cans size fridge on Amazon for just $50. It's small and easy the find a place for it. So the biggest problem in that solution is solved. Once the setup is done, a single bottle will last several months. In comparison, live phytoplankton culture will require weekly works. And the space it needs to setup at least two bottles, or three, is not smaller than the fridge. Also with a fridge, it opens the door of lots of other feedings. Like the Oyster Feast and Red Sea AB+. Those are what I'm dosing manually every night now. I could put them all on doser with a fridge.

ReefBeta · Jan 31, 2021

In the past 10 days, I started to try out the red sea color trace dosing, with the test kits. According to my alk dosage via kalk, for each 2320ml kalk dosed, I should add 1ml each of red sea color traces. My daily dosage is about 3L, so I start with 1ml. After 10 days, the readings moved as follow:

Iron: 0 ppm => 0 ppm
Iodine: 0.04 ppm => 0.06 ppm
Potassium: 368 ppm => 398 ppm

For Iodine and Potassium, I think I will reduce the dose. There are still quite some room for potassium to raise. But if iodine raise another 0.03, it will reach a toxic level.

Iron is interesting. I was not only doing red sea color, but also the iron supplement came from the pax bellum reactor. But the reading is still 0 after all these. It means my tank can use quite some more iron.

ReefBeta · Jan 31, 2021

A "product review", of my own design, filter cup floss insert.

Idea is simple, to maximize the surface of floss facing water flow. The cup will be clogged when all that area is clogged. If just putting floss into a 7" filter cup like this, that area is only the 7" diameter circle, and it won't last for more than a couple days. This insert increase that area by many times.

This is what the floss look like when it's clogged. Most of the floss is used.

It last a week, longer than filter socks. The best thing with that is, no more washing socks. Floss are cheap enough to throw and replace.

ReefBeta · Jan 31, 2021

Some latest shots of the tank.

Reefer5640 · Feb 1, 2021

How is the Morris’s idol doing. I had one years ago but never dared to put it in the reef tanks due to fear of loosing some of my expensive coral. Has yours nipped at any coral since you’ve had it? Awesome setup by the way. I like your visual indicator on your UV.

ReefBeta · Feb 1, 2021

Reefer5640 said:
How is the Morris’s idol doing. I had one years ago but never dared to put it in the reef tanks due to fear of loosing some of my expensive coral. Has yours nipped at any coral since you’ve had it? Awesome setup by the way. I like your visual indicator on your UV.

It's still behaving within my tolerance level lol. It did bite at some corals, mostly big LPS like acanphyillia, trachy, cynarina, pectina. So I did have to move some of the nicer ones to my other LPS dominated tank with only safe fish. It's not only the moorish idol, the majestic angel do the same. As long as they don't pick at my expensive sticks, I can deal with it. But also there is still a cheaper cynarina and a trachy in the tank and neither of them ever touched them. They did have eyes for expensive ones I guess ...

I had a moorish idol years ago too, and it picked my tank clean of zoa. But this time the morish idol doesn't seem to care for zoa at all.

On the side note, the moorish idol did cause some damage on some acroporas. It didn't pick on the coral itself, but love to pick on the superglue (or the algae film on it). Since it's pretty strong, it managed to knock couple off the rock, and caused some tissue lost. Now I learnt my lesson and be more generous on glue.

ReefBeta · Feb 1, 2021

Analyzing ICP test in context of dosing. I'm experimenting Red Sea Color Program. Here is the ICP test I sent out right before I started the dosing.

For Color A and B, these are the major elements:
Red Sea Color A: Iodine, Bromine and Fluorine
Red Sea Color B: Potassium and Boron
Corresponding ICP test result:

So without dosing, all of the target elements are already within range. Maybe I should not be dosing them at all.

Red Sea Color C: Iron, Manganese, Cobalt, Copper, Aluminum, Zinc, Chrome and Nickel

All of the Color C elements are depeleted, excepted Manganese. I have been using the additive come with Pax Bellum, which contains Iron and Manganese. Maybe the Manganese is too much there.

Red Sea Color D: Silver, Gold, Vandium and Tungsten, 18+ elements

The elements in Color D is unclear to me whether adding some will be beneficial. The one that listed out are all have only upper limit, without lower limit. Vandium is at the above group, with value already within range.

So it looks like, Red Sea Color C is the only one that worth dosing. So I'm going to turn down dosage for the other 3, from 1ml/day to 0.5 ml/day. And up dosage of C to 2ml/day. Also reduce Pax Bellum dose from 12 drop to 6 drop daily.

ReefBeta · Feb 4, 2021

For some unknown reason, the alkalinity consumption increased dramatically about 2 days ago.

Alkalinity dropped by 0.5 in half a day, without change in dosage. I actually thought it's Alkatronic out of calibration, and calibrated everything of it, and counter check with Hanna checker. The reading appeared to be true.

Before the change, it's dosing 2ml/min kalk, push couple times a day by Alkatronic to maintain 8.5 dkh. Now it's doing 4ml/min, and it has been adding about 15ml 2 part A solution per 2 hours.

So the dosage is doubled and more. But alkalinity still dropping. Do I believe the coral grow rate doubled overnight? Not sure ... Most frags are looking fine from what I can tell. Only one frag is dying, but it has been losing tissue from previous damage. I more suspect some other reason causing the abnormal consumption jump. But I can't find out what.

ReefBeta · Feb 5, 2021

Looks like the higher alk consumption is legit. In the past two days, pH is also raised slightly.

Went from 8.16-8.35 to 8.25-8.41. Without any change on CO2 scrubber, it would mean photosynthesis increased in the tank. So stuffs are growing faster now.

ReefBeta · Feb 5, 2021

Just double checked the indoor CO2 level, it's also slightly dropped in the past couple days. Could that be the actual cause of the change? Seem pretty possible.

ReefBeta · Feb 5, 2021

I think I'm at the edge of out running kalk now. So the question is, what to do next. I was planned to use DIY All For Reef. But now I'm more leaning towards 2 part for the pH benefit. Eventually I'll want to use sodium hydroxide for calcium. But to do that well I will need an adjustable low speed dosing pump, like versa, to really spread out the dose to avoid too high of a pH spike. So for now, I'll start with sodium carbonate.

I also just found that BRS is selling big buckets of 2 parts. $99 for 35 gallon worth of it. A lot cheaper than $24 for 6 gallon. So if my tank need 200ml 2 parts per day, it will be 6L per months, 72L per year, about 20 gallon. So it will be about $110 per year. It's not that expensive even compares to calcium reactor.

Some thought on calcium reactor. It has been long to be said that it's the most stable alk supplement method, whici I do agree. But I think the reason is not because of calcium reactor, but the continuously running dosing pump. Continuous and consistent dosing of alk is the keep. It just happened that calcium reactor was the only way to achieve that, well till recent years. With the advanced dosing pump, it's now very achievable to spread out the dose to the same consistence as calcium reactor. Yes, those dosing pumps are not cheap, but same as calcium reactor. The easy of use, save on space, and most importantly, pH benefit, make 2 parts way more attractive solution.

ReefBeta · Feb 5, 2021

Just found that SBBCorals is selling again. I think it's almost qualify as a phenomena. It's selling upwards $1k+ half inch frags, and sold out super fast. I would not understand the worth of those frag compare to other "cheaper" high end frags like Homewrecker and WD. But the fact that they sold out every time means people are buying it. I don't have a problem with it actually. It's good frags, at least seen from the nice photo. For me, half of those frags look just like homewrecker, while the other half looks just like WD. The only remarkable one is the "half-baked", a terrible name if you ask me. I'm just amazed such high end demand exists. It's like watching those auction of arts goes for millions, while many very nice drawings "only" selling for couple thousands, with comparable quality from my untrained eyes.

ReefBeta · Feb 5, 2021

Just some pictures of the tank glows under blue/UV lights. Every night there is about an hour of this and I love it.

ReefBeta · Feb 7, 2021

Finished the fridge auto dosing setup.

I used a pump to continuously pump tank water into the closet. The doser then feeds into that line. The purpose is to minimize the amount of liquid stay out of the fridge. Also it is a lot easier add more bottles. Red Sea AB+ and OysterFeast are my next.

When it dose:

ReefBeta · Feb 10, 2021

Happen to come with couple discounted kamoer dosing pump, so I decided to scale up the feeding station to full capacity.

PhytoFeast + OysterFeast + Red Sea AB+. First two is feeding every hour from 9pm to 7am. Amino is doing hourly throughout the day. Starting dosage is 4ml + 2ml + 4ml. These would last for about 3 months.

The whole setup cost only $230 plus the food. Pretty happy with it.