Been a few months and I thought I would pop in for an update.
My RTBAs became too much for my tank, so I had to thin them out.
Before:
After:
I thank everyone who bought one from me and hope they are working out well in your tanks. So far I have heard nothing but positive feedback.
While I was taking out the RTBAs, the ATO decided to stay on...and flooded my stand. It wasn't fun. With the amount of fresh water added to my tank, I decided to add an upgrade to my Apex:
I must say that the ability to read salinity is nice, but I am surprised at how much it fluctuates with the temperature.
Current control panel:
My other new addition to the mechanical feature of my tank is an addition to my salt mixing station:
I plumbed in a whole house water filter container to the hold 10 cups of salt for my 20 gallons of mixing water. So far it works out well. I have a pump in my water that circulates up into the salt container, slowly mixing the salt in. This way I can visibly see how the salt mix is going and not wonder if it was thoroughly mixed in or not.
The return goes to the top of my saltwater container and keeps the water swirling.
I have a float switch added to the bottom and to the top of the saltwater tank. This allows my Apex to monitor when the water container is low and then when to turn off when it fills the tank back up with RODI water (the top container). You can see the fill valve at the coming down from the top tank.
Added a Stenner Chemical Feeder (100DMP4) to the setup so that I can do water change with a push of a button. This model does 70gpd. When fully functional, I plan on doing a 20 gallon water change every two weeks but can do an emergency water change at any given time.
I plan on buying another one of the PM2 modules to monitor the salinity/temperature of the salt mixing container, but that is a luxury in the future.
In the upcoming months, my thought is to swap out the 5 gallon Fluval tank I have plumbed in line with my return and put in a 15 gallon column. I really want to host some seahorses and don't want to do the dwarf horses because of their feeding requirements.
On a side note, I lost my beautiful hammer coral. There was some swing in the water chemistry that wasn't showing up and it just dropped it's heads over the course of two months. I never did find out what the problem was, but everything else seems to be healthy.
I will eventually get a new hammer because I think they are beautiful, but my try my hand at a golden one.
I believe this is a long enough update for now, see you in a few months!
