Amoo's Pasture 60 Gallon Shallow Reef

Amoo · Sep 30, 2017

what the heck ALERTS!!! I was busy with that silly salt thread on reefermadness, and totally missed @Robin Haselden 's reply and it since it gave me the "there may be more posts after this, I didn't get alerts for everybody else. It was such a frustrating night of reefing, you guys ever have those, where you come and post on your build thread and just hope somebody notices and offers some soothing advice or encouragement? That was me tonight and my alerts failed me

HAI FRIENDS!

@Maritimer I'm sorry man, I saw your post earlier today and I thought I had welcomed you to The Pasture already, but it turns out I had not

Welcome friend.

@GoVols /Freddie, look man, I've already got a bunch of rif-raf in this thread with @Rakie hanging around, I'm not sure if I can handle you slumming around here as well. How about we give it a chance for a while, no strings attached and if it doesn't work out we'll just part on mutual terms? Also any pictures of Butch is an instant breech of contract and this contract is immediately null and void and you're outta here. Oh and WELCOME TO THE PASTURE!!!

@Rakie I don't want to hear another peep out of you for at least 24 hours. I went through your Dinos....errrr thread today (absolutely stunning rock wall by the way), but dude if you cause an algae outbreak in my tank like the one you had, you're outta here bud. Also worth noting I think you have more frags in your little almost 50G then my LFS.

@mdbannister I'm tagging you because I had a crappy night and you're usually on, but you weren't. You let me down man, it hurts, it hurts deep.

@Robin Haselden I checked your build thread and no mention yet of what we talked about via PMs, dude I'm so stoked for you!

Rakie · Sep 30, 2017

I don't cause algae blooms. Wait, is bryopsis algae? Cuz everyone I know gets bryopsis. The good news is ask @mdbannister, I sell the cure.

Maritimer · Sep 30, 2017

Bryopsis is algae - got it from a frag market before the cure was known.

Good to know where to get the cure ... there's another frag market in a couple of weeks . . .

~Bruce, who gets some strange algaes

najer · Sep 30, 2017

"English person reads thread, has a think about it, stifles giggle about apex, loves the frags, sneaks back out again!"

Duraticate · Sep 30, 2017

Looks awesome i want to go shallow

SashimiTurtle · Sep 30, 2017

ALERTS!!! How am I missing them. Glad I saw the thread in the recent posts section.

@Amoo, I'm stoked too. DREAM TANK! Hopefully by this time next year I'll have a new build thread and you can come laugh at me pulling my hair out over it. Hopefully by then Neptune has their ducks in a row as I'm sure a controller will help with a tank that size.

GoVols · Sep 30, 2017

"Freddie, look man, I've already got a bunch of rif-raf in this thread with @Rakie hanging around, I'm not sure if I can handle you slumming around here as well. How about we give it a chance for a while, no strings attached and if it doesn't work out we'll just part on mutual terms? Also any pictures of Butch is an instant breech of contract and this contract is immediately null and void and you're outta here. Oh and WELCOME TO THE PASTURE!!!"

...

.......... ;Writing

.

Amoo · Sep 30, 2017

@najer trust me I'm regretting not just dealing with the software issues every reply Neptune sends me. Welcoem to the Pasture.

@Duraticate don't think I didn't see you sneak in here, welcome aboard man.

Today's email from Neptune support informed me that since I am out of calibration fluid and we can not calibrate the probes over the phone I can send them in via RMA, keep in mind I've already calibrated them 3 times and 2 times at their request and sent them results. I basically told them to pound sand. I'll order a new probe and some more fluids myself. The only reason I care about the pH probe to begin with is it gives me at least some level of backup protection against an ATO or doser failure. It's legitimately one of the only reasons I got this system. So I'll order my own new probe along with some calibration solutions and if I'm still having troubles with the thing, I'm within my window where I'll just return the whole unit.

SashimiTurtle · Sep 30, 2017

Sounds like Neptune needs to step up their QC and support game.

Amoo · Sep 30, 2017

Robin Haselden said:
Sounds like Neptune needs to step up their QC and support game.

To say I'm less than thrilled would be an understatement. I've tagged Terrance twice in this thread alone and he hasn't even done as muchas dropped by and hit the like button. Is what it is.

jsker · Sep 30, 2017

;Stig

Daniel@R2R · Oct 1, 2017

Amoo said:
Tonight has been a complete and total exercise in frustration.

For starters, I'm still getting jerked around by Neptune about these mismatching pH probes. I've calibrated the dumb things 3 times in the last 48 hours, on separate ports, on the same port...etc and they're still off from one another, by at least .1 usually .12. Now Neptune wants to call on Monday so we can setup a phone/remote session so we can calibrate them together. I flat out told the rep, "look I've calibrated these things 3 times in 2 days and I'm out of calibration solution at this point". You'd think they could just send me a new probe and we could be done with this whole ordeal as the third one will tell me which one of the two I have is bad, but noooooooooooo. So far, not so great for Neptune's customer service. Either way we're off to a pretty miserable start with the "new Apex" which I should be thrilled about after spending a grand on.

Next let's talk about RO/DI. Adam @Battlecorals gave me some great ideas for setting up a degas system and as a thank you, I placed the order I did with him, because of the money it will save me in DI resin. I think that was only fair. So I get all my new filters and resin in, everything I need, get everything rerouted, running 2 membranes in series like I always have turn the thing on and BOTH the seals on the sediment containers start leaking.

No big deal, I'll just pull the whole unit down again, take it outside and torque those things down with the wrench.

Hook things back up, still leaking. No big deal, I'll just pull the whole thing down again, take it outside, pull out both gaskets, put some lithium grease on both of them, put them back in, summon my inner Thor and snug those things up with the wrench and take it back inside and hook it back up.

LKUADSFLK:JASDHFKJ:LASDHFLKJSADHFLK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I have 3 new o-rings on order as well as 3 "backup" canisters. In the meantime the unit is just hanging over a spare tank, dripping water into it as I HAVE to make some RO/DI tonight as my topoff has been empty for about 30 hours now.

So outside of wanting to chuck both my Apex and my Spectrapure RODI unit out the window, everything is going just great tonight. I'm going to get a stiff drink...

Yikes! This definitely sounds like a very bad night.

GoVols · Oct 1, 2017

mdbannister said:
Yikes! This definitely sounds like a very bad night.

Amoo · Oct 1, 2017

mdbannister said:
Yikes! This definitely sounds like a very bad night.

Thanks Daniel,

Luckily when I get frustrated with my fish tank stuff, I've learned well enough to just step back and remind myself that this is a hobby and I can always just walk away and come back at a later time. None of us flat out wake up in the morning and are like, "YES TANK MAINTENANCE DAY!!!" but hey, I do enjoy spending the time looking over all of my equipment and taking my time to clean things up. It's all a trade off, but at the end of the day we have to remind ourselves to have fun.

SashimiTurtle · Oct 1, 2017

Amoo said:
None of us flat out wake up in the morning and are like, "YES TANK MAINTENANCE DAY!!!"

So I'm the only one that does that?

.... well this is awkward. ;Sorry

najer · Oct 2, 2017

Note to self, stop watching the weirdo with the blacked out 14 G!

Amoo · Oct 3, 2017

That moment when you're feeling bad about your tank because you've got the uglyies and you go to feed the tank and your whole existance in the hobby doesn't show up for food...

She was behind the rock the anemone sits on possibly prepping a spot......stupid clown

#FeelsBadMan

Also @jsker welcome to the pasture man, sorry I'm not more energetic today, should be feeling great as my 32g is officially cycling, but the uglyies have got me down and the near loss of my crowned jewel sent me into a state of shock

jsker · Oct 3, 2017

Amoo said:
That moment when you're feeling bad about your tank because you've got the uglyies and you go to feed the tank and your whole existance in the hobby doesn't show up for food...

She was behind the rock the anemone sits on possibly prepping a spot......stupid clown

#FeelsBadMan

Also @jsker welcome to the pasture man, sorry I'm not more energetic today, should be feeling great as my 32g is officially cycling, but the uglyies have got me down and the near loss of my crowned jewel sent me into a state of shock

Thank you very much for the welcome. I do not know how much torture you have gone through in my build thread

, but we all go through the uglies and with the help of follower like @GoVols aka Freddie and others things always look better about 6 weeks later

Amoo · Oct 3, 2017

jsker said:
Thank you very much for the welcome. I do not know how much torture you have gone through in my build thread, but we all go through the uglies and with the help of follower like @GoVols aka Freddie and others things always look better about 6 weeks later

Thanks for the words of encouragement @jsker I can see the newer corals encrusting which means they're doing fine, color isn't great yet, but meh, the uglies come and go as we all know, just one of those days where you feel worse about it than others. I think I'm also very distraught/disturbed by watching people I care about on both sides of the 2A issue waving their weenies all over social media today acting like complete idiots when all names haven't even been released yet, which means all families haven't been notified yet. Just all around a discouraging day of behavior from the outside world has got me down. Don't want to get too political though.

Also I must say from page 1-10 you have made some vast improvements to your overall setup, belated welcome to sump-life my friend.

jsker · Oct 3, 2017

Amoo said:
Thanks for the words of encouragement @jsker I can see the newer corals encrusting which means they're doing fine, color isn't great yet, but meh, the uglies come and go as we all know, just one of those days where you feel worse about it than others. I think I'm also very distraught/disturbed by watching people I care about on both sides of the 2A issue waving their weenies all over social media today acting like complete idiots when all names haven't even been released yet, which means all families haven't been notified yet. Just all around a discouraging day of behavior from the outside world has got me down. Don't want to get too political though.

Also I must say from page 1-10 you have made some vast improvements to your overall setup, belated welcome to sump-life my friend.

once you go sump you never go back