Back in the game... RSR 250 build

[coley650]

@coley650 I can't remember the name of the brown wrasse with white dots and yellow tail. Is it a Tamarin wrasse? Truely a beautiful fish and so are the Melanarus wrasses. You are lucky to have them.

It is indeed a yellow tail tamarin wrasse, she’s beautiful. I really do like wrasses, the new tank will predominantly tangs and wrasses. Only reason I’m not going bare bottom is because of the wrasses!

I’m on the look out for an iridis wrasse next!

 

[RomoFL]

Great tank and excellent documentation! Following.

 

[NY_Caveman]

Nothing too much to report, after some testing today it seems my nitrate has climbed, I do feed a lot so will feed less to bring it down. Alk has also dropped somewhat, I have some triton Alk Increaser so plan to bring it up to 7.5 over the next 8 weeks!

P04 - 0.092
N03 - 12 [emoji15]
DKH - 6

I have an ICP ready to go so will see what’s happening there.

A couple of Monti shots under blues on an iPhone so apologies for the blue!

Still looking like frag rock but still seeing growth.

My female clown isn’t playing nice, she’s living her best life in the elegance and forces the male into his little day cave. Thankfully he is eating and they still stick together at night!

Only new additions are two Malanurus wrasses, took a risk on this aggression wise but it’s been a couple of months with no issues so far.

Started to get things ready on the upgrade.

Started a slow going build thread.

Slow and steady 500L upgrade
https://www.reef2reef.com/index.php?threads/Slow-and-steady-500L-upgrade.638230/

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Great images!

 

[coley650]

After a little scare the other night whilst on a night shift I decided an investment needed to be made

So my Apex notified me telling me it had lost its heartbeat, fortunately a few hours later it notified me power had been restored!

Given that and the likelihood when the election does his final fix power was something I needed to think about.

I went for the icecap backup which cost me 120 euro. Was super easy to install and I now have piece of mind!

 

[coley650]

So far I’ve been away from the tank for a week with a couple of days left. Before I went away I sent and ICP off which came back as follows:-https://www.triton-lab.de/en/showroom/aquarium/auswertung-b/icp-oes/91385/

It’s not so bad just need to stay on top of a couple of things, Sr, K, I and B which tbh are the usuals. I’ll compare my last ICP and get a consumption figure and dose 1/4 under it to try and stay on top of the depletion amount!

Po4 - now this is high 0.1 and I’m not surprised! When I was doing some equipment checks before I went away I noticed my reactor sounded the same but the return water was very slow... dismantled the pump and found it some chaeto that had found its way in so not drawing very well. It could have been this way for upto 3 weeks as I check it monthly, annoying but it happens! I’ll retest when I get home where it should have come down!

Problems being away - ATO unit was left full which has always been more than sufficient and I foolishly had no more made up. I didn’t check the weather at home in the excitement of being away and home being much cooler than it was a month or so ago and so was under prepared for the evaporation rate. Really annoyed with myself. Anyway managed to get get some and topped up within a few hrs.

I was alerted when my apex alarm let me know the temp was up and secondly the water level caught my attention when I started to get a strange reading from my salt probe which made me question how submerged it was and the water seemed to brushing over it rather then completely submerged. That all seemed to be sorted after talking a friend through it.

As for the temp... agh! With there being no one in the house besides a friend nipping in to feed it looks really stuffy in there. Yesterday the temp hit 29 to my absolute horror! Fans on but can’t leave the windows open whilst not there, used controller to knock off the T5’s that supplement the radions in the hope that will prevent any extra heat.

Not an ideal situation but we’ll see the impact over the next few weeks I suspect. Managed to get it down to 28 at the min and hopefully will continue to come down. I usually run 26 but crept it up to 27 over summer to avoid huge swings.

Lessons learned - tough one! I could have got my stay in pet sitter for this holiday if I’d checked the weather and known they’d have needed to be a bit more hands on and available.

Potentially had more frozen RO available and lastly a chiller? I’m just not convinced I need a chiller tbh and that good preparation would suffice, I don’t know?

So we’ll see, this has been my first major stress regarding the tank and consider myself lucky. Realistically it’s not that bad when I think of what others have experienced whilst away it’s more the lack of being able to take action and the ability to know, you’ve done all that you can and finding that balance to continue enjoying your time with family/friends.

 

[coley650]

I spoke too soon on the male clown I think who I thought was standing up for himself more against the female who backed in into a corner a lot. I’ve not seen him last 2 days and fear the worse. I’m not sure what’s happened, I don’t feel like it’s the tank or water as all my other fish are doing well and appear healthy, whereas I had my concerns with him and that the female bullied him somewhat, feel gutted over it but the threads are here to portray the ups and downs of this hobby so...
Took a couple of growth comparison pictures today, I try to do this every 3 months and stay on top of what’s actually in the tank.

I’ve noticed my acro growth seems to be thickening rather than spread and branches.

Here’s a handful, some variants of under blues and then day time light schedule. Now the tanks at capacity I’m going to turn my attention to fine tuning such as paying more attention to colouration. I feel like this is the next step for me research wise and hope it makes for some interesting learning.

I’ll throw in a couple of some of the posers that couldn’t help themselves

 

[NY_Caveman]

Those fish images are amazing. I love the one of the Midas with the face straight on. I need a real camera.

 

[coley650]

He’s a funny little guys actually, really makes me laugh. Glad I managed to catch a bit of his personality!

 

[coley650]

Last few weeks have been interesting.

Decided to add another clown, wasn’t sure how my female would take the news but added a Picasso. She did her little dominance dance and then took straight to him, she even made him host her elegance which was the problem with the clown I lost, she wouldn’t let him in.



Good result!

1 - I noticed a carbonate build up where the dosing tubes are. Calcium was very high and Alk seemed in precipitation it was at 500, mag was fine and in range. After some reading triton suggests if you need to mix dose then you you can drop calcium but not mag as solution 1 is where the trace elements are. Did that and have finally got calcium down to 460 over a few weeks and noticed Alk is on its way back up, which is a relief! Hopefully that’s sorted.



This was a good opportunity to clean all my equipment to make sure there was no build up in there and thankfully all kit was clear.



2. Yesterday when the lights came on to my horror a large piece of rock had dropped and fragged my bubblegum [emoji24][emoji2364]. I have noticed one of my snails is a beast so think he may be partially responsible! This is further supporting of dry scaping on the new tank so it can be secured properly opposed to interlocked!



I must admit, I was stressing about it but all sorted and no problems besides the breaking of the bubblegum so not actually a real drama.



Fish all seem happy, I’m additionally spot feeding the little male clown as he’s not as a competitive eater yet because he’s small but eating well.



Corals all growing well too. Decided to change the T5’s from 6 to 4 hrs as I noticed some of the corals higher up for fluorescing green so think they may have been getting a bit too much light.

 

[Flameback Pair]

@coley650 I was so impressed with your lighting setup I decided to try and copy-cat. I have everything bought to replicate your Radion/ DIY T5 Hybrid setup. Not seen in the picture is Radions, RMS mounts, and floor edging strips, and T5 bulbs. Pictured from Iquatics is: reflectors, lamp LED endcaps, 2 channel dimming cables for Apex, wire harness with quick disconnects, extra reflector adhesive strips, and T5 dimming ballasts.

However I am lost about bending the floor edging strips to angles similar to yours. I could experiment but only to an extent as I have only 3 edging strips. They came to me inside a suitcase from Britain through a cousin of mine that lives there. She came back to the states for a short visit and was more than eggar to bring them to me. However she only brought 3, leaving 2 for the end product and just 1 to experiment with the angling. If you could help me with a proper angling as you have done yours I would be so great full to appreciate your help. Using one of those little clear plastic protractors that kids use in grade school should be adequate to measure. Also how did you bend your strips?

Thanks and best regards, Mitch Powers, AKA powers2001

PS How is your Reefer 250 doing?