My WWC entry!
#reef2reef,
#worldwidecorals,
#mywwccontest
Hmmmm so last night I dreamed my splattered hammer broke off straight in the middle and was floating around.
Thankfully this morning its fine lol.
So, this will be a quick overview of making the holders for the ATO. I'll probably write a sticky or article eventually on making it, as I found there weren't many good videos/pages that gave you a good description. Most were vague or assumed you had a good knowledge of electriciy.
So I'll do one that everyone can use, a double float switch, one emergency, with redundancy, and safe.
First, I cut the acrylic on my bandsaw. This was the part I was worried about, but it worked great.
Then I tried boiling them... didn't work. Again, thats what they showed in the vids. So instead I took a lighter and did a sweep or two back and forth on one side, flipped, and did it again on the other side. After 2-3 flips it was very bendable, and I just layed it on the counter and bent it. You have to make sure you hold it until it's solid or it will warp back.
Unfortunantely, one of the float switches arrived missing the top nut. :mad: So I drilled the hole just big enough to barely squeeze it into. It worked. The other was fine though. So I drilled a hole in the bent part for the float switch, then three holes on the long part for suction cups. Make sure you leave enough room for a snail guard on one. I want a small clear pill bottle, or mabye a clear acrylic bottle for the snail guard, as the big white pill bottle sticks out.
On the snail guard, drill one tiny hole in the very bottom, and a tiny hole at the very top. If you don't, wave motion will be constantly be flipping the float switch on and off which makes it very hard to calibrate to the water level. Again, something I found out the hard way. :dead:
As you can see, it doesn't look bad above water. The blue hose is where the water came out. I wasn't thinking at first and stuck it in my
HOB, cause it would mix it before going in. Whelp when the pump turns off it becomes a siphon lol.
Here's the view from where I sit.
Part of the reason I wanted a new scape.
After never having cleaned the fuge, I noticed the
chaeto was getting filthy, even after rinsing multiple times, and flow was slow. So I pulled the
matrix out, put it in a
mesh bag for easy removal, and wiped everything down. It looks so much better and cleaner and flow is way better. I'll be adding that to my monthly or bimonthly maintnence list.
Last but not least, Gobiwan is doing great!
Copper levels been holding at 0.5/6
ppm and he's healthy and eating like a pig. Not too much longer until I start metro (May 7), and then he'll be out in 10 more days after starting metro! Unfortunantely only about 50 days will have gone by by then, so he'll need to stay in
QT another month. :banghead: I hate not having a fish in DT, and not being able to get fish into my
FW because I don't have a QT. :meh: Sooooo I'm getting a Skunk cleaner today! Basically, it may be carrying
ich into the system encrusted onto its shell. But, when it molts I just need to pull the molt out of the tank, and the tromonts (floating things) will die after a maximum of 15 days due to not having a host. So yay I'll get some life n the tank today!! And mabye another
coral.... or two
. Grows way faster then the setosa, but the setosa grows, just realllll slow.
This has got 7 or 8 heads. 
I do want it next to my bed, but I'd have to build a stand and I'm not sure if it would look as nice as on my dresser which I'd have to reinforce. BUT if I used my dresser I don't have under-stand space for storage/ect. Juts had a thought on the stand... I do the base a little small, and put a piece of staingrade 1/2 plywood on top. I can cut the plywood to exactly the shape of the biocube with only a little big of extra. Wouldn't look too bad I think.
