Germs WaterBox Frag 105.4 build

[Jgerm]

Somehow stopped getting alerts on your thread, but glad to know you made it through that heckofamess in TX. There were a lot of R2R reefers here grinding hard from the outage.

Yeah I have been helping other locals get back going that lost almost everything. I am going to make some frags to give out as well. It has been rough for many and I consider myself very lucky for sure.

 

[ScottB]

Nice. Glad you're helping out the reef community.

Our power goes out all the time. An hour from NYC and still on the end of the grid with many old trees in between. Several hundred hours on my standby generator.

 

[Branespikin]

Saturday night blues...

That space invader is insane.

 

[Jgerm]

Nice. Glad you're helping out the reef community.

Our power goes out all the time. An hour from NYC and still on the end of the grid with many old trees in between. Several hundred hours on my standby generator.

That’s rough having to use the generator that much.

 

[ScottB]

That’s rough having to use the generator that much.

It is a whole house automatic setup that runs almost everything. When we had the Sandy superstorm, it took 10 days to restore power. Fortunately I had 14 days worth of LPG.

 

[Jgerm]

Got some new Additions.

 

[Jgerm]

Colors are coming back and PE is back as well. My corals love that moonshine!

 

[Jgerm]

time to find permanent places now

 

[Jgerm]

6 months old and 2 water changes due to a pipe bursting and leaking in the tank. Can’t wait to see where it is at the 1yr mark.

 

[ScottB]

Those are some pretty racy sticks for a 6 month old tank. Not your first rodeo I presume?

 

[Jgerm]

Those are some pretty racy sticks for a 6 month old tank. Not your first rodeo I presume?

Definitely not. Although I did take a 5yr hiatus and I’m a much more old school style reefer trying many mew things with this tank.
The biggest is changing from MH and T5s to this all LED lighting setup. It has been a learning curve with the full spectrum adjustability. I miss the days of swapping a bulb and setting timers. Haha
Also the Apex is leaps and bounds over my old reefkeeper 2 system. All in all though it’s the same stability that the corals favor for growth just getting to that point was a different path this go around.

 

[ScottB]

Right. Just looking back a few pages I am reminded that I was following for a while but lost/missed notifications.

Back to this SPS in a 6 month old system. I spend too much time in the SPS forum for sure, but when there, for every successful and YOUNG SPS tank, there are a thousand that are not successful. When we run through the normal checklist of parameters, flow, light, nutrients, pests, blah blah, the conditions should be ideal. And yet all their sticks die and continue dying for many months. The only thing that often jumps out to me is dead rock starts and bacteria in a bottle.

What factors or methods do you believe most contribute to your early success relative to most?

 

[Jgerm]

Bacteria in a bottle and dry rock for this day and age for sure is a big thing.
I treated the Carib sea life rock I got just like live rock from back in the day and put it in a trash can with a circulation pump and ghost fed it for a few months while I was building the tank. It already came with a biofilm of bacteria on it so getting the bacterial colonies to grow on it was in my opinion a good base to my stable start. That said I had a bacterial slim issue right after my cycle completed in the tank and I’m still wondering if that was because I mixed many types of bacteria in a bottle and added different types of ammonia sources...

 

[Jgerm]

Here is a list of every brand type of bacteria I have in the tank.
1- CaribSea bacteria from LifeLock and sand
2- Dr Tim’s
3- MicroBacter 7
4- Fritz turbo start
5- just recently I started Biodigest Pro

 

[Jgerm]

I ghost fed the rock in the brute trash can.
I added ammonia drops when I put Dr Tim’s in to start the tank cycle.
I fed Phyto when I added turbostart and seeded the refugium and continue to feed weekly to this day.
I upped my ghost feeding when I started getting diatoms and added microbacter 7
And to keep with up with the nutrient export I check and dose (when needed) NeoNitro and NeoPhos.
BioDigest has been added to combat the cyano I developed after the power outage and freeze here in Houston.

 

[Jgerm]

Finally the I will definitely say that following the Reef Moonshiners Method from the start of this tank not only keeps my need for water changes down to emergencies only but allows me to see what other parameters are in need of corrections that water changes would not fix like for example my first month corrections included over 72 ml of potassium and over 172 ml of fluoride. I have spent all most exact the same on elements and ICP tests over the past 6 months as I would have in saltwater changes at 20% every 2 weeks. That includes the large investment of the initial elements purchase. I’ll calculate the exact amount at 1 year and do a comparison write up that should help people decide if this is a route they would like to take from the start with a visual aid at 12 months to show.

 

[newbreefr]

Thanks!
I just cleaned the surface with alcohol before paint. I used Krylon fusion all-in-one

Is this safe to be touching water?

 

[Jgerm]

Is this safe to be touching water?

I would not recommend it actually touching the water.

 

[Jgerm]

Full spectrum light pics today.

 

[Jgerm]

Ignore the UV pump hose is the back. It’s on my list of things to do this month.