Greybeard's Wide, Shallow Peninsula

Greybeard · Dec 17, 2023

So... took one bommie, rock and all, covered with nems... probably 15 of them, to the LFS. Traded for a box of purple painted reef rock, dry, in the box. Yeah, he's coming out ahead on this, but in a small town like mine, getting rid of a tank full of nems is a real problem. This is better than dumping them in the creek.

So, one bommie replaced with new rock. I'll give that a month or so, and do 'er again, with the other bommie. Eventually, I'll be nem free, ready to restock with corals. Still haven't decided the best path forward on that... but I'll probably just call WWC and see what they can do for me. Big mixed frag order, they usually send pretty healthy stuff, from what I've seen.

Greybeard · Jan 13, 2024

2nd Bommie done. Took another 18 or so Nems to the LFS. Got another box of dry, purple painted rock. Did a quick structure... I think it'll be fine. Also donated my 'pair' of clowns... a female cinnamon and a male maroon. They've been laying eggs together for years. In fact, the rock I traded with the nems on it also had a patch of clown eggs

. Thought they'd probably do poorly in a nem free tank, after having a tank full of nems to live and play in, so I went ahead and gave them to a friend, along with a couple nems.

No, I don't glue rocks, and I'm not interested in fantastic NSA architecture. Yeah, it's cool, but I prefer something that looks more natural. IMHO, this suits.

What few corals I had left are there. Added a small fighting conch they had at the LFS. Oh, that net box of rubble is for a friend setting up a new tank. Just some starter rubble. It'll be there another week or so.

So... Got a 15lb bag of sand from US Live Rock coming to reinvigorate the tank's micro biology. Sent in a sample for ICP testing. Let everything settle for a month or so, and I'm going to be ready for a boat load of frags.

Wanting some montipora, plating, branching varieties. Always have had good luck with them. Wanting some encrusting corals... leptoseris, cyphastrea. Some euphyllia of some sort. Maybe a pretty echinopora. Couple clams... preferably squamosa or deresa. Gigas, even... never had much luck with maximas. Probably some sort of capnella and sinularia. I've always liked them, good space fillers.

Greybeard · Mar 17, 2024

Ok, tank is once again stable, parameters look just as I like 'em... Time for some coral.

Went to SLASH's, really Reefing USA these days, spring show in STL yesterday. Eh. Maybe 15 vendors, prices pretty high... I bought a few things out of one tank and moved on. Picked up a tiny cyphastra frag, a pretty little zoa frag, a green finger leather, and a very pretty, if tiny, aqua-cultured gonipora.

Pics below, didn't catch the name of the vendor, sorry.

On to the next stop. New place in the loo, Liberty Reef, way out in OFallon. Been seeing good looking stuff from them, and saw that the owner was USMC vet, injured. Semper FI... Let's go. New shop, 3 months or so. Owner's been working out of his garage for some time. Light on dry goods and such, but his coral selection was excellent. Not so great if you're wanting stix, but LPS? Oh yeah... and prices were quite good.

Picked up a fairly large long tentacle variety Fungia, a nice looking little duncan, a bit of caulastrea, went a bit overboard on the euphyllia... 3 hammers and a frog spawn

. Oh, and a very nice 5" clam.

On that clam... Don't Maximas generally have smooth shells? This things got flutes like a squomosa. Doesn't really matter, I suppose, as long as he's healthy. Looks great to me.

I'd say it's a solid start on re-establishing my reef

Still need to get a batch of SPS. Want some montipora... branching, plating, encrusting... always been a favorite.

Greybeard · May 20, 2024

A quick bit... my Apex EB832 failed on me the other day. I'm using the EB832 that came new with my Apex EL, purchased 2019, so it's 5 years old. Just quit. Nothing plugged into it would turn on, auto or manual. LED status lights were correct, but no power to outlets.

A bit of emergency tweaking, I was able to get everything important plugged into an old PB8. Works, if not ideal.

An email to Apex said I can send it to them for repair, but no estimate on repair costs. Some googling shows they're quite expensive to repair, and turned up a bit about a failed step down power supply on Youtube. Same symptoms as my failure... Hm.

So, Apex never replied to my request for a price estimate, and the part on Amazon was $8... What the heck. Ordered one, and dragged my old soldering iron out. 1st unit Amazon sent me was damaged, returned that, got one in good condition.

The repair itself, check youtube, you can find several videos of people making this repair. The only thing I'd add is that the step down unit is supported, and connected, via 4 soldered header pins. I was able to reused 3 of these, damaged the 4th trying to clean the old solder off of it. Ended up using a bit of 18g copper wire... worked out fine. Still, cleaning the old pins was about the hardest part of this operation. I'd recommend picking up some new solder pins. Amazon sells 11.5mm header pins made for Arduino boards for a few bucks, it's be trivial to cut a few loose and use nice clean pins. A couple bucks will save you a half an hour of frustration

Repair resulted in fully functioning EB832, cost was $7.99, with next day delivery. Hard to beat that. Part number is NOADPB12500. I understand Ebay has it cheaper, but I've not had much luck ordering from Ebay over the years.

Oh, I picked up a 1.5" tiger tail cuke over the weekend. See if he'll help me clean up the sand bed a bit.

Daniel@R2R · May 20, 2024

Greybeard said:
A quick bit... my Apex EB832 failed on me the other day. I'm using the EB832 that came new with my Apex EL, purchased 2019, so it's 5 years old. Just quit. Nothing plugged into it would turn on, auto or manual. LED status lights were correct, but no power to outlets.

A bit of emergency tweaking, I was able to get everything important plugged into an old PB8. Works, if not ideal.

An email to Apex said I can send it to them for repair, but no estimate on repair costs. Some googling shows they're quite expensive to repair, and turned up a bit about a failed step down power supply on Youtube. Same symptoms as my failure... Hm.

So, Apex never replied to my request for a price estimate, and the part on Amazon was $8... What the heck. Ordered one, and dragged my old soldering iron out. 1st unit Amazon sent me was damaged, returned that, got one in good condition.

The repair itself, check youtube, you can find several videos of people making this repair. The only thing I'd add is that the step down unit is supported, and connected, via 4 soldered header pins. I was able to reused 3 of these, damaged the 4th trying to clean the old solder off of it. Ended up using a bit of 18g copper wire... worked out fine. Still, cleaning the old pins was about the hardest part of this operation. I'd recommend picking up some new solder pins. Amazon sells 11.5mm header pins made for Arduino boards for a few bucks, it's be trivial to cut a few loose and use nice clean pins. A couple bucks will save you a half an hour of frustration

Repair resulted in fully functioning EB832, cost was $7.99, with next day delivery. Hard to beat that. Part number is NOADPB12500. I understand Ebay has it cheaper, but I've not had much luck ordering from Ebay over the years.

Oh, I picked up a 1.5" tiger tail cuke over the weekend. See if he'll help me clean up the sand bed a bit.

Awesome! Nice job on the repair!

Zionas · May 20, 2024

Glad you got the repair done. Would you mind giving a list of your total fish stock right now? Thanks.

Greybeard · May 20, 2024

Zionas said:
Glad you got the repair done. Would you mind giving a list of your total fish stock right now? Thanks.

Fish stock? Sure...

Female LaMark's Angel
Female Spotbreast Angel
Tomini Tang
Scopus Tang
Blue Stripe Cleaner Wrasse
2x Orbic Cardinal fish
Matted Filefish (Biota)

I think that's it...

Zionas · May 20, 2024

Ahh what happened to your other Cardinals and did you get rid of the Foxface?

Greybeard · May 20, 2024

Zionas said:
Ahh what happened to your other Cardinals and did you get rid of the Foxface?

I've had many cards over the years. Great reef fishes. This tank, and my previous one, have had multiple re-boots, and several crashes over the years. I'm pretty sure that a big blue pistol shrimp I had was killing off my smaller fishes. Can't prove it, but the ochre striped cards disappeared while he was in residence.

The foxface I had belonged to a friend who had a tank spring a leak. Was getting too big for this tank anyway.

I'm probably going to have to rehome the scopus tang, eventually. He's probably 4", maybe a bit more, at this point, but they get big enough to be an issue in this shallow reef. I expect the other fishes will be fine, long term. The two angels will get pretty good size, but I think they'll be OK. The LaMark's is about 5" now, fat and healthy.

Greybeard · Jun 28, 2024

Bit of an update,

I neglected to clamp the 3d printed shelf that my Apex auto feeder sits on, on my lights... and it fell. Right through the screen top. Feeder is toast. Just ordered a new one, I'm going to switch to the Ehiem model. I'm less than impressed with Apex's quality lately.

Top was an Octo-Top... I emailed Matt, the Octo-top guy, to ask what size screen spline I should buy. He responded promptly, .125". Bought that, and a 6' length of 1/4" clear screen off of Amazon. A little cleaning... my wife Amy is better at getting screen spline in than I am

.

All good again. That Octo-top is 5 years old now. Needed a good cleaning, but it looks like new again. Great quality product. I highly recommend them.

Oh, and the booster pump for my RO/DI system quit on me. 9 years old, probably due. New one should be here today. (Later update: new unit is an Aquatec, from Amazon. Already installed. Seems to be a high quality kit, simple, well built. We'll see how it does long term.)

minus9 · Jun 28, 2024

Greybeard said:
Bit of an update,

I neglected to clamp the 3d printed shelf that my Apex auto feeder sits on, on my lights... and it fell. Right through the screen top. Feeder is toast. Just ordered a new one, I'm going to switch to the Ehiem model. I'm less than impressed with Apex's quality lately.

Top was an Octo-Top... I emailed Matt, the Octo-top guy, to ask what size screen spline I should buy. He responded promptly, .125". Bought that, and a 6' length of 1/4" clear screen off of Amazon. A little cleaning... my wife Amy is better at getting screen spline in than I am .

All good again. That Octo-top is 5 years old now. Needed a good cleaning, but it looks like new again. Great quality product. I highly recommend them.

Oh, and the booster pump for my RO/DI system quit on me. 9 years old, probably due. New one should be here today. (Later update: new unit is an Aquatec, from Amazon. Already installed. Seems to be a high quality kit, simple, well built. We'll see how it does long term.)

Hot tip. If you have a sump, put the auto feeder in your return section just above the intake of the pump (use a small powerhead on the opposite end if needed) and it will draw up the food, right into the display and it won't look ugly sitting on top of you lights/tank. All of my auto feeders are in the return section and I've never had an issue running them this way.
Btw, Matt is top notch and has awesome customer service and products!

Greybeard · Aug 28, 2024

Had the electricity blink this afternoon, out for about 5 minutes. Noted a half hour later than my tank didn't sound right. Quick inspection shows my Current USA EFlux 1900gph return pump, purchased 2017, isn't running. Powers up, starts pumping for about 10 seconds, and stops. Repeat cycle, never really gets started.

So...

I've got an old Skims pump from a long since retired skimmer, about 1500gph. Go to hook that up, need to pull the old skimmer output so I can attach to my return line... Crack. Outlet pipe sheared from the pump body. So much for that idea.

Call the only 'local' place, about an hour away, he doesn't have anything suitable.

Amazon, same pump that failed, no next day option... will be here Friday. Great. Flow through the sump... I've got a Sicce utility pump I use for water changes. Maybe 800gph. Drop the end of a hose in the tank, and I've got flow. Not much flow, but enough to keep the thing running for a couple of days. I hope.