Greybeard's Wide, Shallow Peninsula

Greybeard · Jul 28, 2017

TylerMoralez said:
VERY nice! Great build. Can't wait to see those bookshelves in. Such a brilliant idea!

Now all you need is a nice sitting chair next to it so you can observe [emoji12]

Thanks. Nicely fills the area, I think. My wife was less than excited about cutting a hole in the wall, but I did it with minimal impact. I've got to replace a few bits of baseboard, and it'll look OK for a while. The shelves are going to have to wait until my workshop isn't quite so darned hot. An old fat guy like me can't work in this weather.

I'll concentrate on getting a good start on the fish and corals I want, for now. No rush.

How 'bout a half dozen oak bar stools

Eventually, I want to put a small fridge in the corner, and the two bookshelves on the side towards the wall will likely be filled with liquor bottles and glassware. This thing is going to double as a bar ;Drool

Greybeard · Jul 31, 2017

It's been a good weekend

Added a small scopas tang, small orange spot rabbitfish... a few misc. snails and hermits, handful of C. Mexicana to the fuge, a golf ball sized Meteor Shower Cyphastrea, an orange Montipora digitata frag, and one each green, red, and purple Montipora capricornis frags.

Nice to see stuff going into the tank, finally

Janci · Jul 31, 2017

Greybeard said:
It's been a good weekend

Added a small scopas tang, small orange spot rabbitfish... a few misc. snails and hermits, handful of C. Mexicana to the fuge, a golf ball sized Meteor Shower Cyphastrea, an orange Montipora digitata frag, and one each green, red, and purple Montipora capricornis frags.

Nice to see stuff going into the tank, finally

Nice progress.
Did you add some kind of speed up bottle (One-and-only for example) to get more bacteria up the new rock?
Algae must be settling in by now.

Greybeard · Jul 31, 2017

Janci said:
Nice progress.
Did you add some kind of speed up bottle (One-and-only for example) to get more bacteria up the new rock?
Algae must be settling in by now.

Yes. 1st time I've ever tried any of these 'fast cycle' products. Red Sea's 'Reef Mature' kit. Of course, with a 140g tank, I had to buy 3 of the kits... wasn't cheap, but I must say, I'm impressed with the results.

By day 5, ammonia was topping out. By day 10 Ammonia was 0, nitrite rising rapidly. I missed a few days testing, but by day 18, Ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 20, and FALLING. I have _not_ done a water change yet, nitrate at 10, and still falling. I'm backing off the NoPox dosing now, a few ML less each day, I hope to have it stopped by Friday. Diatom bloom started about day 12, transitioned to fine green hair about day 18.

I added the scopas tang, rabbitfish, and snails yesterday, they went right to work on the hair. I shut my lights off for the day today (day 22, if that makes sense), just to get a head start in riding the initial algae stages. I'll be adding GFO and GAC reactor (BRS 2 stage) in the next couple of weeks.

The intention is to transition to Triton Core7 dosing next weekend. Right now, I'm dosing RO/DI water into a beaker, at 10ml/day over all 4 dosing pump heads. Want to see how far I can trust the CoralBox doser I bought. So far so good, right at 40ml/day in the beaker.

40lbs or so of nice mature rock from my old tank, 60lbs of dry base rock, 4 liters of Matrix in the refugeum area, and 80lbs of 'special grade' dry reef sand... should be plenty of bio filter area, even with the rather minimalist rockwork.

Vertex skimmer is pulling MUD. I've got to clean the collection cup daily. Water clarity is _excellent_. So far, so good!

Janci · Jul 31, 2017

Sounds like right on track.
I had not heard about the Red Sea Reef Mature kit. Must be similar to all the other live bacteria available.
The Coralbox doser seems like a good choice. I find my GHL off by close to 50ml on 2000ml dosed. Luckily it is easy adjusted.

kresDFW · Aug 2, 2017

Great build and I love the dimensions of the tank!

Greybeard · Aug 2, 2017

kresDFW said:
Great build and I love the dimensions of the tank!

So do I

I've always loved low and wide. Many years ago, I came across a Zeroedge type tank, 30x30x12, very lightly aquascaped, containing mostly Tridacna clams and a few fairly mature LPS corals. Small DE halide pendant, hung several feet over the tank. A handful of pipefish... that's about it. Gorgeous tank. Every since then, I've been as interested in looking down on a reef, as looking through the glass.

I even thought at one point about doing a reef pond... an oval stock tank, in the 300 gallon range, sitting on the floor. Filtration above, rather than below, the tank... I've seen some photos of similar systems people have built, mostly for large angelfish and such. Love the look.

Greybeard · Aug 8, 2017

Added a BRS dual GFO/Carbon reactor last night, and received my Triton ICP test kit. Figured I'd let the GFO/Carbon run for a couple of days before I collect the sample for Triton.

Started dosing Core7 last Saturday, in small amounts. Dkh at 7.2 and holding steady.

C. Mexicana seems to be doing well in the refugeum so far. I should be getting a Chaetomorpha donation this Sunday.

Montipora frags from a friend added a couple of weeks ago, one green, one red, and one orange cap, one bright orange digi. All glued in and seemingly doing well. I had a couple gorgonians from my old system that seem to be liking things so far, as well.

Initial round of brown, then green algae on the sand and rocks is nearly all gone.

truepercs · Aug 10, 2017

Nice build!

justingraham · Aug 10, 2017

Mr gray beard I would recomend waiting two months to send in the triton kit at least that was what Joe told me from unique corals. This way there is time to see what is built up. Unless of course u want to know what u started out with

Greybeard · Aug 10, 2017

justingraham said:
Mr gray beard I would recomend waiting two months to send in the triton kit at least that was what Joe told me from unique corals. This way there is time to see what is built up. Unless of course u want to know what u started out with

That's sort of the idea... document the starting point. It's only money, right? I'll send one off probably every couple of months for the first year or so, and see where I'm at.

justingraham · Aug 10, 2017

Greybeard said:
That's sort of the idea... document the starting point. It's only money, right? I'll send one off probably every couple of months for the first year or so, and see where I'm at.

I'm like 7 months in only did one test. Which overall was pretty good. I bought the three pack so I have two left. I plan on doing it every six months then every year.

Janci · Aug 10, 2017

justingraham said:
I'm like 7 months in only did one test. Which overall was pretty good. I bought the three pack so I have two left. I plan on doing it every six months then every year.

Is Triton recommending a certain period for sending water samples? Monthly, 2, 3, 6... months?
I was reading today about the ATI Elements which do a similar job as Triton. It looks a lot as DSR, but with the difference that ATI offers the ICP testing with 43 results.

justingraham · Aug 10, 2017

Janci said:
Is Triton recommending a certain period for sending water samples? Monthly, 2, 3, 6... months?
I was reading today about the ATI Elements which do a similar job as Triton. It looks a lot as DSR, but with the difference that ATI offers the ICP testing with 43 results.

They don't have a schedule in fact they only recomend you do themnot that u HAVE to like everyone thinks I think six months if a good limit or if u think something is off u can send one

Greybeard · Aug 10, 2017

IMHO, the best indicator of the health of your reef is looking at your reef. The animals contained therein will let you know when things aren't right.

I keep a close eye on Temp and pH, probes, and alarms that let me know if it varies on my controller.

I test Alk (Hanna checker), Calcium (Salifert), Nitrate (Salifert), Phosphate (Nyos) weekly. Right now, since I'm dialing in Core7 dosing amounts, I'm checking Alk daily, but that'll end soon.

Aside from those, I only test as needed. I figure with the Triton testing, I'll probably do every 2 months for a while, get a good trend going as my reef builds, and then back off. Twice a year is probably a good target for me, after the first year.

I've been looking at the ATI program. I'm going to stick with Triton for now, but I've got a friend that was looking to switch his fairly mature tank to Triton, I'm going to talk to him about switching to ATI instead... for comparison purposes. We'll see.

justingraham · Aug 10, 2017

I looked into ati and I was sold but when I was setting my tank up I would have had to order from Germany

I test alk daily at 10:10 pm and all the other stuff when I feel like it for the most part besides corals that shipped bad I have had no losses my one monti is starting to loose color so going to test today. I personally think two months is a little over kill ESP since u won't be stocking it to its max right away and that's when I would want to find the trends in what's being consumed but ur tank I'm sure will look great so good luck

How's the doser working for you?

Greybeard · Aug 10, 2017

justingraham said:
How's the doser working for you?

Fine. Dosing very low quantities at the moment, of course. Before I started actually dosing, I filled a reservoir with a known quantity of RO water, and dosed 10ml/day split into 2x 5ml doses on each pump head for 5 days, measuring the used quantity each day. 40ml per day, plus or minus less than 1ml. Total for the week was 39.5ml. Accurate enough for my purposes, anyway.

The app based control and calibration is OK. Easy enough to use, but not as 'feature rich' as some of the higher end units. That's OK, it does what I need it to do.

Can't connect it to my home wifi network... I'm running an open network, no password required, and it won't allow me to connect it without a password. Not that big of a deal, I just have to connect my phone to it's wifi net to use it... not like it's an every day thing.

Retains it's configuration after a power outage properly, which was a big problem with my old cheap Chinese doser.