Greybeard's Wide, Shallow Peninsula

tripdad · Dec 4, 2019

Following along, very interested in your take(read that as a seasoned old school reefer) on the Zeo system. I've never run it but have really appreciated the tanks of some who have. Best of luck!

Greybeard · Dec 5, 2019

tripdad said:
Following along, very interested in your take(read that as a seasoned old school reefer) on the Zeo system. I've never run it but have really appreciated the tanks of some who have. Best of luck!

Thanks

KZ has been around for a long time, but the company hasn't ever seemed very interested in customers that can't speak German. I've long been amazed by some of the KZ tanks I've seen. When a reboot seemed in order, trying something different just seemed appropriate.

Oh... last night, I got this set up

Yeah, numbers are low, but I haven't started dosing yet... no corals, no need

Brian Kennedy · Dec 5, 2019

Greybeard said:
Obligatory kid in the tank photo... Staring my grandson Parker

Did you quarantine him before putting him in thank?

Greybeard · Dec 5, 2019

So... Yesterday, I'm messing with my Trident, and note that there's a bit of salt creep on the back side of one of my plumbing unions, the one that handles the 'trickle' overflow. Grabbed my big slip joint pliers, and gave it a quarter turn. Seemed ok.

Tonight, I noticed that the durned thing is dripping. Give it another quarter turn...

Pop.

Bulkhead in the bottom of my overflow box cracked.

Power down the pump, pull the bulkhead, start a frantic search YES! I have a brand new 1" bulkhead! Aaaannnddd... no 1" pipe. Really? Search the stand, storage area, garage... out to the barn, and found a 4' long stick of 1" Sch40 pipe, complete with mud dobber's nests in it

Bit of scrubbing, bit of fitting... all fixed.

Gawd, that could have been a disaster

cmaxwell39 · Dec 5, 2019

Glad you had the stuff on hand to fix it. I tend to never return my extra PVC fittings/pipe at the end of projects. Just comes in too handy at times.

Greybeard · Dec 11, 2019

So... KZ system startup proceeding... I did a worksheet to keep track. Yeah, it's complicated enough that I thought it necessary, or, depending on how you look at it, my memory is that bad

Wanted a shelf for the little blue bottles, so I stuck one together. Magnetic whiteboard... yeah, this is working.

Rebooted sump closet: Changed sliding doors to bifolds, much more room to get in there, and the humidity issue is fixed. Smaller sump. Reduced complexity. So far, I'm happy with it. No, it's not a showplace, but it's easy to maintain, without having to work from my knees.

Tank is coming along. Nitrates came up to 80+ by the end of Dr Tims bio filter process. Weekly 10% changes and the KZ startup has brought that down to a much more reasonable 20ppm or so.

Still no corals. I'm adjusting Calc/Alk and Mag to my intended ranges, slowly, using the DOS pump and Trident. Finally calibrated the Trident earlier this week. Man, that thing is cool

You can see where I calibrated... steady rise in Alk, it was always low. I've been bringing Calc up some since calibration. Haven't dosed Mag yet, but I will. Verified Calc and Alk with my Hanna Alk and Red Sea Calc tests. Close enough for me.

Oh... tank shot. As I said, no corals yet, but the 'clean' look of the bare bottom system with minimal rock is starting to grow on me

tripdad · Dec 11, 2019

Which Zeolite reactor are you going with? Looks good so far!

Greybeard · Dec 11, 2019

tripdad said:
Which Zeolite reactor are you going with? Looks good so far!

Skimz ZR157 automatic. No 'pumping' the rocks, over powered DC pump rinses the mulm clean twice a day. Seems to work well... I bought the bigger unit, I'm kinda on the line between them, and didn't want to buy undersized. Probably should have gone with the small one... oh well.

tripdad · Dec 30, 2019

Any update on the tank? How are you liking the Zeovit system so far? Hope all is well.

Greybeard · Jan 2, 2020

tripdad said:
Any update on the tank? How are you liking the Zeovit system so far? Hope all is well.

Hi

Sorry, was taking a bit of time away from keyboards over the holidays.

Tank is, well, about as good as I could expect, at a little more than two months in.

I've got a dozen SPS corals of various types. While I can't claim that any of them are amazing, all of them are holding on... I've not had anything bleach yet. My fishes seem to be happy. Still too early in the process to really know anything for sure.

Zeovit makes for an odd startup. Nitrates are fairly stable at 3 or 4 PPM. Phosphate at .2 or so. I've not experienced ANY algae growth in this tank so far, no green film on the glass, nothing. I'm feeding algae sheets pretty heavily to give my graizing fishes something to do. I have to clean a white film every few days, bacteria of some sort. I'm basically finished with the 'new tank startup' portion of the Zeovit dosing guide now, switching over to maintenance dosing. I will say this, it's not for people trying to keep a reef on a minimal budget... seems I'm buying a little blue bottle of something every time I turn around, and they're not cheap.

I guess I kinda like the system... so far. It's a bit pricey, but not too bad. It requires that you spend a few minutes each day really looking at your tank, not really a bad thing, IMHO. Ask me again in a year

Oh, a bit on the Trident. I'm hearing bad things, inaccurate, problematic, etc... I'm not experiencing any of that. As far as I'm concerned, it's been functioning as expected. I've about used up the first container of Alk testing reagent, right on schedule. Have been lucky enough to find enough reagent packs to keep me going for a while. I've manually tested Alk, Calc, and Mag several times, just to compare to the trends that the Trident creates. Testing is usually a bit off from what Trident says, but not enough to make much of a difference. It's the trends you want to see, not necessarily the actual values, but how they change over time.

My system has gotten pretty stable at 9.5 Alk, 460 Calc, and 1260 Mag. Seems reasonable to me.

CoralWealth · Jan 2, 2020

following along

tripdad · Jan 2, 2020

Thanks for the reply. I am strongly considering this for a new tank, acro dominate, this year. The water is in and mixing so guess I have to decide soon, lol. Following along.

najer · Jan 2, 2020

Greybeard said:
So... KZ system startup proceeding... I did a worksheet to keep track. Yeah, it's complicated enough that I thought it necessary, or, depending on how you look at it, my memory is that bad

Wanted a shelf for the little blue bottles, so I stuck one together. Magnetic whiteboard... yeah, this is working.

Rebooted sump closet: Changed sliding doors to bifolds, much more room to get in there, and the humidity issue is fixed. Smaller sump. Reduced complexity. So far, I'm happy with it. No, it's not a showplace, but it's easy to maintain, without having to work from my knees.

Tank is coming along. Nitrates came up to 80+ by the end of Dr Tims bio filter process. Weekly 10% changes and the KZ startup has brought that down to a much more reasonable 20ppm or so.

Still no corals. I'm adjusting Calc/Alk and Mag to my intended ranges, slowly, using the DOS pump and Trident. Finally calibrated the Trident earlier this week. Man, that thing is cool

You can see where I calibrated... steady rise in Alk, it was always low. I've been bringing Calc up some since calibration. Haven't dosed Mag yet, but I will. Verified Calc and Alk with my Hanna Alk and Red Sea Calc tests. Close enough for me.

Oh... tank shot. As I said, no corals yet, but the 'clean' look of the bare bottom system with minimal rock is starting to grow on me

@Katrina71 like this?!

Greybeard · Jan 2, 2020

tripdad said:
Thanks for the reply. I am strongly considering this for a new tank, acro dominate, this year. The water is in and mixing so guess I have to decide soon, lol. Following along.

Zeovit has their own forum... it's a bit slow, but you can get responses from long time users. Not sure how helpful it's been, really, but it's there, if you get in trouble.

Their guide does a fair job of explaining what the various products do, and how to get started using them. Really, you need the rocks in a reactor, carbon in a bag, zeobak, zeostart, and zeofood. BRS's starter kit, basically, is all I'm using, though I've started buying larger bottles.

I'm still getting a feel for things. It's a complex system, you've got to arrive at a balance that works for your tank. I'm still adjusting as I see things change.

I did a full Dr. Tim's 'One and Only' start up, then added fish, then started the Zeovit startup. Slow, perhaps, but I knew my fishes would be safe, and the Dr. Tims doesn't seem to have affected the Zeo startup process. Also, I'm bare bottom, which is not recommended by the Zeo folks, but with my current turnover rates, sand really becomes problematic. I added a big block of MarinePure to the sump. Seems to be working fine.

Picked up this 4" wild colony from Seascape Studio in St. Louis the other day. Sure hoping he stays happy

cmaxwell39 · Jan 2, 2020

Sounds like you are having some success with the zeo system. That is good. Some of the nicest SPS tanks that I have seen have run that or a similar system.

The automatic reactor sounds very nice. How are you liking it so far??

Greybeard · Jan 3, 2020

cmaxwell39 said:
The automatic reactor sounds very nice. How are you liking it so far??

Skimz 157 reactor... it's a bit large... holds up to 3l of zeo media, I need a liter and a half. Their smaller model doesn't hold quite enough. Has a bit of a waterfall noise... not bad, but you can hear it. Tube in tube design, zeo media is in center tube, water flows up, down outside tube. Decent design, really. I thought, when I was looking at it, that you could change the media pretty easily, remove the outside tube, pull the inside tube in tact, change the media, put it back together. Unfortunately, there are a half dozen finger screws holding the inside tube at the bottom. You've really got to turn the reactor pump off, and pull the body out of the sump to change media. Could have been a better design... I may alter it, in time.

The auto cleaning function just works. The pump is way oversized, twice a day (or once an hour, if you want) it pulses full power for a few minutes. Works great to clean the mulm off of the zeo media.

I'd like to measure the flow rate, but that's rather difficult, since it drains out the bottom of the body. I suspect the flow rate is about right, but it's always nice to verify.

One less daily task.

Greybeard · Jan 7, 2020

Quick update on the Neptune Trident:

Had to change out reagent for Alk today. No email alarm?? I knew it was going to be empty... Fusion let me know upon logging in. Task for Changing Reagent A, took a minute or so, emptied out 1/2 gallon or so of purple waste, as well. No issues.

Reagent bottle had less than a half inch of liquid left in it. Task says not to dump this into the new bottle, contamination issues.

Once again, worked as I expected, no issues with the thing so far. I know, others are not having my luck with it, but so far, I'm happy as I can be with it.

Greybeard · Jan 9, 2020

So... two months into this Zeovit thing.

Tonight's weekly tests: Nitrate (Nyos) 5ppm. Phosphate (Hanna ULR) 0.11

Add in the Trident, running my DOS to hold values I've set...

Having this level of control over water quality and nutrient levels is a new thing for me.. I'm _really_ liking it.

Technology is a wonderful thing