HybridAZN's 180 gallon build

ParkerB · May 20, 2016

I love scorpion fish, I had a leaf fish identical to the one in the picture above a couple years ago. All time favorite fish.

hybridazn · May 20, 2016

ParkerB said:
I love scorpion fish, I had a leaf fish identical to the one in the picture above a couple years ago. All time favorite fish.

Yes it's def a cool fish, I'm happy with how that pic came out.

hybridazn · May 20, 2016

I picked up a new fish the other day and is currently in qt. A male Carpenter's flasher wrasse, since being added to qt he had hid in an ornament I have in there. I'm hoping he comes out in the next day or 2.

Any suggestions @evolved ?

evolved · May 20, 2016

Time and tranquility.

Dim lights and a room with low activity can help.

hybridazn · May 21, 2016

evolved said:
Time and tranquility.

Dim lights and a room with low activity can help.

Sounds like a plan haha. He can all the time he needs, I'm just getting impatient because I want to take a pic to show him off a little bit lol. My wife and daughter think he's dead every 5 minutes because he doesn't move out of the ornament

hybridazn · May 21, 2016

So much for the wrasse, sigh. Found him dead in qt this morning.

hybridazn · May 22, 2016

So as a refresher in case anyone forgot I am using my Geo's Reef bio pellet reactor to feed my skimmer. I finally decided to post the pics of the plumbing lol

Here is the reactor in sump and plumbed

Here is the skimmer with the plumbing running along the wall.

I'm in the process of replacing the one pump because it burned out last night while water testing it, I was going to replace said pump anyway because it had a small leak and we know that leaks with a external skimmer is a no no lol. I plan to have the pumps swapped out tonight.

hybridazn · May 23, 2016

Nothing worse than trying to take pics thru dirty glass lol, but my mandarin was front and center and I had to take advantage before she darted off somewhere else lol. So here she is, one of my favorite fish

There is a slight haze to the pics because of algae I didn't scrape off, but I think they still came out ok.

Here is a quick pic of my SC Orange Passion. It lost a lot of color with the last alk dump but its doing fine. The polyps are a nice orange but I couldn't get it in the pic. I'm blaming it on the dirty glass lol

hybridazn · May 23, 2016

So I took the skimmer offline and replaced the dead sedra 5000 with my backup I have laying around. Leak testing is currently going on, so far so good.

Since putting the CaRX online I have tested alk everyday until I got it where I wanted, which was 170-175ppm. I got it at 171ppm a little over a week ago. After I got it there I have not tested for over a week. I tested tonight and this was the result

It hasn't budged! I like the consistency

evolved · May 23, 2016

hybridazn said:
So much for the wrasse, sigh. Found him dead in qt this morning.

Sorry to hear

bknapp · May 23, 2016

What media are you using in your calcium reactor and which brand of bio pellets?

hybridazn · May 23, 2016

evolved said:
Sorry to hear

Yea it was a def bummer, he was a beautiful specimen too. I was excited, back to the drawing board I suppose.

bknapp said:
What media are you using in your calcium reactor and which brand of bio pellets?

TLF reborn and vertex bio pellets.

turbo21 · May 23, 2016

sad to hear about the wrasse and the skimmer pump. Been dying to see that beast running

hybridazn · May 23, 2016

turbo21 said:
sad to hear about the wrasse and the skimmer pump. Been dying to see that beast running

The skimmer will be online in about 30 minutes lol. I leak tested last night and all was well but I was too chicken to let it run overnight lol.

hybridazn · May 23, 2016

Skimmer is online!bits already starting to pull out gunk

This thing makes A LOT of foam, I'm digging it. Although I have a feeling the other sedra pump is not long for this world. I went to check the skimmer an hour ago and noticed that the sedra was off. I put my hand on it and it was a little warm but nothing out of the ordinary. I thought, "great I better go order a new pump" and then it kicked back on and is still running. Could it have overheated and shut down? If so why would it just kick back on itself? I'm guessing that it could be that Sedra's just aren't good external pumps.

Here is a quick FTS I took with my phone