Ken's 215G Build

kenchilada · Nov 16, 2020

Live rock is looking a lot better than a few weeks ago.

kenchilada · Nov 17, 2020

Quarantine equipment coming. That stuff ended up being like $300-400 total.

Aquascape time soon. I'm trying to figure out if I want to try gluing rock together since my rock is wet. Hmm....

Gablami · Nov 17, 2020

Nyos reef cement is the best for wet rock. It sets the fastest so you can get it back into the water with short turnaround.

kenchilada · Nov 18, 2020

Gablami said:
Nyos reef cement is the best for wet rock. It sets the fastest so you can get it back into the water with short turnaround.

Thanks I hadn’t looked into that one much. I guess I’ll try pulling rock out to experiment and get ideas, take pictures, and then try to piece it together. Sounds tough. Think I’ll order some Marco foundation rock to build off of.

Steph72 · Nov 20, 2020

The stand is absolutely beautiful! I wish I had that level of skill with detail. My stand is going to be a bit more “rustic”. Lol I was reading through and we’ve made some of the same choices on equipment... ATI Sunpower lighting, Synergy Reef sump, and planet aquarium. Great minds think alike

Ithink your wife will fall in love with the big tank...after your backs recover from moving that stand. Lol I can’t wait to see how it looks all set up!

kenchilada · Nov 20, 2020

Steph72 said:
The stand is absolutely beautiful! I wish I had that level of skill with detail. My stand is going to be a bit more “rustic”. Lol I was reading through and we’ve made some of the same choices on equipment... ATI Sunpower lighting, Synergy Reef sump, and planet aquarium. Great minds think alike Ithink your wife will fall in love with the big tank...after your backs recover from moving that stand. Lol I can’t wait to see how it looks all set up!

Wow thanks for the kind words. Yeah that sounds like a good equipment list to me.

Planet has been really easy to work with by the way. When I picked the tank up they showed me all the seams and loaded it into my truck and even strapped it to the bed for me.

kenchilada · Nov 20, 2020

Finally here! It looks really weird without overflow boxes. I have two guys coming to help move it into the house tomorrow, and still trying to line up one more guy.

Right now I’m drilling holes in my wall to run electrical and plumbing, and still have to shim the stand in the morning. I’m going to have a drain line in the wall for water changes and return lines for fresh saltwater and RODI.

kenchilada · Nov 21, 2020

fluidimagery · Nov 22, 2020

Looks great! The stand is amazing. Nice work.

kenchilada · Nov 24, 2020

I've heard rumors of how bad the Apex salinity probe can be, but wow...

Gablami · Nov 24, 2020

kenchilada said:
I've heard rumors of how bad the Apex salinity probe can be, but wow...

Oh yeah, I don't use it for anything. I have the probe, and it's in my tank, but I haven't calibrated it or really pay it any attention. If it swings wildly, I might check my salinity when I get around to it...maybe.

kenchilada · Nov 25, 2020

Bought an Alkatronic today. Won’t need it for a while but 10% off is pretty significant on a $900 toy so figured I’d get it now.

kenchilada · Nov 26, 2020

I’ve been playing around with my Apex. I’m really not impressed... it feels like cheap junk and I’m pretty sure the internal components ARE cheap junk. I might sell it and go a different route.

Kershaw · Nov 26, 2020

kenchilada said:
I’ve been playing around with my Apex. I’m really not impressed... it feels like cheap junk and I’m pretty sure the internal components ARE cheap junk. I might sell it and go a different route.

I am on the fence right now about what direction to go. Please provide as much detail as you can about what you don’t like about the apex and what you decide to go with.
the only thing leaning me into apex is my old apex jr was perfect and being color blind the trident would be awesome

kenchilada · Nov 27, 2020

Kershaw said:
I am on the fence right now about what direction to go. Please provide as much detail as you can about what you don’t like about the apex and what you decide to go with.
the only thing leaning me into apex is my old apex jr was perfect and being color blind the trident would be awesome

I don’t like how terrible the conductivity probe is. Mostly I just think the system is way overpriced for the quality. Most of the addon accessories have such bad reviews I won’t even bother with them. Flow monitors, PAR monitors, auto feeders, even the EB832 all have pretty mixed reviews and they’re basically novelty items. The app is pretty clunky and painful too. They should hire a UX designer.

I will probably switch to GHL controller with a Mastertronic at some point.

kenchilada · Nov 27, 2020

I figured out why my salinity readings were wrong. I had a heater cord draped over the conductivity probe wire and it pushed the wire down too close to the ph/orp probe wires. If I lifted the conductivity probe wire up 6” the readings went back to normal.

Why has Neptune not added some kind of shielding to this probe? I have zero faith in it, what a joke.

Here’s what happened....

Kershaw · Nov 27, 2020

kenchilada said:
I don’t like how terrible the conductivity probe is. Mostly I just think the system is way overpriced for the quality. Most of the addon accessories have such bad reviews I won’t even bother with them. Flow monitors, PAR monitors, auto feeders, even the EB832 all have pretty mixed reviews and they’re basically novelty items. The app is pretty clunky and painful too. They should hire a UX designer.

I will probably switch to GHL controller with a Mastertronic at some point.

Have you considered the hydros?

kenchilada · Nov 27, 2020

Kershaw said:
Have you considered the hydros?

Yes, definitely keeping an eye on it. My office is down the street from CoralVue. I’m waiting on more reviews before I’ll consider getting one though.

Manny’s Reef · Nov 28, 2020

kenchilada said:
I’m really not sure. Even crazy high ammonia in the boxes would not kill the ammonia-oxidizing bacteria.

I did lots of homework before ordering this and there are plenty of reports of people having zero cycle with wet-shipped rock. Just bad luck? Or maybe this is typical?

wouldn't they die off contribute to the ammonia? That wouldn't kind of make sense to me that you are seeing a small ammonia spike. Not totally sure though. Also, if this has already been answered in a post, forgive me. I'm barely on page 5 of your thread. Been reading it for the last 70 minutes.

kenchilada · Nov 28, 2020

Jmandel87 said:
wouldn't they die off contribute to the ammonia? That wouldn't kind of make sense to me that you are seeing a small ammonia spike. Not totally sure though. Also, if this has already been answered in a post, forgive me. I'm barely on page 5 of your thread. Been reading it for the last 70 minutes.

Yeh I had huge die off and off the chart ammonia. Full cycle.

Still no idea what happened but the rock looks good now and I still see a few feather duster worms and even some caulerpa sprouting.