Mike and Terry's 300g Reef
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Pumbooris
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This is really cool! I may have to give this a try. A couple questions....
Where do you buy the media from? Medical supply store? Did you have to upgrade the air intake from your skimmer to fit onto the reactor?
Do you just fill the tlf reactor to the top or is there a certain amount that needs to be added for your tank volume?
Where do you buy the media from? Medical supply store? Did you have to upgrade the air intake from your skimmer to fit onto the reactor?
Do you just fill the tlf reactor to the top or is there a certain amount that needs to be added for your tank volume?
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I've been running one myself for 6 months or so; very happy with the results. I find the media is still effective even after it's color change happens; I change it when the pH lows warrant it.
question about the geo818 and your kalk reactor with this c02 scrubber... how are you dosing the kalk now if not via top off? How did you get a scare in november with the kalk? are you sill dosing the kalk in conjunction with the c02 scrubber? I too have a GEO 818 and it is driving my tanks PH down to 7.5 and i am barely able to keep up with the demand. i am seriously considering kalk but am curious what the c02 scrubbers numbers are including cost for a 5 gallon jug. thanks for the reply ahead of time!!
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
Glad to have you on board!:bigsmile:
We purchased our soda lime from Airgas. We did need an adapter (TLF makes one) for the intake on our Deltec skimmer, but the SRO did not require one. We fill the reactor to the top.
Hmmm... We definitely notice the pH drop once all of the media in the reactor changes color.
That's a lot of questions at once, LOL.
I'll start with the kalk scare. Without going into too much detail, we had a middle of the night incident where our Deltec skimmer mysteriously decided to flood. This would not have been a real problem if the ball valve for the drain line on the skimmer cup had NOT been left open. The drain line was connected to a 5g bucket next to our 2nd sump. Needless to say, the skimmer dumped 70g of water onto the garage floor and the ATO kicked in and proceeded to pump several days worth of kalk into our system.
When we discovered the problem late the next morning, our salinity had dropped to 1.018 and the ph was 9.27. We were fortunate to have the ability to intervene quickly to contain and replace a large portion of the bad water. In the end, we lost 1 small SPS colony and lost a good portion of 2 larger colonies.
After that incident, we separated our kalk dosing from our ATO using a separate pump attached to our GEO Kalk reactor that is controlled by our APEX. We dose kalk 4x/hour from 10:00 PM to 4
M when our MH's come on.Before adding the CO2 scrubbers, our pH range was between 7.70 and 7.95 (sometimes dropping down into the upper 7.6 range). Since adding the scrubbers, the pH range is between 7.95 and 8.25.
We are using TLF Reborn which is a coarser media in the GEO 818. The pH in the Ca reactor is controlled by our Apex and avg's 6.45.
We purchased our soda lime from Airgas locally for $80. If you don't have an Airgas location near you, I've seen it available online for as low as $89 thru Wayfair w/no shipping charges.
-Terry :bigsmile:
Shadow1
Community Member
This thread and the tenacity you guys have shown is what got my wife and I to move up to our current 300 DD. I don't believe ours will ever get to the point yours is but 1/2 and I will be a happy man.
Truly this system is an inspiration. Thanks for posting about it.
Truly this system is an inspiration. Thanks for posting about it.
Glad to have you on board!:bigsmile:
We purchased our soda lime from Airgas. We did need an adapter (TLF makes one) for the intake on our Deltec skimmer, but the SRO did not require one. We fill the reactor to the top.
Hmmm... We definitely notice the pH drop once all of the media in the reactor changes color.
That's a lot of questions at once, LOL.
I'll start with the kalk scare. Without going into too much detail, we had a middle of the night incident where our Deltec skimmer mysteriously decided to flood. This would not have been a real problem if the ball valve for the drain line on the skimmer cup had NOT been left open. The drain line was connected to a 5g bucket next to our 2nd sump. Needless to say, the skimmer dumped 70g of water onto the garage floor and the ATO kicked in and proceeded to pump several days worth of kalk into our system.
When we discovered the problem late the next morning, our salinity had dropped to 1.018 and the ph was 9.27. We were fortunate to have the ability to intervene quickly to contain and replace a large portion of the bad water. In the end, we lost 1 small SPS colony and lost a good portion of 2 larger colonies.
After that incident, we separated our kalk dosing from our ATO using a separate pump attached to our GEO Kalk reactor that is controlled by our APEX. We dose kalk 4x/hour from 10:00 PM to 4
Before adding the CO2 scrubbers, our pH range was between 7.70 and 7.95 (sometimes dropping down into the upper 7.6 range). Since adding the scrubbers, the pH range is between 7.95 and 8.25.
We are using TLF Reborn which is a coarser media in the GEO 818. The pH in the Ca reactor is controlled by our Apex and avg's 6.45.
We purchased our soda lime from Airgas locally for $80. If you don't have an Airgas location near you, I've seen it available online for as low as $89 thru Wayfair w/no shipping charges.
-Terry :bigsmile:
Thanks for the reply. The reasoning behind the questions is due to wanting to build a fish room system similar to y'all's. it is absolutely amazing and in turn you can see it in your tank.
Do you think you could have ran your ATO system through your apex on a PH controller aspect so that I the ph ever got to say 8.4 it would automatically turn off? Just a thought because that is what I am thinking about doing with my reef keeper. Do you foresee any kind of failure if you were to set it up that way? What are the advantages of the coarse media? Thanks again for the the replies!!
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
Your welcome Kyle and thank you so much for the compliment! :bigsmile:
Yes, we could have done that and it certainly would have mitigated the impact on our system. :doh:
After the kalk scare, when we separated kalk dosing from our ATO, we added code on the Apex to monitor the pH and shutoff the kalk pump if the pH hits 8.4.
As far as Ca reactor media goes, it's really a personal choice. Typically, less course media tends to dissolve at a higher pH and can turn to "mush" more easily than the courser media.
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
Thank You so much! Sharing our journey(the high's and the lows) is our way of giving back for all of the help and support we've received from fellow hobbyists and friends over the years.
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
A tease of what's coming...
A. kimbeensis
A. kimbeensis
swannyson7
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Stunning as always!
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
Thank You, Scott! :bigsmile:
Genesis Corals
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Beautiful photos. You might have answered this prior, but with your photos I tend to miss the text because of how amazing they are, anyway are you a fan of the GEO818? How many gallons do you think it could handle for a heavily stocked tank? I was looking into getting one this coming year and thought I would ask. Thanks.
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
Thank you for the compliment! The GEO 818 is built like a tank and we've been very happy with it. Our total water volume is about 450 gallons with a number of good sized SPS colonies in our DT as well as in our frag tank and our consumption is pretty high. The 818 holds 24lbs of media and lasts about 6 months for us.
The 818 should work fine in a larger system and at most, the media may need to be replaced more often.
hth
Genesis Corals
Genesis 1:21
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
I'm with Chris
We'll try to post up some pics tonight... :bigsmile:
Our Tomentosus Filefish does not bother our chalices, blastomussa or favia colonies that are in our DT. He has also been kept with acanthastrea (lordhowensis and echinata) and would only pick at them if they were damaged already. He will nip/eat lobos (or at least the bright orange ones that we had), LOL.
We would never house him with duncans, bubble corals, long/short tentacled plate corals or elegance corals. We've had no experience with other fleshy brain corals or fungia. We routinely move him to our frag tank to keep aiptasia at bay and he has never bothered any of the RBTA's in that tank, but the lone resident clown tends to claim them all (there are at least for large ones in there right now) as his/hers. Not sure how the filefish would do with them if the clown wasn't in the tank.
He will also devour z's and p's - the only exception we've had is the paly colony that our Ocellaris Clownifish pair has claimed as their home. Neither he nor our Regal Angel would dare to nip a polyp with those two on guard, LOL. :xd:
-M&T
