8/25/2016 - Day 109 - Sump Work (Again)
I think I spend more time looking under my tank than looking in it. I've not clocked either yet, but it sure feels like that lately... Still; given that we've got a new baby in the house and a nigh 2yr old who knows words like, "both", "one minute", and - of course - "no", I feel lucky to be able to give the tank any attention beyond feeding and ensuring that stuff ain't crashing.
First upgrade worth mentioning:
Vectra L1 return pump. Boo-ya. Dat's the flow I've been looking for!
I splurged (ha!) and got some of the silicone tubing as well. I've no idea if it made the difference or not, but BOY is that pump silent. So quite, in fact, that I'm looking into how I can remove the skimmer pump (Curve 7) and just plumb the skimmer into my manifold. If I can do that, then I should be able to watch movies in the living room again without having to turn up the volume till it's too high... It's a small desire, in truth; I don't watch many movies these days, despite having a 12ft projector screen and 9.1 surround to enjoy... :-\
On the topic of movie watching and such; the purchase of an Apex has been put on hold. The wife is spending more time than normal sitting in the living room with the two kids (not surprising, really). And to keep the 2yr old entertained while feeding the baby, she sometimes has to resort to shows. The theater setup is nice, but not really something you can turn on easily (the screen drops out of the ceiling and such - which the kiddo loves to play with...). So we picked up a TV for the room - which sucked up the budget that was earmarked for the Apex. Ah well; happy wife, happy life. Knowing that the Apex is now a "someday", I also picked up a second Jebao dosing pump for my 2-part+mag (the BRS ones I've got now are nice, but I can't find a good timer to control them, so I've been plugging them in manually - which defeats the purpose, eh?) and ordered an "emergency shut-off" temp sensor (will run my heaters through it and set it to shut off a few degrees higher than my heaters are set at). That should cover the critical things that I wanted the Apex for (I've got the Seneye for emergency notification and basic monitoring already).
Also in the sump area, I've got Fuge 2.0 installed and running:
This one works MUCH better - that ball of chaeto is constantly spinning and the silver bottom has evened out the light a bit more. The main difference is that the drain is at the bottom instead of the top - which really helped increase the possible flow rate. It still needs tweaking, however; I need to lower the drain's entry point so that it starts to syphon sooner. As it is, when the pump kicks back on from feed mode, the fuge overflows (into the sump via the spill-over) until the drain can equalize. Easy fix there; I just need to replace the interior bulkhead (which is just a 1" threaded-slip converter) to be the bulkhead into a slip-threaded corner, and then screw the filter directly into that - lowering it about 2-3 inches. Should be enough to do the trick.
The "bounce wall" (for lack of a better term...) is currently not glued in place - thus the egg-crate holding it in place, so that's something I'll do when I swap the bulkhead. I'm glad I didn't glue it, because I started it pretty much directly vertical. Yet once I got it all running, I found that putting it at the angle pictured (or thereabouts) really helped to get the chaeto spinning better. The sponge at the top was initially there just to catch any small pieces of chaeto from the initial shipment, but I think I'll leave it in there as it seems to have become a home to some of the wildlife that I got as well. Note that the lone rock that's in there had no particular purpose, but it seems to make the tiny little snails happy, so I'll just leave it there.
I'm thinking that the "drain chamber" might be a good place to grow a mangrove or two eventually. But I'm in no rush to make that happen and, honestly, I would be more likely to put any mangroves up into the DT area as both the wife and I think they look pretty cool... That's a decision for later though; trees are far down the livestock list...
All the new wires and such have made keeping the right-side cabinet even reasonably organized more difficult:
I'm not unhappy with the current state of things, but there are certainly improvements that can be made. For example; when I need to clean the skimmer (every few days), I have to reach into the back corner and unplug it. It's the cord with the yellow tag, so it's the easiest cord to reach, at least. But still; unplugging and re-plugging the thing is neither easy nor likely good for it. I've got a power bar with switches for each plug that I intend to install somehow/someday, so that's likely going to be the pain that causes me to do so. Just need to find the time...
The other bother was dosing in 2-part and mag. As I said; I do so manually - specifically by plugging in the Alk dosing pump for about 10 minutes at a time. Ca seems to be stable, despite some obvious coral growth going on. I suspect that this is due to the snafu I had where the entire 1gal jug of Ca solution got dosed into the tank (did I tell you I HATE digital timers?!?). My Ca spiked, of course, so I stopped dosing that in until my Ca showed signs of dropping below my target levels. Well; that's not happened yet. From a high of 550ppm back in mid-July, the Ca dropped down to 475ppm - and is just hanging there. My guess is that the rock absorbed some of the Ca when it was over-dosed, and now it's leaching it out about as quick as the corals are consuming it? In any case; I still have Alk left from the same batch, so I've not hit the point where (had the massive dose not occurred) I would be looking to make up more of both. If my theory is correct, then I would expect that around the time that my Alk solution runs out, the Ca in the tank will start to drop lower. Not sure; but my Ca numbers aren't so bad that I'm freaking out (a bit high, but within the margin of error of the Red Sea test). I'm keeping an eye on it and can start dosing it in at any time. In fact; I'll be setting up all three (Alk, Ca, and Mag) on the new dosing pump (upper one in the pic) sometime soon...
It's been a while since I've included a FTS, so here are some I snapped with the phone to show how the Gyre 150 was placed:
QT is doing great. The 3 Bartlett's Anthias are eating great, looking healthy, and seem ready to move into their forever home. About another week in the QT just to be sure and they'll make the journey across the room and into their great big world.
Once they are out, we'll be looking to get the next batch of tank members into QT! Someday, we'll get that counter space back, I tell my wife... She seems skeptical. She's a smart one, my wife...
Anyways; next batch is looking to include a Flame Hawkfish and Green Mandarin. Perhaps something else as well (the 10gal QT seems able to handle 3 fish at once), but not sure what... Don't have a lid (so no wrasse or tilefish, is my understanding) and not ready for the tang/angel injection yet (when that happens, it'll likely require both my QT's running at once to add them all at the same time). I wouldn't mind a trio of Banggai Cardinals, but I'm not sure that the QT could handle 5 fish for a month... Open to suggestions.
Granted I dont recommend you pack them in there like I have, Im just saying that it can be done if you have the time to maintain and observe them. Actually, what Im really saying is you should get a bunch of bangaii 
