Rob's Really Rad 180 Reef Rally

[RobB'z Reef]

Try living in Canada where there $42 each, it's INSANE! I ordered mine from Amazon, they were $12 at 3ft, MUCH better!

We should talk brotha...I could send you packages of my 'Grandma's knitted sweaters'.

 

[RobB'z Reef]

Not really an update, but I found a BRS coupon laying around from a previous shipment ($10) Thought it might be interesting to see if anyone reads my worthless ramblings lol. If you use it please post here so others at least know it's gone.

First come first serve I guess.

Code: BWAHXIJ

I used another one earlier this week and it worked so thought I'd pass this one on.

 

[JoshH]

Not really an update, but I found a BRS coupon laying around from a previous shipment ($10) Thought it might be interesting to see if anyone reads my worthless ramblings lol. If you use it please post here so others at least know it's gone.

First come first serve I guess.

Code: BWAHXIJ

I used another one earlier this week and it worked so thought I'd pass this one on.

I'll hop in my time machine and put that bad boy to work

 

[RobB'z Reef]

Hermit-Triceratops

 

[RobB'z Reef]

Some exciting (for me) additions to the tank this weekend! I have a love of Euphyllia, and want my tank to eventually reflect as much. I'm trying to emulate a lower depth to shallower (lps left on lower rock, sps to the right on higher rock) in the tank. We'll see how it turns out in the long run. I'm super excited for these additions anyhow.

I picked up a bunch of fish as well that will be going into my TTM system tonight. More on that tomorrow. I'm hoping to document that process and all its successes and failures here in the next two weeks.

Little video of the new kids on the block.

 

[RobB'z Reef]

I'll hop in my time machine and put that bad boy to work

oh snap... you know i just noticed that!

 

[RobB'z Reef]

Going through my first iteration of TTM, been interesting so far. Into the second tank on the 36 hr phase, first transfer went well enough. Will be refining things as I go along. Below is an excel spreadsheet I'm working on, that too will evolve as I learn things. Simply plug in your starting date/time and system volume and it helps with some dosing (optional).

I'm dosing Prazi on alternate transfers as a safe guard since TTM by itself will not address internal parasites and the like. Using SeaChem Ammonia Alert badges to keep an eye on things. Nothing showed up the first round, hopefully those things are accurate enough for this purpose. Knock on wood, nobody is dead yet, but I'm not through this just yet.

I have a couple videos with a boring narrative that I'll post shortly.

 

[JoshH]

Looks good, how is the TTM going overall? Any losses? It's the system I will be going with with new additions and I'll be following yours closely

 

[RobB'z Reef]

Looks good, how is the TTM going overall? Any losses? It's the system I will be going with with new additions and I'll be following yours closely

So far so good! No losses yet, but it's early. This first time around I did the beginning a little different. Next batch I run through I'm going to do the first 36hr phase in the receiving tank. I didn't do that this time. Why? I don't know why, why do birds sing? Why are hamburgers round? These are all hard questions. Overall not too bad to manage so far. Took me less than an hour to get the next tanks up and online and everything transferred.

 

[jk_s124]

So far so good! No losses yet, but it's early. This first time around I did the beginning a little different. Next batch I run through I'm going to do the first 36hr phase in the receiving tank. I didn't do that this time. Why? I don't know why, why do birds sing? Why are hamburgers round? These are all hard questions. Overall not too bad to manage so far. Took me less than an hour to get the next tanks up and online and everything transferred.

Exciting man! Thanks for sharing the spreadsheets! That will be an awesome tool to use. Good luck! But I’ve seen your tank transfer set up and I think you have a good well thought out plan.

 

[RobB'z Reef]

For anyone that finds this useful, would like to critique it or even help improve it I'm attaching it here. I haven't spent a ton of time on this tool just yet so I consider it pretty raw at this point. But it's super helpful so far in planning and holding the schedules which are critical to the process.

 

[zukihara]

What happened to the booze????

 

[RobB'z Reef]

What happened to the booze????

Lol the booze? Maybe the Cardinals got into it!

 

[RobB'z Reef]

Put in the remaining two Kessil A360x's finally! Lighting checkbox complete! Next week I'll likely order Apogee's blue tooth meter as I'll need to figure out the spread, PAR and all that other jazz.

 

[jk_s124]

Put in the remaining two Kessil A360x's finally! Lighting checkbox complete! Next week I'll likely order Apogee's blue tooth meter as I'll need to figure out the spread, PAR and all that other jazz.

Looking great!

 

[LittleFidel]

Quick few pictures of the rock scape after the rebuild from tear down from catching all the fish lol. I actually like this one better from a future outlook for growing out corals etc...

Last of the 2020 effort!

Looks like bubblegum all over the rocks. Wow.

 

[RobB'z Reef]

Video update to my TTM. I'm running my first batch ever of fish thru now. I lost a lawnmower blenny on day 4.5 to unknown reasons. He wasn't eating from day one and I couldn't see anything visible wrong with his other than he just didn't thrive from the get go unlike all the other fish. Everyone is eating and appears healthy and active. I'm documenting more of this on humblefish's website as he really is the pioneer of this process that I've adopted and put my own spin on. Two more transfers left for the 72 hr spans at the end. Things are looking good, a little bummed over the blenny and I'll have to think over what went wrong with him.

Link to youtube update:

Link to humblefishes forum: TTM Experiment

Wish me luck!

 

[Reef370]

Looks like you have a nice set up, I’ll be following along to check on your progress... seems like you have it well under control my friend!!!

 

[RobB'z Reef]

I had an interesting learning experience this morning and I wanted to share it with everyone. Having just moved into my current house a year ago during the previous winter which was fairly mild by Wisconsin standards I really didn't pay much attention or mess with the programmable thermostat at all as we seemed fairly comfortable throughout. Fast forward to this year when we now are in a bitter freezing snap with an arctic Canadian front (thanks @JoshH ) and the house has been struggling to stay warm.

I woke up this morning to alarms going off in the basement and it was my inkbird squawking at me and I look to my phone and sure enough, inkbird alarms as well as a host of Apex alarms b!tchin at me. Never heard them because I have a google pixel that i set on my wireless charger and the current settings muted everything so i never woke up :mad::mad::mad::mad:. My bad, I fixed those settings promptly.

The alarm was initiated from the inkbird initially which caused itself to turn of. It was termed an abnormally long heating cycle and it shut itself down for safety I'm assuming. While a cool feature in this instance it wasn't doing me any favors, not that I helped it any. The cold weather, coupled with stupid programming on the thermostat (was set to drop to 64 between 1030pm and 530am which caused the heaters to struggle to keep up. I'm using two 300w titanium heaters from BRS. I'm still thinking this is fine for the future but it's good to note. Tank temp had gotten down to 75 degrees. Hopefully nothing bad comes of it, but I'm sure everything will recover fine.

Good lessons learned here.

1. Make sure your phone is set to receive important notifications while in do not disturb mode.
2. Always go thru your thermostat programming and make sure it's appropriate for conditions.
3. Set the temp alarms to be a bit higher (76 degrees).
4. Evaluate heater sizes for your tank.

So while it wasn't a big disaster it was a learning experience that I was glad I was home for and able to react to. The temps were only under for an hour or so by luck of timing is all. Seems things went south around 3 or 4am. Sometimes things like this happening are good as it only makes you a better, more experienced reefer in the end.

 

[RobB'z Reef]

Got that same alarm again, though this time my alerts woke me up! Coincidentally my furnace was having an issue. So it turned out that it wasn't struggling to keep up due to the cold but a bad flame sensor instead which was causing it to not run intermittently. Who knew... Timing lol. Got the furnace fixed today, but it revealed that I really did under spec my heaters. So here are the replacements, 600w units with an emergency spare! Why not since I was already ordering them? Love living an hour and a half away from BRS. It's always next day service

Anyone need some slightly used 300w units? They've worked great, just asking to much of them for my system volume. Only 3 months old, free, you pay for shipping.