The Interim Tank

[The Reef Dork]

Set the RO filter on last night. Got a phone call late so went upstairs then went straight to bed. Woke up to this...



I wouldn't mind but I must have done this 15+ times now! I even bought one of these after the 10th time but I either forget to use it or think 'nah, won't need it' ;Facepalm



Lucky it was only 10 to 15 litres - been much worse in the past! Dogs learn faster than me :mad:

 

[The Reef Dork]

Photos of the final, fired beast. I had planned on drilling frag plug holes into this to easily remove frags to sell on but that looks like it might be quite difficult. On the plus side, there are plenty of holes there that I can stealthily stick frag plugs in. Then I can just pull them off when the zoas spread onto the rock ;Greedy

Being posted today and should arrive for the weekend. BUT... i'm away this weekend so I won't get to play with it until next week

 

[The Reef Dork]

I had an alert from my Seneye the other day telling me my ammonia had gone up to 0.014. I was told that 0.050 is when you should start worrying so no bother. However, I had a look to see what might have caused it and I realised I hadn't taken my dead frogspawn out. It had a layer of mush sat on top of the skeleton that was its tissue so that could have been the cause (not that it matters). Took it out and it STANK! ;Yuck So I removed it, cleaned it off and took a photo - I think it actually looks pretty cool! Although not cool enough to avoid getting binned

 

[The Reef Dork]

Got myself a cuppa, now ready to type up a big butt update.

So.....

Mount KrakaZoa was delivered on Friday... in 2 pieces . It was packaged in a large, sturdy cardboard box with about 3 kilometers of bubble wrap. I asked the courier to leave it round the back but instead of opening the gate, they dropped it over the bloody 6 foot fence :mad: It was a clean break so I superglued and puttied it back together. The fix looks clean enough but my eye is drawn to the putty now (even though I used the super white Milliput which costs a small fortune) so i'm miffed with the courier and have asked them for a partial or full refund. Well, I've asked R&R Aquascapes to do so which they are in the process of sorting. No blame on R&R - they must have spent half what I paid on bubble wrap!

Here's the break - I didn't take close up photos of the fix but see if you can spot the putty in the FTS below!





I left the Milliput/superglue to dry for 24 hours then put the rock in the tank tonight - it didn't come apart when I lifted it in so hopefully it's sorted. We'll see when I come to move it in a few months...

More on MZ later but I also took delivery of some new pieces of kit today. This picture is a great example of something that is very good value and something that, in my humble opinion, is priced to include what I call ReefTax. Around £14 for the Tunze algae magnet. I also have the Tunze long magnet from my last tank - it CHANGED MY LIFE!! It makes removing algae so easy! As inventions go, it's up there with the wheel and the aeroplane. I'll admit the nano version isn't as good as its bigger brother but it's still significantly better than the mag floats that I had for the first 2-3 years of my time in the hobby. If I could only tell a nube one thing, it'd be to get one of these. Never mind the nitrogen cycle, KH or fish compatibility. This is more important.





So my tank is now clean - it took no time at all which means i'll clean it more often which means i'll enjoy the tank more

But reefing giveth and reefing taketh away. So for every excellent value product, there are 5 products subject to ReefTax. Which brings me to this. Almost £25 for a magnetic Seneye holder. A device you don't need, that must cost a pittance to make and that you only consider because the suction cup they give you is terrible. If I were cynical, i'd say deliberately so. But i'm not, so I won't



Before I had this, the Seneye just sat at the bottom of the sump. And that takes away the benefit of the out of water alarm because it's nowhere near the water level. And it plays on my OCD which states it must be somewhere neat. I probably could have achieved the same effect with a new, better suction cup at a fraction of the price. So this is all my fault really ;Greedy

In filter sock news, I haven't changed mine for a fortnight and it's doing what skimmers do the day before you go on holiday. I've changed it but the point is, it looks like I can't leave it more than a fortnight which is a minor irritant ;Meh



Finally in equipment news, i'm not happy with my water flow. I have one Jecod SW4 which I don't think is enough. Shoulda got the SW8. May have to get a 2nd SW4 now (or an 8 and dial it down) ;Greedy

There's nothing for today's Any Other Business so back to the new rockwork. I rinsed it with RO then read the delivery note ;Bookworm which says don't rinse it in RO ;Facepalm. Then it went straight in. I tried keeping the other tall(ish) rock in but it was a really tight fit and looked cluttered so I removed that in the end. But that made the tank look empty as MZ is quite short so I whacked in a new bit in front of it. It has caves so Chepe will he pleased.

There are a few air bubbles still working themselves loose from the underside of the new rock - they look a bit like the T-1000 from Terminator 2 after Arnie freezes him and he melts back into one piece.

Air bubbles in rock:

Terminator T-1000:


I then put some of the zoas in place (to be puttied later) and the tank is now starting to look a bit more like a nice place to be a fish and a bit less like a labratory I have 4 or 5 more zoa frags to put in place then all I will need is 6 months of growth . Segueing to coral health, my zoas all look great but my acans look a little sad which i'm putting down to my total lack of nitratage. I've read about a squillion threads on forums asking how to get nitrates down and every time i'm like "mate, i'll have some of them". So how to increase that? Ideally, i'd like to put 5 or 6 chromis in but that's probably a recipe for agro in such a small tank so i'll probably set up the auto feeder instead and increase food input. Adding a silver belly wrasse and a scooter might happen too ;Woot

Annnywho... here are some shots of the re-scaped tank and the new clowns ;Snaphappy









*Heavily edited photo klaxon*

 

[The Reef Dork]

i'm miffed with the courier and have asked them for a partial or full refund. Well, I've asked R&R Aquascapes to do so which they are in the process of sorting. No blame on R&R - they must have spent half what I paid on bubble wrap!

Got 50% off plus the cost of the Milliput I used. I'd prefer to have an unbroken item but that's a fair outcome so all is good

You know I was saying i'm not happy with my flow? Well I fixed that today with an SW-8! Annoyingly the plug doesn't work though so i've had to use the plug from my SW-4 for now but i'll get that replaced by the shop then i'll have 2 powerheads which is my preference. 1 SW-8 is much better than before though - it's rated at roughly double the turnover and that shows. When I get the SW-4 back, i'll be happy with the flow. Although I actually think 2 SW-8s on this tank would be fine in hindsight. Also bought a zoa frag but that's being shy so photos will have to wait...


How about a FTS while I'm here?

 

[The Reef Dork]

I was thinking the other day about how I should slow down my livestock purchasing and that 4 fish in a 120L tank is probably close to capacity. Then I saw a wrasse in my LFS that looked pretty. And we all know you can’t run a zoa tank without a halichoeres wrasse so, if you think about it, there really was no alternative.



For the uninitiated, it’s a Radiant/Iridis Wrasse. Ideally, i’d like a pair - apparently they’re easy to sex so it should be a simple case of IDing this gentleman/lady then picking up a mate when I see one. Any ideas on the gender of this?? It spends a lot of time cleaning the rocks so I assume it female

My sandbed is not as deep or as fine grain as I (read the wrasse) would like but there are deeper patches and it’s not too coarse so I think she’ll get by. In my upgrade, I’ll try to have a large-ish patch of fine sand out of sight for wrasses to sleep in but I don’t think that would work aesthetically in this tank. Sorry wrasse, them’s the breaks.

My CUC is massively under strength at the moment. I think I have one Trochus (1 missing, presumed dead), a cleaner shrimp and one Conch. I love hermits but don’t trust them with snails so I added 6 more Trochus on Thursday. I can’t seem to find any Mexican Turbos at the moment which is irritating as they’re my algae-munching snail of choice.

If I come across a Blue Tuxedo Urchin though, i’ll nab one. They remind me a bit of living with your mum when you were a kid because they pick up your stuff and move it somewhere else just to mess with you :mad: but I think my frag plugs are heavy enough to be safe. Think ;Nailbiting

I also need to pick up some copepods to seed my tank so i'm on the look out every time I go to an LFS.



I also bought a nice orange zoa (looks much better in the flesh and under blues, honest) this week for Mount KrakaZoa.



MKZ is almost at capacity now to be fair but I think this nube will look great next to my Purple Hornets. It was sold as a Rainbow Sakura but that’s not right so it may have to go down under ‘miscellaneous zoas’ unless I can ID it or come up with an amusing name myself . I’m loving MKZ but it’s going to be frustrating as hell waiting for the zoas to grow out! Hence, I will be feeding all zoas like they’re on Man vs Food for the foreseeable future.



The first coral I bought was a rainbow monti frag. Looked awesome in the shop but has been drab since going in. It's slightly on the up though, here's a pic that doesn't really prove that :fear:



I've also made my lights 10% bluer this weekend. That's partly because it looks a little nicer but also because of watching Jason Fox's tank that is only lit by blues. I know that won't make an ounce of difference(!) but hey, it makes me feel better :yes:

Here's the tank in question in case you missed it (skip past the first 3 minutes...)

And now for the bad* news…

*bad is an exaggeration if i’m honest but it sounds more dramatic :whistling:

My best hammer frag croaked it this week :rip:. It just seemed to wither and die over the course of a few days. KH and salinity have been stable and the only real change is an increase in phosphate and nitrate. This is the hammer that I accused of stinging my frogspawn to death and it has died in a very similar way. I don’t know what killed it but i’m putting it down as ‘one of those things’ that we constantly have to deal with in reefing :shrug:

Here's a before and after...

Before (on the left)


After




Also, in what could be the beginning of the end of my honeymoon period, my nitrates have gone up from 1ppm to 5ppm and phosphates from 0.03 to 0.11. I’m happy enough with the nitrates but i’d like the phosphates to be lower. That said, i’m just going to let it settle for now - if it keeps going up, i’ll put a bag of Rowa in the sump.

The one irritating thing about nitrates being 5 is that my acans are not extending as much as i’d like. I’d previously put that down to low nitrates but now I don’t have that excuse! Maybe that will improve in time with stability of levels. The blue one has lost its colour and I put that down to phosphates but again, it could be stability of levels… or any one of a million things frankly!

Blue originally


Blue now (admittedly under different light settings)


Finally, i've discovered a flaw with MKZ. It's completely flat on top which means you only get to see the full beauty when standing by the tank, rather than all the time when you're sat on the sofa. Just a thought for my next shot at a zoa rock really and you'll be able to see more when it grows out anyways...

 

[The Reef Dork]

I need to bust out the DSLR at some point but I also need to get a macro lens and a subscription to Lightroom so in the meantime, this is the best I can do under blues...

Mohawk zoa (which has grown a new head since I bought it )


Speckled rainbow


Utter chaos


MKZ top down (10 points if you spot the smidgen of cleaner shrimp ;Pompus)


Better shot of the new 'rainbow Sakura'

 

[The Reef Dork]

It’s Sunday which means it’s massive update time! ;Woot


Firstly, here’s a FTACS (Full Tank And Cabinet Shot)



Some corals are appearing slowly but it’s still looking a bit bare (except for the fish of course). I'm going clam hunting on Tuesday and I want a Duncan on the left-hand bommie so it looks a bit more lively.

I’m discovering that I prefer zoas that sit close to the rockwork than the ones that extend beyond. That, coupled with MrFraggle’s warning that Darth Mauls can take over everything has led to me moving the DMs and Speckled Rainbows away from Mount KrakaZoa. I still like both zoas but now they will live on their own zoa rock so they can grow out without nuking the others

The zoa rocks are small enough to look good in my upgrade when they’re covered and they have frag plug holes so fragging these off will be easy.

Here’s a photo of my old Watermelon (I think) zoas in my last tank - they were starting to spread a little and looked really cool just encrusting onto the contours of the rock. That’s my vision for MKZ but with multiple different colours next to each other.



I have a weird hitchhiker growing on one of my hammers. I asked on here and it sounds like it might be a peanut worm. There are also a couple of sponges on the base of my other hammer which is a nice bonus. I think the peanut is harmless but it’s made me realise that I need to start dipping corals, particularly my zoas. What if that was a nudibranch?? :mad:



So to that end, i’ve set up a dipping station for use with Coral RX Pro on all new frags. I went for a tall, thin container to allow me to do the job with a relatively small amount of water so it’s easy to replace in the tank and so i’ll use less RX Pro. This will need 2 litres of water per dipping session which will be enough to submerge the corals and powerhead. I’ve gone for the cheapest powerhead I could find - a 2,000lph Eheim pump and a firm-bristled toothbrush to deal with any eggs. I’ve white vinyl-wrapped the bottom so I can see what pests fall off and have raised the egg crate frag holder off the bottom using plastic tubing to allow proper flow.

I know this is some entry level DIY but I'm really chuffed with it ;Headphone













As to the tank, I dialled the colour on my Kessils down by 10% this week to make it bluer. 100% is white, 0% is blue - I'm now at 30%. It just looks a little nicer without being too blue. I also reduced intensity although i’m not quite sure why I did that if i’m honest ;Facepalm. An overwhelming urge to tinker for no reason and with no benefit! I’ve got a Seneye PAR meter and I really need to bust it out and do some tests. Then set it and forget it.

Generally, my water is looking really clear . I change a bag of carbon once a week with a 15% water change so that’s what i’m crediting it to. Well, that and the fact that it’s still a new tank.

Here’s a side-on shot that shows the clarity better.



With regard to the tank itself, i’ve found a flaw in the weir box setup. It’s a really odd design in that the downpipe is a 180 degree u bend pointing down so water has to go below it to drop to the sump, rather than just dropping into an open hole. It also sits in its own little ‘well’ and the combination of those 2 things means that any pellet food that floats towards the weir comb ends up sitting at the bottom of the little ‘well’ area. I need to start syphoning them out as part of my weekly water change regime before I get a nutrient buildup. I get pellet escape-age down there everytime I feed :mad:



My new SW-8 has bedded in now but I don’t think an SW-8 and an SW-4 is enough for my tank. I get a good wave on one side of the tank but much less on the other side. That improves if I point the SW-8 at the front of the tank (rather than the opposite corner) but then the sand bed goes! It’s fine and the better flow is on the side of the tank where my corals are but i’m a flow junkie and i’d like more ;Drowning

Right hand side





Left hand side




Finally, I put a few bags of copepods in this week - they’re living in a small zoa rock in the sump. It’s not an ideal home for them but with a bit of luck, they’ll establish themselves in time. I may be plotting a dragonet of some description

 

[The Reef Dork]

I’ve had a particularly busy week, fuelled by time off work with only life admin planned. When I have time off, I invariably obsess about my tank and this week has been no different

This tank is now 6 weeks old and it’s starting to show signs of looking like a reef rather than a rock pool. Some of the zoas are spreading quite quickly, so much so that i’ve had to isolate two of them at the foot of Mount KrakaZoa so the don’t take over. Although I will admit that most are taking a bit more time and choosing to enjoy the growth journey rather than cutting to the chase ;Yawn

I’m starting to get a few spots of coralline algae on the outlet pipe as well as some of the rockwork. Because of that, I won’t be getting an urchin now although I would still like a Mexican Turbo snail for my CUC.



I had a daytime trip to my 2 favourite LFS on Tuesday. I love going to an LFS when it’s quiet! I got some really useful information on clams - mainly on selection and care. I then watched this video which made me realise how diverse clams can look. The guy in the vid also said you can get a Maxima in Japan for $5… in a sushi restaurant! ;Facepalm

In equipment news, I managed to break my water change heater last week. Tried doing a w/c without heating it (new water 20 degrees, tank 25 degrees) and it caused more strife than it’s worth! Overall temp dropped enough to set off my Simply Aquaria alarm which beeped at me for half an hour until the tank warmed up. And, while the drop caused no visible harm, it can’t be good to drop by a degree immediately then increase again in the space of 30 minutes.

So I bought a new heater. I decided to go for a Schego 200w that has gone into my DT and use the existing 300W cheapo from my DT for water changes. My upgrade will have a 300w and a 200w Schego so I see this as ‘spreading the cost’ of the upgrade rather than spunking money unnecessarily (we’re good at justifying purchases as reefers). I’ve put my hand next to the heater in the photo to show how small these are! I was convinced it’d be too big when I saw the box but it’s fine.



As I said in my last update, I want to have my Speckled Rainbow zoas and Darth Mauls on a separate rock so they don’t take over the world (well… MKZ). I have a spare zoa rock with 4 frag plug holes lying around for the DMs but I needed a 2nd rock for the Rainbows. As I picked one up in the shop, I saw a nice piece of Real Reef branching rock and it gave me an idea ;Bookworm

I’ve always wanted to see if you can drill RRR easily. So I bought 2 tile drill bits (one the size of a frag plug and a smaller one for making a pilot hole) and gave it a bash. As it turns out, it’s not that easy with the branching stuff - you can get most of the way without too much bother but I decided to stop before it snapped. I drilled at the base where 3 branches join so there’s more bulk. I think you’d have no chance drilling a frag plug size hole (width and depth) in a single branch. I wonder if it’d work with a plating piece though when you can probably drill all the way through...



I’ve wanted to make interesting structures for zoas/encrusting montis to spread over for a while now so this is the start of my experiment with that. I think the zoa rock might work better with zoas because they’ll grow evenly whereas they won’t grow on the shaded side of this RRR stick (IME, encrusting montis will to an extent) but it still has the potential to look pretty sweet in 6 months. The Darth Mauls are now on the zoa rock so we’ll see how that goes.







The frag plug is near the base and the whacking great white bubble you can see is super glue. The white specs are micro bubbles released from the RRR that disappeared quickly.

The Darth Mauls are starting to look awesome and are already spreading quickly. Here’s a close up which looks a lot like the Milky Way to me (as in outer space not the deliciously underrated chocolate bar). They look amazing close up but they won’t start to look that good from a further distance until there are 20-30 heads rather than the current 4.



I emptied my chaeto reactor for the first time. It came in with a decent haul of chaeto - here’s the before and after pictures.

Before


After




It needed a bit of a clean which looks like it will be a regular thing. Maybe once a month, i’ll need to empty it, clean the light tube and the tube the light tube sits in to keep it running at maximum efficiency. You will definitely need a pipe cleaner if you get one of these!

The light spill suddenly reappeared after i’d emptied it though! Not a lot in the way of micro fauna in there - I didn’t see any amphipods or similar, just a few asterina starfish ;Sorry

I’m happy with it so far - keeps my sump tidy, massively reduces light spill and stops chaeto strands clogging my return pump. It’s also keeping my nitrates below 5 on its own - I have no skimmer - although phosphates are creeping up a little.

Final kit update was to install a motion detector light in the sump cab that comes on when the cabinet doors open. I bought this for my last tank but it was too dim to light up a 3 foot cabinet. It’s perfect for a small cabinet like this though.



In tidying news, I re-purposed an ikea filing cabinet to take over from my fish cr*p tray that used to live under my sofa. I’ve inventory’d every drawer so I don’t have to root around every time I want sommat. Yes, it’s dorky but if the hat fits…





My cat ;Cat currently has fleas so I've had to spray the house with flea killer. I only did upstairs for fear of wiping the tank out if I did downstairs too. I also put some fresh carbon in the sump and did a (scheduled) water change the day after. No apparent ill effects in’t tank so I was clearly being paranoid and overly cautious.

Water levels are currently as follows:

Salinity 1.025
Alk 8.5
Nitrate 3ppm (down from 5)
Phosphate 0.14 (up from 0.11)

I think the high phosphate could be caused by a build-up of pellets at the foot of the weir ‘well’ that I mentioned last weekend. I flushed them through the other day then changed the filter sock. I tested the levels 2 days after doing so and there was still no change so i’ll put a small bag of rowa in the sump at some point. My acans could look a little brighter but no real dramas so there’s no rush to sort phosphates for now.

Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. I bought a clam yesterday! I went back my LFS after seeing a few there and picked out a beauty. It’s a Tridacna Maxima and it’s ruddy massive! It has pride of place in the centre which is also to give it good light.

I love that they recede their mantles when you shade them from light That gives a tank the ‘wow factor’. I had friends round for dinner last night and they actually gasped when I demo’d it! It’ll be a bit of an alk sponge but I can deal with that. I can't quite work out why more people don't have clams - it’s absolutely spectacular looking and you don’t get many blue corals so it adds variety. Maybe it’ll die in a week then i’ll understand!

I’ve turned my lights down a bit and have set them to acclimation mode for 2 weeks - ramping up slowly from 20% to 35%. I could be being paranoid but it looks like it has a couple of very small, faint white patches. I’ll just monitor it for now.

I’m absolutely fascinated by it - it’s a really interesting animal and I can see myself getting a few of these beauties in time. Even the shells are mesmerising!

In order to accommodate my new BFF, I had a mini re-scape. LPS moved from right to left and Rainbow/Darth Maul zoas moved to the right. That looks much better - I now have colour/movement in places where the tank looked a little bare/flat and the clam doesn’t block anything interesting from my usual viewpoint on the sofa.

Here are a billion photos of the clam ;Drool



























Here are a couple of FTS to round off the update. I’m going to grab a cuppa and stare at my clam (not a euphemism )

 

[The Reef Dork]

In stark contrast to last week, this has been a slow week. I started a new job with a long commute on Monday so i've had no time in the evenings. I'm used to getting home before at 5:45. This week it's been 7:30 at the earliest ;Yawn The commute will reduce when I move house though and at that point, i'll upgrade my tank!

To satisfy my mild OCD, i'm going to start doing these big weekly updates in the same order each time: equipment, test results, livestock, future plans and Any Other Business. Here goes.

Equipment
I've ordered a couple of bits to improve my RO station - a booster pump and 2 additional DI pods. There are a couple of other reefers who have fancy RO/DI stations and they swear by additional DI pods. I don't have the space to add the various other stages they have but this is a decent start. I do need to change my pre-filters and membrane (not done for over 2 years ;Facepalm) but i'm going to do that when I move house in early Q2 '18 (for those who like to express dates like an accountant). The booster pump should improve the reject rate, reduce waste water and crucially prevent me from leaving it on over night and flooding my kitchen . My theory is that i'll only ever run it when i'm in the house and it'll only ever need to be on for an hour at a time so i'm less likely to flood it. In practice, it may just mean that i'll still forget to turn it off and the flooding will be horrendous because it'll produce water so much quicker. I'll connect it to a smart plug which I think you can set to turn off after an hour as standard. Someone on here put a video on of controlling a skimmer via a smart plug with their voice using Amazon Alexa and the nerd in me went bat**** crazy so I bought one too. "Alexa, turn the RO pump on". DORK BONER! God, I love gadge.

I also set up my DD media reactor because my phosphates hit max level on my Elos test kit. I'm now running Rowaphos using a 600lph pump. That gives the perfect flow - tumbling nicely but not going crazy. I tried a 400lph but it didn't tumble at all. Results of that to follow in the test results section... I've seen a few manifolds on here that run 3 or 4 pumps off the return and I think that's amazing. In my upgrade, i'll have the ALR1, a UV filter and a Rowa reactor to run so using a manifold will save me 2 plugs which is worth its weight in gold. I've somehow managed to end up with 9 plugs on what is basically a softy tank with no skimmer and only 1 light so plug reduction will be essential in the upgrade. Plus manifolds look cool

After I emptied my ALR1 last week, I put it all back in the sump and now I can't get the bloody pump to stop buzzing! If I move it, it stops for a few seconds then goes again. I really need to spend 10 minutes doing it properly but I cannie be arsed at the moment.

One really simple piece of kit I ordered was a bottle brush. I'll use that to clean out my ALR1 light tube as it gets a little dirty with algae which in turn blocks the light. Cleaning that once a fortnight or so will improve efficiency and won't take long - you can do it without removing the reactor from the sump.

With the phosphate reactor, my sump is now looking a little busier. Please excuse the jaunty photo angle, i've had a beer;Vomit


20171111_201552 by Alex Brooke-Smith, on Flickr

The DD media reactor is fine and does its job extremely well. BUT it's a pain in the derriere to change because the lid is a screw fitting :mad:So you can't easily undo it in the sump and when you re-screw it, invariably it takes a few goes to line it up without it dribbling out of the top. The Aqua Forest reactor used a lid that comes off with a few thumb screws that and looks really easy to change over so i'll consider getting that when I upgrade my tank.

Parameters
Now this section is a terrible idea because all it will do is show how infrequently I test my water.

On that note, i've only tested alk and phosphate this week AND, I meant to test alk before my water change to see how much of a sponge my clam is but I forgot. Then I tested the alk at 8:30pm tonight as opposed to the usual 9am. So the results are less accurate than i'd like they do still show how much of an alk junkie a T. Maxima is. The only other carbonate hardness eaters I have are a few small LPS frags and a small rainbow monti frag that isn't growing.

Alk 7.3 (8.5, 9 days ago)
Phosphate 0.03 (0.14+, 7 days ago)

So yeah, Rowaphos is awesome at reducing phosphate. Quelle surprise. I'd like to get to the stage where I don't need a phosphate reactor at all and my chaeto eats all the phosphate so I don't have to mess around with rinsing rowa and changing it from the DD reactor. I mean seriously, it takes like 30+ litres of RO before the stuff runs clear! I'd also like a gold-plated Lamborghini and a tank full of butterflies, angels and SPS though so....

Livestock
No new corals, fish or other inverts this week. My clam was getting a bit too much flow in the middle of the tank though so I moved it to the left again and it seems happier. My zoas a re still spreading nicely but the current projects that i've put on their own rocks haven't spread off their frag plugs yet. It'll be freaking awesome when they do! In the meantime, i'll keep reef roid-ing them up.

Future plans
With a bit of luck, i'll be getting a Royal Gramma this weekend. That'll be my last fish and will add a splash of colour as well as more of a rock dweller - 4 of my 5 fish are pelagic and I like a bit of variety. I'm stepping up my upgrade plans now - still haven't found a house to buy but i'll be doing a 2nd viewing on one next weekend that would be awesome for a tank! Must. Resist. 5. Foot. Tank.


AOB
I took a few shots of my acans when phosphate was 0.14. I'll do the same next week when phosphate has been at 0.03 for a week or so to see if it made a difference. Come onnnn brighter colours ;Woot

Nothing else to report so i'll sign off with a few top down shots.


20171111_195920 by Alex Brooke-Smith, on Flickr


20171111_195857 by Alex Brooke-Smith, on Flickr


20171111_195907 by Alex Brooke-Smith, on Flickr

 

[The Reef Dork]

There’s a widely held view that Friday is fish day. Well in my house, it’s Sunday and there ain’t nobody getting eaten

Equipment
The big move forward this week has been with my RO station. As per my last update, i've installed a twin DI pod as well as a booster pump and a new 50gpd membrane and i've replaced the pre-filters for the first time in 2 years It's amazing how much trouble you need to go to to make h2o h2o. The booster pump leaked when I first set it up but i’ve siliconed it which seems to have done the trick. I’ve only tried running water through it at tap pace though, haven’t fired it up yet so we’ll see...

I have my original, single DI pod before the 2 nubes (colour changing don’t you know ) and will change the original one when TDS out goes to 1 so the final twin pod should be doing only the final polish.

In addition to other members on here, ATI recommend additional DI pods as part of their Essentials guide. BRS have also done a billion videos on RO/DI filters that say the same thing - DI resin is good. This is all really with my upgrade in mind but i’m sure my clam will enjoy the purity in the meantime.

In hindsight, I would have preferred to have a self-regulating booster pump. I almost cancelled my order and bought one from Osmostics but they were out of stock so I stuck with this. 50GPD with a booster will be more than enough for my needs anyways. And it was £30 cheaper so I have £30 to spend on zoas now ;Woot

Does a bottle brush count as tank equipment? Well it does when it's a slow news day so here’s one I just bought. I’ve found the ALR1 light tube is quite tricky to clean without a bottle brush but a piece of cake with one. But mine wasn’t long enough (ooh, matron) so I bought a long one from Amazon.

My sump is now looking messy AF. I’d really like a manifold in here - pumps take up space and plug sockets that I don’t have to spare.

Parameters
Welcome to the sparse part of the update. So much so that i’ve included temperature to flesh it out a bit

Alk - 7.2
Phos - ummm
Nitrate - not sure
Calc - God knows
Temp - 26.1 according to Seneye. 25.4 according to Simply Aquaria Dual Controller.

I forgot to test everything and now I can’t be arsed. On the plus side, my alk went from 7.3 to 7.2 after 4 days so the clam isn’t drinking alk as much as I thought it might. I have a completely free weekend next weekend so no excuses. I’ll also bust out the PAR meter if I can muster the energy. If.

Livestock
I moved the clam away from the centre and off to the left. It was blowing around a bit in the flow and I get less current on the left-hand side. It seems happier - i’m seeing slightly improved mantle extension and less mantle flappage

The other day, I accidentally dropped a piece of pellet food on the clam next to its exhalant syphon (that's bum hole to you and me). It bent the syphon over towards the pellet and blew it away! Seriously cool! Although I once went to Bangkok once and saw something similar

Here’s a video of it retracting when you cover the light! WHY DOESN'T EVERYBODY HAVE CLAMS??? The only explanation I can think of is because they're extremely difficult to photograph/video well.

Utter Chaos zoas

Radiant wrasse. I took over 40 photos and these are the best I could do ;Snaphappy

Peek-a-boo

Clowning around

Mount KrakaZoa

I’m expecting a baby!

Dunno what zoa this is but it’s starting to look cool. It's fair to say it's a slow grower though ;Facepalm

Cleaner shrimp doing what they do

Future plans
Although this is The Interim Tank, it’s starting to look like it might not be as interim as I thought. When I move house, I might have to do a bit of renovation work which would mean there’s no point setting up a bigger tank straight away. We’ll see.

I still want a Royal Gramma - they didn’t have one at my local MH last weekend so I need to spread my wings a bit. Innovation Aquatics posted some pics on their FB page so maybe i’ll have time to head over there next weekend. I think that’ll be my last fish as that will make 6 in total. As much as anything, it’ll be more of a hassle moving more fish to a new house.

AOB
I noticed the other day that I have zero nuisance algae I noticed that when I tried to count my snails and could only see 4 of the 6. It feels really weird not battling some kind of algae bullcrap if i’m honest! Early days I suppose. Here's the coralline algae spreading a little...

And an FTS to finish.

Bloody hell that update took ages! Thanks for reading.

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

Great build! Excellent detail, and I'm loving the rock structure!

 

[The Reef Dork]

Great build! Excellent detail, and I'm loving the rock structure!

Thanks man!

 

[The Reef Dork]

When you have low nitrates in a softy/LPS tanks, the corals don’t thrive as they might. On the plus side, that can be fixed by adding more fish ;Woot

Equipment
I played around with my ALR1 pump and got it to stop buzzing - that was driving me crazy! My ‘new’ RO setup is up and running now and I did my first water change with the pristine water yesterday. I’m also using it for top off of course so we’ll see if it makes any visible difference. It bloody better do!

I did set up the booster pump but it’s leaking ever so slightly so it’s going back to Amazon and i’ve ordered the better self-regulating pump as I was advised to buy in the first place. When it was on, my pressure went up to 90 PSI and it produced 1.5L in 10 minutes vs 0.5L with the booster off so it’ll be fantastic when the new booster arrives

For no good reason, here are photos of the results

Without booster


With booster


In temperature news, I managed to figure out how to adjust the alarms on my Seneye so now it’ll warn me if temp goes up or down by more than 0.2 degrees so i’ll know immediately if there’s a problem.

I bumped the Kessil up by 10% intensity to 40%. I had turned it down when I first put the clam in so it's back up to where I want it. I'd like to set it and leave it now but i'll make a final decision when i've tested PAR... which I meant to do this weekend but ran out of enthusiasm

Parameters
Apart from PAR, I’ve been a good boy this weekend and tested everything I need to - testing calc and mag is for jerks

Alk - 7.6
Nitrate - 3
Phosphate - 0.45

Phos is creeping back up now the rowaphos is saturated. I'm hoping the chaeto reactor will take care of phosphate in time but it needs a helping hand for now so the reactor can be its phosphate buddy

Livestock
Fresh fish! Fresh fish!

As i’ve mentioned a few times lately, I’ve been thinking of getting a Royal Gramma. So I went to Reef Dreams yesterday and bought… a silver belly wrasse! They had a RG but it had a dodgy eye so I changed my mind. The wrasse gives me some nice, bright yellow and will be good with pests like nudis, flatworms and pyramid snails. They can also look spectacular when they mature





My only piece of SPS, a rainbow monti, is starting to show some good colouration now after looking drab for ages. This is the best I can do photo-wise. The macro lens I want wasn’t included in the Black Friday sale



And some select shots of zoas (and the clam obvs) while i've got the underwater cover on.

Utter chaos


Alien anti-venom


Rastas


Speckled rainbow


Scrambled eggs


Super saiyan


Watermelons


T. Maxima


Future plans
The plan for the rainbow monti is to attach it to a dead acro skeleton. I found a perfect piece in Reef Dreams but it had been in their QT so it was probably ‘infected’ with copper I’ve asked Steve to pick up a bit next time he’s at TMC though so with a bit of luck, i’ll get that sorted soon

I think an encrusting monti will look ruddy marvellous on an acro skeleton. Time will tell if i’m right and when I say time, i’m not kidding. It’ll probably take a year until it covers the skele to a decent extent. Bloody corals.

I’m also thinking about removing my phosphate reactor now my levels are under control. It’s probably not absorbing anything now though so I might just leave it in as it’s easier than taking it out.

I might also set up the auto feeder to increase nutrients and fatten the fish. There’s currently no obvious place for it to go though without cutting a gap in the tank cover though so I might just continue with half a cube a day. I’m trying to feed the corals with reef roids once a week so that should help with nutrients anyways.

I still have a few zoas on my wish list to add to Mount KrakaZoa. They are, in descending order of ridiculous name, Blue Eyed Blonde *****, Valentine’s Day Massacre and Gatorade. Sample pictures below for the uninitiated.

If anyone has a frag of any of these, give me a shout!

AOB
Yesterday, I visited another local reefer. Good to have a chat about nerdy s**t quite frankly! He’s got a nice EaReef 1500 pro with a couple of lovely genicanthus wanatabei. Cheers for the brews Steve!

I might reduce these updates to fortnightly now my stocking is slowing down. Quality not quantity and all that. I’ll see how I feel next weekend

 

[The Reef Dork]

No bullcrap today, just DSLR photos ;Snaphappy

Silver belly wrasse










Radiant wrasse






Clownfish






Red-headed fairy wrasse




T. Maxima clam


Scrambled egg zoas ;Eggonface


It's been a while since I got the old DSLR out. Things i've learned from this sesh. Blue stuff is hard to photograph, aiming the camera slightly upwards (towards the light) results in massive over-exposure ;Sour... and I need a proper macro lens ;Greedy

 

[The Reef Dork]

For a FTS though, you can't beat a 50mm prime lens










Now don't get me wrong, I'm really pleased with how this tank is going but... I really miss sticks

 

[The Reef Dork]

Mount KrakaZoa under blues. PLENTY more zoa space!

 

[The Reef Dork]

Part of the reason I set this tank up in the first place was to establish a zoa rock and give it a few months to grow out before it goes in the upgrade. So today's update is mostly about growth so far and the latest on my future plans

Equipment
Given that I have next to no nuisance algae and low nutrients potentially responsible for my sad little acans, I decided to increase feeding. So i've added an auto feeder which puts in 1 dose of pellets once a day. I also now add a cube of frozen. I'm seeing how it goes but I think i'll double down on the pellets.

With a cover on this tank, there isn't anywhere obvious to put the auto feeder. So i've had to break out my ingenuity

The Eheim single is now mounted on the Kessil gooseneck. It looks a little funny in the photo but I don't notice it and it actually looks OK in the flesh.




I think I mentioned before that I changed booster pump - the 50gpd one sprung a leak so I bought a self-regulating 36-150gpd booster.







It puts out 2L of product water every 10 minutes which (for no reason other than to break up the writing) looks like this:


Parameters
Alk - 7.8dkh
Nitrate - 4ppm
Phosphate - 0.06

These bad boys are all pretty stable at the minute so I only test fortnightly now. Not getting much algae on the glass either which is sweeeet.

Livestock
One newbie to introduce this time. Some random but extremely bright green zoa. I dipped this (first zoa i've dipped ;Facepalm) and managed to scrub the thing off its plug so i've had to glue it to a new one.


And so to growth. Well. Some of my zoas are behaving, others are consolidating (i.e not ****** growing at all) but then it's only been 3 months or less so this comparison will be better in another 3 months... maybe 6 ... :mad:

Speckled rainbows
16 Sept


16 Dec


Radioactive dragon eye
26 Sept


16 Dec


Watermelons
28 Sept


26 Nov


Utter chaos
28 Sept


16 Dec


Mohawks
22 Oct


16 Dec


Purple hornets (top left)
9 Oct


16 Dec


Alien antivenom (bottom left)
9 Oct


16 Dec


Scrambled eggs (centre right)
9 Oct


16 Dec


Rastas
21 Sept


16 Dec


Super Saiyan
25 Sept


16 Dec


Coralline algae (from nothing 3 months ago)
16 Dec


Mount KrakaZoa
16 Oct


16 Dec


Ricordea (right obvs)
24 Sept


16 Dec
What. The. Hell. ;Sour


Future plans
I've had no luck with house buying recently so it looks like i'll be moving into rented for 6 months ;Meh

That in turn means this tank will be not so interim (no bad thing), that I won't get to upgrade for ages (bad thing) and that i'll have to move it ;Facepalm

I've said a number of times that I won't be bullied into going bigger than a 4 footer. But... the Red Sea Reefer 625XXL looks kinda cool so... ;Woot my thinking is that I won't be happy with my existing skimmer (Nyos 120) and return pump (3k lph Eheim) so i'll need to upgrade them anyway. AND, i'm not a wimp

I'm not saying i'll definitely get that but I just wonder if i'd regret not going 5 feet ;Nailbiting the 625 has loads of space for scaping, being 26 inches wide. I really like the sump (unlike the 425/525XL) and it'll just mean that i'll have to use the funds I wanted to reserve for livestock early on to go bigger. Or put it on the credit card ;Woot

We'll see - i've got ages to plan it so don't get your hopes up yet. Lighting-wise, I really like the Kessils but I just can't get away from the growth/spread T5s will give me on an SPS tank. I absolutely HAVE to have shimmer though so i'm considering hybrid options. Apparently the ATI hybrid doesn't give much shimmer. I'm looking into reefbrites or attaching my Kessils to the back of an ATI unit somehow. We'll see.

AOB
Any cricket fans on here? Bloody Steve Smith.

 

[The Reef Dork]

Quick update that doesn't deserve structured subheadings ;Bookworm

I've recently been thinking i'm not entirely happy with Mount KrakaZoa. I've sacrificed the perfection I was chasing and ended up buying some dull zoas :mad: I also don't like that the rock its based on is on one level and more or less completely flat. So i'm working in Mount KrakaZoa Pt II!

The original plan was to drill frag plug sized holes in the rock so I could easily pull out a frag plug and sell as they grow then 're-plant' a frag plug and let that get grown over and so on and so on.

But that went out the window when I was told my design wouldn't work like that. So I found a bit of rock I don't mind losing and got the drill out expecting the whole thing to fall apart ;Nailbiting... and...

...it only bl00dy worked! ;Woot



It has 3 ledges and i've drilled 2 frag plug holes into each plus an extra one on the slope near the top.

Only having space for 7 zoas may be a little restrictive but... it'll mean i'll have to select m'zoas more carefully and they'll all have more space to grow out. I reckon it'll look better if there are fewer big colonies rather than more small colonies. And if the zoas I choose are all the brightest, most interesting specimens

I might even put a bit of Aussie hystrix on the top of this and some plating monti on the sides...

3 final bits of news. I bought a new zoa. No idea what it's called but it is bright green as frick!



Moved my clam to higher light and found this bambino... look carefully...



Last but not least... my acans are looking a little more inflated now i've moved them to lower flow and lower light. I also turned down my powerheads given that none of my livestock likes/needs high flow.



The colouration is still really washed out but I can work on that. Maybe I should buy another fish to increase nutrients ;Woot first person to say increase feeding instead gets a slap ;Hurting

 

[The Reef Dork]

Better photos of the new zoa...