Upgrade to a 29

vlangel · Nov 3, 2014

I hope your eBay ATO works better than mine. They worked great for a year but then they stopped calling for water sometimes. I am guessing it is a float switch problem but I don' t know for sure. Because it quit being reliable I took it off and plan to ask for a smart ATO for Christmas. Very cute clowns. You should not have trouble with the duncan, they are a fairly easy LPS.

Diamond1 · Nov 4, 2014

vlangel said:
I hope your eBay ATO works better than mine. They worked great for a year but then they stopped calling for water sometimes. I am guessing it is a float switch problem but I don' t know for sure. Because it quit being reliable I took it off and plan to ask for a smart ATO for Christmas. Very cute clowns. You should not have trouble with the duncan, they are a fairly easy LPS.

Thanks for the heads up I will keep an eye on it. When I ordered the float switch I ordered 5 so I have back ups on hand if one stops working. I'm probably going to be replacing it with a hydor after the first of the year.

vlangel · Nov 4, 2014

Diamond, I also meant to mention that dual switches saved me more than once. One for low water and one for high water. That way if a snail or something is sitting on the low water switch causing it to not turn off the high water switch will catch it. That happen to me a number of times.

Diamond1 · Nov 11, 2014

Thanks Dawn I have the float switch where no snails or crabs can get to it, (you can see it in the fts below) and I clean the switch daily.

Quick update time. Everything is looking good but I'm having a little cyano outbreak. I attribute that to the newness of the tank and the lack of fully curing the base rock that I used. All my corals are going through a growth spurt.

My monthly FTS (more for me to keep a record of how the tank has progressed)

New duncan frag

some random coral shots

vlangel · Nov 11, 2014

Wow, nice! You are really getting good color and growth.

Diamond1 · Nov 11, 2014

Thanks I'm really pleased with it so far.

Re3f_Adict · Nov 11, 2014

love the ZOA collection you have

Diamond1 · Nov 11, 2014

Re3f_Adict said:
 love the ZOA collection you have

Thank you very much. It's getting there.

Diamond1 · Nov 19, 2014

Another quick update. I was looking at my tank Sunday and thought there was a big hole right in the middle of my aquascape so I thought.. what better to fill it up than a new coral!!!

So I picked up a new toadstool leather.
I'm hoping it will fill the gap between the rock and the overflow as it grows.

And a better shot of the new Duncan.

vlangel · Nov 19, 2014

I love toadstool and have been thinking of getting one as well. It looks very nice in your tank.

Diamond1 · Nov 19, 2014

Thanks Dawn, today was the first day that it opened up and showed polyp extension. Are you looking at putting one in your bowfront or the pony tank?

vlangel · Nov 19, 2014

Actually I have not decided for sure which tank it would go in. There is not a lot of room in the pony tank so I am leaning toward the bowfront. Seeing yours makes that longing for one more acute though.

Diamond1 · Dec 5, 2014

Ok, another month another update. Been fighting rising nitrates for a bit and I think I have a handle on them now with the start of dosing vinegar. Nitrates rose to about 80ppm and made my sps corals very unhappy. After 3 large water changes I got them down to around 20 ppm and then started dosing vinegar. After about a week I noticed that any cyano I had in the tank was gone and not coming back and the nitrates haven't risen above 20ppm since I started dosing. On the plus side of the higher nitrates I noticed all of my zoas had a major growth spurt. I can only assume that that was due to a good bit of nutrients in the water column.
My new toadstool is doing great and has expanded nicely and is filling the middle of my tank just like I wanted it to and the duncan coral is starting to grow new heads.

Ok here's my FTS of the month

Toadstool looking happy

new head on the duncan

Zoas growing out.

vlangel · Dec 5, 2014

I love that toadstool! You are still getting nice color and 20ppm is ok for nitrate although I don't think you want them any higher. I am glad you have them under control. I never tried the vinegar dosing...it kind of intimidates me but it seems like lots of folks have great luck with it.

Re3f_Adict · Dec 5, 2014

I'm loving those zoas great color

zoacrazy42 · Jan 26, 2015

Very nice!

Diamond1 · Jun 6, 2015

Wow it's been a few months since I updated this thread. Guess I need to stop slacking off and get some updates going.

I just got some new LEDs for this tank. I bought an OR T247 fixture that so far I like a lot. I was looking at replacing the bulbs in my t5 fixture and decided that for the price of replacing 2 sets of ATI bulbs I could replace the whole fixture with LEDs.

Not much new in the tank and a few pieces of coral are giving me some trouble. My candy cane coral had an adverse reaction to my high nitrate problem and started shedding heads off the skeleton. The coral seems to be doing a bit better and I'm hopeful it will recover. At one point my nitrates were approaching 80ppm. After figuring out that my RO filter needed replacing and putting all new filters in it I have finally got them down to 20ppm. Not perfect but getting better with water changes. Also replenishing my clean up crew made a big difference as well. Through all the nitrate issues the one coral I thought would suffer the most was my sunset monti. This coral has really surprised me and has continued to grow, it lost a bit of it's nice orange coloration but I'm hoping it will come back with the new lights.

On to some pics.
The tank is much brighter than it looks in the pics just need to figure out how to take pics under the LEDs.

new lights and my pvc light rack that needs painting.