Water Lily Reef (180g In-wall)

[DLHDesign]

Like I just watched a part of Disney being built!!! IMPRESSIVE!!!! Kudos!

Thanks for the compliment. I've got to admit that the crows for my tank are smaller than those for Galaxy's Edge, however... ;-)

So - yeah; I need to update this thread. This whole "learning to fly" thing is taking up a lot of my time, so the tank looks like hell right now. I need to get in there and give it a good cleaning ASAP. Like... tonight. I've got 3 months of WWC Coral Club frags arriving tomorrow... 8-|

 

[Clownfish2]

Thanks for the compliment. I've got to admit that the crows for my tank are smaller than those for Galaxy's Edge, however... ;-)

So - yeah; I need to update this thread. This whole "learning to fly" thing is taking up a lot of my time, so the tank looks like hell right now. I need to get in there and give it a good cleaning ASAP. Like... tonight. I've got 3 months of WWC Coral Club frags arriving tomorrow... 8-|

Have you solo’d yet or you close to Checkride day? Read a lot and fly minimum 3x a week. You’ll spend less money this way and be more proficient!

Got my private in 2001, airline pilot today. When I get more time at home, I plan to upgrade my tank to as nice as yours.

 

[DLHDesign]

Have you solo’d yet

I have not - but am close. I'm on my fourth flight instructor at this point, so it's kind of been hard to dial in the skills... :-| Flying 3x per week sounds like a great time, but work/kids/life just doesn't allow for that. I'm lucky to get 3hrs a week to fly (plus 3hrs of ground instruction). I went into this with the knowledge that it would be a slightly drawn out learning process, but that's better than not going at all.

Still haven't cleaned the tank. :-\ Though I did manage to replace my janky cobbled-together-with-tape wire disconnects on my light-box with waterproof ones soldered on this morning while the kids were busy killing each other with toothpicks at breakfast, so... progress?
"Luckily", the WWC shipment didn't appear to go out, so the corals didn't arrive. Gives me another day to clean the tank - and make an update! Stay tuned...

 

[najer]

I have not - but am close. I'm on my fourth flight instructor at this point, so it's kind of been hard to dial in the skills... :-| Flying 3x per week sounds like a great time, but work/kids/life just doesn't allow for that. I'm lucky to get 3hrs a week to fly (plus 3hrs of ground instruction). I went into this with the knowledge that it would be a slightly drawn out learning process, but that's better than not going at all.

Still haven't cleaned the tank. :-\ Though I did manage to replace my janky cobbled-together-with-tape wire disconnects on my light-box with waterproof ones soldered on this morning while the kids were busy killing each other with toothpicks at breakfast, so... progress?
"Luckily", the WWC shipment didn't appear to go out, so the corals didn't arrive. Gives me another day to clean the tank - and make an update! Stay tuned...

I like your style, I'll clean the glass, things will be fine, take preparation right out of the equation!?

Edit, serious, unless it is cold out I just temp acclimate for 15 - 30 minutes, dip if required and plonk them in!

 

[DLHDesign]

7/18/2019 - Day 287

First off; FTS!

As you can sort of tell - there are corals in that there tank! About a dozen, plus the Maxima clam. Everything in the frag tank has been moved into the tank. Before I did that, however, I took the time to clean it - the wife says it's the cleanest it's ever been, but clearly she doesn't remember seeing it when it was empty. Or when I first put in the rock. And then filled it with water. But yeah; pretty much everything after that made it more of a mess than it is now. So... she might not be wrong. It sure is purty all cleaned up, that's for sure! Very blue. Really makes me want to work on the shadow box cut-outs to see how that will look in place. I want to get to that, but I have zero time these days - learning to fly is taking every spare hour I've got. In a good way; I enjoy flying. Not so much the constant instructor switching nor the annoyingly slow/bothersome ground school classes, but I have a solution for the latter at least... But this isn't a thread about my flying - except as how it keeps me from taking care of the tank. And how (someday) it'll take me to distant places to get fish, corals, and meet reefing friends... So, okay - it's kind of about flying.

Back to the tank. Before I put all the corals in, I rigged up the SenEye to the computer and got some PAR measurements. This is more of a challenge than it sounds because I have a Mac. The SenEye software is Windows only. Which meant I had to dredge up my virtual machine software and get that all updated and working. I spend "all" day getting paid to set up, debug, fix, and code computer systems. The last thing I want to do in my free time is fiddle with setting up software - especially Windows... But I did it. Because as painful as that is (it's not, really), I really wanted those PAR measurements. And lo; I got them!

They are about what I was aiming for when I set up the tank - some high areas for some SPS, but mostly stuff in the mid-range for LPS and softies. These numbers are with the 8 T5's on full (of course; these don't dim), the 4x G3 Radions running at 90% with wide-angle and diffusers, and the shadow box 100% (for whatever that does).
Light - check.

Sharp-eyed readers may notice that one of the gyres has been updated. This wasn't a thing I wanted to really do, but the one I had (which was bought used) couldn't seem to stay running. I've had a gyre for several years now, so I'm pretty confidant that I know how to clean and re-assemble them, yet every time I thought about that pump - never mind actually touching it - it would decide to stop spinning. Or do that little "I'm too tired to turn, but I'll keep trying because you believe in me" jerky thing that they do when something isn't woking right, but is not so wrong to be actually dead...
So I pulled it out and replaced it with a new 350. I like it better - the flow is more directional, taking it apart and cleaning it is easier, and it seems to work well. The diverter is supposed to enable it to be closer to the surface, but I couldn't seem to get that to be the case when I was fiddling with it for 30 seconds. I'll revisit that at some point, but for now it's even-ish with the other, so whatever. Looking at the pictures above, I see that it's not level. That must be driving my OCD wife mad... I should fix that...

The frag tank is back to being isolated from the DT. I finally called WWC and had them ship out the order I'd placed about 6 months or so and they came in. The frag tank is all self-sustaining with auto-water-changes and it's own Apex, so it's not really a big deal to QT the frags for 76 days. Better safe than sorry - especially since I'm happy to never QT a fish again if I can (I'll leave that to Humblefish to do for me). I somehow totally missed getting a picture of that tank, so I'll try to remember to do that when the lights come back on. It's already a mess in that tank, however, so fair warning there.

Now that the tank is clean, my daughters have taken an interest again. And by "taken an interest", I mean that they keep reminding me about the fish we've lost. "Daddy,I miss Zebra. Are we going to get another Zebra?" "Daddy, why don't we have any Nemo-fish any more? I liked our Nemo-fish. <sad face>" Breaks my heart. Luckily, Zebra II (Schooling Heniochus) is already through QT and is just waiting to be shipped to me. But rather than ship just one or two fish, I'm holding off until more of the tangs and such are ready so that they can all go in at the same time. So I suffer with my daughter about the missing fish. Unfortunately, she still doesn't have a solid grasp on the way time works, so if I try to tell her that we'll get the fish later, she'll think that means somewhere between "in 5 minutes" and "tomorrow". Even if I try to tell her, "No; not for a month or so", she'll think for a moment and reply, "Okay; so two tomorrows?" It's adorable - and maddening. Parenting, eh?

I passed on the Trident. BRS called me up and told me my name came up, but for budget reasons (see: new gyre), I decided that I could wait a bit longer for one. I'm very proud of myself for my restraint*, but also a bit peeved at myself for not getting one before we go to Hawaii for a week. Not that I NEED one, of course - auto water changes are fine - but it would have been... nice. I've put my name back on the list just in case.
* - Okay; technically they called me on July 4th and I didn't have time to call them back until well past the 12hr window what with the holiday and all. If I had really wanted one, I would have made a stink about that and might have gotten one sooner (because BRS is awesome about customer service like that). But (a) I don't really need one, and (b) I don't really like to make a stink about non-important things.

Speaking of the Trident; I somehow managed to dose in way too much Triton 4-part. Not all at once or anything; I just had my dosing a bit high for the tank consumption levels. The build-up happened, however, and now I've got many patches of deposits built up all around the tank (in plumbing, sump, etc.). The main result of that (aside from the mess) is that now my flow meters are clogged up. I need to take the plumbing apart to clean them, but when this happened last time (yeah; this is a repeat mistake - I'm slow to learn on some thing) I cleaned them all before the deposits started to break apart and they just clogged up again within a few days. So this time I'll just wait until the deposits break down on their own (get re-absorbed?) and then go in and clean the meters. It's not like I don't have visual indicators of the flow working anyways; the meters are just nice-to-have's when I'm away. Needless to say, I've turned off my Triton dosing for now. I'm hoping that my few small patches of coralline continue to expand. I'm sure they will, right? Right?

Started with some pics; let's end with some pics!

Side shot of my last bit of cyano in the DT. But don't worry - there's plenty more in the sump!

The clam (with all it's worms and such) and "Pink"; the Coral Beauty. Why "Pink"? Because my daughter is 2, that's why...

The bubble that needs bigger bubbles to make me happy. Also; Scrat. And Pink again. Don't judge Pink; he's happy...

Doing well. Very green. I mean the algae, of course. :-\

Stadler II is judging you. And Pink as well. Everyone gets judged by Stadler II.

Peek-a-go says Peek-a-boo! (But really; it's "Feed me. Now.")

 

[Heezie]

Just read through both of your build threads and they’re both awesome! Any updates?

 

[Jeto2004]

Wow, nice build! Really like your modern looking woodwork. Poor soul you will have to sit with there back to the tank during dinner!

 

[DLHDesign]

Thanks for the read-throughs, comments, and compliments; appreciate it all. I won't make a "formal" update because I don't really have any new pics, but I'll try to give a summary.

Nothing has really changed in the tank for the good. The fish are all fine (yay!) and the corraline algae continues to slowly display in tiny little small spots still too small to photograph easily. The water flows, lights light, and chiller chills. I'd say that my heaters heat, but they never come on because the tank runs too hot as it is - a byproduct of the small room behind it, perhaps? Even with the little fan running 24x7, I think all the lights and gear are too much. Need to figure that out some day as I don't really want to run the tank at 80/81F...

Beyond the fish being alive and nothing catastrophic happening, I did loose most of the test corals I'd put in. The tank just isn't stable yet - not enough to handle SPS corals, at least. I could spend a lot of effort getting it stable and keeping it that way, but I don't really have the time to do that. So I'm letting it settle itself out for about a year or so. Once the purple algae covers more of the rock, I'll try some LPS. I've still got a carpet nem, bubble coral, and the clam doing well enough, so I'll tune to keep them around, but otherwise just let the tank do it's thing.

My maintenance schedule is equally lackadaisical. I scrape down the front glass once a week or so (sometimes once every other week) and hit the back maybe every other month. The skimmer isn't really drawing anything out, so that gets dumped and cleaned even less frequently (it's got an oversized overflow with carbon to keep the smell away). I've got a goodly collection of various nuisance algae in the fuge section of the sump right now. I clean that out by hand when I clean the skimmer catch. I'll likely try to add some more chaeto again one of these days to see if I can get that to grow, but for now the icky stuff I have is only growing below (the fish and CUC keep the display rocks clean enough).

The tank has made it through two vacations with me out of town. I think that sets a record for my tanks, because the last one had some kind of alarm notification every time I left town for more than a day. That gives me confidence that the system can run automated well enough, but it also makes me hesitant to re-introduce some of the more complicated aspects - such as the Triton method dosing I took offline a few months ago...

Next up for the tank is to re-combine the DT and Frag tanks into a single system. I tried to do that today, but one of my gate valves got over-tightened and jammed, then stripped the threads. So I put in an order to BRS for replacement parts to rebuild that section of plumbing - and THAT'S why you use unions, folks! Once that stuff gets here, I'll rebuild that bit of plumbing (it's only about 1ft in length; no big deal) and get the system fully circulating again. There are some LPS in the Frag tank that I'll leave in there for a month or so until I try to position them into the DT.
Only other thing in the pipe (ha!) is another batch of fish in the works. It would have been here by now, but one of the fish got slightly injured during bagging and the vendor wanted to keep an eye on it in case of bacterial problems before sending them to me. I love, Love, LOVE not having to QT anything - even things this minor!

 

[jsker]

Any updates on the system?

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Yes would love to see where the tank is today!

 

[DLHDesign]

Pulling me out of "Lurk Mode", eh? ;-)

The tank is much like the rest of my life - surviving, but not thriving. :-|

The good news is that all the fish are fat and (seemingly) happy. They get hand-made frozen food practically every morning and into the afternoon, and a bunch of nori to munch on via two feeders for communal happiness.

As far as corals go, however... Practically non-existent. The three anemones (two rock and one bubble) are doing well. The bubble went on walk-about for a bit which gave me palpitations, but it ended up basically where it started, so <<shrug>>. The clam is doing well enough, though the colors on some days seem a a bit dull. They generally come back to vibrance for a bit, which seems to cycle with no rhyme nor reason. The bubble coral colony is still doing well, and one or two other are holding on well enough.
But the vast majority of the corals I've picked up on tried to transfer - perhaps about 60 frags? - have slowly faded away. I have no idea why, honestly. ICP tests come back with everything in the green, and I've followed the guidelines on dosing in trace elements. I've got the Triton hooked up and running it's 4x daily tests and keeping those params stable. Temp and salinity are held within narrow bands thanks to automated heating/cooling. Lighting has been checked with PAR meters multiple times and flow seems to be in the realm of "somewhere in the middle" (though that is easily the least accurate measurement I have). The coralline, at least, is growing well. It keeps me scraping the glass, at least.
I also can't seem to keep chaeto alive for more than a month or two. I've tried several times and have even tried dosing in additives specifically to help it grow. I have a feeling that the reason for this challenge is that my fuge light (Kessil H380) is too powerful for the ~12" above the fuge location. It's been off for a few months now, which has turned the frag tank into a "refugium" full of hair algae. I pull out handfull of it once a week or so, which is about the only nutrient export that I have since the skimmer seems unwilling to balance between "totally dry skim" and "overflowing". Despite the frag tank looking like a mess, the DT- with it's army of 2" snails and tangs, etc. - stays free of any major algae. I have the AWC ready to go and every so often will turn it on to cycle out ~20gal, but for the most part I hold the 50gal of new saltwater ready in case there is an emergency of some type.

This is, to be honest, not what I wanted for this tank. I had envisioned that I would have something that wasn't quite a "show tank", but at least would be on the way there. Instead, I have a stable FOWLER+ tank. Which would be rather upsetting except for one thing - my MAIN goal with the tank was to get something ULM. Which, to be honest, I have. I feed the fish every day, which takes about 5min. I scrape the glass once a week or so - sometimes every other week. Every so often I pick out some hair algae from the frag tank. And aside from an occasional need to pull a snail out of a return pump input (the shells are too big to fit all the way in, so it's just freeing them from the suction) - that's about it. In terms of effort::value, this tank falls safely in the "worth it" column.

I sometimes think about trying to "fix" things - about trying to figure out how to get some of my desired corals to grow. But even the thought of that causes stress. And there is already MORE than enough stress right now. My family is doing well enough, despite all that's going on in the world. We've stayed safe from the pandemic so far. The CA fires are nearby and covering us in smoke, but so far are far enough away (despite being able to see their glow at night) that we should not be in danger. I still have my job - and though I had to reduce my hours, we can still balance our budget. I had to pause my flight school as a result of the drop, however, and finishing that would be a higher priority than picking up more corals...

So the tank is what it is, for now. I can't really complain - looking at it still brings me more peace than stress. I trust in the tank's ability to mostly care for itself, which is comforting in these times.

 

[Rick.45cal]

Pulling me out of "Lurk Mode", eh? ;-)

The tank is much like the rest of my life - surviving, but not thriving. :-|

The good news is that all the fish are fat and (seemingly) happy. They get hand-made frozen food practically every morning and into the afternoon, and a bunch of nori to munch on via two feeders for communal happiness.

As far as corals go, however... Practically non-existent. The three anemones (two rock and one bubble) are doing well. The bubble went on walk-about for a bit which gave me palpitations, but it ended up basically where it started, so <<shrug>>. The clam is doing well enough, though the colors on some days seem a a bit dull. They generally come back to vibrance for a bit, which seems to cycle with no rhyme nor reason. The bubble coral colony is still doing well, and one or two other are holding on well enough.
But the vast majority of the corals I've picked up on tried to transfer - perhaps about 60 frags? - have slowly faded away. I have no idea why, honestly. ICP tests come back with everything in the green, and I've followed the guidelines on dosing in trace elements. I've got the Triton hooked up and running it's 4x daily tests and keeping those params stable. Temp and salinity are held within narrow bands thanks to automated heating/cooling. Lighting has been checked with PAR meters multiple times and flow seems to be in the realm of "somewhere in the middle" (though that is easily the least accurate measurement I have). The coralline, at least, is growing well. It keeps me scraping the glass, at least.
I also can't seem to keep chaeto alive for more than a month or two. I've tried several times and have even tried dosing in additives specifically to help it grow. I have a feeling that the reason for this challenge is that my fuge light (Kessil H380) is too powerful for the ~12" above the fuge location. It's been off for a few months now, which has turned the frag tank into a "refugium" full of hair algae. I pull out handfull of it once a week or so, which is about the only nutrient export that I have since the skimmer seems unwilling to balance between "totally dry skim" and "overflowing". Despite the frag tank looking like a mess, the DT- with it's army of 2" snails and tangs, etc. - stays free of any major algae. I have the AWC ready to go and every so often will turn it on to cycle out ~20gal, but for the most part I hold the 50gal of new saltwater ready in case there is an emergency of some type.

This is, to be honest, not what I wanted for this tank. I had envisioned that I would have something that wasn't quite a "show tank", but at least would be on the way there. Instead, I have a stable FOWLER+ tank. Which would be rather upsetting except for one thing - my MAIN goal with the tank was to get something ULM. Which, to be honest, I have. I feed the fish every day, which takes about 5min. I scrape the glass once a week or so - sometimes every other week. Every so often I pick out some hair algae from the frag tank. And aside from an occasional need to pull a snail out of a return pump input (the shells are too big to fit all the way in, so it's just freeing them from the suction) - that's about it. In terms of effort::value, this tank falls safely in the "worth it" column.

I sometimes think about trying to "fix" things - about trying to figure out how to get some of my desired corals to grow. But even the thought of that causes stress. And there is already MORE than enough stress right now. My family is doing well enough, despite all that's going on in the world. We've stayed safe from the pandemic so far. The CA fires are nearby and covering us in smoke, but so far are far enough away (despite being able to see their glow at night) that we should not be in danger. I still have my job - and though I had to reduce my hours, we can still balance our budget. I had to pause my flight school as a result of the drop, however, and finishing that would be a higher priority than picking up more corals...

So the tank is what it is, for now. I can't really complain - looking at it still brings me more peace than stress. I trust in the tank's ability to mostly care for itself, which is comforting in these times.

I’m glad to hear you and your family are still happy and healthy. Sorry your tank hasn’t been as responsive as you had hoped. Still plenty of time to figure that out in the future, some things are far more important these days! Be well my friend and keep doing what you’re doing.

 

[jsker]

Pulling me out of "Lurk Mode", eh? ;-)

Yep;Hilarious

Good to read that your family and you are healthy and safe. The tank looks great, the slow approach works well.

Great the read that the fish are getting fat on your homemade food.

I will not be such a stranger.;Joyful