Zoomonsters 200g Build Continued

[zoomonster]

Not a whole lot happening on the aquarium front. I have been doing some major maintenance and cleanup. I added 25# of big live rock pieces and did some rearranging to get rid of some clutter of smaller pieces and to open up the rock work a bit. As far as rearranging that's still a work in progress and still not quite where I want it.

I was out at stormborn reef last week to see the shipment of Bali aquaculture's. Nothing really jumped out at me but watching as more of it colors up. They did give me a pretty good sized loripes that was in the expected to die tank. No clue if it will make it yet or what color. Right now mostly white with just hints of light brown. Definitely not dead and it will be interesting to see what it looks like if it survives. It does have a very nice flat fan shape.

They are having a 3 year anniversary sale this weekend and I stopped by today to see what they had. A lot of nice stuff and more on the way today/tomorrow. They had a couple nice female pintail fairy wrasses but someone grabbed them. I had my eyes more on an unusual pink margin wrasse which I got. They had two and one looked like my female but the one I got looks a lot like a female but has very long pelvic fins. It also does not seem to have the pink margins on the tail or dorsal fins. It does have the distinct orange eyes though. Not exactly sure what it is but I liked it and grabbed it. Guess is its either a mutant or maybe a male in early transition. However in the pics I have been through even the adult males don't have pelvic fins quite this long. Excuse the quickie cell phone pics.

I'll be stopping by this weekend to see what else shows up, what specials, and there's at least a frag or two I want. There's also the possibility they may have some more pintails with males. Very nice mystery wrasse caught my eye too but it might be trouble in my otherwise peaceful wrasse community.

 

[zoomonster]

Well I think it took evolved about a minute to ID that wrasse as a C. pylei, Cebu variant transitional male. Beautiful fish at female pink margin pricing (and on sale). The only downside is they are noted for being somewhat aggressive to other flashers. I'll have to see how that goes.

 

[zoomonster]

Today was a good day at the stormborn sale. There were a few fish I was interested in but they had gotten in a beautiful pink margin male (not fully transformed) to go with my female. They had gotten in a few other "pink margins" that were actually cebu pylei's like the one I grabbed yesterday. Being the kind of store they are they continued selling them at much lower pink margin prices even after I told them.

On the SPS front I grabbed a few frags. I got a Tyree rouge milli, a setosa and a bird of paradise. The latter two were to replace growout colonies I killed some time back with an alk crash and never replaced. At 22.5 for those it was a great deal. I think the rouge was 45. I also picked up a mariculture. Nothing spectacular but I found a large piece I liked that was just 30 at discount. I was shocked how low some of the stuff was. They had a whole group of $20 before discount pieces that flew out of the store. Some of the nicer maricultures had been fragged and I was able to get 4 bases with encrusting and at least one nice branch left for $10 each. I got two milli's, a sunset monti and one not sure yet.

Probably done buying but I'll be back tomorrow for the BBQ and raffle. The tank they are giving away would make a nice clown and anemone tank.

 

[zoomonster]

Front is the mariculture I picked up. Whats to funny is the statue of a bangai cardinal in exact same spot he was yesterday.

 

[zoomonster]

Just a random picture I took today. Clowns are still getting over me getting rid of more anemones and moving them around. I was down to 5 and one rock I moved had 3. Guess it stressed them out and two of them split so back up to 7. They stayed put except one that took off and landed in a big colony of zoanthids. I'll have to fish it out later.

 

[zoomonster]

Here's my multicolor lubbocks wrasse that I got a worthwhile shot of today. Probably one of my favorites and was just in the $30 range a while back.

 

[zoomonster]

I hit up the WWC anniversary sale today. I got there closer to 12 and you couldn't move in the place to went outside and ate first. Funny thing is the rush only lasted may 1.5 hours and then pretty dead. Nice sale but surprised no clubs involved and no raffles. Might have something to do with clubs getting stiffed at reefapalooza this year. The store was overall better this year than last meaning the normal consumer tanks and the frags in them looked a whole lot better. As usual not many fish and didn't really pay much attention. Now the farm has always looked great and even better this year. That 900g(?) is absolutely stunning this year. Last year it was pretty new and just a bezillion frags glued to rock. I had meant to go back and take a few pics but forgot. My only complaint is they have just gotten totally out of hand with prices even for common stuff. Even at 40% off it just put some into reason. I did find a couple things to make the trip worthwhile but I think If I'm going to buy anything from WWC (don't go there very often anyway) I'm going to focus on sniping Ebay auctions where chances are you will get a better deal and pickup.

I got a WWC Piranha, Paletta pink tip and one of the slightly golder versions of honeycomb plus my free frag from the bin. Not sure what that is but its pretty large with green polyps. Time will tell on that one. Actually just took a better look and its a green stylo.

 

[zoomonster]

Well... I did decide to do one of WWC's auctions tonight. Lets put it this way I got 8 frags for not much more than I paid for the 3 pieces at the 40% off anniversary sale. Even at 40% off Ebay stuff seems to go on average 1/2 of that. I had 48 items on watch (chalice and acro) and all but 2 I think sold in the $16-65 (mostly 20-40) range. One hit 75 and a JF B22 157.5. Really don't get the game of charging crazy in store prices and virtually giving them away on Ebay. I'm sure it doesn't leave a good taste in some customers mouths but hey I seldom go there anyway because of prices and Ebay works for me and local pickup. Then again its still pretty much summer and back to school and things are a little slower than they will be over the fall/winter. There were some others I wanted but hey win some lose some.

WWC red baron, Vivid's purple cap, WWC gold nugget chalice, Ultimate stag, 500 dollar efflo, Paletta blue, WWC pinked out chalice, WWC frostbite.

 

[zoomonster]

Always like to archive a set of pics from whatever I buy online for future reference.
500 dollar efflo, WWC frostbite, WWC gold nugget chalice, Paletta blue,
WWC pinked out chalice, WWC red baron, Ultimate stag, Vivid's purple cap .

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Nice!

 

[zoomonster]

Always freaking something... absolutely no quality/longevity in much of anything aquarium related. Not Like I'm talking about a $20 air pump but now Apex I have a fair amount tied up in (Gold + extra PM1, leak, wireless, 2x xtra temp probes, 1x xtra ph probe etc) went belly up. Per the usual unable to contact Neptune by phone and they seem to even have chat turned off. I did file a ticket which I got a fairly prompt lvl 1 response too with a canned trouble shooting list. That I had already done and I responded immediately. Per the usual I don't expect a response until tomorrow sometime. This set has been in use 2 years (think I used my aquacontroller II 7 years and it still works) and it would seem the controller went belly up. Just about a month ago the display stopped working and is just a blue screen. Other than some out of the box issues I went round and round with support over its been reliable. Other than the display everything that has occurred has been in the past few weeks since the Apex update. Today though I noticed a light shut off and I've been having issues with ozone control. Once I looked the controller is online but all modules and EB8's are offline flashing yellow and same after multiple reboots. Neptune also suggested the config or firmware may be corrupted. If that's the case being no display and the apex browser is not seeing the unit I'm probably screwed other than paying $219+ for a new unit or paying to have it repaired. Anyway I really did not waste anytime getting everything off Apex and running on wall knowing that if Neptune did do anything for me it would be days. IME if you are waiting on something from Neptune your tank would be dead first. It will be a pain but I'll be ok for a while. Just manual light and wave control, manual CO2 to CaRx and going to leave ozone off or maybe run a while each day.

Anyway now the dilemma... I will of course wait at least a day or so to see what Neptune says but I'm not holding my breath on any resolution. The dilemma is repair it, replace it or buy a whole new unit. The real bad taste dilemma is do I give Neptune another dime. I'm kind of suspecting I may have to. This is not subject to argument, and not trashing anyone else's choices, but I really would not consider a system other than Apex or GHL. I don't mind spending some money but GHL would be starting over and to get the functionality I have now would probably make it more than twice as much as Apex (minimal US presence/support an issue also) after adding additional boards etc. That's of course taking into account some of my Apex stuff is reusable like the leak, PM1, sensors, probes etc.

More to come but I'm leaning towards a new Apex, reusing some stuff and selling some parts to recoup some $$. Depending on what it costs I might get the controller fixed (or find a used one) and keep it all for a frag tank build I'm thinking about. This unexpected failure kinda slows that project down and the near future purchase of some new lights for my existing tank.

 

[zoomonster]

Went out this morning and picked up the Ebay stuff from WWC. Nice but definitely a big difference in the size of stuff they sell on Ebay and typically whats in the store tanks. The farm stuff when they let you shop it is probably better yet or at least more of a selection. First off before anyone asks... no that is not cyano. That's the blood red coralline that came on a small piece of yuma rock a couple years ago. I like it but at least on the rocks it pretty much snuffs out a lot of the pinkish/magenta varieties. Its never cared for growing on the glass or overflow too much though. The cool thing about it is if it gets scraped by urchin etc. it turns a dark florescent orange.

The back row is the freebie stylo that needs to be cut to remove dead, paletta pink tip, WWC Piranha, and honeycomb I got at the anniversary sale. Definitely much bigger stuff than Ebay other than the paletta blue.
Up front is the paletta blue (nicest piece and pic does colors no justice), tiny red baron, tiny ultimate stag, frostbite, $500 efflo, pink chalice, gold rush chalice and vivid's purple cap. That zoanthid is from elsewhere and the tiny frag far left is a sniper sps bubblegum milli.

Overall I'm happy with what I got. If you want a lot of stuff from WWC at reasonable prices Ebay is probably best bet. Smaller stuff but smaller prices. The average for the 8 Ebay pieces with tax was $30 each. The cheapest was $18 and the most was $42. Want bigger better pieces then in store, or maybe website, is a better bet but in store prices are much higher. With 40% off + tax those 3 back pieces cost me $198.

On the way home I stopped at Stormborn and used up some store credit to grab a female tierra and female lyretail to start replacing the ones eaten. Plus they are the only ones that seem to have the 1lb packs of hikari mysis locally. Among other things the pigs in my tank eat at least a pound of that a month. The males of each I still have are missing their girls

 

[zoomonster]

Apex continued... in a word DOA and I'm running all manual everything. The thing that kind of burns me is they will sell you a replacement at $279 but they will sell you a "spare" at $219 only if you send in the broken unit to be repaired. The real catch is repair to replace the board (most likely repair) with shipping is pretty close to same price. So against my better judgment I went ahead and just ordered the new orange/silver plastic monstrosity from BRS. Still undecided but may send in the unit for RMA and then turn around and sell it with an EB8, WXM, display, PM2 and the probes to at least recoup something. The 2nd EB8, ALD and PM1 (for CaRx), extra ph/temp probes I'll reuse. Assuming the new model works as advertised I at least get a new set of improved probes and a little new functionality. So hopefully sometime next week I will have a fully functional system again.

Also finally pulled the trigger on a Reef Octopus recirculating bio pellet reactor. That should be up and running next week also. If nothing else this all gives me the forced opportunity to clean and rewire everything under my tank. It started out organized but a couple years of repairing, replacing, upgrading etc. and its a cluster. The BRS GFO/Carbon reactor is also coming out for good which will make some space and reduce some clutter.

 

[zoomonster]

Good god wheres the nearest chapter of reefaholics anonymous ??? Not sure why I went there but the ASD weekend sale did me in for a few more Benjamin's. I've always been obsessed but SPS is going to be the death of me. If I were a heroin junky I'd be looking like a pin cushion right about now. Trust me I had many more pieces on my initial pick list and whittled it down to 5. If I hadn't gotten that colony I probably would have gotten many more frags. Good thing I only use cash and not credit or I would be in a deep dark hole already. ASD has great stuff (ordered once before) but most of the names usually seem made up as they post (works for me especially when the price is right). Pink blossom colony, flame jacket zoas, Mary Poopins, Middle Earth, pink pikapika. At least as the pictures go that middle earth is the bomb.

 

[zoomonster]

As I mentioned before I pretty much gutted the electrical/apex wiring under my tank, when apex died, and moved everything off to power strips outside the tank. Hopefully by the end of the week I will have everything back in order and do some major cleanup and reorg along the way. Thought I would post a couple before pics. Most of my neat and organized pics when I built the tank a couple years ago were elsewhere and the tank is well past that stage. I guess this "build part II" thread now becomes build part III genesis

 

[zoomonster]

My stuff from BRS showed up early on Wednesday but between work and trying to get a new truck its been a hectic week.

Yesterday I got a few minutes and setup the Reef Octopus bio pellet reactor which took all of 15m to get setup and online. Well after I presoaked the Vertex pellets for about an hour. Pretty much set in it sump, attach an output line and your done. I was expecting the usual metric stuff from them but 3/4" PVC works fine. A length of PVC to an elbow and then another piece down next to skimmer input and done. May revisit later to refine it but working great right out of the box.

This afternoon/tonight I had some time and started on the Apex upgrade. I'm just going to say it would seem Neptune can't get anything right and the pain never ends. I didn't have too many options but I regret spending $800 on this thing already. Once I got past the mounting of the EB832 and controller (that mounting system wastes so much space and literally had to remove my entire old systems modules and redo everything) its been nothing but trouble.

1) I started it up using hardwire and went ahead and did the software update. That seemed to take forever but it was good.
2) I setup the wireless which went pretty well. Of course not long after I removed the cable the wireless went offline and browser didn't see it. Long story short several reboots and nothing. Then went back to wired and there it was. When I opened the browser it shows its connected to WIFI and signal strength of 100% (fairly close to good router) and quality of 98% but no WIFI. Guess I will need to deal with Neptune support next week although with this and the other problems prone to returning the whole thing to BRS. This seems to be a pretty common issue and they probably used the cheapest Chinese junk component they could get.
3) Somewhere in there I added all the probes and calibrated and none seem to be working correctly. I also plugged in my old PM1 running my CaRx and that seems to be the only correctly functioning thing with expected readings of PH and temp.
4) The new PH probe seemed to calibrate correctly but so far has seemed unresponsive with one constant reading. When I cleaned it and stuck it back in the 10.0 solution it did respond but is reading 10.2. When back in tank it went back to 8.2 which is a little high at this stage of lights and should be falling off more. I'll see how it behaves overnight and tomorrow.
5) They don't bother to include ORP calibration solution and the probe appears to be reading about half what it should be reading (knowing my tank). It climbed a bit over the past couple hours but seems to be hovering at 159.
6) The salinity probe was missing a cap altogether and was dry shipped. Not sure if that's what they do now or if it was missing. Anyway I tried calibrating it and it failed (several times). Thought maybe it was the dry probe but tried my old lab grade probe and it failed also. That was the auto calibrate and also tried the manual but no settling occurs. Basically where it starts is where it stays. They have never been terribly reliable but its reading 35.1 and actual according to refractometer is 34 right now (time to add some salt but hasn't helped system being offline for a week with failed old Apex). I've heard it can take a week before the new probe can be calibrated but that does not explain why the old one won't calibrate either.
7) Not much to say about temp probe. Will need to verify its readings tomorrow. Right now its about 1 degree different from the PM1 probe sitting next to it.

Needless to say not a very productive night and nothing back on Apex control yet. Oh and BTW my old display was dead. So that's the controller and a display that lasted just over 2 years.

 

[zoomonster]

Just a little followup. Have not had time to do much but I've been waiting to see what the probes do. Wireless I have not yet bothered with it again.
PH: Seems normal now but will give it maybe a week and calibrate again
ORP: Took it about 1.5 days but seems to be reading correctly now.
Salinity: Readings are all over the place high and low. Last night it seemed to be reading correctly and this morning is low at 31.8. They have always been unreliable (and highly susceptible to micro bubbles) but seems worse than on old controller and I have used old and new probe.
Temp: This thing is erratic also. The new one is reading 77.5 and the PM1 one is reading 79.2 and they are side by side.

 

[zoomonster]

Been working, when I have time, to get new Apex finished up which I pretty much did last night.

1) Wireless I finally got working last night but a huge PIA and multiple attempts before it worked to my PC and cell phone. Even at that this morning it took multiple refreshes on the apex browser before it showed up. Since then it seems to be ok. The apex android app, that worked last night, never did detect the controller today. While local though the response times are slow, for dashboard clicks compared to my old apex but it was hardwired.
2) Got Fusion going again but having same issues I did with old controller after updates. When I go to Fusion and login it tells me 401 unauthorized with repeated attempts the same. Then I can click on my username at top right and select settings. Once at settings and I click on the home pull down I see the option to select apex list. Once in the list I see my controller and when I click on it I get the dashboard despite previously being told my login was invalid.
3) On my old controller with wxm it took me all of 5 minutes to setup my two MP40WES's. This time I must have spent hours. The first time they connected fine but Apex created 3 entries for 2 pumps so I deleted them all and started over. Man was that a mistake. Despite multiple reboots of controller and vortechs, updating WXM, disconnecting and reconnecting WXM they would not connect or show up. Eventually they just did and don't know why. Seems to be fine now and I guess I have been lucky to never have the issue of "pump missing" disconnects except when power is actually off. Programming took minutes and the copy function was useful to quickly setup the 2nd pump and then set it to sync.
4) Kessils were a breeze and my usual setup of using ramping profiles i.e. dawncolor, duskcolor etc. I did also try the wizard once but went back to profiles. Whats kind of annoying is if you use advanced programming it pops up the wizard crap every time you go to tweak them. Not sure if a bug or intentionally pulled out but the dashboard no longer shows you the numerical level the L1 or L2 ramp is at. If using a profile it says the name of the profile and if you use the wizard it says table. Interestingly the controls for the Vortechs still displays the mode and power level. Different mechanism but I guess they screwed up the L1/L2 setup when they added the new wizard. For me at least I always preferred the old method of defining ramp profiles and using them like this.
If Time 09:00 to 19:00 Then Kdawnclr
If Time 19:00 to 22:00 Then Kduskclr
5) The EB832 was working but after I updated it every outlet was in error reporting 25+ amps. Found a solution where you turn off (from dashboard) or unplug everything, telnet to the controller and run eb8reset device number. Its in the complete new user manual at 139. That was relatively painless and worked.
6) One minor thing is that reminders are only available on Fusion. If you are logged in locally they don't show up on the dashboard. One other thing is you have to arrange the screen for every device you are on. I got it the way I wanted it on my PC but when I view on my cell everything is the screwy initial layout with every unused control displayed.
7) Probes seem mostly good now except PH and Temp both seem to still be off. Knowing my tank that 8.16 reading should be around 8.3 that time of day. PH I will calibrate again soon but need to find a decent thermometer to get my temp probes in sync. At this moment they are reading 80.3, 8.18 next to each other and sometimes the span is greater. At most I think I have seen a 1.5f difference. The conductivity probe is still suspect with its ups and downs and could also be affected by inaccurate temp readings and compensation.

Barring any more issues, particularly with wireless, everything is back to full apex control. Now I just need to clean up everything. I have a couple outlets left over because I put my 5 Kessil's on separate power which eventually will get plugged into Apex on a single port.

 

[zoomonster]

I'm back... never really went anywhere but I needed a break and a lot of stuff going on. Most of which is I like to build things and been wrapped up in finally putting in a large garden out back while temps are bearable. Not done yet but irrigation, 6/12 citrus trees in, 24 blueberries, 12 blackberries and 3/4 8'x8'x12" raised beds put in with fall veggies going. Still gotta finish the citrus, dragon fruit and assorted other like banana, guava, avocado and whatever else I come up with. Should keep me busy at least until spring.

 

[zoomonster]

Tank wise kind of been on auto pilot as biopellets fully kicked in. I had a few issues at various times with burnt tips when alk spiked, occasional red cyano and been chasing what I thought was a bio pellet related PH issue. That turned out to have been a defective PH probe which was the new one that came with my 2016 apex and it needs to get RMA'd. It was slowly going low over time and I was scratching my head on the issue (thinking it was bio pellets). I finally did another recalibration attempt yesterday (x2) and it was whacked. Would not auto calibrate and manual was all screwed up. After calibration reading of test solutions were way off. Went back to my old lab grade from gold, recalibrated and PH is golden. Probably also did not help the temp probe that came with the 2016 was always off quite a bit. There again went back to gold probe.

Coral wise nothing new in a while. Colonies are doing pretty well and I took a couple hits on some frags and had some browning. Overall everything is turning around pretty quick. I suspect the aquaforest coral B caused the alk spike and I have discontinued it. I will likely go back to KZ coral snow (or make some) for occasional use. AF wise I have pretty much stopped everything except vitamins, aminos and I started energy as I ran out of Pohls. I did use up my Pro Bio S as my reactor kicked in.

Fish wise between the black Friday+ sales locally I added another female Tierra and a yellow fin flasher and a week later a blue chromis and terminal male blue flasher wrasse. The yellow fin didn't survive but a couple days. Almost forgot I got an oddity... a tank bred cross between a springeri and a neon dottyback. Quite the cool fish and he got named snake. The blue flasher is a little small but the color is stunning (more reds than blue) and happy to say all is calm in the tank and no one has bothered him. Overall I have a pretty peaceful bunch of wrasses and tank.

Black Friday was also good for stocking up for a while on BRS high cap GFO (ditched AF), DI resin, flake and pellet food and a more AF amino, vitamin and energy, hanna po4 reagents, Aiptasia x and selcon. Just enough for free 3 day shipping and enough points for $60 off on top of discounts. Salty supply is all but gone but I snagged a bunch of 4x14 felt socks at $3 each and a large Ozotech air drier at $35 along with a spare Tom's air pump. All that was 50% off or more. Its a shame they didn't have more stuff. What's really a shame is the Orlando (and other) shops kind of forced them to close and be just a distributer as deepwater. I've always preferred BRS but they were always great when I needed something in a hurry and of course they always had some things way cheaper like socks. For stuff I need quick there's always marine depot with a warehouse in GA. The real irony is all these local shops have next to nothing in the way of hard goods and when I need something seldom if ever have it in stock. In this day and time "we'll be happy to order it for you" doesn't cut it.

Yes I'm back to GFO. Little disappointed the BP reactor is not hanging in that regard. If it keeps nitrates in line though I'll be happy though. The jury is still out on that one.