Cali Kid Corals

Arvin's wife's 25g lagoon tank

Arvin R

Arvin R

Sponsor
BARcard
EDIT: This has gotten another transfer into a 25g lagoon tank with eshopps HOB overflow into a ice cap reef sump 15.

Decided to get another tank journal up.

Started April 2, 2022

Rimless 32gal biocube
AI prime 16HD
Mightyjet 326 return feeding through 2 random flow nozzles
Nero 3
Intake media rack
(Trimmed first chamber wall in sump to lower display water level)
Green killing machine 9w UV sterilizer
Aqueon 200w heater

This was Started as a tank transfer from my wife's 10 gal that started on March 1st with live rock from my 45gal tank.
March 1
20220301_190549.jpg

March 6
March 11
20220311_201352.jpg

March 21
Added AI prime 16hd
20220321_170727.jpg

March 24
20220324_211018.jpg

April 1
Cutting the rim off the biocube
20220401_195329.jpg

April 2
Biocube is wet with fiji pink and more live rock from the sump of my 45gal
20220402_101707.jpg

20220403_163729.jpg

April 3
Figured since it's a tank transfer I really didn't need to wait for a cycle since all the rocks already had plenty of nitrifying bacteria on them.
20220403_205204.jpg

April 9
Start of diatoms
20220409_144458.jpg

Can anyone ID this coral below? It has more than doubled in size since it was moved from my 45gal tank to my wife's tanks.
20220423_113323.jpg


(Time line catch up cont. on next post)
 
Last edited:
April 23
Diatoms phasing out and now onto cyano!
20220423_114203.jpg

May 19
Still battling cyano, dosing microbacter 7 every 2 days and running UV. It was all over the sand a week before this. It's slowly going away. Nitrates 2.5ppm 0 phos. Started feeding with reef roids to try and dirty it up and bring up the phos.
20220519_182242.jpg

The blue finger leather will need to be trimmed so I'll have some frags and starting dbtc once they're healed up and attached to a plug or rubble.
20220519_182234.jpg


Phew that took awhile going back through my phone's pictures to give a full history lesson on this tank.

Majority of the upkeep has been my wife as a couple days after the tank transfer I got sent out of town for work for a few weeks only to come home on the weekends so she was left to do all my tanks daily tasks and she did great!

I'll try and get some close ups of the corals in the next few days. They are all thriving in her tank with the exception of her hammer.

These tanks development was definitely fast by any standard but that's also the glory of keeping cooked rocks on hand.
 
Last edited:
Transfered once again

Tank: IM Nuvo Black 25gal (drove 4 hrs round trip to get this because I'm addicted to a good tank deal)
Sump: Ice Cap Reef Sump 15
Simplicity Skimmer
Green Killing machine 9watt UV sterilizer
Nero 3 power head
AI prime 16HD
20220904_165443.jpg

Pic below is after purchasing some rock scapes from Reef Rock Oasis at CFM.
20220925_113939.jpg
 
Last edited:
Last night at 3:30am I got woken up to my ATO beeping. I figured it was just acting up as it does sometimes (Smart ATO lite) and I unplugged it and would just deal with it later in the morning as I wanted to just get back to sleep. No biggie right?

I went back to bed and was about to fall back to sleep when I heard a gurgling noise from the tank. Figured I better take a thorough look and see what's going on. I noticed bubbles all over the top of my water and checked my return chamber in the sump and notice it's water level very low and quickly hit the button to turn it off from my Kasa Smart Power strip. (This tank runs an HOB overflow). The water level in the display was about 1/4in from overflowing from the top of the tank. Surely enough the siphon broke (probably due to my skimmer overflowing and my return pushing an insane amount of bubbles into the display.) I shut the skimmer off, turn the return pump back on and get the siphon going, reset my ato level watch it for 15 min then had to head off to work.

I've always planned on running a Reef Octopus Varios-2 pump for the float switch shutoff feature as this would make the HOB overflow a non issue and prevent an accidental overflow. I headed to Neptune after work today as AC only carries simplicity and Vectra pumps.

Out with the old...
20221031_220259.jpg

20221031_220252.jpg

In with the new!
20221031_151558.jpg


Now I have no more worries of running the HOB overflow.

Next steps for this tank is to install a gate valve in an effort to lower the overflow noise and maybe even hard plumb the overflow to the sump.

I've removed the skimmer from the sump as while doing a deep clean I noticed the spindle for the pinwheel wasn't lining properly or able to engage with the guide hole on the center of the pinwheel cover. Going to try running a fuge on this tank instead of the skimmer for awhile.

I've been battling nitrates and phos for a couple weeks now. My Nitrates tested at 88 ppm about 2-3 weeks ago and my phos was higher than 2.50 and was showing as out of range on the Hanna.

Currently nitrates are at 50ppm and phos is down to 0.33.

Nitrates have been weird as they would go down then test and addition 10ppm higher the next day. Will continue with daily testing until I get my nutrients back to appropriate levels.
 
You'll love the VarioS pumps. I actually have a spare in perfect condition with all original box/hardware if you're looking for a backup ;)
 
Kensington Reefer said:
Rio 1700.....vintage!
Click to expand...
Still works like a champ! Just wanted the safety of a float switch. I was originally going to drill this tank and move my eclipse small overflow from my 50 g lowboy and put a medium on the low boy but I got lazy so I just ran the HOB overflow and didn't mind it.

To be completely honest, I just wanted to buy new reef gear and it was the perfect excuse for my wife lol. I probably would've been ok with just removing my skimmer and running my return chamber water level on the lower side and setting my weir box lower in the tank so my display would have enough extra room to take the little bit that would be in the return chamber without overflowing.
 
Arvin R said:
Still works like a champ! Just wanted the safety of a float switch. I was originally going to drill this tank and move my eclipse small overflow from my 50 g lowboy and put a medium on the low boy but I got lazy so I just ran the HOB overflow and didn't mind it.

To be completely honest, I just wanted to buy new reef gear and it was the perfect excuse for my wife lol. I probably would've been ok with just removing my skimmer and running my return chamber water level on the lower side and setting my weir box lower in the tank so my display would have enough extra room to take the little bit that would be in the return chamber without overflowing.
Click to expand...
As @Coral reefer said
Retire that thing!
Encase it in an acrylic box as a piece of art
Just don’t use it
You have won the race with that pump...you replace the pump before it fails (or worse)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top