CDA 87G

[sfsuphysics]

I was actually thinking of going thinner. Fact is much like wood the compression strength in the long direction of a single piece of aluminum far exceeds the weights of our tanks, horizontally however I was thinking of going like 60mm (which is like 2 & 1/3 inches) just so I don't have to worry about deflection issues, kind of like you'd do with 2x6s to make it thicker, thick in one direction thin in another. But it would most definitely would have braces so it's not just one long span.

I really wanted to go with the black anodized stuff and make it really sexy, it's just the sizes of that seem to be extremely limited, so clear anodized it is... maybe I can get paint to adhere to it if I want it black.

 

[Ibn]

You could. This stand is overbuilt and I think I could have gotten away with 1" 8020 easily.

 

[Ibn]

My last sump, which had an integrated ATO reservoir, was a good concept, but there were some issues with it.

1. It was only 2G so it could only hold enough top off water for ~4 days or so. This proved to be insufficient since I would need to make sure that it was filled up before the weekend and for any time when I'm out of the office for a week or more, I'd have to drag out the 5G bucket and relocate the ATO pump to it instead.
2. It was integrated into the sump, which made filling it up a chore. Part of this is remedy to the height of this current stand, but I still want to be able to fill it with ease.

I decided to remedy both of those with the new ATO setup.

ATO is much easier to piece together versus a sump since it's mostly a box. 26"x8"x15". Roughly ~12.21 gallons if it were filled to the top. 11.38 gallons if filled within 1" from the top.

JG quick disconnect to a bit of Tunze tube to the ATO pump. I'll modify this for the ATK down the line.

Testing for leaks. The top was cut into 3 sections with a Dremel by hand and both ends were glued down. Right side is where the pump is going so the JG was placed there and a small hole was drilled to fit the electrical wire for the pump to slip through.

Relocated into the stand and a piece of RO tubing was used to connect one JG to the next. The middle section just sits on top and can be removed for filling. I love that it has enough capacity for me to dump 10G of ATO water in (it's what's currently sitting in the reservoir in this pic). Oh, I've been checking on evaporation rate for the tank and it looks like it's ~0.63 gallons a day. The reservoir filled at 10 gallons has enough water to last me 15 days. I just need to finish setting up the remainder of the Tunze ATO in the next couple of days since I'll be out of town for the weekend.

 

[Ibn]

I haven't seen any PAR measurements from the Maxspect Recurve light. Vincent was kind enough to let me borrow his Apex PMK for me to pull some figures for this fixture.

100% all channels to see what this light is capable of.

Maxspect's P1 (SPS). Not too bad and what I'll be running for awhile.

 

[scuzy]

Nice


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[Gablami]

Nice numbers for your sps “tree”


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[sfsuphysics]

Yeah those Maxspect products can be annoying, they get lots of "hype" from various reef blogs or shows, then they are released and you dont hear much about them, like the "big" LED makers put so much "noise" out there they almost disappear.

I was jazzed about the Maxspect Etheral fixtures, but finding info from users about them is so flipping hard. Did no one buy them? Did those who did not write about their experiences, neither good or bad

 

[Ibn]

Picked up a COR-20 from AC after the swap and plumbed it in the same day. Was originally going to get it from Neptune, but Robert didn't have one in stock and mentioned that he saw a couple of them at AC. Sending business to someone else, but I appreciated the fact that he was looking out for me instead of the bottom line.

Also, decided to test out some gyres. Picked up two Jebao WP40 and mounted one of them. It pushes a ton of water and has moved 1/3 of my sandbed away from the other side of the tank leaving me with bare glass on the bottom using the lowest setting. Gonna pick up the integration into the Apex module and see if I can bring the speed of the gyre down a bit more.

Finally got down to the list of sps that I want in the tank:

1. Oregon tort (acquired 4/21/18)
2. Pearlberry (acquired 4/21/18)
3. GARF Bonsai
4. OG Purple Monster
5. OG strawberry shortcake
6. OG Bali shortcake (comparable acquisition: JF firecracker (4/14/18), RR Fireball (acquired 4/21/18))
7. OG Pink Panther
8. PC Rainbow (frag swap 4/14/18)
9. Aquascene Icefire Echinata
10. SC/RR Orange Passion
11. RRC Pink Cadillac (transferred from 47G)
12. RR Orange Machine (source found)
13. Walt Disney
14. Homewrecker
15. Jaw Dropper (source found)
16. Vivid Confetti
17. Palmer's blue milli (frag swap 4/14/18)
18. TBD (possibly BC Aquatic-Man tabler)
19. TBD (possibly BC Bubblebath Unicorn)

I counted the points on the rockwork and determined that there was at least a minimum of 18 points in the tank where I can mount sticks to, without adding more branches on. I did mount some testers in some of the areas not accounted for in the 18 so that I can see what some of the wilds end up looking like. Oh, when I met up with Vincent at Neptune to borrow his PMK, we spotted a superman like pink table with orange polyps. We both thought it was a wild superman table, but it turns out that it was from a tank breakdown. It's a A. hyacinthus tabler that was grown from a frag. We were hoping that Robert was around at the time and could frag it, but he wasn't. I went back the following day and bought the colony from Robert instead and gave Vincent a frag of it at the swap.

 

[Flagg37]

Those are good numbers all around. I don’t know what your other tank was at but you could probably afford to go even lower on the intensity. That one 470 point is pretty high. Mohawks will be the only thing that could handle that unacclimated.

What, no red dragon on the list?

That’s a nice looking colony. Maybe a good dbtc candidate.

 

[Ibn]

Yeah, no red dragons for now. That's a secondary coral versus the list, which consists of a lot of OG sticks. I'll pick one up after Vincent is able to grow out his.

That hyacinthus tabler will eventually make its way over to DBTC once it grows out a bit more. It looks massive in the pic at ~3" around, but it's nearly impossible to frag. The branching structure on it is very tight and even to frag a piece for Vincent, it took away from the shape of it. You can see the triangular knotch at top of the frame of the pic, pretty much dead center. That's where Vincent's frag came from.

Speaking of DBTC, here's a pic of Charlie.

Mounted him on a 2.75" disk for now. Hopefully when you're ready for him again, he'll cover that entire disk and graduate onto the next size up (4" disk).

Some other pics taken yesterday.

BC Spainbow. Brown from the trip to me and mounted on the bottom rockwork. Hardy and low light piece, so I'm not too worried about it.

Crystal Jade from the BAR swap. Not sure where this piece came from but interested in seeing what it colors up like. Any pics of the mother colony? @Coral2Coral

JF Firecracker. This one should darken up. Lots of bleached/brown stuff at CRC from their T5 replacements, but I have a general idea of how pink/red this piece can attain. The base colors with the yellow tips reminds me of the OG Bali shortcakes when they first became available.

ORA Pearlberry

Oregon tort

I pick up wild frags up every once in awhile if they have promising colors or with potentials. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. Some of the tester SPS from Neptune. I used these two (out of the four) SPS to verify lighting on the rock as well as to make sure that tank would be ready for the SPS to move back in.

Testers from CRC. Couple of tenuis with potentials added over the weekend.

 

[sfsuphysics]

So where are all these sticks going to go that aren't on your list? Just grow out pieces to see if they do something?

Love all the OG pieces you have on your list, well except the Purple Monster I think I'll have grand kids before that thing gets to any significant size ... and my kid just turned 2
Also loved the Cali/Becker/Bennett(?) tort, that thing just was super blue in my tank, although I have seen other versions that have a lot more green to it so meh.

 

[Ibn]

Yep, grow out pieces to see if they do anything. If I don't like it down the line, then I'll get rid of them similar to how I got rid of some of the mini colonies in the past. I usually sell them to others at a fraction of the cost of what it costs for a mini colony with proven colors. The returns basically allows me to cycle frags through the system without breaking the bank.

PM is definitely a slow grower, but it wasn't as bad as the pink panther. That thing made the PM look more manageable in terms of growth. As for blue, just gonna stick with the Oregon tort and the Palmer's for now. They're OG pieces that are pretty consistent even though they're not the king of blues. The current bluest coral is Peng's Heart of the Ocean. Might pick it up eventually, but not a high priority.

Here it is next to the Oregon tort.

I forgot to list some of the pieces coming on Thursday from Copps. His 24k milli and the Bella's acro will make the trip (along with Vincent's red dragon). They were in the last tank but didn't make it. I want to see if they do grow out similar to the colors and growth/corallite structure in this tank as it did in his.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Yeah if you can get that Palmer's mille to color up that can be absolutely INSANE levels of bright blue where as the Oregon tort was a more of a darker blue/purple coral. I do have to say though all my memory of these corals were grown the OG way too under metal halides and/or T5s, not LEDs, so it will be interesting to see what happens with some of those OG pieces.

 

[Ibn]

I've grown the same Oregon before so have a general idea of what it'll look like. It's the Palmers that I haven't kept in a long while and never under LEDs that I'm interested in seeing.

 

[Flagg37]

Charlie looks happy. I’m glad he’s going to a good home.

 

[Ibn]

CaRx vs. 2 part dosing
I've always used 2 part dosing since most of my tanks has always been on the small side. Even with the 47G, I was looking at ~60mL of alk daily to keep up with it, but with this larger tank I decided to use a reactor instead. I already own a 5# aluminum tank and a nice regulator that Ian and I pieced together awhile back when we were into freshwater planted tanks. Both of these are being repurposed for the reactor instead.

Was originally gonna order a Aquamaxx cTech-T1 reactor, but they aren't in stock at the moment and hasn't been for over 2 weeks+. Talking to a buddy of mine and he mentioned JNS, which is basically the generic version of the Aquamaxx brand. JNS makes a Seapora brand of calcium reactor which has the Sicce 0.5 pump mounted on the bottom of the body versus the top as in the Aquamaxx.

One of the reasons why I originally built the return manifold was for flexibility which would allow me to add additional equipment. In this case, a 1/2" JG to 3/8" push connect was picked up from HD to feed the reactor. pH probe came from my Apex classic (replaced about a month ago with the Apex 2016) and the solenoid is being managed by the Apex. Media is nothing special and was sourced from Neptune at $2.25/lb. I still need to get the ReMag into the reactor for the magnesium portion, but the reactor has been working well. I've been dialing it in the for the last week or so and adjusting the value with the remaining 2 parts that I already have mixed. So far it's been working well and is currently holding alk at 7.7 for the last 5 days.

 

[scuzy]

That's awesome. The one thing I notice with many reactors the pumps are on the bottom and if I ever need to service the pump for to a clog I had to drain the reactor. The nice thing about the aquamaxx c series with the pump on the side you can disconnect without emptying the reservoir.


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[sfsuphysics]

NIce!

I've been debating the pros and cons of CaRX vs 2 part as well. So far the biggest con is "Holy crap that's a lot of investment needed", the other being 2 part is something I know, something that I can control, and in the case of a problem occurring with a pump, not super duper critical. But the ease of use is definitely an alluring property.

 

[Ibn]

Yep, the pump on the bottom was something that I considered, but it's not too big of a deal. Reactor uses a Sicce pump which are pretty darn reliable, but it isn't hard to pull it apart for servicing. I just need to close the valve on the manifold and then disconnect the JG fittings. It isn't that big of an issue since the reactor is relatively small even though it's supposedly rated for up to 300G (I'll half that as usual vs. any mfg'er specs). I actually went through this scenario when I first set up the reactor and noticed a leak (silicone tubing that it came with had a good size tear on it).

My investment in this is relatively small since I had more than half the parts needed beforehand: regulator, co2 tank, 2nd pH probe (recalibrated). The reactor was a bit less than $175, the media was another $13 (still have some to refill), and the JG fitting was a $5. Total cost for what I didn't have was actually less than what I originally paid for the BM 3 channel doser and that doesn't even account for the 4 head expansion.

The tank uses a lot more 2 part than the 47G even though I have a limited number of SPS in the tank. It was eating up ~80mL of alk daily, which would have meant that I need to mix 2 part every other week just to keep up with the demands. Definitely not the funnest thing to do and BRS hiking up their 2-part additives for pharma grade was the coffin in the nail in my consideration.

As for how the tank is doing, the sticks are doing alright. There's some decent growth on it, like in this pearlberry. The first shot was when it was added to the tank and the second is as of last Friday (approximately 5 weeks of time difference between these two shots). Not the best, but not too bad considering that the tank has only been up for a couple of months.

 

[Ibn]

Let's talk about something that I've seen over the years, especially with new tanks, and the lack of maturity in most of them. Cyano.

This tank is no exception and there's a decent amount of cyano in the tank as it's maturing.

Most people would freak out if their tank looks this way, but to me, it's all part of the process. Chemiclean would nuke it all in the matter of 48 hours and I've considered it, but I've seen it before in new tanks and rather let the cycle ride its course and correct for itself over time. I'm just keeping thing consistent with my normal maintenance (5G water changes) and let things mature. It's slowly subsiding and there's less of it over time. My rocks, which were once covered is now pretty much cyano free and inhabitated by other types of algae. I'll let the snails and hermits worry about the cleanup.

One of the reasons why I love banded trochus is that they do consume bit of cyano, but it takes awhile for them to put a dent in it. What you'll notice is that after consuming a bit of cyano, they drop on their back and pass out for awhile. I usually just make sure that I right them up, even though none of the fish bothers them, to make it less of an effort for them. You can see the areas where they consumed the cyano off the overflow box here, leaving the coralline behind.