Coral reefer
Past President
Tubing inside pump heads good? Could be getting worn out
Derek's 225g - Magnifica / SPS Reef
- Thread starter derek_SR
- Start date
BAYMAC
Supporting Member
good point. As it ages, its looses rigidity,
RandyC
Supporting Member
Tubing get hard and clogs easily. Make sure to grease up with something like Molykote 111.
I find that the tubing you can buy from Ecotech for the rollers doesn’t last a terribly long time. 7-8 months at the most, but I change them every 6 months or so. Haven’t yet tried sourcing my own tubing yet.
derek_SR
Supporting Member
The group of 4 were purchased together and are basically brand new still. Bought <2 months ago. Still, I'll check just in case.
BAYMAC
Supporting Member
2 months is way to soon. There has to be some other issue.
BAYMAC
Supporting Member
Mine have always gotten flattened under the rollers so I have always assumed they lost rigidity in that area. Serves me right
derek_SR
Supporting Member
Couple cool things worth sharing. I bought two of those battery-powered USB fans that @JVU suggested in the power outage thread, decided to test them out yesterday during the heat wave. My tank was swinging between 76 and 81. Tank didn't seem to mind but I wanted to try the fans out. Two of them on my tank (6ft) made a surprisingly huge difference, you can see when I added them:
I had to turn them off before bed to prevent the tank actually getting too cool. They were also still at "100%" on the battery indicator after 6 hours of use at medium speed! Awesome product. Here's the link again so you don't have to dig up the other thread: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08866RDYK?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
I have also been experimenting with dosing alk at night. Drip dosing 90ml (the full daily dose) of ESV at night from 7pm to 6am to see if it keeps PH up, similar to dosing kalk - and it does. PH bottomed out around 8.35:
Alk swings a little more doing this but not sure that matters. Going to keep doing this for a bit and see if it makes any kind of difference. PH is logarithmic so trading some alk stability for PH stability makes sense, I guess?
FTS after some more rearranging, trying to pack in more SPS:
I had to turn them off before bed to prevent the tank actually getting too cool. They were also still at "100%" on the battery indicator after 6 hours of use at medium speed! Awesome product. Here's the link again so you don't have to dig up the other thread: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08866RDYK?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
I have also been experimenting with dosing alk at night. Drip dosing 90ml (the full daily dose) of ESV at night from 7pm to 6am to see if it keeps PH up, similar to dosing kalk - and it does. PH bottomed out around 8.35:
Alk swings a little more doing this but not sure that matters. Going to keep doing this for a bit and see if it makes any kind of difference. PH is logarithmic so trading some alk stability for PH stability makes sense, I guess?
FTS after some more rearranging, trying to pack in more SPS:
Coral reefer
Past President
I think ph stability more important than alk
H2OPlayar
Supporting Member
Looks great. My best advice for smoothing out graphs like that is to throw another log scale on the Y axis. Smooths everything right out and makes the graphs looks as good as the tank!
Kensington Reefer
Supporting Member
Ya should have gotten a 30” tall tank!
Your fish told me…
Your fish told me…
Coral reefer
Past President
This is gonna be one of those jam packed with acros tanks in a couple years where I see them and go, how the fuck does that happen, and how does it work?!?
derek_SR
Supporting Member
Unfortunately this doesn't work - when the USB cable is energized it just starts charging the battery - doesn't turn on the actual fan.Fans are pretty cool
Highly recommend plugging them into the Hydros USB ports have them trigger on at 80F so you don't have to think about it.
derek_SR
Supporting Member
Couple pics of corals that aren't in particularly visible areas, but they are looking really beautiful these days:
Anyone know what this coral is? I got it at Neptune in the cheap acro section as a small 1" frag:
And I got this one from @Turkeysammich, he said it was the Vinh:
Anyone know what this coral is? I got it at Neptune in the cheap acro section as a small 1" frag:
And I got this one from @Turkeysammich, he said it was the Vinh:
RandyC
Supporting Member
Some people call the first one as “Needle in the Haystack.”
derek_SR
Supporting Member
Ecotech sent replacement tubing for my versas for free...will install and see if it helps with the calibration issues. Their CS has been pretty good so far but still very annoying (they wanted to see a video of my setup...).
Also dealing with some Cyano right now. It seems to come and go in my tank...I've noticed that growth seems better when cyano is around. Maybe just a coincidence, or maybe there's some correlation. I never do anything about it and it usually goes away after a bit. I have been dosing KZ FWS so perhaps that's feeding it? I haven't really changed anything else in a while.
FTS w/ blues:
Other side:
Also dealing with some Cyano right now. It seems to come and go in my tank...I've noticed that growth seems better when cyano is around. Maybe just a coincidence, or maybe there's some correlation. I never do anything about it and it usually goes away after a bit. I have been dosing KZ FWS so perhaps that's feeding it? I haven't really changed anything else in a while.
FTS w/ blues:
Other side:
RandyC
Supporting Member
Is the cyano showing up at the bottom of rocks in the picture below? Or is that red coralline? If it is cyano, it looks like that is an area that might not get much flow. Could try adding a temporary powerhead if you have a spare and see if that helps.
derek_SR
Supporting Member
Thanks - yeah I am actually adding a second SOW20, mostly to try and get a bigger standing wave going. The flow through my tank is actually pretty high, though - which definitely helps keep the cyano down most of the time. It still randomly appears, goes nuts, then sort of burns itself out from time to time.