High Tide Aquatics

Insomniac's 150g "downgrade"

One fantastic thing about the new tank setup vs the old one is running the rollermat directly off the overflow. My previous configuration had a pump feeding the rollermat from the sump. It was so much less effective. It did not take long for buildup of fish turds everywhere in my sump.

Now that I'm running this new configuration, my sump is slowly cleaning out (I kept all the detritus in the sump when i re-plumbed everything), everything is staying clean, as well as getting cleaner from moving the old detritus out over time. The other benefits are electricity savings from reducing a pump, slightly lowered water temps, general simplification, and reduction of a failure point.

Another very valuable thing that I have learned from running a rollermat, is that you want to run very close to maximum water flow rate. In my opinion, this is the only way that you will effectively reduce nutrients in your tank. My reasoning is that the wheel on the filter is so large, it takes quite some time for the filtered nutrients to leave the water column. Way too long IMO. By running at max rate, I cycle through much more filter media and quickly remove everything out of the water. My present suspense is about 1 day. The other fantastic benefit is that my skimmer runs much cleaner and more consistent. I haven't even cleaned it yet, since re-plumbing. It would have gunked up much sooner that that. I'm very happy withe the results from that.

I gota say... I love this thing even more than I hate filter socks. I will likely never do another tank build without one (or a variance of one).

Now the tank will only get as dirty as I want it to get!
 
Teaser of my phase 2 project. Say hi to my qt/observation tank. It will be a busy tank soon, and then will end up transforming to an anemone clown tank.
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Operation "Tiger pod" is a success. Production has been a bit slow, so i have been experimenting with different salinity and air bubbles. So uh..All i had to do was forget that i was trying to culture them for a week. Let the salinity get likely way too high. Remove the air stone entirely and top off to the point that the water was probably brackish. 2 days later, i have 1 million pods. This picture just cannot do it justice. When i shine a flashlight, they are literally caked to the side of the entire surface of the container. Crazy!
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No particular reason. I had read that they are preferred, are really resilient, and breed well. Figured I would try it out. Considering that I have less than ideal conditions in my hot garage, I'd say that they are definitely an easy species.

No I haven't bothered breeding any pods in the past. I just figured that I would accelerate my tank reboot. If your coming my way today and want some pods, it seems like I have some to spare :)
Coral reefer said:
Nice, Why'd you choose that species? Have you ever done any others?
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Back from vacation and tank still looks pretty good. My tank sitter overfed I wasn't about to explain when to stop feeding, so that's what i get. My DT rocks have a thin layer of algae on them, so I will have to try to combat it down and out compete with my refugium. Other than that, my tester monti and setosa frag's still look good. In fact, my monti already started encrusting onto my base rock that i put under it.

One thing that has become very evident is that I have WAY too much light at the moment. I cut back my T5's by an hour and ramped down my kessils sooner to color up my corals a bit. As they are bleaching out a bit. My rainbow monti base is pretty much all light light blue now. Hopefully I can get some purple back soon!
 
What intensity do you run your Kessils at and what photoperiod? I am having bleaching troubles and need to learn about it.
Glad to hear no worse problems during vacation.
 
T5's were running for 5 hours during high light times. Kessils were running at almost minimum intensity from 9am to 10PM. Im assuming that because my water is so clear at the moment, that I need much less light. I cut back my t5 times to about 3 hours, and now have my kessils ramping and changing spectrums from 9AM to 8PM. I will probably need to reduce the light cycle on the Kessils still being that I'm actually ramping them now.

I still have plenty to learn, but I know that my water quality is fantastic and I have a lot of random flow. So for me, the suspect is too much light.
 
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