Neptune Aquatics

kinetic Reefer 170

Clown circus update:
Down to 3 now, bonded pair of mocha gladiators and a fancy white extreme. The bonded pair are still in the magnifica, and the fancy white is just swimming near it. He was totally enraged with the last small clown, but now that he's the last small clown, he's mellowed out completely. He swims close to the magnifica, and doesn't get bullied by the pair. They let him eat from the feeding "station" as well. I think I'll stick with these three! Maybe the fancy white will find his way back to the BTA at some point.

Fish plans:
Since I no longer have a ton of clowns, and I'm not sure if I'm going to try again for a group, I'm thinking of adding one or two of the following fish:
  • Captive-raised orchid dottyback
  • Whitelined combtooth blenny
  • Gold midas blenny
  • Algae / starry blenny
Any suggestions?

I've had tailspot blennies before, and they were extremely hard to get to eat (most died instead of ate). So I'm worried that the blennies won't eat, like the whitelined blenny. They look really cool though. Anyone have success with these?

Are orchid dottybacks really mellow? I know most dottybacks are aggressive mofos, but the orchid is said to be timid. Any thoughts?

Gold midas blennies are neat, but might get really big or aggressive?

Algae/starry blennies are so neat. I like how they're always grazing, but I worry they will starve in my small tank.

Any other cool fish that will eat from a fish feeding ring when I'm away for a couple days that aren't clownfish and are reef safe?

There's also a strong possibility that any of those fish will be food for my magnifica...
 
OctoAquatics custom lid arrived:

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Fit
The fit is perfect. I gave some very specific measurements, and I was worried it would be too perfect and possibly risk not fitting, but looks like there was plenty of wiggle room built into it.

Build
The edges are all straight and perfect. The edges are smooth for the most part, but not super smoothly polished (they never advertised as so, just think that would be nice?).

No slack in the netting which is great.

There's plenty of "extra" netting that sticks out on the bottom, but not enough to be annoying or unsightly. It would probably be a big challenge to tuck that in somewhere.

The tabs holding the lid up are nicely rounded and are very sturdy.

Cutouts are nice and neat

Looks
I never was a fan of a top over a tank. I love the rimless look. But this lid doesn't look too bad. I won't keep it on normally, just when I'm away for a few days and at night if I remember. I've had two clowns jump out within the first few days of having them, but they haven't jumped since. I think it's good to have the top just in case. If I ever get a wrasse or something, this lid will probably stay on 24/7.

Conclusion
I'd highly recommend the OctoAquatics lid. Matt at OctoAquatics is always no frills and to the point, which I really appreciate. The lead time for the lid was super fast, and exactly on time with the estimated time. I went with Matt because I've heard some not-so-great stories about Artfully Acrylic and their super long lead times and lack of communication. Though it seems like they've gotten better, I decided to just go with Matt since he was really easy to reach and communicate with.

He's also prototyping out a filter sock silencer for the Red Sea Reefer sumps. Not sure why nobody else has done it, but hoping to beta test a few!
 
from my experience dottybacks are mean only to similar shaped fish, but my 6 line wrasse would chase it around. Add it last. How much was the tank lids run? They look nice. - never mind I see the website for prices.
 
Apon said:
from my experience dottybacks are mean only to similar shaped fish, but my 6 line wrasse would chase it around. Add it last. How much was the tank lids run? They look nice. - never mind I see the website for prices.
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Thanks for the suggestion arnold! I think mine was $135 shipped or so.
 
Got my ORA orchid dottyback and golden sailfin blenny today. The orchid dottyback is such a beautiful fish! he just swims out and about staring (seemingly) at me, when I get close he hides, but comes back out after a few seconds. At first I thought they sent me a purple dottyback, because I couldn't see the line through his eye, but it's there. Faint. I'm thinking maybe I should get another to try to pair them up. Think that would work? Especially if I intro into the DT at the same time? Who wants to jump in on a Diver's Den order with me and split shipping (or free if something is expensive enough)?

The sailfin is teeny tiny. I mean they did say it was 3/4". But I thought I just got a bag of water at first. Then I saw him, tiny dot of a fish. I don't really know what he looks like, just a dot really. My QT isn't lit, so I can't see that well into it, but holy cow this guy is small. So small that I'm afraid maybe my geometric hawkfish will eat him...
 
Mark B said:
We picked up a panda goby that was tiny, we saw him once, and never again
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Yeah. I've had those little eviota / masked gobies before. I remember I totally lost all 6 that I put into the tank at first, and almost all at once, two months later after I took out a flame angelfish, they all appeared out of nowhere and were perching all over the rock work. I guess they stayed fat on pods.
 
A few updates:
  • Orchid dottybacks now have separate established burrows, but like to swim around together quite a bit. They seem to really like swimming next to snails for some reason. Anyone else notice this? Especially my big turbos.
  • My magnifica decided to walk around quite a bit recently. On Sunday it did a full walk around on the top of the pedestal, getting really close to my Gyre intake. I was worried (though the gyre has a mesh guard on it). Yesterday night, it fully got off the pedestal and walked down to where the BTA's are. Early morning it got back on the pedestal. Around lunch it came down to the front of the rockwork. And finally late afternoon it's back on the pedestal and has stayed there since. It inflated bigger than I've ever seen it. Probably 10" across (normally 6-7"). I'm not sure exactly what's going on. I didn't change the flow or lighting for awhile now. I don't really feed it, but I tried anyway to make sure it was OK, and it ate right away and has a tight mouth and is well inflated. I guess she just wanted a look around. Nothing died in her wake, so we're good. I hope she still likes the pedestal.
  • I've been feeding APBreed TDO Chroma Boost to the fish with the Neptune AFS for two weeks now. The fancy white extreme clownfish is a lot redder now, and the orange parts of the mocha davincis are really intense as well. They're all looking healthy. I think I'll continue feeding. I noticed the orchid dottybacks look a bit pinker than purple now (but that might just be my imagination). But the clowns are absolutely redder.
  • Sailfin blenny is still alive. I haven't seen him eat or chomp on anything. He's still small. I'm thinking of letting him out of the isolation box into the rest of the DT. I'm not sure he'll survive. He'll most likely get eaten by the Pygmy Hawkfish. I wonder if anyone has a pico/nano tank that'll take him nearby. Also, my tank doesn't have much algae these days. Might not survive if he won't eat any prepared foods.
  • Phosphates are still around, but low (7ppb). Nitrates aren't detectable. My chaeto has all melted away, and my nice DIY reactor is empty. I tried dosing iron, but nothing happened. I'm pretty sure my chaeto didn't make it because there's not enough nitrate. Overall, there's very little nuisance algae (just some film on the glass that I clean every 2 days), and there's no nitrates to speak of. So I guess I'll just leave things be. I was thinking of pulling my marinepure plate, but I'm scared that'll throw off the balance of everything else in my tank. It's a bit too much of a UNLS now. Not sure what to do next. Just leave it?
  • I've been hand dosing daily about 24mm of Alk/Ca using Aquaforest's Components. Mg has always been high, so I've been leaving that out. I'm keeping Alk at about 7.5-8.5dKH. I bought an Apex DOS that I need to pickup from a local reefer to help dose throughout the day instead of spiking it every night. I'll use that to dose the Alk/CA daily. I might pickup a BRS dosing pump and run it on a timer to dose some nitrates.
  • It's been cold. My 125watt heater isn't keeping up, and I have to run my house heater up to 66* so that my tank can keep up the heat when I'm away from home. I'm probably going to add another heater somehow (need to free up an outlet on the Neptune EB4).
Now for the photos:

Need to hide the plugs somehow. My Icecap Gyre batt backup is sticking out, boo:

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The little isolation box on the top left is where the sailfin blenny lives for now. It's covered in algae. Check out how red my fancy white ext. is now after TDO Chromaboost.

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The Rainbow BTA is getting bigger?

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Mocha Davinci clowns are still drunk/high off of this mag:

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Instead of adding a second heater you could just replace it with a higher wattage one. I use two 200w heaters for my 125 gallon and they don’t come on that often.
 
tankguy said:
Love the look of your tank
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Thanks!!! It needs to be bigger though ;) One day...

Vhuang168 said:
Start bumping up your light. If the Mag is standing up all the time, it’s looking for more light.
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That's what I thought too. So one thing I failed to mention is, when it started walking around the pedestal, I bumped the light up by 10% all around. That night it walked down the rocks. Maybe a coincidence. I put the light settings back to what they were before, and it got back on the pedestal and hasn't moved since. Also a coincidence maybe. I'll try bumping it up one more time to see if the light changes anything... It could be that he just wanted to look around.

Flagg37 said:
Instead of adding a second heater you could just replace it with a higher wattage one. I use two 200w heaters for my 125 gallon and they don’t come on that often.
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Good idea. The only problem is I'd like to stick to Eheim Jager heaters, and the higher wattage ones are possibly too long for my sump. In the summers, the 125watt works great. I was thinking of only turning on the second heater if my temperature drops below some amount (like 77).
 
Ordered a 200watt jager. I think it'll fit. I'll actually try running both the 200watt and 125watt, having the 125 watt turn on only if the 200 doesn't seem to be keeping up.

I cranked up my Hydra 52HD. We'll see if it makes a difference! So far the magnifica hasn't wandered since.
 
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In an effort to automate dosing, I picked up a Neptune DOS and will be using a dosing container I found on BRS that fits perfectly next to my Reefer 170 sump. I modified the DOS to use RO Polyethylene tubing instead of the soft tubing, and had to drill the reservoir to push the tubing through instead of using the barbed end.

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Materials:

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Why the Neptune DOS?
I’ve been looking high and low for the perfect dosing pump. All had their pros and cons, but the biggest thing for me was the price. Overall, the Neptune DOS had the best results, as long as you were in the Apex controller world. Unfortunately the pump only has two heads, at quite the premium price. I decided to take the dive and just get the pump for Alk and Ca dosing. My mg never seems to fall much, and water changes have kept the levels high enough. If I end up needing to dose other things, I’ll buy another DOS.

Other pumps I considered: GHL Doser 2.1, CoralBox WiFi, Kamoer X4 WiFi, and Bubble Magus. GHL Doser seemed nice and could run on its own. For the same price as the DOS, I could get 3 heads. CoralBox and Bubble Magus were super affordable, but I didn’t like the setup problems and failures I’ve heard with Bubble Magus. Kamoer was a good price point with 4 heads, but I also heard that it was hard to setup. That was probably the dosing pump I was going to go for, but being heavily committed to my Apex Jr, I decided against it.

Why modify with RO Tubing?
I didn’t really like the idea of limp tubing being strung through my cabinet. I have clear RO tubing left over, so I decided to go that direction. I’ve also heard that the Neptune lines are hard to straighten out and remove the kinks. I did order 16 meters just to see, and it seems to be OK and kink-free.

How did I modify?
It was pretty easy to modify the DOS. I used RectorSeal Pipe Thread Sealant on the threads and screwed on John Guest adapters that have 1/8 NPTF thread that I could push my 1/4” RO tubing into. I realized that the reservoir I bought actually uses the small 1/8” airline tubing. I decided to use a hacksaw to chop that off the barbs, then used a 1/4” drill bit to widen the hole. The clear RO tubing was an extremely snug fit through the hole, enough where I wouldn’t need to use silicon or anything.

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What’s next?
I need to get the 24v power adapter (oops) and then calibrate it. Then I’ll set it up to dose daily 17ml of Alk and Ca from my Aquaforest Components 1+, 2+. I’m thinking of just spreading it evenly out throughout the day. I know some people prefer to dose at night for pH swing reasons. I literally have never tested for pH, and don’t have a probe for it, so I’m just going to leave it.

Current cabinet mess:

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