Michael's 168 build
- Thread starter H2OPlayar
- Start date
UPYOURKIA
Guest
Went over to Mike's today and was blown away. My wife thought we were at Neptune when we walked in and saw his tank. IMHO this his guy is incredibly gifted at reefing. Although I'm a newbie (40 years saltwater but just 2 years of reefing) I think I can say his tanks are awesome.
Went over to pick up some Cheato and check out his tank, but ended up covering several topics and he shared what he has done to make this tank gorgeous. Gave my wive some frags and some more ideas on what to do in our tank.
On top of it all, he is genuinely a nice guy and has applied his engineering skill set masterfully to his display.
Thanks for the cheato and the tour, and all the ideas you shared.
Everet & Lulu
PS We loved you fat mandarin too!!!
Went over to pick up some Cheato and check out his tank, but ended up covering several topics and he shared what he has done to make this tank gorgeous. Gave my wive some frags and some more ideas on what to do in our tank.
On top of it all, he is genuinely a nice guy and has applied his engineering skill set masterfully to his display.
Thanks for the cheato and the tour, and all the ideas you shared.
Everet & Lulu
PS We loved you fat mandarin too!!!
H2OPlayar
Supporting Member
Yes, this is how I was changing water for a bit. Water changes are not essential to my system health, but they can't hurt. When I had the time, I would hook the tube up to my Vertex skimmer, add Chemiclean and let it flow. I could do 25 gallons in ~2-3 hours, which is all I really wanted as that is the size of my RO container. Now that I have the Reef Octopus skimmer, it doesn't froth up as much from the Chemiclean so the water change is more like 15 gallons, but I have still done it twice in the last 2 months or so.
RSR4Roy
Guest
After visiting your home to learn how to frag and seeing this tank up close I can’t forget about the view when walking inside from the door. Seeing the fish through the hole and the corals was amazing. It also was amazing to see how true tank and stand were measured and placed so precisely without any room really left. Also having you explain how your dosing and sump worked I understood it more than just the pictured of everything. I hope it all works out if you’re about to turn your closet in you’re control room for the tank. Thank you for showing me how to frag and teaching me about dozing and how Important it is to log everything so you have a starting point to fall back on when you’re running an experiment basically to find the right balance.
H2OPlayar
Supporting Member
My alkalinity consumption has been increasing as I the corals recovered from the heavy fragging. Today my TCD reset back to 90 mL/day and my dkh dropped down to 6.8 so I did the math and slowly added 6 oz of soda ash solution while also resetting the levels on the TCD. Hopefully when I get more in tune with the Apex, this won't happen as much, or I will be able to react to alerts. At least I found it the day it happened and corrected right away. Since it was a vacation day, I spent a few hours trying to get another anemone out, as well as gluing a bunch of frags down. I am back down to 1 frag rack in the display. I'll take some pictures tomorrow. Two days ago, my p04 was .24, so it was time to change out my high capacity gfo and carbon in my reactor. I'll let it run a few days and retest to see where I am at. The seems to like being between .05 and .2. I also ordered some lanthanum chloride and 10 micron socks so I can start playing with that to lower phosphates.
Edit: next morning Trident measured dkh at 9.7, so this is the bump I was looking for to get the TCD back in the drivers seat.
Edit: next morning Trident measured dkh at 9.7, so this is the bump I was looking for to get the TCD back in the drivers seat.
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H2OPlayar
Supporting Member
How's the view of your Emerald City?
This is the hardest to scape corner of the tank, so I like the idea I have going of easy growing sps colonies that will like the heavy flow. I moved the green pocilloporia down here from the top of the arch as it was growing too well, and I wanted to put acans up there.
@Jonathan Chia I can't remember the sps on the top, but they are happy. The pink to green one under the anthia is encrusting the plug more and sent out a second prong.
The lps garden is looking lush today
Torches from the front
Glued down the orange hammers and the yellow frogspawn on the front arch.
Getting sticky!
The plugs of cyphastrea will occasionally come off, so I glue them back. The yellow polyp, blue back cyphastrea (I think it is a bizarro) is almost encrusting onto the glass. The meteor shower cyphastrea continues to spread.
I moved the clam to a spot that is less liekly to get it moved, and glued down as much of the red montipora digitata as I could find to make a colony here.
Clearwater had a pretty carnation coral, a non-photosynthetic filter feeder that likes high nitrates and phosphates and dirty water. It should like my tank then as the last time I testes phosphate, it came out to be .24 before I swapped the high capacity gfo and carbon out of my reactor yesterday.
Jonathan Chia
Guest
Nice! Glad the rehomed SPS are doing well. I think the red was a maleficent, so hopefully you can pull out the deep reds!
Kensington Reefer
Supporting Member
How is the interaction between the maroon and the pair?
H2OPlayar
Supporting Member
The maroon's home is the carpet anemone on the other side of the tank, so they leave each other alone mostly. There are also a lot of fish and hiding places, so any aggression is distributed pretty well.
That being said, the maroon is the most aggressive towards my hand and I am tempted to start putting effort into removing it.
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Just wear an anemone glove.
Kensington Reefer
Supporting Member
Other side...how far is that?
5 feet?
H2OPlayar
Supporting Member
Their homes are just under 3' away from each other with rock walls between so they don't see each other usually.
Kensington Reefer
Supporting Member
Thanks for the info