Cali Kid Corals

Michael's Referbish

Hey guys need a little help. Does anyone have a JBJ chiller (not sure if the size matters, but I have a 1/10th hp). It would seem I accidentally threw away the spare elbows for my chiller. I thought I was using 3/4 but turns out it was 5/8ths and I have been unable to locate a pvc 3/4" slip to 5/8" barb fitting. Or any 5/8pvc for that matter. If anyone has the extra elbows for a chiller they don't need, it would be greatly appreciated. I'll pay for them if needed, just don't want to wait for JBJ to ship out a spare part.
 
JBJ-Arctica-Titanium-Chiller-DBA-075-1-10HP-3.jpg


They look like this by the way.
 
Finally get a few pictures up here.
1)We've got the refugium complete with new macro (still need to grab some cheato)
2)mini beananimal drain... so cute!
3)skimmer and right behind it the siphon on the right, and open channel on the left. You can also see the manifold although the reactors aren't plumbed into it yet. Power strip is just temporary-- tomorrow the reef angel goes in.
4)the return pipe, top valve to the display tank, right valve to manifold, left valve feeds chiller and in turn the refugium.
5)return line into display, and the overflow who's teeth will be either removed or increased in size/number in the near future.


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I think it's about time to drop a fish in quarantine!

I'll give a little background on the fish I currently have.

1 Sailfin Tang: The longest tank resident, perhaps a bit large for a tank this size, but he seems happy. Apparently the tastiest algae grows on the MP40, as he enjoys swimming right in front of it, even at full blast, and trying to get close enough for a nibble.

1 spotbreast/swallowtail angel: Started out as a female about 5 years ago, decided to turn male a couple years back. Good friends with the Tang.

1 maroon clown (Dona Corleone): Oldest fish in the tank. She's been in my tank for just over five years, but was living in a cousin's tank for 2 or 3 years before it got torn down. After a few splits there are four bubble tips spread through the tank, and Dona Corleone likes to split her time between all four. Currently in a turf fight with the mag-float.

1 Bi-color Blenny: Newest member of the tank. Was in an 8gallon cube that I had set up at school, but has been in the 135 for almost 4 years.

had a 6-line for about 5years, but went MIA sometime last year.

What am Considering (in order):

small maroon clown male-- hoping if I add this guy first Dona Corleone will be too busy to bother the other new additions. Either that or he will be last. I think any maroon will work for a mated pair since ORA has managed ocellaris/maroon hybrids.

3-4 Spotted/Pajama Cardinal fish-- I've always liked the look of these guys a bit more than the Banggais, but only if I can get them. Also afraid too many Banggais would fight.

3-4 Anthias-- Probably will go with Lyretail, but nothing is set in stone and I'm open to changing this idea.

1 female spotbreast-- Always thought the females were prettier than the striped males, and hopefully everyone gets along well.


some type of wrasse-- this one I'm not 100% on, but I find wrasses to be colorful in both personality and scales and would like to add one at some point. Maybe a Wetmorella of some type. My pod population is pretty low right now from when I had a 6-line, and I want to wait for the new refugium to repopulate before adding a wrasse. May substitute for a mandarin, but that's a tough call. As a passive fish I would want to add it early, but I don't want to add it till the pod population has had a few months to grow.

I plan to quarantine everyone for about a month if they don't show problems.
Since I only have one tank for quarantine (I think it's a 30), every species would go in about a month apart or so.

What does everyone think? Too much? Wrong order?
 
Well, I had a fun night. About 2am last night, my Dad wakes me up, "Hey something is leaking... a lot." Lo and behold, the stand and area around the sump is full of water, as well as most of the tile hallway. A good chunk of water also soaked into the nearby carpeted living room. We unplugged everything, then started toweling up what we could. I ran a blow dryer under the stand, and seem to have dried it out pretty good without too much damage to the stupid particle board base from all-glass. The carpet might be a different story. We pulled up a few feet of it, and the foam pretty soaked. Some of the water also wicked under a wall and into the adjacent room. Dried what we could, and have fans and a dehumidifier running in the living room. Gonna have to better assess the damage after work.

So what happened? Well the modified beananimal didn't fail, the emergency overflow was bone dry, and the level in the display hadn't gone up. Turns out a filter sock was to blame. I had read interesting things about milk filter socks, and decided to try some of these.

http://www.fleetfarm.com/catalog/product_detail/fleet-farm-brands/farm-livestock/milkhouse-brand/milkhouse-brand-heavy-duty-milk-filter-socks-2-1-4-in-x-12-in

Well they work a bit too well I guess. I didn't rubber band or tie it to the drain at all, just slipped it over the siphon pipe. Turns out, once it got going, the water flowing over the top was just enough to trickle onto the rim of the sump, and over the side. I took out the sock (which had turned a lovely shade of brown in just 4ish hours) and problem solved. Either I have way more crap in the water than I thought, or these filters just work really good. I am going to see if I can trim one down and still run the filter that way. Amazing how a n $0.08 nothing can undo the best of plans.

All in all, I needed almost 5 gallons of saltwater to get the water level back up. I'm not sure how full the auto top off container was, but it had about a gallon still left in it, so no more than 4 could have been pumped into the sump. So 5-9 gallons on the floor in total. Thankfully, the waterblaster didn't run dry, in fact the small amount of air it was pulling in was what drew attention to the problem. When I get my reef angel hooked up this weekend, I'm going to have to think about how to set up the ATO and float switches. Might need one as a low sump level alarm trigger.

Thank god for insomniacs! Gonna be a long day of work though....
 
Rough story. there.
Water always finds a way out.
Last week a towel was on the rim of the tank. Somehow it fell in, half in and half over the side. I reckon about 5 gallons of water was slowly siphoned out of the tank overnight, and all over my garage floor. I'm real glad I'm in the garage and not the house!

Quarantine them all!
 
Yes quarantine all the towels! I don't know what I'm going to do about fish at this point. The maroon is a devilish little creature, so we'll see. I wanted to pick up some of those blue strip cardinals from Neptune Aquatics, but they only had 2 left by the time I got there.
 
What is the micron size on the milk filter socks?

Sorry to hear about the water all over the floor, it sounds like it could have been much worse if it wasn't caught in time. The only thing better than houser's advice about placing the tank in a room with concrete floors is having drains installed in said floors.
 
lattehiatus said:
What is the micron size on the milk filter socks?

Sorry to hear about the water all over the floor, it sounds like it could have been much worse if it wasn't caught in time. The only thing better than houser's advice about placing the tank in a room with concrete floors is having drains installed in said floors.
Click to expand...

No Idea on micron size, must be smaller than 100microns though, because it clogged up fast. I don't think it would be a problem if I just cut it a few inches shorter. Probably only useful for short amounts of time though. Throw one on to really shine the water and pull some stuff out. I wonder if they can go into the green bin instead of the trash.

Luckily most of the hallway is tile, and the carpet is strait onto the slap, so at worst it is just a section of carpet to be replaced, or at least thoroughly cleaned.
 
Sorry to hear about the flood.

If you still have squish-e carpet try a wet/dry vac. They are rentable at Home Depot among others. Otherwise fans blowing across the carpet will help it dry fast. I don't believe you need to ask how I know this! :)

Bondolo (Mike) has a source for cheap leak detectors. IIRC it was Harbor Freight. Hopefully he will chime in. It won't be much help now, but we all know there are such escaped water events in our future.

I went looking and found:
http://www.harborfreight.com/water-leak-detector-98461.html
for 6 bucks!
 
Pretty sure the Reef Angel can do a low sump feature.
I think newhobby even uses it himself due to skimmer issues.
http://www.bareefers.org/home/node/14008.
Hope this helps ,sorry about the flood.
 
aqua-nut said:
Sorry to hear about the flood.

If you still have squish-e carpet try a wet/dry vac. They are rentable at Home Depot among others. Otherwise fans blowing across the carpet will help it dry fast. I don't believe you need to ask how I know this! :)

Bondolo (Mike) has a source for cheap leak detectors. IIRC it was Harbor Freight. Hopefully he will chime in. It won't be much help now, but we all know there are such escaped water events in our future.

I went looking and found:
http://www.harborfreight.com/water-leak-detector-98461.html
for 6 bucks!
Click to expand...


Things like this are very helpful.
Mine has saved me some big trouble!
Fish tanks=leaks at some point.
 
6-Bucks! I'm going to get like 10 of those! One of these days we're going to have to just buy a wet/dry vac.

Changing to programming for the reef angel shouldn't be any problem at all. I just hadn't decided how to best utilize two float switches. I know for sure I don't want to use one to turn on the ATO pump and the other to turn it off. I was going to do one on/off and the other a back up a little higher on the sump. Now I'm thinking I might want to do one on/off, and one to shut off the return and trigger an alarm if the sump gets too low.

You guys think a max time on for the ATO pump will be enough, or should I use a third float switch?
 
Level low triggers a fill routine until either the level high sensor stops the fill OR a timeout occurs throwing an error. Level low-low tells you you're running dry. Level high-high is flood from sump imminent!
In the industrial automation world 4 sensors are commonly used.
Soooo from top to bottom.
Level high-high
Level high
Level low
Level low-low
 
Been a while since an update.

Finally picked up some new livestock!

Added 7 blue eyed cardinals (Zoramia leptacanthus) from Neptune's to QT on sunday. I started prazipro yesterday, and they've eaten a little bit of live nutrition arcti-pods, but not much. Sadly one already moved on while in QT, but the rest look ok.

Also added a golden hammer and sunset monti frag from aquatic collection.

I added a milli frag and another monti from neptunes as well, but I think I killed them by leaving them in CoralRX for too long :(
milli is totally bleached, still has some polyps though, so I'm holding out. Monti is half bleached, so maybe the other half will recover. Fingers crossed.
 
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