sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
Ok this seems like a good enough time for a quarterly update, it's been about 3 month since the last photos. Wife & kid left me for the weekend, so figured I'd clean up, do a water change and take a few pictures
Here's the 200g tank
So the updates on this tank, mostly bad
-Well after about 4 months one of the ATi t5 bulbs just stopped working, unfortunately any warranty period is only 30 days out from the seller so that sucks, no blackened ends, no burning, splashing, just stopped working. I threw another bulb in the same socket and it has been working fine.
-Alkalinity has taken a bit of a dip recently, the biggest offender kalkwasser addition. I have a kalk stirrer (Avast) however there's a microtiny leak somewhere along the base that I have not been able to fix, so I stopped using that and instead just use a "5 gallon" (Red Sea blue bucket?) container, toss in enough kalk mix it up and just dose from that. Well I go through a surprising large amount (need to refill every 4 days or so) which I'm not too worried about still well under evaporation losses, but if 4 days goes to 5 or 6 then I'm behind schedule. My latest snafu though was the end of the kalk line was caked over, not sure how many days I went without but needless to say I went from 9s to 6s, I haven't upped it yet, I figure sometime today maybe mix up some 2 part enough raise the dkH 1 part per day or so.
-Had a minor pump issue overnight where it stopped pointing the way I had it, and somehow rotated downward, sand storm galore... nearly threw the MFing pump out the window
-I think my phosphates/nitrates are creeping up a bit, hence the water change. I always planned to run this tank with a refugium as nutrient export, however I just haven't gotten around to it yet due to lack of lighting for it, hopefully soon though. I do notice a bit more brown on the rocks, not sticking away from the rocks, just like a brown coraline algae look, not happy about that, picture doesn't really show it that much though.
-I noticed some water on my stand. This is the scary one. It could be a small leak from my overflow trickled down into the bottom trim and it just kind of went under the stand from there, this is the preferred problem because I know there was a leak, just fixed it (I hope) yesterday. The other thing it may be which worries me greatly if true, are the covers I used to cover the holes on the bottom of the tank, now I used an acyrlic/glass adhesive (E6000) and I was very generous in how much I used, i.e. not just a bead around the edge), but if for whatever reason this is the problem this is a big problem because I'll have to drain the entire tank just to try and fix it, and at 200 gallons this is no small feat.
-Lost both of my Bangaii cardinals, one I lost sometime shortly after I got it, not sure where it went, the other was gone a week ago or so saw it stuck to the side of the MP60 pump. Either way, I think I'm done with that fish in this tank.
Now some good news
-Corals are growing, some more than others I'll admit. I decided not to post any coral close ups, I just can not get the colors to come out representative of what I see, so I'm not even going to bother. The "non-acro stick garden" (front left) seems to be doing the best. Although there are a few acros that are growing pretty good, you can see Green Slimmer (high and back) is growing well but that's to be expected, that's why I like that coral so much, that random blue stag I got (just to he right of the yellow tang) seems to be doing great down there too, red planet is the other one that is doing pretty good (hard to see just to the right of green slimer). Other ones are still going through that "encrusting on the frag plug" stage so growth is happening, need to get that alk and calcium back up though. I would love to take growth shot photos but I can't get the colors right, so I'm not going to bother.
-That floofy "reef bunnies" I had, is largely gone. I'm not sure if it was something alive, or literally dust and crap that settled in the tank, but either way it used to be heavy underneath rocks where it can attach to but I don't see much of it at all. Maybe I just managed to filter it out in socks. I will say though my frag QT tank, which I've just let evaporate away to almost nothing, has it in the tank. So maybe it is something alive? If it is man the salinty alone in that tank probably is like 1.06 or something crazy high as at least half the water has evaporated (no corals in there so I largely don't care).
Here's the 40g tank
Nothing big to report here, 2 clownfish, 3 chromis, soft corals and anemones, still there Good ol' softy tank, no water changes, additions of calcium/alk, just clean the skimmer and top it freshwater.
Here's the "rainbow" bubble tip I got. Picture is when all the whites are cranked up, so looks a bit less orange in this case.
But for reference, here's the RBTA under the same lighting
Often blues and what not make BTAs look a little more special than they are when you put them under "your lights" but these definitely are two separate coral variants.
Last but not least, Maureen's "Chocolate Acro" that she donated
When it came out of QT I decided to absolutely blast it with light by putting it high in the tank, I do currently have corals growing there so figured it'd be fine, it didn't take long for it to lighten up and then I started worrying that I might actually bleach it so put it low in the tank, literally right on the sand bed (still getting 200ish PAR) and here's where it's at today. While I won't say the brown is completely gone it's no where close to the color that it used to be which was dark brown, see up near the top of page 8 (this page?). You can see some greens, and what looks like some hints of pink. We'll see what direction it goes but I'm thinking it's worthy of permanent addition to the rock structure (aka gluing). Also I'm changing the name again from "Chocolate Acro" to "Maureen" now I'm not saying Maureen is green and pink, but who knows she might have a punk rock/raver part of her that dyes her hair that color on the weekends
Here's the 200g tank
So the updates on this tank, mostly bad
-Well after about 4 months one of the ATi t5 bulbs just stopped working, unfortunately any warranty period is only 30 days out from the seller so that sucks, no blackened ends, no burning, splashing, just stopped working. I threw another bulb in the same socket and it has been working fine.
-Alkalinity has taken a bit of a dip recently, the biggest offender kalkwasser addition. I have a kalk stirrer (Avast) however there's a microtiny leak somewhere along the base that I have not been able to fix, so I stopped using that and instead just use a "5 gallon" (Red Sea blue bucket?) container, toss in enough kalk mix it up and just dose from that. Well I go through a surprising large amount (need to refill every 4 days or so) which I'm not too worried about still well under evaporation losses, but if 4 days goes to 5 or 6 then I'm behind schedule. My latest snafu though was the end of the kalk line was caked over, not sure how many days I went without but needless to say I went from 9s to 6s, I haven't upped it yet, I figure sometime today maybe mix up some 2 part enough raise the dkH 1 part per day or so.
-Had a minor pump issue overnight where it stopped pointing the way I had it, and somehow rotated downward, sand storm galore... nearly threw the MFing pump out the window
-I think my phosphates/nitrates are creeping up a bit, hence the water change. I always planned to run this tank with a refugium as nutrient export, however I just haven't gotten around to it yet due to lack of lighting for it, hopefully soon though. I do notice a bit more brown on the rocks, not sticking away from the rocks, just like a brown coraline algae look, not happy about that, picture doesn't really show it that much though.
-I noticed some water on my stand. This is the scary one. It could be a small leak from my overflow trickled down into the bottom trim and it just kind of went under the stand from there, this is the preferred problem because I know there was a leak, just fixed it (I hope) yesterday. The other thing it may be which worries me greatly if true, are the covers I used to cover the holes on the bottom of the tank, now I used an acyrlic/glass adhesive (E6000) and I was very generous in how much I used, i.e. not just a bead around the edge), but if for whatever reason this is the problem this is a big problem because I'll have to drain the entire tank just to try and fix it, and at 200 gallons this is no small feat.
-Lost both of my Bangaii cardinals, one I lost sometime shortly after I got it, not sure where it went, the other was gone a week ago or so saw it stuck to the side of the MP60 pump. Either way, I think I'm done with that fish in this tank.
Now some good news
-Corals are growing, some more than others I'll admit. I decided not to post any coral close ups, I just can not get the colors to come out representative of what I see, so I'm not even going to bother. The "non-acro stick garden" (front left) seems to be doing the best. Although there are a few acros that are growing pretty good, you can see Green Slimmer (high and back) is growing well but that's to be expected, that's why I like that coral so much, that random blue stag I got (just to he right of the yellow tang) seems to be doing great down there too, red planet is the other one that is doing pretty good (hard to see just to the right of green slimer). Other ones are still going through that "encrusting on the frag plug" stage so growth is happening, need to get that alk and calcium back up though. I would love to take growth shot photos but I can't get the colors right, so I'm not going to bother.
-That floofy "reef bunnies" I had, is largely gone. I'm not sure if it was something alive, or literally dust and crap that settled in the tank, but either way it used to be heavy underneath rocks where it can attach to but I don't see much of it at all. Maybe I just managed to filter it out in socks. I will say though my frag QT tank, which I've just let evaporate away to almost nothing, has it in the tank. So maybe it is something alive? If it is man the salinty alone in that tank probably is like 1.06 or something crazy high as at least half the water has evaporated (no corals in there so I largely don't care).
Here's the 40g tank
Nothing big to report here, 2 clownfish, 3 chromis, soft corals and anemones, still there
Good ol' softy tank, no water changes, additions of calcium/alk, just clean the skimmer and top it freshwater.
Here's the "rainbow" bubble tip I got. Picture is when all the whites are cranked up, so looks a bit less orange in this case.
But for reference, here's the RBTA under the same lighting
Often blues and what not make BTAs look a little more special than they are when you put them under "your lights" but these definitely are two separate coral variants.
Last but not least, Maureen's "Chocolate Acro" that she donated
When it came out of QT I decided to absolutely blast it with light by putting it high in the tank, I do currently have corals growing there so figured it'd be fine, it didn't take long for it to lighten up and then I started worrying that I might actually bleach it so put it low in the tank, literally right on the sand bed (still getting 200ish PAR) and here's where it's at today. While I won't say the brown is completely gone it's no where close to the color that it used to be which was dark brown, see up near the top of page 8 (this page?). You can see some greens, and what looks like some hints of pink. We'll see what direction it goes but I'm thinking it's worthy of permanent addition to the rock structure (aka gluing). Also I'm changing the name again from "Chocolate Acro" to "Maureen" now I'm not saying Maureen is green and pink, but who knows she might have a punk rock/raver part of her that dyes her hair that color on the weekends
