RandyC
Supporting Member
Deep freeze at 0 degrees or less can go for up to 12 months. We have a separate freezer in garage we use.
Randy's Red Sea Reefer 250
- Thread starter RandyC
- Start date
Deep freeze at 0 degrees or less can go for up to 12 months. We have a separate freezer in garage we use.
Ashalye
Guest
Yea. We just have our fridge/freezer combo, and a completely full garage. It would be great to have a separate deep freeze freezer!
Ashalye
Guest
All this talk of babies and breast milk got me wondering.....Is 3 months too young to start teaching about reef tank husbandry?
Start them young! I was trying to use our kessils for his newborn jaundice.
RandyC
Supporting Member
Start them young! I was trying to use our kessils for his newborn jaundice.
That crossed my mind too when I brought my daughter home, but I couldn't test the theory cause she was pretty good with her jaundice by the time we left the hospital.
RandyC
Supporting Member
Day 203: A fortuitous mistake
So, butterfingers here, had the refractometer slip out of his hands and in an effort to catch it, ended up hitting it an extra foot in the air and had it make a loud bang on the floor. Well, the refractometer line is now slanted. So I took this as an opportunity to buy a Milwaukee Salinity Refractometer that I've always thought about buying. After it arrived, I kicked myself in the butt because I realized it had been a long while since I calibrated my now-broken hand held refractometer. Though not that horrible, my salinity was at 1.028. I can't attribute any deaths to this fact since I don't know when this happened exactly, but I did have two acros RTN within a week of each other and a chalice have it's flesh wither away about 2 weeks after that. And about 1.5 weeks ago, I had a zoa melt and an elegance go downhill real fast after two days after introduction to my tank. So, scary part is, I tested my calibration solution that I use with the hand held on the Milwaukee refractometer and it registered at 1.028. Ack!
I got the Milwaukee on Tuesday and I slowly moved back down to 1.025 over the course of the last 4-5 days without issue and I'm back in a happy place. I love the Milwaukee and will never go back to a handheld refractometer. I also set up my old Fluval Edge 12G reef tank as a frag tank and while a tall tank isn't ideal for a frag tank, I had all the equipment to get it running.
GHA is almost completely gone with the addition of four Mexican turbo snails. Still fighting back a little cyano. I think I my return output was a little low and nutrients were not being cycled through as much to the sump, so I upped the flow a bit on my Vectra M1.
Been a while since a picture dump. So here's a bunch to show what's been up with my tank.
My WWC Helios acropora is encrusting and coloring up nicely. Can't wait for this thing to grow and be huge!
Acropora Carduus (I think)
Acropora Saramentosa
Cool little favites I picked up from Neptune's
Strawberry Fields Monti is showing some decent growth
Avatar Chalice
My Rainbow BTA is growing nicely, bubbling up at the tips some and hasn't moved in months.
Miami Hurricane Chalice I got from @Newjack. Growing in nicely and starting to encrust the rock it's on. Thanks Newjack!
Unknown Zoa (Yellow-burst center with green skirt)
Keds Red Zoa
no-name Blue Zoa
no-name Yellow Burst center with a yellow-green striped skirt
And for once, non coral pictures.
Swiss Guard Basslet
Radiant Wrasse
Maxima Clam I've had for about a month.
Coral and clam pictures were taken under Radion XR15w Pro G4 @ 20,000K lighting. Fish @ 18,500K lighting.
So, butterfingers here, had the refractometer slip out of his hands and in an effort to catch it, ended up hitting it an extra foot in the air and had it make a loud bang on the floor. Well, the refractometer line is now slanted. So I took this as an opportunity to buy a Milwaukee Salinity Refractometer that I've always thought about buying. After it arrived, I kicked myself in the butt because I realized it had been a long while since I calibrated my now-broken hand held refractometer. Though not that horrible, my salinity was at 1.028. I can't attribute any deaths to this fact since I don't know when this happened exactly, but I did have two acros RTN within a week of each other and a chalice have it's flesh wither away about 2 weeks after that. And about 1.5 weeks ago, I had a zoa melt and an elegance go downhill real fast after two days after introduction to my tank. So, scary part is, I tested my calibration solution that I use with the hand held on the Milwaukee refractometer and it registered at 1.028. Ack!
I got the Milwaukee on Tuesday and I slowly moved back down to 1.025 over the course of the last 4-5 days without issue and I'm back in a happy place. I love the Milwaukee and will never go back to a handheld refractometer. I also set up my old Fluval Edge 12G reef tank as a frag tank and while a tall tank isn't ideal for a frag tank, I had all the equipment to get it running.
GHA is almost completely gone with the addition of four Mexican turbo snails. Still fighting back a little cyano. I think I my return output was a little low and nutrients were not being cycled through as much to the sump, so I upped the flow a bit on my Vectra M1.
Been a while since a picture dump. So here's a bunch to show what's been up with my tank.
My WWC Helios acropora is encrusting and coloring up nicely. Can't wait for this thing to grow and be huge!
Acropora Carduus (I think)
Acropora Saramentosa
Cool little favites I picked up from Neptune's
Strawberry Fields Monti is showing some decent growth
Avatar Chalice
My Rainbow BTA is growing nicely, bubbling up at the tips some and hasn't moved in months.
Miami Hurricane Chalice I got from @Newjack. Growing in nicely and starting to encrust the rock it's on. Thanks Newjack!
Unknown Zoa (Yellow-burst center with green skirt)
Keds Red Zoa
no-name Blue Zoa
no-name Yellow Burst center with a yellow-green striped skirt
And for once, non coral pictures.
Swiss Guard Basslet
Radiant Wrasse
Maxima Clam I've had for about a month.
Coral and clam pictures were taken under Radion XR15w Pro G4 @ 20,000K lighting. Fish @ 18,500K lighting.
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Coral reefer
Past President
Full tank shot?
RandyC
Supporting Member
Euphyilla are a little retracted and all the fishies are hiding because the lights were off, but here's what my crammed tank looks like (mostly the sand bed which I want to clean up eventually).
Oh and forgot to post of pick of this guy....this dood is my buddy, he'll actually eat frozen food out of my hand. (Oh and ignore the marine snow in the water...I have to feed them as that's the only way I can coax all the fish out at the same time to actually take a picture of them.)
Tomini Tang
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RandyC
Supporting Member
Day 306
Whoa. Been 3+ months since I've updated. A lot of things have happened over the last 3 months. Here is the cliff notes version to catch you up.
1. I somehow managed to mix my BRS 2-part alk portion at half strength and ran with that for about 3-4 weeks. Long story short - Calcium ended up being at 650+ before I noticed since I dose equal amounts of 2-part and hardly ever measure calcium.
2. If you've been following this tank journal, you know I've had a ULNS running since the start of this tank. No more. At the same time as my alk mishap, somehow my nitrates hit somewhere between 25-50 ppm without me paying attention. My bio-pellets were flowing slower because the screen was a little dirty, so I'm attributing it to that. Not high, but out of the norm for me and enough to stress out a number of coral (mostly acros, but also my elegance).
3. Had a number of acros RTN/STN because of the above. Doh! I think it was around 6. Most were inexpensive frags (the WWC acros weathered the storm - whew), but I was most sad about my green with purple polyp Gomezi.
4. Yellow coris wrasse jumped and made himself into jerky.
5. Moved dosing station and ATO to my new "fish room" - I have a storage area behind the fish tank (under the stairs). Also made my own dosing containers out of BRS gallon jugs and push connect bulkheads I got from Amazon.
6. Upgraded the ATO to a 20G acrylic container from Advanced Acrylics.
7. Got an Apex with an additional EB832. So first EB832 for stand, and second for my dosing station.
8. Made an Aquabus cable to run to fish room using Cat6 cable. Total length of cabling is ~13 feet. I don't need 13', but if it works, having extra slack is never a bad thing.
9. Tank is now running around 5ppm nitrate and 0.01 phosphate.
Lesson to be learned: Don't get lazy with your testing!
Whoa. Been 3+ months since I've updated. A lot of things have happened over the last 3 months. Here is the cliff notes version to catch you up.
1. I somehow managed to mix my BRS 2-part alk portion at half strength and ran with that for about 3-4 weeks. Long story short - Calcium ended up being at 650+ before I noticed since I dose equal amounts of 2-part and hardly ever measure calcium.
2. If you've been following this tank journal, you know I've had a ULNS running since the start of this tank. No more. At the same time as my alk mishap, somehow my nitrates hit somewhere between 25-50 ppm without me paying attention. My bio-pellets were flowing slower because the screen was a little dirty, so I'm attributing it to that. Not high, but out of the norm for me and enough to stress out a number of coral (mostly acros, but also my elegance).
3. Had a number of acros RTN/STN because of the above. Doh! I think it was around 6. Most were inexpensive frags (the WWC acros weathered the storm - whew), but I was most sad about my green with purple polyp Gomezi.
4. Yellow coris wrasse jumped and made himself into jerky.
5. Moved dosing station and ATO to my new "fish room" - I have a storage area behind the fish tank (under the stairs). Also made my own dosing containers out of BRS gallon jugs and push connect bulkheads I got from Amazon.
6. Upgraded the ATO to a 20G acrylic container from Advanced Acrylics.
7. Got an Apex with an additional EB832. So first EB832 for stand, and second for my dosing station.
8. Made an Aquabus cable to run to fish room using Cat6 cable. Total length of cabling is ~13 feet. I don't need 13', but if it works, having extra slack is never a bad thing.
9. Tank is now running around 5ppm nitrate and 0.01 phosphate.
Lesson to be learned: Don't get lazy with your testing!
RandyC
Supporting Member
See how the apex modules just adds up
Bleah.....
The voice in my head: "I will not buy ATK, FMK, WMX. I will not buy ATK, FMK, WMX. I will not buy ATK, FMM, WMX."
Vhuang168
Guest
Coral reefer
Past President
So hard not to get lazy and take it for granted when everything has been going well for awhile.Day 306
Whoa. Been 3+ months since I've updated. A lot of things have happened over the last 3 months. Here is the cliff notes version to catch you up.
1. I somehow managed to mix my BRS 2-part alk portion at half strength and ran with that for about 3-4 weeks. Long story short - Calcium ended up being at 650+ before I noticed since I dose equal amounts of 2-part and hardly ever measure calcium.
2. If you've been following this tank journal, you know I've had a ULNS running since the start of this tank. No more. At the same time as my alk mishap, somehow my nitrates hit somewhere between 25-50 ppm without me paying attention. My bio-pellets were flowing slower because the screen was a little dirty, so I'm attributing it to that. Not high, but out of the norm for me and enough to stress out a number of coral (mostly acros, but also my elegance).
3. Had a number of acros RTN/STN because of the above. Doh! I think it was around 6. Most were inexpensive frags (the WWC acros weathered the storm - whew), but I was most sad about my green with purple polyp Gomezi.
4. Yellow coris wrasse jumped and made himself into jerky.
5. Moved dosing station and ATO to my new "fish room" - I have a storage area behind the fish tank (under the stairs). Also made my own dosing containers out of BRS gallon jugs and push connect bulkheads I got from Amazon.
6. Upgraded the ATO to a 20G acrylic container from Advanced Acrylics.
7. Got an Apex with an additional EB832. So first EB832 for stand, and second for my dosing station.
8. Made an Aquabus cable to run to fish room using Cat6 cable. Total length of cabling is ~13 feet. I don't need 13', but if it works, having extra slack is never a bad thing.
9. Tank is now running around 5ppm nitrate and 0.01 phosphate.
Lesson to be learned: Don't get lazy with your testing!
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
Why spend $800 for a great controller when you can add a zero to the end and get more greatness!
Ok maybe that's a bit much... but when all is said and done who knows
