Reef Hobbyist 40B

[aqua-nut]

Thanks for the correction.

 

[Nav]

Today I picked up a handful of Cheato...

To be extra safe in not introducing any hitchhikers, I was patient enough to inspect & transfer each strand into a second container that had my tank’s water.

Once I was done with that, I vigorously rinsed the cheato and moved all to another container that had fresh tank water. I repeated this rinse & transfer 4 times and then placed the cheato inside my fuge (inside a colander).

Its in a colander for now to keep it contained until I figure out my skimmer situation. If the HOB sits in the same chamber as the cheato, I’ll have to get some egg crate dividers…

Hope I didn’t do anything crazy, waiting to see how Nitrites start going down now

 

[Nav]

Last week I has ordered a small CUC from Reefcleaners.org that arrived on Friday

Here’s what I ordered

• 20 Dwarf Ceriths
• 6 Nerites
• 5 Florida Ceriths
• 1 ReefPod pack (copepods)

Now coming to the delivery & feedback:

• Package came in a deflated plastic bag (not air tight)
• There was pretty much no water other than a wet tissue inside
• Got too many dwarf ceriths (ordered 20 but got maybe 50 or more)
• 50% of the Florida & Dwarf Ceriths didn’t make it alive
• Many Dwarfs were super small (5-8mm, not sure if thats good or not)
• All Nerites were alive & healthy
• ReefPods came in another air tight plastic bag but was punctured and leaking very slow
• Extremely close observation showed signs of very tiny copepods (I simply emptied that whole thing into my fuge).

Overall I’m not extremely impressed but it could just be the hot summer temperature & the way things were handled while shipping…

I’ll pick up some turbos at ReefRaft when I get an algae bloom.

 

[Nav]

Today noticed another unusual thing on my glass and freaked out. There were 20 such things looking exactly like mini bullseye eggs!

Apparently they are Nerite snail eggs that most likely won’t hatch and are eaten by fish. It has been less than a week adding the 6 Nerites and so soon!

One of the Nerite shells also had an egg on it Learning something new everyday…

 

[FeliciaLynn]

I wouldn't assume that the non-moving ceriths were dead. A lot of times those snails won't move at all for a couple days after shipping and then suddenly they wake up and are good to go. They seem to go into some sort of hibernation thing during shipping. Also, they intentionally ship them in basically no water because those types of snails can survive with just a bit of moisture for several days no problem. I've ordered from them at least 4 times and I've always had at least a 90% survival rate. Considering they give you so many extras, that's pretty good! And yeah mine were always shipped with almost no water and moist paper towels. KPA (another Florida company) ships their snails the same way, so its pretty normal.

 

[Nav]

I wouldn't assume that the non-moving ceriths were dead. A lot of times those snails won't move at all for a couple days after shipping and then suddenly they wake up and are good to go. They seem to go into some sort of hibernation thing during shipping. Also, they intentionally ship them in basically no water because those types of snails can survive with just a bit of moisture for several days no problem. I've ordered from them at least 4 times and I've always had at least a 90% survival rate. Considering they give you so many extras, that's pretty good! And yeah mine were always shipped with almost no water and moist paper towels. KPA (another Florida company) ships their snails the same way, so its pretty normal.

Good to know about the moist shipping... I moved active snails to the 40gal and the inactive/dead ones to the 29gal assuming they'd start moving.

Some did move after few days but many are still idle & seem dead.

 

[FeliciaLynn]

The Reefcleaners website says ceriths take up to 72 hours to start moving after shipping. If some of them are actually dead, just let John at Reefcleaners know and I'm sure he'll replace them. He's a great guy who has a really good reputation for being and honest and helpful vendor on Nano-Reef.

 

[Nav]

The Reefcleaners website says ceriths take up to 72 hours to start moving after shipping. If some of them are actually dead, just let John at Reefcleaners know and I'm sure he'll replace them. He's a great guy who has a really good reputation for being and honest and helpful vendor on Nano-Reef.

Yea but he already compensated by shipping way more dwarf ceriths For now it's a good CUC that hopefully can fight any upcoming algae blooms...

Looks like they're busy laying eggs instead of grazing

 

[Nav]

Added Seachem Purigen (100ml) to the sump today. Hope it contributes in bringing the Nitrates down. Its 15ppm after my 15gal water change from this weekend.

 

[Nav]

Also finally moved my ReefOctopus BH-100 HOB skimmer from the 29gal to the sump here. After debating between the first & middle chamber, ended up in the fist one since the water level was higher and no chance of Cheato getting sucked into the pump!

The first chamber is kinda loaded now with the inlets, heater & the skimmer (had to remove the sock panel that sat on top of the first chamber).

Initially had trouble with the Skimmer since it produced very large bubbles (like from an airstone) and no good foam… After lot of experiments with angles and height adjustments, it came down to the pump’s depth underwater (which I couldn’t control).

Went down to Lowes, chopped the skimmer intake PVC pipe, then couldn’t find an exact PVC extension (1/2” was too small, 3/4” was too big) so ended up using a vinyl tube extension with plastic clamps.

Its now skimming perfect and the foam is back to normal. All I have to do now is to re-adjust the collection box height to get the right wet/dry skimmate balance.

 

[Nav]

Received another shipment from Amazon today…

The Kent Magnesium was to bring my Mag levels back to normal. For some reason when my cycle ended, Mag was 1020ppm and after dosing a lot of this (over 3 days) I could bring back up to 1280ppm.

I decided to go with the WP-10 instead of the 40 since I’m going to be using my Koralia 425 powerbeads with this. Currently have this sitting on the left end of my tank (mode: W1-S1, Full wavelength) with the Koralia 425 sitting on the other side. Together these guys are doing an awesome job with the flow.

Went with the grey epoxy since my dry marco rock is mostly white and for it to turn good green/red its going to be a while. Used it to fix my Frogspawn & Hammer and worked great. Will use it on the rest of my coral after deciding on the right placement.

 

[Nav]

After dosing 500ml of Kent’s Tech M Magnesium, I was finally able to get the levels up to 1400ppm (from 1080ppm after my cycle).

Latest snapshot of the water chemistry

Also picked up 32oz BRS 2 Part today… All additives are well lined up

 

[Nav]

My newest addition, the Yellow Coris Wrasse. Got him from ReefRaft.

Did my 20% water change yesterday and here are latest params:

I just can’t understand how Mag dropped from 1400 to 1280 in just a week! Maybe my salt has less Mag?

 

[Nav]

Got my JBJ Auto Top Off system and Tom Aqua Lifter pump last week. Setup was very easy and it has been doing a great job (It was very hard to carry those 5gal jugs to add 1/2+ gal everyday!).

I’m using Mode A with one sensor in my sump return chamber (which has the variable water level) and other in the RO/DI reservoir. The pump hangs right behind my sump and is above water level so no worries about reverse siphoning…

 

[Nav]

Full Tank Shot - Jul 14, 2014

Also here's the coral layout (I used in another post).

 

[Merith]

Keep an eye on the jbj, not sure if I have jutst been unlucky but I have had nothing with problems with it. Either it dosent want to maintain a constant water level or it decided that it is going to turn the pump on but not actually send power to the pump so I have to unplug the ato and let it reset. Other than that the tank is looking great man! Can't wait to see more of what you do with it.


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[Nav]

Sure, the JBJ has been doing a great job for the last week, perfect levels...

Thanks, planned out my next set of coral, stay tuned

 

[Merith]

Good to know, maybe I just got a bad one. It only cost me like 25 new so can't really complain and thankfully of the problems it has overfilling is not one so.... If you have any zoas your looking for let me know and I'll see what I got. Hopefully I will be getting another add up soon with the few new things I got fragged. Still got a bunch more that needs to be cut back but I'm out of room till I get the 25 cube up lol


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[Nav]

I need lot of zoas but u live far right?

 

[Merith]

I'm in Modesto but I'm up in sf about once a month for drs and over in your neck of the woods off and on. Usually when I have a apt up there we try and make the day not totally suck by hitting fish stores, some times in the bay and some times I drop down to neptunes cause I love getting stuff there.


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