Reef nutrition

Rygh's 250 gallon - Rev 3

If I were to do it again I would probably use white or sand colored acrylic/pvc/starboard.
Right now it is reflective, which is a bit weird.

I think using black or dark blue might work, but be a bit dark.
 
Man, I really liked your idea. I wonder if you do a mix of both how it would work out. So if you had just like 1/4 of sand on top. In a glass bottom tank it just looks dumb because it gets moved around and you see the bottom of the tank but in your situation any open patches would look like more sand underneath. I’m curious if the small amount of sand moving around would decrease the amount of algae that can grow on it.
 
Flagg37 said:
Man, I really liked your idea. I wonder if you do a mix of both how it would work out. So if you had just like 1/4 of sand on top. In a glass bottom tank it just looks dumb because it gets moved around and you see the bottom of the tank but in your situation any open patches would look like more sand underneath. I’m curious if the small amount of sand moving around would decrease the amount of algae that can grow on it.
Click to expand...
I thought about that.
The problem : You would get a small hole in the real sand, which would look OK for a while since fake sand would show.
But then algae would grow in that hole, which might look even worse.

An alternative thought - fake reef bottom.
Buy some solid base rock. Cut it into fairly thin pieces, and glue that to a substrate.
Rough it up so it looks like a realistic rock.
Maybe add some sand in the joints.
I have seen that done on back walls of tanks. See below.
So basically you have a live rock bottom, so it is real, not plastic-sand.
Although all the nooks and crannies will gather detritus, so it might be pretty bad.

rockwallwithfoam.jpg
 
I used to want to do a rock wall on the back glass.
rygh said:
I thought about that.
The problem : You would get a small hole in the real sand, which would look OK for a while since fake sand would show.
But then algae would grow in that hole, which might look even worse.

An alternative thought - fake reef bottom.
Buy some solid base rock. Cut it into fairly thin pieces, and glue that to a substrate.
Rough it up so it looks like a realistic rock.
Maybe add some sand in the joints.
I have seen that done on back walls of tanks. See below.
So basically you have a live rock bottom, so it is real, not plastic-sand.
Although all the nooks and crannies will gather detritus, so it might be pretty bad.

View attachment 13875
Click to expand...
Your plan is to do this on the bottom glass.
 
Flagg37 said:
I used to want to do a rock wall on the back glass.

Your plan is to do this on the bottom glass.
Click to expand...
More of a thought.
Current plan - do nothing.
Possible plan - pvc/starbord, light grey or beig. Starboard ST has "Sanshade"
Pretty unlikely to do a rock-bottom.
 
Not a good week for equipment.

My algae scrubber pump failed.
Jebao-6000. I will call customer support and see if it is under warranty. ... :p Hahah ... Jebao .... service ... warranty...
Very old pump, almost zero maintenance, hard to be mad.
And I have a spare. Jebao = cheap, so easy to have a spare.
I use the same pumps for scrubber and two returns, so always have a spare on hand.

FYI: I had a red dragon pump on my skimmer fail. Service was great, cross shipped for free.
But that was still slower and more expensive than replacing Jebao with the spare and buying a new one.


My Reefbot water tester also failed.
Customer support took a few days, but I did eventually get it diagnosed. They could do tests locally as I reported the actions.
They are shipping me a new servo for the syringe section.
Again - if you are not DIY-savvy, don't buy. If you are, still a good product.
 
Coral reefer said:
How are the living things doing?
Click to expand...
Snails are doing poorly.

Forgot problem #3:
My Kalkwasser was dripping on top of a sensor wire. Something moved...
This resulted in it solidifying before it really entered the water.
So I had a large (2" or so) block of calcium precipitate, and my Alk and Ca dropped rather significantly.
The big turbo snails hate that.

Coral is doing well.
 
My Foxface is not doing so great. :-(
Best description is "Guant" like an old person. Thin, haggard, slightly grey in spots that should be all white.
Been getting slowly worse over several months now.
I have tried various frozen foods and sheets of seaweed.
The fish east a bit, but then sort of loses interest.
Other fish are fat and happy.

Pretty sure it is simply old age.
Pretty sure I have had it for 10 years, and it was not a baby when received.

If anyone has any great ideas, let me know.
 
Sad day today, my Foxface died.
He/she has been wasting away for several month, almost certainly old age.
It was stuck on a powerhead tonight, kind of twitching, so I euthanized it.
One of my earliest fish in the 240G tank, some 8 years ago. And it was not a baby.

Funny ... my best fond memory is when it stabbed me with its poisonous dorsal spines.
I was moving it between tanks, and it was stuck in the net. As I unstuck it, it got me.
I was frantically searching the internet to see if I needed to call 911 as my hand started to feel hot and weird.
I was fine though, hence more of a fun memory.

:-(
 
Sad to hear that man, I had the same feeling with a Tomato clown some years back which was my first reef fish ever, mean little b**** sure, but still you remember the ones that have been with you a while.

Funny, I had a similar foxface experience too, when moving between tanks it decided to leap out right as the net was getting to the top and I went to go catch it before it hit the floor and it was one of those slow motion things you see in movies where it was upside down and I saw the spines flex up and took at least 5 of them in the palm of my hand... yeah that was not a comfortable rest of day.
 
Argh, I hate Coraline and acrylic tanks ...

I had a cut on my hand, so I missed one weekend.
Then I had a bit of "I will get to it soon" and never did...

And in a couple of weeks, I had a nice pink wall. (Started to clean right side)
IMG_0601.jpg
 
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