latteslave Posted December 17, 2014 Share Posted December 17, 2014 Really like that first coral. Great blue tips. Link to comment
evan127 Posted December 17, 2014 Author Share Posted December 17, 2014 Thanks! Me too. They are very deep purple and fade into a blue. Then the base is green. It's weird, the colony this came from only has green at the very base and the rest of the coral is a vibrant blue. I'm hoping this frag turns into something similar as the colony Link to comment
BriFran9 Posted December 20, 2014 Share Posted December 20, 2014 great set up, would love to have a system like this someday Link to comment
evan127 Posted December 24, 2014 Author Share Posted December 24, 2014 Hey thanks BriFran, I really appreciate that! Link to comment
Sk8n Reefer Posted December 24, 2014 Share Posted December 24, 2014 Tanks looking good- that FTS shot is nice- how's the frags going- maybe another FTS ? Link to comment
evan127 Posted December 27, 2014 Author Share Posted December 27, 2014 I'm very over due for a new FTS. The coralline algae on the overflow is almost entierly covering it now. All my frags are doing extremely well. Lots of horizontal growth, very little vertical for the most part. Good color too! Pictures soon Link to comment
Spiderguardnano Posted December 27, 2014 Share Posted December 27, 2014 cant wait for the new fts question lol is your sump diy or did you buy it? if its diy can you provide the layout thanks man Link to comment
evan127 Posted December 27, 2014 Author Share Posted December 27, 2014 It's is 100% diy. I had a local class shop cut 10 pieces for me. I think with the glass and the silicone it cost me about $60 total. It fits my stand perfectly. Tight, but perfectly. I wanted the most water volume I could fit in there. To be honest, I don't know if I have the plans that I drew up for it anymore. I'll look though. If that's what you meant? Link to comment
evan127 Posted January 31, 2015 Author Share Posted January 31, 2015 Alright, so life has been crazy busy. I haven't just been lazy with updating I have run into some troubles with my system. Essentially I have been cooking my aquarium slowly. I have had corals bleach over the last few weeks and I could not figure out why. At first I thought it might have been my alkalinity. It has not been swinging too drastically, but swinging. 7 to 9dkh. Then I thought maybe it could be too much flow. Then too little. Then too much light. Then not enough. Then too intense lighting. List keeps going. But at the bottom of my list was temperature. I had two of the little temperature probes you get at the LFS in my system. One in the display, one in the sump. I have used these before without issue. I also cleaned them regularly. In early December I calibrated my Jagers. It got really cold here and the aquarium is in the basement, which is about 64/65 degrees. The thermometers in the system kept reading 74. I thought it was due to the cold basement, so I cranked the heaters up a bit after the calibration. Still reading 74. I made another small heater increase. Still 74. This chase kept going for a few weeks. So this morning while drinking my coffee and looking at my tank, I decided to test the temperature using a meat thermometer. I know, weird. First I tested it on myself to see how accurate it was. Put it under my tongue and it read 98. So that was accurate enough for me. Put it in my tank and watch the gauge settle at 86. Yep. Awesome. Thermometers were both wrong and so I calibrated both heaters incorrectly. Amatuer hour over here! Moral of the story. Don't use those cheap thermometers. Not to run the risk anymore, this guy got an Apex today FTS coming asap! image by Evan_Cronshaw, on Flickr Not the most up to date, but recent and bright Link to comment
evan127 Posted January 31, 2015 Author Share Posted January 31, 2015 Thanks so much KleinReef! This picture is about 3 weeks old if I remember correctly. The coralline is covering almost the entire overflow and most of the back glass now. And, most of my SPS are bleached Link to comment
evan127 Posted February 1, 2015 Author Share Posted February 1, 2015 Well it's been 48 hours with my system is set at a cool 79.5 degrees. And wouldn't you know, everything is starting to look better! The poly extension has been better, the clean up crew is 10x more active and the small patches of brown turf algae are withering away. Oh, and my tiger shrimp has been "clicking" a ton more. I'm also pretty sure that he clicked in morse code, "thanks for breaking the heat wave!" Jk DSLR February FTS coming today Link to comment
Pinner Reef Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 Lookin good Evan!!! Link to comment
TheKleinReef Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 What caused the bleaching? Link to comment
evan127 Posted February 1, 2015 Author Share Posted February 1, 2015 Thanks Pinner! Klein, I think the high, prolonged temperature made a few of my largest SPS bleach Link to comment
Markburns43 Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 I like your set up mAn reAlly clean. Keep the udpdates coming when u can! Link to comment
evan127 Posted February 1, 2015 Author Share Posted February 1, 2015 Hey thanks Mark! I really appreciate that. Link to comment
evan127 Posted February 3, 2015 Author Share Posted February 3, 2015 Updated February FTS Link to comment
evan127 Posted February 3, 2015 Author Share Posted February 3, 2015 I like this perspective. Hopefully one day it will be beaming with color! image by Evan_Cronshaw, on Flickr For some odd reason I trust this reading more image by Evan_Cronshaw, on Flickr Link to comment
evan127 Posted February 9, 2015 Author Share Posted February 9, 2015 I thought I'd make a little update. The system is doing very well now that the temperature is stable once again. It's fluctuated 2.2 degrees since the Apex has been online. I absolutely love this thing. I really don't know how I have managed to make it this long with out it All my corals have come back with such life. PE is great as well as color, but that is a slightly different story. My big question is that I have two corals that have a few patches of bare skeleton. A seritopora and a stylophora both have small white patches without tissue. I've kept an eye on them for algae and my clean up crew have been fantastic at cleaning them. What are the chances the tissue will fill in those bare spots? Should I just go in and trim them out? Link to comment
Sk8n Reefer Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 I thought I'd make a little update. The system is doing very well now that the temperature is stable once again. It's fluctuated 2.2 degrees since the Apex has been online. I absolutely love this thing. I really don't know how I have managed to make it this long with out it All my corals have come back with such life. PE is great as well as color, but that is a slightly different story. My big question is that I have two corals that have a few patches of bare skeleton. A seritopora and a stylophora both have small white patches without tissue. I've kept an eye on them for algae and my clean up crew have been fantastic at cleaning them. What are the chances the tissue will fill in those bare spots? Should I just go in and trim them out? If things are stable they should regrow in those areas- keep an eye on em. If your seeing good PE then they are happy and should improve from my experience Link to comment
evan127 Posted February 16, 2015 Author Share Posted February 16, 2015 I've been dosing 25ml of alkalinity and calcium daily. Tested alkalinty before my water change this evening. It was 9.5 so I'm going to skip a day of dosing and test on Tuesday Link to comment
evan127 Posted March 18, 2015 Author Share Posted March 18, 2015 Just a quick update. I have been busy with life lately and the aquarium hasn't gotten the attention it deserves. However, I did go on a trip recently and was able to snorkel off the Yucatan Peninsula. I had a great time, but it was a spur of the moment activity so I wasn't able to A. dive and B. take pictures. It was absolutely gorgeous though. Lots of SPS, gorgonians, sea fans, etc. Tons of fish too! Oh, and I was surprised by the amount of sea anemones there were. No clownfish (because they are not native to that area, right?) but tons and tons of anemones. So cool. Anyway, I decided to simplify my reef tank. I wanted a more natural take on things. So, I did two things. 1. Flow is now in reef crest mode only. I think this replicates waves to some degree. 2. Put the Radion back in Natural Mode. If the data collected for Natural Mode was taken in Malaysia near the equator, its got to be pretty true to the sun, right? And that is the whole goal here right? Mimicking the sun in our little boxes? That's my interpretation at least. I am pretty happy with the current status. Pictures to follow Link to comment
evan127 Posted March 21, 2015 Author Share Posted March 21, 2015 IMG_0978 by Just a quick snap last night while doing some maintenance before the lights went off for the evening. And, I am very pleased to announce that I ordered.....Mangroves! I am so stoked. I ordered 10. I am going to put 1 in my little biocube/future seahorse home, 2 or 3 in my refugium on my main system and I am going to pot the rest. I am very excited! Link to comment
evan127 Posted March 21, 2015 Author Share Posted March 21, 2015 So, a bit of a mangrove question. I am going with this guys method (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkrDDDvpHig) as far as planting in peat moss and the hydroponic containers in another container with water. But my question is can I use my saltwater from my water changes as the water the hydroponic pots sit in? Link to comment
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