Dropped's Reef

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Full tank shot

 

The brown Monti is really starting to attach to the rock. Mr flame angel loves the camera

 

The gorgonian is growing really fast, branching off left right and centre.

 

This green touch has grown 10 times its size in about 2 months

 

 

 

 

And finally picked up my last fish for the tank, a pair of captive raised bangaii

 

[Learn It]

Lots of progress. The gorgs look great, nice work. I like your compact sump setup as well.

[HarryPotter]

Looks great. Do the bangaii swim around a lot or stay in the same place?

[dropped]

Lots of progress. The gorgs look great, nice work. I like your compact sump setup as well.

 

Cheers Learn It, i was surprised at how fast the gorg is growing.

 

Looks great. Do the bangaii swim around a lot or stay in the same place?

 

Umm not continually, they do move around... but not a lot.

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FTS

 

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Neptune apex installed and configured with basic code. Looking forward to getting my geek on and making things far to complex hahah.

 

Never realised the massive temp and ph swings.

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Upgraded the dosing container, looks a bit better and easier to tell what's left.

 

 

 

Moved a few things around, also spent ten minutes with a razor blade chipping a recordia off a rock, which slimmed everywhere!!

 

 

Also got this puppy all hooked up

 

[dandelion]

Following!

[dropped]

Bit of an update.

 

I have now replaced all my Jebao controllers with Jebao to apex adapters, which basically means less controllers stuck to the side of the tank. I replaced the return pump and skimmer on one adapter and two RW-4s on the second adapter. May have to buy bigger power supplies at some stage as they are not as powerful as they were due to the fact the adapter only takes one power supply and i used the standard units. Although this isnt a huge problem as they were all running at 40-60% anyway.

 

added two of these

 

replaced four of these

 

 

 

Also added some mangroves, i was going to wait and see how they went on my nano/pico but i jumped the gun.

 

[dropped]

So ive recently changed from Seachem to Salifert for my dkh testing.

 

Testing the water side by side i got the following results.

Seachem - 8

Salifert - 4.5!!!!!! what the f&^K

 

So im not sure how long this has not been right for, but it would explain why my SPS has not been doing very well recently. So i have been testing and upping my ALK dosing by 2 ml per day, i would think by friday ill be back at around 8 dkh.

 

I also found that my Maxspect razor was only running at 50% so ive been slowly bumping this up over the last 7 days, can already see growth! Not to sure how high i should go, does anyone run there maxspect razors at 100%?

[RollaJase]

Make sure you read the Salifert instructions correctly. I noticed that between the Red Sea Pro kit and the Salifert kit that they are quite different in how they read. Red Sea is based on how much Titration is used where as the Salifert is based on how much is left once the colour of the solution changes. They also require different amounts of water in the test tube. Just double check things and see how you go before start dosing it up to the correct levels. Although it could just be that the Seachem kit is rubbish lol.

[dropped]

Make sure you read the Salifert instructions correctly. I noticed that between the Red See Pro kit and the Salifert kit that they are quite different in how they read. Red Sea is based on how much Titration is used where as the Salifert is based on how much is left once the colour of the solution changes. They also require different amounts of water in the test tube. Just double check things and see how you go before start dosing it up to the correct levels. Although it could just be that the Seachem kit is rubbish lol.

 

 

Cheers for the heads up, i follow the instructions every time, way to many test kits to remember how to do them all.

 

Ive never used Red Sea test kits, only Salifert and Seachem. But from what you have written sounds like the Seachem and Red Sea test kits are a like.

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FTS 06/01/2016

 

Have started to dedicate this tank to Sps, have added a few new sps since this photo will get some pics up in the coming days.

 

Trying to keep a simple look and let the sps grow into the scape.

 

[dropped]

As I have an apex there are a few things I want to complete this year to make use of the functions and abilities of the Apex. Ultimately I want to automate everything from auto top off, water changes, skimmer overflow cut off.

 

This week i made my own Apex break out box using a terminal block wiring board and a MD8 cable from aliexpress for a total of 6 dollars NZD, which is a far cry from the $50 NZD from apex.

 

Looks like this (not my picture) stolen from the interwebs, but gives you an idea of what it looks like.

 

 

First item to automate was to turn the fuge lights on when the door of the cabinet was opened. This was super easy with two wires, two screws, a door switch and a single line of code which activates the fuge light when the circuit is broken. So far this has been one of the best mods as I no longer have to touch my phone or apex display with wet hands.

 

 

Next few projects

• Replace the tunze osmolator with an apex controlled solution, and move the tunze over to my pico
• Automate the RODI water station filling, so there will always be 60-120L of RODI on hand
• Install a float valve in the top of the skimmer so it will never overflow
• And finally the biggest project and probably the last project will be to automate water changes!!

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had good look over the tank last night with a torch and found a few of these which i dont see during the day.

 

what type of snail is it?

 

[Slowtwitch]

Could be a banded trochus.

[sidneysix]

This tank is looking lovely, what fish do you have?

[dropped]

This tank is looking lovely, what fish do you have?

 

Currently i have

 

2 picaso clowns

2 Bangaii

1 fire fish

 

Might looks to get some type of sand sifter in the coming weeks.

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Bit of a pic dump

 

 

New corals

 

 

New green monti

 

 

few new corals, not in their final places yet.

 

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Bit of an epic fail on my part..... had some direct flow on the large coral in the pic above... RTN Face-palm.

 

Hope it recovers.

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Cleaned up the apex mounting, not too sure where im going with this. But its cleaner than before

Will paint it black to match the tank in the coming weeks.

[dropped]

Not sure what has happened here, but I’ve been having a break out of cyno recently. Which is strange as phosphate and nitrate are very low in my tank. I guess this could mean that my test kits are incorrect (salifert)?? In the 8 months this tank has been up and running, I have never really had algae issues. In fact no hair algae, no cyano, nothing. I put this down to how I started the tank with dry rock and dry sand. I assume that various algae spores have made it into the tank from corals and the like that I have added over time.

 

Few things in my tank have changed recently.

 

1. I removed my flame angel and sold it, although to do this I pretty much destroyed my tank moving all of the rocks trying to catch the little bastard. ( could this have started some type of cycle?)
2. I’ve been trying new types of dry foods in hopes of getting my captive breed bangaii onto dry food so when we go away in a month or two I can add an automatic feeder. I have since stopped feeding the new dry food as the fussy little fockers don’t eat it.
3. I change the lighting period on my fuge, for some reason I was having massive PH swings at night and thought my reverse lighting cycling maybe contributing to this, even though a reverse lighting cycle is meant to stop PH swings at night. Turns out my PH probe needed to be calibrated…. NOOB! Last night I increased the lighting cycle back to where it was.
4. Target feeding coral – I have started target feeding my coral a couple of times a week.

 

Has anyone else got any insight to what could be causing my cyano?