HotRodScamp's 12g Aquapod

[seahorsejl]

I may start removing hermits from the tank now. They've done their job, now they're just a PITA.

 

While they can be a pain at times, I still like keeping hermits around. They are great at cleaning up any un-eaten food that you might feed corals or fish. They also are good if a fish or snail dies to help consume it before it fouls the tank. Now they could have also been the reason for said fish/snail's death ... double edge sword there

[HotRodScamp]

While they can be a pain at times, I still like keeping hermits around. They are great at cleaning up any un-eaten food that you might feed corals or fish. They also are good if a fish or snail dies to help consume it before it fouls the tank. Now they could have also been the reason for said fish/snail's death ... double edge sword there

I'm thinking about swapping out the blue legs and the mexican red tips for the "micro" blue legs. I haven't done anything rash yet

 

- Mike

[Needreefunds]

Great stuff Mike! I had been trying NOT to keep a running total for my 12g money pit, thanks for giving me a clue. LOL. It really is something how much you can spend huh. Very informative and entertaining thread you have, and will be following along. Best of luck to you for continued success.

[HotRodScamp]

Great stuff Mike! I had been trying NOT to keep a running total for my 12g money pit, thanks for giving me a clue. LOL. It really is something how much you can spend huh. Very informative and entertaining thread you have, and will be following along. Best of luck to you for continued success.

Thanks! I just checked out your tank thread. Great job! I can relate to your comment about how much time you can spend just staring at a little box of water and rocks. Before I started reading N-R.com I thought I might need professional help. Now I know there are plenty of "us"!

 

- Mike

[coral_addict]

Love the Running Tab!! Keep up the great job.....try to not to refinance the house.

[HotRodScamp]

Love the Running Tab!! Keep up the great job.....try to not to refinance the house.

Thanks! I'm really having fun with it I won't be re-financing for the nano. We have been talking about refinancing to get up funds for either opening a reef shop or maybe starting a propagation project. Yeah, it's a sickness

 

- Mike

[HotRodScamp]

Time for an update. Got my delivery from Fosters and Smith.

 

I love the beat up box with the "Fragile" stickers all over it. Classic! The smaller box had the 'fuge light in it. Extremely well packed, double-wrapped in large bubble wrap and then in packing peanuts. Despite the condition of the outer box, the box with the light was undamaged and the light works perfectly.

 

Here are the plumbing parts for my water change system:

 

This is the rest of the order, mini-jet 404, 'fuge light and heater for the w/c system:

 

I assembled the plumbing parts first:

 

I set the reservior on top of the assembly just to get an idea of where the lines will enter and exit. I may have to re-think my design a bit as all this 5/8" plumbing is a little larger than I had envisioned.

 

The 'fuge light arrived in perfect condition in spite of FedEx's best efforts:

 

I set the light behind the tank to get an idea of how it would fit. Now I need to cut the vinyl on the back of chamber 3 and I'm going to use velcro to attach it to the back of the tank:

 

I bought the Mini-Jet 404 powerhead to help with the flow around the back wall of the tank:

 

Front shot with the Mini-Jet. I pictured it smaller.

 

Side shot with the Mini-Jet:

 

Tomorrow I'm going to try to get the plumbing and 'fuge light finished out, then I'll be off to shop for some chaeto. More updates soon...

 

- Mike

[Needreefunds]

Neat stuff Mike. Often wonder if "FRAGILE" = DROP KICK or perhaps USE AS WHEEL CHOCK. Geez. Let us know if you have any heat issues with this lamp please. Looking forward to seeing your wc system fully assembled. This your own design??

[HotRodScamp]

Neat stuff Mike. Often wonder if "FRAGILE" = DROP KICK or perhaps USE AS WHEEL CHOCK. Geez. Let us know if you have any heat issues with this lamp please. Looking forward to seeing your wc system fully assembled. This your own design??

Thanks! I'm having a ball with this tank!

 

When FedEx picks up from Fosters & Smith, there are likely a fair volume of same-sized boxes. When the kids in the warehouse see this, it becomes a perfect opportunity for a distance throwing contest. I don't write fragile on any boxes I ship, and don't ship in same-sized boxes if I can at all help it.

 

My temps so far have run between 79 and 81. After I added the Mini-Jet my temp went up to 82.3 this afternoon. I'm going to keep the room a little cooler to try to combat that. I don't expect too much trouble from the 'fuge light since I'm going to run it on a reverse light cycle. I want to do a DIY metal halide upgrade down the road so I'm sure I'll need a chiller then anyway.

 

The water change system was my idea. I don't know if it's clear from the photo so I'll explain. First I have a 5-gallon water jug as a reservior for water change water. I marked it at the 3-gallon level for the amount of my regular water change. I'll have a feed from my RO/DI system with a valve I can use to manually fill it. Inside the reservioir I'm using the original pump from my Aquapod to pump out of the reservoir to the "T" and the 2 valves. The valve on the left goes to a return line back into the resevior and the valve on the right leads to a feed line going up to the back of the tank. I also purchased a heater to go inside the reservior.

 

So the process goes: open the valve from the RO/DI to fill the reservior. Then add the required amount of salt for the 3 gallons to the reservior. Once filled to the 3 gallon mark, close the RO/DI valve. Then open the mixing return valve and close the tank feed valve. Turn on the pump and heater to mix the salt and warm the water. After siphoning off 3 gallons from the tank, shut off the pump, close the mixing valve and open the tank feed valve. Turn the pump back on and pump the 3 gallons up to the tank. Easy water change! It also helps that a built a sink into my stand right next to the tank so I can siphon directly into the drain. No buckets involved!

 

- Mike

[Needreefunds]

Teach me Master, teach me! Mike, that sounds pretty sweet to me! Do you get any sleep at night? Or just visions of ATO and WC systems dancing....

I think we enjoy all the mods as much as anything else in the hobby

Still following and wondering if you will EVER reach a ceiling. Take care man, great stuff!

[saltman123]

Tank looks great. I too bought a Mini jet 404 for the exact same positioning. I haven't used it yet so your pic definitely shows it is larger than I was imagining also.

 

I plan to try to stick it in the rock in the back center to hide it. I'll take pics when/if I do it.

[seahorsejl]

Do you get any sleep at night? Or just visions of ATO and WC systems dancing....

 

I think he just does this 24 hours a day! Or at least is thinking about it.

 

Tank continue to look great! The fuge is a good idea to help battle nutrients and phosphates ...

[HotRodScamp]

Tank looks great. I too bought a Mini jet 404 for the exact same positioning. I haven't used it yet so your pic definitely shows it is larger than I was imagining also.

 

I plan to try to stick it in the rock in the back center to hide it. I'll take pics when/if I do it.

After I put in the Mini-jet, hundreds of 'pods showed up all in the green algae on the back wall. Within 36 hours the back wall was clean! This has to be one of the best things I've done for this tank.

 

I think he just does this 24 hours a day! Or at least is thinking about it.

 

Tank continue to look great! The fuge is a good idea to help battle nutrients and phosphates ...

24 hours a day isn't too far off! But somehow I still manage to work! I even have another hobby, I'm a motorcyclist. I guess it really consumes the most time when starting out. Many of the things I've done with the tank are aimed at making it less time consuming.

 

I'm going to work on setting up the 'fuge and the auto-water-changer later today. Hope to have a nice update and more pics this evening.

 

- Mike

[Needreefunds]

Looking forward to the pics Mike. And since you brought it up, I have to ask, what are you riding??

[HotRodScamp]

Looking forward to the pics Mike. And since you brought it up, I have to ask, what are you riding??

I have a Suzuki GS-500 and my girl just got her first Ninja 250. I've had about a dozen bikes over the last 25 years and this little GS-500 is just plain fun. It's light and responsive and plenty fast enough for anything this side of insane. I suppose there have been a couple of Sundays I might have gone riding but worked on my tank instead.

 

On to the update!

I installed my water change system today. I used a 5 gallon jug common at LFS's as my water change reservior. With a little dremel modification for pump access, adding salt, etc.:

 

Then I added my original Aquapod pump to the plumbing setup:

 

I set the plumbing into the reservior and used zip-ties to hold the whole thing in place:

 

Here's a shot of the pump down in the reservior:

 

The empty space under my cabinet for this setup:

 

The system is in place with a power strip added to the back of the cabinet to power the pump and heater:

 

System in place and mixing saltwater!!!

 

This crappy pic shows the feed line coming up to the back of the tank. I an going to drill the back of the hood and make a bracket to hold this in place. In the mean tim, when I want water in the tank I can simply pull this hose up and over the top of the tank.

 

One more project done! I'm actually looking forward to doing my water change tomorrow!

 

- Mike

[Gerber77]

HotRod, Your tank is looking amazing. Keep up the good work.

[Needreefunds]

Looks pretty neat Mike! Can't wait to do a water change? Gee, how many times have you said that . 'Suki gs500 huh? I sold my gs550L a couple years ago and bought a 2006 Suzuki c50 Boulevard (the old Volusia 800). Lots of fun. Its cool that your girl is into riding as well. And your right, I'm sure I have blown of a few good ride days to play with the tank or read on this forum! OK, sorry to partially Jack your tank thread.... So whats next for the totally hooked up 'Pod??

[HotRodScamp]

HotRod, Your tank is looking amazing. Keep up the good work.

Thanks Gerber!! I am having the best time with all this!

 

Looks pretty neat Mike! Can't wait to do a water change? Gee, how many times have you said that . 'Suki gs500 huh? I sold my gs550L a couple years ago and bought a 2006 Suzuki c50 Boulevard (the old Volusia 800). Lots of fun. Its cool that your girl is into riding as well. And your right, I'm sure I have blown of a few good ride days to play with the tank or read on this forum! OK, sorry to partially Jack your tank thread.... So whats next for the totally hooked up 'Pod??

Yeah, we love to ride. We even bought a 50cc pocket bike for our 9-year-old girl. We take her to the local high school parking lot on Sunday mornings and she rides that little bike like a champ! Today's one of those days, instead of going out riding, I'm doing tank maintanence and projects

 

So what's next? Well, I needed to add an RO feed to the water change reservoir and to the ATO reservior. So a little trip to the home improvement store. I bought a sheet of light diffuser (egg crate), two 1/4" tees, and two 1/4" valves. I also picked up a can of "Great Stuff" foam insulation to fill the hole I made last week for the drain.

 

The valves and tees I bought for the job:

 

I threaded the valve into the air vent on the 5-gallon jug:

 

Then a piece if 1/4" tube to a tee:

 

Finally I put the tee into the RO/DI feed line:

 

I decided to hold off on the feed to the ATO reservior for now. As it stands, I don't have to fill the ATO any more than once every three weeks or so.

 

Projects planned:

RO/DI feed to ATO reservior

Filter chamber reconfiguration

Chamber 3 refugium

Water change feed bracket

Metal halide

Chiller/pump

Who knows...

 

More later...

 

- Mike

[HotRodScamp]

How about a livestock update?

 

The Xenia I bought 2 1/2 weeks ago started going downhill after just a few days. At this point it is all but gone. I initially put it right in front of my Hydor Flo, as I know Xenia like high current. After it started shrinking, I moved it to a lower flow area. That didn't help. I put it up higher to get more light. That didn't help either. I'll have to assume that my tank is just not mature enough for Xenia yet.

 

For the last week or so, the "Eye of Rah" Zoanthids I bought a month ago haven't been looking quite as good. There was some kind of tube worm growing out of the middle of the frag and it was putting out, for lack of a better term, a "fishing line" 6-8 inches and it was clearly irritating the polyps around it. I removed the worm and it hard tube from the rock and all seemed well. Now as we've been watching the colony closely for the last week, we have seen two more worms. These have a very bright red crown, where the one I removed had no crown. I have seen these in photos growing out of the middle of a Zoa colony, so I didn't think these were the cause of the decline.

 

Today, my girl was looking at the tank and saw a "bug" on our pink zoanthid colony that was clearly irritating the polyps around it. I used a dropper to suck it up and drop it in a glass. We don't have much of a camera, but she got a good enough shot to ID it:

 

This creature is an Aeolidiidae species, commonly referred to as a "Zoanthid Eating Nudibranch"!!! Arrgghhh!!! I examined the rest of the pink zoanthid colony and there is no sign of another nudi or any eggs. Now back to the other Zoanthids. Clearly this (or these) must be resposible for the deterioration of the colony. Upon closer examination, we spotted another on the "Eye of Rah" colony.

 

I pulled the colony for a fresh water dip, and got 3 more nudi's! Now we could see the "egg-rings" on the side of several polyps. I did some scraping to get them off, but it seems as though they are stuck to the polyps and I couldn't get them off without getting rough. I did get many of them, and I am hoping the fresh water dip helped kill the rest.

 

Having these things in my tank has me a little freaked-out, but I'm glad to know the problem is a hitchhiker and not an environmental problem

 

The other corals are doing well. The Ricordea we got a month ago along with the "Eye of Rah" is doing very well. It took a few times of moving it to find a spot it liked, and now it's been happy where it is for several weeks.

 

Finally, the three green zoa polyps we got 2 1/2 weeks ago are doing great and appear to be spreading onto the rock we placed them on.

 

Now we'll be watching (hunting) for any more Nudi's diligently until we're confident they're gone. I hope we got them in time to save the "Eye of Rah" colony. It's been a couple of hours since I did the fresh water dip, and they are starting to open again. By contrast, they usually come out within minutes of closing up due to an irritation (like a hermit crawling over them). So three of our five corals are doing beautifully, one (the Eye of Rah) may come back, and the Xenia appears to be a gonner.

 

I'll keep you posted!

 

- Mike

[seahorsejl]

Eep! Good thing you caught those zoa eating nudibranches early! Man, I luckily, , have not had to deal with those.

 

I swear, your tank cabinet looks like it was taken over by the borg with all thos lines and such

 

BTW, on the Xenia front ... I wouldn't worry too much on it ... I have the same problem with Xenia in my tank. I have this one stalk that just is not doing great. I have tried it in various positions and flow, and no dice. I guess i some aspects we should be lucky as it normally is a weed (like my Green Star Polyps).

[HotRodScamp]

Eep! Good thing you caught those zoa eating nudibranches early! Man, I luckily, , have not had to deal with those.

I just hope it was early enough! All I can do now is wait patiently for the colony to recover. I think it will, as a lot of the polyps are open today.

 

I swear, your tank cabinet looks like it was taken over by the borg with all thos lines and such

Haha! The Borg did my 3 gallon water change in 15 minutes yesterday. No buckets, no muss no fuss!! I am having as much fun equipping this tank as I am stocking it!

 

BTW, on the Xenia front ... I wouldn't worry too much on it ... I have the same problem with Xenia in my tank. I have this one stalk that just is not doing great. I have tried it in various positions and flow, and no dice. I guess i some aspects we should be lucky as it normally is a weed (like my Green Star Polyps).

I'm not too worried about the Xenia. From all the reading I've done in these forums, I understand that there are two kinds of tanks; ones that Xenia won't live in, and ones that it grows uncontrollably in. I was just hoping I would be the one to land in-between and just have a nice happy little colony. I think I might try some GSP next

 

- Mike

[seahorsejl]

Bumping to see how the mega tank is coming along ....

[HotRodScamp]

Bumping to see how the mega tank is coming along ....

Thanks for checking in! Work's been keeping me away from tank projects the last couple of weeks. I have picked up a few new frags since my last post.

 

On 4/26 I bought a 1 1/2" red mushroom for $10 and a 1/2" rock with three tiny orange zoanthid polyps for $15. The mushroom is fabulous, and I have a half-inch piece of live rock that cost $15! The orange polyps never peeked out again

 

Then on 4/30 I picked up a frag of about 15 polyps of blue zoas for $38 and a 4 1/2 rock covered in red-brown/long tentacles/orange mouth zoas for $10. This one has got to be the best deal we've gotten yet. On zoaid.com they're called "Dragons breath". We just love them! The blues are real nice too, but one of the large polyps doesn't seem to be opening right and my girl is worried about it.

 

Our "Eye of Rah" zoas are in slow recovery mode. They look a little better than last week, and much better than when we found the nudibranchs. Some of the polyps that were just babies seem to be fading, but most of the large polyps seem fully recovered.

 

 

Our "Radioactive dragon eyes" were showing incredible growth 2 weeks ago. One side had grown off the rock it came on and onto the rock where it was placed, and several bumps on it had opened into tiny polyps and several more bumps had appeared. One day over a week ago, they didn't open and they haven't opened since. All the growth seemed to just stop in its tracks. No spots on them, no lesions no predators or egg-sacks... nothing! They have shrunk some, but don't look like death. The outside of the closed polyps looks like healthy tissue. I am puzzled by this one.

 

The pink zoanthids are just beautiful and look better than when we bought them. There is some pretty vivid pink speckling coming out on some of the polyps.

 

Our ricordea has found it's place in life It looks best in the evening under just the blue light. It gets fat!

 

Finally, the last of the Xenia has faded away I'll try Xenia again, but not for a while and not until I have reason to think the environment has changed in the tank enough to give me a different result.

 

The rest are the crabs/snails which are doing fine. There are a couple less since we started, I can only count 9 of the 11 crabs we started with, I lost two turbo snails a while back--both had landed on their backs, I think we still have all 4 nassarius, but I can only ever see 2 at any given time and we see starfish legs out from under the rock every day! We have seen several stomatella snails cruising around too.

 

We have a heavy population of copepods, seen on the glass, back wall and free-floating in the water. There is also a population of some kind of isopod that is EPIC! They swarm on an area of red coraline and they'll be just piled on top of each other. These things are absolutely everywhere you look, in every nook and cranny! I have not seen any amphipods though. I have seen a couple in the bags from corals I've bought, caught them and dropped them in the tank and still haven't seen any. I'm going to find a live culture of them and see if I can get a population going.

 

My water change system is fantastic! I can do a 3-gallon water change in under 15 minutes with no clean up! It takes me longer to do water tests!!! I've changed the filter chambers around a little more. I added an egg-crate shelf to chamber one above the live rock rubble and on top of that I have a small bag of carbon and a single layer of poly fiber. The second chamber has the heater and pH problem, the third chamber is empty awaiting the refugium set up and chamber four has the return pump and ATO sensors. The flow through the chambers is steady now and the ATO works perfectly. But any change in the flow in the chambers throws off the ATO and I've had to adjust it a couple of times now. I expect that when I set up the 'fuge I'll have to adjust it again.

 

I did get some pictures of the new corals when I brought them in, and I'll resize and post them soon. For now it's back to work!

 

- Mike

[Needreefunds]

Nice update Mike. Looking forward to pics of the new additions. $15 - .5" piece of live rock?? Hmmm, got a few of those myself I have a similar situation with a Whammin' Watermelon frag. They only "peek" a little every so often for the past two weeks. I have tried a different location and this did not help. Weetabix7 gave me a few other things to try. I will let you know how I make out. Take care and keep up the great work.

[HotRodScamp]

Well, I haven't been here for a month, so there's been some changes in my tank

 

Added:

Light Blue Zoanthids

Dragons breath Zoanthids

Orange ricordia

Green Zoa/Brown paly/Xenia/Red mushroom rock

Blue mushrooms

Hi-fin red bar Goby / Randalls pistol shrimp pair

Green w/orange mouth Zoanthids

Lord of the Rings Zoanthids

Green Candy Canes

Blue Zoanthids

 

Had an outbreak of flatworms, did 3 treatments of FWE. Looks like they're gone now.

 

Here's a new FTS:

 

More later!

 

- Mike