Paneubert's 40G Breeder

[paneubert]

Thanks! I did edit this most recent photo to lighten it up a bit. Mostly to make it look more real world and accurate to how I see it in person. I also still have that nice little algae island front and center on the sand Conveniently hidden in the shadows....

 

Looking at my photo.....I see that it might make some sense to move the heater and canister intake to the left of that Koralia......not sure why I did not see that before now.

[paneubert]

Came home from a weekend away and found a rock covered in Bryopsis......need I say more?

 

Yes?

 

Well how about this......it is also sprouting from between some zoa frags and seems to be on some sand as well...

 

Where the hell did this come from so fast? Maybe I just missed it and thought it was hair algae up to this point?

 

Anybody think BRS Mag works as well as Tech M Magnesium? Seems like people say you have to use Tech M Magnesium since it has some sort of special/magic ingredient. I think I will go with BRS......

[paneubert]

After reading up on using mag to kill bryopsis, it seems like everyone claims there is a magic ingredient in Tech M that NO other mag has. I find that hard to believe..... due to reading the following quote/response someone got from the company when they noticed that the label on the bottle had changed...

 

The reason for the label change is that the ingredients they used are Mag chloride and mag sulfate--- and that the other items in the previous "ingredient list" on the label were basically by-products or impurities. By law they don't need to record them as "ingredients" since they are of such a low concentration.

 

My BRS has those same two ingredients. So unless Tech M is "dirty" with contaminants in a good way for killing bryopsis, then I am sticking with my gallon of BRS mag. We will see if it kills off the algae. I am going to test my level tonight and raise it by 100 until I see something happen.

[redkneecoral]

your tank is one extreme beauty thats for sure.

I'll kill to have a hammer in my tank. Don't understand why i don't cuz the hammer was on the top of my list to get when i first started reefing.

 

I've never seen a pink hammer before

[paneubert]

Thanks! I want to mostly keep my hands off it for a while to see if the corals grow in. Other than fighting the algae, I plan on not adding or moving things around at all for the near future.

[redkneecoral]

I hear what ya saying.

I need to do that in my tank, but I can't stand the diatoms building up, ugh driving me insane.

[paneubert]

Bryopsis battle report.......

 

Mag measured at 1500 today. I had raised it from around 1300 over the past 2 days. I just dosed it again to raise it to 1600. I might go for 1650 tomorrow and then hold it there for a while to see what happens. Today happened to also be the day when I increase my vodka dose by .5 again (it goes up .5 each week until I see some good results algae wise). So I am up to 2.2 ml per day. I assume the increased vodka will help reduce the nutrients even more than I had been in the past. I have never seen a crazy cyano or cloudy/milky tank happen from the vodka so far, so increasing the vodka week by week still seems to be the way to go.

 

I debated moving the frozen food to every 3 days while still feeding a little bit of pellet each day. I think I will go with that since the fish did not seem to be starving when I was doing every 2 days. They would eat some of the frozen, but seemed to pick at it and leave most of it alone. So moving to every 3 days should not be an issue.

 

I had ordered my mantis for my macro tank from ReefCleaners and so I added some snails, crabs, etc... to my order to make it worth my while as well as provide some food I could feed him. The mantis did not show up, but all the other things did...... So I guess the added clean up crew could count as battling the bryopsis as well. They can battle it until I find a mantis to eat them

Edited April 6, 2011 by paneubert

[paneubert]

I think the BRS Mag might be working........

 

I did some manual removal on Wednesday and it seems like things have not grown back much from where I removed. The stuff I did not manually remove seems to still be there, but might be weakening. I might have to take a photo each day of the same spot to see if I can compare growth patterns.

[paneubert]

Someone decided to make an appearance in my other tank...

 

[paneubert]

Wow, I have not been on in MONTHS.

 

What is new? Bryopsis 100% gone as of months ago. So for anyone wondering, the cheap BRS Mag does kill it. Either that or my bryopsis just decided to die completely on its own.

 

I have also not done a water change since April.....hahahaha. And the tank is still going strong. I do skim, and I do run carbon/GFO/Purigen. I run them in a canister filter that holds about a gallon and a half. Clean it once a week and replace the water in the canister with Instant Ocean. So I guess I am actually doing a gallon and a half water change once a week.

So that probably accounts for the tank doing ok.

[paneubert]

Now that I am back in the game, I am going to replace the canister filter with 2 BRS reactors. One with Bio Pellets and one with Carbon/GFO.

 

Plan on running them off a Mag 7 that has its output split. Ball valves on each to fine tune the flow to each reactor. I will see if I can plumb the Bio Pellet reactor to flow into/close to my skimmer intake so that the skimmer can get all the bacteria. The other I will try to plumb in to my existing spray bar from the canister filter.

 

The Bio Pellet one will obviously be all Bio Pellets. The Carbon/GFO one will either be 100% carbon, or will be carbon on the bottom and some bagged Purigen on the top. I do have a crap ton of Purigen that would not have anywhere else to go if not in the reactor. We will see how it goes. Might jam it in there to get some flow through it. Or not. I plan on holding off on using any GFO for now.

[paneubert]

Reactors are all up and running. The plumbing looks like shizzzzzzz. Hahahaha. The tubing that comes with the BRS reactors is really stiff. If you cut the tubing any longer than nessisary to go from one thing to the next, then it makes you have to place your reactors or pumps far apart from each other since the tubing does not bend or anything. I learned that the hard way.

It is nice because it means the tubing will never kink or pinch, or reduce flow, but man......I wish I would have taken some measurements for tube lengths before I shoved them all together. I just sort of did it by eye and only one section at a time. The end product after plumbing the pump...with a split "T"...to two separate reactors....and then up in to the tank with two separate returns really made my stand look like a mess of tubes. It takes up more real estate than the big canister filter did. Ohh well.

 

I also woke up in the middle of the night and realized that since both my returns are under water, I cant take off the reactor chambers from under my stand without a siphon forming and flooding under the stand. My ball valves are on the intake...not the return side. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

To be honest, I am not sure why this was not thought of and provided for in the BRS kit they sell you. They give you a valve to control the flow going in, but not one to stop it from siphoning back. Don't most people have their returns below the water line? Maybe not I guess.....

Edited October 17, 2011 by paneubert

[paneubert]

I bit the bullet and pretty much redid the plumbing for the reactors. Since I always tend to overbuy my parts, I had two extra quick connect ball valves already sitting around from my last BRS order. Plumbed them in to the return side of each reactor so that I can now isolate each reactor head and remove the chambers without flooding my stand from the intake or the return.

 

I also shortened a few of the tubes that went from pump to reactor to return, etc....

 

In other news, I am already seeing what seems to be bacterial growth in the Bio Pellets. Not on the ones that I have tumbling in a large mass at the bottom of the reactor, but the ones that are constantly stuck up on the wall of the chamber. They have little trails of clearish goop coming off them. Seems like exactly what should be happening. Except that they are not tumbling in order to have the goop broken off. I am not that concerned since these stationary pellets are only in one or two spots on the wall and they only number something like 10 pellets total. Not going to crash my tank or anything.

 

I am surprised I am seeing this so soon. I have been dosing 5ml of Nite Out II as well as 5ml of MicroBacter7 each day. Maybe me adding those really did jump start the pellets.

Edited October 19, 2011 by paneubert

[paneubert]

Finally broke down and was "forced" to do a water change after what, 4 months? Something like that.

 

I notice that I was seeing more and more flatworms on my glass and on the underside of my toadstool. Nothing crazy or anything, just more flatworms than usual. So I decided I was going to have to finally dose the Flatworm Exit that I bought months and months ago. I had bought some coral from someone who had flatworms a while back, so I knew I would be getting them. The six line wrasse seemed to have kept them in check. But I guess not as quick as they reproduced.

 

So.....I did not want to risk the dead worms poisoning anything (I have heard stories of them spewing out of the rocks by the hundreds), so I mixed up a barrel (9 gallons) of Instant Ocean and filled my BRS reactor 100% carbon (took out the Purigen).

 

Dosed for 40G of water. The worms seemed to be slightly pissed. The ones on the glass started to sort of lose their grip. The ones on the toadstool just started running in circles. It was funny to see. After half an hour of that, they still were running around and I did not see any floaters. So I dosed for another 10G of water. Waited another half hour. About half the worms had disappeared. Dosed another 10G worth. Waited another 30 minutes. I could not see any more worms. I called it good and turned on the reactor and changed my 9G of water.

 

That was last night. After 24 hours things look fine. The corals never really showed any stress to begin with. But it is nice to see that after 24 hours things are still going well.

 

The one thing that seemed sort of odd was that my skimmer (was running the whole time I treated), was foaming like crazy skimming the worm goo and stuff. After the water change and carbon, the skimmer has not even pulled any skimmate at all. I wonder if the 9G change and the carbon really did cut the crap in the water that much. Maybe so . We will see how long it takes the skimmer to start up again.

Edited October 25, 2011 by paneubert

[paneubert]

Skimmer is still not skimming. Weird. Maybe running so much fresh carbon really is keeping the water smoking clean. Weird though since the Bio Pellets should be ramping up the bacterial load exponentially with time. I think one day the skimmer is just going to go from nothing to 100% full while I am at work or something.

[paneubert]

What is new.........

 

Finally broke down and bought a RO/DI system. Got it used here from the forum for a sweet price. It is the 75 GPD RO/DI 5 Stage *PLUS* System from BRS. Figured that when a lightly used "all the bells and whistles" unit showed up for almost 50% off retail, I should go for it. Probably going to just use it for top off water and emergency water change water since I am still committed to getting my actual saltwater from nature/the Seattle Aquarium. Cant beat 5 cents a gallon for natural sea water. Just have to make the drive downtown to get it.....

 

Anyway, it arrived today! I have it running now and all seems well. Zero TDS after flushing the system back and forth a couple times to get some of the crap off the membrane.

I think my water pressure is low.....I seem to be getting a pretty high rejection rate. Pressure gauge is only reading about 28-30 PSI. But that is ok. I live in a condo where the water bill is included in the monthly dues. Might as well get the most out of the 220 bucks a month I pay anyway. Suckers!

 

I wanted to do a quick test with the "normal" sink faucet adapter. FAIL! Somehow my faucets are female threaded instead of male (the kit adapter is female as well). WTF.

 

Then I thought I would do a quick test under the sink. FAIL! Somehow my water supply lines are like.....twice the diameter of the black adapter that came in the kit. WTF.

 

So I moved on to hooking up the washer/garden hose adapter thing. That worked....finally something in my condo that is standard sized. But since I do not have a splitter yet for the washing machine supply line, it means I cant use my washing machine. Hahahaha. We will see how long the wife lets me have this thing sitting on top of the dryer with no working washing machine.

 

Clean clothes are overrated.

[paneubert]

After a trip to Home Depot this morning for some screws and a "Y" adapter for my cold water line to the washer, we are looking good. I mounted the unit inside the front/right side of my little washing machine closet. No leaks I can see, and it is all totally out of sight with the way I mounted it (unless you stick your head in the closet and look to the right). I did mount the DI where I can see it and also see the "before and after" TDS meter.

 

I ordered some random connectors and tubing from BRS earlier this week during the Group Buy anticipating needing to mess with this thing before I got it all running and installed where I wanted it. But the guy I got it from included absolutely everything that came with the original kit. So I don't think I am going to even need any of the stuff I ordered.

 

I do think I am going to add a splitter into the waste line so that I can save some of the waste water for drinking or putting in the washing machine. I am wasting a crap ton of water since I have low water pressure

 

I might have to keep me eye open for a booster pump.....

Edited November 5, 2011 by paneubert

[paneubert]

One of the Talbots Damsels decided it was time to dig a tunnel.

I think it learned all of its skills from my Maroon Clown

 

Edited November 9, 2011 by paneubert

[redkneecoral]

man, you sure had done alot since i last was on here.

[paneubert]

Yeah. I gotta post some photos or something. I have been all talk and no photos.

I was out of town Friday morning until right now (Sunday night). Tank made it ok. Since my ATO broke a bit ago, I overfilled the display a bit with some RO/DI before I left and it was not very low when I returned. That was my only real concern. Front glass needs a scrubbing but that is about it!

[tam]

I do think I am going to add a splitter into the waste line so that I can save some of the waste water for drinking or putting in the washing machine. I am wasting a crap ton of water since I have low water pressure

 

I'd rather run the waste line straight into the washer, I can't imagine waste water would taste very good.

[paneubert]

Waste line is in the washer drain line now. So it just disappears magically.

 

I did split and then ball valve separately the clean line after the RO phase but before it enters the DI phase. That way I can flush the RO membrane and get the TDS down to 1 or 2 before I send it to the DI phase. No sense in flooding the DI resin with high TDS every time I turn the system on after sitting for a week or two.

 

I left this "flush" tube just as long as the "final clean zero TDS after the DI phase" tube. That way I can collect the RO water for drinking or the coffee maker or ice or whatever and it will not have the nasty DI taste that comes from the DI section.

 

Seems like it only outputs a couple cups to this "after RO" line before the TDS is down to zero and I can flip the ball valve and send it to the DI. Works out well.

[paneubert]

Sump time!

 

Watch out, this is a tl;dr type post.

 

Finally bit the bullet and started to build a sump. I am stuck with a standard 10G tank due to my stand door dimensions and because I have a full 40B on top of it (so I cant drop from the top or even move the stand at all). I also want to keep my "top off" water bucket down there still and that leaves me with almost no room left even when working with a small ass 20 inch long sump. But.......it was convenient when it comes to baffles because I could just buy a bunch of dollar store 8 by 10 picture frames and just use the glass without any need to cut. As long as I was cool with 8 inch baffles.

 

I picked up some 11 by 14 lexan sheets from Home Depot when I was buying my silicone just in case I needed them. Turns out that I ended up cutting and using that lexan instead of the glass. I know the bond is not going to be as strong....but I am not that worried about it since I gooped the crap out of it all.

 

I really went basic with this thing. I figure since it is my first try, I am probably going to mess it up or not like how it works out. I figure there is about a 50/50 chance that I tear it apart and start over within 6 months of having it running. But that is part of the fun. Working out how I like it through experimentation.

 

The water will enter into one of the 90 degree corners of the tank. I glued to that corner a chunk of acrylic that is about 4 inches wide. So that gave me a little triangle shaped chamber. I chunked out the bottom of the acrylic so it has a little table leg on each end and a gap in the middle for the water to flow under. I also drilled some random holes in the bottom 3 or 4 inches of it for flow as well. I plan on sticking some rubble in there and then just have the flow from my tank go in there. Hope it kills most of the micro-bubbles.

 

That first section is about 7 inches wide. I plan on physically having my Bio Pellet reactor sitting in there along with my heater probably. The Bio Pellets will not draw or send water to/from that first chamber though. It is going to be fed by a pump in my return section and it will outflow directly into my skimmer. More on the skimmer later.

 

For now I did not really do anything in terms of "flow under" type baffles for bubble traps other than that little triangle one in the beginning . I just literally siliconed an 8 inch baffle to the floor of the tank. So that leads us to the second section.

 

The second section is about 8 inches wide and I plan to use it for a refugium. I am going to put as much sand in there as makes sense. Since it is an 8 inch tall baffle, I think I will probably do 3 or 4 inches to get a somewhat deep bed. I know that most people get dead spots in their sump, so I figure if I limit my water depth in my sump to 4 sand and 4 water, there will be better flow in the refugium. I also plan on putting a little basket of rubble in there. I will keep it in the basket so I can take it out to rinse the crap out of it if it turns into a Nitrate factory. My Remora skimmer is going to be hanging on the side of the sump and I plan on having the skimmer draw from this refugium section(and the outflow of my Pellet reactor), but outflow to section one if possible. This will cause me to essentially throw the skimmed water back into section one so it will flow into the refugium a second time. It seems it is always nice to have water flow through the refugium more than once.

 

Third section is also separated by an 8 inch baffle. It is about 5 inches wide and will be for my return pump as well as a second pump to power my Bio Pellets. Since the water will go from the third chamber back to the bio pellets and then the skimmer (which outflows to the first section), the water is recirculated once again. Always striving for having the water flow through the sump more than once before it heads back up to the main tank.

 

So.....photos you say? Those will come tomorrow. I am letting this thing cure for at least 24 hours before I even look at it again. I have it sitting out on my back porch so it can get all the humidity it wants. That is how it cures right? Atmospheric moisture if I recall.

 

Here is a MS Paint for those who can't wait.

 

[paneubert]

Woot!

 

30% off sale at the LFS.

 

Color is pretty accurate....real clam is slightly more bright blue and less purple. But this is fairly accurate as to what the eye sees.

 

[Gort]

Noob,

 

Nice to see you posting again - can't say the same for myself. I like hearing about forward motion; I'm experiencing what seems to be a tank crash in slo-mo. Losing a lot of corals as the alk and salinity readings have been skewing negatively.