Steely185's rimless 75 edge

[steely185]

Thanks. The plum crazy didn't bother me, the 8" birdsnest did and my setosa is starting to go. I did another water change last night and diluted down the kalk in my top off for any potential all swings.

 

I'm not sure with move what may change. It's a pain rescaping so we will see. I'm probably gonna sell some LPS from my other tank to help furnish the new house.

[steely185]

My tank appears to be bouncing back after a rough couple of weeks. All said and done I lost my green birdsnest colony, my plum crazy frag, and 90% of my setosa so far. I fragged the setosa and dipped it in an iodine solution to try and save it so we will see. I also started to have a portion of my yellow fiji leather die. I removed the dying portions and it seems to be fine. It hasn't inflated in about 4-5 days but the necrosis seems to have stopped. Just to recap other subtractions I sold a milli colony, the torch colony and my frogspawn colony in the last month.

 

My bulbs are about 14 months old right now and I wonder if some of my problems have been from my bulbs lately. Moving has zapped my wallet away for the time being so I'm going to have to wait to purchase new bulbs until after the move. I just don't have the $150 for some new radiums at the moment and if in a pinch can always go back to my much whiter reeflux 20k bulbs.

 

I took a few new pics of the empty spaces I've filled lately. I may post them tonight. I am still trying to get a good full tank shot but want to wait until the leather perks up a bit more. I am also going to move over my acans soon. So I can shut down the Mr. Aqua for the time being.

[steely185]

Here is an overdue picture update. Please excuse the stressed leather.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[steely185]

I wanted a little insurance on the tank after running 14 month old radiums so I decided to throw on some two month old reeflux 20K's. I just want to make sure I'm not running with bad bulbs for a while. I hate them because they run so white but I'm interested to see any differences in growth of coral and a lack there of algae.

[steely185]

I switched by bulbs back to reeflux 20Ks yesterday morning. I can't say enough how much I hate them. They are so white. They look like 10Ks. It's night and day difference on the bulbs. Corals go from beautiful to looking like crap. You lose so much color with them. It should be illegal calling them 20k bulbs.

 

The only interesting change noted with the bulbs: increase in pH. My daytime high was the highest it's been in several weeks. It increased by 0.15 over the highest previous mark in a month with no other changes. I know pH increases with light but I was astounded how much it increased with just a change in bulbs.

 

I'm in the process of trading for some three month old radiums. Should have them by next weekend.

[Arkayology]

Everything is looking good Steely. Your colonies are huge. Interesting about the bulb. Makes me wonder what my ph flux is with the LEDs.

[steely185]

Thanks SoCal. Two days straight of increased pH. The lights are definitely making it happen.

 

As someone else pointed out: "Higher intensity/warmer color = more photosynthesis = more oxygen = higher pH".

[steely185]

I did some work on the tank this weekend. I went ahead and replaced my GFO with a fresh 1/4 cup of GFO, cleaned up my biopellet reactor, skimmer, and swapped out the media in the CO2 scrubber. I also moved a few things and in the process inadvertently did some new aquascaping. I removed two majano covered rocks, a third rock, and scraped a large portion of majanos from the overflow. I'm not crazy with the right side right now but I'm moving in a month and will have to aquascape things again at that point. I may further consolidate my rock at that point.

 

I plan on swapping out the lights this weekend because the color on the current bulbs is going to drive me crazy. The bulbs look better warming up than at full strength. I believe my ice cap ballasts overdrive the bulbs a bit and burn them whiter.

[iball1804]

I love your SPS colonies. Definitely look good

[steely185]

Thanks iball

[steely185]

The wife pushing to take down the small tank when we move in 4 weeks. As a result of taking the small tank down I may try adding my kessil a150W into the mix on the 75 somehow. I may possibly hang the pendent in the middle of the tank for some added center light.

 

I would eventually love to replace my halides with some radions but that just isn't in the budget anytime soon. She would kill me for dropping $1400 on the tank.

[keydiver]

I can only hope that my edge turns out this wicked.

[steely185]

Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.

 

It just takes time.

[revaltion131]

Like the tank quite a bit, looks amazing.

 

The effect of the lights on the pH is really interesting. I also can't stand Reeflux's bulbs, such liars. At least you'll get some extra growth as pay-off for having to put up with that horrendous color range.

[steely185]

Thanks revaltion.

 

I couldn't stand the bulbs and replaced them with the old radiums yesterday. I plan on picking up some 3 month old bulbs this weekend from someone so no worries.

 

I really think my ice cap ballasts overdrive the reflux bulbs. They have a 20k look when warming. The ice cap ballasts have a soft start when firing bulbs to reduce damage on a bulb. As the ballasts get to full strength the bulbs flicker maybe slightly (only in color from more blue to white but never off/on flickering). The radiums never had an issue. The tank looks so much better now without them.

[steely185]

Three weeks until closing. Not looking forward to the move.

 

I've managed to line up buyers for everything in my Mr. Aqua tank except for my purple/green lobo and Acan lords. I'm still trying to decide whether to sell them or keep them. It's going to be a hard fit with everything.

 

The tank is doing well. Anything that was dying a couple weeks ago has survived and is growing well again. The tank is back on track. I'm not doing much other than keeping it clean since I'm moving after the 4th. No sense in aquascaping if it's just going to be taken apart in a couple weeks.

 

The part that kills me about all this is that with the money I've made on selling corals and stuff I could almost buy two radions for the tank. Sadly but more responsibly it will be used on purchasing new furniture for the home.

[Arkayology]

The part that kills me about all this is that with the money I've made on selling corals and stuff I could almost buy two radions for the tank. Sadly but more responsibly it will be used on purchasing new furniture for the home.

Furniture is overrated J/K

[revaltion131]

Furniture is overrated J/K

 

 

No kidding! I'm just bumming my parents' unused stuff and my old college furniture when I get my place next summer...

[steely185]

Inching closer towards moving. My apartment is stacked with boxes and it's hard getting to the tank for cleaning. It may be a dirty couple of weeks. I will try and do one more water change before moving.

 

Sadly I lost another colony I have had for a few years now. The blue tip acro colony next to the green slimer in the pictures further up the page died. It RTN'd all the way up. I dipped it but it just seemed to speed up the process. I may stop using GFO in the tank. I never had many coral losses without reason. I don't use much GFO but it's a bit of a coincidence.

 

I'm looking at a possibly new aquascape when I move. I'm thinking of reducing the amount of rock on the right side of the tank. It will make it much shorter and give more room for growth and swimming. My only concern is providing enough spaces for the fish to hide and sleep.

[steely185]

I decided last night to pull my GFO offline. Too much strange stuff (mainly RTN) going on in the tank. I don't use much but I never used to have issues with it in the past. I don't attribute it to my biopellets because they have been going for 6 months now.

 

I'm working on ideas for projects on the tank over the next couple months.

 

1) Looking at using a BRS doser and my APEX to add kalk at different times of the night rather than using my ATO. This would control pH at night better.

 

2) I'm looking at the possibility of replacing all my live rock. I would go with 50 lbs or less of dry pukani rock and use some marco rocks reef cement (forget the exact name) to bond the rocks together with the scape I like. I would then cycle them in a rubber made in the garage. This would remove any and all pests anemones like majano and aptasia from the display. I would keep live rock in the sump to help with any possible additional cycle once the cured dry rock has been added to the display.

 

3) Distant future I would like to replace my halides with two radions. The money for the lights will be hard to justify with the wife though so this could take a while.

[revaltion131]

If you look into doing the doser idea, I'd love to see the pros and cons you look at when you purchase. I need to go automated in the future and really want to see what others have done and why.

[steely185]

It really won't be that difficult of a decision for me. I will just order a BRS doser. I only need one doser since I use a calcium reactor. The dosing aspect will be more for night time pH balance. I don't plan to use the kalk much for calcium/alk addition but more for buffering of pH. I still see my pH drop to about 7.6 nightly with the use of a CO2 scrubber. My daily pH hits around 8.2. I'm interested to see how my corals respond from a growth aspect with less of a pH swing each day/night.

 

There will be some trial and error to get it tuned. I will have to figure how much to add to begin to move the pH without swinging it too much at a given time. I will also have to figure out how saturated to make my kalk water. The last thing to monitor will be how big a kalk water reservoir to run. Without knowing the exact amount needed each night to balance pH I won't know how big a container to use to keep from filling up constantly.

[animalmaster6]

Looking Good!

[steely185]

So waiting for moving is kind of killing me now. I lost part of my idaho grape plate and all of my mint chocolate montipora colony. Not sure what's going on in the tank. So that makes 3 large colonies in the last two months and some RTN on others.

 

I'm definitely getting some newer bulbs this weekend and doing some water changes to help fix what's wrong. I have taken the CO2 scrubber, biopellets, and GFO offline. I'm going to replace the pellets when I move just for convenience. I can't hardly get to my tank to clean anything right now either. I have boxes all around the tank and living room.

 

Closing on the house Monday and moving the tank a week from this Sunday. I'm anxious to move the tank.

 

I've also decided to order some BRS pukani rock to cycle in a tub in the garage. I'm going to replace all my live rock with it. I've had enough of the majano everywhere and some aptasia. They are absolute pests that kill off coral and it makes me want to slap someone when they talk about how cool they are to have. To each there own I guess. They can see how hard they are to kill over time. It will just be easier to replace the rock and start pest free, cycled of course. I will leave plenty of live rock in the sump to help in terms of bacteria but I don't expect any pests to travel from the sump on up.

[steely185]

I may greatly reduce the amount of rock in my system. I would store more in the sump.

 

I may not have to order much rock. I may focus on a few pieces of shelf rock supported by a couple pukani I have now. I would then attach some of the tonga branch rock that I have using the marco rock cement.

 

Here is kind of what I want to do along with a current reference.

 

old look

 

 

new look I may try to achieve