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Coral Vue Hydros

Kyle's Reef - ~150g combined system


Kyl

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On 5/29/2017 at 7:38 PM, Weetabix7 said:

 

Just look at the fat bellies on those fish!!

Tank looks nice to me. :)

Thank you. Aside from the ich management going on, things are on the up and up. Still trying to find a good time to go fallow.. will probably just do tank transfer in 5 gallon buckets with the fish split in half to keep things simple and easy. I know the clowns are going to be very upset when removed from their anemone home, they're very territorial of it.

 

Was kind of hoping to line it up with a larger AIO tank upgrade, but I'm probably moving later this year and if that happens I'm giving serious thought to running two systems off a shared sump in a new place. 

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Tank continues to improve and some of the corals are really getting vibrant again. The chalice have almost completely grown back from the colour and tissue loss resulting from the peroxide dip months ago (never again) and recent tank issues.

35019114251_6ce8ab9db6_c.jpg

chalice1 by Kyl, on Flickr

 

34340167263_f2735d235b_c.jpg

chalice2 by Kyl, on Flickr

 

The plate has had some of the better "tendril?" extension in months and last night it was super ballooned like I've never seen before after the lights went out.

35019114531_8471f5cc29_c.jpg

plate by Kyl, on Flickr

 

RBTA and the clowns continue to take up almost the entire right side rockwork, they do not leave it at all except to grab food now.

34340168423_62594b31e2_c.jpg

rbta by Kyl, on Flickr

 

The red monticap is a nice deep red again, it had bleached out to a faint pink at the worst. There is extensive tissue loss from the frogspawn below it, which is fine. I will have to frag that frogspawn and move it a bit lower though as the sweepers at night are almost touching the purple valida acro. It's also recovering excellently with a bunch of visible polyps at the base now.

35019115241_66c1d80b4b_c.jpg

recolouring by Kyl, on Flickr

 

Then just some more at how invasive the zoanthids can be, especially to each-other. These all started as 2-4 polyp frags as noted earlier, I would guess about a year and a half ago now.

34340169253_ec69888bf1_c.jpg

zoarock1 by Kyl, on Flickr

 

35019115801_c40c80dcd4_c.jpg

zoarock2 by Kyl, on Flickr

  • Like 3
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6 hours ago, Kyl said:

Tank continues to improve and some of the corals are really getting vibrant again. The chalice have almost completely grown back from the colour and tissue loss resulting from the peroxide dip months ago (never again) and recent tank issues.

35019114251_6ce8ab9db6_c.jpg

chalice1 by Kyl, on Flickr

 

34340167263_f2735d235b_c.jpg

chalice2 by Kyl, on Flickr

 

The plate has had some of the better "tendril?" extension in months and last night it was super ballooned like I've never seen before after the lights went out.

35019114531_8471f5cc29_c.jpg

plate by Kyl, on Flickr

 

RBTA and the clowns continue to take up almost the entire right side rockwork, they do not leave it at all except to grab food now.

34340168423_62594b31e2_c.jpg

rbta by Kyl, on Flickr

 

The red monticap is a nice deep red again, it had bleached out to a faint pink at the worst. There is extensive tissue loss from the frogspawn below it, which is fine. I will have to frag that frogspawn and move it a bit lower though as the sweepers at night are almost touching the purple valida acro. It's also recovering excellently with a bunch of visible polyps at the base now.

35019115241_66c1d80b4b_c.jpg

recolouring by Kyl, on Flickr

 

Then just some more at how invasive the zoanthids can be, especially to each-other. These all started as 2-4 polyp frags as noted earlier, I would guess about a year and a half ago now.

34340169253_ec69888bf1_c.jpg

zoarock1 by Kyl, on Flickr

 

35019115801_c40c80dcd4_c.jpg

zoarock2 by Kyl, on Flickr

 

WOW, wonderful and encouraging improvements!!!!

What are you doing differently?

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Stopped dosing Vibrant, 2-part and cut back on volume of water changes from a full 5 gall on bucket to half of one. Not sure ultimately where the problems stemmed from, but params are overall lower and things seem happier. Things do seem to have been kicked off after I removed the huge birds nest from my middle rock work..

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24 minutes ago, Kyl said:

Stopped dosing Vibrant, 2-part and cut back on volume of water changes from a full 5 gall on bucket to half of one. Not sure ultimately where the problems stemmed from, but params are overall lower and things seem happier. Things do seem to have been kicked off after I removed the huge birds nest from my middle rock work..

 

This is very interesting, especially since it seems contrary to what is usually advised. 

Maybe not being tinkered with for a bit allowed the system to stabilize?

Interesting....

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9 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

 

This is very interesting, especially since it seems contrary to what is usually advised. 

Maybe not being tinkered with for a bit allowed the system to stabilize?

Interesting....

I have no idea really, but there were too many moving parts and I had a tank that was in rapid decline again. The largest chalice is still losing tissue, so things aren't 100% yet.

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fishfreak0114
20 hours ago, Kyl said:

Then just some more at how invasive the zoanthids can be, especially to each-other. These all started as 2-4 polyp frags as noted earlier, I would guess about a year and a half ago now.

34340169253_ec69888bf1_c.jpg

zoarock1 by Kyl, on Flickr

 

35019115801_c40c80dcd4_c.jpg

zoarock2 by Kyl, on Flickr

Awesome!  I hope all my Zoas invade each others space. 

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Tank transfer #3 today, fish are super lively like I haven't seen them in a while and still eating very well. Kind of feel crappy now having known it was in the tank for quite a while, must have been a lot of stress for them to be constantly fighting off in the gills. The clowns were initially very miserable and the female quite agitated not having the anemone, but they've calmed down and are just swimming about.

 

Tank continues to improve, the SPS are nearly fully re-coloured, especially the pink lemonade. The only lingering setbacks continues to be tissue loss on my original chalice, and the last of the acan heads is also completely gone - it just wouldn't stop melting away. The gorgonian is nice and fuzzy every day now, no more dino snot traces piling up on it - plus it's already encrusted completely over the plug and I'm wondering if it will start a new branch / shoot like SPS does?? Also fragged half the mounted green hammer below the red monti, mounted the setosa and purple monti and put some more inverts n the tank while it's in fallow mode. Three fighting and an orange lip conch total now, but two of the fighting and the orange lip will be going in the 65 once the 76 day ticker is up. Picked up another set of three porcelain crabs again, might as well while it's fallow.

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A different perspective of things..

35477672536_5e90e7dcc7_b.jpg

TDS by Kyl, on Flickr

 

You can see the large amount of tissue loss on my chalice :(, but it seems to at least have slowed down if not stopped receding..

  • Like 2
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Anddddd I didn't notice that the mummy-eye chalice frag had fallen off the rocks, next to the favia. The favia killed 90% of the frag in less than two days, couldn't believe it.

 

Good news on the fish, they're all super active and will be going into a couple months of QT observation following 14 days of tank transfer as of Thursday night. I also have five fish for the larger tank in copper right now (C. lubbocki, C. cyanopleura, C. rubriventralis, N. magnifica & N. decora). As a note, this is why I'm quarantining everything these days; the wrasses and the purple firefish are all showing signs of non-visible ich with flashing, scratching and head shaking after only a week in "acclimation" QT to get eating well. Never trust any fish that you haven't personally quarantined to be clean, it only takes one time and while ich might seem minor, it can and does kill countless fish in our hobby every year.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Since the tank is in limbo with the fish out for fallowing, I've done some extensive monkeying with the Jebao SW-2 pumps via Apex control as they never did work correctly. Unfortunately I've come to the conclusion that either both of these pumps are lemons, or Jebao slapped the 0-10v control option on the units without actually testing it.

 

Here's a bit of cut/paste from what I sent the vendor I picked these up from to see if he can get an answer from his supplier.
 
Quote
I do not have any of the larger pumps (SW-4, +) to test this against, but I have asked a few others running these via apex to try and get me some voltage readings off of the AV lead to the pump from the controller board. I've spent the last couple of nights building a sheet of cause and effect with VDM and control voltages sent to the pump via the controller, and a definite problem has emerged.
 
First, the SW-2 control board is identical to the SW-4 and above controller boards (they're all stamped model JB-BW-01 revision date 2016-04-29), but I'm pretty sure these SW-2 pumps do not operate on the same voltage control response as it's bigger brothers. When running without an external 0-10v control, the controller to the pump will output between 3.3v (1 light bar @ ~20% speed) to 2.2v (7 light bars @ ~70% speed), and finally 0.03v (full light bars @ ~100% speed), and a final voltage of 4.6v to physically stop the impeller in wavemaker modes.
 
The problem with the SW-2 occurs when you connect the 0-10v control, it's outputting voltages to the pump that you would normally associate with going backwards. This is starting to make me think that they've included the wrong controller board for these pumps if using 0-10v control, or that the pumps are flat out aren't designed to run with external control and they just slapped the '0-10v control' option on there without actually testing it.
 
For example;
 
0v (0%) from apex = 0.03v to the pump, or 100% speed
5v (50%) apex = 1.94v pump. around 90% speed
10v (100%) apex = 3.95v pump, around 10% speed
 
You can see how this is working backwards to how it should, and that the voltage curve required to actually control the SW-2's lies very lightly between 10v - 6v, or 100% - 60% on the apex VDM percentages, and never does really flatten out for complete ramping control. You also cannot turn the pumps off via 0-10v, as 10v only translates to 3.95v control, short of the 4.6v plateau required to stop the impeller.

 

Here's a bit of what I mean, as these points are measured by what the APEX VDM port is set at (0% = 0v, 50% = 5v, 100% = 10v), and showing what the controller is sending to the pump as a control voltage to tell it how to operate. For the SW-2, a lower voltage = faster speed and at 4.6v or above, the impeller physically stops.

Spoiler


0% .03v
1% .045v
2% .068v
3% .98v
4% .13v
5% .16v
10% .35v
15% .54v
20% .75v
25% .95v
30% 1.14v
35% 1.34v
40% 1.54v
45% 1.74v
50% 1.94v
55% 2.14v
60% 2.3v
65% 2.54v
70% 2.74v
75% 2.94v
80% 3.14v
85% 3.34v
90% 3.54v
95% 3.75v
100% 3.95v

 

So again, 0% 0v from apex means full speed on the pump. Conversely 100% from apex, 10v, translates to 3.95v to the pump, which puts it at I estimate 10% speed. Completely counter to how every other 0-10v pump operates. I guess it's a big you get what you pay for, especially with a brand new Jebao release that also has brand new functionality, there was no RW-2 or PP-2's before. As a side note, the older Jebao apex harnesses also do not work as it is designed to send a 0-5v input directly to the pump, but it just doesn't respond as it should, probably due to whatever internal circuitry is in the pump head itself and the voltage speed differences between it and the SW-4's or above.

 

Really debating to get rid of them and go back to the MP10, the whole point of it was to get some controllable pumps..

 

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Amazing how the *pod population becomes visible once fish are gone. They've been out roughly 5 weeks now, and there are copepods and isopods all over the glass. My pinkstreaked wrasse is going to have a field day on these pods when he's back in the tank!
 
35942750131_b58385df25_c.jpg
pods by Kyl, on Flickr
 
Stocking wise, I've been searching for Greenbanded gobies for over a year and our local market in Vancouver Canada has basically one vendor, whom can't source them. Unfortunately there is no national source like liveaquaria to fall back on, but I do know there is a fish/coral store with an online presence a couple of provinces over. 
 
Anyway, now that I'm on holidays for a bit it's time to press the issue and try and get a pair of those gobies. After that, stocking should be complete for this tank in it's current incarnation.
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Porcelain crab doing it's thing while mama clown is out of the tank.
 
36046774512_55a6350c60_c.jpg
porcelain by Kyl, on Flickr
 
Idaho grape monti is also finally starting to plate out after months of not really doing a whole lot. Most of that is probably attributed to having everything dialed in once again; 8.2 DKH, 410 calcium, 1340 calcium, ~2 ppm nitrate, 0.03 ppm phosphate. Another month and a bit, and the tank should be rocking fully stocked.
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Thankee :lol:

 

I guess it should be mentioned that the SW-2's are going to be removed next week and the MP10WQD is moving back to this tank, the lack of control is just off-putting.

 

There's another hobby taking up some time lately and that's 3D printing. I've been using others designs so far for things like Ecotech, Apex display and Jebao controller brackets, but have been meaning to mount a light over my QT tank for a while. It came with some really thin, flimsy metal brackets but I finally got around to creating a bracket for it.

 

35438494614_ac0a8c1e2d_b.jpg

ledbracket by Kyl, on Flickr

 

36230338476_622eb3751d_b.jpg

bracketmounted by Kyl, on Flickr

 

I think these two hobbies mesh very well, though I'm still weary of in-tank prints yet while I figure out what material will be safe. It would be really nice to have little stand alone frag plugs to keep things up and off the sand since the disks seem to get lopsided as things burrow beneath them. The next project while the fallow timer counts down is creating a drying rack for my Hanna and Salifert cuvettes.

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Nice! I have read from other reefers doing 3D printing that there are indeed certain materials to use and others not to use for marine tanks, especially if it's going in the tank. I can't remember the specifics but it's out there somewhere in the internet :)

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So a pair of SW-4 (24v DC) Jebao pumps arrived today, and they work flawlessly on both the harness and 0-10v control inputs. I have to conclude that the SW-2's, being 12v DC pumps, just aren't able to correctly operate with the current controllers they come with, nor with any on the market by an external 0-10v control input.

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I've always hated trying to safely dry out the Redsea / Hanna cuvettes from water testing, since they tend to knock over and fall on the floor.

 

So..

 

36317302516_044386fa30_c.jpg

cuvette_holder by Kyl, on Flickr

 

35526079074_d73c880be2_c.jpg

cuvette_holder2 by Kyl, on Flickr

 

Perfect fit for a v1, and space to put some of those Brother label stickers to keep the cuvettes from being used on another test. Now to create a Hanna version, wondering what the best way to store the caps would be..

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