Duderubble's Lagoon of Rubble - a lounge rat's contest tank.

[duderubble]

Added an air plant above the water. We'll see how it does. Sorry for the blue light. Day lights are off for the night. 

 

In other news the GHA problem is much improved. I think a few more clean up crew will take care of it. I need to be more disciplined with water changes. That seems to have been effective. 

 

 

[duderubble]

Daylight picture. I still need a more agressive glass cleaner than mag floats.  Also I need a bigger CUC. And corals. Colonies. 

[duderubble]

[duderubble]

Added a little livestock today. The GHA situation is much improved but I added a couple turbo snails just to give it a nudge. I'm not Healy a fan of turbos but I'm giving them a chance because I know they are good at cleanup. 

 

Also added:

 

A fourth chromis to replace the one that croaked on the first day they were in. 

 

A coral banded shrimp

 

An emerald crab 

 

And a tiny toadstool I'm sure I'll regret a year from now. 

[duderubble]

Oh also my ATO is supposed to arrive tomorrow so I should have a week to dial it in before vacation.  I'm actually most worried about the airplant.

[RayWhisperer]

So, once dialed in, rig it to drip down on the air plant. Nobody will be there to look at it, so it won't matter if it looks crappy. Then, just put it where it needs to go once you're back.

[duderubble]

I did have that idea but not for the trip.  I like the setup of this ATO but the pump is absolute crap. I'm hoping it has enough head just to work. 

[Weetabix7]

26 minutes ago, duderubble said:

I did have that idea but not for the trip.  I like the setup of this ATO but the pump is absolute crap. I'm hoping it has enough head just to work. 

 

Which ATO did you end up using?

[duderubble]

I got the nano box with the two sensors. Like I said the system seems great it's just the weak noisy pump that sucks. It would be nice if someone made an upgrade. I mean little pumps are cheap.  I wonder if there's a mod I could do using a rio or something. 

[Thunder Goose]

I like your scape. The air plant is a neat touch.

[RayWhisperer]

Quiet, slow and rebuildable. Ideal for an ATO setup.

https://premiumaquatics.com/products/tom-aquarium-aqualifter-package.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4Y_C8OGJ1QIVlBuBCh1ORw72EAQYBCABEgLwjPD_BwE

those can pump more than 30" up. Assuming you may need a bit more height, you can hang the pump 10", or so, above the ATO. It should have no problems drawing water up that height. That'll give you 40" to play with.

[duderubble]

That would be great. I've used a qualifiers before but this controller plugs into a transformer and powers the pump directly with stepped down power.  

[duderubble]

Upon experimentation it looks like the pump on the ATO will be fine. I will just need to uild a shelf in the cabinet once I find the reservoir I want to use. I looked at gas cans which I like because they are short and unlikely to ever leak, but I would need to make a hole large enough for the pump. I went to four places and couldn't find anything that would work as is. Right now I have a bucket on a chair beside the tank. 

 

Also I added these lovely zoas and a pretty rough looking Monti frag. 

 

 

[duderubble]

These new zoas are crazy under the blues. 

 

Also FTS

[duderubble]

A post from Destin on vacation. The air plant fell in the water before I left so I pulled it out. I'll try again with a different one or a tiny aloe or sedum. I wasn't very happy with the color anyway, it blended into the rock too much. 

 

Vacay report is that the ATO is working splendidly. We have a house sitter to water outdoor plants and such. She is feeding the fish twice this week and making sure the ATO reservoir isn't dry. 

 

I boughta large mouth 5 gallon bottle like you use for a drinking water dispenser that I plan to put in the stand. If it works well I'll buy a second and switch them out with ro/di water from a store. I'll continue to use my tap for wc's. I think that should be sufficient since the tap seems to be working well.  Using it for top off indefinitely worries me because of build-up of impurities. 

 

I guess that's it. 

[Weetabix7]

On 7/17/2017 at 9:13 PM, duderubble said:

These new zoas are crazy under the blues. 

 

Also FTS

 

This tank is shaping up nicely. 

I get to experiment with my first ATO soon as well. 

Have fun on vacation!!

[duderubble]

A few new frags and improved cleanup crew. Things seem to be going well and I have coraline algae growing all over the glass. 

[duderubble]

[duderubble]

 

These guys deserve a medal. Huge difference in the cleanliness of the sandbed. 

 

Just noticed these evildoers. There was another in a different place entirely a couple weeks ago that's gone now though. 

 

 

[Lula_Mae]

1 hour ago, duderubble said:

In your second to last pic--are those green zoas on a bivalve?

[duderubble]

Yes. They came that way from the store, lol. I'm 95% sure it's not a living bivalve. I assume it was wild collected. 

[Lula_Mae]

15 minutes ago, duderubble said:

Yes. They came that way from the store, lol. I'm 95% sure it's not a living bivalve. I assume it was wild collected. 

That's pretty neat, even if it's not alive!  I once had live rock with a big round bivalve that had a little orange encrusting coral on it, never did figure out what it was.

[duderubble]

[duderubble]

[duderubble]