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1 hour ago, Boggers said:

Use some rocks into the pond foam, and yes Portland would need to be cured for a few weeks first but makes great rocks if you mix with sand.

I've come up with a new and improved 'Evil Plan (tm)'  Based on some research it seems that fimo clay can be used, and it naturally sinks.  This should let my girls really get into making a centerpiece. Without some crazy giant mess...  "Yes I know, I'm always an optimist. Two kids and an art project.... what could possible go wrong!?!"   

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Slight progress has been made. Goose neck for the light came in, but not the light... :angry: Hobby lobby was scoured, and "Items" bought. We now have competing design plans in the house. The girls picked out their corals at the store as well.  So we just need to settle on a theme and get the process moving. 

 

With regards to our free Petco rescue corals, we've discovered life! Though what kind, we do not know yet.   The brown slime in the second photo has developed new green 'polyps'. And the brown stalk in the first photo is aware enough to close-up when the infrared beam for my phones auto focus shines on it.  Not sure yet how to get closer photos or view of it,as it closes up quickly when jostled.    

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Hi fellow plastic container guy - nice score on the dead corals...  even if the "corals" don't make it you can gain some benefits in the bacteria/infauna departments....  Also crazy science lab type setup you got there... I like it!  I've got a small corner in the basement for my fish stuff.

 

On 10/31/2017 at 11:14 AM, jahnje said:

I've come up with a new and improved 'Evil Plan (tm)'  Based on some research it seems that fimo clay can be used, and it naturally sinks.  This should let my girls really get into making a centerpiece. Without some crazy giant mess...  "Yes I know, I'm always an optimist. Two kids and an art project.... what could possible go wrong!?!"   

Duuuuuuuuude...  I've thought about this so many times...  Could never decide what method to use though for DIY rocks...  Last year I set up a Fluval spec III and wanted to have some nice and thin branchy rock in the tank.  I ordered 5lbs at BRS but it seems what I want isn't something that's typically available so I've considered making a centerpiece from the stuff (Sculpey Premo specifically)... Not sure how much I really want to spend on this little experiment though - polymer clay isn't cheap.  At least it can be mixed using various colors of the product.  I'm really curious what you end up with. 

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4 hours ago, ajmckay said:

Duuuuuuuuude...  I've thought about this so many times...  Could never decide what method to use though for DIY rocks...  Last year I set up a Fluval spec III and wanted to have some nice and thin branchy rock in the tank.  I ordered 5lbs at BRS but it seems what I want isn't something that's typically available so I've considered making a centerpiece from the stuff (Sculpey Premo specifically)... Not sure how much I really want to spend on this little experiment though - polymer clay isn't cheap.  At least it can be mixed using various colors of the product.  I'm really curious what you end up with. 

 

We bought about 3 lbs of the stuff. Just plain white, since anything without coral in the end is just going to get covered in algae.  We're not quite sure yet how to make it thin and branchy though, as once you get it going it's pretty soft and floppy. So we're currently try to find the right shapes that can support it while baking.  We spent a good 2 hours last night working with it, everyone doing their own thing. I'm trying to mostly stay on the technical side while the kids are starting from the art side.  The only limits I've put on them are about flow via a center airline, frag mounting holes,  and all ornamentation must be handmade,  aka the "No Sponge Bob" rule.  Some of the dead coral has come in really handy for them to work with and have a better idea of how things go together.  

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5 hours ago, jahnje said:

 

We bought about 3 lbs of the stuff. Just plain white, since anything without coral in the end is just going to get covered in algae.  We're not quite sure yet how to make it thin and branchy though, as once you get it going it's pretty soft and floppy. So we're currently try to find the right shapes that can support it while baking.  We spent a good 2 hours last night working with it, everyone doing their own thing. I'm trying to mostly stay on the technical side while the kids are starting from the art side.  The only limits I've put on them are about flow via a center airline, frag mounting holes,  and all ornamentation must be handmade,  aka the "No Sponge Bob" rule.  Some of the dead coral has come in really handy for them to work with and have a better idea of how things go together.  

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How fun is that!!!!  Is the chimney hollow?  Might be a cool place to put your airline :)

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22 minutes ago, gena said:

How fun is that!!!!  Is the chimney hollow?  Might be a cool place to put your airline :)

Yep, was one of the requirements. :-) center located hole for airtube.  Holes for for frag pedestals. Right now there is a little ceramic bowl under the roof that will come out after firing. exposing the frag holes.  This is still a proof of concept, but it's one of the possible directions. There other competing "bid" is a tree, or a forest, but we've got some structural issues to figure out for those. :unsure: The girlz r' dig'n it though!     

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It's cool that you're involving them in the tank - my kids would go nuts with clay.  For now, however, it's air dry clay to practice with.

 

 

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8 hours ago, ajmckay said:

It's cool that you're involving them in the tank - my kids would go nuts with clay.  For now, however, it's air dry clay to practice with.

The sculpey stuff isn't too bad. Esp. with Hobby Lobby's daily 40% off one item coupon.  It was like $13 for 3.75 pounds, which is cheaper than a coral.... ;)

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Finally got my light and Reef Chili in! I no longer have dieing, starving rescue corals in the dark.   I now have happy fattening recovering corals.  So added the lights and the food, and about 20 min after I took this picture I noticed a couple of new polyps popup. It's amazing what a little food and light can do.  I'm up to 7 active 'colonies'  with 2 ~ 3 more possible.  I'm really loving the excitement of a rescue pico tank where every polyp is a cause for celebration. 

 

So the light is a RapidLED PAR38 Mixed Color.  Love the color this is putting out. Plenty of pop without being overly blue. It's almost a nice lovely pastel lavender color. :blush: I've got it set to about 1/2 output at the moment. The clutron lamp dimmer that I got from Lowes causes flicker anywhere below that.  But the corals stayed out and bathed in the light, so I'm going to assume it's not too bright for them. The Spouse and I spent about 5 min under it looking for new corals, when finished, She called a friend of hers who get seasonally depressed, and said she come over and hang out under our new light. After which she decided to go off and get her own! Who new reefing lights could help with seasonal depression!   

 

 

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Random Pro-Tip:  Adjustable dosing syringes from walmart. This things save me so much time it's crazy.    Where they come in the handiest is in water testing. Need 5ml of water from the tank? no problem. Takes all of 2 seconds to get the right amount of water from the tank and into the test tube. I can load a fully battery of tests in under ten seconds. Doesn't seem like a big thing, but when you got more than one test, and more than one tanks it adds up really quickly. It's probably overkill on my part, but I keep one for each tank, so as to not cross contaminate.  You can find these in the pharmacy section at walmart with all of the other dosing syringes, and baby medicines.  

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Did a little more culling of the dead from petco. At this point pretty much anything left is alive or a source of coraline and nitrifying bacteria for the pico. I've got one that I'm not sure is going to make it or not, but if it keeps my ammonia up, we're going to go with NOT.  I think it's currently the only major source of decay in the tank, and I should be able to get a general idea of the WC requirements once things have settled down a bit.  We started this process with an average of almost .5 ppm of  after  24 hours, and are now down to below .25 ppm.  Still doing a 100% WC each day, and supplementing with  7 drops of Prime and 0.625 ml of Stability each day.  Corals seem to be happy enough that I went back to Petco and actually bought some!  The Girls had picked out this hammer, and GSP.  So in they went. Petco likes to run their frag tank at 1.030SG, so drip acclimated these two for about 6 -7 hours back down to my 1.025. They were putting off some fairly high ammonia when measured this morning, but seemed happy enough to move in with their little friends.   

 

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Got my grids sized and cut for the bottom of the tank. Not sure yet what the girls have planned for a covering yet, but I'm going to bake me a mermaid  today so I can see if she'll hold some algae.  Since I'm trying to use the  the fimo clay as a replacement for live/dry rock.  I wonder if I should just put any of the backed decorations in a separate container, and basically let them 'cure', as opposed to moving them with corals each day?  Throw them in some saltwater with some stability, my dying frag, and some algae, and just let it cook/cycle for a while ?  

 

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So without having a baked/cured piece in front of me, my understanding is that the final product is essentially plastic, right?  If that's the case then there's no "cycle" to be had.  Add the polymer clay decorations anytime you like it won't matter (I would thoroughly rinse them though). 

 

Your bacteria will be just what's on the frags.

 

The decorations will likely have some bacteria grow on them but without being a porous rock there won't be much and it will essentially wipe off anytime you clean it.   Again this is assuming it cures to a plastic like consistency that's relatively smooth and non-porous.

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5 hours ago, ajmckay said:

So without having a baked/cured piece in front of me, my understanding is that the final product is essentially plastic, right?  If that's the case then there's no "cycle" to be had.  Add the polymer clay decorations anytime you like it won't matter (I would thoroughly rinse them though). 

 

Your bacteria will be just what's on the frags.

 

The decorations will likely have some bacteria grow on them but without being a porous rock there won't be much and it will essentially wipe off anytime you clean it.   Again this is assuming it cures to a plastic like consistency that's relatively smooth and non-porous.

  In the end, it's PVC. So I guess we'll have to rough it up a bit if we need more places for bacteria beyond the frag plugs.  As long as we can get some algae to grow on it i'll be pretty satisfied. Otherwise the girls are going to be disappointed that I won't let them paint their creations. They've already informed me of this of course...   thanks for your help.

 

Weekend report:

We baked and added our screaming mermaid.  In the water she looks like she's drowning, and being crushed by a boulder....  Really It's just about the algae...  Still picking bugs of the new corals.  Was happy to see that without feeding, and with the removal of anything dying, the water parameters remained at an undetectable amount of ammonia. Went ahead and did a feed this morning, and moved my hammer away from the others as my GSP all closed up shop a little early last night. I've been running a pretty long light cycle since I'm doing 100% daily water changes, but perhaps I'm over taxing them with the light. Other possibilities, did the hammer attack? Moved. Bugs? didn't see any up top.  Something leaching off the new plug tray or sculpture? Going to leave light cycle alone, decided to feed, and will do a WC today as well. If everyone still goes to be before the sun is down, I'll reduce the cycle.  It's currently at 50%, 24" and 15 hours.   

 

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Haha the screaming mermaid.  I am seeing that, now that you mention it.  Save her omgomgomg

 

:lol:

 

Maybe a shadow scared the the GSP closed or even a vibration.  I noticed that just moving my hand near the jar sometimes makes my goniopora react.  Kinda weird. 

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Just now, gena said:

Haha the screaming mermaid.  I am seeing that, now that you mention it.  Save her omgomgomg

 

:lol:

 

Maybe a shadow scared the the GSP closed or even a vibration.  I noticed that just moving my hand near the jar sometimes makes my goniopora react.  Kinda weird. 

probably, was bumping around and things. I fed them later, and everyone was happy, and had babies... :blush:  so who knows.   Trying to currently resist the urge to feed them a tiny tiny bit every day. Currently I can get 24 hours after feeding out the tank before I get any noticeable ammonia.  But would like to cut down to a once a week WC as opposed to a daily... Going through salt pretty quick. though the WC takes only takes a few seconds, and a new batch of salt only take a couple of min, so kinda addictive.... but no... must resist... must be patient... :unsure:  

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So while resisting the urge to over feed my corals. I decided to head out to the store and just get some more that I could feed....   Bought two frags of zoas of an orange variety.   Picked solely both frags had some sort of long stringy algae on them, and since these came from Petco I'm sure a number of bugs as well.  But I feel like sciencing today so... Using this as an excuse to try my hand at dipping and getting my QT procedures down better.   I drip acclimate starting with 1 litre of bag water and 5L of qt water.  Once there is enough water to keep thing above 1L in the destination container, I pulled 120 ml of mixed water out, and mixed it with 10 ml of 'bayer total insect killer'.  Let it soak for 5 min, then flushed with more mixed water using a syringe a few times. Then returned to container. I repeated this for the other zoa as well.  Polyps closed up, but that was about it.  Next I pulled 90 ml of mixed water and 30 ml of peroxide, and let one zoa soak for 5 min. Tips turned white and puckered up nice and tight.  Not doing the other so I have a bit of a control. We'll see how it goes...:unsure:

 

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Man you are moving right along with this thing!  I think there's a frag swap near me sometime soon so I'll probably do some stocking up then.  

 

I've got my light on the way and a plan for water movement but it's still a few weeks out. 

 

Looks great though - this is good motivation to get my own setup going!

 

 

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todays update:

    Zoa didn't mind the hydrogen peroxide too much. And as a matter of fact looked better this morning than the undipped one.  Bayer dip didn't seem to have any effect on them at all other than creating a sea of death on the bottom of the container.  Dead bugs everywhere. yea! :D

 

this is the undipped control:

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and this the peroxide dipped:

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The other thing to note here is that the dipped one has NO algae growing on it.  Under my current lighting conditions which are pretty intense. Anything with algae on it bubbles like a witches cauldron . Not a thing on the zoa though, which I would consider a success.

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Going to have to beat the children into submission soon for them to finish up their scaping ideas.  

 

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Another day another update...

 

Everything looked good this morning, so decided to do a bayer dip on all my frags.  The zoa's were looking good, so figured everyone could use a bath since most of them had never had it done before. And my pico has been crawling with little things that I did not put there.  Also got another day day w/o any ammonia, which I find fascinating.  There's no live rock, no substrate, just frags. And I'm feeding a little reef chili every day.  So after the initial die off of my supposedly dead petco corals, ammonia has stayed un-measurable.  This makes me think I can probably go a week w/o a water change. So we'll test that out soon.  The only reason I can see to do a change is to refresh the elements in the water.

 

@morecoffee mentioned something I hadn't heard of that I thought might be very cool for the contest, and that's travertine tiles. I have a bunch from a bathroom install, and have been looking for  something to do with them.  Going to have to check that out. 

 

Here's my dipping setup:

  1. pull frag,
  2. clip binder clip to bottom of frag,
  3. hang upside down for  5 min in jar for 5 min w/ 4 oz tank water & 10 ml of bayer.
  4. watch critters fall off and die while laughing maniacally. austinpowers_033.jpg.4edee4e467fff5291c152fbae6c2be44.jpg 
  5. use large syringe of fresh tank water to flush off bayer and death into spare container.
  6. place in new container. 
  7. while more frags goto 1
  8. dump jar and remaining extra tank water into spare container.
  9. Counting coup.

The important thing here is the upside down with the clip. Keeps you from having to search in the cloudy nerve agent to find your coral who may be resting on it head or something. 

 

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Nice progress, and I love the kids' sculptures :wub:

 

I do both Bayer and peroxide dips all the time, especially for zoas. Bayer is good killing critters, but it won't do anything for algae or bacterial problems. I always dip Bayer for 15 minutes, and then rise twice for 15 minutes each, because even a tiny bit of Bayer getting into the tank is really bad for anything with a nervous system. Just be careful with the peroxide, it can burn the zoas if they are exposed too long.

 

Nice find on the syringes. If you ever need more, Amazon has them for about $5 for five of them. Or $8 for 25 :lol:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RUI8WS/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_0

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2 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

Nice progress, and I love the kids' sculptures :wub:

thanks

 

2 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

I do both Bayer and peroxide dips all the time, especially for zoas. Bayer is good killing critters, but it won't do anything for algae or bacterial problems. I always dip Bayer for 15 minutes, and then rise twice for 15 minutes each, because even a tiny bit of Bayer getting into the tank is really bad for anything with a nervous system. Just be careful with the peroxide, it can burn the zoas if they are exposed too long.

Yeah, the rinsing part worries me a bit... But i'm only putting these back into QT for a couple of months so shouldn't be an issue.

 

2 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

Nice find on the syringes. If you ever need more, Amazon has them for about $5 for five of them. Or $8 for 25 :lol:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RUI8WS/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_0

The syringe I was pointing to lets you set the amount each time. :-) i use amazon syringes for everything else, but for guaranteeing I get the right amount for each test tube each time, nothing beats these.  

 

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Acu-Life-True-Easy-Syringe-10ml/36282226

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23 minutes ago, jahnje said:

thanks

 

Yeah, the rinsing part worries me a bit... But i'm only putting these back into QT for a couple of months so shouldn't be an issue.

 

The syringe I was pointing to lets you set the amount each time. :-) i use amazon syringes for everything else, but for guaranteeing I get the right amount for each test tube each time, nothing beats these.  

 

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Acu-Life-True-Easy-Syringe-10ml/36282226

Oh, I see, that's really cool!

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Nothing too exciting today. Went to petco last night to see if their new shipment of corals had come in. The less time they stay in their tanks the healthier they are.  But alas, I misunderstood. And instead came home with a bright red/orange peacock cichlid that they just got in. Little guy is too fast to photo well at the moment, but crazy orange red coloration like I've never seen.

 

 

 

Spent the day starting to build the "floor" of the pico tank. Breaking up travertine tiles, and trying to make it kinda of a stacked stone wall look.  Our mermaid needs something regal I think. So trappings of atlantis it is...   Should give the coral a nice place to grow. I haven't quite decided how to hold it all together yet. Super glue or some of that coral putty stuff, or even baking it along with the fimo clay as mortar.  Got to break up about twice as much I think to give it a nice height. 

 

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On 10/28/2017 at 10:29 AM, duderubble said:

I'm not sure if the little reefs will grow coraline algae or not. My main tank now has started growing crazy amounts, more than any other tank I've had. Coraline will be a problem on a round tank (which I have for my contest tank too). It would be a nightmare on a non-glass round tank. 

Why is a round tank surface a problem for coralline?

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