Newbies IM 25 AIO

[Jaren45]

I found my green one (2.5-3") for only $50, the "duller" ones can be found from time to time!

[Llorgon]

Long overdue, but no longer living dangerously. Picked up a temp controller

[Ratvan]

4 hours ago, Llorgon said:

Long overdue, but no longer living dangerously. Picked up a temp controller

Lets see the rest of that Marine themed tattoo? 

[Llorgon]

14 hours ago, Ratvan said:

Lets see the rest of that Marine themed tattoo? 

Here you go! It took 7 6hour sessions. 

[Llorgon]

23 hours ago, Jaren45 said:

I found my green one (2.5-3") for only $50, the "duller" ones can be found from time to time!

Lucky! The green ones or one colour ones I've seen, the lowest was $140. I'll keep an eye out though.

[Llorgon]

While looking for a reasonably priced trachy, I came across a couple nice looking euphyllia. Picked up a rainbow hammer although it looks more gold and a purple frogspawn.

 

Slowly adding to the euphyllia garden!

[Llorgon]

For awhile now I have been dosing by hand twice a day. Works fine during the winter, but spring and summer we go camping a lot and I'll need to setup an auto doser.

 

I added a couple shelves and got the tubing from the reservoir to the doser done. Now I'm wondering how to fit the dosing lines into the back of the tank. The holders seem to be about 3.5" wide and right now, I don't really have the room for that. I guess I could lower the water level and make room that way?

[Llorgon]

I finally finished off the box of rpm salt and I am now switching over to red sea coral program. 

 

I did my first water change with the red sea salt and mixed up the calcium, alkalinity and magnesium. I was going to get the doser setup, but when I poured everything into the dosing containers, the alkalinity and magnesium had a lot of sediment at the bottom. I must not have mixed it enough.

 

I had my manual dosing down before switching. Seems like I will need double or so alkalinity and about half the calcium from my previous dosing liquids.

 

Other than that, fish are doing well. Corals are growing. I'm hoping that the red sea program will help with some trace elements I've been low on and improve colours.

[DevilDuck]

I use this dosing line holder: Amazon.com : Aquarium Choice Soft Tube Fixture Holder for Holding Doing Pump Soft Hose : Pet Supplies

 

and the one made for the Red Sea ReefDose and their multicolored lines, just make sure your doser has the same size dosing lines.

 

ReefDose Deluxe 4-Color Tube Kit (Red/Yellow) - Red Sea - SaltwaterAquarium.com

 

Just make sure you are not using something with suction cups. The suction cups will flail eventually, and you will end up dosing all over your floors.

[Llorgon]

6 hours ago, DevilDuck said:

I use this dosing line holder: Amazon.com : Aquarium Choice Soft Tube Fixture Holder for Holding Doing Pump Soft Hose : Pet Supplies

 

and the one made for the Red Sea ReefDose and their multicolored lines, just make sure your doser has the same size dosing lines.

 

ReefDose Deluxe 4-Color Tube Kit (Red/Yellow) - Red Sea - SaltwaterAquarium.com

 

Just make sure you are not using something with suction cups. The suction cups will flail eventually, and you will end up dosing all over your floors.

I was looking at the red sea one. Might give that a try and see if I can make it fit.

Good advice on the suction cups. Wouldn't want things all over the floor!

[Llorgon]

I picked up the red sea dosing lines/holder. It came today, the lines that it comes with seem really good quality compared to what came with the bubble magnus doser. Still trying to figure out how to fit in into the back of the tank. I could potentially remove the ghost skimmer. I'm not sure it even does much, but the holder where it would go and add a bit of extra tubing to have things go into the return chamber. Or possibly use the dosing line organizers and attach one to the wall above and have the lines go into the tank from there.

[DevilDuck]

I love my Reefdose!

 

[LazyFish]

If you are still looking for trachs it seems to be bit of season but aquasd has small ones sometimes medium.and large large. I have 3 from them the smallest has a skeleton of about an inch but it puffs out closer to 2.5 at its largest. Its one of the smaller ones I've seen from them. They all have colors. They only carry the australian ones from what I've seen. Prices can be from 30 to sevral hundred. They usualy start out a bit on the higher end for pricing I think my little one was like 60 and droped down to like 24 when I got it. They put them on sale after a short while. Depending on color and size sometimes you get a realy good deal. Lucky corals, Austin aquafarms and unique corals carry them alot but I rarely see any go for under 80. Sometimes they have the indo ones but they usualy cost more.

[Llorgon]

On 3/4/2022 at 5:53 PM, DevilDuck said:

I love my Reefdose!

 

Nice. What do you like about it? I've been looking into it for my 75g tank. Does it have any functionality for dosing trace colours or anything like that?

How do you like the hydros control? I have the wave engine and I was thinking of getting the control for this tank.

 

On 3/5/2022 at 2:59 AM, LazyFish said:

If you are still looking for trachs it seems to be bit of season but aquasd has small ones sometimes medium.and large large. I have 3 from them the smallest has a skeleton of about an inch but it puffs out closer to 2.5 at its largest. Its one of the smaller ones I've seen from them. They all have colors. They only carry the australian ones from what I've seen. Prices can be from 30 to sevral hundred. They usualy start out a bit on the higher end for pricing I think my little one was like 60 and droped down to like 24 when I got it. They put them on sale after a short while. Depending on color and size sometimes you get a realy good deal. Lucky corals, Austin aquafarms and unique corals carry them alot but I rarely see any go for under 80. Sometimes they have the indo ones but they usualy cost more.

Unfortunately I'm in Canada so none of those places will work for me. I am jealous at how cheap you can get corals though!

[DevilDuck]

9 hours ago, Llorgon said:

Nice. What do you like about it? I've been looking into it for my 75g tank. Does it have any functionality for dosing trace colours or anything like that?

How do you like the hydros control? I have the wave engine and I was thinking of getting the control for this tank.

 

The ReefDose is compact, very accurate and well priced. The app is not bad either, automatically splits your dose across the day and will make up for missed doses. I needed something that I can control over wi-fi, my old Kamoer X1 was bluetooth only and would stop working after a power outage.

 

I see presets for Red Sea additives in the app but i don’t dose any so i’m not sure what functionality it may have. I use the doser with a DIY All for Reef mix and vodka dosing. Still deciding what the finally two heads will be used for. Maybe aminos or Mg.

 

I love the Hydros! I like the fact you can buy as little or as much control as you need. Also the fact that the main control unit is distributed across multiple units so you have redundancy. I wish I would have bought the wave engine instead of diving into Ecotech. You get more flexibility with different types of wave makers and gyres, that are all power and controlled from one unit. Ecotech still doesn’t have their Mobius app wi-fi enabled. 

[Llorgon]

On 3/7/2022 at 7:32 PM, DevilDuck said:

The ReefDose is compact, very accurate and well priced. The app is not bad either, automatically splits your dose across the day and will make up for missed doses. I needed something that I can control over wi-fi, my old Kamoer X1 was bluetooth only and would stop working after a power outage.

 

I see presets for Red Sea additives in the app but i don’t dose any so i’m not sure what functionality it may have. I use the doser with a DIY All for Reef mix and vodka dosing. Still deciding what the finally two heads will be used for. Maybe aminos or Mg.

 

I love the Hydros! I like the fact you can buy as little or as much control as you need. Also the fact that the main control unit is distributed across multiple units so you have redundancy. I wish I would have bought the wave engine instead of diving into Ecotech. You get more flexibility with different types of wave makers and gyres, that are all power and controlled from one unit. Ecotech still doesn’t have their Mobius app wi-fi enabled. 

Sounds like a good doser. I've looked at some reviews of it and people seem to like it minus the app. It's a bit more expensive than the bubble magnus, but seems to have more functionality. I've just started the red sea program and if it can auto dose the trace colours without me doing a bunch of math.... that would be amazing!

The wave engine works with ecotech so I think you could still do it. I went with the wave engine to save some space on all the power bricks. I had some setup issues at first, but now it's great.

[Llorgon]

Solved my space issue. Glued the dosing line holder to the light mount. 

 

I haven't programmed the doser yet, but hoping to get to that this weekend.

[Llorgon]

Been quite awhile since I updated. It's been a bit of a crazy last couple months. Near the end of March I got laid off in a mass layoff. Luckily the tech market is hot right now so I was able to find a job in a week and took 3 weeks off.

 

As for the tank, it's been a bit neglected the last couple weeks. Been on a couple camping trips and ran out of salt so this weekend was the first water change in a few weeks.

 

The tank has been a bit neglected recently. Between camping trips and waiting for my salt to be delivered it's been a few weeks since the last water change. 

 

I've had some ups and downs recently. I was having issues with the inkbird and the continues heating alarm and shutting off the heater. It happened while I was away camping one weekend and I came back to a tank temp in the 60's! Luckily I only lost one SPS frag.

 

I've also been having issues with one of my Montis seemingly dieing off in places. Not sure what's going on there...

 

For the last few months I've been dealing with lots of cyano. While my tds was still at 0, I think it may have been the water as it was starting to appear in my other tank as well.

 

I haven't added any new fish or corals. My clowns have started to host in the toadstool which is pretty cool. Unfortunately they tend to move it around a bit which is kind of annoying.