Daan's Waterbox peninsula mini 25 - 365 Day Challenge

[Daan6661]

So this weekend I couldn't help myself and bought some coral haha. I was sure the system was up for it as the diatoms where already dissapearing again and the parameters are where I want them to be. Took home a yellow polyp torch, a blasto, a gold/purple- and a rainbow acan.  Also have a purple blasto and a red ultra acan coming in tomorrow. 

 

Blasto and torch are doing great.

The acans are a bit off color but are still nice and fluffy.  Probably need some time to adjust to thier new environment.

 

I ordered a diffuser for the prime from 3d reefing which I'm pretty excited about, I find the discoball-effect on the light a bit much.

Should be coming in around the weekend.

 

 

 

 

[Daan6661]

Photo bomb!

 

 

Snapped a couple of pics with the yellow filter. Surprise, they look way better! 

Moved the torch a bit up yesterday and it looks way happier up there. Also decided the acan-garden is going to be on the right so they're not directly under the light. 

 

[Daan6661]

Yesterday's parameters after my weekly testing:

KH 7.6

Ca 420 

Mg 1410

Po4 .049

No3 3

Salinity 1.024

 

I topped off the tank with salt water to raise the salinity a bit. 

 

Don't know why magnesium is elevated as the tropic marin pro reef mixes at 1300-1350.

Used the aquaforest mg test for the first time so maybe I made a small error, or interpreted the color wrong. 

 

Mg isn't a parameter I'm too concered with though.

 

Anyway, glad I'm keeping nitrates and phosphates in check which means my nutrient-export matches my import, for now. haha 

 

Looking into some options for a DIY chaeto reactor that I can add once the nutrients start to creep up.

[LordNecro]

Hi I'm currently planning a setup very similar to yours. I was wondering how has the tunze 9001 been working for you? Was it easy to install/replace the stock skimmer?

[Daan6661]

On 4/18/2020 at 8:21 PM, LordNecro said:

Hi I'm currently planning a setup very similar to yours. I was wondering how has the tunze 9001 been working for you? Was it easy to install/replace the stock skimmer?

Well, after some tweaking it has been working great! Way quieter and great skimmate. 
 

BUT,

In my opinion you kinda have to ditch the original ATO though. So you can tweak the water height as needed. Even though it comes with prefered waterlevel you have to almost cut the airflow down to zero for it not to overflow or skim very wet. Plus with the standard waterheight the skimmer sits to low in the chamber which makes it wobbly and you push it down everytime you touch it because the magnet isn't that strong. This almost had me put the stock skimmer back in, but it was WAY too loud.

So what I did was place the skimmer a bit higher above the waterlevel so it fits snugly between the nugs that held the og skimmer in place. The top of the skimmer is the same level as the top off the little nug, so I always have a refference that it's in the right place. then I played with my top off sensor to get the correct water height for the amount of air I want to push into the skimmer. 

 

[Daan6661]

Rainbow Acan is finally getting his color back! 

[IHaveADegreeInMarineBioBut]

Did you light acclimate them/move them after they lost color? I had my first coral shipped and it's starting to lose color, but was also thinking it just need to acclimate since the light isn't that powerful. Torn between moving it further and letting it chill. 

[debbeach13]

That acan is beautiful. 

[Daan6661]

4 minutes ago, IHaveADegreeInMarineBioBut said:

Did you light acclimate them/move them after they lost color? I had my first coral shipped and it's starting to lose color, but was also thinking it just need to acclimate since the light isn't that powerful. Torn between moving it further and letting it chill. 

I figured the acans should move a bit to the side of the tank since they like very low light. If the light isn't that powerfull you should probably let it be for a few weeks and see what it does. It's probably just a bit stressed out from it's new environment and shipping.

[IHaveADegreeInMarineBioBut]

1 minute ago, Daan6661 said:

I figured the acans should move a bit to the side of the tank since they like very low light. If the light isn't that powerfull you should probably let it be for a few weeks and see what it does. It's probably just a bit stressed out from it's new environment and shipping.

That's what I figured, thanks so much. Very happy your corals are happy 🙂 

[Daan6661]

4 minutes ago, IHaveADegreeInMarineBioBut said:

That's what I figured, thanks so much. Very happy your corals are happy 🙂 

heheh me too ! 

[Daan6661]

Wow, guess waterchanges aren’t gonna cut it anymore. Torch didn’t look happy so tested my parameters and kh was down to 5,8 in a week. Didn’t expect needing to start dosing this soon. Ordered all-for-reef but doing a couple 30% wc back to back to take it back to baseline. Also I’m going to test my freshbsaltwater to see if I may have a bad mix or something. 

[Daan6661]

Tested the TM pro reef salt at 7,7. 5 gallon wc put me at 5,8.  Have another 7,5 gallons mixing up over night. Hope my all-for-reef arrives soon. Didn’t expect the tank to uptake so much this soon. 
 

i guess it’s a good thing😅

 

gonna start dosing 3ml by hand while I figure out what dosing pump I want. Probably going for the versa since I can expand it in the future should I want to. 

[Daan6661]

After doing 2 big waterchanges my alkalinity dropped from 6,5 to 5,9 again overnight. Good thing the all-for-reef arived and I started dosing yesterday. 

 

I thought I had a second wind of diatoms but after weekly testing and both nitrates and phosphates being undetectable I think I had a small dino outbreak or something. 
I had a suspision of this so I ordered some polyp lab polyp booster and reefroids to add some nutrients to the tank. 

 

It's really fun to see the corals react to it so quickly with their feeding response and I'm happy to say that after feeding the first time yesterday my bacteria/algae didn't come back the same way today. 

Having issues isn't the most fun thing of the hobby.. but I have to say; figuring out and planning an attack, then executing it and observe it working makes me feel bad ass haha.

 

Now let's get this KH back to 8 slowly but steady.

[Daan6661]

Added the Ecotech versa and started dosing 3ml All-for-reef a day which raised my alkalinity to 7.7 over a week or so and everything is looking happy again 🙂

Getting some new frags soon so I will post pictures then. 

 

The versa is hands-down the best dosing pump I've had so far. Software isn't as intuitive as you'd like but it has the ability to dose 3ml over six hours. WAT?! how's that for stability? 

 

I still have to build it into the cabinet, I just didn't come around doing so since the weekends are super busy the last couple of weeks. 

 

 

[kimberbee]

How's the tank doing? Is the All-For- Reef working out?

[Daan6661]

Hey Kim!

Sorry for the late reply! Our second daughter was born just a couple of days before you posted.

Tank is cruising along. Lifes been really busy with a construction project on the house and ofcourse the birth of our daughter, which meant a barely was in the office the last 4 weeks. 

 

So with that in mind, it's doing awesome! It's just not very presentable right now haha. Once I cleaned every thing up this week, I'll post some pictures! 

 

For some reason one acan is going to the dark side but the rest is thriving. 

I love the all for reef. It's very potent in such a small tank though, so tuning in the dose can be quite tricky if you don't have a lot of corals. 

One note that's quite important is that tropic marin advices to do frequent waterchanges to even out indifferences between elements. 

 

On 7/5/2020 at 9:05 PM, kimberbee said:

How's the tank doing? Is the All-For- Reef working out?

 

[debbeach13]

Congratulations on your baby girl.

[Daan6661]

On 8/3/2020 at 2:17 PM, debbeach13 said:

Congratulations on your baby girl.

Thanks!

[Daan6661]

Just a FTS of all the new additions. Sent out an ICP test too. 

Tank is slowly coming in it's rythm, maturing a bit so to say. 
Ugly stage hit me hard during my break. But at the same time some corals grew a couple of new heads from letting the tank do it's thing. 

[Daan6661]

Hope everybody's okay!

 

Been a hell of a couple of months. After some thought, I decided to move the tank home so my kids can enjoy it too.

I also overestimated the time and care I could give a tank in my office. The business is taking off, but that also means there's more work to do. 

At least now I don't have to hurry with a wc after work, or go back to the office on weekends for testing or maintenence. 

 

My busy schedule resulted in the ugly-stage getting pretty nasty. Slowly but surely the algae is dying off.

 

Some changes: 

- Bought a new tank! This is a waterbox peninsula mini 25. The old nano was scratched up a bit so the move was the perfect time to "upgrade".

- Upgraded to the g4 xr15 pro which I mounted for now. The mount didn't fit on the back sump together with the skimmer. 

I will make a floating bracket in the near future for an ultra clean look.

- Tossed the old sand and put in new. 

 

To keep it short (ish) for now: here are some pic's. 

 

P.s. All the equipement goes trough the wall into the garage. Will post a pic later. Stil have some cable management to do 😛

[debbeach13]

Looks great and I love the table.

[sr2z]

Wooow, those corals look great under your new Radion! Thumbs up 👍

[Daan6661]

30 minutes ago, sr2z said:

Wooow, those corals look great under your new Radion! Thumbs up 👍

They sure pop a bit more. The extra clear glass of the tank helps a lot too. 
So far everything survived the move, so that's more then enough for me atm.

[Daan6661]

Forgot to post this earlier. My favorite view:)