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Coral Vue Hydros

11yr old 29G BioCube has seen it all (ReVamp)


andrewjardin

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andrewjardin

Awesome! Thanks everyone!  I have purchased a bunch of distilled ozonized water for water changes, working on procuring the head for the hose to actually vacuum the sand..

 

Thanks for the ID on the macro!  I couldn't remember what it was, I bought it almost 2 years ago, and I haven't seen it until about 4 months ago it just started growing again!

 

If you are running ChemiPure Blue, is there any point in running a second carbon bag separately or would that be bad for the water chemistry?  What do you guys think about bio media bags that can be changed regularly instead of something that sits and becomes a waste collection problem?

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andrewjardin

Another update on the corals...

(Also sorry for my photo quality!  Trying to figure out how to use pro mode on phone to get most realistic colours in the lighting)

 

The upper Duncan head is acting much happier, but the lower head is angry.. any ideas why?

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The GSP have even brighter colouration under the LED's lately, and I'm seeing more and more polyps popping up!

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I definitely want to replace my lighting, as I still have the stock lighting from 11 years ago 😳 just waiting to decide if I want to do a custom LED unit or purchase one.  I think the DIY would be way more fun of course...

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Nano sapiens
6 hours ago, andrewjardin said:

If you are running ChemiPure Blue, is there any point in running a second carbon bag separately or would that be bad for the water chemistry?  What do you guys think about bio media bags that can be changed regularly instead of something that sits and becomes a waste collection problem?

Chemipure Blue is basically activated carbon with some phosphate reducing resin thrown in for good measure.  Running separate activated carbon wouldn't be of any benefit, unless you had very low phosphate and didn't want to use the Chemipure Blue.  GAC (granulated activated carbon) is used to trap organics, especially the yellowing compounds that can build up over time.  Can also be helpful in reducing toxins due to allopathy (coral chemical warfare) in a mixed system with especially toxic soft coral and stony coral.  Don't need much in a small tank, best to change every few months, at least.

 

Bare in mind that all the mechanical and chemical filtration are simply aids to deal with possible potential issues or current ones, so it's important to know what they do and how to manage them in your system.  Interestingly, none of them are actually required to run a successful reef tank (live rock and/or live sand are all that's necessary, filtration wise).

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andrewjardin
1 hour ago, Nano sapiens said:

Chemipure Blue is basically activated carbon with some phosphate reducing resin thrown in for good measure.  Running separate activated carbon wouldn't be of any benefit, unless you had very low phosphate and didn't want to use the Chemipure Blue.  GAC (granulated activated carbon) is used to trap organics, especially the yellowing compounds that can build up over time.  Can also be helpful in reducing toxins due to allopathy (coral chemical warfare) in a mixed system with especially toxic soft coral and stony coral.  Don't need much in a small tank, best to change every few months, at least.

 

Bare in mind that all the mechanical and chemical filtration are simply aids to deal with possible potential issues or current ones, so it's important to know what they do and how to manage them in your system.  Interestingly, none of them are actually required to run a successful reef tank (live rock and/or live sand are all that's necessary, filtration wise).

Okay thank you for that insight!  I will have to do some more thinking and research about what will be best in the basket!  

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andrewjardin

 My not so local LFS was open to walk ins, so I made a little trek to buy some snails.  They were really expensive compared to where I normally shop so I didn't get a ton..

Added:

6x Trochus

2x Astrea

2x Nassarius (6 total now)

 

Also picked up 4 colonies of Zoas and a single polyp

I honestly don't know what any of them are, but they are very pretty in person.  Hard to take nice pictures, and the dang skunk shrimp keeps stepping on them every time I try to take pictures and making polyps close!  It likes to try and photo bomb a lot 😂

 

 

This colony is a very light mixture of pink and green colours

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This colony is a deep orange/red with neon orange fringes

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This colony has slightly larger heads, is speckled with orange spots and orange fringe

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This colony is a mix of browny polyps wth a green centre and deep reddish polyps with orange fringe

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This single polyp is my favourite, there is another polyp below it which has yet to open, I hope it is the same type.  The fringe is neon yellow/green

and the centre is neon orange.

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Got each colony for $10 and he tossed in the single polyp for no charge! 👌

 

Here's a couple pictures of the very brief natural sunlight the tank gets in the evening.. about 30 minutes across the bottom front of the tank where most of my corals are.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 4 months later...
On 9/2/2021 at 4:33 PM, mipster said:

It's been a long time, how is this coming along?

Hello again, it has in fact been a long time!  I started a new job and it's taken me a long time to sort of adjust to how much of my time that has been taking away from me.

 

Update: my tank is.... interesting to say the least.  The Duncans and the Zoas are long since dead and for some reason I decided at one point to remove my sand bed??  What came over me, I'm not sure but I have regrets.

 

I have been reading and researching and listening to podcasts about the actual chemistry of water quality (something I have never had the patience to do before) and... I would say I'm about 99.9% sure that is why I have never had success in this hobby. 😅

 

I am working on setting up a strict water change schedule, testing and feeding schedules, going to most likely tear my tank apart and start over.

 

At this point I am thinking that I may just wait until I am in the position to start the process of the tear down/ reset and start a new thread... I have an idea for a thread topic that I would like to try out that I haven't been able to find anyone else having done already.  If they have it is either buried deep or I suck at using search engines.

 

As it stands, here is a photo of my tank after my last water change. (don't know what happened with the lighting in this picture, but it's nothing pretty to look at right now anyways)  I don't expect that I will be making too many updates here because the budget is still being ironed out.

 

 

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