Aclman's 9 to 5 Middle School Mayhem - Meet Wasabi!

[Maas101]

Very nice, I bet your students are fascinated by it. If any of my old teachers had set up a reef tank in a classroom they would have been the coolest teacher ever!

[aclman88]

The fish finally has a name!  I had my classes all come up with a bunch of names and then they selected the best name from the class to go to the finals.  Then, I had all classes vote on the top overall names from each class.  The results are below:

 

 

Meet Wasabi!

 

 

I also recently added another orange rhodactis and found a place for the hairy mushroom.  

 

Updated FTS:

 

[aclman88]

Things are chugging along. GSP waving in the current, xenia pulsing away, Wasabi eating like a pig.  The sympodium and finger leather are still grumpy, but alive.  There are about three astreas in the tank, which have been doing a great job with keeping up with the hair algae that started to sprout up on the rocks. 

 

Recently placed an order for some mini maxi nems and blastos from aquasd.  Still deciding on whether to add them or not, since I still want to make sure this tank is stable for anemones.  Most of the rock was from LFS in their curing tub and the rest was from my tank or curing in water for months.  Pods already have populated the glass and the snails, mushroom coral are happy, and Wasabi are doing great, so I think it should be okay.  

 

I recently had to replace the Aqua Duetto which stopped working.  I bought it used, so no help warranty-wise, and a replacement sensor was going to run some $60 or so.  Luckily, I had extra supplies from when I built a DIY ATO a while back so after buying new float switches and some barrel connectors, I have a working ATO with dual float sensors for redundancy.

 

Autommotive relay with screw terminal barrel connector adapters:

 

Float switches connected to an acrylic lid holder (note, I replaced the small switches with these, so that I could have a lower water level in the rear chambers.

 

 

This is the unit wired up.  By using the screw terminal barrel connectors, I was able to use the pump and power supply from the Duetto which saved some money.  

 

Here is the electronics all hastily elegently packed in a watertight food storage container purpose built project box:

 

 

 

[aclman88]

For anyone who wants the info on how to do this:

Thanks to @ajmckay for his well written explanation how to do this.  The first one I made has been running without issue for about 3.5 years.  By mounting two float switches in series, the only way for an overfill is if both switches fail at the same time.  To prevent snails or other livestock from tripping the switches, a simple snail guard using zip ties and plastic mesh works really well. I added an additional layer of protection by hooking it up to a smaart outlet that is set to turn on twice a day for one minute each time.

 

The only downside of wiring in series is that one broken float switch will cause the ATO to not trigger when water level lowers.  That being said, I would much rather have slowly dropping salinity than water dramatically lowering salinity and destroying my floors. 

 

 

 

[aclman88]

Couple new pics of the tank.  

 

 

 

 

[aclman88]

Been far too long since I have updated. Things went downhill the last month or two. Work and life got much busier, and I will admit I did not keep up with tank maintenance.  Algae and what I believe was cyano started to take over every inch of rock and sand.  The water was perpetually cloudy from what I believe were bacterial blooms caused by leather frags that had died in the tank.  I moved all coral, except a couple of mushroom frags and a xenia, to my tank at home solely for their survival.  Then, after spring break and a power outage over this past weekend the tank was looking pretty abysmal.  I knew it needed a serious cleaning, but I really just couldn't find time to do it.  At one point I tried treating the algae with h2o2 but it was haphazardly done. 

 

Cue reading @sadie's biocube rip clean thread and @brandon429's info and I was inspired to tackle the issue.  Yesterday, I used all free time I could find at work to drain the entire tank.  While drained water I syphoned out all sand to be rinsed.  All rock was scrubbed with tap water, squirted and scrubbed liberally with h202, and then soaked in RODI for a few hours.  Tank class was wiped with vinegar and pumped and heaters where scrubbed and soaked in vinegar.  

 

The plan moving forward is to lower whites, shorten light cycle, monitor the tank more closely, weekly water changes and spot treat algae.  I will likely dose h202 as well, I just need to purchase some more.

 

I know I won't win any contests for beauty, but I want to document this in case other's come across this post and see that issues can be tackled, and a really, really, really ugly tank can be saved.

 

Before:

 

After:

 

 

[brandon429]

Thank you for posting! You just did a few firsts among rip cleans 

 

hundreds done, some firsts happened here well done 🙂

 

of all the rip cleans on the internet / probably a thousand or so/ only about ten washed the live rock in freshwater 

 

and zero soaked the rock in freshwater for hours after, where hyposalinity is highly likely to assist in target kill. For personal resolve transferred onto this before picture tank it’s a 150% effort am so pleased to read and your after pics show it that’s truly laser clear water 

 

any sand you may put back in has to be rinsed to perfection. Add a clump of what you think is rinse prepped sand to a clean glass of water, hold to the light, pre-check for clouding that way what you add to your tank is not a cloud surprise 

 

 

am I concerned about recycling? No. People washing rocks in freshwater isn’t new and our filter bacteria are housed in bioslicks and are insulated from that. Even with the peroxide and soak 🙂 they’re still there and the reasonable bioload in the system will be carried by the washed rocks as they’re back in clean saltwater now. 
 

I wouldn’t add peroxide to the water it should just cruise now for a while and get incrementally cleaned as needed for growback prevention, rip cleans are never one off fixes.
 

we get to watch what I’d consider the roughest handling of reef rocks I’ve ever seen pan out and the prediction is it will turn out fine. Our filter bacteria are this tough is the bet. Reef2reef in the experiments forum already has a dedicated freshwater rinse impact study and the results are: minor loss of initial nitrification but not enough to kill anyone’s reef tank, and then total rebound in forty hours.

 

 

Ideal continuance of the thread: don’t use non digital ammonia kits to gauge bacterial safety. Posting a color darker than zero that most running reefs already show as a results color if we search out the particular non digital ammonia kit will have the effect on readers here of causing doubt in the ability of bacteria to weather some insults.
 

No lab tech in the world ever sterilized their workstation by running cool tap water or ro/di water over surfaces, and neither will our cycling bac be decimated. If you soaked them in bleach, I’d be concerned 🙂

 

fish can’t live and feed daily in uncycled small tanks they die fast, like an animal without kidneys

 

 

so when fish act fine here, the water smells normal and stays clear, that’s your proof filter bac are housed in bioslick film insulation and if there was a digital seneye meter hooked to the tank measuring free-form ammonia, it would show passing in ability. In the absence of digital seneye ammonia verification we are better off with prediction and follow up visual proofing of safety 
 

 

[brandon429]

You have really beautiful corals for all to see! Those are some top shelf corals I’m seeing above 

 

I was forever impacted in elementary school by a teacher who kept merely guppies reproducing as snake food. The snakes never really interested me but I spent days and years trying to make little aquatic production containers for guppies then it became a permanent venture moving onto corals…you’re inspiring a kiddo to daydream about little reefs and little ecosystems it’s very likely they will thank you one day in the future for that 

[kimdawg]

I hope you got your tank up and running.  Your students are lucky to have a teacher that shares the gift of saltwater with them.  Good luck in the contest.

[aclman88]

Quick update.  Things are chugging along nicely.  Tank is currently three weeks post rip clean.  It is staying cyano and algae free so far and the coral are doing well.  I added a small pump I had leftover to increase the flow in the tank and that has helped to alleviate any dead spots.  My students are currently finishing out the year creating brochures for a space travel agency, so I figured I would include one in the current FTS:

 

 

 

[aclman88]

Quick update.  Rebooted the tank this year and scrapped the canopy since I think the light was too close and I think there were hot spots.  Wasabi is back from my home tank.  I decided to go with live rock from my LFS (I found a piece in the bin that had literally 40 or so mushrooms growing on it.  Added my three mini-maxi nems and some ther soft coral as well as my candy cane I accidentally fragged.  Things seem to be going well.  

 

[debbeach13]

Awesome! New school year and a new start for the tank.