Milton’s Basement Carboy Bommie 9to5

[MainelyReefer]

Milton’s Basement Carboy Bommie

Milton is going to be setting this carboy on 🔥. Knowing my limitations, I cannot tweeze together a reef in a bottle, so I will place frags and let them do it naturally.  Husbandry will mimick that of my old reefbowl….. air pump, heater, light, 100% water changes.  The plan is to fasten small fragments to frag plugs that are inverted so the stem faces upward.  This will achieve lifting the frags off the bottom, it will allow me to fit mounted frags more easily through the tiny opening, and it will create a wide base to hopefully offer stability to the frags once set.  Perhaps some crushed coral as a bed to help conceal the bases of the plugs and offer further stability in the event the glue loosens from below the plug(I know it likely won’t stick well to the glass bottom).  If they don’t stick I might try stapling them in with my trusty Swingline. The initial stocking with frags will hopefully be the only one and they will be allowed to grow into a Bommie.  This is a long term project that likely won’t look spectacular until well after the contest.  

Current Full Tank Shot:

[Photo 📸 Here]

 

 

Contest Entry Picture:

 

 

Equipment:

• 5g Glass carboy
• Cobalt Aquatics 10w Minitherm Heater(likely need a 20w but since it’s a budget build I’m trying my luck, might even use 2x 10w heaters as I have those on hand)
• Azoo Temp controller(Dr. Fosters score from when they closed)
• Cobalt Aquatics Airpump w/ battery backup
• Lift Pipe
• Carboy Bung(LOL google it)
• Carboy Jacket w/ Viewing window cut out(if needed)
• Light spill from my 50g and maybe a kessil a80 or two w/ controller

 

Livestock:

• Coral Only, excess frags from my 50g lowboy nothing fancy
• CUC stomatella, micro brittle stars, bristleworms

Super excited to be participating in another nanoreef competition, especially one sponsored by Stevie T.  Still upset the grand champ doesn’t get flown out to Intank head quarters for a dip in the ping pong ball filled hot tub  in the wettest water man has seen.  Hookers, blow and all the Swedish fish imaginable included.

 

Reefin' 9 to 5, Brought to you by:

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[MainelyReefer]

Filled the tank yesterday, the little 10w heater was able to raise the temp from 19c to 22c in a few hours.  22c was warm enough IMO so I pulled the trigger on adding a few tester frags.  I moved recently and my easy SPS colonies broke off quite a few branches, they have just been sitting on the bottom of the tank for ~2 months now.  So they aren’t the healthiest but will be perfect for our little experiment.  Adding frags was more difficult than expected, my plan was to fasten a 24” bamboo skewers to the plugs and then a bigger dab of glue on the bottom to stick to the glass then break off the bamboo skewer.  This didn’t work.  So I took to dropping the corals in attached to their plugs,  this works but one of the corals I put in early on had a falling plug knock into it and dislodged the coral also got super glue on it lol.  So most of my corals are on plugs but a few of them are just resting on the ground.  Assuming these corals look happy in a day or two I will fill out stocking of the tank.  Some plugs are glued, some are just pushed into an upright position.  Here’s a lights out photo from this morning, temp up to 23c and some polyps showing so all is well.

[MainelyReefer]

Rigged up a kessil a80 all sketchily, slight bacterial bloom reminded me to add my siporax media for some biological filtration so will work on that today, and may fasten some corals right to them.  Temps are up to 24c… maybe this is the 10w heater that could! Polyps are out, since most of these were laying horizontally you may notice less extension on the stressed/dead sides lol.  Also temporarily fastened the bubbler to the heater with a zip tie as the damn thing kept floating without my lift pipe.  I should have the lift pipe squared away soon but it needs to be removable as in order to do any maintenance I have to remove all equipment because of the small opening. 

[debbeach13]

Good luck in the contest. Glad to see another reef in a bottle has been entered. 

[MainelyReefer]

So being in a new house I did not see my basement getting to low 50’s at night, the tank can’t keep temp and I don’t feel like buying new stuff and paying to heat it.  The corals are pretty bleached but alive so I’m pulling them out this week and bowing out of the comp.  Not to mention the bottles neck and bubbles act like a mame protein skimmer creating thick scum on the top of the bottle reducing light penetration.  Lots of variables acting against success and not enough joy to put that effort in.  Good luck on the comp everyone!

[debbeach13]

Sorry things didn't work out. Reefing in general and these contests should be fun. When it isn't then we have to rethink what we want. Are you running any other tanks at the moment?

[Maas101]

Sorry to hear this, it was looking like an interesting build.