tommer's Aquatop 13 Vertical Bowfront

[tommer]

The toadstool I got at the end of August has grown a ton and is very happy. It's still on a plug until I figure out where to put it.

 

 

  

This zoanthid frag is starting to regain its health from the July power outage finally. This is a 4 week difference, and I can see that the red color is coming back to the polyps. I thought this was a goner for a long while. Hopefully it will continue to recover! 

[tommer]

After playing with the adjustments in Google Photos I got an FTS that wasn’t crazy blown out. I got some of the frags off the sand bed and mounted the toadstool, zoas, kenya trees and mushrooms.

 

 

 

I also started dosing Tropic Marin All-For-Reef 2 days ago now, along with testing daily before dosing. I am keeping an excel sheet with the params still, so as I adjust I will post. I started with the calculator on their site, and put in the 9gal of actual water volume in this 13gal and got a dosage of 1.7mL/day. I’ve quit doing the Reef Plus dosing in the meantime. Between today and yesterday my DKH has risen from 8.4 to 8.7 and Ca has stayed at 380. I will need a couple weeks data to find the sweet spot though!

 

 

[tommer]

 

Well, I finished up week 1 of dosing AFR. These are my numbers. I started lowering the amount of AFR that I was adding as I had seen the numbers continually climb. DKH of 10 is my goal. Going into week 2 I may end up lowering dosing more. Mag is on the high side, but others seem to have seen that when using Reef Crystals salt so it makes sense. I have a bucket of Red Sea Coral Pro salt that I am going to start using. Not too worried about magnesium as I am about alkalinity stability right now.

 

 

 

Ended up installing a BRS 50mL/min pump as my replacement for the Aqualifter. Now that I have the head pressure, I started using the bottom left tote for an ATO. Should be big enough for just under a month of topping off. Attached the JBJ ATO sensor in the reservoir to an old magnet cleaner that I had glued some eggcrate to, and threaded the hose through the eggcrate. I just stuck the pump onto the wall of the stand using command strips. Really don't want to drill into the side of the stand right now in case I move stuff around.

 

 

 

 

 

InkBird has a sale on their temperature controllers on Ebay so I ordered an ITC-306A temperature controller for $36 dollars instead of $50. Set the app up on my phone, and it was nice to have some peace of mind. The second day I had it installed I got a notification that the continuous heating time was abnormal. When I checked the app my tank was at 75 degrees. I had turned on my air conditioning a few hours prior, and I think that the heater was having a hard time keeping up. The tank in its new location is underneath the AC unit. I'm wondering if that's partially to blame for the deaths of my bangaii and clown, and maybe some algae issues that I had last winter, because I keep my apartment cooler in the winter. If it is having a hard time keeping up when it's not too cold out, then last winter the tank must have dropped pretty low during the night. I remember checking the temperature during the day and it was at 78, but I bet it got cold at night. Sadly I couldn't check the temp of my tank in the middle of the night, so I'll never know if this was the issue. I added my spare heater that I used for water change heating, and so now I have 2 75w heaters in the tank. If the temperature becomes an issue again, at least I'll get an alert. Money well spent.

 

 

I also picked up a Waterbox Peninsula AIO 50.3 this weekend. The seller also threw in a Kessil, Gooseneck, and Spectral Controller for free. Got it fully filled up today. Eventually I'll make a journal for it but for now it's going to sit and get to its ugly stage.

[Jimh61]

Any update on your tanks? I am thinking about getting the 13 gallon bow front tank.