Reef under Siege - Waterbox AIO 50.3

[siege]

PAR Measurement!

These measurements are my lights driven to 100% Blue, 75% White, 100% Green, 100% Red.

The two light bars are slightly offset here, leaving the front right corner falling off in intensity rather quickly.

I'm still actually slowly increasing brightness while trying to control algae, so my current "daylight" setting is 50% blue, 10% white, 0% red, 0% green, until the rest of my CUC gets out of observation.

Diatom bloom in the fuge now appears to be rapidly receding, below is yesterday, a day or so after the bloom peaked:


Yes, that's diatoms... I've been running blue and violet only to keep green algae down, which is why it looks red even with my makeshift yellow filter. Here it is under white-only:



The pinkish areas were all solid brown a few days ago... at this rate I expect it gone reasonably soon.

 

[siege]

Got new inverts today from the Reef Cleaners order.

Still acclimating, unfortunately neither of the pom pom crabs made it. SIP, little guys - I'm sorry.

Shame, I was really looking forward to having them, and I REALLY hate losing livestock. I have to admit that kinda ruined my day.

 

[siege]

Forgot to measure PAR in the 'fuge... HOLY MOLY!

That little NooPsyche K7 Mini driven at 30% each on the white, blue and violet channels, is hitting 230 PAR at the bottom center of the tank.

At 100% on all three channels, it's straight up 500 PAR!!

Unfortunately there seems to be some non-linear scaling in power output on the blue channel between the 19% and 20% setting, with jump of about 65 PAR when measured at the same spot (near dead-center of the tank). In order to keep my gracillaria happy without moving it from where I want it to live, I had decrease blue to 19% and increase white and violet to make up the difference and get it near the 150 - 200 PAR I want in that spot.

 

[siege]

*)&^$)*#&^#$*&^Q!!!!!

My porcelain crab was found dead in observation this morning. I have no idea what I did wrong... it only had 3 more days until introduction.

I am unreasonably unhappy about this.

And this after I was so happy yesterday to have spotted a stomatella in the DT and amphipods in the fuge.

EDIT: (*&(*^ing tank had ammonia in it somehow. I had cycled matrix in a HOB and wasn't testing often because I didn't figure the inverts + the little bit of phyto and sinking food I was feeding would create anything it couldn't handle. Ammonia wasn't high, but it was present, and I didn't have any ammonia alert badge on it because I'm borrowing the QT tank.

(*&@^%!!!!11111

Minor setback, some money lost... but damnit. Not enough by far to make me ACTUALLY quit the hobby or anything, but damn.

 

[project1004]

Things happen in this honor/journey!

It’s like we try our best yet we always have something to feel bad about.

It happened with one of my fish flashers wrasse died from jumping out. I knew he was suicidal when I had to catch him twice jumping. I found him dead this weekend -.-; Sad. No more fish for me. I have 9 and 2 -.-

Anyways, sorry for your lost.

 

[siege]

SON-OF-A...

That little (*%$#%* had molted and then gone into hiding where I couldn't see it.

I just spotted the (*&% perched underneath a PVC elbow. Which came as a bit of a surprise, seeing as how I disposed of its corpse yesterday.

Might explain why it was impossible to pick up with the long-handled tweezers (I was trying not to squish/crack it) I was using... I just thought the hermits and snails it was in the tank with might have done for it.

 

[shanepike]

For a long time, I was bummed at how often I was losing scarlet hermits. At some point it should have hit me that I had lost more than I had ever put into the tank to begin with ... but it didn't. Finally caught one molting one day and realized what was going on

 

[siege]

For a long time, I was bummed at how often I was losing scarlet hermits. At some point it should have hit me that I had lost more than I had ever put into the tank to begin with ... but it didn't. Finally caught one molting one day and realized what was going on

Yeah I guess I ought to know better, what with all my freshwater shrimp... but they're kinda easy to tell when they're molts, and the shrimp in that tank usually clean them up before I ever find them anyway.

One of the hermits I have changed shells as soon as it found the gallery of them in the cryptic zone in the back of my tank. Not long after putting them in, I saw a bit of what was clearly hermit parts floating around and thought maybe I'd lost one, until I realized someone must have molted after I got a count on all 5 of them at once, probably the one that changed shells right away.

 

[shanepike]

Yeah, my scarlets' molts look exactly like them: scarlet red and everything. I assumed they'd be a clear exoskeleton like the amphipod molts I see floating by all the time

 

[Hunna]

Wait until you find a pompom crab molt after not seeing it for a few days, and it taking a few more days for it to reappear

 

[siege]

AHHHHHHH...I have hydroids!!! Ugh.

Any suggestions besides scraping the glass?

 

[project1004]

I think they are part of the reef cycling?! They come but they will leave on their own eventually I think. I sow them early part of the tank life. Including sponges. I am finally getting few spots of sponges again .

 

[siege]

Well, okay, various things have gone on here since I last update this thread, including the addition of a pair of tuxedo urchins, 3 peppermint shrimp, and 1 berghia nudibranch (which promptly disappeared into a rock, ate a single aiptasia head the next day, and hasn't been seen since). I've been struggling with NO3, which I can't seem to get below 20 or 25ppm (without doing more 50% water changes, which are not only extremely laborious for me to do with the equipment I have, but also I'm running rather low on salt), nor PO4 below 0.5.

And that's despite running a liter of De-Nitrate in the fuge, Phosguard (recently switched to RowaPhos)

But the thing that really prompted me to update this was not even the growth of my favias (which I think are doing pretty good, but would maybe be better if I could get my nitrates and phosphate down some more) or my pocillopora, but when this picture I took on June 12 of this year cropped up on one of my displays, I kind of had to do a double-take:



That was a month after I'd gotten it at the fragging event in May, finally starting to show some signs of growth (I've only recently seen any polyps at all on that original section).

Versus where it is today, just 3 months later:




Recently I remarked I can almost see how fast its growing, particularly up and over that little peak of rock that was originally holding it in place. Having that picture come up randomly on my Nest device really drove it home.

Of all the corals I brought home that day, this showed the least activity for the longest time, and I wasn't even sure it was alive for the first few weeks. Now though, it's grown at 1 - 2" in just about every direction in just over 2 months!

 

[siege]

Well.... it's been kinda slow, but also productive since September. Have had some ups and downs - I lost my Porcelain Crab along the way for unknown reasons, and my ricordea is STILL sulking since nitrates dipped hard in December. Also fragged the monti a couple of times and gave away a few pieces, and sold almost all of my Nirvana zoas that never really took off in my tank for whatever reason. Picked up a rainbow stylo shortly after my last post here that has done very well in the meantime, tho growth on my pocilloporas seems to have stalled out for some reason. Purple Monti has gotten HUGE!

I added a torch coral a week and a half ago that totally failed on me within 3 days (so much for that $60), along with some macro... the pom pom is doing great in the fuge, but the atomic broccoli crashed and died-back hard in my display, massively raising my nitrates... from ~10, to now ~25. I kept trying to trim and save the atomic broccoli, and eventually moved it into my refugium where lighting is higher and photoperiod is longer in the hope that I'll be able to save the four pieces. I've had lights low in my DT while I tried to nurse the ricordea Yuma back to health, and I'm guessing coming from the fuge they were in, the lower lights and shorter photoperiod was more than they could cope with.

THREE WEEKS of low lights. Careful flow adjustments, nutrient balancing... and a single &^% tuxedo urchin decides it HAS to clean the rock around the Yuma, and just totally set back the last 3 weeks of progress. ARGH.

I am, however, hoping to finally add fish soonish. I have to go out of town for work for a week in early May, so, I probably won't do anything before then, but hopefully I can start getting fish in not long after that.

Here's some pics:

 

[project1004]

If I may suggest, I suggest you get some more flow. Youve mentioned careful flow adjustment but it seems like you have 1 mp40? or 10? and looks like small powerhead in the first picture and return? you got to get your water moving....

 

[siege]

If I may suggest, I suggest you get some more flow. Youve mentioned careful flow adjustment but it seems like you have 1 mp40? or 10? and looks like small powerhead in the first picture and return? you got to get your water moving....

I have a DMP-10 and a CP-1 in the display. The DMP-10 is, I think, WAY too much flow even on its lowest settings. No matter where I place it in the tank, it pretty well thrashes things around more than I'd like.

I HAD been running it most of the day/night anyway, until it seemed to have quit. As an emergency stand-in, I got the CP1 while I figured out what I was going to do. I wound up getting the DMP-10 working again, but it kind of abuses my hammers, so I'm only running it in pulses throughout the night. Meanwhile, I've tried to get the CP1 placed where it ensure the ricordea is getting the kind of flow it wants. The CP1 is placed high in the center rear, near the filter returns, that's the one you're seeing. The DMP-10 is effectively invisible in these pictures, but is it mounted high in the center of the left glass wall. I've had it mounted closer to the rear wall in the past, but that just winds up making something of a vortex in the tank - with it in the center, it should at least be kind of splitting the flow in half along the front and rear wall, but it still seems to be kind of punishing on the hammers... which I don't have an especially better place to put.

I'm trying to find the time to design a flow-reducer for it. I found a design for sale for MP-10's, but nothing I can get an STL file for, so I need to sort out how to do something similar myself.

There seems to be bit of a gap in flow rates between models of powerheads, especially ones I found affordable in the moment... like they're either meant for nanos, or 100+ gallon tanks, but not my little 50g AIO. Heck, even that CP1 is too much, I think, for my 15g refugium. which is why I went with a cheap 160gph fountain pump for it, with a 3d-printed RFG nozzle.

I do need to try to find the time and get back to working on that diffuser for it tho.

 

[project1004]

You think that you have too much flowing… i don’t think so… but.. nvm. Best luck. To you~