Gilroy 425g Build Thread (All Apex, all the time)

[Hemmdog]

Thanks. Love this car. Need to replace it soon and sadly I will have to replace it with the M4 because the M3 is a sedan only.

I have an E92 manual coupe m3, and an x5 50i... lol I like bmws.. lol

 

[Terence]

I have the new m4, do it. I have an E93 manual coupe m3 as well, and an x5 50i... lol I like bmws.. lol

Little off-topic but the M4 competition edition IS pretty slick - just not a fan of the wheels they have.

 

[Hemmdog]

Little off-topic but the M4 competition edition IS pretty slick - just not a fan of the wheels they have.

Gotta go with Apex wheels

 

[Ashley Kekua]

update please

 

[SeaDweller]

Gotta go with BBS wheels

I fixed it for you

 

[dca22anderson]

We need an update... with pics

 

[MrWheelock]

Yes 9 months and no update

 

[justingraham]

Terrance if you did switch over to a heat exchanger for your heat what safe guards did you put in place to make sure it works properly?

I would be scared that the hot water would get stuck on and cook my tank or not come on at all

Like when my brain got stuck in reeboot mode and I didn’t have control over any of my sockets I at least had a heater I could plug into the wall to keep my tank the proper temp.

Your a smart guy from what I have seen what happens if you do not have control over that solenoid and what is your back up to keep your tank the proper temp?

 

[Spuzio]

Any updates on the tank ? Still using a DOS to feed the Carx?

 

[Daniel@R2R]

@Terence how's the reef going?

 

[Mickey]

Terence - where's the update?

Did you ever skin the stand and canopy?

 

[acropora4u]

Hey Terrence, any updates>?

 

[Ashley Kekua]

UPDATE?

 

[Terence]

OK, so it has been over a year since a real quality update. What better day than my birthday to finally do one. Things on the Fugazzi Reef have been going pretty well. Hope this update does not jinx that! This might be a long post so all you TL;DR folks can just bail out now - the rest of you, well, I hope this update satiates you for a while.

So let me start with an update on the gear that makes this reef tick - and maybe some feedback on these key components and how they have been doing for me.

• Reef Savvy Tank. What can I say except that this is one bullet proof, gorgeous aquarium. And it has held up great. And I expect it to do so for 30 years at least the way it is built. Key feature - what Felix calls "Armored Seams". These are the strips of glass in the corner which allow me to, without concern, scrape my glass with a Flipper, side to side, slamming away, without ever being concerned about the silicon seal getting torn up or damaged. They also give the tank extra strength. The overflows work well too. I still have a hard time tuning the noise but have got them more or less dialed in most of the time. One of them has sprung a slow drip leak if the water level rises too high. Need to tighten the bulkhead where the overflow connects to the tank - or have someone else do it for me
  
  
• Philips CoralCare lights. These have been amazing for me - the tank has fully filled in on one side and the coral is still growing away. Amazing to have a wide-paneled light that has not shadowing at all and no disco. I think I could use one more of them - but maybe there is an upgrade in my future. The only thing I really hate about these is they are obtrusive and super heavy (20-something pounds) which makes the hinged canopy difficult to lift (two of them in each side). Their new, yet-to-be-released v2 ones would help a little bit with this, but they still weigh in at over 14 pounds each. If only they made one that weighed less than five pounds and could be mounted more easily - I think I might be ready for an open top tank...
  
  
• ReefBrite XHO strips - I still have one of these on each side. They really add that little extra pop missing in the v1 of the CoralCare. Maybe a future upgrade might make those unnecessary as well...
  
  
• Tank Stand - Much to my own dismay - and the scorn of my loving wife, I still have not yet wrapped the stand. If it were not for the incredible beauty and success with what is inside, there is no way I could have gotten away with this for so long. I really want to match the furniture in our dining room, but I just cant seem to connect with someone that I trust nor am I excited about laying down the $. Maybe the drop in cost if/when i go open top will push me over the edge - or Nancy might the next time we are out on the water!
  
  
• The WAV powerheads are amazing. I am pretty lazy when it comes to cleaning them - sometimes to the point where they end up stalling before I do it. Full transparency here people - do as I say, not as I do. Also, I have had one of the six in the tank fail after 4+ years running. Considering my maintenance schedule and the flow to cost ratio of the WAV, I am good with that.
  
  
• Alkatronic - yes, you read that right. I did run an Alkatronic on the tank for about 10-12 months. Wanted to run it along side the Trident during development. It is now offline. It did give decent numbers and is probably the only other device out there besides the Trident that will operate consistently - abeit noisily and with a lot more nits in the setup and software areas. Also, probably some sort of evil spirit payback got me when I forgot to empty its 7g waste container (it makes a lot of waste) and came home to water all over my wood floors. Oh well. Not too much damage. Life of an aquarist. It now is out of operation, still sitting next to the tank two feet from the Trident, sadly watching, but not hearing, the Trident do its duty 8 times a day - hahaha.
  
  
• Abyzz A400 return pump. This thing is a beast. Can't hear it run. Uses just 200w to push >1100gph against 18+ feet of head pressure for years now. Don't tell Alex but I have not had this out of the water for a cleaning since I put it in (go back quite a number of pages for that date - i cannot remember). Nothing else to say here - it is the duracell of return pumps!
  
  
• Reef Octopus Regal Skimmer with Next Extension and Wiper. I think for now this is the best value middle-big range skimmer out there. The pump seems like it could probably do a bit more air, and the needle-wheel does get clogged with debris from time to time, but I love this thing. I only go down to the fish cave every 7-9 days and it has about 2" of skimmate in there and a paddle full of goo. I have had to replace one power supply and one motor controller in the last four years. CoralVue took care of me and sent replacements no charge - even though it was out of warranty. And quickly. Great service.
  
  
• Geos Reef Calcium Reactor - a few pages back you can read about me changing my Deltec piece of crap CaRx over to a reconditioned and refit with COR pump version from GeosReef. This thing has been a champ! No issues at all with the COR pump running it. That was a total unknown how it would do in that tough environment with all that calcium, low pH, and calcium fines swirling through it. No problems at all. The reactor is on its third filling now since installing it. I have let it get down to about 1/4 full before refilling. I take all of the media in there out, rinse it several times, and then mix it back in with the new stuff. I only use Two Little Fishies ReBorn coarse and ReMag in my CaRx. The pH level in the reactor is now controlled by the Trident. Basically it fluctuates between 6.65, 6.85, and off depending on the level reported by the Trident as well as time of day. This has allowed me to have about a +/-0.15-0.23 dKh. I try to keep my level at 8.5dKh. I feed the reactor with a DOS that is using a custom profile and set of virtual outlets. I rarely change the flow rate. This is not recommended unless you have a low flow rate need on your CaRx. Mine is not low so I do have to change heads about every six months, and it is noisy (but it is in my fish cave so I dont really hear it).
  
  
• Triton "Other Methods" - for about two years I had run the Triton method along side my CaRx. I ran out of Triton about three or four months ago and have not yet resupplied myself. I did have some of 3a still available (wont get into why as it was just an accident on programming once) so I keep (kept) that on the ready with one of my DOS pumps. Or so I thought. Turns out when it was needed a few weeks back when I was in Vegas and CO2 went out - I found out from Chad (who came to bail me out) that it was actually #2, not 3a, and the tube was clogged. But, having something like this for standby is super helpful as it kept my tank from crashing until i could get home, get some CO2, and get the CaRx back online. For now, I am going to take a hiatus on the Triton stuff and move to something else to supplement my reactor - maybe a little more on that in a later post - suspense...
  
  
• AquaMaxx Sulfur Denitrator - This, along with my "little" patch of macro-algae is my key to getting nutrients out of the reef. I have this automated using the Apex, but not in any way I would officially recommend. Properly running a sulfur denitrator is not for the amatuer aquarist and certainly not for someone who does not understand what is going on. I am not trying to be snobby here - its just that running one of these means if you do the wrong thing (and there is more than one "wrong thing") you can kill off everything. However, run it correctly and it really is the secret sauce engine of a great SPS reef. I still run this the same way. I have an ORP probe in the top, plugged into the Apex, and because I am lazy and math conversions are easy for me, I have it running as pH as opposed to swaping the wires around to make it read negative ORP. So, I just know that somewhere around 10-11.5 is the sweet spot for it for me, watch it every day, and tweak the flow (again using the DOS) to keep it in that sweet spot. I make very slight adjustments and then watch the curve so as not to over or undershoot. More art than science. Two weeks ago I had to break it down, clean it out, and add new sulfur media. It had been offline for a couple of weeks (sicce circulation pump could not push enough water through it due to tiny beads clogging the grates - and other goo). This is exactly one of the ways though that you can kill the reef - if you have one of these that goes offline, and then you push that "rotten egg water" right into your tank. Most people that run these either give up, have a catastrophe, or are running it incorrectly with no harm and no help either. If you dare - and you want to learn - give it a shot and you will have a great tool at your disposal to allow you to put tons of fuel into the reef knowing it (and your macro) will help pull out the nasty byproducts.
  
  
• Water Changes - I still do these pretty manually. I know I know. But with the closeness of the tanks, and the easy of getting stuff to the drain, it just hasnt been a priority to do some cool thing. Maybe one day, @dca22anderson will finally come out and do it up right for me. Until then I do them pretty much manually (RODI does go into the tanks automatically) waterchanging every 8-12 weeks doing two 100g changes in one weekend (~33%) - right now using Fritz (and LiveAquaria - same thing) salt for the last couple of years. Seems to be fine for me. I know salt is a personal thing for a lot of people but I just care that it mixes close to params, mixes clean, and mixes pretty fast - did I say I am lazy?
  
  
• Heating - I recentluy have switched from using electric heaters to using circulating hot water from my existing house hot-water loop (natural gas water heater). I first used a really nice, "titanium" heat exchanger. The welds leaked in two weeks. So, I switched over to using 100' of Pex pipe instead. I have save a ton of $ on electricity by going this way. Net Net looks like at least $150 a month in savings. Maybe I will document how it was done later in this build thread if I find the time. There are other posts here on R2R about doing it. In my case, I found a 24v DC controlled valve that is NC (normally closed) and has a capacitor in it to make that happen during power outages. I wired this to my Energy Bar 832 DC24 connection and then have that outlet controlled when the Apex temp drops and the Apex calls for heat. Then, my electric heaters are still in there as a backup in case there is an issue.

Well, that is all I have time for now - I will try and make another post about livestock within the next week - and also answer questions - and try to keep this thread on track. Until then, here is also some eye candy to look over. Oh, and check out www.skimmate.com - a podcast Rich Ross and I do - try to do a new episode every two weeks - though we are behind right now.

 

[Jstn]

Tank looks amazing!!! what rainbow milli is that? (Sixth picture from the bottom)

 

[tbaity1401]

Innuendos galore. Nice update!

 

[dragon99]

Talk about a mic drop 1 yr update!. Good stuff, the tank looks amazing.

 

[Flameback Pair]

@Terence Happy Birthday man !!!! Have a great one.

 

[emvanburen]

I recently have switched from using electric heaters to using circulating hot water from my existing house hot-water loop (natural gas water heater).

Terance,
Great update - thanks for posting! Happy Birthday.
I'm following how the valve controls it - but what's driving the water through the PEX heat exchanger and where does it go after?

 

[User1]

Great update. The sky is falling