jcolliii's IM25 Lagoon journey - MASTERTRONIC up and running!

[TheWB]

I just hated the entire procedure with the Hannas. The little packets that always retained significant reagent, the awful pipettes, cheap syringes, and droppers. The timer problem - that they still have not seemed to address - I don't know how many reagent packets I wasted. I forget which checker it was (I had 3 before selling them all), but one of them called for 1ml of sample - 1ml! So you're getting potential error from the cheap syringe, from not all of the reagent making it in to the cuvette and from potential contamination from the RODI water used. I bought a micropipetter for that one so I could reduce the error somewhat.

Anyhow, the Salifert kit works for now - just confirmed with 1ppm sample this afternoon, but I am considering the Milwaukee device.

I had the timing out issue with one of the older PO4 units. They fixed it with the ULR version. I have a process that works pretty well for transferring the reagent to the cuvette. I do agree more precise measuring tools would be preferred. I have that issue with the Seachem NO3 kit im using because I couldn’t find a Salifert version when I needed one. The pipette is terrible and I’m never sure I’ve got the right amount of sample water. I guess they work good enough but I would love something better.

 

[jcolliii]

Today's does was only 1ml, thanks to correcting my DIY phosphate soln - the initial baseline test today was a slightly weak 0.015ppm. Added 1ml of my solution and the 5 minute retest was 0.03ppm. NO3 was 7.5 today and ALK 8.75. Today I noticed that my Anacropora, which had had rather poor PE had its polyps reaching out as far as it could. I haven't noticed PE like that on the Anacro in awhile. Fed the corals tonight and everyone seemed to gobble it right down - especially the Trachy. Did a little experiment yesterday to see whether I could rule out too much light. I put the trachy in a place under a branch where it got direct, bright light on the left side and diffuse shaded light on the right. This morning, the bright light side had more color. This tentatively leads me to think it was not exposed to too much light. The damsel and wrasse have both acclimated very well and both are extremely active, busy fish. I think they bother my blenny (Kenny) a little bit with their business. They both continue to eat like pigs. The damsel picked up a bit of a scrape on its left side (I think from hiding under a sharp rock for the first 10 minutes in the tank), but it seems to look just fine - just a little scratch.

A little off topic...

I feel like we really don't know too much about our other lives, so today was horse washing day. We have a membership at a local saddle club, and when there isn't an event going on, members can use the facilities for training, practice, horse washing... So today my wife and I took one of our horses to the SC. She worked on some training stuff with her horse - an off the track thoroughbred rescue. My horse, Al Capone, is kinda locked to his best buddy (my other rescue, Three Socks). Both my horses are grade quarters. They were bred by a nice lady who was breeding good barrel stock with paint stock to get more graceful quarter crosses that would be good for running round barrels (a thing up here). Anyhow, she got cancer and died, and the guys she paid to watch the horses and care for them took off, the herd became semi-ferral, ate up all of their grass and began to starve. The neighbors brought in big round bales for the horses, but too many idiots with guns up this way, and some of the hirses started being picked off by morons who think shooting at animals for fun is a good way to get off. Little Al was just a pup back then, and we think he was frightened by the shooting and rann fast and hard and got his face hung up in a barbed fence. He also had a wound on his chest when he was only 4 or 5 months - I have some truly heartbreaking pictures of him as a skinny, gangly little guy. But, a lady we know now found out about this situation and bought the whole herd and put them on one of her friend's feed lots to recuperate and adopt off one at a time. As soon as I saw a picture of him a few months later, he came home with me. He's been a spoiled pony ever since. He's just about 3 and a half we figure because he lost the tips of his ears when he was a foal - so he must have been born in the winter. And because he has a big scar on his schnoz, and because that gave him his name, it also gave him his birthday - January 17th.

Anyhow, Al is very strongly bonded to his buddy Three Socks, so today was about getting some exposure away to try and get the herd-sourness out of him a bit. And he did phenomenal - he sniffed around a lot, we walked in the arenas, he ate some grass - he did not call to his buddy even once. And he got a bath. Al is a cremello - he has 2 copies of the gene responsible for making brown horses into palominos (they have a single copy of the gene). Two copies means that all hair that would be brown without the allele turns pale cream - so they call it the 'cream gene'. Because this gene changes the make up of a pigment, it also changes the color of horses eyes from brown to a piercing sky blue. Here is my best buddy Al Capone getting his bath. He hates water, but he just does his best - he did a great job (at getting me dirty)!

He's good size (I called him a pony, but he's not) - 15-1 in horse lingo. I'm 6'2" for scale. Such a good boy.

 

[jcolliii]

Well, the PO4 level, NO3, and ALK are all stable exactly where I want them, but today, the pump on the IM NuvoDC Desktop skimmer decided to stop working. Four months service life. I have been pretty happy with the abilities of this skimmer - it pulls a lot of grunge, it's quiet, and it can go a good 2-3 months without a substantial cleaning, but a 4 month service life on a pump is a bit abysmal. The pump is also clearly designed to *NOT* be serviced. The front of the pump is held on by two microscopic and very weak clips that each grab a tiny nub of a tab. I know the pump has to be small, but the plastic front (which really does need to be removed to clean the impeller) should be more robust than that! I was afraid to breathe on the dang thing. Broke one clip trying to get it off - and I am careful and really good with small things - I *BUILD* my own phonograph styli. Clearly a pump meant to be disposable. Which is fine, I suppose, if the lifetime of the pump can be measured in years.

I called up BRS, and they got an email almost immediately out to the generic info email account at Innovative Marine, but I am less than happy right now. My tank usually runs 8-8.1, and my pH has already dropped to 7.78. We'll see how IM handles this, and I'll let all'y'all know as I have seen quite a few folks here with this skimmer and have sung its praises myself. Just when things are chugging along too...

 

[TheWB]

Well, the PO4 level, NO3, and ALK are all stable exactly where I want them, but today, the pump on the IM NuvoDC Desktop skimmer decided to stop working. Four months service life. I have been pretty happy with the abilities of this skimmer - it pulls a lot of grunge, it's quiet, and it can go a good 2-3 months without a substantial cleaning, but a 4 month service life on a pump is a bit abysmal. The pump is also clearly designed to *NOT* be serviced. The front of the pump is held on by two microscopic and very weak clips that each grab a tiny nub of a tab. I know the pump has to be small, but the plastic front (which really does need to be removed to clean the impeller) should be more robust than that! I was afraid to breathe on the dang thing. Broke one clip trying to get it off - and I am careful and really good with small things - I *BUILD* my own phonograph styli. Clearly a pump meant to be disposable. Which is fine, I suppose, if the lifetime of the pump can be measured in years.

I called up BRS, and they got an email almost immediately out to the generic info email account at Innovative Marine, but I am less than happy right now. My tank usually runs 8-8.1, and my pH has already dropped to 7.78. We'll see how IM handles this, and I'll let all'y'all know as I have seen quite a few folks here with this skimmer and have sung its praises myself. Just when things are chugging along too...

I’m not a huge fan of their skimmer design either. My old ghost skimmer is basically impossible to disassemble and clean. IM is usually pretty good to deal with though so hopefully this will work out. I recently spoke with Paul the Customer Service Manager there and he was very quick to respond. That pump should definitely give you at least a year.

 

[jcolliii]

IM responded about an hour after BRS did, so pretty happy about their responsiveness. He said 2 days to ship though - and probably 5 days altogether. Not super happy about that. I just had to go to Petco to grab an air pump. pH is beginning to climb back up - we're at almost 7.9 now. Normally, I'd just open the windows and turn off the A/C, but it's wheat season now, and I am super allergic when they start cutting. I would be incapacitated by bouts of sneezing, coughing, and wheezing, and my COVID test is Monday - that would look pretty bad...

Anyhow, I think the pH will stabilize back up in a few hours.

I do think I am going to buy a backup pump for down the road.

 

[jcolliii]

Had to open the windows, but pH is back over 8.1. IM just shipped the new pump today - hope I get at least a year out of this one. Props to IM for being pretty quick in responding to this.

 

[Calm Blue Ocean]

Today's does was only 1ml, thanks to correcting my DIY phosphate soln - the initial baseline test today was a slightly weak 0.015ppm. Added 1ml of my solution and the 5 minute retest was 0.03ppm. NO3 was 7.5 today and ALK 8.75. Today I noticed that my Anacropora, which had had rather poor PE had its polyps reaching out as far as it could. I haven't noticed PE like that on the Anacro in awhile. Fed the corals tonight and everyone seemed to gobble it right down - especially the Trachy. Did a little experiment yesterday to see whether I could rule out too much light. I put the trachy in a place under a branch where it got direct, bright light on the left side and diffuse shaded light on the right. This morning, the bright light side had more color. This tentatively leads me to think it was not exposed to too much light. The damsel and wrasse have both acclimated very well and both are extremely active, busy fish. I think they bother my blenny (Kenny) a little bit with their business. They both continue to eat like pigs. The damsel picked up a bit of a scrape on its left side (I think from hiding under a sharp rock for the first 10 minutes in the tank), but it seems to look just fine - just a little scratch.

A little off topic...

I feel like we really don't know too much about our other lives, so today was horse washing day. We have a membership at a local saddle club, and when there isn't an event going on, members can use the facilities for training, practice, horse washing... So today my wife and I took one of our horses to the SC. She worked on some training stuff with her horse - an off the track thoroughbred rescue. My horse, Al Capone, is kinda locked to his best buddy (my other rescue, Three Socks). Both my horses are grade quarters. They were bred by a nice lady who was breeding good barrel stock with paint stock to get more graceful quarter crosses that would be good for running round barrels (a thing up here). Anyhow, she got cancer and died, and the guys she paid to watch the horses and care for them took off, the herd became semi-ferral, ate up all of their grass and began to starve. The neighbors brought in big round bales for the horses, but too many idiots with guns up this way, and some of the hirses started being picked off by morons who think shooting at animals for fun is a good way to get off. Little Al was just a pup back then, and we think he was frightened by the shooting and rann fast and hard and got his face hung up in a barbed fence. He also had a wound on his chest when he was only 4 or 5 months - I have some truly heartbreaking pictures of him as a skinny, gangly little guy. But, a lady we know now found out about this situation and bought the whole herd and put them on one of her friend's feed lots to recuperate and adopt off one at a time. As soon as I saw a picture of him a few months later, he came home with me. He's been a spoiled pony ever since. He's just about 3 and a half we figure because he lost the tips of his ears when he was a foal - so he must have been born in the winter. And because he has a big scar on his schnoz, and because that gave him his name, it also gave him his birthday - January 17th.

Anyhow, Al is very strongly bonded to his buddy Three Socks, so today was about getting some exposure away to try and get the herd-sourness out of him a bit. And he did phenomenal - he sniffed around a lot, we walked in the arenas, he ate some grass - he did not call to his buddy even once. And he got a bath. Al is a cremello - he has 2 copies of the gene responsible for making brown horses into palominos (they have a single copy of the gene). Two copies means that all hair that would be brown without the allele turns pale cream - so they call it the 'cream gene'. Because this gene changes the make up of a pigment, it also changes the color of horses eyes from brown to a piercing sky blue. Here is my best buddy Al Capone getting his bath. He hates water, but he just does his best - he did a great job (at getting me dirty)!

He's good size (I called him a pony, but he's not) - 15-1 in horse lingo. I'm 6'2" for scale. Such a good boy.

No kidding, I grew up around horses and was still riding competitively up until a few years ago. Don't have horses anymore but they were a huge part of my life for as far back as I can remember. Cool stuff!

 

[jcolliii]

Some interesting observations from the past week.

I have not needed to scrub the algae off of the bottom in over a week, which is a bit counter-intuitive as I have had to dose PO4. Initially, there was a slight increase in a weird brown stringy algae - it did not appear to be dinos (I was getting the UV ready, just in case), but I suppose it may have been a bit of diatoms or some other thing. That lasted two days or so before subsiding. I've only had to scrape the glass once this entire past week as well. So, in my case, adding PO4 seems to have had an overall effect of slightly lessening algae. I still have a bit of stubborn GHA in a few places (one in a paly colony). But, when I see them, I drop the smaller snails (nerites I think) into the paly patch and they work on it a bit. I doesn't seem to bother the palys as they are constantly popping out new polyps. Coralline is really starting to expand as well. I am seeing lots of little specs on my rocks (good), frag plugs (good), and pumps (not good). So far, none on the bottom or back (very good). ALK use is up slightly. If PO4 was limiting as I suspect, that makes sense - increase growth by supplying the missing nutrient, growth increases and calcium carbonate usage will increase.

Nitrate has been fairly stable. It does seem to increase and decrease slightly throughout the week going from approximately 5ppm to around 10 or so. That does seem to indicate that there may be a small anoxic zone in the seachem Matrix columns that I have in both intakes. I've got nearly a liter of matrix packed into filter bags in either corner. That takes up all of the space in each corner from the bottom of each floss holder to the bottom of each chamber. Seachem estimates that a liter of Matrix has around 700 m^2 of surface area. That is a lot of surface area, and it is certainly possible that O2 is stripped away as the water gets toward the base of the column. But if so, this effect must be minimal - moving my pH probe from after the matrix column to inside of the display does not register any change in pH, and thus O2 and CO2 must be the same after the column and in the display area. Anyhow.

Polyp extension on the SPS has been a major difference that I have noticed this week. Both my digitata and cap seem like they are straining to get their polyps out as far as possible, and the one acro that I have has bonkers PE. The anacropora also has some major PE and has developed the nice blue tips that it gets when it starts rapid growth spurts.

WOW, is that fish active! Starsky (the starki) has thus far been a pretty great citizen. I have not seen him actually nip anyone else, but he is very damsely in the way he swims around - very rapid, punctuated bursts of speed. Those rapid, darting movements freak out Kenny (the blenny), who has been hanging out behind the rockwork more frequently. Hutch (the wrasse) just seems to be impervious to the damsel - he is so fast, he sees it coming and just sort of sidesteps the incoming damsel like it was barely even an effort. Dervish (the smaller of my two cardinals) is now in the hospital tank for the second round of antibiotics to try and get the blindness in both eyes sorted. This time, I'm using EM. The broad-spectrum stuff I used last time didn't have any real effect, hopefully this treatment will get it cured. I call him dervish because he just kind of swims in small circles to avoid hitting things in the display. When I feed him, I have to throw pellets at the water so he can hear them splash and he know they are coming down. Sometimes there is a pile of pellets on the bottom by the time he's eaten 2 or 3 (which I then suck out with my coral feeder). So, big hopes for this EM treatment.

I think this tank is getting close to being on cruise control. Even though it is bare bottom (and you hear that barebottom tanks don't achieve stability until the second year), and it's barely 5 months old in its current configuration (this IM tank, these rocks), I think it has attained maturity because I have substituted the sand with another very high surface area option and seeded it well with multiple strains of bacterial culture. Now that I have the nutrients dialed in, hopefully, growth will will take off and stability will continue.

 

[jcolliii]

I'm so fed up with having to pull the light mounting legs up to remove the screen top on my tank tha I ordered some brackets off Amazon that should work to mount my light on. Will have to fabricate a piece for the top of my Maxspect light, but these brackets look pretty solidly built, and are nice and clean looking.

Current USA brackets

 

[jcolliii]

So there are a couple things I really don't like about the Maxspect Razor x light. Not the construction or materials - that is top notch. Not the output - that seems more than adequate. And not really even the spread - the coverage is pretty good front to back and from side to side. As mentioned in the previous post, I hate that I have to lift the light partially off the top to remove the screen lid - and that will hopefully be taken care of over the weekend when the new mounting legs arrive.

The other thing that drives me batty is the lack of wireless controlability - specifically a lack of Bluefish. The Bluefish ap was simple to use, and fairly intuitive, whereas programming the Maxspect with the pushbutton-rotating dial thingy is very fidgety - rotate the dial a bit while trying to push the button and your choice is messed up. There used to be an aftermarket Bluefish add on for the Razor, but that has been out of stock forever. So, I decided to give the Maxspect ICV6 wireless control a go. What the heck, for 50 bucks, why not?

I'd heard that setup could be complicated and that setup was not at all intuitive or easy. Plugged it in, downloaded the ap for my phone, and opened it up. There are two options for setting up wireless when you fire this thing up - wifi or by wireless router. If you choose the wifi option, you will have to switch wifi networks on your phone every time you want to access your lights, pumps, whatever. I set mine up that way at first, had to delete the controller from the ap and reinstall it. Reinstalled through my wireless router, and now I can access it from my phone without having to switch wifi.

The initial setup can be done manually or automatic. I have no idea what auto is, and didn't try it - I hit manual, and the controller read the settings from my light. That was pretty much all setup involved for me. This is what the ap looks like when you start it up. If you have maxspect pumps or a gyre, this device will also link to those through the ap (as long as they are syna-G controllable).

Wow, that's a big Android screenshot! Anyhow, when you open your lighting device, you will see a schedule with your start/end points, power settings in standard graph form, and the channel power settings for any time along the profile indicated at the bottom of the screen. There is a green line in the image below - I had not told the ap whether I had the planted tank or marine versions of the light yet at this point.

If you go to one of your time presets and click on it, you will see a visual representation of the spectrum profile based on the power values for each channel you have set. So, if you are trying to match the profile from a specific brand or combo of T5 bulbs, or match a published spectrum, this feature may be useful - and was not something that the Bluefish ap did. Pretty neat gadget. The spectrum changes in response to you changing the power setting for each channel.

So far, I really like the ap, but I have to say that the ap does crash a lot when switching between aps. For example, when I was doing the screenshots above, the ap crashed almost every time I tried to switch back in after emaining my screenshots. That was annoying, but I don't think I will be doing too much ap switching when genuinely using this ap. The other nice thing is that if I decide a gyre in my tank may be a good idea, I would be able to control that with this device/ap. Not sure if this will work with an Icecap or other brand gyre pumps, but it will with the maxspect ones for sure.

So far, I like it a lot. SOOOOOOOO much easier than fiddling with that wheel button thing.

 

[TheWB]

So there are a couple things I really don't like about the Maxspect Razor x light. Not the construction or materials - that is top notch. Not the output - that seems more than adequate. And not really even the spread - the coverage is pretty good front to back and from side to side. As mentioned in the previous post, I hate that I have to lift the light partially off the top to remove the screen lid - and that will hopefully be taken care of over the weekend when the new mounting legs arrive.

The other thing that drives me batty is the lack of wireless controlability - specifically a lack of Bluefish. The Bluefish ap was simple to use, and fairly intuitive, whereas programming the Maxspect with the pushbutton-rotating dial thingy is very fidgety - rotate the dial a bit while trying to push the button and your choice is messed up. There used to be an aftermarket Bluefish add on for the Razor, but that has been out of stock forever. So, I decided to give the Maxspect ICV6 wireless control a go. What the heck, for 50 bucks, why not?

I'd heard that setup could be complicated and that setup was not at all intuitive or easy. Plugged it in, downloaded the ap for my phone, and opened it up. There are two options for setting up wireless when you fire this thing up - wifi or by wireless router. If you choose the wifi option, you will have to switch wifi networks on your phone every time you want to access your lights, pumps, whatever. I set mine up that way at first, had to delete the controller from the ap and reinstall it. Reinstalled through my wireless router, and now I can access it from my phone without having to switch wifi.

The initial setup can be done manually or automatic. I have no idea what auto is, and didn't try it - I hit manual, and the controller read the settings from my light. That was pretty much all setup involved for me. This is what the ap looks like when you start it up. If you have maxspect pumps or a gyre, this device will also link to those through the ap (as long as they are syna-G controllable).

Wow, that's a big Android screenshot! Anyhow, when you open your lighting device, you will see a schedule with your start/end points, power settings in standard graph form, and the channel power settings for any time along the profile indicated at the bottom of the screen. There is a green line in the image below - I had not told the ap whether I had the planted tank or marine versions of the light yet at this point.

If you go to one of your time presets and click on it, you will see a visual representation of the spectrum profile based on the power values for each channel you have set. So, if you are trying to match the profile from a specific brand or combo of T5 bulbs, or match a published spectrum, this feature may be useful - and was not something that the Bluefish ap did. Pretty neat gadget. The spectrum changes in response to you changing the power setting for each channel.

So far, I really like the ap, but I have to say that the ap does crash a lot when switching between aps. For example, when I was doing the screenshots above, the ap crashed almost every time I tried to switch back in after emaining my screenshots. That was annoying, but I don't think I will be doing too much ap switching when genuinely using this ap. The other nice thing is that if I decide a gyre in my tank may be a good idea, I would be able to control that with this device/ap. Not sure if this will work with an Icecap or other brand gyre pumps, but it will with the maxspect ones for sure.

So far, I like it a lot. SOOOOOOOO much easier than fiddling with that wheel button thing.

That visual representation of the spectrum is one of the best things I’ve ever seen for setting up a light. Very cool.

 

[jcolliii]

Light Mounting Update.

The problem: The stock mounting legs on the new Maxspect Razor X is different than it was on the last generation Razor fixtures - the legs are no longer vertical, but have a slight inward angle of maybe 25-30 degrees or so. That angle, combined with the overlap of the bit of the bracket that sits on the tank top makes it impossible to remove the screen top without first sliding the light to the rear of the aquarium, and partly lifting it up so that the screen top can be lifted slightly at the front and slid forward and off of the aquarium top. Doesn't sound like such a big deal, but I find myself reticent to take pictures in the evening because of having to do this procedure to take the top off each and every time.

Old version of the Razor mounting legs.

New Razor legs with more complex angles. There is an outward angle from the plastic tank mount piece, and an inward angle from the plastic piece upward into the slots for the rod in the fixture.

The slight inward angle of the legs means that even if I was to trim the plastic tank mount piece so that it did not overlap the screen top, I would not be able to lift the screen top up enough to slide it out because it would hit the legs.

So what to do? I am constantly doing something in this tank. Re-gluing frags that my bulldozer astreas dislodge, blowing off the rockwork, sucking out the couple bits of sand that I still find here and there, cleaning my wavemakers, there is always something to do, so I want better access, but don't want to go with a hanging kit because I don't really care for the look. So what I decided to do was to go with a pair of CurrentUSA legs for one of their fixtures. There is not a lot of vertical adjustment with these legs, but they do have quite a bit of horizontal distance to them. I found a measured drawing somewhere online and did some quick measurements on my tank and it looked like they would work well, so I ordered a pair and they came in yesterday.

CurrentUSA Orbit tank mount that I ordered two of.

They are fairly robust, and the mounting block is thick and beefy. They are made of powder coated aluminum with a long continuous slot in the upper part and three pairs of holes for the upward/downward adjustability - so lots of horizontal adjustability, but very little vertical. That's fine for me because my light works nicely just the 7 or so inches it sits above the water right now. So I put them on the tanl yesterday, and just sat my light fixture on top to see what it would look like (pretty cool), and whether there was any deflection of the rather long arms under load. Yep, probably a good 2 or 3 degrees of downward deflection - to be expected with 1/8" thick aluminum, I suppose. I will slightly 'preload' them when I do the actual installation by giving them a slight upward bend to compensate.

I was initially thinking about fabricating a couple of nice wide aluminum bar brackets that would wrap around the outside of the fixture and painting them with a nice flat black textured paint so that they would match both the fixture and the mounting arms, and I think I could make some brackets that would look really quite nice. BUT... the arms are quite low, and even on the uppermost adjustment, the light would be a good 2-3" lower than it currently is with the fixture installed onto the brackets and the brackets on the light. The other option is mounting the fixture on top of the brackets, and this had more appeal to me - no brackets visible, nice clean look. But how to mount it without seeing some sort of bracket wrapping around the front edge from the bottom? and how to keep the mounting arms from interfering with the light output? Hmmm.

Well, what I came up with was to use barrel nuts. They are cylindrical nuts with the hole drilled and tapped through the cylinder sideways instead of lengthways. Went to Menards and picked a couple up, but the diameter was just a smidge too big (3/8" diam - needed 5/16"). So plan B then. The legs already have rod with holes tapped lengthways and with the screws included.

Stock Maxspect Razor X legs. Note the small holes near the outer ends - the small screws (right) thread into those holes and lock the legs to a fixed position.

So, I cut the ends off of the legs instead of ordering 5/16 diameter barrel nuts and waiting. Cut them off with a hacksaw and sanded and rounded the cut edges. These would be my new mounting cleats. I did measure before cutting to make sure I had enough extra on the legs that I could still use them if this system didn't work out - but I probably wouldn't have cut them if I weren't 90% sure it would work.

New mounting cleats from chopped legs.

Then I put my new cleats on the upper sides of the mounting brackets and put screws in. I slid these in to the slots in the fixture all the way to the center and lined them up so that the edges of the brackets were far enough away from the LED clusters to minimize any light blockage by the brackets. The brackets ended up being spaced fairly close together due to the location of the emitter clusters.

New brackets mounted using the cutoff 'barrel nuts' fashioned from the stock Maxspect legs.

I could mount them out toward the edges more, but that would require machining a notch into each mounting block to accommodate the divider between the outermost rear chambers. I kind of dig the look with the legs closely spaced. Anyhow, mounted the light over the tank, and I think it looks like it should have - very clean and modern. And the best part is that I can now remove my screen top in about 3 seconds instead of having to perform the multi-step procedure that I used to. As an added bonus, the light is about 2 inches higher than it used to be, so I think the spread at the sides should be just a bit better than it was before. We'll see when the lights go on!

New legs!

 

[TheWB]

Light Mounting Update.

The problem: The stock mounting legs on the new Maxspect Razor X is different than it was on the last generation Razor fixtures - the legs are no longer vertical, but have a slight inward angle of maybe 25-30 degrees or so. That angle, combined with the overlap of the bit of the bracket that sits on the tank top makes it impossible to remove the screen top without first sliding the light to the rear of the aquarium, and partly lifting it up so that the screen top can be lifted slightly at the front and slid forward and off of the aquarium top. Doesn't sound like such a big deal, but I find myself reticent to take pictures in the evening because of having to do this procedure to take the top off each and every time.

Old version of the Razor mounting legs.

New Razor legs with more complex angles. There is an outward angle from the plastic tank mount piece, and an inward angle from the plastic piece upward into the slots for the rod in the fixture.

The slight inward angle of the legs means that even if I was to trim the plastic tank mount piece so that it did not overlap the screen top, I would not be able to lift the screen top up enough to slide it out because it would hit the legs.

So what to do? I am constantly doing something in this tank. Re-gluing frags that my bulldozer astreas dislodge, blowing off the rockwork, sucking out the couple bits of sand that I still find here and there, cleaning my wavemakers, there is always something to do, so I want better access, but don't want to go with a hanging kit because I don't really care for the look. So what I decided to do was to go with a pair of CurrentUSA legs for one of their fixtures. There is not a lot of vertical adjustment with these legs, but they do have quite a bit of horizontal distance to them. I found a measured drawing somewhere online and did some quick measurements on my tank and it looked like they would work well, so I ordered a pair and they came in yesterday.

CurrentUSA Orbit tank mount that I ordered two of.

They are fairly robust, and the mounting block is thick and beefy. They are made of powder coated aluminum with a long continuous slot in the upper part and three pairs of holes for the upward/downward adjustability - so lots of horizontal adjustability, but very little vertical. That's fine for me because my light works nicely just the 7 or so inches it sits above the water right now. So I put them on the tanl yesterday, and just sat my light fixture on top to see what it would look like (pretty cool), and whether there was any deflection of the rather long arms under load. Yep, probably a good 2 or 3 degrees of downward deflection - to be expected with 1/8" thick aluminum, I suppose. I will slightly 'preload' them when I do the actual installation by giving them a slight upward bend to compensate.

I was initially thinking about fabricating a couple of nice wide aluminum bar brackets that would wrap around the outside of the fixture and painting them with a nice flat black textured paint so that they would match both the fixture and the mounting arms, and I think I could make some brackets that would look really quite nice. BUT... the arms are quite low, and even on the uppermost adjustment, the light would be a good 2-3" lower than it currently is with the fixture installed onto the brackets and the brackets on the light. The other option is mounting the fixture on top of the brackets, and this had more appeal to me - no brackets visible, nice clean look. But how to mount it without seeing some sort of bracket wrapping around the front edge from the bottom? and how to keep the mounting arms from interfering with the light output? Hmmm.

Well, what I came up with was to use barrel nuts. They are cylindrical nuts with the hole drilled and tapped through the cylinder sideways instead of lengthways. Went to Menards and picked a couple up, but the diameter was just a smidge too big (3/8" diam - needed 5/16"). So plan B then. The legs already have rod with holes tapped lengthways and with the screws included.

Stock Maxspect Razor X legs. Note the small holes near the outer ends - the small screws (right) thread into those holes and lock the legs to a fixed position.

So, I cut the ends off of the legs instead of ordering 5/16 diameter barrel nuts and waiting. Cut them off with a hacksaw and sanded and rounded the cut edges. These would be my new mounting cleats. I did measure before cutting to make sure I had enough extra on the legs that I could still use them if this system didn't work out - but I probably wouldn't have cut them if I weren't 90% sure it would work.

New mounting cleats from chopped legs.

Then I put my new cleats on the upper sides of the mounting brackets and put screws in. I slid these in to the slots in the fixture all the way to the center and lined them up so that the edges of the brackets were far enough away from the LED clusters to minimize any light blockage by the brackets. The brackets ended up being spaced fairly close together due to the location of the emitter clusters.

New brackets mounted using the cutoff 'barrel nuts' fashioned from the stock Maxspect legs.

I could mount them out toward the edges more, but that would require machining a notch into each mounting block to accommodate the divider between the outermost rear chambers. I kind of dig the look with the legs closely spaced. Anyhow, mounted the light over the tank, and I think it looks like it should have - very clean and modern. And the best part is that I can now remove my screen top in about 3 seconds instead of having to perform the multi-step procedure that I used to. As an added bonus, the light is about 2 inches higher than it used to be, so I think the spread at the sides should be just a bit better than it was before. We'll see when the lights go on!

New legs!

Looks great. Nice ingenuity.

 

[jcolliii]

8/23/20 update

Tank continues on auto-pilot mode. Stopped dosing Vibrant 2 weeks ago today and the algae continues to decline. I believe this is due to the nutrients stabilizing where they should be for this tank (PO4: 0.03ppm, NO3 7-10ppm), and the strong support from the cleanup crew along with aggressive nutrient export and the huge surface area that I have in both chambers one with a liter of Seachem Matrix in there. I cannot find any trace of cyano in the tank (there had been one stubborn patch on the underside of one of my branches for months), and I can find no hair algae on the rocks anymore. I have one patch of hair left in my AOG paly colony which I keep after with tweezers and is in decline. My CUC has kept the back glass and rocks pretty nearly spotless. I have one electric blue hermit (Hermes), 6 astreas, 3 star astreas, and a couple nerites eating away at the algae/biofilm. The only algae that I can notice when the lights are on at this point is a powdery green/brown stuff in a couple places on the starboard bottom and some coralline beginning to grow in spots on the bottom. Whenever I see a snail near the top of the tank, I grab them with tweezers and drop them onto the bottom where the algae spots are. They are not eyesores, and I have not been scrubbing them so the snails have a source of food (the rocks look *that* clean).

I did a second 4-day antibiotic treatment on Dervish (the blind PJ cardinal) with EM this time, and it made no difference at all. I think he's blind for life. He swims in circles so that he doesn't run into things, and everyone in the tank just leaves him alone. When I feed him, I have to turn off all of the flow and throw the pellets at the water surface. He 'hears' the splash and comes to investigate. If one falls directly in front of him, he'll grab it. I make sure he gets a couple of pellets every day.

Dervish the PJ cardinal. You can just see the spot in his eye.

The open brain continues to be pale (see FTS above), but has not seemed to be losing any more color. I talked to the guy at LA Reefs and he had them under very low light (around 50 PAR he said) about 16 inches down. That seems low to me for an open brain, but I still have that coral in the shadows. I have started feeding it every single day to see if that is going to make a difference. It expands like crazy, still puts out its stubby little feeding tentacles, and eats readily. I think perhaps it was the sudden increase in light that led to its slow partial bleaching. Hopefully this regimen leads to it brightening back up.

The new fish continue to be awesome. Starsky (the starki damsel) continues to do great - he's a plumper now - that fish is SOOOOO fast and darty. He has not shown any real aggression to anyone else in the tank. Hutch (the yellowfin flasher wrasse) is also nice and chubby - he loves the small BRS 1mm pellets that I throw in a few times a day. He goes to bed pretty early though - even before the lights begin to fade, he goes to his hiding spot under the rocks. Kenny (the blenny) has a couple of spots on his head where he bashed into something, but they look like they are healing up well. The second PJ cardinal used to pick on Dervish a bit, but now he swims along with him sometimes and even sorta nuzzles up to him sometimes. Perhaps they are opposite sexes?

The biggest issue continues to be the skimmer not being online. I don't know how IM sent that pump out, but tracking has still not updated. There is a thread in the vendor feedback in the IM section here on R2R that outlines all of the pump failures folks have been having with these cheap Chinese rubbish pumps IM uses in their skimmers - days to months. I've been quietly scouring various vendors websites looking at all of the nano skimmers available and seeing what pumps are used - most also seem to be Chinese. But a couple use Sicce pumps - an eshoppes one uses the Sicce Micra, and I think Octopus has a small skimmer that they make a pump for that would fit as well - but the flow rate also need to be considered. I just ordered a Sicce Nano from Amazon, and I am pretty sure that sizewise it will fit into the skimmer body. I will have to make a needle- or mesh-wheel for it, but I think I can adapt the noodle and machine a venturi that will fit the front of the pump and that pump comes with a 3 year warranty. Flow rate on that pump is given by Sicce as 40-100gph and the pump in the IM desktop (midsize) is rated at 53gph. BUT, I'm sure that the Nano will flow less with a needle wheel than with its stock impeller. But, with no skimmer I cannot run my CO2 scrubber which means that tank pH is at the mercy of my allergies and the outside temperature (A/C). Right now, I've been opening windows at night to keep CO2 in the house down and the pH from dropping too low. It's been working for the most part.

Top left 3/4.

Bloodshot Krakatoas. These grow fast.

WWC 'Fried Circuit' Platygyra.

 

[jcolliii]

Interesting development.

No skimmer pump not here yet, but I think it's related. My PO4 has risen since my last test before my water change on Sunday (4g.) when it was 0.03 and fairly stable at that number since dosing my DIY TSP solution. It has now risen to 0.1ppm, a rise of 3.3x! So it does seem that the grunge the skimmer was pulling out was quite effective at keeping the PO4 down in my tank. I have made no other changes other than feeding my pale Trachy daily - but that is a small amount of food compared to my 2x weekly coral feedings. Interesting.

No change in coral behavior that I can see, and no change in algae growth. Skimmer pumps should both be here tomorrow, and I did find a needle wheel impeller for the Sicce Nano - so going to give that a try sometime over the weekend maybe if the impeller gets here anytime soon. Although who knows when with the changes to the USPS that have (rather stupidly) been made.

 

[jcolliii]

Skimmer pump finally showed up - DeJoy seems intent on turning the USPS into a joke. First class package took 10 working days to move half way across the country. In the mean time, the Sicce Nano I ordered from Amazon was here in 3 days. The Sicce pump will definitely fit in the skimmer body, and I found a needlewheel impeller for the pump (which Aquamaxx uses in one of their smaller skimmers) for 10 bucks shipped, so that will be an interesting experiment when it shows up.

No complaints about the performance of the IM skimmer - I put the pump online around 1:30 this afternoon and it was collecting foam by 6pm. But I am not going to just sit and wait for a pump with a known short service life to fail again in another 3 months.

I have finally figured out what the wrong coral that WWC sent me 7 or 8 months ago is - I had ordered a three color platy, and they sent a really neat Favia. Under my lights, the outer margin of each corallite is a nice baby blue, with the raised rim inboard of that a vibrant yellow-green, and then the center part of each polyp is the same fluorescent baby blue. It's an oldie but goodie - dating back to the days of reeffarmers and Tyree: the Spongebob Favia. I'd been watching WWC's ebay listings hoping I would come across some pieces that would let me know what it was, and saw one that was similar, started doing some reading and searching, and found some photos that are exactly what I have. This picture was taken a few months back and the colors are pretty close, but in person that green is *much* more yellowy. Neat piece, and fun to find out what it is!

 

[jcolliii]

Well, it looked as if Kenny (the blenny) was a goner last night. Just before I went to bed around 1am, I looked into the tank just as the lights are going down and I see Kenny spinning, twirling, and swimming out of control. He was bumping into stuff, swimming upside down. He was obviously in distress, and because of the way he was swimming, Starsky was going after him as well. I have not seen Starsky pick on him when he swims normally, but some fish have a 'thing' when they see a distressed fish, they will help dispatch it. Have seen this a few times in the past, both in my salt and freshwater tanks - especially with African cichlids. So, I immediately caught him (would have been an impossibility if he had been acting normally), and put him in my little breeder enclosure and watched him for awhile. He did not stop this behavior for the better part of an hour. I had almost reached the point of euthanizing him - it was very difficult to go to bed with him behaving this way. When I got up this am, I was sure that he would be dead. But, luckily, he was acting just like his normal self. He's had a good bump and some missing skin on the left side of his head that he's had for a couple of days, but has been acting pretty normal - figured he swam into something as he is easily distracted. Perhaps he got stung by something and it temporarily drove him crazy? I was looking stuff up frantically last night based on the symptoms I saw, and the only thing I could come up with was swim bladder disease, but prior to this he was acting normally. Really strange.

So, I'm cooking water for a water change, will fill up my hospital tank with the old tank water and give him antibiotics for 3 or 4 days and observe him closely. He is definitely my favorite fish - he has so much character. When the return pump is off and before I put the stock nozzles back on, he'd back into the loc-line and just sit there observing what was going on. When I turned the pump back on, he'd go shooting out like a blow dart! Then he'd try like hell to swim back in against the current! When he was smaller, when I would turn off the wavemakers, he would go inside of those. I would always be so nervous about turning the Jebaos back on - had to make sure I knew where Kenny was beforehand. And then there is his sleeping arrangements. He sleeps on my flipper algae scrubber - he kind of wedges his tail in the space between the magnet and the glass and sleeps with his head hanging off just a bit. Super peaceful fish - I have even seen tanks where there were multiple striped blennies in the same tank, so conspecific aggression does not seem to be a thing with these guys. I think they are a super underrated fish, and wicked interesting.

What a great fish - Kenny (the striped blenny).

Anyhow, I'm glad he's acting normal - whatever the malady was, he's getting antibiotic-ed. There are three or four other species of Meiacanthus that are obviously very closely related, and I have been kicking around the idea for some time of getting one of those as well if I can find one. There is the Bundoon blenny...

...

The Kamhora blenny...

...

The Canary blenny....

...

They are all fairly small - 3.5" - 5". I really like the looks of the Kamhora blenny, and they used to be pretty rare in the US, but ORA is breeding them and Liveaquaria has them in stock for 39 bucks. Maybe...

Anyhow, I think Kenny looks pretty good today, but he'll get some hospital tank time with antibiotics just to make sure.

 

[jcolliii]

Well ****. When I caught him and put him into the hospital tank, he did the spinning again. The abrasions on his head look like raw flesh - three very small patches. No visible parasites, no other visible blotches, spots, blemishes, bruises, or abrasions. What a weird set of symptoms. Slightly rapid breathing, but I am sure he's stressed about his condition and about being moved to another tank. At least the water is exactly the same - I used the outgoing water change water for the hospital tank. I hope this is not neurological. I wonder if he bit himself - but then again, it would seem like fang blennies would be immune to fang blenny toxin. I put some flake food in there a while ago, and it's gone now, so he is eating. Ugh.

 

[Calm Blue Ocean]

Well, it looked as if Kenny (the blenny) was a goner last night. Just before I went to bed around 1am, I looked into the tank just as the lights are going down and I see Kenny spinning, twirling, and swimming out of control. He was bumping into stuff, swimming upside down. He was obviously in distress, and because of the way he was swimming, Starsky was going after him as well. I have not seen Starsky pick on him when he swims normally, but some fish have a 'thing' when they see a distressed fish, they will help dispatch it. Have seen this a few times in the past, both in my salt and freshwater tanks - especially with African cichlids. So, I immediately caught him (would have been an impossibility if he had been acting normally), and put him in my little breeder enclosure and watched him for awhile. He did not stop this behavior for the better part of an hour. I had almost reached the point of euthanizing him - it was very difficult to go to bed with him behaving this way. When I got up this am, I was sure that he would be dead. But, luckily, he was acting just like his normal self. He's had a good bump and some missing skin on the left side of his head that he's had for a couple of days, but has been acting pretty normal - figured he swam into something as he is easily distracted. Perhaps he got stung by something and it temporarily drove him crazy? I was looking stuff up frantically last night based on the symptoms I saw, and the only thing I could come up with was swim bladder disease, but prior to this he was acting normally. Really strange.

So, I'm cooking water for a water change, will fill up my hospital tank with the old tank water and give him antibiotics for 3 or 4 days and observe him closely. He is definitely my favorite fish - he has so much character. When the return pump is off and before I put the stock nozzles back on, he'd back into the loc-line and just sit there observing what was going on. When I turned the pump back on, he'd go shooting out like a blow dart! Then he'd try like hell to swim back in against the current! When he was smaller, when I would turn off the wavemakers, he would go inside of those. I would always be so nervous about turning the Jebaos back on - had to make sure I knew where Kenny was beforehand. And then there is his sleeping arrangements. He sleeps on my flipper algae scrubber - he kind of wedges his tail in the space between the magnet and the glass and sleeps with his head hanging off just a bit. Super peaceful fish - I have even seen tanks where there were multiple striped blennies in the same tank, so conspecific aggression does not seem to be a thing with these guys. I think they are a super underrated fish, and wicked interesting.

What a great fish - Kenny (the striped blenny).

Anyhow, I'm glad he's acting normal - whatever the malady was, he's getting antibiotic-ed. There are three or four other species of Meiacanthus that are obviously very closely related, and I have been kicking around the idea for some time of getting one of those as well if I can find one. There is the Bundoon blenny...

...

The Kamhora blenny...

...

The Canary blenny....

...

They are all fairly small - 3.5" - 5". I really like the looks of the Kamhora blenny, and they used to be pretty rare in the US, but ORA is breeding them and Liveaquaria has them in stock for 39 bucks. Maybe...

Anyhow, I think Kenny looks pretty good today, but he'll get some hospital tank time with antibiotics just to make sure.

I didn't know there were so many unique looking blennies out there. I was thinking of getting a Tailspot to round out my tank but wow, some of these guys are really striking. Time for more research!

I hope Kenny starts doing better. He looks like a cool dude.

 

[jcolliii]

Well, sad news again. Kenny the blenny is no more. I treated him with antibiotic, a therapeutic, and for parasites. Melafix did definitely help the raw areas on his head begin to heal up, but none of the medications helped with the bizarre swimming behavior - it had to be neurological or trauma. The onset was so sudden - just weird. I've had a lot of fish - a powder brown tang used to be my favorite, but Kenny definitely took over that spot. So much personality. He was just a cool fish.

If you want a fish with a ton of personality, you can't go wrong with a striped blenny. Petco has them all the time for about 15 bucks.