ksfulk's Red Sea Reefer 525xL

[ksfulk]

And finally - a quick video when only the reefbrites are on - makes me laugh at how much some coral stand out, and you cant even see some of the others.

 

[pelphrey]

Thanks for reading posting the code, going to save this and possibly give it a try. with the way my rock is I think this could help out. Thanks!!

 

[Centerline]

Makes me want to run out and start working on my 525!

 

[ksfulk]

SO - an update.

Things are still rocking and rolling in QT land. All of the remaining original inhabitants have settled into observation life after TTM and are doing well. Which is good. I picked up a few more fish - and sadly some of them didnt make it - always a sad time. These guys make the last transfer on Sunday, and then it'll be a few more weeks of observation. Im really torn, because I want a few fairy wrasses, but Ive struck out on them every time Ive picked them up Ive not had success with getting them through QT. Might give it one more try since I have time before the DT is done with the 6 week parasite purge

I finally took the frags off the racks and put most of them into their permanent homes. I messed with the pump placements so they arent directly blasting any of the frags. I had one of the Tunze 6040s stop working unexpectedly, but a few emails with Roger and I should have a replacement tomorrow or Monday. Really great customer service from BRS and Tunze, Im very happy about it.

Sunday is the big Lansing Frag Swap. Im excited because I get to go for the first time in a few years. I already have about a half a dozen frags ordered from Cherry Corals - got my hands on a WT Mother of Pearl and AV99 Orange Crush and a couple of other sps frags Ive had my eye on. Im hoping to find a Oregon Tort and a nice sunset millepora at the swap but Ill keep my eye out for anything else fun. Maybe some fish, we'll see what happens! Anyhow. Here's some pictures - I'll get a video up shortly.

 

[ksfulk]

 

[Centerline]

SO - an update.

Things are still rocking and rolling in QT land. All of the remaining original inhabitants have settled into observation life after TTM and are doing well. Which is good. I picked up a few more fish - and sadly some of them didnt make it - always a sad time. These guys make the last transfer on Sunday, and then it'll be a few more weeks of observation. Im really torn, because I want a few fairy wrasses, but Ive struck out on them every time Ive picked them up Ive not had success with getting them through QT. Might give it one more try since I have time before the DT is done with the 6 week parasite purge

I finally took the frags off the racks and put most of them into their permanent homes. I messed with the pump placements so they arent directly blasting any of the frags. I had one of the Tunze 6040s stop working unexpectedly, but a few emails with Roger and I should have a replacement tomorrow or Monday. Really great customer service from BRS and Tunze, Im very happy about it.

Sunday is the big Lansing Frag Swap. Im excited because I get to go for the first time in a few years. I already have about a half a dozen frags ordered from Cherry Corals - got my hands on a WT Mother of Pearl and AV99 Orange Crush and a couple of other sps frags Ive had my eye on. Im hoping to find a Oregon Tort and a nice sunset millepora at the swap but Ill keep my eye out for anything else fun. Maybe some fish, we'll see what happens! Anyhow. Here's some pictures - I'll get a video up shortly.

Man that tank looks fantastic!

 

[Centerline]

Artfully Acrylic lid came back after a restringing of the mesh. Fits great - little to no gap along the edges. Im really happy with this

Love that lid - ordering one now.

 

[ksfulk]

Here's a couple pics of what fun things that were picked up yesterday at the Lansing swap.

 

[ksfulk]

Man that tank looks fantastic!

Love that lid - ordering one now.

Thanks! Its still a work in progress but its definately on it way. The lids are really nice - I would suggest measureing your tank before making your order, just incase there is a slight bow or something to your tank. Several people have had issues with the lids not completely aligning due to minor variations in the tanks themselves. Also make sure that you have an idea as to where you want your cord cutouts for your lids as well. I forgot about that in the initial email.

 

[ksfulk]

So I put in some work today on the tank. 20 gallon water change, vacuumed the sandbed, changed out my front 4 bulbs - ended up changing 6 bulbs total, and scrubbed all my powerheads (Tunze and WAVs). Cleaned out the old QT, since all of my newly acquired fish have not been successful. Looks like I wont be adding any wrasses to this tank in the immediate future. The good news, I suppose, is that the 6 week QT period is up next weekend, so I can start adding fish back to the DT at that time. So thats exciting.

Ive ordered the new Apex FMM and some of the flow monitors. Seeing as how Ill have to redo some of my plumbing, Ive been entertaining buying a new sump and revamping the entire thing. It would be nice to get something a bit more slick and sleek. We'll see what comes of it. For the moment, Ive got to see if my new bulb combination looks good or not

 

[loweryphil]

Like

 

[ksfulk]

Fish are back in the tank! woohoo!

 

[ksfulk]

Did I go crazy at the CC live sale tonight? Maybe? Im not sure what crazy means, honestly - but I did blow through everything on my wishlist before 9pm, which is pretty outstanding. Picked up 14 frags in total, though I may pick through some of the leftovers in the morning and see if there is anything else Im missing on the *gotta have* list. I had a couple of gift cards from Christmas and my birthday, so I think I might have only spent about $100 over what I thought I would - which might be a first for me.

Here's the list:

Rommels Watermelon Millie
ORA Plum Crazy
Retina Blaster Suhasori
Peacock Acropora
JF Tierra del Fuego
ATL Shade of Fall
CC Sunset Millipora
ORA Scripps Millie
WWC Laser Lemons
CC Maize n Blue
Vivid's Rainbows
Miami Hurricane Chalice
Pink ******* Chalice
CC Cherry Novas

 

[TonapahNorth]

Thanks for the read along. I enjoyed reading everything.

Couple questions:
1. Does the zeovit system call for other feeding of the corals? Frenzy, roids, anything?
2. What do you feed your fish and how much/often?
3. What's the black frag rack? I like it.

 

[spiraling]

Looks like you have some beauties headed your way!

 

[ksfulk]

Thanks for the read along. I enjoyed reading everything.

Couple questions:
1. Does the zeovit system call for other feeding of the corals? Frenzy, roids, anything?
2. What do you feed your fish and how much/often?
3. What's the black frag rack? I like it.

Thanks for following along!
1.) I dont feed anything specifically for the corals - except for the ZeoVit additives (ZeoBak, SpongePower, ZeoStart). Lots of people use numerous other additives, but I dont see a need for it until Im lacking something specific.
2.) I feed 2-3 cubes of frozen food (PE Mysis, PE Calanus, Spirulina Enriched Brine Shrimp) once a day. Generally the fish get at least one cube of mysis and then I rotate the other ones.
3.) Oceans Wonders N52 Mag Rack V3 (Blech... a mouthful) Its a relatively cheap frag rack that unobtrusive and holds really well to the glass. Also the snails dont seem to be able to move it around.

Looks like you have some beauties headed your way!

Thanks - Im pretty excited for the box to show up tomorrow!

 

[ksfulk]

Some fun things for this week. I caught that there was an anomaly on my Fusion page early in the week, where my light power draw had dropped by 2 amps during the day. I thought it was kinda weird, so I was able to stay home one day this week (to get my Cherry Corals box!) and come to find out that my 4 & 5 bulbs arent firing. Luckily, Im still within my warranty and Keith from ATI has a new ballast on its way to me sometime next week. Really, Ive had a lot of little things go out/bad in the past month (Tunze 6040 shut off and wouldnt restart, Red Sea drain collar cracked, and ATI ballast went out) but every single company has been GREAT with customer service, and Ive had the parts in the mail within a day. Really glad I can support awesome vendors here on R2R.

Anyhow - CherryCorals order showed up awesome as usual. All the pieces went through my dipping protocol and got remounted and into the tank. I may have mounted one of my chalices on the wrong side, so hopefully it recovers from the user error. Still, they all look great. I've also hooked up with one of my local vendors to special order a couple of wrasses for me that DONT come from the same vendor that a lot of online places get their fish from. Instead he hand picks from A&M Aquatics in Lansing - which is only about an hour from here. I started with an exquisite fairy wrasse, since I love the color contrast on the fish, and with that one lasting a full week without incident, I had him pick me up three more wrasses - a mccosker flasher, a carpenter flasher and a bluehead fairy wrasse (C. Cyanopleura). Well, we missed each other , but he left my fish with a neighbor for me to pick up. I grabbed the cooler, brought it home and guess what.... the carpenter is about 4" long, the mccosker is about 1.5" long and the bluehead is not C. cyanopleura, but T. bifasciatum (which is also commonly called a bluehead wrasse). Well, I like my shrimp and inverts, so the bluehead went to a LFS today, while the other wrasses got put into observation QT. All are eating well (brine and mysis) so I feel like I might be ahead of the curve so far.

Does anyone get SUPER excited when they move a frag from the rack to its final permanent place?? One of my first memories of someone's awesome stick tank was seeing a full colony of the Wet Thumb Mother of Pearl Acropora. Its a gorgeous coral that has a pearly purple body with lighter indigo tips with dark green polyps. Crazy extension on this one too. I was lucky enough that Brett at CherryCorals had a nice chunk of the coral available, and so I snatched it up as soon as I could (Valentine's Day). Well, I mounted it on the rockwork today, as its starting to climb off the frag plug and I had a great spot picked out. Im so very excited that its touching the reef rock now. Ive been downstairs three dozen times today just to look at it.

Everything else is settled in as well - I did my major monthly maintenance yesterday, swapping out carbon, zeolites and vacuuming the sump with a 10 gallon water change. I picked up a bucket head shop vac from HomeDepot along with the micro cleaning tubes (takes the 3/4" hose down to a 1/4" tube) and it makes cleaning the sump and water changes even faster than before. I still have to manually clean the sand bed (since shop vac + sand bed = no sand), but it still makes the job less of a chore. I won a small bucket of Red Sea blue bucket salt, which Im using for the next two weeks of water changes to see if the salt parameters are any more consistent than my IO salt that Ive been using. My ALK has crept up a bit, but Im still hovering around 7.5 dKH. I should test CA and MG this week, but Ive just been too lazy. I did find a Triton test that fell behind my shelves, so I sent that out on Wednesday too, just to see where everythings at with the tank. I like having a good reference.

Ok, enough words... some pictures! Oh and possibly a HUGE change coming to this tank... but we'll have to wait until Wednesday to know for sure...

 

[ksfulk]

Triton testing came back really quickly on this round... everything looks relatively good and/or on par with my own testing. I just placed a pretty big order for some things that should be here by the weekend... we'll see what goodies show up later this week!

Oh, and I won a drawing from the live sale and won a acan pack from CherryCorals! Im sure there will be all kinds of coolness in there

 

[spiraling]

Oh, and I won a drawing from the live sale and won a acan pack from CherryCorals! Im sure there will be all kinds of coolness in there

Lucky Duck!
Can't wait to see your new arrivals!

 

[TonapahNorth]

Invariably I see folks posting about their Aluminum levels. Does the Triton result there concern you? Although it's higher than your set point, the results still show green. Any suspected source other than just trace from in the salt?

I have no experience in this regard. I just noticed it was higher than your set point so I thought I'd ask.