Perseverance Reef

[tbrown]

I'd go with the 10000k or 20000k personally, but I like the blue look.

 

[Fishy888]

I'd go with the 10000k or 20000k personally, but I like the blue look.

I like that look too but Kathy and I both like the brighter white light. I’ll run the blue plus lamps during the 8 hours the halides are on. The blue pluses will also be on for another 6 hours, 3 hours in the morning and 3 in the evening. So 14 hours of light from the T5s and 8 for the halides per day. If the light turns out to be too dim at 10000k I’ll try 6500K. That’s assuming I don’t upgrade to 250w halides.

If I upgrade I’ll have to buy brand new sockets and ballasts as well as new lamps. It’ll be worth doing as long as the new sockets fit the reflectors.

My friend had these lights over a 300 though. It was 30 inches deep like mine (ok 29.5 but you might as well call it 30). She’s pretty sure the halides are 150s but I’m secretly hoping they’re 250s. That or that the 150s work.

I know I had a 10000k 150w lamp over the cube. The anemone (pre split) seemed to be struggling under it but they’re higher up in the reef now and there’ll be 3 of them so their light in combination with the T5s should work for the nems. I really want some maximas or croceas though. I’m fairly certain they’d about have to practically have one of the MH lamps resting right on the clam’s open mantle to work, especially for the croceas. Maximas aren’t that far behind. If worst comes to worst though I’ll go with a derasa or a squamosa instead.

 

[F i s h y]

I like that look too but Kathy and I both like the brighter white light. I’ll run the blue plus lamps during the 8 hours the halides are on. The blue pluses will also be on for another 6 hours, 3 hours in the morning and 3 in the evening. So 14 hours of light from the T5s and 8 for the halides per day. If the light turns out to be too dim at 10000k I’ll try 6500K. That’s assuming I don’t upgrade to 250w halides.

If I upgrade I’ll have to buy brand new sockets and ballasts as well as new lamps. It’ll be worth doing as long as the new sockets fit the reflectors.

My friend had these lights over a 300 though. It was 30 inches deep like mine (ok 29.5 but you might as well call it 30). She’s pretty sure the halides are 150s but I’m secretly hoping they’re 250s. That or that the 150s work.

I know I had a 10000k 150w lamp over the cube. The anemone (pre split) seemed to be struggling under it but they’re higher up in the reef now and there’ll be 3 of them so their light in combination with the T5s should work for the nems. I really want some maximas or croceas though. I’m fairly certain they’d about have to practically have one of the MH lamps resting right on the clam’s open mantle to work, especially for the croceas. Maximas aren’t that far behind. If worst comes to worst though I’ll go with a derasa or a squamosa instead.

I used the Phoenix bulbs. Great quality and a good mix on color.

 

[Fishy888]

Last night I cleaned my wave maker and moved it to the side opposite of where my return pump is right now. The flow pattern is much better than it was. Just as I thought I was done I discovered my rastas went missing.

After tearing my aquascape apart I found them. They were quite a distance away from where they were. Thankfully they’re doing well. The aquascape wasn’t done all the way before so I would have had to take it apart to some degree anyway.

The xenia are doing nicely and the mushrooms look great. As I get more of the aquascaping finished the corals will move to their permanent places. I have several corals that need to be glued down. I bought some super glue yesterday so today I’ll glue the corals that are still loose.

I got both doors made last night. I need to either find my hinges (I got them a long time ago for other projects but I haven’t used them yet) or just buy new ones and attach them.

 

[tbrown]

Last night I cleaned my wave maker and moved it to the side opposite of where my return pump is right now. The flow pattern is much better than it was. Just as I thought I was done I discovered my rastas went missing.

After tearing my aquascape apart I found them. They were quite a distance away from where they were. Thankfully they’re doing well. The aquascape wasn’t done all the way before so I would have had to take it apart to some degree anyway.

The xenia are doing nicely and the mushrooms look great. As I get more of the aquascaping finished the corals will move to their permanent places. I have several corals that need to be glued down. I bought some super glue yesterday so today I’ll glue the corals that are still loose.

I got both doors made last night. I need to either find my hinges (I got them a long time ago for other projects but I haven’t used them yet) or just buy new ones and attach them.

Do you know what moved the Rastas?

 

[Fishy888]

Do you know what moved the Rastas?

I’m pretty sure it was me. In the process of adjusting the wave maker I had it pointed briefly in that direction.

They’re glued down now. That was a priority because the rastas are growing on a trochus snail shell. With no anchor of any kind they might as well have been mounted on a helium balloon. Of course they’re still attached to the trochus shell but that’s now glued to a rock that will allow the rastas to spread out and become a good sized colony.

 

[Fishy888]

As I sit here looking at the reef, I’m starting to think I might have a slight case of diatoms. Slight. Maybe.

I triggered a mini cycle I think. I know some of the rock was used in another system but that “rock” is aragocrete, and much less aragonite, which as I’m finding, is much better than having higher aragonite content.

More likely is the amount of food I’ve been feeding. I’ve been feeding pellets, broccoli florets, and my frozen food mix. I’m particularly concerned with feeding the tang foods that will help her keep growing. She’s grown some, both for my friend from whom I got her, and a bit for me. I want to keep that going. Plus, heavy in heavy out as they say.

As for Dory, she loves the DIY frozen mix, and thankfully it contains broccoli and peas. I wish I had added Nori at the time but I didn’t think I’d ever have a tang since I had a 90 gallon cube at the time. I’m going to try making a puréed veggie mix with a little bit of seafood. By veggies I mean mainly nori for now but I’ll add some terrestrial veggies to make it more palatable to Dory. She’s never eaten nori or any other vegetable matter, other than whatever was in her flake food. Hopefully the veggie mix will help her recognize that nori is food. Right now she’s as likely to eat nori as she is to eat rocks. Of course we’ll get there.

The anemones were closed for a couple days which worried me. They’re open now though and looking good. I won’t have to move their rocks again either.

I’ll need to move the rocks around on the right hand side though. You can see the bommie to the left. I’m going to make one to the right also. I’m glad I got a 210 instead of a 125. It’s made aquascaping much easier and allowed for much better shapes. Of course it allows for more corals, clams, etc.

 

[Fishy888]

For those of you who follow @fishguy242’s thread you probably know that I completed the aquascape on the left half of the tank. Now it’s time for the right hand side.

I still have the old return pump going on the right hand side. After thinking about it I was decided to try and make it part of the aquascape.

Before I do anything too stupid I’ll get some rock and see how hard it will be to drill into it. Of course I’ll have to see if I even have a masonry bit that can drill a hole large enough to allow the business end of the pump to protrude from it.

Failing that, with some putty I could glue rocks in the right shape to achieve the same effect. Of course I’ll need to be able to access the pump still for maintenance but I think I like this idea better.

I’ll see if there are any videos of anyone successfully doing something like this.

If I decide to keep the pump permanently in the DT I’ll need to get some loc line. I should have some in storage or in my fishy bins of doom, which I need to upgrade to a fishy cabinet of doom but that’s another story. I’d remove the hose barb and get a 3/4” threaded tee. It’d have to be female on two ends and male on the other.

Hopefully it’ll work because I’ll need all the flow I can get. The closed loop pump will give me 33x tank size per hour. The wave maker gives me 21x. The pump will give me another 5x and the two return pumps for the sump would give 10x between them. Hopefully I can grow some acros with that much flow although I like birdsnest corals and other non acropora corals too.

 

[tbrown]

For those of you who follow @fishguy242’s thread you probably know that I completed the aquascape on the left half of the tank. Now it’s time for the right hand side.

I still have the old return pump going on the right hand side. After thinking about it I was decided to try and make it part of the aquascape.

Before I do anything too stupid I’ll get some rock and see how hard it will be to drill into it. Of course I’ll have to see if I even have a masonry bit that can drill a hole large enough to allow the business end of the pump to protrude from it.

Failing that, with some putty I could glue rocks in the right shape to achieve the same effect. Of course I’ll need to be able to access the pump still for maintenance but I think I like this idea better.

I’ll see if there are any videos of anyone successfully doing something like this.

If I decide to keep the pump permanently in the DT I’ll need to get some loc line. I should have some in storage or in my fishy bins of doom, which I need to upgrade to a fishy cabinet of doom but that’s another story. I’d remove the hose barb and get a 3/4” threaded tee. It’d have to be female on two ends and male on the other.

Hopefully it’ll work because I’ll need all the flow I can get. The closed loop pump will give me 33x tank size per hour. The wave maker gives me 21x. The pump will give me another 5x and the two return pumps for the sump would give 10x between them. Hopefully I can grow some acros with that much flow although I like birdsnest corals and other non acropora corals too.

Speaking from experience - that Aragocrete rock is hard to drill it it's a higher cement mix. Mine was about a 50/50 mix and it's a pain to drill.

 

[Fishy888]

Speaking from experience - that Aragocrete rock is hard to drill it it's a higher cement mix. Mine was about a 50/50 mix and it'st a pain to drill.

I’ll skip that part then. Thank you for letting me know.

 

[Mschmidt]

Hopefully it’ll work because I’ll need all the flow I can get. The closed loop pump will give me 33x tank size per hour. The wave maker gives me 21x. The pump will give me another 5x and the two return pumps for the sump would give 10x between them. Hopefully I can grow some acros with that much flow although I like birdsnest corals and other non acropora corals too.

Holy flow bro! The reef will love that.

 

[Fishy888]

Holy flow bro! The reef will love that.

I hope so. For now I have enough to give me the 21x even if I can’t do what I want with the pump. I’ve got to get the aquascape done pump or not. My wife wants the living room back and I don’t blame her.

 

[Fishy888]

So I turned off the pump and thankfully the flow on the corals and anemones remains unchanged soI just decided to take it out. I’ve been cleaning sand but I still have a few hours to go. At least the sand bucket is only halfway full now.

I’ve started taking some of the rocks on the right hand side out and I added all the sand I’ve cleaned so far. I’m going to aquascape the right hand side but I need to find some flat pieces of rock so I can stack rocks without having to worry about pressure points. I have some fortunately.

I started thinking about how rocks can settle into the sand over time as sand gets pushed around them. As a result I’m going to be careful about how much weight is on any potential pressure points.

My 90 gallon cube had one huge bommie. It towered 20 inches easily. There were plenty of pressure points taking a ton of pressure. I’d never had problems in any other tank but I also never had so much rock weighing down on any pressure points. I had 100 lbs of rock in that tank.

The cube was made in 2012. The bottom glass wasn’t tempered. That might have made a difference too.

I learned a lot of lessons as a result of the catastrophic failure of the last tank and I’ve been applying them here. There’s no reason this tank shouldn’t hold water for decades. As long as there are minimal potential pressure points on the glass and none of those bearing much weight at all everything should do quite well.

 

[Fishy888]

I made some decent progress on the aquascape last night. The lights went out just as I was about to take pics. I took pictures anyway though.

In this image is the bommie that I finished aquascaping earlier in the week. I ended up rounded the end a bit in the process of separating the two bommies.

Here’s the right hand bommie so far. My reefing friend has a cave like piece she’s giving me since she’s not using it in her new build. That piece will be incorporated into the bommie once I get it. It weighs about 20 pounds so there’s a good chance of a major re-aquascaping of this bommie.

Here’s the space between the bommies. Much of this rock will have corals glued to them and in turn they’ll be glued to the major rocks making up the two bommies.

I took a macro shot of the tank. One thing I did was to move some of the corals to places that will soon be under the new lights.

The lights will be more dim but the shimmer from the halides will be amazing. All three halides work as do the T5s. They’re 150 watt halides so there should be decent enough PAR to have some zoas, LPS, and a Derasa clam on the sand. I hope that I can grow a maxima or two higher up right under one of the halides. If I could grow a crocea under the double ended 150s that would be amazing! Of course there are also T5s in the light bar. I just don’t know that they can penetrate much past 24 inches with any meaningful PAR.

The derasa would likely end up going in the space between the bommies.

 

[N1tew0lf1212]

Looking good buddy hope all is well can't wait for this thing to be flowing full of acros

 

[Fishy888]

Looking good buddy hope all is well can't wait for this thing to be flowing full of acros

Me either. A little bit at a time and there will be some acro blamming happening.

Just take it easy with that arm of yours. We all want you to get better too.

 

[Fishy888]

Other than topping off the tank I haven’t messed with, nor will I be messing with the tank today. I took some new pictures today with the light on. The water is crystal clear today. In fact, this is the clearest the water in the 210 has been since setup.

Here’s the aquascape as of today.

Dory has definitely grown as has her appetite. I’m feeding her more of my frozen mix. I still need to purée some broccoli, peas, and nori for her but it turns out hippo tangs are mainly zooplankton consumers so they’re meat eaters mainly. Nonetheless they also eat algae so I need to get her to eat some every now and again. I also need to get her some frozen zooplankton and to get my pod population up for Dory and the mated pair of mandarin dragonettes I want to have eventually.

 

[Fishy888]

When I fed the tank tonight I target fed the nems.

They’re doing well but I know they’re about to be under lights that are dimmer than they’re used to so I’ll need to target feed them a little more often. Once I load the new lights with ATI blue pluses, it will give the larger metal halide light that I’m currently using a run for its money PAR wise and my corals and nems will start fluorescing much more.

Other than that, especially in this weather, I’m leaving well enough alone. I love interacting with the tank but it’s nice that things are doing well enough that I don’t have to have my hands in the tank 24/7. I’ll have to top off the system tomorrow but that’s easy and fast enough.

This is a shout-out to @fishguy242. I really appreciate all you’ve done for me. You’ve shown me things to looks for like that area of my 210 that looked like it was patched (thankfully it wasn’t). I hope to pick your brain some more now that things are progressing like they are. I hope to visit you at some point fairly soon. I’ll have to bring a case or two. Of Dr. Pepper, that is.

 

[Fishy888]

I figured today would be just another day in paradise. Unfortunately one of my reefing friends had a tank crash. She gave me a nice sized colony of of cabbage leather. It’s the mother colony my mini colony came from. This thing is massive. I took an image of the bucket when I first filled it with water. This is all one rock.

There was xenia on the rock that died before I got it. I’ve been using water from the DT to clean the rock since it’s already made. That and it’s the water the cabbage leather will be living in of course.

It appears the coral is perking up a bit. The water is running much more clearly now. The coral has been sloughing off like a cabbage leather normally does. I’m letting it sit in the water it’s in now since I’m sure there’s more chemicals that need to dissolve. I’m hoping I’ll be able to add it to my system tonight but unless it runs clear I might have to set up a bin to house the colony in. Here’s what the water looks like now.

There’s more cabbage leather than can be seen in this picture.

That’s not even the only rock she gave me today. She gave me this rock today. This is the cave rock.

Then she gave me this rock as well.

Needless to say I’m sad this happened to her. She has helped me and others in this hobby. If it would bring back what she’s lost in the crash I’d give it all back and then some. I’m honored that she chose to give it to me. I just wish it was under far better circumstances.

 

[Fishy888]

Here’s a couple more pictures. Big difference. I might be able to put it in the DT tonight after all.

This image in particular shows how huge this colony is.

The water in the DT is getting a bit yellow so the rock is running about as clear as it can at this point.

I have to make room for the cabbage leather mother colony in the DT soon. I’ll need to rethink the aquascape but for tonight I need to just get it in the tank.

The smell of dead xenia/cabbage leather sloughing has pretty much subsided now. It was horrible for a while though. Sand has been settling out of the rock as it’s been soaking. That’ll help eliminate more phosphates and possibly other things I don’t want.