Rebooting the 29g AIO

[burningbaal]

had some adaptation-fun, but things are looking better. When I got the spongodes, I decided I'd move the toadstool down to near the sandbed, the unknown zoas are on the other side, just for variety. The spongodes had better polyp extension the past few days and today is looking pretty fuzzy!
The toadstool was really unhappy, there was once or twice I think I saw it shedding its symbiotic dinos (like it was getting too much light?), which is why I moved it down. I then found a mini-aptasia on it (must not have quite killed the original one with the STOP-aptasia), and the little baby aptasia was kinda pinned between the toadstool and the plug, so I think it was irritating the toadstool...just what it needed after all that. Anyways, after torching that aptasia on Monday, the toadstool has a little bit of polyp extension today, so I think it's on the mend. All the fish are happy, still counted 9 snails earlier this week!

I'm on the hunt for a cleaner goby, but maybe a cleaner shrimp would be better. Maybe an algae-eating blenny and maybe a wrasse, but no other fish for this little tank. The parameters were about on-target yesterday. 0.15 PO4, 7.5 NO3, 8.3 dKH. We'll see how the metals are on Saturday, I may buy some Balling additives to start a real dosing regimen (I used some baked baking soda to address a low-alk/hi-Ca/hi-Mg issue).
I may add a couple corals the weekend of the 12th, hoping for all varieties of LPS and easier SPS (no acro yet). But really...whatever locals have I'll try to add 2-4 $10 frags per month for a little while and see how it goes.

Now, corals pics. Front and back of each frag:

 

[burningbaal]

I finally broke down and am going the controller route. I just bought a raspberry pi 4 (2gb) canakit, @Michael Lane hat, a few other odds and ends to make it control an American DJ SRP8 to get 8 channels of outlet control. I'm buying three BRS dosers (AC) used, so I needed a good answer on controlling them, and I've been putting off getting started with Reef-pi, so here we go! I'll probablymove my lighting onto the reef-pi instead of running a cheap outlet timer

Next steps will probably be to add a temperature probe and control my heaters with the reef-pi. Then I want to add more real lighting control for my existing LEDs (old cheap stuff), and get a 165w black box under control. Then the obvious things like adding pH, salinity, ORP just as monitors (not controlling much).

Long term, this will get moved to the new big reef and become a full-fledged controller, including controlling maxspect gyres, DC return pumps, 4 black box lights, the refugium light, skimmer, you get the idea.

I hope to contribute to the source code for reef pi as well, plus...I have ideas

#reefpi

 

[Urtoo]

Welcome to the #reefpi community. I am awaiting my ML boards as well, should be an exciting project you have started.

 

[phixman]

What made you go with a reefpi over other controllers?

 

[burningbaal]

What made you go with a reefpi over other controllers?

cost is definitely a factor, but I was disappointed with the prospect of being stuck in the weird neptune 'programming' bubble. As an actual developer, it pained me every time I looked at someone's apex 'code'.

And I'm interested in being able to do some things Neptune doesn't quite support. things like adding an ambient barometric pressure sensor (to turn off the skimmer when the ambient pressure drops). I know you can get the module for the apex to play with your own games, but then you're stuck using their world to do things they don't support in a 'language' I can't stand to read...

 

[burningbaal]

Lost the chromis, but used it as an excuse to find some additions an LFS had a yellow corris wrasse and a tailspot blenny, but went through safety stop and into the tank (wrasse also had two weeks at 1.010 and low-copper at the store). I couldn't resist a single head torch frag
Also met up with a hobbiest for a 3-head Duncan and a little cyphastrea in need of some TLC

 

[Urtoo]

Have you started your ReePi build?

 

[burningbaal]

Have you started your ReePi build?

sort of...I got the software put together, but need to find a pigtail to wire up the external power supply. It appears the wall wart that came with the canakit doesn't supply enough power to run the RPI, hat, and ADJ's 12V input. Once I dig up a power cable, it should be easy.

 

[burningbaal]

wow, it's been a while! I also lost the bangaii cardinal...no idea, it seemed fine the evening before, then the next day I could barely see it under the rocks getting eating by hermits... weird. The wrasse, blenny, and firefish all seem super happy. Pictures are pretty recent. I also noticed two teeny polyps of the zoa were floating off the plug (I'm not even sure how they hadn't blown all over the tank), so I glued them to another frag. The original plug's worth are super tall, look more like big palys...

Also, I bought a roll of filter fleece for the klir filter (BRS) and rigged up a little egg crate where my AIO wall overflows toward the fuge. At this point, I check it visually at each evening feeding and most days I roll it to get a clean batch of fleece. Surely it's wasting fleece since there's near-zero head pressure, but it's not too bad in such a small tank and it's definitely removing some junk!

 

[burningbaal]

oh, and testing has my nitrates creeping up to about 20 (API), phosphates around 0.1 (salifert), so I bought some brightwell xport-NO3 block from BRS. They're soaking in some tank water seeded with 5mL of MB7 and a tiny bit of Live Rock Enhance until tomorrow night, then I'll stick it in the tank to see if I can limit the nitrates my fledgling refugium hasn't addressed yet.

 

[burningbaal]

Just bought some temperature sensors for my reef-pi that should arrive tomorrow! hoping Tuesday evening I can hook them up. I'm not quite patient enough to put together a secondary waterproofing solution :/ I'll stick two in the tank and one on the wall as an ambient sensor. I think I'm going to find some 3/8" RO line and seal the end with some silicone. When that's ready (soon), I'll rinse the probes in RODI really well and seal them up in there.
This means I'll have real temperature control!

Probably the next thing is a new fuge light. I found a few lights on ebay that are led 'grow' lights (the pink/purple thing) and just the right dimension to stick against the glass on the outside so the fuge is lit along its whole height/width. I'm getting some growth, at least of the grape caulerpa (chaeto just barely), but with my nitrates up at 20ppm and phosphates around 0.15, I'd like a little more from my fuge.

Next concern is dosing, but the demand is so low right now, I'm just catching up weekly with a manual dose after my test. I'll be buying a Jebao DP-4s and dosing adapter for my #reef-pi from @Michael Lane 's tindie store when I decide it's time to buy. I may get his pH board at the same time to work toward that goal. This will be 3ch for balling additives from Tropic Marin, and the fourth reserved for some kind of nutrient (TBD, maybe acropower or something)

At some point, I want to replace my display lighting. Currently an old ebay LED fixture (20w 10kK, 20W actinic) and 36w of 12kK 'reefbar' leds from amazon a while back. I'd like to buy one sbreeflight 165w for the tank, knowing multiple of that is what I want over the future upgrade. I'll modify it to have 2ch dimming from my reef-pi.

I may pitch in some if reef-pi looks to integrate an ORP sensor as I think it'd be great as an alarm. Hard to know when a bacterial bloom is consuming oxygen (for example) unless you're measuring

 

[Ranjib]

any updates on the build?

 

[burningbaal]

sure! I got a barrel to start curing rock for a dream upgrade...not sure when it will be, but I guess that's why it's a dream Anyways, that means I could pull the loose rocks and the one up top that shouldn't have been there.
Currently just the yellow corris wrasse and firefish, both have been in for a while and seem pretty settled. Thinking a pair of bangaii cardinals would be nice, or maybe I'd try another blenny, but there isn't much algae for them to eat, so I'd be feeding herbivore pellets and nori.
Still have the unknown zoas and montipora spongodes, neither have spectacular growth, but I'm hoping I'll get things more consistent soon and that my new light will help (read below). Still have the green-polyp toadstool, definitely a little bigger, though not dramatic. The Duncan is doing pretty well, great big heads and a new one forming, too! The torch seems fine, but again, not too dramatic.

I bought a new 165w black box light (used no name) from another reefer in the area who now has a kessil AP700. I'm waiting for @Michael Lane to get the Mars Aqua adapters back in stock so I can get my #reef-pi to control the lights. My current lights are about 65W of LED, which is probably a little low, I plan to run the 165w lights at about 40% for the first week or two, then maybe ramp them up a few percent each week with a target of maybe 75%, we'll see.

I'm having issues with the temperature probes on my reef-pi, not sure if it's a bad solder job (where I extended the wires and connected to the jst), or a flaw in the GPIO connection or just a bad probe. I may try pulling two of the probes so only one is plugged in at a time, hopefully determining if one of the 3 is bad. The issues are a bit vague; it's often that the connection goes bad after I've been nearby (and note: I don't have a real enclosure, so it's a mess), but sometimes when I haven't even been in the room. The symptom seems to be that the pi will just lose the 1w connection, thus reef-pi can't see what isn't there.
That's my biggest unknown right now...Really wanting to sort out the temperature probe issue

Lights were on their way down, so the pictures are iffy and some corals aren't super thrilled in the dim light, but here we go:
Duncan bottom-center, it's actually green...Hard to see the toadstool in it's same place on the low-right, two zoas on a plug on the sand mid-right. Both fish visible, a couple snails and a hermit or two visible

Other side, the montipora spongodes is on the near side of the top-right rock, but it's in the dark. The cyphastrea is bottom-right, it's happy enough, but shaded this late. zoas on sand on the left.both fish, snails, etc.

Last you can see my refugium where I got a new light from Ebay, just a boring $30 grow light, resting against the glass shining through the side. Mostly grape caulerpa with some chaeto, pods visible when the light is out.
This sucker is BRIGHT! I was running it about 16 hrs a day, but that was cutting my 20+ nitrate and 0.1+ phosphate down to about 15 and 0.05, then a giant water change pulled it back a little further, so I think I'll set this to about 8 hours a day for a while to see how it does.

 

[burningbaal]

Took a few more when the blues kicked on, polyps not al the way open since it's early, but still some okay colors. Looking forward to getting the PWM adapter so I can wire my 165w lights to the reef pi and be done with my 65w I'm running now!

Cyphastrea (meteor shower) is happier than when I first got it, and covering much more of the substrate that it was before

Montipora spongodes has grown, and looks less lumpy, which isn't really what I expected, but that's fine. color was better when I first got it; I look forward to how this will look with the new lights

The torch looks just about the same, but reasonably happy

One of the two zoa plugs: One of these plugs is up for trade if anyone nearby has some LPS to offer:

And the one that seems happiest: the duncan. One new head grown in, even!

And the toadstool, the first of the lot that went in. has grown some, still pretty small, but happy. I haven't seen it shed except the very beginning back in September:

 

[phixman]

Any updates ?

 

[burningbaal]

Any updates ?

Thanks for asking!
I picked up a bunch of frags at aquafest on Saturday! All the other corals are still doing their thing, the only things that aren't visibly grown in the last couple months are the zoas and torch. They're okay, but don't appear to be doing much.
I got 5 frags from one table and 3 from another. I'm not 100% sure I've got these named right, but I think I got it. Photos are pretty severely cropped so some are blurry, but I think that's better than showing it tiny...sorry. Maybe I'll get out the old DSLR sometime soon.

bubble gum Montipora digitata

Montipora setosa

Psammacora sp

Photosynthetic gorgonian

Hammer coral (not very extended at the moment, was better yesterday but ha been in and out quite a bit)

Tyree tricolor Acropora valida
The first acro. Not much polyp extension, but I do see feeding filaments tonight, so I think that's good

Tubbs Montipora stellata

Hydnaphora sp

 

[burningbaal]

Also, I picked up a used black box LED and the @Michael Lane Mars Aqua adapter to go with my #reef-pi

With Michael's help, I managed to get the drivers wired in (turns out my driver is using pwm directly, so it took some creative wiring, yay for "vendor" support!). However, I think I ended up frying the whites driver, so this is all-blue right now... :/ It's probably okay for a while, because the 25g display doesn't need 165w of light anyways, but I am on a hunt for a replacement driver. If I can't ever find one, I'll probably plan on switching to sbreeflights instead

 

[Michael Lane]

I love the look of that setosa!

I've had a hard time finding replacement drivers for the black box lights that are cheap enough to make sense. I recently picked up a Viparspectra light. I think @AbjectMaelstroM tried one out and found that it can actually dim all the way to zero. I think I'll have time this weekend to check it out.

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

I love the look of that setosa!

I've had a hard time finding replacement drivers for the black box lights that are cheap enough to make sense. I recently picked up a Viparspectra light. I think @AbjectMaelstroM tried one out and found that it can actually dim all the way to zero. I think I'll have time this weekend to check it out.

Yeah I've done some preliminary searches for drivers, while I came across a place that sells them, it was bulk order only so passed on it. Honestly, for the price of the light, I probably wouldn't bother trying to seek a replacement driver and just buy a new light.

The viparspectra lights dim fine to 1(0) with Reef pi pwm. At stock config the 0 (off) to 1 (on) is actually a big jump, probably closer to 5% pwm.

 

[burningbaal]

Yeah I've done some preliminary searches for drivers, while I came across a place that sells them, it was bulk order only so passed on it. Honestly, for the price of the light, I probably wouldn't bother trying to seek a replacement driver and just buy a new light.

The viparspectra lights dim fine to 1(0) with Reef pi pwm. At stock config the 0 (off) to 1 (on) is actually a big jump, probably closer to 5% pwm.

ya, I may just roll with my 80w of blue until I decide to buy from sbreeflights. I think they've hit a sweet spot with a black box that actually gives support (replacement parts) with some upside relative to a standard black box, and the basic model is closer to the black box price than a radion, with as much power as either and wires cleanly to a reef-pi.

If I were ever to go another level up, I think I'd go ReeFi, but it's a bit rich for my blood, as evidenced by my interest in black box and sbreeflight