spartanfish's 37 cube

[spartanfish]

as promised, some pics and current info about my tank!

SETUP
-37 gallon oceanic cube
-10 gallon DIY fuge with chaeto and caulerpa lit by 1 10 watt CF shop light.
-aqua-c remora skimmer runs 24 hours
-outer orbit MH fixture (150 + 2x65)
-two maxi-jets in the main display and a mag-5 to run the sump return.

Chemistry
-RO water from the grocery store
-Reef Crystals at SG 1.025
-at last check, CA = 380 and Alk = 8
-have been dosing with seachem reef complete and reef carbonate to raise the cal/alk
-use B-ionic 2 part every now and then to try to maintain ca/alk
-dose seachem reef plus once a week or so
-Nitrate 0

Fish
-1 Ocellaris
-1 Sixline
-1 Yellow Watchman
-2 blue chromis

Corals

LPS: neon green candycane, rainbow acan
Softies: tyree green leather frag, a couple rhodactis shrooms and a bright red shroom.
Zoas: eagle eyes, fire and ice, raspberry limeaids, purple death, kedd reds (my favorite!), yellow sand polyps, blowpops, some pink and purple zoas i am not sure if they have a name, and some solid lavender zoas (the guy claimed they were tubbs blue but i haven't seen any blue in my tank...) I have also gone through a lot of other morphs that have died off for whatever reason
Other: a couple kinds of cloves.

Pictures to follow.

 

[spartanfish]

for the top, i have an outer orbit lighting unit sitting on the legs provided, and then I DIY'd a false front and sides to make it look like a canopy. I think it turned out really nice -

 

[spartanfish]

small prop rack

sad fire and ice

sad GSP

very sad piece of kedd reds. they were open yesterday...

 

[spartanfish]

the original piece of kedd reds, now covered in bryopsis.

raspberry limeaids

Sorry all my pics are blurry, i can't take a clear pic of my tank to save my life.
Blowpops

these have been long-stemmed ever since I got them, despite different placements in my tank. I don't know if they are named but they are cool anyway. The heads are a little larger than dime sized.

 

[spartanfish]

 

[spartanfish]

enjoy... hopefully i'll learn to take better pictures soon

 

[ficklefins]

Good looking stuff, and the picture above is my favorite. One of these days I'll find something like that.

 

[spartanfish]

got that piece from Rommel at ultimatefrags a while back

 

[surfn]

hmmm, one common characteristic i see amongst your zoas is they are stretching towards the light like crazy. but w/ 150w MH over a 37g cube, that should be enough light...hmph. what type of bulb? and how old is it? is your UV shield clear?

which MJ's are you running in the tank? 900's?

only other thing i see as a problem, could be your calcium reading. 180?? is that in ppm? thats VERY low. way below normal levels i would think.

from a recent graduate student, on a poverty budget w/ a reef tank...take it from me and ditch all of those expensive additives you are using.

all you need to buy is some ordinary food grade baking soda, and a jar of kents turbo calcium (dry stuff), or a bag calcium chloride de-icer from home depot/lowes (can't remember the names of them).

dose those into your tank as needed to increase the KH and Ca levels, by using this dosing calculator:
http://jdieck1.home.comcast.net/chemcalc.html

 

[spartanfish]

whoops, did i post 180, i meant 380 for the calcium! my lights are 14k phoenix at 6 months old. i suppose the shield on them is a little grimy, good call, i can clean that up. two maxijet 1200's in the main tank and a mag 5 returning water from the sump. i'll bookmark that calculator

 

[Azurel]

On your lighting system is that a Double ended bulb or single? Double right?

 

[spartanfish]

yea it's a double ended HQI.

i cleaned the splash shield on the lights and it might just be my imagination but it really does look brighter in the tank... hopefully the zoas will flatten out a little...

 

[spartanfish]

toad

 

[spartanfish]

So I just got my TDS meter and have been going around measuring water
Tap water at my apartment (city water) = 470 tds
Tap water filtered with a PUR = 450 tds
Meijer RO water (have been using this in my tank since startup) = 5-8 tds
Water from new RO/DI system = ? (haven't set it up yet )

is 5-8 tds enough to cause an algae problem if built up over time?

 

[surfn]

So I just got my TDS meter and have been going around measuring water
Tap water at my apartment (city water) = 470 tds
Tap water filtered with a PUR = 450 tds
Meijer RO water (have been using this in my tank since startup) = 5-8 tds
Water from new RO/DI system = ? (haven't set it up yet )

is 5-8 tds enough to cause an algae problem if built up over time?

yes, very possible. i dont remember for sure, but you can have a tds reading of 0-1 and still have phosphates in the water....so you really need that DI stage.

 

[spartanfish]

sweet, then maybe my new RO/DI that showed up at my door today will be a good step in my ongoing algae battles