The heater failure build

[attiland]

I have had aquarium since I can remember. Ok the very first one hardly can be called an aquarium as it was just a 3l jar with a 2-3 inch catfish in it my dad caught while we were fishing. And that fish didn’t last long with me as he had to go back to the river Danube. It was growing faster and was eating more than any of us anticipated.
That fish has been replaced by a pair of guppies. Was better choice for the size of that jar. No heater, no air stone. Just about worked. In the winter I have moved it closer to the radiator, in the summer I have moved it away from the direct sun. This was almost 40 years ago.

Few years later I have sold my model trains to finance my custom built tank placed on the top of my desk lifted up about 10-15 inches by a made shift stand put together by my dad. This 60l tank housed all sorts of fish over the years of my childhood from guppies to dwarf cichlids and later small Tanganyikan mouth breeders.
Than adulthood hit and I had all sorts of tanks between 60l to 400l with mainly Tanganyikan cichlids. I was fascinated by them. From aquatics point of view life was kind to me.
Than about 14 years ago I needed a change and a challenge so I moved countries and for a few years I had no tank but challenge. After a while I couldn’t help myself and bought a small 40l tank. At this point my first marriage have been failed I just had to have some water in the house. After all I am now living in a country where the weather is cold and miserable half of the time and I stuck indoors with too much time in my hand so I need some entertainment other than a TV I don’t watch and it is good for Feng shui too I don’t believe in.
Fast forward to beginning of this year I am now remarried to a beautiful woman and we have 4 years old little boy.
In Feb disaster stroke; the heater on my 130l tank failed in the “ON” position and whipped out all my Malawi cichlids leaving me no fish or aquatic plants left. I was heartbroken.
I was playing with the thought of a reef for years now but have been put of by my wife saying we gonna need a bigger (boat) house and once we move there you can have it a bigger tank and even saltwater in it.
Great I thought, so I have bought some equipment just to be prepared. I will certainly need these for the life in the promised paradise. This was considered of a Refractometer and a small in-tank skimmer sized for up to 200l tank. Did this before I even had a clue how to set reef tank up. You just put saltwater in the tank and the fish and coral comes soon after right? Beautiful to be a newbie again.

But you don’t want a heartbroken man in the house. It is not healthy. The broken heater is a sign, the reef is calling!!!!
So research started again and a week later I have started to order salt, sand and rock and here we are with a small 130l (39g) tank waiting to be home for Nemo and others.

The pictures has been taken after about 2 months. No corals at the time and still using the freshwater lighting. But I will come to that in the next post.

 

[WIReefer]

I enjoyed reading your story congrats on getting the reef! Just be aware that the tang will probably outgrow that system fast.

 

[attiland]

I enjoyed reading your story congrats on getting the reef! Just be aware that the tang will probably outgrow that system fast.

The paradise is still in offering long life for that fish with me. Upgrade will hopefully come before the size will be a problem.

 

[attiland]

The Tank

Hungarians are a proud nation. Proud of their history and their culture and food... And then the communists came and tried to take it all from them and the results is they don’t believe anything just because somebody said it is like that. There was too much lies going on.
Ask my wife she would say Hungarians are the most cynical people of all nations she has been ever seen. Expect us say things as they are, no going around the bushes.
Mix it all together and add a hint of geek to it and you get an analyst. That is me.

All my preparation for this tank were results of research of my own as I just can’t take one person’s advice without checking it against other’s. And before you ask I didn’t think I know it all it is actually made me realise I know nothing and also realised most of us are in the same shoe. That is where R2R starts to play for me.

Before I get a coral or a fish or an equivalent I spend days checking the web to figure our what to expect from them. This is how I soon become an R2R and BRS fun as the amount information on these websites are exceptional.

The technical details of the tank

I know many of you like the technical details of an aquarium so let’s see som of these.

Tank: AquaOne Aqua Nano 80 130L(39g)
(This is an Aqua one exclusive build for Pets at Home) I love the curved corners of it. It is an all in one tank. Behind the back panel there are filter chambers filled with mainly mechanical media.

Lighting: AQUANEST plus m7 running on about 75% peak. This is a cheap version of some big better known names.


http://www.aquanestlight.com/AQUANEST PLUS LED AQUARIUM LIGHT/

Extra flow done by 2x Jebao SW-4 Wave Maker

ATO: AutoAqua Smart ATO Lite
UV Jebo 18 w

I am not running a skimmer yet but I have one ready for action. Need some modifications though.

The water is mixed from RO + RED SEA MARINE SALT NEW FORMULA to close to 33 ppt


And the rock is red limestone 10kg started dry and the sand is live Red Sea fine white Coral sand.

I will tell about the inhabitants next time.

 

[attiland]

Not long after feeding you can tell the Duncan is happy.

 

[attiland]

The inhabitants
I am new to saltwater but have loads of experience with freshwater aquarium. Cycling them never caused any issues there. For at least the first 10 years of my aquatics life I wasn’t even aware of the process. Not in details anyway.
I was probably lucky but never had to do more than get rid of the chlorine and add fish. I have to say that something always came from an old tank so seeding was done without being aware. In fact we had no equipment to measure anything anyway.
We could see it from the colour and smell of the water the quality is probably good or at least we thought that we could. I would have never hesitate to drink from any of my freshwater aquarium.
Well the saltwater tank tastes awful so I had to find some different way to do that.

I have started with dry rock and live sand and some dr Tim’s one and only bacteria. The main reason was financial not that it was my preferred method. Many people did this with success so I trusted it enough to try. Within a day I had no ammonia and the first nitrate showed up on the test. This was quite quick I thought.
It was midweek and I was busy. I am working as an IT and COVID-19 made my life very busy I had no energy left by the end of the day on the other hand it helped me to wait for he first fish. A little pair of clown fish. They were small about 2 inch.
I was fallowing the BRS 5 minutes guidance in the set up and the first step has been completed. Happy as can be.
Writing game is not my favourite thing so I have ordered my lights and was expecting long delivery. No coral for me at this point anyway. The delivery was expected to be 3-4 weeks. It was 8 at the end.
The fish on the other hand were happy with the light the tank originally came with but those were for freshwater.

Never mind I have started to build bio load with fish instead of corals. The clowns were fighting a lot after the first few days. I know it is normal but I wanted to break it up a bit so 3 Azure Damselfish fallowed in about 2 weeks.
Those little buggers ended the fight between the clowns by intimidating them every time they started it. The solution was a bit like what Malawi cichlid tank owners employed. None of these fights seems to be serious anyway so I have had carry on every 2 weeks with one new fish for a while.

The first CUC has also arrived after about a month in the form of 3 hermits and 2 turbo snails.
Latter died in 2 weeks and I blame high magnesium for it although I have no proof but the symptoms.

The current stock:
Fish;
2 clowns
1 Scopas tang ( this is the only one even has a name. Cola battle aka ghost fish)
2 angel damsels
1 royal dottyback
1 Ruby Red Dragonet (I know don’t start me on that)

The CUC ;
5 hermits (4 scarlet 1 blue leg)
2 Trochus snails
2 Astraea snails
2-3 mini brittle stars (came from as hitchhiker)
Pods, pineapple sponges and feather dusters. (Most came as hitchhikers)

 

[attiland]

My fight with dinos

The Start

As I mentioned before I have started with dry rocks and it comes with a price. Lack of biodiversity. The buzzword even new reefers are aware of and no doubt it is paying a big part of the Dino problems we hear about a lot in R2R.

I have had (sill till a certain degree have) my fair share of dinos . I would love to know what has triggered it but I only have assumption as I was doing a lot of things at the time of it has started.

The first signs a naive aquarists easily ignore. I had only light dusting on the glass and the edge of the sand. Watching BRS videos I assumed this was diatoms and expected for a new reef. Not to mention I have used tap water for the first few weeks. My RO unit has just arrived at the time so I have ignored it.

It was June and the problem hasn’t yet escalated too much or at least didn’t show that much as one of the thing Dinos really like is light and light was not present in high the volume than since the lighting unit I have ordered was delayed. The freshwater lights came with the tank were not enough for a full bloom. I didn’t know what kind of surprise is lurking in the shallow waters. It didn’t have JAWS but it has bit hard later in August.

In August I have decided it is time for more biodiversity so introduced Rotifers and Copepods not knowing it could feed Dinos when there is a die off of the population. And there was die offs as I wasn’t feeding them and the available algae would not able to keep up the amount introduced.
I have also dosed vibrant thinking more bacteria is the better.

Then at the end of the month the lights arrived and few days later the bloom started in full force the sand turned brown. Nitrate soon hit 0 and. Phosphate fallowed it soon. It has happened in the matter of days. Sill naively choose to ignore it as it may go away itself. Well it didn’t.

I only had a suspicion that it might be the “you know what” because it was looking better in the morning than at the end of the light peak.

I have started go trough the Dino tread’s 600 pages and soon realised it is not the question if I have Dinos but which type I have. And to my first post on the tread got a short answer: get a microscope! Now I think it was one of the best advise I have ever got. It is more important equipment than a fishnet.

So I have ordered one which turned out to be useless and than an another one was good enough for taking a picture trough my phone to ID it.

I have found out I not only have to deal with the “D” word but with the “A” too. Later stands for Amphidinium and I had small and large cell ones. Yay.

The main problem with these ones that they don’t tend to swim much staying on and under the sand mainly and resistant to Dino X and other chemicals.

This one seems to be so tricky to get rid of it had its own tread in R2R with people expecting with different techniques to get rid of them.

The plan
.
Since it is long winded to explain all the whys I will just list what my plan was below;
- increase nitrates (food grade Saltpetre)
- Increase phosphates (KH2PO4)
- Stop water changes
- Get a UV
- Dose silicates (Brightwell Sponge Excel)
- Do manual removal as much as possible (filter floss and vacuuming)
- Increase biodiversity (add adding live rock and mod)

It meant to order a bunch of stuff, wait for deliveries and tell my wife you have to be patient. Now that’s not in her nature. She is a do it now type of woman.

It took more than a month by the time everything were together so I have started to do the things as they arrived.

Started to dose phosphate and nitrate. In the beginning it was gone almost instantly. The amount of 20-40ppm of nitrate gone in less than 24 hours in the first few days. Phosphate was dosed to 2ppm daily and gone by next day. In the fist few days I started to question my maths but than without significant transition I could stop dosing these. After in next 2 months I had to top up maybe twice the nitrates.

Nitrate seemed to be out of control and sometimes hit over 40-50ppm than disappeared soon after. Probably more was going on in the microscopic level than what I could understand.

The UV has been plumbed from and to the display fashion (required for more efficient operation) I could see an affect within a week. This was targeting the small cell Amphidinium

I have bought from the LFS some Miracle Mud® and 2 fist size live rock and put it in the tank. Apart from some sponges and Coraline Algae growing on them not much visible happened at first but nitrates started to stabilise and maybe the water seemed to be cleaner. I say maybe because at this point I was desperate to find something positive.

I have also employed some chaeto in the display over the worst affected areas. I didn’t see real positive affect of this but thought it worth a shot as some people had success with it. My Scopas tang was eating most of it and it started to disappear soon. What it did do though it introduced some critters namely micro brittle stars.

I had a filter floss hanging in high flow areas to manual collection of dinos. Worked really well to export Dinos but my wife wasn’t impressed with it. I had to go into long uncomfortable conversations on how soon I will remove it.

Started to siphon the top of the sand without really disturbing it trough a 5 micron filter sock. This gave the illusion of clean sand for about a day or two.

The beak trough

All above made a difference in its on way but the battle seemed to be never ending and clean sand to be just a dream. Due to the conditions in cyano started to appear too.
But than finally the silicates have arrived. The product I was going for wasn’t easy to get hold of in the UK. Everywhere the stock was back ordered.

Measuring silicates is hard and tests are unreliable so I decided not to order yet another test kit but calculate the dosage by simply doing the mats. 2ppm was the target to achieve diatoms to bloom. So I have just dumped it in in 2 days. Diatom meant to kill my large cell Amphidinium.
Within 3 days I had the diatoms bloom and within a week I couldn’t found dinos.

2 weeks later cemyclean got rid of the cyano and after months I had clear sand and rocks.

The fight is not over though. I had a small relapse of dinos in some small patches so as of today I have to started dosing silicates again. I possibly won’t go as high with the dose this time but we will see how it goes in a week or two.

I have restarted water changes.

Ever since I try to tell everyone to get a microscope and use it to ID their algae as part of their routine. I feel it is more important than have low level nitrate and phosphate.
My corals by the way really enjoyed the elevated nitrate and phosphate levels and the silicates made the water so crisp that for days I was just couldn’t talk about anything else but that.

I have also came across a video I want to share with you. So much to learn from it;



The 2 dino tread are a must to read

Amphidinium Dinoflagellate Treatment Methods

This thread is a spin-off from the @mcarroll very successful Dino thread The purpose is to discuss methods for removal and fighting against a particular strain of dinoflagellate - Large Cell Amphidinium. It seems to make up about a third of the cases of dinos. The reason this strain gets its...

www.reef2reef.com

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/dinoflagellates-–-are-you-tired-of-battling-altogether.293318/

Finally I want to say special thank you for those people helped me the most in this fight. @ScottB @taricha


The worst state of the tank can be seen in the attached picture for your amusement and hoping this will give hope for those think their brown uglies are bad.

 

[ScottB]

My fight with dinos

The Start

As I mentioned before I have started with dry rocks and it comes with a price. Lack of biodiversity. The buzzword even new reefers are aware of and no doubt it is paying a big part of the Dino problems we hear about a lot in R2R.

I have had (sill till a certain degree have) my fair share of dinos . I would love to know what has triggered it but I only have assumption as I was doing a lot of things at the time of it has started.

The first signs a naive aquarists easily ignore. I had only light dusting on the glass and the edge of the sand. Watching BRS videos I assumed this was diatoms and expected for a new reef. Not to mention I have used tap water for the first few weeks. My RO unit has just arrived at the time so I have ignored it.

It was June and the problem hasn’t yet escalated too much or at least didn’t show that much as one of the thing Dinos really like is light and light was not present in high the volume than since the lighting unit I have ordered was delayed. The freshwater lights came with the tank were not enough for a full bloom. I didn’t know what kind of surprise is lurking in the shallow waters. It didn’t have JAWS but it has bit hard later in August.

In August I have decided it is time for more biodiversity so introduced Rotifers and Copepods not knowing it could feed Dinos when there is a die off of the population. And there was die offs as I wasn’t feeding them and the available algae would not able to keep up the amount introduced.
I have also dosed vibrant thinking more bacteria is the better.

Then at the end of the month the lights arrived and few days later the bloom started in full force the sand turned brown. Nitrate soon hit 0 and. Phosphate fallowed it soon. It has happened in the matter of days. Sill naively choose to ignore it as it may go away itself. Well it didn’t.

I only had a suspicion that it might be the “you know what” because it was looking better in the morning than at the end of the light peak.

I have started go trough the Dino tread’s 600 pages and soon realised it is not the question if I have Dinos but which type I have. And to my first post on the tread got a short answer: get a microscope! Now I think it was one of the best advise I have ever got. It is more important equipment than a fishnet.

So I have ordered one which turned out to be useless and than an another one was good enough for taking a picture trough my phone to ID it.

I have found out I not only have to deal with the “D” word but with the “A” too. Later stands for Amphidinium and I had small and large cell ones. Yay.

The main problem with these ones that they don’t tend to swim much staying on and under the sand mainly and resistant to Dino X and other chemicals.

This one seems to be so tricky to get rid of it had its own tread in R2R with people expecting with different techniques to get rid of them.

The plan
.
Since it is long winded to explain all the whys I will just list what my plan was below;
- increase nitrates (food grade Saltpetre)
- Increase phosphates (KH2PO4)
- Stop water changes
- Get a UV
- Dose silicates (Brightwell Sponge Excel)
- Do manual removal as much as possible (filter floss and vacuuming)
- Increase biodiversity (add adding live rock and mod)

It meant to order a bunch of stuff, wait for deliveries and tell my wife you have to be patient. Now that’s not in her nature. She is a do it now type of woman.

It took more than a month by the time everything were together so I have started to do the things as they arrived.

Started to dose phosphate and nitrate. In the beginning it was gone almost instantly. The amount of 20-40ppm of nitrate gone in less than 24 hours in the first few days. Phosphate was dosed to 2ppm daily and gone by next day. In the fist few days I started to question my maths but than without significant transition I could stop dosing these. After in next 2 months I had to top up maybe twice the nitrates.

Nitrate seemed to be out of control and sometimes hit over 40-50ppm than disappeared soon after. Probably more was going on in the microscopic level than what I could understand.

The UV has been plumbed from and to the display fashion (required for more efficient operation) I could see an affect within a week. This was targeting the small cell Amphidinium

I have bought from the LFS some Miracle Mud® and 2 fist size live rock and put it in the tank. Apart from some sponges and Coraline Algae growing on them not much visible happened at first but nitrates started to stabilise and maybe the water seemed to be cleaner. I say maybe because at this point I was desperate to find something positive.

I have also employed some chaeto in the display over the worst affected areas. I didn’t see real positive affect of this but thought it worth a shot as some people had success with it. My Scopas tang was eating most of it and it started to disappear soon. What it did do though it introduced some critters namely micro brittle stars.

I had a filter floss hanging in high flow areas to manual collection of dinos. Worked really well to export Dinos but my wife wasn’t impressed with it. I had to go into long uncomfortable conversations on how soon I will remove it.

Started to siphon the top of the sand without really disturbing it trough a 5 micron filter sock. This gave the illusion of clean sand for about a day or two.

The beak trough

All above made a difference in its on way but the battle seemed to be never ending and clean sand to be just a dream. Due to the conditions in cyano started to appear too.
But than finally the silicates have arrived. The product I was going for wasn’t easy to get hold of in the UK. Everywhere the stock was back ordered.

Measuring silicates is hard and tests are unreliable so I decided not to order yet another test kit but calculate the dosage by simply doing the mats. 2ppm was the target to achieve diatoms to bloom. So I have just dumped it in in 2 days. Diatom meant to kill my large cell Amphidinium.
Within 3 days I had the diatoms bloom and within a week I couldn’t found dinos.

2 weeks later cemyclean got rid of the cyano and after months I had clear sand and rocks.

The fight is not over though. I had a small relapse of dinos in some small patches so as of today I have to started dosing silicates again. I possibly won’t go as high with the dose this time but we will see how it goes in a week or two.

I have restarted water changes.

Ever since I try to tell everyone to get a microscope and use it to ID their algae as part of their routine. I feel it is more important than have low level nitrate and phosphate.
My corals by the way really enjoyed the elevated nitrate and phosphate levels and the silicates made the water so crisp that for days I was just couldn’t talk about anything else but that.

I have also came across a video I want to share with you. So much to learn from it;



The 2 dino tread are a must to read

Amphidinium Dinoflagellate Treatment Methods

This thread is a spin-off from the @mcarroll very successful Dino thread The purpose is to discuss methods for removal and fighting against a particular strain of dinoflagellate - Large Cell Amphidinium. It seems to make up about a third of the cases of dinos. The reason this strain gets its...

www.reef2reef.com

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/dinoflagellates-–-are-you-tired-of-battling-altogether.293318/

Finally I want to say special thank you for those people helped me the most in this fight. @ScottB @taricha


The worst state of the tank can be seen in the attached picture for your amusement and hoping this will give hope for those think their brown uglies are bad.

Thanks for documenting and glad the tank is improving. It is VERY common to have dino relapses. Keep track of your input/output changes and nutrient levels. Over time two things will happen: the biome will get more stable and you will know better how & when to tweak inputs/outputs just enough.

I haven't "seen" dinos in my system for a year now, but if I let the glass dirty up and take a scraping under a microscope I can always find a few. They are just being outcompeted by other consumers.

 

[attiland]

My corals
My first exposure to corals was in black and white when Jacques Cousteau’s dive into the oceans were aired on TV. It has introduced a magical world down below the surface I am really attracted to. This has been fallowed by my personal favourite, David Attenborough’s documentaries. His deep soothing voice always grabbed my attention and took me with him to discover wildlife over and below the surface now in colour.

Sons strange but when I was a child we had two channels on the TV and my Dad has highlighted all the films worth watching in the TV magazine. He has never missed to tell us if a documentary about oceanic life was about to come on.

This and many of his similar influence turned my attention to aquariums and later and made me the person who cannot really imagine the life without a tank full of life.

My dream is a mixed LPS dominated reef with clown fish occurring some of the corals. Although at the moment The heater failure build has not got super exiting corals as I wanted to go slow but hopefully soon it will become a swirling mass of life.

I already can’t take my eyes of it and I can only hope my wife won’t change her mind about how good idea it was to go salty. She already saying it is too much work not realising the most of it is just observing.

Santa of course has been asked for a little help. For the record I was a really good boy.
But for now here are the pictures I have taken this evening.

Enjoy.

 

[attiland]

I love Santa. He already have sent me something via my wife. And I know it will certainly mean I will have to upgrade my tank in the next year or so.

 

[attiland]

New fish new problem. My butterfly is hard to feed frozen. I have a rockwork with loads of halls so I try to hide some food hid for him but I have not really seen him eaten much. He has taken out loads of my feather dusters but nut much else i have seen him eating. He is in constant search though.
Today I have built him a feeder from a plastic tab and a shell. We will see how it goes.

 

[attiland]

An almost full shot of the build. My new Duncan has opened fully. Still struggling with the feeling of the butterfly though. I have to find the right food. He is not really eating frozen and spends fairly long chasing his reflections on the side. When he gets bored he searches the rock works for food but looks like other fish eating not triggering him to try. Some white worms are in the order. Hopefully that will make a change.

 

[count krunk]

CBBs also love clams. From the grocery store. Buy one open it and put it in your tank for the CBB to eat.

They are a notoriously difficult fish, what size tank do you plan upgrading to? 75, 120 gallons?

 

[attiland]

Happy new year all. The big news is for the last 2 days that CBS started to eat clams for the first time. I am very exited.

 

[attiland]

CBBs also love clams. From the grocery store. Buy one open it and put it in your tank for the CBB to eat.

They are a notoriously difficult fish, what size tank do you plan upgrading to? 75, 120 gallons?

My plan is 300+L(79g) as the minimum. We plan to move so it really depends on the space I will have. There is a good chance of custom build tank.

 

[attiland]

You have to be superstitious when it comes to New Year’s Day. It is said what you do on that day will be done a lot in the rest of the year. Well I have had to wait till this morning with the first water change and vacuuming of the sand just in case it’s true

So here is the pic after a quick work this morning. I have to make things bit more efficient it was still 3 hours work to mix salt do the sand vacuuming and do the water change.

 

[attiland]

The feeding routine upgraded

My fish has better feeding routine the me, honestly if nobody tells me to eat I can go all day without it but the fish doesn’t like this as much so I feed frozen twice a day. Once in the morning and once in the late afternoon.

The food is a random mixture of Krill /squid /Brine shrimp /Rotifera/Mysis. My butterfly eats only clams at the moment once a day from frozen and the Scopas Tang have some dried seaweed couple of times a week and all above too, he is an eating machine. The dragonet has frozen Brine and Mysis as target feeding and I top up the live pods in the tank from a subscription arrives on Wednesdays.
About twice a week as part of one of the feeding I feed the corals too with frozen and I have just started to add pytoplankton twice a week.

I select an odd day every now on then not to feed at all as I feel this is actually beneficial for the whole system including all inhabitants.

Now I have written it all down it seems to be quite a variety of food I put in the tank.

I will be honest I sometimes find it hard to find that ten minutes for the feeding. Since there is loads target feeding going on I have to turn off the pumps and ATO while doing this. ATO has to go off because when the pumps are off the water level drops at the point I am measuring it.

Today I have installed a new smart extension lead to take away the pain of turning things off and back on which significantly extends the time I have to spend with this. From now on I can just ask Alexa to turn on the feeding routine. This turns off all flow and the ATO and 8 minutes later it turns back thing slowly on by one with little delays.

Not bad for £20 not to mention this has multi-standard sockets which helps in the UK as almost everything from abroad comes with a bulky converter instead of proper sockets.

And installing all this had an another benefit. I have cleared up the cabinet under the tank as mine was just as messy as yours.

 

[attiland]

Today I have ordered 2 more smart switch as planing to have all equipment in a managed plug. This will help me later for a bit of smart setup too. I am planning on installing a reef PI later this year and hoping to able to control these switches with it too.

On the sad side my CBB seems to be on it's way out. Yesterday was eating fine today morning I have not noticed anything bad on my routine check, but in the afternoon I have noticed him floating with the current in the tank. I have separate him in a small trading box so it can rest but I have no high hopes. He seems to have balance problems with no visible injuries or other symptoms. He is floating on his side and I think he has hours maybe days left. This event seems to realise my biggest fears what I had when I got it as a Christmas gift.

 

[ScottB]

Today I have ordered 2 more smart switch as planing to have all equipment in a managed plug. This will help me later for a bit of smart setup too. I am planning on installing a reef PI later this year and hoping to able to control these switches with it too.

On the sad side my CBB seems to be on it's way out. Yesterday was eating fine today morning I have not noticed anything bad on my routine check, but in the afternoon I have noticed him floating with the current in the tank. I have separate him in a small trading box so it can rest but I have no high hopes. He seems to have balance problems with no visible injuries or other symptoms. He is floating on his side and I think he has hours maybe days left. This event seems to realise my biggest fears what I had when I got it as a Christmas gift.

CBB seem to be one of the more challenging fishes to get settled. Hopefully others can suggest intervention.

 

[attiland]

Rest in peace Kite my beloved Copperband butterfly.