Mhucasey's SPS obsession

[glaukos]

Can't help you much mhucasey,since my setup is different but i can feel you on the high cost of electricity
Even changed a lot of my equipment because of that!
What i did was cut back my sump's volume by almost 60%.It really helped regarding the time that my heaters needed to do their job!
I had a lot of space in there for "just in case" purposes which i never used,for any of them
Hope you'll find a good solution to this my friend!

p.s
Love that anemone pic too

[mhucasey]

Originally Posted by glaukos

Can't help you much mhucasey,since my setup is different but i can feel you on the high cost of electricity
Even changed a lot of my equipment because of that!
What i did was cut back my sump's volume by almost 60%.It really helped regarding the time that my heaters needed to do their job!
I had a lot of space in there for "just in case" purposes which i never used,for any of them
Hope you'll find a good solution to this my friend!

p.s
Love that anemone pic too

Thats one bummer about changing up the design, i added extra tanks to the system to increase the system volume, but now they are just big tanks of water for the most part, so I will be eliminating them to make the system more efficient.

I'm thinking of building the new enclosure out of extruded Aluminum t-slot, its strong, light, corrosion proof, and I can attach finished wood panels to the outside to make it look nice. Plus it gives me an excuse to work with a material I haven't used yet

[mhucasey]

Having the system in the garage gave me a chance to try out a bunch of different things, but in the end the Pellets and the skimmer are the only parts of the system I have to keep. In a couple of months I will have been using Pellets from Reef Interests for a year and the All in one pellets for 6 months of that. They have been a true "Set and forget" method for me now.

Things I've tried in the quest for happy coral water:
Vertex biopellets - corals showed stress after a couple of months
Vinegar dosing - Worked well but never could keep my PO4 down without a lot of nitrate dosing
GFO - killed two clams and stressed the corals
Pellets from Reef Dynamics - never seemed to do much of anything. PO4 stayed constant.
Zeovit system - I'm still a believer it works but it has a bioload limit that is lower than my system was throwing at it. It just couldn't keep my Phosphate low and the more I tried to push it the more corals died.
Lanthanum Chloride - this is pretty good stuff, I haven't had any issues with the fish when I've added it, but it only knocked down Phosphate temporarily, and I was a little concerned about long term effects.
NP biopellets with PO4X4phosphate remover - The NP pellets worked and brought everything down to the levels I wanted, I tried using the PO4X4 with it but it is a hassle and a half keeping it in a reactor. After the initial use and regeneration, it didn't seem to work anymore. I finally just pulled it and let the NP pellets work and they did well on their own, when phosphate would rise a little I'd add LaCl.

Finally, the All-in-one pellets. The tank looks better than ever, the skimmer responded with increased skimmate and my phosphate values stayed low to undetectable. Honestly I haven't tested phosphate in about 3 months. The only thing to know with these is that you will need to replenish them faster than regular biopellets as they get consumed more quickly.

[Indiana Reefin]

Your tank is a inspiration! Let me know if you ever make s frag pack and are willing to ship

[mhucasey]

Originally Posted by Indiana Reefin

Your tank is a inspiration! Let me know if you ever make s frag pack and are willing to ship

Thanks very much! I don't have any plans to ship anywhere but that could change, ill let you know.

[mhucasey]

What passes for Yellow Acroporas in my tank:

And the Strawberry Shortcake continues to get better!:

Note that that picture is minimally processed, here is the original unprocessed iPhone pic. The color on this coral is unreal!:

Finally, the Pink/Magenta Millie that I grew from a small light brown millie, one of the first corals in the tank:

(this pic is un-retouched as well, it didn't really need any blue removal)

[mhucasey]

Pics from this evening:






The bottom part of the pic begins to get blurry because the iPhone 6 won't fit in the porthole viewer flat against the bottom, so its taking the pic a little at an angle.

[reefmutt]

Looking really nice!
Is that an ice fire echinata in the middle of the last pic?

[mhucasey]

Thanks! The tank is really humming along right now, I'm even taking a chance on a blue table acro that was dying at my LFS, he let me have it to see if I could save it. If it does it could be pretty spectacular

As for the blue tipped coral, it wasn't sold to me as an ice fire but it looks identical to the ice fires that I've seen, so I think it is.

[glaukos]

Great colors mhucasey
Love that SSC

[mhucasey]

Originally Posted by glaukos

Great colors mhucasey
Love that SSC

I know, it's not rational how happy a little colored stick makes me!

[mhucasey]

Last Night's fun - I had a light blue acro frag that suddenly turned brown and lost polyp extension, located in the middle of the tank toward the back. I took it out and dipped it, no bugs or worms, but a bald spot on one side like it had been stung. Looked at the location where it was and saw the culprit: The purple long tentacle anemone has been sneaking a few tentacles out of its prison in the back corner.

The anemone is hemmed in by the rock work and the back of the tank on three sides. The other side and the top were guarded by a big purple Stylo colony I grew multiple times from a little brown frag. Well the Stylo has gotten so big it was blocking the majority of light from filtering down to the Nem. So I pulled it out:



The Clowns and Anemone didn't know what to think of that:


I trimmed it down to a reasonable size:


And now the anemone is way happier. I also moved the stung coral so that it can't get stung any more even if the anemone was in the same place again.

One of my first must-haves was purple Stylo. I was so excited when I got a frag and it started growing.

The stuff is a purple friggin weed! I've thrown probably two or three gallon buckets' worth of the stuff in the garbage. I've had to kalk paste it where it has spread onto rocks, and it comes back! I used to feel bad, try to save every piece I had to trim away, etc. Not any more, I'd remove it completely from the tank if it didn't work so well as an anemone cage.

[biggles]

Your colors are looking awesome mate, really digging that SSC you have - way prettier than my two.

Loved the pics and explanation of what was going on with the nem and how you dealt with it, i bet your clowns weren't impressed.

There's nothing rational about keeping SPS dominant tanks..........

[mhucasey]

Ok so seeing a few others here getting their tanks in gear is prodding me into the planning stages for our upgrade. We were hoping to do that last spring but ended up with too much on our plate. This year We finally have the money to get this going(hopefully). We are also planning on installing solar on the house and that is a steep chunk of change so worst case it will be delayed a little bit more.

The plan is to divide the family room and the dining room with the tank, right now the back of the couch marks the division. At this time the dogs will jump on the dining table if its too close to the couch so this helps with that. I have been mocking up the room using a floor plan and to-scale outlines of the furniture and possible tanks to see how everything would fit:


The current favorite size for the tank is 72X36X22" but practicality may force it a bit narrower down to 72X32X22". It will be rimless and Starphire like the current tank, and I am leaning toward an extruded Aluminum stand with a wood covering. I hope to build the system to last.

I would upgrade to the 8X80Watt T5s but at least I already have the pumps, controller, support equipment, etc. I will probably look at getting a calcium reactor to eliminate dosing two part. Thoughts?

[mhucasey]

Originally Posted by biggles

Your colors are looking awesome mate, really digging that SSC you have - way prettier than my two.

Loved the pics and explanation of what was going on with the nem and how you dealt with it, i bet your clowns weren't impressed.

There's nothing rational about keeping SPS dominant tanks..........

Thanks Biggles, I have another acro with a really nice color-up to show off soon!

[jackson6745]

First I must say I love all the wiener dogs The black and brown one is my favorite

You're getting insane PE on your mills. Was this a response to anything in particular, or was it always like this? The colors are awesome. Do you know what your current nitrate level is? I am intrigued by pellets, but my friends all messed up their tanks at one point or another using regular pellets. Curious how the All in one type are long term. You seem to be kicking butt with them Whatever you're doing, keep it up….. and I'll put in a small request for more fuzzy acro pics

[mhucasey]

Thanks Richard! Yes if you met him in person, Buddy would tell you he is your favorite too
The polyp extension all over the tank is just ridiculous, especially since installing the Gyre. I don't do anything special for it, I do quite like acros with good PE so I tend to select them, when they don't have their polyps out its sometimes a good leading indicator for a problem. Ill get some more fuzzy acro pics soon!

As for the Pellets, I've had hit or miss with them until I used the pellets from Reef interests(NP biopellets and All-in-one biopellets). The All-in-one pellets are super easy to manage with a recirculating reactor, the water is crystal clear(with no filter socks), and the corals are growing fast while looking great. Lunar has has long term success with them and his reef is the best in the world currently IMO. I used to dose Nitrate to keep my value at a constant 2-3 PPM with the regular pellets and with vinegar dosing, but since the All-in-one pellets kicked in every time I check it it is around 2 with no dosing. I'm going on 9 months without a water change at this time as well...

[mhucasey]

Fuzzy acro of the day, and one of the most intense color-wise...Its a Tort, sold to me as an Oregon Tort as I remember, but it has green on the inside of the coralites:


Anyone know the specific type of Tort?

[mhucasey]

Performed some testing today and I got the following results:
Ca:420
Mg:1350(Much lower than I expected, added 250Ml MgCl)
K:420
NO3:1-2ppm(Lowest it has been in a while, I will keep a closer eye on this in the near future)
Salinity:34ppm

I've turned Sunday into dosing day- 10ml each of FM color elements red/purple(iodine in this one) and blue/purple, 2 ml Kent iron/manganese.

Tank is doing really well, I was having a little issue with Cyano creeping back in but it looks better today after tweaking the flow through the pellet reactor to a slower flow, and with the makeup water getting better. I had gone way overdue with the RO/DI filters and I've been using slightly crappy water in the ATO for a couple months.

The Sunpower light fixture needed cleaning, so I took it down and took it apart. There was surprisingly little dust inside for it having run over 2 years solid! I cleaned it and then I got an idea, and I have a hard time saying no to ideas. I took the center two bulbs off the 6 bulb circuit and added them to the two bulb circuit. Effectively I now have two four bulb circuits.
I moved the bulbs around a little so that the center four bulbs are Actinic/Blue+/Actinic/Actinic Blue. The "blue" channel will be on for 11.5 hours. Its much brighter than two bulbs(duh).

The "White" channel is on for 6.5 hours and adds in The AquaBlue Azure, Fiji Purple, Aquablue Special, and KZ New Gen. It looks pretty much identical to the previous arrangement when all bulbs are on.

Here is what it all looked like after the re-do:

[biggles]

Reef is looking awesome mate probably due to your sneaky additive dosing.............just saying

I love the new display ideas, all sounds cool to me. I think you'll find 32" wide is more than enough for a peninsula setup such as you're planning. I don't like calcium reactors just because they cost heaps to set up initially with high quality gear which i think is justified on a calcium reactor. You could dose kalk to take the sting out of your two part dosing requirements as another alternative.

You have the best avvy on RC, Buddy is super cool as are all your pooches

[mhucasey]

Originally Posted by biggles

Reef is looking awesome mate probably due to your sneaky additive dosing.............just saying

I love the new display ideas, all sounds cool to me. I think you'll find 32" wide is more than enough for a peninsula setup such as you're planning. I don't like calcium reactors just because they cost heaps to set up initially with high quality gear which i think is justified on a calcium reactor. You could dose kalk to take the sting out of your two part dosing requirements as another alternative.

You have the best avvy on RC, Buddy is super cool as are all your pooches

After lots of measuring I think the biggest we can live with is going to be 66"X32"X22", I think that 32 inches wide will be plenty of room to work with. As for the Calcium Reactor, I will do a lot of research before heading down that path, I don't want to complicate things more than I have to for sure. I make my two part now from Backing soda and Calcium Chloride(I get this for 20 bucks for 10lbs) so its not an expense issue as much as a quantity issue, but I suppose I could just go to faster dosing pumps too.

Biggles, take a look at this coral coming available at one of the LFS here:

And they have a pink Mille that I'm thinking you would approve of:


No pricing on the red one but Im gonna put my name in the hat to get a shot at it when it comes available.

[AugustWest]

Tank is looking great. Not sure I understand how you changed your ATI from a 6 bulb and 2 bulb circuit to a 4 bulb and 4 bulb ?

[mhucasey]

Originally Posted by AugustWest

Tank is looking great. Not sure I understand how you changed your ATI from a 6 bulb and 2 bulb circuit to a 4 bulb and 4 bulb ?

Thanks! It was really easy actually, inside there are four ballasts, two bulbs for each. The power for the ballast that supplies the center two bulbs was connected to the power supply using push connectors - there is one black and one white wire.

I just removed the two wires that supply the center bulb ballast from these connectors. I then cut the two wires leading to the 2 bulb circuit's ballast and stripped the ends of the wires. Using a wire nut, I connected the two black wires from the two ballasts to the black supply power and the whites to the whites.

Having two ballasts per circuit seemed to make the whole fixture brighter, but it could be my imagination, or having three ballasts on one power circuit could have resulted in lower output for the whole thing. It is very cool having two blue and two actinic for dusk/dawn and it may get me a bit more growth...

[biggles]

Hey buddy, i use the same cheap bulk type additives and the expense is tiny compared to everything else you throw money at lol. Take those two yummy acros, i'd spend a whole lot on both of those pieces

The top one is very weird looking - in a must have SPS way

[echopiece]

How are you liking that Gyre pump? Do you have any videos of it in action?