Holiday Reef Recap: Did you get any reef-related Christmas presents?

[jhadaway]

2 new Quanta Pro lights, a SImplicity Doser and a few parts to build a better Refugium. Love them all. Nothing fancy but they do what they say they will do and do it well.

 

[Reefer Matt]

My wife got me a GoPro to step up my YouTube channel. Watch out @Reefer Matt I'll be on your heels!

Awesome! I like it!

 

[MoshJosh]

Gift card to LFS!

 

[tzabor10]

Blue Maxima clam for my wife. I got inverts as well! Emerald crabs, bumblebee snails and turbos.

 

[VintageReefer]

Three coral came on dec 21 (in tank pics attached) and three Aussie dendros are coming tomorrow (stock pics attached)

And an algae turf scrubber for my 15g nano is arriving today

 

[Derrick0580]

I haven’t “received” my aquarium gift yet per say… buddy of mine has connections to get us a private tour of Chummingham’s Reef so we will be heading there possibly this week/weekend where I plan on getting a few things! Already got wife’s permission!

 

[jimfish98]

I bought a Reefmat 500 and spare rolls during black Friday and my wife wrapped it up and gave it to me on Christmas. Does that count?

 

[Oiseaufeu]

I received a hand made clown fish plushie. I love it! It's not reef related or tank related, but it's awesome!

 

[spacedcowboy]

I got an Icecap Large External AGS PRO Turf Scrubber which so far I'm actually not particularly impressed with.

In hindsight, I ought to have gone for an over-the-sump scrubber - my last ones were floating SURF4x ones from SantaMonica.cc but I got tired of them eventually leaking and dying. I hadn't quite considered that the external scrubbers were still "waterfall" type, and would need to be elevated above the sump for gravity to do its work. Mea culpa in that regard.

But anyway,

• I opened the box, and it's all in bits. Fair enough, looked for the assembly diagram, but there wasn't one. There wasn't anything... went online looking for a manual but just .. nope, not even at the above web-page where you'd expect to find it. Ok, well it can't be that complicated, right ? Right ?
• There are plastic flaps which snap onto the water drip-bar, possibly to try and prevent water leakage. There are O-rings, it's not clear which way around the O-rings and the flaps go. There's an end-cap as well which is completely loose, so I put end-cap, O-ring, plastic-flap and hope that's the right way around. It doesn't seem to be leaking at least.
• Speaking of leaking, there is a pre-assembled pipe/valve combo on one side. It's all ready-to-go, except for the bottom bit, a 90-degree angle, which is not cemented into place. There's no indication that this one piece isn't assembled, so you find out when you get a water leak after turning it on the first time. Joy.
• The actual fit-and-finish isn't great. The mesh is a bit skewed inside - perhaps I have it set up wrong because of the lack of any documentation, but I played with different configurations and couldn't get it to simultaneously have a flat mesh, and also a good fit along the drip-bar in the container.

But what bugs me the most is that the plastic being used is translucent. What in $deity's name possessed them to do this ? Couple it with the fact that it's above the sump level (so competing with the tank in vertical space) and you have light-pollution that is just unacceptable, really.

Here's a photo of my tank with the moonlights on - and it actually looks a lot darker than this in real life. The phone's auto-gain isn't really helping here, could be the reflections, I should have turned off the outside light ...

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And here is is when I turn on the turf-scrubber, at 8pm -> 8am...

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Not sure what I am supposed to do with this, maybe cover it up somehow ? Wrap it in Aluminium foil ? For $630 I expected them to put basic thought into it ... It's only been running a single night, so I'm not sure how well it actually works. I guess we'll see. I still might send it back, but that's awkward when it was a present, and doubly so when it was one I asked for...

 

[zoomonster]

Well not really but... Christmas then my birthday this week and not back to work until early Jan so perfect time to treat myself lol. Five fish, more cleanup crew, and some supplies from BRS all coming this week. Makes up for all those years of getting screwed with Christmas/birthday close together

 

[Zygotica]

Yes! An R-60 Neptunian Cube aquarium/stand, a NewJet DC return pump, an AI Prime 16HD light and a 200W Aquatop heater.

 

[CRABDADDY]

My amazing fiance got me an apex a3! I'm a very lucky guy. She's not only interested in my tanks, but she's also very supportive of what I'm doing.

I have about a million ideas of what I want to do with the apex, so I'll be tinkering for the next few weeks. The apex is probably the most excited I've been for any gift as an adult. Took be back to the feeling I got opening gifts as a kid!

 

[BeanAnimal]

Already got wife’s permission!

Usually easier to ask forgiveness than get permission.

 

[Derrick0580]

Usually easier to ask forgiveness than get permission.

Yeah….let me introduce you to my wife sometime!

 

[Tactical Reefkeeping]

Yeah Santa got me a Ai prime and a Ai Nero and some test kits for Christmas and some other stuff extremely grateful for everything

 

[drolmaeye]

One reef gift: wife gave me an old-school small photo album filled with 4x6 pics of my fish and inverts. The quality of the pics isn't perfect, but the thought and kindness was about as good as it gets. She said it's for me to take to work and show my coworkers (half-joking). Funny thing is, I think she enjoyed the process and loves my tank and its inhabitants more than she did before the project.

 

[robotrash]

My wife and I do not buy for each other at Christmas, and only buy for the kids. So I guess no I didn’t get anything reef related.
It amazes me that adults receive presents on Christmas.

As an adult in my 30s I love buying my parents gifts, especially nice ones since I'm able and they did it for me my whole childhood. I definitely think this is an odd take. I also don't hate receiving gifts but I also don't have kids nor will I at any point.

 

[crazereef]

Nah… sweaters and socks.. booo

 

[Gtinnel]

As an adult in my 30s I love buying my parents gifts, especially nice ones since I'm able and they did it for me my whole childhood. I definitely think this is an odd take. I also don't hate receiving gifts but I also don't have kids nor will I at any point.

I don’t hate receiving or giving gifts, I just don’t need a holiday as a reason for my wife and I to buy things we want. Christmas for us is a reason to buy our two kids presents, because they don’t have money throughout the year to buy things they want (at least not all of the time).
Once we had kids we decided we wouldn’t buy for each other, and admittedly part of that may have been because when my kids were little we didn’t have a lot of spare money to spend on ourselves and it seemed selfish to buy ourselves something if it meant the kids didn’t receive something else that they wanted. Now that we are better off financially that has stuck with me.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Maybe not specifically reef related, but I got some cash and visa cards I can use on reef equipment haha