OINK! I'm a Pig. 200g Reef Savvy, Bashsea, Royal Exclusiv -Direct sunlight- In wall w/ IKEA fishroom basement sump build

[drtechno]

Nice set up! Should be a beautiful tank once you get it stocked up! I personally would give that tang a day or so and let him loose! If you see aggression a mirror taped to the side of the tank works wonders.. I just added a gem last night to my established tang gang and only my sailfin is being a jerk! Ugh… he been occupied with a mirror the last 8 hours

Lol ! Hilarious. Yes, sounds good. I hear the mirror trick does wonders so I have that ready to go.

 

[drtechno]

Well. I definitely did not skip the ugly stage completely. I assume these are diatoms. Let’s see if they go away in a bit. Adding some more copepods from algae barn next week

 

[drtechno]

Bought a small frag/coral quarantine tank from Tenecor and drilled the side for a side draining overflow so it can sit on my countertop. First of all, great work on the tank by Tenecor. Came out very nicely and is a perfect (small) frag tank. I got the 8” tall version and am mounting a Kessil over it.

I have set it up to receive the waste water from the AWC and then overflow into the sink. We will see how often I will need to correct salinity with evaporation.. that’s the tricky bit.

Anyway, so that is filling today

 

[MickeyCT]

I haven’t been particularly impressed with the JBJ heater controllers as the temp range seems to be 2 degrees despite everything I’ve tried. That’s not stable enough for what I am looking for, so I ordered up the Helio controller and will run that as my primary heater controller. I don’t think my backup heater has fired a single time in the last couple months so maybe I slightly oversized them, but I guess a better indicator will be when winter hits, as the basement gets colder. I have seen people get great results with this controller, so before I get a Ranco or something similar, I wanted to give this a try

Otherwise, my Bristletooth Whitetail came yesterday and is chilling in his Octolids acclimation chamber. I got the biggest one available so that the fish have some room in there, and it’s working great! Very happy with it. We will see how the other tangs react when the lights come on later today. Plan on keeping him there a week to make sure everyone is happy with each other. Very curious where he will come out in the pecking order

Great thread. I found it recently and followed along.

Why not use the Apex to control the heaters and the JBJ controller only as the failsafe. The Apex outlets on the EB832 can handle the frequent switching on and off of a heater (per the folks at Neptune and Russ M. on the Neptune forums).

I'm also interested in how much your heaters run in the winter given the sump in the basement which I assume you aren't heating. I'm in CT and often consider moving my sump to the basement below the tank. My knees and back are tired of crawling under the tank for the last 19 years for maintenance. I already have counters down there and some equipment, including my return pump (to minimize noise) and the chiller. But I'm worried about the 60 degree temperatures in the winter. Also worried about high humidity from 78-80 degree water in the sump with the lower temperatures in the basement. Any thoughts on that?

 

[drtechno]

Great thread. I found it recently and followed along.

Why not use the Apex to control the heaters and the JBJ controller only as the failsafe. The Apex outlets on the EB832 can handle the frequent switching on and off of a heater (per the folks at Neptune and Russ M. on the Neptune forums).

I'm also interested in how much your heaters run in the winter given the sump in the basement which I assume you aren't heating. I'm in CT and often consider moving my sump to the basement below the tank. My knees and back are tired of crawling under the tank for the last 19 years for maintenance. I already have counters down there and some equipment, including my return pump (to minimize noise) and the chiller. But I'm worried about the 60 degree temperatures in the winter. Also worried about high humidity from 78-80 degree water in the sump with the lower temperatures in the basement. Any thoughts on that?

thx for the advice. I’m very nervous about using the EB for frequent switching that occurs with a heater. I ended up getting a Helios controller for my primary heater (the second heater has yet to fire up… ever). I guess if the Helios dies I can try the EB to control it. That’s a lot of switching tho.

Ive only been really up and running since early Spring, but I think the unseated basement will be fine. It never gets super cold down there and you can always upsize your heaters.
My bigger temp issue currently is that even with LEDs I’m getting some heating of the tank upstairs. I’ve had to mount a fan over the basement sump to keep the temps below 80. Contributing to this heat issue, and getting to one of your points, I have a dehumidifier (GE from Home Depot) running almost full time it seems. Keeps the humidity 50% or lower but dumps tons of heat into the room. It’s constantly fighting with the air exchanger (HRV) continuously dumping humid air into the room (At least now in summer time). It’s pretty hot in that fish room. Like 77 air temp.

So yea, you may need a dehumidifier. Dumping into either a floor drain or an evacuation/condensate pump.

But it’s so nice having room to work tho.

I’ll report back on how the temps do in the winter but like I said I really am only running one heater at the moment. So I’m sure the two will do well

 

[alysak6075]

I’m very nervous about using the EB for frequent switching that occurs with a heater.

Get the EB8, the solid state relays will last forever. They have an order of magnitude more "cycles" in them. That is what I use for my 220. Backup is a JBJ controller.

 

[drtechno]

So we finished setting up the frag/quarantine tank today. Bought a fiji frag rack which was perfect size and added that. The entire thing looks pretty good so will see how it works with the corals.

Will try to get some fish pics up this weekend as well

 

[drtechno]

 

[drtechno]

 

[drtechno]

 

[drtechno]

Been struggling a bit with my pH which has been running 7.6 to max 7.8. Even with 2 gal kalk per day. It’s slowly trending up but very very slowly. So I decided to just get the co2 scrubber on top of everything. My alk btw is 9.5+ dkh. I’ll install the recirculating part of the design once the skimmer cup adapter arrives (FishOfHex aquatics). The large icecap scrubber is a lot smaller than I thought it would be. Maybe I should have just gotten the BRS chamber.

 

[drtechno]

Holy smokes. I got my apogee par meter today and went in to measure light intensity. Looks like i was over zealous on the lighting! The kessil a500x are at 70% using the 55 degree reflectors and the radions xr30s are running at 80%. i am hitting 500 par on the sand bed in places and one spot under the a500, about 12” down is at 800+. Ridiculous. I‘m surprised i’m not growing more algae. So firstly I am very happy I bought a par meter as I thought I was low on lighting. Insane and I am glad I can fix this before I cook some coral. Going to take the reflectors off the Kessils to use their default 120 degree spread, to reduce the massive hotspots, and decrease their output, while also turning the radions down to 50%

This is my lighting diagram.

 

[drtechno]

As mentioned above, I changed the CO2 scrubber to a recirculating design and so far it is working very well. One problem I noticed is that I am getting a lot of condensation from the moist air from the skimmer cup, resulting in too much water accumulation at the bottom of the scrubber chamber. I ended up installing another chamber before the scrubber, to capture the condensation and water accumulation. So far this has been working well. And the Co2 scrubber has been even more effective with the recirculating design, or maybe as the media has become a bit more moist. As you can see in the photo, the media is a deeper pink as it absorbed the moisture in the air.

To the right you can also see my DIY skimmate collector with an apex water level sensor to shut down the skimmer.

My pH is so much better now! 8 to 8.2 instead of 7.6 to 7.8.
I will likely also install the bypass valve on the co2 scrubber for when the pH hits 8.4. That's later today

 

[drtechno]

Wow.. its been several weeks since an update. Things in real life have just gotten hectic, and will probably remain this way through August. So I will just provide some quick updates and lessons.

After getting a frag tank and co2 scrubber, I started cranking on the alkalinity and ph to try to get everything as high as possible. Little did I know Sandbed Precipitation was a 'thing'. So sure enough, I needed larger and larger amounts of alk in the tank, with little change in ph or alk. So after reading the Reef Chemistry thread, I decided to look at the sand bed. Sure enough, it had large dense clumps in it - precipitation. I got some helpful advice from Randy and friends over there, and stopped all supplementation and let my ph drift back down to 7.7 and let alk drift down (5.1 dkh !) over the last week to break the cycle.

So in the last couple days, I started dosing slowly again. This time with only kalk. I managed to snag an AvastMarine K2 before they sold out (again), to do the dosing. At 1 gal per day, I am able to keep my alk stable. Then I have used Bicarb to raise the alk back up slowly, currently at 6.8 dkh. It's been quite the humbling experience, and makes me nervous going back up to high levels of pH for now. I guess slowly over time I will build back up.

In the meantime, I installed the bypass valve on the co2 scrubber. Very straight forward and works great. I haven't needed it of course because my pH is not even close to 8.3. But its there for the future.

I got a call from Elliot at MarineCollectors this week as he just got in some Pyramid Butterflys that cleared quarantine. I was so excited as I hadn't seen these available yet this year. I got two and a diamond sand sifting goby, with the butterflys in an acclimation box for now.

I grabbed some LPS and easy SPS frags from a sale a couple weeks back, and ran through my first coral dipping lesson. The LPS all look great (Bayer -> MediKoral -> Peroxide).. the SPS not so much (Bayer -> CoralRx). After reading more about it, the CoralRx is not needed as Bayer does the same thing. At least that was my interpretation.

In any case, that's it for now. Later in August I will update with nicer photos and better descriptions of things.

Cheers for now!

 

[drtechno]

 

[saltcats]

Gorgeous fish! Love the mix of colours you have

 

[drtechno]

Distinct lack of updates this month is due to my schedule being slammed.

However, I am still struggling with precip and more specifically, sand bed hardening/precipitation. I put my hands in the tank to feel around in the sand bed and what I found were literal bricks of sand. It is incredible. See attached photo of the brick like sand piled up. I am not sure if these will break up over time, but I am replacing the hardened sand with fresh sand. I will keep some hardened sand in areas of high flow to keep the sand bed looking intact, and I will see if they break up over time. I still have yet to have a real response over whether a hardened sand bed breaks up over time and becomes 'normal' or if the hardened sand just needs to be disposed of.

In any case, I am back to letting my pH drop to 7.7 and just letting it sit there while I get more coralline algae. Its like a catch 22 - you can't grow coral and coralline quickly at low pH, but if you raise the pH and have no coralline/coral you will just precip in your sandbed. Very frustrating. I thought this part of it would be easy with all the tools we have these days. Im also surprised no one really mentions sand bed precip when they discuss new tanks, and raising pH and Alk to high levels straight off the bat.

Anyway, more updates in a couple weeks and what I learned about going on vacation with a semi-automated tank :/

 

[drtechno]

Afternoon all.

So I have spent the morning paying for my past mistakes - I ripped up as much of the hardened sand bed that I could, and replaced it with fresh - loose sand. That probably means I need to keep my ph where it currently is, and not restart the precipitation process. I always thought this whole thing would be easy, and despite the new tank, I could push alk and ph as high as I wanted without any penalty. Boy was I wrong. Much of the sand bed is literal rock. It is absolutely crazy. With all the discussion regarding high ph, I am surprised that BRS has not done an episode or barely mentioned sand bed hardening.

In any case, this is what I have pulled out of my sand bed today - These are actually quite sizeable fragments, and each is absolutely rock hard.

 

[drtechno]

Whenever you feel like you know what you are doing, something happens that makes you question that assumption.

I found the source of my recent frustrations with sandbed precipitation, ph, and alkalinity. Turns out, I hadn't re-calibrated my apex probe since March.. I have had my ph at 7.5 to 7.8 and then did everything I could to bring it up to 8.2... except whenever my ph would hit 8, I would get drops in alk/ca and have sandbed hardening. I was wondering why this issue isn't more prevalent because I was running the same parameters as everyone else.

Well.. turns out my ph measurements were waaaaay off. I recalibrated yesterday off of a whim, and found my ph probe was reading up to 1.0 too low.. so my efforts to push a ph of 8, was more like attempting to push 9.0+ I cannot believe I made such a basic error, as not recalibrating my probe. I also don't quite understand why it drifted that much in 6 months, but just teaches me a lesson (again) to not rely on a single piece of equipment.

To be fair, and as you all know from this thread, I have backups for pretty much everything. Redundancy upon redundancy (alternate GFCI methods for example)... I also have tools to double check pretty much all of my major parameters to make sure other equipment is working.

Well, it turns out I don't have an alternate way of measuring ph .. no ph meter or test kit. What a face-palm moment this has turned out to be

Just truly unbelievable and disappointed in myself... such a basic concept I overlooked.

So I ordered a ph meter and a bunch of calibration solution. But now that I have my answer to a problem that has been hounding me for the last 2 months, I can finally make progress. So that in itself is a massive relief.

I'll have a larger update coming soon.

 

[drtechno]