180 gallon SPS focus build

[AJsReef]

I should mention the primary reason for the thought of switching is I never like the flow pattern the Vortech pump can generate. Two MP40 at an end is not enough to push water all the way across 6ft tank. Not the it has not enough raw power, but it's the current is so turbulent that it disperse around 4~5 ft mark. I think a real gyre pump will do a lot better at pushing the current to the very end.

Agreed. In hindsight I would’ve gone MP60s for my 180 just for the sheer fact MP40s barely, and I mean barely, stay attached on 3/4” glass.

With 4x MP40s flow has never been a huge issue though. I run mine opposing each other on reef crest/constant as described in the coral labs documentation.

Just recently staggered them so that I have a “top” and “bottom” pump on both sides with bottom and top opposing one another. Really happy with the random flow created.

I tried the early iterations of the Gyre pumps and found them very unreliable and required much more cleaning.

Are your connectivity issues with Mobius?

 

[ReefBeta]

Agreed. In hindsight I would’ve gone MP60s for my 180 just for the sheer fact MP40s barely, and I mean barely, stay attached on 3/4” glass.

With 4x MP40s flow has never been a huge issue though. I run mine opposing each other on reef crest/constant as described in the coral labs documentation.

Just recently staggered them so that I have a “top” and “bottom” pump on both sides with bottom and top opposing one another. Really happy with the random flow created.

I tried the early iterations of the Gyre pumps and found them very unreliable and required much more cleaning.

Are your connectivity issues with Mobius?

I used the first gen gyre, the clean and maintenance is PITA. That's why I didn't choose them this time. But with the suboptimal flow pattern and annoying connectivity problem with mobius, I'm not sure the trade off is worth it anymore.

 

[ReefBeta]

Another Battlebox. This time some high end stuff.

A Fire Engine
Lasermelon
Cricket Spine
Confetti
Lemon Hammer
BC 1orange milli

 

[ReefBeta]

Full tank shot update

And a short clip


Not too much update recently. Tank is mostly on auto pilot and doing well. Life got busy recently. So not much tinkering going on.

I'm still figuring out the way to regulate CO2 scrubber. I bought a motorized ball valve, but it came in DoA. Have to get a replacement. Hopefully I can have something working soon.

 

[ReefBeta]

With this spring sale, I decided to improve light coverage, ordered a Reef Brite 50/50 XHO 72". It would go through the full length of the tank. Also the un-lens diode with reflector seem like a better way to provide fill light, in comparison of the individual lens per diode in Orphek bar. I did like the color of the Orphek bar, and not very sure about that of Reef Brite light with its limited color. I'll see how the end result will look.

 

[ReefBeta]

After 6+ months, start clean and quarantine and everything, now my tank has all the pest and nasty that I tried to avoid, ich, aiptasia, vermetid snails, cyano, dino, etc. Also some that I saw the first time, like digitate hydroids. Am I screwed? Absolutely not. In fact, the tank is doing better than ever. Those are annoyance for sure, and would become problematic if left unchecked. But those are not unmanageable, definitely not something to start over for. This weekend I dealt with two of them.
First is the aiptasia. This time it's interesting as most of the aiptasia I found is in the sand bed. So for those, the solution is simply siphon them out. Then there is one at the corner of the rock by the sand. It's actually attached to the rock. So for that one I used F-Aiptasia to deal with it. I also went to buy 3 peppermint shrimps as safe guard. They seem to do a good job at keeping them at bay. I guess they pick at babies of them as they got in so they don't have a chance to spread. I'll keep a close eye for aiptasia in the coming weeks, and F-Aiptasia them if I found more.
Second is vermetid snail. These are quite spread out to many places in the tank now. So there is not much a chance to get rid of them all. So I just cut them out whenever I notice one. This would be something I keep doing from time to time.
I don't think those pest are really that detrimental. As long as I keep them at bay, they won't get the chance to irritate corals, and that's fine.

 

[ReefBeta]

I feel dumb that I just found out the pax bellum has flow rate recommendation. The N24 is recommended for 200-400 gph. Just measured mine, 75 gph ... Time to fix the plumbing there.

 

[ReefBeta]

Today I discovered my first epic fail. The fridge auto feeder I setup earlier clogged. The stuff inside is totally spoiled and smell horrible. I don't really know how long it has been clogged. If I were not to redo the manifold, thus taking that line apart, I might not find it out for a lot longer. The place of clog is the 90 air tubing elbow. As typical air tubing connector, it's inside diameter is smaller than the tube. So that is really small. It's right before the line go into the sump. The phytoplankton have a bit built up over the time, the line after its injection point all got a bit green. So those built up eventually blocked that small choke point.
To fix that, I redo the line with RO tubing all the way. The different for RO tubing is that, all connector are bigger than the tubing. So there is no small choke point. Also as I redid the manifold, it now getting increased flow, so I hope it won't clog again. But if it still happen, the next upgrade is to use 3/8" tubing instead. That should be big enough to avoid it all together. But I don't have the part at hand at the moment, so have to compromise for now.
How it looks like now:

 

[ReefBeta]

Another oops discovered today is, the salinity is at 32ppm. I don't have a good idea how it shifted so far from 35ppm. Maybe it's when I working on the chaeto reactor, I pulled out a lot more water than I thought. I did a 30 gallon water change with 40ppm water to raise it back up a bit to 34ppm. Then probably keep adding saltwater go replace evaporation to slowly raise it up.
I really need to get used to test salinity regularly. At least everytime I test water or empty skimmer.

 

[ReefBeta]

Earlier this week, I saw an offer of clean chaeto in local group, so I decided to jump on it. (Interestingly, I found two tiny aiptasia in the bag, but it's otherwise clean from detritus, cyano, etc.)
With that, I finally pulled out the pax Bellum to see what the heck is growing in there these pass months. Here they are.

It's a mix of all kinds of nasty stuff. I'm surprised there are still some chaeto there. I thought all are melted already long time ago.
Now with fresh chaeto attached

It looks nice and satisfying when running


The one thing I realized then is, the flow rate the reactor is getting is way lower than suggested. So I ordered some part to redo the manifold to maximize the flow it can get.

The limit of previous setup is the 3/8" quick connect piping. That is the input size after the ball valve. So even the manifold goes to 1/2" to the algae reactor, the flow is limited by that already. So for the change, I replaced the first out from the ball valve with a 1/2 pvc tee. Then one end goes to 3/8" that feeds the feeding pipe to the fridge. The other goes to 1/2 quick connect to the algae reactor.

It's now harder to change compares to the daisy chain quick connect, but it's way more practical. And now I think of it, the manifold is not something need changing all the time anyway. That is a three way threaded tee, so changing the setup is just matter of unscrewed and screw in. Not that much more work really.

The final flow rate is about 170 gph. Good enough I think.

Another thought with this work is, I probably won't do a manifold from return ever again. After fixed the algae reactor flow, the sump water level raised for more than a gallon worth. It's kind of annoying to figure out the pressure balance between the return and connected devices. It will be easier to have a dedicated pump to feed the manifold instead.

 

[AJsReef]

You put cheato with aiptasia in your system? Braver than I am!

Couldn’t agree more with the manifold off the pump. I run a second pump for my manifold which happens to be the same size so I technically always have a backup return pump

 

[ReefBeta]

You put cheato with aiptasia in your system? Braver than I am!

Couldn’t agree more with the manifold off the pump. I run a second pump for my manifold which happens to be the same size so I technically always have a backup return pump

Of course I removed those two aiptasia first. Besides, my tank already has aiptasia so it's not like it can get much worse

 

[AJsReef]

I may be overly cautious but I won’t even buy corals from my LFS because they have aiptasia in their tanks xD What size PAX are you running?

 

[ReefBeta]

I may be overly cautious but I won’t even buy corals from my LFS because they have aiptasia in their tanks xD What size PAX are you running?

I just accepted the fact that there will be pests in my tank. Not going out my way to eradicate them, but just pay attention to manage them. I'm a lot more annoyed by vermetid snail, and there are a lot more of them in the tank now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What's PAX? You mean the RO tubing kind? From the manifold, there is a 1/2" going to the Pax Bellum, and a 1/4" going to the fridge feeding line. The fridge feeding line is probably better as 3/8" to reduce risk of clogging, but I'm out of the size pipe at the moment.

 

[ReefBeta]

The biggest change I made last week was replacing the supplement light, from a Orphek OR3 Day Plus 48" to a Reef Brite 50/50 XHO 72". The light spread is way better in all ways that it's really impressive.

Test run:

The look of the tank lighted with just the Orphek bar:

The look of the tank lighted with just the Reef Brite bar:

The spread difference it day and night. The reefbrite led basically managed the light the whole tank by itself. The most obvious improvement is the length. Lesson is simple, don't use a 4ft LED bar to supplement a 6ft tank. Get the bar the same length of the tank. I think just upgrading a same brand 4ft light to a 6ft light would be worth it. But the most important difference is the side spread of the light. It's most obvious looking at the middle section of the tank. With Orphek, the middle section of the rock is the brightest, while a bit higher to the top of the rock, where the gorgonias are, it's quite dark. Also the front of sand bed is darker than the sand next to the rock. The return nozzles are so dark that it's barely noticeable. In comparison, with Reef Brite, light up from the front of sand bed to the top back of the tank evenly.
Another example, with both light shining to the ceiling. The distance to the ceiling is similar to the distant to the bottom of the tank.

The Orphek bar porjected a obvious bright spot in the middle. Light drops off both along the length of the light, and towards the side of the light. With Reef Brite, in the direction perpendicular to the light, the difference in brightness is unnoticeable. It got gradually dimmer beyond the length of the light. That's also show the importance of using a light same length of the tank. Even the light can reach beyond its length for some, the brightest won't be the same.

 

[ReefBeta]

There are also some small touch on the reef brite that I really like.
The first is the bracket it comes with. It comes with like this.
As it's pretty close the light, there isn't much room to rotate. But then I realized, I can take it down and install it on the other side. Like this.

And it can turn a lot more now. It's a very simple L bracket. But the holes on it seems to be well thought out and versatile. It's this small thing that really make a product.

Another interesting discovery is when looking from the gap of the canopy from the side

With the projection line, it's very obvious where the coverage is going. That make angling the light very easy.

 

[ReefBeta]

Just found out that there are AEFW in my tank. I dipped a couple troubling frags, half of them have AEFW dropping off of them.

So now to figure out the solution. I'm planning to start with KZ Flatworm Stop. It probably have the best reputation. I will continue to dip those frag probably twice a week. I'm still considering if I need to employ a whole tank treatment. The Purge V2 from the maker of Vibrant will probably be my choice of treatment. But I'm a bit hesitate since I think there is certain risk related to all treatments, and most of the acroporas are actually doing well so far that I'm not sure if I should take the risk yet. I think I will observe for another week or two before deciding.

 

[ReefBeta]

I'm a bit undecided on next step for AEFW. In the past week, I blasted all acros with a maxijet several times. The first time I can really see flatworm got blown out to water column. Then I dipped some of the infested frags. But I didn't find another flatworm again. I'm not sure if I should still do the Purge treatment. Will they be gone that easy? If so, I can't imagine how it's so much trouble for the hobby. But with no new AEFW found, it's hard to subject the tank into the treatment process.

In the meanwhile, maybe I should just start dosing flatworm stop for now. But there could be a case that, with that dosing, flatworm will be under controlled. But the treatment might be eliminate them all. But just maybe. I really want a way to evaluate the affect of the treatment. With symptom already suppressed, it will be hard to tell.

 

[dbq5anlxj]

Yesterday, I installed the CO2 scrubber, recirculating style.

The effect is so immediate.

It's not even the peak of the day yet. That's 0.3 jump. kH is already start dropping.

Now let's see how long these media will last.

What's the fitting called for the air intake and the skimmer cup ? Thanks

 

[xiaoxiy]

Finding AEFW is such an awful feeling. The buggers sometime stick really tightly to acros and don't come off with powerhead blasting. You can always try blasting your acros (in tank) with a turkey baster full of RODI too. This does not harm the acros and shocks the FW enough that they let go and float into the water column.

Are your larger acro colony/mini colonies encrusted on the rockwork? If not, weekly dips for 6 weeks might be the way to go. It's a PITA, but effective.

FWS will likely help too. I dosed it at 2x recommended dosage w/o any negative effects in the tank. Load up on peppermint shrimp and a wrasse too (there was a paper recently published that showed peppermint shrimp and sixline eat AEFW and eggs). https://www.researchgate.net/public...cropora-eating_flatworms_in_coral_aquaculture

I have no experience with the in-tank treatments, but am interested to read about your experiences if you decide to go that route.