75 gallon GlassCages build

[BAMatter]

Tank is looking good!

How big is that ATO reservoir and how long does it last before you have to fill it? I have a 5 gallon one and it seems to last about 3 days since I removed the glass lids on my tank.

Thanks!
It’s a 5 gallon res, I fill to about 4.5 gallon mark, and have to refill every 3 days I’d say. It’s about 1.5 gallons of evap daily. Bit more than I was expecting but assume it will reduce a bit when spring time rolls around.

 

[BAMatter]

Couple more connections and we‘re solid. Bit of coral shopping tomorrow.

love this Hydros stuff btw,

 

[Llorgon]

Thanks!
It’s a 5 gallon res, I fill to about 4.5 gallon mark, and have to refill every 3 days I’d say. It’s about 1.5 gallons of evap daily. Bit more than I was expecting but assume it will reduce a bit when spring time rolls around.

Ok. About the same as mine then.

How has setting up the hydros controller? What is it running?

 

[BAMatter]

Ok. About the same as mine then.

How has setting up the hydros controller? What is it running?

Setting up was pretty easy. Couple frustrating moments due to firmware updates but nothing I wasn’t expecting. Have it running pretty much everything. My ATO is controlled, skimmer and OctoPulses shut off in feed mode, etc etc… I haven’t gotten much into if/and/or commands yet, but will get there. Nice having the temp, PH, and ORP tracking, and push alerts. Still need to install the skimmer sensor, door switch for my cabinet light, and a couple other things. Definitely happy with the purchase and setting up the collective for sure.

 

[Llorgon]

That's awesome. I'll definitely have to give the hydros a try on my 25 gallon.

Is programming it like programming the wave engine?

 

[BAMatter]

That's awesome. I'll definitely have to give the hydros a try on my 25 gallon.

Is programming it like programming the wave engine?

Yep pretty much same thing… very simple.

 

[BAMatter]

Having a bit of an annoying bacterial bloom in the tank. Would imagine from the increase in feeding. Added a couple Aussie torches, hammer coral, and a frogspawn, plus a couple Acan varieties, and then here comes the cloudy water. Hoping it clears up shortly. Seems as though my Harptail Blenny is a bit freaked out from it. Going to get my UV online this weekend, maybe that will help. Who knows.

 

[BAMatter]

Making a bit of progress with stock so far. Have a 4 different torches (1 of which was in my Biocube that I had to move over), a nice toxic green hammer, peach frogspawn, and a couple acan mini colonies. Fish so far are the YWG/pistol pair, 2 PJ cardinals, Harptail Blenny, and just added a Royal gramma, yellow flanked fairy wrasse, and a Dispar Anthias. Just moved all the corals onto the rocks from the sand, and waiting for them to open back up. Also have a new lid in the works from TopLids. My Harptail ended up carpet surfing, but was lucky enough to find her before it was too late. Currently have a temporary egg crate lid, can’t stand the looks of it but it will do for now!

 

[Llorgon]

tank is looking good! I really like that torch in the middle.

Glad you found the Harptail before it was too late. I have the egg crate lids as well. Not the best looking, but they seem to work. At least it's worked so far for me.

 

[BAMatter]

tank is looking good! I really like that torch in the middle.

Glad you found the Harptail before it was too late. I have the egg crate lids as well. Not the best looking, but they seem to work. At least it's worked so far for me.

Thanks!

Already had to move that torch, the power heads create a massive amount of downward turbulence right at that spot and it couldn’t get happy with that much flow. Ended up behind another torch on the right side of the tank.

 

[Llorgon]

Always annoying when a coral isn't happy where you want it.

In another tank I had, a bubble tip that was happiest on the back side of the rocks...was a bummer.

 

[BAMatter]

Attended the New England Farmer Frag Market in CT this weekend and loaded up with some acans, zoas, couple diff hammer colors, and a small duncan. Also snagged a dozen or so nassarius snails and a sea cucumber… gotta keep that sand clean. What a show it was. Attendance was around 1300 people, over 100 vendors selling coral. Could get any type of coral you’ve wanted. Pretty unreal.

Anyways, fish are doing good, minus my Royal gramma ended up in the overflow and sucked to the drain. May or may not replace him. Recently also added a Molly Miller Blenny. Very fun fish. UV Sterilizer and carbon reactor got hooked up to my manifold as well. Chaeto is growing like a champ and is keeping nutrients in check despite heavy feeding. Enjoying the Triton method.

1 of my Aussie torches decided to check out, first loss is always discouraging. Still in the tank but barely.

 

[BAMatter]

Good ol fashioned sump pic. My NO3 is creeping up to over 12 so bumped exposure time to 18 hours. PO4 around 0.03 mark.

 

[BAMatter]

Been a minute since I posted, tank is going through a bit of a rollercoaster with nutrients and parameters. Finally think I got it stabilized but lost a couple pieces in the meantime. The Core 7 is some potent stuff, my alk reading had spiked from 8.8 to 10.2 in 2 days somehow, partially I believe to be from new Hannah Reagent (accurate) vs the old bottle (never checked it against a titration test). But had to cut the Core 7 50/50 with RODI. I’m only dosing 1 ml of each of the 4 parts throughout the day, and Alk is finally steady at 8.8, which i think I’ll land on. My fuge exploded and my NO3 and PO4 ended up tanking a bit, after I had cut back on Roids and PolypBooster since they were trending up a bit more than I was comfortable. PO4 was 0.01ppm and NO3 had cut in half to a bit less than 10ppm. Will test again tonight to see if they’ve stabilized or are going back up/down. I also started dosing phyto, and think I will start to culture my own for a steady source for the tank.

 

[Llorgon]

How is the tank doing these days?

 

[BAMatter]

How is the tank doing these days?

Not good. Crashed and burned, tried to move things along too quickly. Now I’m on the tail end of a dino battle but am making good progress. Should be back to working on stability and getting things back on track in the next couple weeks. Been eventful and frustrating, however I will say I’ve learned quite a bit about nutrients, cyano, Dino’s, and other algaes in the process of it all. Wish it didn’t really take this route, but it is what it is. Hopefully start making it a nice tank soon…

 

[BAMatter]

Have definitely been put through the ringer so far with this tank, but if anyones looking for a custom lid, @Top_Lids did a great job with mine. #Toplids

Guess I can slowly start piecing together everything I’ve been doing the past few months. I’d like to try to detail my experience with Dino’s as well. May need a couple beers to type it all out though :)

 

[Llorgon]

That sucks. Do you know what caused the crash?

Did anything survive?

I've gone through dinos. Oddly the thing that helped me the most was dosing silica. The diatoms out competed the dinos in a couple weeks. Of course that was after 6 months and losing most coral and CUC.

After I had dinos I was left with a crazy amount of gha. Hopefully your tank looks better than mine after having them.

Those lids look really awesome. Much better than my egg crate!

 

[BAMatter]

That sucks. Do you know what caused the crash?

Did anything survive?

I've gone through dinos. Oddly the thing that helped me the most was dosing silica. The diatoms out competed the dinos in a couple weeks. Of course that was after 6 months and losing most coral and CUC.

After I had dinos I was left with a crazy amount of gha. Hopefully your tank looks better than mine after having them.

Those lids look really awesome. Much better than my egg crate!

Don’t think my tank was ready for the bioload I threw at it. Ended up stocking fish and coral too much too fast, and parameters and nutrients were all over the place. Ended up with massive amounts of hair algae, and fought that too aggressively so ended up with Dino’s when NO3 and PO4 tanked.

The type of dino I have are Ostreopsis which aren’t photosynthetic and release into the water column at night… toxic too. So I need to bring nutrients up, run an oversized UV, and run carbon. Haven’t seen any in my tank for a few days but need to keep the UV running for a bit longer to finish the job off. I forget the name of the Dino that require silicate dosing, but yea… they’re all a pain.

 

[Llorgon]

That sucks. Hopefully things start to turn around soon.

I think I had the same type of dinos. If I remember correctly that was the main one since all my cuc died before I knew what it was. When I looked at them through a microscope it was them and some of the photosynthetic kind. I tried a blackout for a few days and just ended up killing some corals. Either way not a great experience.