SPS dominated TOTM quality 6' tank on a $1k budget challenge; AKA a really bad idea.

[Labridaedicted]

I don't think it's cyano. It could just be a strange coloration on the coral. Last night i looked with a flashlight and it had full PE and the red thing hasn't changed or moved. I've never seen anything like it.

interesting... might be worth a dip anyways if your concerned. Tends to be my first reaction if something seems off.

Tank is coming along nicely, too!

 

[Catfish2]

Enjoying this thread. I love the challenge.

I'm just curious why you picked 30 months though?

 

[five.five-six]

Enjoying this thread. I love the challenge.

I'm just curious why you picked 30 months though?

I figured it would take 6 months to stabilize and that gave me 18 months to grow out 1" frags into colonies and 6 months to recover from a tank crash.

Also, that's about when I'll be ready to start my 5' X 2.5' X 2.5' 240 gallon tank set outside the house in the dining room window :) It will be done on a budget too. One side starfire, 3 sides and bottom plywood and fiberglass. I think that will be a $2k budget, I have to build a shed attached to the house and have air conditioning and an electrical subpanel.

 

[five.five-six]

Some Gifts:

Any idea what the red part is on the 2nd pic? I inspected closely, cut the bases and did a steve Garrett dip yet there it is.

It doesn't seem to have changed at all, though it does look like I have exelaint PE now.

 

[five.five-six]

New totals: $971.35/1,000 spent: $0 stack-O-fish cash, $84.82 fishy paypal


I just spend $75 at RAP and I'm about tapped out.


I'll post a FTS of my tank with the RAP acquisitions in the next few days. They are quite impressive but it's still an immature tank.

 

[five.five-six]

I'm not happy with my temperature stability. I did all my tweaking when it was really hot all day every day and now that it's cooling off, I'm starting to see bigger swings than I'm comfortable with.

 

[five.five-six]

Post Reefapalooza FTV

 

[MamaLovesHerReefTank]

I'm not happy with my temperature stability. I did all my tweaking when it was really hot all day every day and now that it's cooling off, I'm starting to see bigger swings than I'm comfortable with.

Having the same issues myself. Been playing with my heaters for a couple days trying to get it stable again.

 

[five.five-six]

Having the same issues myself. Been playing with my heaters for a couple days trying to get it stable again.

I have my canopy canes connected to my actenic lights and they cool the tank in that combination. I'm going to connect the canopy fans to the sump fan controlled by temp. I think that will straighten things out.

 

[five.five-six]

OK, I got the electric bill for 1 full month of halides and it was $265, normaly $210. The house did not catch fire from all the heat and I have to say that i really love the look of radium 20K lamps. To my eye, every LED thank I have seen just looks dim and blue to me. I can’t imagine how much money is saved with LED but it can’t be that much.

Tank is still very new and immature, just starting to see corraline popping up on the dry rock but I just love it :)

 

[five.five-six]

New totals: $986.53/1,000 spent: $135.0 stack-O-fish cash, $0 fishy paypal


The tank is looking great but the ledger is not :(

The tank is really looking good, frags are encrusting and new branches are budding and colors are popping. I did lose a beautiful acan which perplexes me, best theory is that Scopus tang picked it to death but I don’t know.

On to the money :(

I’m 2 1/2 months into the 30 months and I don’t think I am going to make it :(

I had trouble with the radiums not always fireing. Turns out that m58 electronic ballasts will fire many m80 lamps reliably but not radiums. In the prosess of trouble shooting I bought 2 new radiums $110 shipped and a sunlight supply m80 ballest $50.

The up side is that those radiums look even better on the m80 :) ballests but the down side is that I’m low on cash :(

Sold my biocube 29 on CL $190 and a sump, accounting at the top of this post.

I am just about done acquiring coral but still need fish/clams/shrimp and I really only have perhaps $500 left in dry goods to sell. How do I go another 27 months on $648.47?



I want to catalogue my frags with photos in this thread.

 

[five.five-six]

First tester frag in, purple polyped digi, wish him luck :) 10 weeks ago

10 weeks later and the tester frag seems to be doing OK

 

[Maritimer]

The tank appears to be coming along nicely!

Your budget is doing you a favor ... it's forcing you to add life to your tank slowly.

Do you have a local reef club? They sometimes offer raffles, swaps and other opportunities to acquire corals inexpensively - and sometimes your local reef shop helps to sponsor the club, by offering discounts to its members.

~Bruce

 

[five.five-six]

Ohhh my badge went away :(

I am a SCMAS member and much of the colonies came from a after-RAP-volunteer-raffle.

The budget is a triple edged sword. It is slowing me down and forcing me to make deliberate decisions about additions but a lot of the excitement about the hobby comes from adding new things. The 3rd edge is that because of my open aquascape, to allow for colonies to grow large which will eventually uptake significant nutrients, I have less liverock which forces me to carefully ballence nutreient levels at this sage of the game.

I need to get back to selling things because I only have $145 in the budget at this point and I want to get more sticks started. (I’ve been doing a better job of accounting on another forum)

 

[Mari]

Make friends! I get a lot of coral from people in my club by trading or just for free. If i had a large tank I’d have a few tangs from them too. Ask if anyone wants to rehome their fish. Ask for 1 marinepure ball from every club member you know.

 

[five.five-six]

I’ve been battling Dino’s and this WC is the first break from my first last approach which was to just let the Dino’s go nuts on the glass. The overall effect was more dino biomass but they seemed to leave my corals alone. That changed this morning when I notice that they assaulted my son’s favia from RAP. Charles was kind enought to loan me his UV but it’s only 25 watts which I believe may be insufficient. Maintaining high pH hasn’t helped. I did make a modified sock that captures a ton of them. A 5’ sock wrapped in paper towels an put inside a 7” sock. The paper tow gets very thick with brown Dino’s rather quickly.

Tim from SCMAS gave me this after RAP, it’s one of my favorite corals now.
[/SIZE]

 

[five.five-six]

I have officially blown through the $1k mark. I was at $1,300 and spent $30 on this aquamaxx O3 genorator tho help in my battle against Dino’s. It runs at night and is makes the water really clear and the Dino’s don’t seem to like it much. No stringies hanging off any of my acropora this morning

 

[five.five-six]

I know the Vlamingii tang is reccomended for a much bigger tank but The tank I got him from he was quite happy in with many many more fish, less swimming room and less flow. I just got him last night and the wife and kids absolutely love dumbo.

 

[Maritimer]

Even with the frags still being mostly small, the tank looks rather nice!

~Bruce

 

[five.five-six]

The impeller on my eheim pump for my euroreef skimmer is on it’s last legs. I’ve known this for some time and it’s held together with superglue and jb weld

A replacement impeller is $140.. for a 15 year old pump

My next option was to buy a new skimmer pump, I like the Varios-6S for $350

Another option I had been toying with was to modify a cheep jebao and then I saw a thread about someone who did it on another forum $90 shipped

The jebao showed up today DCP-6500 DC controllable rated at 6500 L/hr

First I had to remove the impeller from the shaft

Next I made a new disk from some scrap acrylic

Next I scribed the keyed shaft hole

Made the correct hole with files

Attached ecomatt

Next I had to make a Venturi. I drilled 1/4” holes in this jebao supplied 1/2” barb adapter. The 1/2 didn’t work so hot so I ended up using the supplied 3/4” adapter and that was much better

So how does it work? Well at first I was like meh, works about the same as the eheim I replaces and with all the great things some people say about jebao and the fact that it was rated for over twice the output as the ehime I was somewhat dissapointed but at least I have the eheim for a spare when this one catches fire




Then I looked at the collection cup 1 hr later and the foam is amazing, it’s like whipped cream or cotton candy. I’ve never seen anything like it.

I know the photo sucks but you hold a flashlight one hand don’t drop the iPad in the sump take a picture do better.