A different kind of 75g build.

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Ordered the seneye reef monitor with par meter. I know it's not the most accurate but it'll still be better than just guessing what the lights are doing. Should be here on Wednesday.
 
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Did a little reshape during the water change today. Also drilled some hols in some of the rocks for better coral frag placement as the power heads kept knocking the frags into the sand. I've also been battling high nitrates. On my red sea nitrate test it turns strait purple. I've done 3 32gallon water changes over the last 5 days and I've barely fed the tank since I started. Only have the 2 clowns, 4 green chromis 2 turbo snails and the sand sifting star. In the pic I took 1ml of tank water and mixed in 16ml of rodi water. I've also been dosing 10ml of reef biofuel. Ammonia and nitrites are both 0. I do have some chaeto but I think my light is killing it. I ended up moving it to the side of the sump and moved the cheato to the other side. On the old setup I had the same light sitting on the top of the sump and would pull bucket fulls of chaeto out each week.

 
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Found my hanna phosphorus ulr checker. And the results are not so good. 178ppb or .54ppm. Added some phosguard to help lower the phosphate. And ordered a hanna nitrate hr checker that should get here on Thursday. I'm already out of salt so gonna have to order some more and do another 30gal water change
 
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Not sure if one of the phosphate tester were messed up or if the phosguard is just that good but po4 dropped to 67ppb or .20ppm. Only have one more reagent left. Will test again tomorrow. Have some more that will be here at the end of the week
 
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It was a bad test. Tested it again today and po4 was at 174ppb. Going to try and pick up another bucket of salt after work and do another water change. A saltwater mixing station is starting to look like a good idea.
 
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The seneye reef monitor came in. The display lights were already off when I got home. Tested the refugium. A good solid 50 par covering the entire spectrum. Plugged in the old fug light and got 275 with 450-700nm wave length. The cheato was turning white and dying. So I put a 36" led light that I had for an old fish tank a few days ago. It's already starting to look better.
 
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Hanna nitrate HR checker and phosphorus ulr reagents came in today. Nitrates are definitely over 75ppm. Not sure by how much. Have 30 gallons of fresh sw mixing. Need to get some bigger containers in case I have to keep doing these large changes
 
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Did another 30gal water change. Got nitrates to 36.8ppm and the phosphate to .08. Started working on a mixing station. It's going into a spare room on the main floor. Will have about a 30ft horizontal run so I can use pretty much any pump. Looking at the danner 24 mag drive with a smart outlet so I can turn it on/off from my phone.

 
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Been awhile since I've updated. Tank is doing good. Other than not being able to keep snails or chaeto alive. Able to keep the nitrates below 10ppm and phosphate below .08ppm with 20gal weekly water changes. Corals are slowly growing. Picked up a diamond goby,bubble coral and red blasto coral last week and today I got 2 damsels and a lta and a 40g breeder. Planning on putting the 40B next to the 75 and use it has a frag tank and have the T from the return pump water into it and a drain into the refugium chamber in the main sump. Can get roughly 200gph from the T. Have a hanna calcium checker on order. As well as a 55gal barrel and a jebao dcp 15k on order. Was planning on using the dcp15k on the sw mixing station in my basement. Have a dcp5k on my current mixing tank in a spare room on the main floor.
I could either

A: use the 15k on the mixing station and use the 5k oh a closed loop on the 40B
B: replace the Jabeo DCQ10K return pump with the DCP15K so I can get more flow into the 40B and keep the 5K on the mixing station.

I have a spare Jabeo RW8 wavemaker that I can use for more random flow either way.
I tested the 5K by taking my hose to the 2nd floor bathroom and turned the pump on. It was slow but it works.
Also been looking into the Robotank reef pi kit to get better control and monitoring.





 
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Started working on the 40b stand. And got the main drain and return holes drilled. Need to drill the emergency drain and get the plumbing for it. Should have it running this weekend


 
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And it's running. The diy coast to coast will take some time to trim right. Have the dcq10k set to 85. Currently running a Nicrew 100W light and controller. And got my 1st batch of corals from vivid.





 
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I've been thinking about moving my Oscar out of my 125 and putting him in the 75 and making the 125 my reef tank. Can have more fish and corals that way. my 125 currently has a Jabeo dcq 10K, but it's starting to get a hum. I can swap it out for the Jabeo dcp 15000. The main question is, should I continue to use the 20gal tank with the filter socks and skimmer or drain strait to the 55gal sump or to keep the 40gal. one option is to make the 40breeder as a separate system with the 20g as a sump. if I combine them, it would look something like this.
 
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And it's running. The diy coast to coast will take some time to trim right. Have the dcq10k set to 85. Currently running a Nicrew 100W light and controller. And got my 1st batch of corals from vivid.





New stand looks nice!!
 

A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

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