Another Build Thread You Won't Read

[FishLvR]

This dang slug. So it has been moving around eating algae, taking forever, today I thought well it hasn't moved off the rocks should be safe to remove these safety covers on the MP40's. So I did and the second, I mean the second, I turned them back on he flew RIGHT INTO THE dang PUMP! It chopped the end of it's tail off. He doesn't seem to care, after turning off the pumps he went right back to eating the algae at negative mach4. I removed a softball sized clump of hair algae. I am getting annoyed. So I think I will up my magnesium to 1600 ish. See if it dent's it. Worked before.

 

[FishLvR]

So the sea slug thing is none the worse for wear and went right back to eating hair algae after going through the MP40. Hair algae has really taken over the tank to the point daily removal can not keep up. Phosphates are .04 and holding. Nitrates zero. Which tells me I have a ton of excess nutrients and the HA is just eating it right up.

I put GFO in the reactor and I am going to just say F it and dose Algae fix. It worked so well in my most successful reef. I was using a quarter of the dose after each water change and my tank was thriving back then.

I have macro algae and clams! There are living clams in my refugium. However I am willing to sacrifice them to finally have a usable display.

Sorry critters I am about to poison this tank.

 

[Red_Beard]

Raw deal with the algae. Fingers crossed for your critters!

 

[FishLvR]

Raw deal with the algae. Fingers crossed for your critters!

**** and players. And edited a non dirty word! Lol rhymes with pots.

 

[FishLvR]

I used half doses for the past few weeks just to see how everything would react. Macro algae took a hit for sure, but I can always buy more no sweat. The clams that hitch hiked in with the live sand seem fine, shrimp fine, all snails fine. On Sunday I removed as much manually as I could. I dosed a full suggested amount, overnight a massive die off happened. Most of it is turning white and just breaking off, the thicker areas are brown now and are easily blown off. The little sea slug guy is still tooling around but I might have to find him a home soon if the algae keeps dying off. He will starve. Also I have aiptasia now. So I got some critters here in town I am going to pick up to eat all that. Then maybe, I can finally enjoy this tank.

 

[FishLvR]

My little algae eating sea slug managed to kill itself in the MP40 through the guard. Which is fine since the Algae Fix has decimated the algae. There are still hold outs so I will continue the treatment into next week. I will do a very small water change this weekend just to get rid of some of the dead stuff.

Return pump is VERY loud. It is making a horrible whining noise. I think it's on it's way out. It was insanely cheap and I should have never bought it. Simplicity is the brand. Probably going to buy the red sea version just so it goes with all the other products of theirs I have, and they replaced that faulty temp meter without any pushback. So good on them. Still won't by their tanks though.

Also going to buy some Berghia for this aptasia.

 

[scubasubiker]

University drop out old lady here that picked the wrong year to stop drinking. Nobody cares about my stupid tank, but here it is. My build thread. It's like losing weight, if you don't tell people you are trying to lose weight then you have no accountability and you stay fat. Right? Or something like that.

I have had this 90 gallon Custom Aquarium Brands tank and a Trigger sump for years. They were free. However they didn't come with a stand. So for years it just sat there.

At this point most everyone has tuned out. Not enough photos, too much talk. Let me tell you something if you haven't moved on. Custom Aquariums Brand tanks are U G L Y. This thing is sooooo ugly. I hate it. It's the stupidest messing thing you have EVER seen. Their overflow is stupid, the intake is stupid, the frame is stupid, their sumps are stupid. I hate this tank. However, this thing is a freaking ugly butt TANK tank. Like inch thick glass, aluminum frame, 3 inches of globbed on black silicone RTV40 in their stupid ugly thick frame. I hate this tank in equal amounts of the peace of mind I have that I could shoot a Blackhawk with 454 casull at it and probably be OK. If Custom Aquarium Brands read this, they won't, but if they do, your tanks suck and your sumps suck, and could you make your intake a little bigger and uglier? I mean it already looks like toilet waste plumbing I'm sure you could up your game and make it even uglier.

I rest my case.

If you willingly bought this tank and it's not in an office building, I would like to know what your drug of choice is and ask you to share it with me.

Why use this tank? Because it was free and knowing what I know now I would have never loaded this 200 pound chunk of silicone and toilet plumbing into my car, then this thread would have never happened, and maybe I would have a life.

First things first I removed the toilet plumbing. Since the man who bought it before me had it plumbed like a literal toilet there is only one bulkhead for a 90 gallon tank. So I am forced to use undersized overflows. Which I don't know what happened in the last 6 years, but there is like 2 companies now? So go with undersized crap that looks good or flushing toilet. So I got the Eshopp Medium. Will it clear the MASSIVE BLACK ALUMINUM 2 INCH WIDE RIM? Probably not, but that's for another post.

So the Trigger Sump is a Ruby. It was abused. Man who had it before had that bad boy straight piped like a Ford trying to run a 6 in a redneck's backyard race track. Imagine Niagara Falls. Now imagine Niagara Falls in your living room. I bet they were hoarse from all the screaming. So he cut out the acrylic. It looked like a small muskrat got caught in a trap and tried to make their way out. Or maybe not a muskrat, maybe just a dude that didn't own a Dremel and only had a chisel and a will. A will to have the world's loudest aquarium. So me being stupid decided, oh all these scratches and defects, I'll just buff them out with all this crap I have lying around the garage. Realizing about 3 hours in I'm closer to death then I have ever been, I gave up. I also decided cordless drills might not be the best for the job at hand. Maybe if Tesla had his way we would never need to charge these things.

This is what defeat looks like.

I got on the world wide web and surfed on over to Trigger and bought the same sump but the Crystal model. Now, I dunno if it's the red color or what. But there is a MASSIVE difference between a 9 year old Ruby Trigger sump and a brand new Trigger Crystal sump. There are more defects in the acrylic, nothing structural, but just ugly spots throughout. And whatever wax they use is just one giant lube mess. I had to wipe this thing down with a microfiber every time I touched it. It's got cloudiness, scratches, crazing, all sorts of garbage. But it was cheap so there is that, and it came with socks so WOO HOO!

I had this old JBJ 45 that I sort of liked, I do like some things, but learned to hate the AIO. It was always a challenge to do anything. I have man hands OK? This last crash I almost gave up. After tearing it down I found my MP10's magnet has been rusting into the tank. And the ATI test shows that. So maybe that was it who knows. I live in a tiny house so I have to make room which meant getting rid of this old tank. I put it on Facebook market place. I don't know why. Maybe because I like to hurt inside and have lost all self respect. After weeding through all the bullcrud people asking stupid questions I found a normalish person.

The guy who came to get it looked so bewildered. He had NO CLUE what he was picking up. All he knows is his wife wanted a "small" tank. He looked scared. He said, "I wasn't expecting it to be this nice, or big." It was LITERALLY in the ad. Here is what he got. For free. It's like The Ring. You remain cursed until you, oh wait if you haven't seen the movie skip this, /spoiler you have to make a copy of the video and give it to someone else. Same with tanks, I was cursed with Custom Aquariums custom crap tank, so now I have to pass it on. He is what he got.

I think he got the better deal.

So now with that gone we took all the furniture out of the room, painted, and today an engineer is putting in a 2,000 dollar beam so this giant messing glass box and aluminum frame don't fall through the floor, and then keep falling through the floor, down through the crawlspace, the ground, past the earths core, right on to the other side of the earth. So essentially I'm not protecting the aquarium, I am protecting my house from the aquarium. So next week new flooring goes in to cover this new massive beam.

I have some fish and some corals from the old tank. I threw the corals in the macro tank and they hate the Tuna Sun, cause it's not Tuna Blue so fingers crossed they don't all die one buy one. Fish and the old rock, snails and urchin live in a Tupperware. They have a window for light, a sponge filter, heater, and a skimmer. And dang it, that's what they get for the next month and a half. And they better like it.

It is the best scape I have ever done.

Equipment is two MP40's and one MP10. Yes, I ordered a new wet side. Sheesh. I got the stupid outdated Ecotech live box thingy to control them all too. Two reef breeders 24inch because I already have them so yay. Bubble magnus that came with the 90 gallon and was surprisingly not in crappy shape. My Loop DC return pump. My stand is custom because stupid Custom Aquarium Brands puts the world's largest rim on their tanks with the thickest glass ever it won't fit on a standard 90 gallon stand. It's aluminum just like the frame of the tank. I stood on it to paint. I have no idea how I am going to skin it yet. I can tell you right now it won't be with fabric, you all know who you are. Stop it.

Oh and because I am generic in life without any single unique vision or will, red with gray plumbing. JUST LIKE EVERY ONE ELSE. At this point places should just charge double for those two colors.

Stay tuned for all my failures.

 

[scubasubiker]

University drop out old lady here that picked the wrong year to stop drinking. Nobody cares about my stupid tank, but here it is. My build thread. It's like losing weight, if you don't tell people you are trying to lose weight then you have no accountability and you stay fat. Right? Or something like that.

I have had this 90 gallon Custom Aquarium Brands tank and a Trigger sump for years. They were free. However they didn't come with a stand. So for years it just sat there.

At this point most everyone has tuned out. Not enough photos, too much talk. Let me tell you something if you haven't moved on. Custom Aquariums Brand tanks are U G L Y. This thing is sooooo ugly. I hate it. It's the stupidest messing thing you have EVER seen. Their overflow is stupid, the intake is stupid, the frame is stupid, their sumps are stupid. I hate this tank. However, this thing is a freaking ugly butt TANK tank. Like inch thick glass, aluminum frame, 3 inches of globbed on black silicone RTV40 in their stupid ugly thick frame. I hate this tank in equal amounts of the peace of mind I have that I could shoot a Blackhawk with 454 casull at it and probably be OK. If Custom Aquarium Brands read this, they won't, but if they do, your tanks suck and your sumps suck, and could you make your intake a little bigger and uglier? I mean it already looks like toilet waste plumbing I'm sure you could up your game and make it even uglier.

I rest my case.

If you willingly bought this tank and it's not in an office building, I would like to know what your drug of choice is and ask you to share it with me.

Why use this tank? Because it was free and knowing what I know now I would have never loaded this 200 pound chunk of silicone and toilet plumbing into my car, then this thread would have never happened, and maybe I would have a life.

First things first I removed the toilet plumbing. Since the man who bought it before me had it plumbed like a literal toilet there is only one bulkhead for a 90 gallon tank. So I am forced to use undersized overflows. Which I don't know what happened in the last 6 years, but there is like 2 companies now? So go with undersized crap that looks good or flushing toilet. So I got the Eshopp Medium. Will it clear the MASSIVE BLACK ALUMINUM 2 INCH WIDE RIM? Probably not, but that's for another post.

So the Trigger Sump is a Ruby. It was abused. Man who had it before had that bad boy straight piped like a Ford trying to run a 6 in a redneck's backyard race track. Imagine Niagara Falls. Now imagine Niagara Falls in your living room. I bet they were hoarse from all the screaming. So he cut out the acrylic. It looked like a small muskrat got caught in a trap and tried to make their way out. Or maybe not a muskrat, maybe just a dude that didn't own a Dremel and only had a chisel and a will. A will to have the world's loudest aquarium. So me being stupid decided, oh all these scratches and defects, I'll just buff them out with all this crap I have lying around the garage. Realizing about 3 hours in I'm closer to death then I have ever been, I gave up. I also decided cordless drills might not be the best for the job at hand. Maybe if Tesla had his way we would never need to charge these things.

This is what defeat looks like.

I got on the world wide web and surfed on over to Trigger and bought the same sump but the Crystal model. Now, I dunno if it's the red color or what. But there is a MASSIVE difference between a 9 year old Ruby Trigger sump and a brand new Trigger Crystal sump. There are more defects in the acrylic, nothing structural, but just ugly spots throughout. And whatever wax they use is just one giant lube mess. I had to wipe this thing down with a microfiber every time I touched it. It's got cloudiness, scratches, crazing, all sorts of garbage. But it was cheap so there is that, and it came with socks so WOO HOO!

I had this old JBJ 45 that I sort of liked, I do like some things, but learned to hate the AIO. It was always a challenge to do anything. I have man hands OK? This last crash I almost gave up. After tearing it down I found my MP10's magnet has been rusting into the tank. And the ATI test shows that. So maybe that was it who knows. I live in a tiny house so I have to make room which meant getting rid of this old tank. I put it on Facebook market place. I don't know why. Maybe because I like to hurt inside and have lost all self respect. After weeding through all the bullcrud people asking stupid questions I found a normalish person.

The guy who came to get it looked so bewildered. He had NO CLUE what he was picking up. All he knows is his wife wanted a "small" tank. He looked scared. He said, "I wasn't expecting it to be this nice, or big." It was LITERALLY in the ad. Here is what he got. For free. It's like The Ring. You remain cursed until you, oh wait if you haven't seen the movie skip this, /spoiler you have to make a copy of the video and give it to someone else. Same with tanks, I was cursed with Custom Aquariums custom crap tank, so now I have to pass it on. He is what he got.

I think he got the better deal.

So now with that gone we took all the furniture out of the room, painted, and today an engineer is putting in a 2,000 dollar beam so this giant messing glass box and aluminum frame don't fall through the floor, and then keep falling through the floor, down through the crawlspace, the ground, past the earths core, right on to the other side of the earth. So essentially I'm not protecting the aquarium, I am protecting my house from the aquarium. So next week new flooring goes in to cover this new massive beam.

I have some fish and some corals from the old tank. I threw the corals in the macro tank and they hate the Tuna Sun, cause it's not Tuna Blue so fingers crossed they don't all die one buy one. Fish and the old rock, snails and urchin live in a Tupperware. They have a window for light, a sponge filter, heater, and a skimmer. And dang it, that's what they get for the next month and a half. And they better like it.

It is the best scape I have ever done.

Equipment is two MP40's and one MP10. Yes, I ordered a new wet side. Sheesh. I got the stupid outdated Ecotech live box thingy to control them all too. Two reef breeders 24inch because I already have them so yay. Bubble magnus that came with the 90 gallon and was surprisingly not in crappy shape. My Loop DC return pump. My stand is custom because stupid Custom Aquarium Brands puts the world's largest rim on their tanks with the thickest glass ever it won't fit on a standard 90 gallon stand. It's aluminum just like the frame of the tank. I stood on it to paint. I have no idea how I am going to skin it yet. I can tell you right now it won't be with fabric, you all know who you are. Stop it.

Oh and because I am generic in life without any single unique vision or will, red with gray plumbing. JUST LIKE EVERY ONE ELSE. At this point places should just charge double for those two colors.

Stay tuned for all my failures.

Laughing so hard i almost peed myself...thanks for that!

 

[FishLvR]

Laughing so hard i almost peed myself...thanks for that!

I live to serve.

 

[FishLvR]

I am not beating this hair algae. It was going away then came right back even with dosing Algae fix every three days. I am at a loss on what to do. I have not done a water change since three weeks ago. Oh well.

 

[FishLvR]

So a continuation of this thread.
I am taking a new approach. No more chems. I am treating the tank as I would if nothing were wrong. Consistent water change schedule and just dosing what I would if the tank was fine. Of course I am dosing very little as the demand is tiny right now. Testing the tank regularly. This week will be my sort of baseline to see how my parameters hold.

Every night when I get home from work I take a turkey baster and remove what will come lose and put it in a net so to not lose water volume. The harder to remove dinos and hair I use a wire brush on. Most of this I can catch but some goes into my filter sock which I change nightly now. Running my litte UV. I am dosing Silica nightly. It is so painful to test for silica but I am barely registering so I will continue to dose until I see diatoms.

The tank is looking much much better with the removal. The sand bed is looking much better too. Skimmer is back online and actually barely pulling anything out. Carbon is back online as well, hoping to pull some of the algae fix out. I will probably change that at the end of next week and dial it back. Most of the coral is a loss I think. I don't think they will bounce back but maybe I will get lucky. Looking into an appropriate herbivore for my tank. Maybe a nice blenny and adding more turbo snails. I am also looking to add more macro algae to replace the loss. It was doing well until I nuked it with Algae fix. But that's for the future right now I need this tank to find it's own equilibrium. If that ends up being low nutrient then so be it. I am not chasing this anymore.

I was looking back at my old tank and what I was doing when it was successful and happy. I was doing nothing. Dosing two part, weekly water changes, light carbon, skimming. That's it. I fed the fish every day and that was that. That's the plan now.

 

[twentyleagues]

So a continuation of this thread.
I am taking a new approach. No more chems. I am treating the tank as I would if nothing were wrong. Consistent water change schedule and just dosing what I would if the tank was fine. Of course I am dosing very little as the demand is tiny right now. Testing the tank regularly. This week will be my sort of baseline to see how my parameters hold.

Every night when I get home from work I take a turkey baster and remove what will come lose and put it in a net so to not lose water volume. The harder to remove dinos and hair I use a wire brush on. Most of this I can catch but some goes into my filter sock which I change nightly now. Running my litte UV. I am dosing Silica nightly. It is so painful to test for silica but I am barely registering so I will continue to dose until I see diatoms.

The tank is looking much much better with the removal. The sand bed is looking much better too. Skimmer is back online and actually barely pulling anything out. Carbon is back online as well, hoping to pull some of the algae fix out. I will probably change that at the end of next week and dial it back. Most of the coral is a loss I think. I don't think they will bounce back but maybe I will get lucky. Looking into an appropriate herbivore for my tank. Maybe a nice blenny and adding more turbo snails. I am also looking to add more macro algae to replace the loss. It was doing well until I nuked it with Algae fix. But that's for the future right now I need this tank to find it's own equilibrium. If that ends up being low nutrient then so be it. I am not chasing this anymore.

I was looking back at my old tank and what I was doing when it was successful and happy. I was doing nothing. Dosing two part, weekly water changes, light carbon, skimming. That's it. I fed the fish every day and that was that. That's the plan now.

When I see a thread that someone starts dosing algaefix or something like it I cringe. It usually ends the same with multiple issues and dead corals. I am glad to see you are getting back to your roots which I think is for the best. Simple can be very effective.

 

[jerricolaboy]

I think your plan to let the tank run its course and find its equilibrium is the way to go. I hope if all falls into place soon.

I’m a big proponent to keeping it simple, like you said weekly water changes and basic maintenance. I think it makes for the best tanks in the long run

 

[FishLvR]

So it's only been three days of manual removal daily. And there is still dinos but much less. I have to really use the wire brush to get rid of it. The cyano is in the refugium only. Which is fine. It might actually prevent an outbreak topside. Water change this weekend. Feeding a measured amount of frozen food. Will test the tank and see what has changed.

 

[FishLvR]

So I joined a facebook group. I have new information that I didn't have here. So I am going to change carbon weekly now. I am going to order Tisbe pods and hopefully that UV will be here by Friday so I can get it plumbed in. I need to dose nitrate and phosphate they are undetectable right now. That can't be good. It is so much worse than it has been. I am not doing water changes anymore. I am just going to test the tank and keep nitrates and phosphates up. I will try to vacuum the sandbed into a sock weekly too. My phyto crashed which sucks so tonight I have to clean and disinfect everything and try again. Otherwise another expense. I have to give this a time frame. I can not keep fighting forever. I am giving it 6 months time. If I can't get it solved then I am breaking it down. I am having a surgery in January that will make taking car of the tank nearly impossible so hopefully that doesn't screw things up.

 

[jerricolaboy]

Sounds like a good plan I run carbon consistently and change it every week. I see nothing but benefit from doing that.
It’s unfortunate the amount of trouble you are having with Dino’s and algae. I hope something gives and you get it sorted

 

[FishLvR]

Sounds like a good plan I run carbon consistently and change it every week. I see nothing but benefit from doing that.
It’s unfortunate the amount of trouble you are having with Dino’s and algae. I hope something gives and you get it sorted

Me too friend me too.

 

[FishLvR]

So day 5 of trying Facebook Dino Support group's suggestions and this is the closest I have been to beating them. The reason I decided to follow their advice over Reef2Reef is everyone there is in agreement to treatment once they know which dino you have. They also will look at scope photos and help you there and you can even compare because they have a gallery of scope photos. That's why I switched it up. It became very clear I was NOT going to beat them without some sort of intervention.

Things I've implemented. Triple checking in microscope the exact dinos I have and comparing to others to further cement they are indeed ostreopsis.

No more water changes.
Dosing MB7 and Microbe Lift on alternate days.
Phytoplankton dosing.
Stirring sand bed right before lights off.
Blowing off rocks nightly before lights off.
So the UV can get into contact with them.
Changing carbon out weekly.
Dosing nitrates to 10ppm and phosphates to .1.
Changing filter socks daily.
All whites, reds, greens, OFF and blues on 15% for only 6 hours a day.
I found out by accident that the two windows in that room were blasting the tank with sun for hours. I would have never noticed if I didn't happen to be home at that time. The windows will remain closed now. This is where the dinos were the thickest too.

Things I was going to start but because of the UPS tragedy, RIP my prayers are with their families, both of my shipments are delayed. This was going to be my Tisbe pods (they show they eat the ostreopsis) and my much larger better built UV. Should get them by the end of the month. Hopefully this will be what finally knocks them out.

All the easy to blow off dinos have not made a come back. The hold out's that were hard to reach are breaking loose and at night I am able to easily blow them away. There are still some hold outs on the back of the tank. I think the new UV will really help. They even have listed GPH for tank size and wattage which was hard to get a consensus on so another helpful tidbit.

Refugium has been over taken with cyano. I can't even remove it anymore. If I remove the cyano it appears with in 20 minutes. Someone online suggested moving a powerhead in there. So I might do that. I think the reason I don't have cyano in the display is because of it's hold on the refugium.

My aiptasia is out of control. I sort of didn't care about it so I was leaving it, but they are getting large. I ordered a team of berghia. Just to get a start on it.

 

[jerricolaboy]

Sounds like what your doing is starting to work, glad your on the right track. I would attack it 1 problem at a time.

 

[FishLvR]

So my bulk reef supply order was delayed for a train accident! Poor UPS they can't catch a break. It arrived in town today but said it was damaged so it's being reviewed. So I think I might, when the UV finally gets here, just return it because just having the lights turned way down has the tank almost algae free. Also, my tisbe pods and phyto has been delayed another week I just told them to nevermind. It's one of those, delays are saving me from doing too much. Reef god was like, "This girl doing too much lets delay all this crap she spent money on to show her she never needed it." Do I think this tank will ever be useable? Probably not really. I think I will always have issues with coral death and massive dino and algae outbreaks the second I turn on the lights. Add into it the massive cyano outbreak in my refugium that is probably the worst I have ever seen. I mean it's thick! Like thick thick! LOL! I can't really catch a break either here.

I am such a fail at this particular hobby. It's almost funny now. I might have to write a book about how NOT to do this hobby.