BPB’s 150 gallon

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Top of the morning!
 
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Ugly stage in full swing. Debating on getting an urchin.

In other news, my old chromis who was bouncing around for a week is acting normal and shoaling with the new ones.

I’ve got a triton test in hand I plan to send off next week at some point. Haven’t tested any parameters on my own but phosphate once which weighed in at 0.04 ppm. Cleaned the turf scrubber once and it was completely packed solid. It was brutally hard to scrape the algae off it was so dense and holding so tight. Doing it’s job. I’m liking this much more than checking the skimmer every day and manually dosing vodka.
 
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Don’t have many corals right now, but for a one month old tank I can’t complain how they’re doing. I’ve had this one a while. Really loving the overall appearance of the reef breeders leds at full spectrum. There is some disco on the sand that may improve when I raise them a few more inches. No ab+ over here. All channels firing equally with intensity set with a par meter.

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It sounds like the scrubber is doing its job. I've been thinking about a scrubber the last few years, but fail to pull the trigger. I'm curious, which do you have? I don't do any carbon dosing/reactor since my NO3 stay undetectable. I need to dose NO3 to keep the Acros colorful and the chaeto alive. However, I would love to ditch the skimmer.
 
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It sounds like the scrubber is doing its job. I've been thinking about a scrubber the last few years, but fail to pull the trigger. I'm curious, which do you have? I don't do any carbon dosing/reactor since my NO3 stay undetectable. I need to dose NO3 to keep the Acros colorful and the chaeto alive. However, I would love to ditch the skimmer.

I run a @Turbo's Aquatics L4 scrubber. Total water volume around 150 gallons. Medium to heavy stock. Very well made. Super high quality lights.
 

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I run a @Turbo's Aquatics L4 scrubber. Total water volume around 150 gallons. Medium to heavy stock. Very well made. Super high quality lights.

Thanks! I e-mailed him and am on the wait list. Actually, the back wall of my frag tank looks like the inside of a turf scrubber :p I pull off big chunks every few days. I would rather have the turf in the scrubber than in the frag tank.
 
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Thanks! I e-mailed him and am on the wait list. Actually, the back wall of my frag tank looks like the inside of a turf scrubber :p I pull off big chunks every few days. I would rather have the turf in the scrubber than in the frag tank.

Did he give any idea on the wait time. Interested to hear your thoughts on it. I swapped out the rev4 flap valve with a gate valve for easier use, though it is bulky. It doesn’t entirely eliminate all bubbles since by nature there will be SOME since it’s a waterfall, but restricting the drain doesn’t reduce the flow, actually increases it much like a gate valve on a full siphon drain as opposed to a durso.
 

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I did get a reply back asking me to confirm that I received his e-mail. Other than that. I have no idea on wait time yet or any other details. I'll likely go for the Rev 5. Before I order, I still need to figure out how and where the scrubber will fit in. I have a basement sump, so plenty of options.

Thanks for the gate valve tip!
 
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I did get a reply back asking me to confirm that I received his e-mail. Other than that. I have no idea on wait time yet or any other details. I'll likely go for the Rev 5. Before I order, I still need to figure out how and where the scrubber will fit in. I have a basement sump, so plenty of options.

Thanks for the gate valve tip!

I’m so envious! I have to cram everything under the stand. The boss doesn’t even want any additional equipment cabinets next to the tank! Considering switching to kalkwasser/tropic Marin all for reef in place of the calcium reactor
 

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If you can do it, do it. Makes life so much easier. After a few leaks on the hardwood floor, I knew I had to do something. Also, like you, I hated the limitations of a sump plus gear under the tank.

There are downsides. Like 15 feet of head to pump against.

Of course my old 135 sprung a leak and ruined the floor around the tank anyway in 2014. The Boss didn't throw me out :D

Even though I have a large 30" calcium reactor, I still have to dose lots of kalkwasser to keep pH up. Our house is so sealed up since the new windows. When AC is on pH drops big time even though I pump outside air to skimmer.
 
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If you can do it, do it. Makes life so much easier. After a few leaks on the hardwood floor, I knew I had to do something. Also, like you, I hated the limitations of a sump plus gear under the tank.

There are downsides. Like 15 feet of head to pump against.

Of course my old 135 sprung a leak and ruined the floor around the tank anyway in 2014. The Boss didn't throw me out :D

Even though I have a large 30" calcium reactor, I still have to dose lots of kalkwasser to keep pH up. Our house is so sealed up since the new windows. When AC is on pH drops big time even though I pump outside air to skimmer.

Unfortunately no basement setup for me. House is on a slab. Basements here are incredibly rare (I’ve never actually seen one in person in my life). Our house is new and sealed very well. The tank room is VERY humid and I have to keep the doors open and fans on at all times. Occasionally someone will forget, shut the door and turn the fan off. When I get home hours later the room is at about 85% humidity. Surfaces damp, about 15 degrees hotter than the rest of the house, and it smells of rotten fish. Very unpleasant. House is pretty tight. Equipment room type thing just isn’t doable. Gotta live with it
 

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Basements are pretty common here. Not sure why. Terrain, soil, demand??? At least it sounds like your new house has a dedicated tank room! Our DT is in the family room and has to look presentable as possible. Its our finest piece of furniture:D

Humidity is not an issue in the winter. in fact, the basement sumps add just enough humidity negating the need for a humidifier. In the cooler months, I crack a few windows to get a pH boost. The 180 DT also has glass tops, so no humidity contribution. The basement sumps & tank are all uncovered and I see the AC pulling a ton of water out of the air. I wonder how much energy that uses. I need to cover up.
 
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Basements are pretty common here. Not sure why. Terrain, soil, demand??? At least it sounds like your new house has a dedicated tank room! Our DT is in the family room and has to look presentable as possible. Its our finest piece of furniture:D

Humidity is not an issue in the winter. in fact, the basement sumps add just enough humidity negating the need for a humidifier. In the cooler months, I crack a few windows to get a pH boost. The 180 DT also has glass tops, so no humidity contribution. The basement sumps & tank are all uncovered and I see the AC pulling a ton of water out of the air. I wonder how much energy that uses. I need to cover up.


When I go in my attic I can hear an active trickle coming from the ac drip pan it’s pulling so much humidity. Lowest we are able to get the house is in the mid 50% range.

My tank is in the “office”. The boss still wants it to look presentable and decent so she’s been on me about finishing the stand panels so it doesn’t look so utilitarian. Tough to find the time. May do some more sanding today. I’m actually pretty close. I just hate that I have to hammer in the panels on the stand with the tank actually running
 

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I just checked our humidity for the last 6 months. It was in the 30-40% range in the winter. In the spring with windows open a lot, it varied with weather. Now with AC and the house sealed, we are in the 55% range. No wonder it seems warm inside. I'll be adding covers to some of the open sumps.

The fish will love the hammering. There may be some jumping. hope you have a cover over the tank.

Still no word from Bud on scrubber availability. I'm curious on your scrubber photoperiod. Do you run it opposite of the tank to help bump up nighttime pH and does the scubber seem to raise your pH? I know lighting the refugium at night gives me a small bumb up.
 
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I run 14 hours opposite of my photoperiod. Not sure of the ph benefit. I just know it grows algae absurdly fast. It’s almost ready for a cleaning again.

Took a few photos. I swear I have more fish than a yellow tang. He follows me around the tank and photobombs every shot. Doesn’t eat directly from my hand like the foxface, clownfish, and now male anthias does, but follows me as I walk around the tank. A note on the hand feeding. I find it remarkable that the
Male anthias is about 6 weeks out of the ocean now and already feeds from my fingertips. He became domesticated quick.

Green hair stage in full effect but rapidly receding. No big deal. Flow is so great I still haven’t seen any cyano. Hoping the mature rocks will help me avoid a Dino outbreak which I saw happen in the curing tub at about the 1 year mark, and it faded away on its own

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Had a bit of a freak out today. Walked in to see my 4 year old had dragged a stool up to the tank, and was holding onto the tank rim dangling his entire weight on it kicking his feet at the sump. Needless to say I didn’t stop for a picture!
 

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14 hours or more opposite is what I do on the refugium. I'll plan the same when I get the scrubber. Looks like late summer or early fall for delivery of version 5.

wow, lots of surface agitation. You could surf in there :) I do need to up my flow in certain areas.

Nice shots! Soon the green will be replaced by pink, red and purple!

I have not tried hand feeding. May need to give it a try. The fish do know exactly when feeding is. The get 5 pellet feedings on the hour with an autofeeder and they go nuts for the 5 minutes prior to delivery. The also know when I feed the frozen food at about 9:00 PM. They mob me at the end of the tank next to my TV chair just before 9:00. Freaky how they can tell time so well.

Our 2 male Anthias are way bolder than the females. Whenever I approach the tank, they disappear in the rockwork.

Scary situation with the little one! Lucky it was a heavy tank!
 
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No pictures yet but I did acquire a few tester sps “frags” courtesy of @dragon99 yesterday. I’ll start by obviously giving big thanks for the generosity in not only babysitting my favorite pieces which looked outstanding when I went by, but for helping me out in testing the waters on a handful one pieces before I bring those all back over. I’ll post some pictures later on as I’ve got time. Just hoping I don’t see the dreaded new tank STN from the base up in the coming days.

It was infinitely easier to mount them with an open top. Haven’t run an open top tank in 7 years, and while I still intend to mount my canopy to get the lights higher up, I can definitely see the ease of work involved in a canopy-less setup. It’s nice getting to look from the top down to see where things are going.

Had to scrub some of the hair algae off the rocks to ensure a good hold of the epoxy and glue. I’ve found if you don’t scrub the area things will get glued, the algae under the glue tends to die off when smothered, which can encourage the frags to fall off the rocks if they don’t encrust quick enough.

Green hair algae is still present on the rocks. It’ll be some months before coraline takes over and that’s ok. The foxface and tangs keep it so shortly trimmed you can’t actually see fibers. Rock surface is just green and slippery since they’re constantly nibbling at it. An urchin would take it down completely, but I’m just not ready for the headaches they present with dragging stuff all over the tank.

My turf scrubber is growing so well. Full 3D filling of the screen within 3-4 weeks seems to be the schedule. When I tested phosphate a few weeks ago it was 0.04. Great. I was happy with that. Yesterday I measured again and it was a whopping 0.2 ppm. I’ve been feeding a ton to ensure the anthias are fat and happy. All of my fish are super thick and robust. Not a one of them is skinny, but the 4 cubes a day, and 2-3 hearty pinches of pellets are doing a number on my water quality. I’ll be feeding a little more carefully.

Much to my dismay, I do feel like it’s time i revisit GFO use so I’ve ordered a gallon of HCGFO which I’ll be running in place of carbon for the time being. I need a second reactor to continue with carbon use I think. I don’t want to stop that because it the turf scrubber really does yellow the water a good bit. Hopefully the phosphate will come down smoothly. It’s been years since I’ve used GFO. Previously I dropped Lanthanum chloride into my skimmer to control phosphate, but alas, this tank is skimmerless and sock-less.

More updates to come
 

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I run 14 hours opposite of my photoperiod. Not sure of the ph benefit. I just know it grows algae absurdly fast. It’s almost ready for a cleaning again.

Took a few photos. I swear I have more fish than a yellow tang. He follows me around the tank and photobombs every shot. Doesn’t eat directly from my hand like the foxface, clownfish, and now male anthias does, but follows me as I walk around the tank. A note on the hand feeding. I find it remarkable that the
Male anthias is about 6 weeks out of the ocean now and already feeds from my fingertips. He became domesticated quick.

Green hair stage in full effect but rapidly receding. No big deal. Flow is so great I still haven’t seen any cyano. Hoping the mature rocks will help me avoid a Dino outbreak which I saw happen in the curing tub at about the 1 year mark, and it faded away on its own

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Awesome fts and nice to see v2+ at full spectrum. I have def found the light does better overall raising it higher. Currently at 16" above water on my tank. I think it gives better spread at 18" though and most likely going to move it back up.
 
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Thanks @LRT! I hope to get both fixtures running and suspended within a couple weeks.

New frags doing ok despite having sky high phosphate. A few quick iPhone pics

RRC Aussie Gold (scarring on the tips is from me pressing it down onto the rocks. Oops)
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BC Reef Ready Grape Juice
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Boom Corals Boomberry
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Northern Lights Stag (funny enough this has now been the first acro to go in every tank I’ve had dating back to my first sps attempt in 2012). Here it is again
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Bubblegum Digi
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Moved my bubble coral to the other end of the tank behind the rocks. I can see it perfectly from the front since my rock scape is a big bridge. It gets a perfect 100-150 par where it sits. And it’s in kind of a dead spot so it inflates super big now. Best of all it’s away from the clown lair so it’s now being left alone and not abused
 

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