Caravan's 165 SPS dominant Reef in Austin

[Caravanshaka]

@FraghouseCorals order came in today, and corals look awesome. Brandon does a great job packing and shipping if you ever need nice chunky SPS!

This is after 30 mins of being in the tank:

 

[NY_Caveman]

@FraghouseCorals order came in today, and corals look awesome. Brandon does a great job packing and shipping if you ever need nice chunky SPS!

This is after 30 mins of being in the tank:

Nice frags!

 

[Caravanshaka]

Orphek fuge light finally came in!

 

[BigJohnny]

Orphek fuge light finally came in!

I didn't know orphek made a fuge light?! Bet it's nice

 

[Caravanshaka]

I didn't know orphek made a fuge light?! Bet it's nice

It’s one of their OR60 bars in a refugium spectrum. Nice build quality and a decent price

 

[Caravanshaka]

Well, after a weekend away with the wife for our 12 year anniversary, I came back to a bit of craziness. Overflow was gurgling, so the in laws said “this tank is so loud!”....I adjusted the overflow knob in front of them and it went back to being very quiet...get bad they dealt with that for a few days, but at least it wasn’t a problem with the tank other than noise.

I had a random RTN of a green slimer....cause may be related to below.

Today, after finally mounting my 2x 54w blue plus t5’s and running my inlet line for.my cO2 scrubber from the skimmer lid, I was taking a look in the sump and noticed that the essentials #2 dosing container was still full.

What!?!? I can clearly see #1 and #3 have dropped about 3/4” or so...so I could tell that wasn’t right. I hit the prime button on that dosing head and get nothing. Turn the Apex slider to “on” and get nothing. It was apparently logging that it dosed, but wasn’t doing squat.

I started checking lines, but since head 1 worked I knew it shouldn’t be power. I thought to myself let me check it again just in case, and I pulled apart the 1-link cable on both ends and re-seated it. That was apparently the problem, as the head started working!!

I then started having Apex fusion comm issues, so anytime I ran calibration on the DOS units, I couldn’t get through it before fusion went back down. Decided to turn on wifi in case my hardwire line was acting up, and finally got fusion running again. Calibrated all 4 heads and confirmed they #2 dosed when it was supposed to.

It’s now 1:30am, and I haven’t had a chance to test calcium to see how bad it is after never having it dosed....but I did quickly double my dose amount for it so it can slowly catch back up. Will run tests tomorrow and see where I am at.

What a long evening!

 

[NY_Caveman]

Happy Anniversary! Sounds like a long night but at least you got it running.

 

[Caravanshaka]

Looks like I’ve got Calcium back in line! Readings tonight

SG - 1.028 (need to drop this a bit, want 1.026-1.027, but not worried about it)
Alk - 7.67 and steady now
Cal - 440
Nitrate - 1ppm
Phosphate - 0 - need to get this detectable at least

Overall the numbers look good, and the tank is looking good as well. After a week of stability, I’m going to send an ICP test in to get my trace element levels and a baseline for how ATI Essentials is doing overall.

 

[Caravanshaka]

After wondering for a few days why my COR20 was running at 100% and it felt like the flow was really weak. Today I decided to pull off the loc-line setup and swap it for a larger one. As soon as I popped off the original, water flow came rushing out and then quickly bubbles as my return section dried out. Dropped the flow rate, still bubbles....dropped again, still bubbles...finally got down to 20% before the bubbles stopped!!!

So let me go back and explain what I had. I don’t like a ton of flow through the sump, so I only run 3/4” return piping. I liked the new random flow generators, and on their site they suggest 1/2” for 500gph. I didn’t want any more than 1,000gph flowing anyway, so I used a 3/4” to 1/2” loc line reducer into 1/2” RFGs on each side. I also wanted to try the loc-line check valves just to see how well they would work, knowing my sump had no trouble holding the water if they didn’t. So I had one of those on each side as well.

Turns out the check valves on both sides got totally clogged up, and hardly any water was getting through! I have now switched it all out for straight 3/4” and will slowly go up in flow rate to get the flow I want. This should also help me get salinity back down. Planning on going up a few percent per day until salinity is normal again.

Moral of the story, trust your gut. I knew something wasn’t right and figured it was probably user error and not the equipment.

 

[Caravanshaka]

Rough week with the new tank.

Picked up some frags from farmerty as well as a colony do red dragon from gig 'em over the weekend. Frags are all doing well, but I guess my tank thinks Red Dragon is invasive and should be nuked, because this is the 2nd time it hasn’t lasted 5 days in the tank before becoming a beautiful white color. Everything else looks ok.

My Hanna calcium checker decided it doesn’t want to be accurate anymore. I’m getting high 400’s as my readings even though my calcium dosing pump wasn’t working...so I brought a sample to test to my LFS and they read it at 380....time for a titration kit, so have a Salifert test on the way.

A couple days ago I woke up to stringy brown junk on the sand. When the Halides came on, it started to get everywhere. Best I can tell it is Dino’s, so the battle begins....

Did I mention Dorey jumped out of the tank? Yeah, she didn’t make it....

And that brings us to tonight, when I had to make a post in the Neptune forum asking what the heck is going on with my DOS pumps....



https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/s...ven-runs-if-i-touch-it-with-my-finger.413425/

Hoping for some things to turn around for me!

 

[Scrubber_steve]

I like your barrell unions.

Tell me a bit about them.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Following along!

 

[Caravanshaka]

I like your barrell unions.

Tell me a bit about them.

It sure what to say about them? They are simple sch40 white unions purchased from an online plumbing supplier. I went for cheap, effective, and aesthetic for the plumbing and am pretty happy with how it turned out.

 

[Scrubber_steve]

It sure what to say about them? They are simple sch40 white unions purchased from an online plumbing supplier. I went for cheap, effective, and aesthetic for the plumbing and am pretty happy with how it turned out.

They are very slimline compared to some.
Do they have a brand?

 

[Caravanshaka]

They are very slimline compared to some.
Do they have a brand?

They are Lasco/Spears:

https://www.pvcfittingsonline.com/1-sch-40-pvc-union-socket-457-010las.html

 

[Scrubber_steve]

They are Lasco/Spears:

https://www.pvcfittingsonline.com/1-sch-40-pvc-union-socket-457-010las.html

Cheers

 

[Caravanshaka]

well, I have microscopic confirmation that I am entering battle with ostreopsis dino's...still researching my plan of attack. Any suggestions?

 

[Zbryant]

well, I have microscopic confirmation that I am entering battle with ostreopsis dino's...still researching my plan of attack. Any suggestions?

No for sure solution, but a properly size in sterilizer running at the proper flow rate seems to solve a lot of issues! Hope that helps!

 

[Caravanshaka]

No for sure solution, but a properly size in sterilizer running at the proper flow rate seems to solve a lot of issues! Hope that helps!

Thanks, i am dosing 1ml/gal of h2O2, running a large UV sterilizer now and started a blackout overnight. Just did a quick look at the tank and only see a tiny sign of them left. May leave lights off tomorrow to make sure they stay in the water column and all get zapped.

 

[Caravanshaka]

Lights have been on for half a day now and everything still looks Dino-Free. Going to continue the H2O2 and UV sterilizer for at least another week though.

I had to chop up my 2 birdsnest colonies to a few frags, I lost the Red Dragon, and a couple minor things...but other than that everything else looks unfazed.