Choss' 96 gallon Reef Savvy "Nano" Tank

[choss]

Looking great Choss.
I love the grain of the sandbed.
Nice photograph as well

Janci - thanks for the compliment. It means a lot coming from you!

 

[choss]

Sand is starting to show some brown algae growth. Time to start adding some cleanup crew. I have some pinch hitters in my other tanks but will also place an order for next weekend. Probably pick up a conch and sea cucumber.

 

[YHSublime]

It's all happening!

 

[choss]

A few Pics
I've added the first few frags and a few more inhabitants to the new tank. Here are a few pics.

upside down hermit by choerenz, on Flickr

Zoa close up by choerenz, on Flickr

green zoa close up by choerenz, on Flickr

And a FTS

FTS 2 by choerenz, on Flickr

 

[Francoreef]

Following awesome thread

 

[choss]

Following awesome thread

Franco glad to have you along. Check back this weekend as I should have a few new corals in the tank and will try to get some closeup pics.

 

[Janci]

Choss... how is the tank doing?
Did you get the new corals?

 

[Genomecop]

I love your setup, metal legs look awesome.

 

[choss]

I love your setup, metal legs look awesome.

Thank you!

Choss... how is the tank doing?
Did you get the new corals?

I am slowly moving the corals up from the frag tank and holding tanks. Right now I have moved a few Zoas, two Acans, a small strip of GSP, which I am iscolating on the sand, and a beautiful brain green brain coral. I will update a few pics in the next days once I get back from travel.

 

[choss]

Update

The tank is progressing nicely. Here is a short video update (watch in 1080p). I hope you enjoy!

 

[choss]

I wanted to share a quick update but first I wanted to thank my son Peter who helped shoot and edit the video. He's a music major attending Northwestern this fall. It turns out he also enjoys video editing. So on to the update:

Livestock: Everything in the tank at the moment was originally in my 40 gallon cube, or in my 20 gallon frag tank. A few items from the video:

• The acan that is on the island with the macro algae (the thumbnail for the video) is the same as I use in my avatar. The growth was exclusively under my Kessil A360WE. It was about 5 heads and is now about 13-14 heads. I don't feed it often - it really likes to stretch upwards to the light and must be getting plenty of food in the water column. Now that it is under significantly more light (I need to borrow a par meter) it still exhibits the same behavior.
  
• I have three other acans in the tank - one on a small rock island and two on frag plugs sitting on the sand. I will eventually mount them on the large Island tower. I assume acans will do ok even if mounted vertically instead of horizontally.
• The large colony of trumpet coral also grew from around 4 heads under the Kessil in the 40 cube. A year later its around 30-40 heads. All the growth happened after I started neglecting the tank in favor of the new tank build out. Less water changes, less hands in the tank, less fussing and more growth! I also started adding my kalkwasser more regularly. So on that note, I added a calcium dispenser from Tunze to the ATO system. It sits in the sump, so the water traveling upwards from my ATO tank in the basement isn't kalk enriched so the john guest pipes wont get clogged up with lime residue. So far my alk is just above 7 and seems to be holding stead.
  
• I believe the yellow tank is a Square Tail Bristletooth tang. He was very dark when he was living in my frag tank - almost brown. Now he is completely yellow. He likes to hide and sleep in a small crevice in the tall tower rock, The crevice actually opens to a large cave inside the rock. THis Pukani rock is truly amazing.
• I have a small purple stylophora frag that I added to the larger island rock. It was doing ok in my frag tank but then I had a dip in ALK and it went very white and had poor PE. So I figured I'd lose it if I didn't move it. It seems to be stable now and I'm hoping it will recover.
• There is a small rose bubble tip anemone in the video. This split off a larger one in my 40 cube. Its about the size of a quarter now and has not moved since I put it in the tank. It will be interesting to see if it colors up as it lost some of its color while in another holding tank under two T5 bulbs.
  
• I purchased some CUC this weekend but decided that in order to stay consistently cautious, I quarantined everything in the frag tank. I want to avoid ich so I guess it will have to stay in the frag tank for some weeks.
  
• The only three items from the CUC package I added directly were a porcelain crab, emerald crab, and sea cucumber. I haven't seen any of the three since introduction.
  
• Nevertheless, I have about 7-8 hermits and a few snails in the main tank, and my sand is staying incredibly clean and white.

Profilux P4: I spent the weekend learning more about my P4. I hooked up all my sensors (only had the heat sensor set up until now.). The UI on the P4 is really not great. The instructions for calibration are poor and I had to watch several videos only to learn that I have to start with the push controls on the actual unit to calibrate! You'd think you could do it via the GHL control center program on the PC. Anyway, it took a while to get it all set up and worked out. My PH has been steady around 8.2 but what surprised me was the ORP reading. It was around 100, then a day later was in the 200 range. Today it was 352. I don't know much about ORP and what affects it so if anyone wants to weigh in please do. I am interested in your thoughts.

Next up: I will explore the GHL KH director that has been sitting in a box. Hopefully by this weekend.

 

[Clayton Jessup]

Amazing video Choss love it [emoji12]tank looks amazing!!

 

[choss]

Amazing video Choss love it [emoji12]tank looks amazing!!

Clayton thanks for checking in! I hope your tank is doing well.

 

[Clayton Jessup]

Clayton thanks for checking in! I hope your tank is doing well.

Thank you Choss , I am currently in the process of revamping my build hopefully for the better , I’ll be posting updates soon

 

[HolisticBear]

The tank looks great. The GHL process is definitely not great, but once you get it set up, it should hopefully be solid. I have a low/high water sensor and along with the temperature, those are 3 alarms that will send me an email. Setup is a PITA, but it has been working.

 

[choss]

The tank looks great. The GHL process is definitely not great, but once you get it set up, it should hopefully be solid. I have a low/high water sensor and along with the temperature, those are 3 alarms that will send me an email. Setup is a PITA, but it has been working.

I haven't hooked up my high water or flood sensors yet partially because I know its going to take me hours! What is the method for getting the email alerts? I seem to recall that @d2mini found a solution but I'm not sure how he managed it.

 

[HolisticBear]

I haven't hooked up my high water or flood sensors yet partially because I know its going to take me hours! What is the method for getting the email alerts? I seem to recall that @d2mini found a solution but I'm not sure how he managed it.

Fellow R2R members are pretty responsive on the GHL forum. Setting up emails alerts teleports you back to 1997 computers. It took me many hours and required GHL to patch their GCC software to fix found bugs. But following my steps, you might get emails in just a few minutes

0. If you use gmail, log out
1. Create a free gmail account. I used [email protected], you'll need another name
2.Enable Less Secure Apps, while logged into your new account
3. Go ahead and fill in your username, password, the mailserver address + port in GCC
4. Click "New.." select Script "Sensors" and Condition "Alarms", enter the email address you use often
5. Click Test (you should get an email)
6. Go ahead and log out of your Profilux4_1997 account and log back into your normal gmail account

EDIT: I have two entries because I have it email both my home + work email on alarms so I see it ASAP

 

[choss]

Fellow R2R members are pretty responsive on the GHL forum. Setting up emails alerts teleports you back to 1997 computers. It took me many hours and required GHL to patch their GCC software to fix found bugs. But following my steps, you might get emails in just a few minutes

0. If you use gmail, log out
1. Create a free gmail account. I used [email protected], you'll need another name
2.Enable Less Secure Apps, while logged into your new account
3. Go ahead and fill in your username, password, the mailserver address + port in GCC
4. Click "New.." select Script "Sensors" and Condition "Alarms", enter the email address you use often
5. Click Test (you should get an email)
6. Go ahead and log out of your Profilux4_1997 account and log back into your normal gmail account

EDIT: I have two entries because I have it email both my home + work email on alarms so I see it ASAP

This is awesome. Extremely helpful. You just saved me a few hours this weekend!

 

[YHSublime]

Looks like things are coming along nicely!

 

[choss]

Thanks! They really are. So far what I've been excited about is the lack of a bad algae bloom. I had a bit of green stuff showing up for a few days but it really went away fast. Could be the fuge doing its job, or maybe the skimmer which I'm quite happy with. I did some heavy lifting in the fish tank room this weekend so I'll have some nice pics to post this weekend. Water station coming together nicely!