Chris' 180 Gallon In Wall Office Tank

[iced98lx]

Got a little cleaning done on the sump. It was hooked up and running when I went to pick it up so I didn't want to leave it too long with saltwater and sand dying off in it.

More to clean but that should keep it from stinking the place up!

And if anyone ever says "I don't think my sump is very dirty, I don't think I'll clean it out regularly" just show them this photo:

 

[iced98lx]

Did something for the first time in this hobby after 7ish years in it. I took a rock out and drilled a hole for a coral to go into. The rock I used is so porous (I think it's dense staghorn colonies?) that I've never really wanted for spots to put corals. In this case I had a rock that was more solid and a piece of torch that was just laying on the sand recovering (and turns out growing). I had tried to glue it in the tank a few times without success. Finally, since hte rock was tiny I took it out, drilled a hole that the torch skeleton would fit in, glued it in and put it back in.

Turned out well, always funny what you just have never done in this hobby.

Crappy phone photo (sorry about the microbubbles, running chemiclean):

The torch is understandably tee'd off as it's been out of water 45 seconds ago in that photo.

 

[iced98lx]

Sometimes I really wish I didn't want to post every mistake I made as some are so elementary.

My 2 year old was home sick yesterday with just me. We're all running on very little sleep but I really wanted to get a few things done on the tank while my wife was watching at night. I checked a few things and noted that ALK was low (I had turned off my dosing since it had over-shot) and Ph was low (I dose Soda Ash so makes sense).

I did the stupidest thing possible at this point: I manually turned the doser on with no failsafes assuming I'd be with it enough to turn it back off.

You can guess what happened from there. My wife needed help, I walked away and this morning I realized my grave mistake and sprinted to the basement to turn off the doser and check ALK.

13.

Fudgemuffins.

I have changed every drop of saltwater I had made now and gotten it down to 12 but honestly, that is such a huge swing. Luckily I have had pretty high calcium levels so I'm not majorly out of whack ratio wise but the swing is pretty nasty.

 

[FrankAbagnale]

Ah! That’s too bad. Happened to me once with a faulty head on my doser. I woke up to an all white tank!

 

[iced98lx]

Ah! That’s too bad. Happened to me once with a faulty head on my doser. I woke up to an all white tank!

Yea I got really lucky since my ALK container was nearly empty (I have a full gallon sitting next to it to swap out) so I think it ran out of solution somewhere in the night.

Funny how we take so many precautions (containers in a position where it can't siphon, etc etc) but then undo all the safeguards we put in place in the name of lazyness.

Now that I'm done kicking myself HARD for doing something so dumb I think best case scenario is some bleaching and I lose my growth momentum. Worse case is the next few days reveal some STN/RTN from the swings. So far everything is polyps out and looking fine so fingers crossed.

 

[FrankAbagnale]

Yeah, only time will tell. IMO I wouldn’t do any more drastic water changes. I would let the ALK come down over time. I think multiple big swings is far worse than one big swing up. But again, I’m no expert!

 

[iced98lx]

Yeah, only time will tell. IMO I wouldn’t do any more drastic water changes. I would let the ALK come down over time. I think multiple big swings is far worse than one big swing up. But again, I’m no expert!

I agree with your suggestion, I was planning the water change post Chemiclean which is why I did them but in hindsight it might have even been better not to to avoid the 2nd swing. The tank will go back to normal upkeep procedures and I'll let the ALK fall naturally over the next few days.

One thing that I did over at RC that I slowly fell out of the habit of is Full Tank Shot Friday, just post a FTS every Friday no matter what shape my tank was in. Both as a way of forcing me to keep status up to date and discuss what was going wrong/right but also for progression shots. Here is my first R2R FTSF:

MicroBubbled up due to the skimmer still processing the chemiclean.

 

[Janci]

I hope the Alk swing effects will be minimal.
The tank looks good though

 

[iced98lx]

Happily no losses due to the ALK swing as of yet. Some lost color, but that will come back with time.

I've started using a turkey baster and blowing off my rockwork every day to try to stir up detritus and get it out of the tank. I noticed an abundance of it now that the rockwork isn't covered in algae. Simple step between feedings that will hopefully help keep things cleaner.

Some photos from today:

DC IceBlue by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


Cardinalfish by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


leptastrea by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


Torch by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


Eagle Eye Zoas by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


DC Surprise by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


DC Blueberry by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


Tuxedo Urchin by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


Copp's Cherry Blossom by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


Oregon Tort by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


Highlighter Acro by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


JF Sour Twist by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


Secret Acro by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


DC Purple Rim Party Time by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


Blue Eye'd Blondes by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


Green Zoa vs Purple Cap by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr


ORA Tri Color by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr

 

[iced98lx]

So, no apparent fallout from the Alk swing. Everything is growing still which is great.

Quick potato FTS as the T5's are still warming up:

This annoying turf algae has turned green again where it wasn't completely destroyed. Another round of fluconazole will be in order to finish the job.

Some random poorly taken/exposed phone shots this morning:

0314180925b by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr

0314180925d by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr

0314180925c by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr

0314180925a by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr

0314180925 by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr

 

[Janci]

Nice pinkish colours.
I love the monti!

 

[iced98lx]

Nice pinkish colours.
I love the monti!

thanks those phone shots are pretty washed out by the T5's so it's not all as pink as it looks but I have ended up with a lot of purple and pink somehow.

I am contemplating growing staghorn or something out of the middle of the big purple monti. Was hoping the others would pick up the growth pace and I'd have a nice spiraling set of colors (orange, purple, red, green) but alas the purple grows like weed.

 

[iced98lx]

Updates will be paused. We just added a daughter to our family!!

 

[Janci]

Updates will be paused. We just added a daughter to our family!!

Congratulations!!!!
❤❤❤

 

[Ento-Reefer]

I enjoyed reading through your build thread. Congrats on the new baby girl

 

[iced98lx]

Snuck in anFTS Friday!

 

[1WildBill]

Congrats on the daughter. Tank is looking great.

 

[iced98lx]

Small update, still recovering from the new kiddo but tank is doing fine thankfully. Last kid the tank took a major nose dive so I'm trying hard to make time for upkeep.

I have noticed one casualty from my alk doser incident, my Tubb's Mystic Blue Acropora is STN'ing from the bottom up but also appears to be continuing it's fast growth at it's tips. I'll need to cut a large piece of it off to make sure the STN doesn't take the whole frag. Otherwise no coral loss, one dead tip on my hawkens enchinata as it got dumped in the sand by an urchin. I've glued it down now, no more sand bed trips for it.

I had turned off my 2part dosing and need to now turn it back on and continue to test. I've been keeping up somewhat on my GFO changes as well. The tank looks good over all and SPS are growing.

Here are a couple awkward porthole + phone photos of coral I think are coloring up nicely:

2018-04-10_04-37-26 by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr

2018-04-10_04-38-02 by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr

 

[1WildBill]

Looks great.

 

[Janci]

Small update, still recovering from the new kiddo but tank is doing fine thankfully. Last kid the tank took a major nose dive so I'm trying hard to make time for upkeep.

I have noticed one casualty from my alk doser incident, my Tubb's Mystic Blue Acropora is STN'ing from the bottom up but also appears to be continuing it's fast growth at it's tips. I'll need to cut a large piece of it off to make sure the STN doesn't take the whole frag. Otherwise no coral loss, one dead tip on my hawkens enchinata as it got dumped in the sand by an urchin. I've glued it down now, no more sand bed trips for it.

I had turned off my 2part dosing and need to now turn it back on and continue to test. I've been keeping up somewhat on my GFO changes as well. The tank looks good over all and SPS are growing.

Here are a couple awkward porthole + phone photos of coral I think are coloring up nicely:

2018-04-10_04-37-26 by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr

2018-04-10_04-38-02 by Christopher Uthe, on Flickr

Looking good Chris.
Which acro is the one in the second picture?