ChukeeR's 266G Reef Savvy + Synergy Reef Build / Upgrade

[Black Pearl]

Understand your plight. I have been dealing with same issues Algae, then cyano, then Algae and my PO4 is around 15 ppb (0.015ppm)
Glad to hear you finally got things balanced out

 

[mattgsa]

Read all thirteen pages, great build so far.

 

[HiddenUser]

Read all thirteen pages, great build so far.

Thanks! I am hoping that this time around it really takes off and I've got everything in terms of maintenance down to a science so that it takes very little time in the summer to maintain whereas previously it had been neglected thus forcing me to play 'Reef tank reboot!'...

 

[mattgsa]

question, earlier in post you were singing the praises of Kessil, saying their lights was better then the Radions. I was wondering you have tried the defussers of the Radions, and if you liked them. Some have said the diffuser makes them better then just about any light on the market.

 

[HiddenUser]

question, earlier in post you were singing the praises of Kessil, saying their lights was better then the Radions. I was wondering you have tried the defussers of the Radions, and if you liked them. Some have said the diffuser makes them better then just about any light on the market.

It's funny going back through this thread to see when I said that and even more funny to see how much my thoughts have changed. At the time I was definitely a Kessil fan boy, but I never deviated from using Radions and after the Coral Labs settings were circulated, I've been using those and have had a lot of luck with my Radions.

In addition my Kessil A360 W that I had literally died a week after the warranty went out. Unlike the Radions the Kessil doesn't really have a option to replace one part or another, thus my only option was to buy a new kessil or something along the lines of trying my luck at soldering a couple parts to bypass a power distributor chip.

So for now I will keep using my Radions as the lighting for my DT.

 

[HiddenUser]

Well my next test as a Reefer has presented itself, ha! I'm thinking some Aiptasia was hit when the rocks were scrubbed (as part of getting rid of my GHA problem) and I now have a nice little outbreak of Aiptasia. There's at least 50 or so of them from what I can count and I'm sure there are plenty more in places I can't see.

I did order some Berghia Nudibranchs from Salty Underground, about 30 of them. Expensive investment to get rid of these things, but there's a large number of them that are deep in the rock that I can see, but can't really reach with a syringe with chemicals. I had some Peppermint Shrimp in the tank before, but those disappeared within two days of adding the Eel. Saw him actually treat himself to a peppermint snack the day we after we got him. I feed pretty heavily so didn't want to deal with the hit / miss of Copperbands or Filefish either.

I know that most people say they never see these things after they've added them into their tank, but I've seen a few of them out and about after lights out on multiple occasions. In addition, the Aiptasia nearest to where I added them seems to be slowly disappearing. Either the Aiptasia are moving or they're getting eaten.


I am also going to be trying to switch from plain IO salt to Red Sea Salt. I'm trying to keep my Alk about 7.5dkh and after doing 20% water changes with IO I'm finding that my Alk is spiking to 8-8.2dkh, and thus I've been having to quit dosing Soda Ash for a few days while my tank consumes alkalinity back down to around 7.5dkh. Right now it consumes about .2dkh per day which isn't much at all, but if I left dosing turned on the alkalinity of my tank would keep increasing for a bit until it reached a plateau, but I prefer to keep things more stable.

I'm trying to run a lower alkalinity so that the tips of my SPS don't get burnt due to my nitrates and phosphates currently being on the lower end. Seems like there's a lot of people who have made comments about higher Alk and tanks with low No3 and P04, so I'm going to try to avoid that. However it that's wrong, let me know as I'm happy to keep using IO since its nearly half the price!

 

[HiddenUser]

It's a good day... The weather has warmed up and I was finally able to get my WWC order.

 

[HiddenUser]

Upgrades!!!



Got a second RD3 230Watt pump which I am going to use to run two return pumps independent of eachother. Hopefully this will get me up around 5x turn over from the 2.5x I am currently at. Plus it'll add some redundancy to everything.

 

[HiddenUser]

Most recent FTS. Quality isn't great since it is from my phone and I was also playing around with the Aquarium Cam app. I think this is a couple weeks old though since it doesn't have any of the coral I picked up from WWC.

 

[HiddenUser]

Despite my nitrates not being measurable via a Salifert test kit I've recently started dealing with some sort of a turf algae outbreak, except this stuff can't really be pulled off in clumps and you really have to scrub to remove it from the rocks. Neither my tangs or CUC will touch the stuff, so I'm trying to get ahead of it before it gets worse.

I tested my PO4 with a Hanna ULR and it came back as .04. Didn't seem terrible, but maybe not the most ideal either as I suspect that some of the PO4 is being consumed by the algae growing in my display. I do feed pretty heavily 5-6 cubes of PE Mysis a day, a nori sheet for the tangs every other day or so, and a calm on a half shell or two for my Hawaiian Dwarf Moray every 2-3 days. I've been experimenting with not running filter socks as they are usually clogged up in less than a day or so with biofilm, and it's just annoying having to change out socks daily.

I picked up a Clear Water Scrubber CW-300 from BRS in hopes that this can out compete the stuff in my tank. If it starts working well enough I'm hoping that I might be able to take my Biopellets offline completely. I wouldn't mind not having to run Biopellets in the future as I'm starting to notice that it's hard to get my pH back up above 8.0. My pH typically hovers around 7.8, but gets down to 7.7ish at night.

I'll keep this updated as I couldn't really find out much about these ATS anywhere.

 

[Black Pearl]

What schedule are you running the ATS on? Having the ATS lights on while display lights are off helped my PH to go above 8.0 when I had it on a 12 Hr schedule. I've been having algae problems also with po4 readings of .02. I have presently stopped carbon dosing and Water changes

 

[HiddenUser]

What schedule are you running the ATS on? Having the ATS lights on while display lights are off helped my PH to go above 8.0 when I had it on a 12 Hr schedule. I've been having algae problems also with po4 readings of .02. I have presently stopped carbon dosing and Water changes

Right now I have the ATS lights on 24 hours a day. Figured I'd do this for the first week and then drop down to 18 hours (reverse light cycle) once the screen was seeded. Ultimately my goal will be to get down to a 12 hour light cycle opposite of my display.

Once it's seeded and growing algae I'll probably start removing small amounts of biopellets from my reactor every other week, or I'll just leave the pellets to be consumed and not refill it.

In a perfect world this ATS will be sufficient for No3 and Po4 removal to where I no longer need biopellets, carbon dosing, or GFO.

 

[Black Pearl]

I did just the opposite, I started the ATS at 12 hour and increase time after each harvest, I'm now running 24-7 at max light intensity, I'm using Turbo ATS. The Algae that i'm dealing with is very fine almost looks like coralline but its greenish brown. I have been hoping it would turn purple

 

[HiddenUser]

I did just the opposite, I started the ATS at 12 hour and increase time after each harvest, I'm now running 24-7 at max light intensity, I'm using Turbo ATS. The Algae that i'm dealing with is very fine almost looks like coralline but its greenish brown. I have been hoping it would turn purple

Only reason I started with 24 hours is that I saw another thread where Clear Water Scrubbers mentioned cutting back the photo period to slow down growth if the water became overly stripped of Nitrates and Phosphates as that reefers corals started losing colors after running their lights 24/7 for so long...

I wanted to get an L8 Turbo ATS, just didn't want to wait 4+ months to get one. So far I've asked Clear Water Scrubbers a couple questions via facebook and they've been extremely quick to respond and help out.

 

[HiddenUser]

One weeks worth of growth with a 24/7 photo period using a CWS-300...

 

[Black Pearl]

Not a bunker crop for sure, the screen looks smooth has it been roughed up?

 

[HiddenUser]

Not a bunker crop for sure, the screen looks smooth has it been roughed up?

Yep, the screen was roughed up a bit. I'm still running biopellets too. I'm not expecting to see much as my nitrates aren't detectable via Salifert and I already have low Phosphates. Plus I did a 20% water change last week and another 20% water change this past weekend. Those combined with only having a week worth of growth...I'm suspecting I'll see stalled growth for a while. At least it's seeded and doing something though.

 

[Black Pearl]

Great just don’t clean it too soon

 

[HiddenUser]

Great just don’t clean it too soon

For sure. I just pulled the screen to get the picture and then put it back. I figure it'll be at least another 2-3 weeks at a minimum before it might need to be cleaned. Hoping that 6-8 months from now I can take my biopellets offline and use the ATS solely for nitrate and phosphate control.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Hey @ChukeeR any updates on your tank?