CV's 75g noobie tank and now upgrade to 240g

[boacvh]

Here are some progress pictures. Coraline seems to be finally taking off. Some corals have had amazing growth. Others zero. My lobo seems to be dying. Down to one head
The blasto is the one from my profile picture so it has a lot of new heads
(Pardon the colors, still also trying out how to remove the blues correctly with Snapseed)

 

[boacvh]

Near disaster story at the 9 month mark? My tunze ato. The kalk solidifies at the tip of the hose as time goes by and prevents the ato from going back in the tank. Been cleaning the hose weekly now.

 

[boacvh]

Took a cool pic today, Everytime I tried in the past he would just bolt haha

 

[NY_Caveman]

Awesome shot!

 

[boacvh]

Awesome shot!

Thanks!

 

[boacvh]

Dealing with a small mystery now. My blasto lost 2 heads overnight. Mouths gaped then melted. But all the other heads look fine after a few days. All other corals look ok too. No big changes to any nutrient or other levels and no changes to lights recently. What could make one head die, but not the rest? The only suspects I can think of are:
1- it got stung by torch (it's 8 or so inches away, and was ok for 8 months or so, so i thought it was unlikely, but maybe?)
2- I recently cleaned my pumps and I can see the flow increased at same setting. Maybe the increase in flow hit just those 2 heads differently?

In any case, glad it wasn't the whole colony, but seemed weird to me. I did a big WC just in case.

Parameters for the record:

Salinity 1.025
Alk 9.5 (steady around that level)
Calc 473
Mg 1380
N 5ppm
P 0.1ppm
Temp 79.2
PH hovering between 8.1 and 8.3 but confess I don't trust seneye very much

 

[boacvh]

Struggling with my alk lately. Coraline has exploded and my kalk in my ato isn't keeping up anymore. Started dosing 2 part to complement. Went from 9.6 to 8.7 in a week (while adding fully saturated dose of kalk in my ATO. I just dont think I have enough evaporation) . Any advice here from experts to adjust to my new uptake? Should I expect consumption to be increased permanently from now on or is this just temporary while Coraline grows?

 

[boacvh]

Grumpiest guy in the tank

 

[boacvh]

And not sure what's up with my leather but now tailspot loves it as well. Hopefully I can take a picture later when both of them are there at the same time.

 

[boacvh]

Acan doing better now

 

[boacvh]

And the only member of the family who observes the fish more than me [emoji23]....

 

[boacvh]

Well..... another update today. My Alk issues continue. I have been dosing 2 part in addition to the kalkwasser in my ATO and Alk keeps dropping.
I am using the brightwell liquid additives. 20ml a day of each based on the online calculator. But yesterday I measured alk again and its only 7.6 now!. (calcium is 480 and Mg 1350). I tried a second measurement. and gave me 7.7.
I also measured my WC alk (reef crystals) and its at 9.1. So its definitely something in the tank either consuming it and/or precipitation. All corals are open and looking great, so I thought maybe it was my hannah checker had gone bad.....but then the WC measure seems to be correct so don't think that's the issue. Coralline still growing like crazy, so maybe I do have such high consumption after all and this is just normal?
could it be my additives are a bad batch and hence aren't raising the alk? (maybe I will try using my WC as a base and adding some to my WC and check for results there)
In any case, still a mystery to this noob, so hopefully someone experienced can shed some light before this trend worsens.
In any case, not panicking to change stuff here and there to try to fix this. Slow and steady changes for now and see what I can learn from this.

 

[boacvh]

One more issue in case someone has some advice. I have noticed my salinity slowly going down now that the weather is hotter. Now, my understanding was that it wouldn't matter as my ATO would replenish whatever evaporated and since salt doesn't evaporates my salinity would remain stable. However, I have been noticing a lot of evaporation happening on my covers and also towards the rim of my overflow and sump where I have a lot of salt creep now. So my theory is that water is evaporating, but salt isn't staying in the tank, it's leaving it in the form of salt creep. So when my ATO refills, my salinity level slowly creeps down. Is this a reasonable theory? I have been triple checking the salinity of my WC's so I am confident that's not likely what has been bringing my salinity slowly down.

 

[boacvh]

Getting ready for vacation. Making me very nervous to leave the tank for so long. But have read all the great advice in R2R and I think I am ready. Cross fingers hope for the best!

 

[boacvh]

Ok. I know, I know, this probably doesn't belong on my build thread, but since I ran into it on vacation I am asking myself "why doesn't every hotel in the world have this? That's the hotel elevator!!" Perfect for a new reef addict

 

[boacvh]

Guess I am having some trouble getting answers to my previous questions above...everyone on vacation like me . Maybe I will open separate threads for each of those so I can tackle them when I get back.

In the meantime, happy to report this is my 10th day away and all fish and corals are still doing fine w/o me. (I can see them on the camera I set up). 7 more days to go through, really nervous.

 

[Armt350]

I have to imagine its a risk vs reward type thing. I would love to see more tanks like that, but only if it was well maintained.

 

[boacvh]

I have to imagine its a risk vs reward type thing. I would love to see more tanks like that, but only if it was well maintained.

For what is worth this one was pristine, definitely recommend. My kids loved it. Here is link with description for anyone interested. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AquaDom

In terms of risk, minimal of course haha, what could possibly go wrong with a 260,000 gallon tank suspended and surrounding an elevator?
(If they spill the same percentage of water as I do during a water change, they would spill 3400 gallons! Haha)

 

[boacvh]

Finally back. That was 17 days total away from my tank. All fish are alive! But sad to report I did have casualties. All fish, softies and LPS are alive. But my few SPS died as well as my clam.
I returned to a tank with 6 dkh. So now will try to bring it back to normal slowly.
In case its useful for someone else out there, here are the noob lessons I learned from such a long time away from the tank:

• Doing a test run before the actual vacation trip was invaluable, and it helped me see the behavior of the tank without me and plan ahead for the trip.
• I didn’t take into account the possible increased consumption of alk. I returned to a tank with 6 dkh and massive coralline growth everywhere. I assume that additional consumption is what outpaced my kalk. In retrospect, should have perhaps used a higher KALK mix while away.
• Nitrates are higher (25), I assume my autofeeder was dropping a bit more than I thought. But not a big deal. Phosphate not too high. (0.25). Nothing that I cant fix with a couple WC.
• The salinity was almost unchanged. I ran my AC cooler than usual to limit evaporation. And I added a second ATO just for the trip. I also filled the tank a little more before leaving to give it an additional small buffer for evaporation.
• Most importantly, I need to make more local reefing friends (I have none) so next time I can get a tank sitter that knows what to do. Or even someone to call just in an emergency.
• Now, I need to just mourn my losses, stabilize my tank, and go get some replacement corals
• I am also considering a controller now. Will need to do some research

 

[motortrendz]

Thanks lilchris! and thanks for the 2cents. I have been reading on it and I was leaning towards an overflow that wasn't hanged. However, I got my tank second hand and it has a huge sticker on the bottom that says Do not drill the glass enclosure, so that's why I went with the hanging overflow. Do you think I can still get the tank drilled at LFS? (I wouldn't attempt it myself). Or more importantly, should I change tanks before I start because of this issue?

That is for the bottom panel. You can test to see if the back panel is tempered with a pair of polarized glasses and a laptop screen. If you google it, you'll find the exact method to do so. I dont want to give the wrong advice on that. But I've used to to identify tempered and non tempered glass before drilling and it does work...

I agree with not using the syphon overflow box, .y first tank used that and lost syphon and my return pump pumped all the sump water to the tank and then overflowed onto the floor.