Griev's 50 Gallon Lagoon AIO - #SavePinkyTheWrasse!

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Griev

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One bit of good news is that my ASD Rainbow Milli is looking the best it's ever looked. Maybe it'll finally start growing.

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I've been thinking about getting a 3D Printer for a while, and finally pulled the trigger on the Prusa i3 MK3S. Spent some time modeling out some projects to make how my lights are mounted to my tank, and the light hanging fixture more professional looking.

Quick digital preview while I wait patiently for my printer to arrive;
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So after another member suggested I learn a different modeling program, I decided to remake the brackets for the back of the tank and for the Nanobox Quad light with a more powerful tool. So happy that I did... Look at the before shots above, compared to these!

This first model is a 3 piece light bracket to hang my NanoBox Quad from my 8020.net extruded aluminum arm above my tank. I designed it to just slip onto the 40x20 T-Slot bar, and it'll have a bolt at the end to make sure it can't slide off.


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The pieces will slide together using a sliding dovetail that the weight of the light will pull down and keep tight;

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Then just slide it over the light body, then pull the center bridge up through the two arms.

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The next part was much easier to model. It's just a foot and back-of-the-tank bracket for the same 8020.net light arm, but I wanted to brace it significantly better. It's currently just clamped to the back of the tank...

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Took two days to build my Prusa kit, but everything appears to be working perfectly! First set of brackets are being printed now and should be ready by tomorrow morning. It's mind blowing to me how far this technology has come in such a short time!

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Took two days to build my Prusa kit, but everything appears to be working perfectly! First set of brackets are being printed now and should be ready by tomorrow morning. It's mind blowing to me how far this technology has come in such a short time!

1579805680576.png


PETG or? If PLA be careful, when it gets warm it will deform and soften. PETG will not.
 
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I realized after printing that I'd forgotten to transfer the .5 mm tolerance to the bottom bracket so I had to reprint it (was so tight fitting that I had to break it to get it back off). I also made a bunch of settings tweaks (decreased infill and increased layer height/wall thickness for increased strength and lower print times). New brackets are working perfectly! I've got the LED holding bracket printing now!

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This peice holds the bar from swaying around?

I made the same clearance mistake. It's amazing what .5mm will do and the accuracy of 3d printers!
 
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After a failed print due to my bed being slightly too cold (popped loose about 1/3 of the way done) the three parts of the bracket are done, and best of all they work! Looks like .5mm was a little bit too much tolerance, next time I'll probably only do .25~. Even with a bit too much tolerance between the parts, the dovetails feel more than strong enough. :)

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Haven't been posting as much as I've been trying to troubleshoot my tank post vacation and have had some SPS losses.

I think I'm finally to the point where everything that's going to die has died and the majority of everything else is looking better every day and I'm starting to see new growth on my Acros.

Looking back I'm still not 100% sure what the root cause was but I think it was either (or possibly a combination of both);
  • The ALK spike from me putting the 'wrong' dosing numbers from my crappy old doser into the new DoS right before vacation
  • The extruded aluminum from the light arm that I had to temporarily put into the rear chamber (clamped to the back glass) had started leaching something bad into the tank.
Thanks to some 3D printed brackets I designed, I've got the aluminum out of the tank, did some big water changes, and the APEX/Trident combo is super dialed in now. I will say it was heartbreaking watching the corals that weren't going to make it slowly melt away since the damage was already done.

Well ups and downs, but over the tank still looks awesome. Big sigh of relief!

I've been having a blast designing and printing new stuff for my tank;
  1. New hanging holder for my NanoBox LEDs that looks way better than the wood one I haphazardly tossed together way back when I got it.
  2. New brackets to hold the extruded aluminum light arm *outside of the tank*
  3. Mangrove Planter Box
  4. Camera mount for a Wyze camera
Anyway here's the pics!

Tank is looking awesome and the new male Spotbreast Angelfish is looking healthy and getting along great with the female. Nems are still wandering a little bit, but they're settling into some good spots.

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Now for the gore... If you're faint of heart look away now!

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Lost most of my PC Rainbow colony, my Foxfire frag, an older BC Frag (can't remember the name), and the two millies on the top left are 50/50 still. Might make it yet.

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Lost this frag of BC Ms Scarlett and the unnamed ASD Green Acro.

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I think the Leng Sy is toast. It had an anemone living on it for most of the vacation. There's one small part that might make it, but I'm not optimistic.

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The Blue Tort is hanging on and I'm pretty sure will make it. Next to it the BC Goldfire that didn't make it.

That's it. Now for the full tank again so the end of my post doesn't bum you out too much.

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Help me fellow reef nerds. I really can't figure out what's going on with some of my Acros.

I've got a few that are just slowly wasting away over weeks/months while others are looking perfectly fine. Nothing seems to be up with my parameters. Thanks to the Trident/DoS set up it's been rock steady between 8.3-8.5 with Calcium holding solid at 450 for weeks now, and Phosphate is steady at .04. Is that maybe not high enough?

My only other theory is that something bad got into the water from having to temporarily mount the aluminum arm inside the rear chamber for a few weeks, but I've done a half dozen water changes since then and I have a hard time believing that any dangerous concentration of whatever it was could still be present.

Anyway here's some pictures of how the corals I'm worried about look.

This acro (middle, back row) has only been in the tank a very short time and was very healthy when it arrived and the corals around it seem to be fine;
IMG_20200226_183131_MP.jpg


Older PC Rainbow colony that's barely got any PE and has been slowly (over months) receding;
IMG_20200226_183148_MP.jpg


I can't seem to keep Montipora caps alive;
IMG_20200226_183231_MP.jpg


Anyone have any ideas for what I could try next to troubleshoot? Maybe an ICP test?
 

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Help me fellow reef nerds. I really can't figure out what's going on with some of my Acros.

I've got a few that are just slowly wasting away over weeks/months while others are looking perfectly fine. Nothing seems to be up with my parameters. Thanks to the Trident/DoS set up it's been rock steady between 8.3-8.5 with Calcium holding solid at 450 for weeks now, and Phosphate is steady at .04. Is that maybe not high enough?

My only other theory is that something bad got into the water from having to temporarily mount the aluminum arm inside the rear chamber for a few weeks, but I've done a half dozen water changes since then and I have a hard time believing that any dangerous concentration of whatever it was could still be present.

Anyway here's some pictures of how the corals I'm worried about look.

This acro (middle, back row) has only been in the tank a very short time and was very healthy when it arrived and the corals around it seem to be fine;
IMG_20200226_183131_MP.jpg


Older PC Rainbow colony that's barely got any PE and has been slowly (over months) receding;
IMG_20200226_183148_MP.jpg


I can't seem to keep Montipora caps alive;
IMG_20200226_183231_MP.jpg


Anyone have any ideas for what I could try next to troubleshoot? Maybe an ICP test?
I’m no help with sps issues as I’ve never owned any but an icp test seems like a good step just to make sure there’s no weird water quality issues. You should also start a thread over in the General SPS discussion forum where more people with specific expertise are likely to see it and help. I hope you get it figured out soon before anything else starts to deteriorate.
 
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Still waiting on the ICP test results, but I did a 20 gallon water change just in case (didn't see any downsides) and have slowly dropped my Alk from 8.5 down to 7.4 since I'm running such low nutrients (which I still don't really believe since I'm stocked pretty heavily, but that's what the tests say, and algae grows very slowly in my tank).

No visible changes yet, but keeping an eye on things. Overall my tank looks awesome, just can't stop the STN of my Acropora/Montipora. :(
 

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Losing those corals is tough, do you feed specifically for the small poly size of acropora and montipora corals? If so, what are you feeding and how often?

Have you checked the aquarium for stray voltage? Sometimes this will affect some corals but not all.
 
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Losing those corals is tough, do you feed specifically for the small poly size of acropora and montipora corals? If so, what are you feeding and how often?

Have you checked the aquarium for stray voltage? Sometimes this will affect some corals but not all.

Stuck my tongue in there and didn't feel a shock, must be OK. ;Dead

I don't currently have a multimeter, suppose I should pick one up just to be absolutely certain.
 
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The more I'm thinking about it. I'm pretty certain it's the higher Alk combined with low nutrients leading to my issues. That explanation best matches the timing of the issue starting, and the changes that I made around that time.

When I set up the Trident, it over-dosed ALK from where I'd been keeping it (7.5-8) to almost 9. Since I was going on vacation soon, I aimed to stabilize it around 8.5. I didn't change my feeding habits or livestock or anything else noteworthy around that time. That's the same time that the issues started. This is my first bare bottom tank, so I guess I'm not used to how low nutrient they run. :eek:

I'll see if the lower levels help while I wait on the ICP test results to come back.
 

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Stuck my tongue in there and didn't feel a shock, must be OK. ;Dead

I don't currently have a multimeter, suppose I should pick one up just to be absolutely certain.

haha, as long as you didn't have rubber boots on ;). It seems like an odd thing, but working in and out of fish stores for quite a while it's surprising how often it happens. I'll usually touch the water and ground myself with the other hand and you learn pretty quickly if there's stray voltage haha.

It absolutely could be that, however I wouldn't think that the overdose of alkalinity (which seemed to be corrected quickly) would affect the corals after so long, and seeing that none of the other corals were massively effected makes me wonder what's going on. I ask about feeding because of the low nutrients, although corals get much of their sugars from their symbiotic algae, they do need to receive the building blocks for proteins from somewhere else which is why I was thinking feeding could be the issue. If you want to try that route I would suggest gut loading brine shrimp nauplii and feeding them to the aquarium once a week (or more often) if possible. Just my thoughts though, hopefully the ICP tests come back okay and you can continue working on solutions from there!
 
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Looks like I should dose a little iodine to help my Zoas/softies, but I don't think that would explain what I'm seeing from my Acros. It also looks like I do have some P/N, but I took samples after removing the chemi-pure.

Right now I'm not sure if I should do anything based on these results. Tank is physically looking slightly better (or at least no longer looking a little worse every day), STN has either slowed waaaaay down or has stopped on the corals that were having problems. Currently in a wait and see mode.
 

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