Hans and his SCA150 adventure in the Dakotas.

hhaase · Mar 7, 2023

Now that it's grown enough, I'm finding out my hammer coral is a wall hammer and not a branching hammer. I'm fine with it, but I really wanted a branching euphelia. Yay! I have an excuse to buy more frags! Starting to get a list together for when it warms up. So far I'm going to look for a frogspawn, a green slimer, maybe a fungia.

It's also time for a new skimmer. I'm going over some options but have it narrowed down to just a couple at this point. Spent a good amount of time researching skimmers for once, rather than grabbing what's cheap.

hhaase · Mar 8, 2023

I have my fingers crossed, but I may have found a Reef Octopus Classic 200-EXT recirculating skimmer at 2019 pricing. So I placed an order and am eagerly awaiting either a shipment or refund notification. The backup plans for skimmer choices are pretty solid too.

When I can get it tuned in, the Bubble Magus Z-7 I currently have can pull a lot of skimmate, but it's really hard to keep it tuned and takes daily adjustment.

At the rate things have been falling into place the past month or two, I'm looking forward to not having to worry so much about the equipment side of this build and more of a focus on the livestock. I'm nervous to say this, but I may have turned a corner with the green hair algae too. It's not looking very healthy lately and seems to be slowly breaking down, while coral colors appear to be improving. Still too soon to tell for sure on either one but things look promising.

hhaase · Mar 10, 2023

Still no word if I'm getting a skimmer or not.

But I do have an out-of-tank photo on the latest version of my filter sock holder. I did a couple updates to give it a cleaner overflow path in case the filter sock gets clogged, and added a couple more mounting holes to connect the two major halves together.

I won't swap this one into the tank any time soon though, as the original one that's currently installed is just working perfectly fine. This one will probably end up in the parts pile in case I need to tinker with some changes, or for some reason I need to swap out the existing one.

hhaase · Mar 11, 2023

New tank-mate came home with me today. Always liked the Diamond Goby. Hopefully a nearly 3 year old sand bed is enough to keep him sustained. This is one of the species that had me choose the fine sand bed instead of a more coarse substrate.

hhaase · Mar 12, 2023

The new lights have also, ironically, made my DSLR my preferred photo choice again. Colors are rendering so much better now in my camera, while they've also become much worse through my phone.

This frag also followed me home yesterday. I hope the colors stick, as they had a few more grown-out colonies of these torches in the store too, and they looked gorgeous.

I'm seeing drastically accelerated growth in all my larger colonies since I put in the lights. So I'm hopeful on a few that hadn't really grown much in the past year.

The only real gap I have right now, when it comes to equipment, is my skimmer situation. Working with the store I ordered the Classic 200-EXT from. They're looking to see if they actually have it, otherwise I'll step down to the Classic 150EXT. I think I'll be happy with either of those.

hhaase · Mar 15, 2023

Turns out they don't have the 200EXT classic in stock, and it is discontinued so I won't be able to get that one after all. Since I'm in a rush I'm having them cancel that order and getting a 150EXT from BRS. BRS is close enough that ground shipping ends up being 1-2 days for me. Already have a feed pump sitting here for it.

This stupid Z7 just won't stay in tune and I'm finding myself adjusting it 2-3 times a day. It pulls out a lot of gunk when it's happy but that's such a short time window that I'm not effectively exporting anything. Looking forward to the skimmer upgrade.

hhaase · Mar 16, 2023

Sweet! Tracking on the new skimmer shows it's arriving tomorrow. Can't wait for that thing to get running.

On more positive news, my 10-headed Duncan is sprouting another 7 heads in the past couple weeks. Really glad I picked it up when I did. One of my favorites in the tank.

hhaase · Mar 20, 2023

AAAAAAND....

New skimmer arrived with the main inlet tube on the body snapped off. So now I get to deal with the joy of a corporate trouble ticket email support system. Who wants to make bets on a 2-week over/under to get this resolved?

hhaase · Mar 25, 2023

Haven't done a shot of the sump area in a while, but now that I think I've settled on equipment for a while I'll do a "before" picture and then start to clean up a lot of this. It's amazing how quick the filter areas can get cluttered up.
Let's also do a run-down of the current equipment in my filtration system. I'll go from left to right. Sump is a DIY'd 40 breeder.

Return pumps are a pair of Jebao DCP-3500's in a split manifold. The return lines are the blue PVC piping. In an emergency I can turn a few valves and run it all on a single pump. This gives me some redundancy in case of a pump failure, and also means I can clean/service the pumps without interrupting flow through the sump. The horizontal run of the return piping also has three gate-valve controlled ports I can use for feeding water to other things without having to run more pumps. I do keep a spare pump as well, just in case.

Hard to see, but the ATO and water change lines are mixed in with the ball-valves on the left side. ATO water comes in from the water-room via an aqualifter pump. Water change has a quiet-one 1200 pump in the sump for a drain, and another of the same pump in the change tank in the water-room. All controlled by the Profilux. I don't have the water changes on a schedule, instead I prefer to trigger that manually so I can supervise. Level control is via a pair of Avast Marine pressure switches. The control boxes are mounted up in the top of the sump area, not visible here.

Skimmer is my new Reef Octopus EXT-150 recirculating skimmer. So far I'm loving this skimmer and it looks to be exactly what I was wanting to install. It of course has its own recirculating pump for pulling air, but instead of a dedicated feed pump I'm supplying it via one of the return manifold ports.

The orange PVC are my drains from the Modular Marine overflow. Center one has a gate valve, hidden behind the center support on the stand. The two main drains feed into the filter sock holder I showed in a previous post. This is also my refugium section, lit by the Kessil A360X refugium light hanging there, with a custom 3D printed light shroud to control the light pattern. I've also got my Ph, Temp, and Redox probes in this section as well as some chaeto growing in there. I've been changing the 4" filter socks every day or two while I try and get the algae under control.

Currently I'm dosing 2-part with a 3-channel Jebao doser and the three slim water containers there. The containers are for Calcium, Alkalinity, and Nitrates, but I've stopped dosing nitrates. I also have another 3-channel Jebao slave unit that is in storage. I do add some magnesium on a weekly basis, but not automated, so I keep the bag in here.

Controller is a GHL Profilux 4, with 2 of the 6-channel powerbars in here, plus a 4-channel in the water room. The Jebao controllers are also just dangling here for now for the two return pumps and my gyre pump.

I also have some lights in the top of this section as well for when I need to brighten things up to work on it.

It all WORKS great but I hate how it all looks. It presents very poorly.

hhaase · Mar 25, 2023

I also wanted to add some of the filtration changes I've made while I try to get this algae under control. I've slowed the algae but it's still not regressing where I want, and there's a long battle still ahead. These changes were all done in stages to prevent a radical shock to the tank.

As mentioned, I stopped dosing nitrates. Tank used to be nitrate deficient, it obviously is not any more.

Skimmer was upgraded from the previous Bubble Magus Z7. The tank finally outgrew my cheap starter skimmer, and to be honest it was a huge pain to keep tuned. New skimmer is the Reef Octopus Classic 150-EXT recirculating. This should make a big impact, but it's only been running for two days and is still breaking in. I did get my first half cup of skimmate from it yetsterday though.

I added the filter sock holder as mentioned above. I've been running socks for a while but the 4" socks are easier for me to manage, and I did switch from fleece to nylon mesh. This way I can clean them a lot easier and change them more often. Right now it's every day or two between changes.

Refugium does have chaeto in it now, and while it's not growing quickly, it is growing. Historically this tank couldn't support chaeto in the past.

I'm keeping my same weekly 15% water change schedule, but I'm trying to actually DO the water changes now, as I had slacked off for a while. Oops. I'm also getting increasingly more aggressive with manual cleaning of the tank algae prior to water changes.

Lastly, I did increase the pump speeds on both of the return pumps to increase turnover through the sump. This should help me get more crud out through the filter socks but I also needed to do this to get enough water flowing into the skimmer to have the right water level.

hhaase · Apr 1, 2023

Manager another nice looking Derasa today. I'll see how this one fares before posting pictures.

I also did an update to all the livestock and equipment listings on previous pages to get things up to date.
Forgot to mention I'm dosing Hydrogen Peroxide for the time being, 13ml daily of 3%, to try and help with the algae issue. Though the skimmer and filter socks are definitely pulling a lot of crud out of the tank too.

hhaase · Apr 7, 2023

Status report.

Derasa still doing well. Most recent Torch is still doing well. Diamond Goby is still doing well. I think I can call the Torch and Goby fully established in the tank, the Derasa is still recent so I'm still paranoid about it. But I think it's going to stick.

The algae fight seems to be going well also. I'm seeing some definite reduction in the algae in some areas that have been very tough to keep clean. My birdsnest in particular just has a tendancy to catch algae, and it's starting to clear out much better than I've seen in a while. Skimmer activity has increased with the peroxide, chaeto growth has increased, but the filter socks are seeing less gunk in them on my daily changes. Since progress is in the right direction, I'm going to stay the course and let it clear up at its own pace.

All the recent upgrades are giving me positive results, particularly the light and skimmer. Coral growth is just getting silly in some cases.

It turns out my recent assessment about my hammer coral was wrong. It's not a wall hammer, it's definitely a branching hammer. It was just in the process of doing a major split which made me think it was a continuous skeleton. Now that it's clearly 6 heads I can safely say it is a branching growth pattern. I may not have mentioned it but my Duncan, which was 10 heads a few weeks ago, is now 21 heads! I may actually have to start trimming a few colonies in the near future here. I'm very happy with growth on almost all my corals.

Though there are a couple battlecoral pieces that, while healthy, just don't seem to want to grow very much. The two monti's from there, plus a pair of acro's. Though it does seem like I might see some changes in the near future once the effects of the light really kick in.

hhaase · May 7, 2023

Just a status report here, mainly good news.

New skimmer still working great, as is the filter sock, and I am slowly gaining ground on the hair algae. So I'm not making any more changes to maintenance at this time.

Derasa is still going, I am super happy about that.

My diamond goby is getting along great with all my other tank occupants, but man he's a digger! Keeps piling sand in front of one of the rocks. I'm very very slowly taking out the fine sand and replacing with a coarser substrate to cut down on fine particulates as a result.