Hart's 120 3/4" starfire expansion!

hart24601 · Apr 11, 2015

Ok, last update tonight! I picked up a red branching cyphastrea from unique corals. I love different looking growth forms and had never seen one for sale before. Very excited how it does, might have to play with position for the best color from what I read. I did have to mess with the colors post photo a bit and they still don't look quite as red as it does in person. The 1st photo is from unique who takes much better pics than I do, but I wanted a shot so I can reference it over time.

gettaReef · Apr 11, 2015

Looking good! I'd love to stop by sometime, introduce myself, and check your setup and corals out, if you'll have me. Maybe later this summer when I have business in the DM area. Sorry to see no clams in there; I'm sure you'll have more success now that nothing will pick on them. Wow, that cyphastrea is a beauty

hart24601 · Apr 11, 2015

gettaReef said:
Looking good! I'd love to stop by sometime, introduce myself, and check your setup and corals out, if you'll have me. Maybe later this summer when I have business in the DM area. Sorry to see no clams in there; I'm sure you'll have more success now that nothing will pick on them. Wow, that cyphastrea is a beauty

More than happy to have you stop by! There is one clam still, the derasa escaped the tangs but is hard to see in the pic. He is in the middle and seems to like the new spot, for now at least.

I secretly put the birdsnest right on top of prime clam spot so I am not tempted anymore! Too much sad, even if the offending tangs are gone, haha.

hart24601 · Apr 13, 2015

I realized that I have not posted pics of the order from goldenbasket on eBay. I wanted some yellow acros and they are hard to find! He had quite a few listed and after reading very good things about him I got some with another acro that I liked the color of. Yellow gets a bit green under blue lights, woot for remember primary colors, but I am happy with them. Under the whiter lighting at noon they are super yellow and even under 20K they are yellow, just not as bright. I will have to try and take more pics, but here they are off his site, and looked just like this on arrival and had amazing PE in minutes.

I also just place another order from unique corals. They keep getting in things I really like the growth form of! A growout mint ORA pavona. They can be aggressive and invasive, but I am going to mount it on the bare bottom with a large plug to manage the growth. It should be really striking on the bottom like that!

SeahorseKeeper · Apr 13, 2015

Nice additions! Can't wait to see them in your tank!

hart24601 · Apr 17, 2015

Interesting observation here. I have been using tropic marin pro reef in this tank and have been happy with it. About 400g of salt mix, including the initial filling, worth of tmp. The ORP is TMP is super low as other threads have discussed before, no one knows why, but the chemistry experts say it is probably just in the metal reduction states or along those lines. Not a big deal, but I have noticed the same thing, even running ozone with fresh TMP the ORP is under 200 and has been. I figured the tank looks good so who cares what is going on if it's the mix or my probes or what. The ORP generally keeps up a little each week if I don't do a WC.

Well anyway, trying to pinch pennies I decided since I have 150g of ESV left with the new "lithium issue free" component that Bob sent me I should use that rather than buying another bucket of TMP. How I do WC is I make up the water and then I pour a 5g bucket of the unheated mix into the overflow and then siphon out 5g before repeating. The temp drop this way is pretty minimal as I can wait between buckets and the sump easily holds an extra 5g for a few min so I don't worry about the ato kicking on or the gyre or return sucking air.

Interesting thing to me is that just changing 18g of water the ESV took the ORP from 240 to 310 overnight. I am just surprised a 15% WC had a 30% increase in ORP so fast when most freshly made water has a pretty low ORP. I don't know what this means if anything, and I don't think anyone else can tell what it might mean, but it is a very interesting observation to me. The WC was just water from the middle of the tank, no detritus or anything from the bottom.

I wonder how the mixes can be so very different. I wouldn't think there would be really much difference between top tier salts, but something in the tmp holds the ORP low for a long time, months at least, that isn't in other mixes.

reef_ranch · Apr 17, 2015

Interesting observation! Hopefully someone can chime in with a good explanation.

hart24601 · Apr 20, 2015

I have continued doing 5-10g w/c to see the effects on ORP, pretty much for my own "fun". Around another 15-20% water change split up over the weekend and before the ORP has never been above 230 with tmp and that's after a few weeks with no w/c and running 40mg/hr ozone at night. With doing tmp changes ORP has never broken 200. Now the ORP tonight is over 360. Strange stuff. Not concerned with it, just interesting. I will be switching back to ESV now.

I got the hydra 26 from winning the acro growout this weekend. So I changed up the lighting arrangement but not thrilled as it lowered the lights so the blending isn't as good. Ordered the hanging kit, so I will suspend the 5 lights on the rail mount about 3" higher. I am not using the rail mount exactly as intended for the 26's, but have it setup so there are 3 lights spanning the back half of the tank and 2 lights staggered on the front. I like it but will be even better then raised few inches higher.

Fish have been back in for a while now and are good. Instead of going with larger butterflyfish (still have the 1) decided on getting 12 female lyretail. Put them in qt and treated with metro and pazipro. They are now eating flakes along with frozen and went in the DT now. Hoping with so many the aggression is spread out, and the male I have had for a couple of years now has a job, lol.

hart24601 · Apr 20, 2015

Oh yea, I forgot to say the female lyretails were from bluezoo. Another great order from them for fish. Liveaquaria has let me down twice in a row, they said there were butterfly in stock so I placed the order, they didn't let me know the fish were out of stock until 2am the day of delivery and I have to take time off of work so that makes me mad how they update stock when shipping. They had been out of stock for days, but didn't tell me. This isn't diver's den, they run better or they used to at least.

I tried using LA again (not DD) for the female lyretails, again taking some time off work - 12 females isn't that big of an order as they are a common fish. Well they sent me an email 2am day of delivery that they couldn't complete the order so they shipped nothing. And on the website the females were still listed as "in stock" so I went with bluezoo and there were no issues. Packed well, everything healthy.

revhtree · Apr 20, 2015

Very nice!

hart24601 · Apr 23, 2015

Installed the AI hanging kit for the rails, I really like it! Adding the other hydra 26 I had to lower the lights 3" and didn't like how it looked as much, now I have the lights where I really like them so no shadowing in the water. Perhaps the coolest part though is being able to get a great top down view now! Between the 20s gyre pulses the water clears up and you can see down just standing in front of the tank, I used a viewer before. These are just straight out of the point and shoot camera, no mods.

gettaReef · Apr 23, 2015

Wow, great shots. Tank looks like it's thriving

hart24601 · Apr 23, 2015

Thanks! I am not very good with the camera, but I am happy with how those turn out just using the auto white balance. It would be nice to know photoshop or other programs to clean up the pics and make them resemble the look in person, but these are pretty close. Close enough for me at least!

Just about everything in the tank is doing alright at this point, just need time now! Sad the aptasia is also doing well... I think the peps are making progress, but it's slow. I was hoping they would find the aptasia delicious and really go after them!

revhtree · Apr 23, 2015

Zang what a beautiful tank!

hart24601 · Apr 23, 2015

revhtree said:
Zang what a beautiful tank!

Thanks! Things are moving in the right direction despite the occasional slip!

hart24601 · Apr 24, 2015

So.........

Don't tell my girlfriend, but even after all this clam and tang drama I noticed the derasa is doing well with lots of new growth so I picked up a teardrop clam from pacific east! Came today in fantastic shape, that place really does have the best clams. It's the biggest maxima, ok, Tridacna noae now, that I have seen for sale in recent memory at 6.5". According to PEA Tonga clams are all wild caught, but do very well unlike the wild french polynesia clams and have great extension.

I was reading that Tonga is a pretty cool (as in temperature) reef, I asked PEA about temps and they replied with a range of 76-78 for all their clams just FYI. My tank has been averaging 78 so I am reducing this to try and get 76ish at night and average 77 or a bit under.

After acclimation today it was already showing great extension when I left. I did notice that unlike the wild french polynesia clams which had almost no white new growth this guy has tons, I was surprised how much was there for being 6.5 inches.

Fitting with the theme of "keeping things happy in a mixed reef is hard" I have been playing around with the gyre location and pulse speed. I really like a ton of flow, but the LPS and clams don't like that much. I reduced the flow from 100% to 70% and am doing 20s pulse. I also aimed the gyre less at the surface and more at the rock so the SPS get a good blast but it doesn't create quite as strong of a gyre sheer on the LPS. We shall see how it goes. I like the longer pulse as the water movement really slacks between pulses and it seems like the SPS has more opportunity to capture food with that slack period in there.

hart24601 · Apr 25, 2015

So the pics when I was putting him in look really strange. The white light was very low since it was the morning and I run the UV and violet channels higher than blue at that time, so that must be why the photos showing it's size look like black and white but the florescent colors are there - kind of neat in a way. The other one is from today at noon, opening up well for just arriving yesterday!

FDAWG · Apr 25, 2015

You got a nice healthy tank!

hart24601 · Apr 27, 2015

Did the general checks yesterday. I normally only test for nitrate (for fine-tuning vodka) and alk. Nitrate was 2.5 - right where I like it, but alk was at 7.2dkh or a bit lower. I have been keeping it pretty steady at ~8.5, so to drop down that much over a couple of days means either more growth, or something isn't working correctly! I never know to be excited or nervous when I see more alk consumption. Cautiously optimistic I guess would be the best description. I will check equipment and make sure everything is working while also monitoring alk over the next few days before making any dosing adjustments with the 2 part just to be sure...