Hendo's Color Wheel 90

[Hendo1133]

First and most importantly I should answer the simple question, what makes this tank unique from the thousands of others amazing write ups on reef2reef?

The color wheel. I plan to make my tank into a visual color wheel. The tank will be a mixed reef acro heavy tank generally separated into two areas; the sand and bottom third of the rock, and the top two thirds of the rock. These two categories will represent their own color wheels complimenting one another. To simplify the description I have made a graphic to represent my vision.

Why? It’s a fun idea to me, in theory the corals will compliment one another in color through the transition from bottom to top. Additionally, and most importantly, it makes shopping for corals more interesting to me. I’m new to the hobby and already worn out of looking at “Insert Coral Distributor” – “Insert crazy name” (Essentially, Mike’s Galactic Universe Smasher 5000). I look forward to the idea of developing a tank in such a way that I have fun targets for me. I can make places for corals I love, however as the tank develops and matures, the targeting and thrill can switch to trying to find just the right yellow SPS, or blue LPS.

On paper this is a clear and simple approach, in practice it will not be so clean and simple. Many corals are desirable BECAUSE they contain a mix or various colors, at minimum most SPS and LPS contain predominantly two different colors. I will have to judge and exercise my own discretion on where I feel like such corals fit and go best. The best part about it all? Well it’s my tank, so if I like how it looks I’m winning, however I do think it will be fun if the tank goes at all to plan getting advice from the community on continuing to stock and fill the tank with exciting and unique corals.

So now, a little bit about my journey into the hobby and the nuts and bolts of the build:
If you asked me a year ago about reef tanks, I would have said cool things with reefs, don’t know much about them and they have fish. Thanks to a good friend peeking my interest I have generally dived off the deep end like most all of us here. Due to good timing and him switching from his current 90 gallon to a larger 160 I was able to acquire the 90 gallon at a great friend discount. From there I did what any good friend does, as I researched and continued to develop my reefing knowledge through videos, helping with his tank and this forum, I sent him the message to let him know the corals I bought on that live sale are arriving at his house in two days (live sales are an Achilles heel after 6 beers).

Enough about me, onto what really matters on here, the tank and gear. I inherited a great setup but wanted to make it my own through some adjustments. The full set-up of gear is listed under, I would say it’s around 50/50 as to what came with the tank and what has been purchased by me, I’ve added (e) for existing and (p) for purchased.
Tank (e): Red Sea Reefer 450 – 90 Gallon Tank
Sump (e): It’s got one, lets call it 20 Gallons or so
Mechanical Filtration (p): Theiling Compact Roller Mat (replacing filter socks)
Skimmer (e): Vertex Omega 180
Return Pump (e): Jebao DC pump (hardly used)
UV Sterilizer (e): It’s got one (Too lazy to check the brand at this moment)
Lights (e): Geisemann Hybrid LED/T5
Power heads (p): Red Sea 45 Gyres (excited to test these guys out)
Heater (p): Finnex with Ink bird Controller
Sand (p): Caribsea Special Grade Dry Sand
Rock (p): Real Reef- Mix of Sizes, Shelving and Branching Rock
Additional Filtration (p): Marine Pure Spheres
Controller (p): Neptune Apex
Testing (p): Neptune Trident (ordered additional test kits for everything as well)
Dosing (p): Neptune DOS pumps, dosing Triton Other Methods
Auto Top off (p): Neptune ATK

I look forward to going on this journey and all the feedback the forum members with far more experience will surely have for me. So where are we now, and more importantly where are the pictures?

Tank loaded up and ready to be moved to be set up, did I forget my ratchet straps and use an extension cord to secure it? Yes.... yes I did. Tank was never fully cleaned after being broken down so its fairly nasty.

First thing up, After sitting for so long it got a good hose down and then a solid 10% vinegar bath. We let this run through it for around 24 hours or so, it did a fairly amazing job of really clearing up the tank of SO much of the gun throughout everything. After running the bath the tank was emptied and broken back down. Everything was rinsed off but shouldn't be the end of the world if a little vinegar is left in the system.

We were both pretty impressed with how clean the tank came out after just a hosing down, vinegar bath and the liberal scrubbing with Mr. Clean magic erasers (recommended on the forum here) did an amazing job. After letting everything dry out for a while we moved the tank into its new place of pride in the living area.

This won't be a 100% permanent location and down the road I will have the joys of a tank move, so the choice was made to not cut out the carpet. The tank is sitting on a very large and thick black rubber mat I had an extra laying around of (tractor supply horse mat, I have bought them for building an at home gym platform and placing throughout the garage workout area).

Outside of that, all the prior mentioned purchased equipment is en-route shipping and will be arriving of the course of the next week or so. Hopefully the color wheel idea and this tank build is something that peaks peoples interest, and we can enjoy the journey together (or you guys can enjoy my misery).

-Jordan

 

[Hendo1133]

Also, in full transparency, after a week or so of being lazy and telling myself that the protein skimmer was "good enough" to not pull it apart to give it a good cleaning, I decided to avoid the public crucifixion and clean it before posting this threat. Now I'm super glad I did, i got it overall to a pretty clean level.

The image of the water in the bucket after cleaning can attest to how dirty said protein skimmer was.....

So as you can see, you guys are already helping me more than you know!

 

[Hendo1133]

First day of Christmas hit today, with the arrival of my MarineDepot order consisting of my two Red Sea Reef Wave 45 Gyre Power heads. There was significant internal back and forth between ordering these new power heads vs MP40s for the tank, however I found myself very excited about these as soon as I saw them and couldn't resist giving them a try. Coming from RedSea I find myself slightly more trusting of a company with such a good reputation to be a good product with quality control. However when I am cursing these things 4-6 months from now, everyone can say I told you so. It's a calculated risk.

Additionally, the order consisted of 4 AquaMaxx Dosing containers, which were both packaged extremely well for shipping and appear to be a great product. They look like they will fit nicely within the side cabinet of the tank along with the ATO reservoir which was provided when I purchased the tank, however I will further consider on if they will be staying there or going into a new home in the equipment stand I will be building to go beside the tank and house the Apex, Trident and other electronics. Finally, just a small Sicce pump which will be used for both keeping the rock happy in the brute trash can cycling while I am making final adjustments on the tank and then be placed into the sump to help create water movement where the DOS pumps will be dosing the tank.

The larger order through BRS will be arriving a couple of days from now, and should lead to more exciting post as things really get going and the tank begins to take final form. In the next two days I plan to finish cutting out the glass baffles in the sump previously installed for the filter socks, and shim the tank to be level. I ended up making the choice to purchase the branch real reef rock late so that will be slightly delayed coming in, which is part of the reasoning for getting the rock into the brute trash can while I'm in a holding period for that.

Additionally, I was able to contact my LFS which is still open a couple of days a week and has been extremely helpful in order to put in my order for all of my Neptune gear. From my understanding Neptune's warehouse is currently not in operation so some of the gear will be delayed, namely the DOS pumps and Trident, expected for about a month. However, still more than happy to support a local store in this purchase and had amazing interactions with them up to this point.

 

[Hendo1133]

Ok, it has been.... a long time since I have updated this, I will get things finally caught up over the coming days and actually be better about updating it.

 

[Hendo1133]

So, lets bring anyone who may be unfortunate enough to finally come across this fine post up to speed! I originally set up the tank at my friend's house while I was in a bit of a transition. This actually worked out as some what of a blessing because it essentially allowed me to let it cycle for some time without near as much urgency to throw in corals or add fish too quickly. Finally back at the end of August I moved and re-set up my tank at my current place. This process actually wasn't that terrible, however I can imagine it being much less than ideal if there were corals on the rocks. Once established at its current home, I let it settle a little before slowly adding corals. In likely not complete order I'll attempt to get you up to speed and included in the current set up and some of the steps taken to get there.

First off, one of the major changes from the way the system was set up happened in the sump area. The sump was re-plumbed from a standard Red Sea and they did a very good job, however to make it my own a couple small changes needed to happen. First off they had set up two manifolds with reactors, while the inclusion of manifolds were great, and reactors are always nice to have they simply made the sump far too crowded while I didn't intend to use them regularly. Due to this I made the choice to cut them out, but still have access to the manifolds for potential future needs.

Secondly, and the much larger project was the conversion from filter socks to a roller mat. I travel a fair amount and will be counting on someone else to take care of my tank and making the system as simple and low maintenance as possible is a top priority. Unfortunately, Red Sea uses glass baffles in their sumps.... these had to go.... after doing the usual googling I came across two techniques similar to what I had used for automotive glass, box cutter and piano or similar thin wire to cut through the silicone. For anyone wondering I tried both of these, however the way the baffles were fitted was SOOOOO tight, I was generally unsuccessful. Eventually (and surprisingly not in a fit of rage), my inner Neanderthal took over and said "hey buddy, you're gonna need a bigger hammer". Hammer, meet glass. While you could NEVER do this with the sump in the tank, since I was still in the set up stage this actually worked great. I threw on some protective glasses and gloves (DO THIS shards will go everywhere) and gently bashed the glass until it shattered. I was then able to carefully remove it, razor blade out the remaining silicone (again be careful for the large amounts of glass shards), shop vac out the sump and surrounding area, then take the sump and give it a thorough wash.

for the very thick pieces of glass you can see I simply and carefully used wedges, this also worked extremely well. I would take all this with the caveat of my approaching this task with the full knowledge I MAY break my sump. So do it at your own risk. Finally, I wanted to be able to easily replace the roller mat filter which requires pulling off the plumbing, I was able to just use a flanged piece of PVC (I believe off a union) and the black screw attachment that came with the roller mat. This worked great and I can now remove the plumbing for changes in seconds.

 

[Hendo1133]

To skip you through most of the boring stuff that follows this inevitable slow period I'll throw in some tank shots I took between set up and now.

The electronics rack was a quick and hasty set up. The controls started hastily attached to a piece of ply wood with Velcro, then eventually as that failed in a horrific pile... until my good friend's wife whose house it was at told us "fix this now" upon unsatisfactory inspection. I'm happy with how it came out as a temporary rack and it actually made moving the tank a complete breeze. It was just quickly made out of scrap 2x4 and 2x6 pieces.

Additionally, since spilling is a thing we are all good at with our reef tanks. I placed mine on a rubber horse mat you can buy form tractor supply. They aren't too expensive and I happened to have this one sitting around not getting much use in my old garage gym. This has been a huge win. It looks pretty good, they are super thick and durable (3/4" or so and HEAVY) plus provides the floor around the tank with some protection from the constant small spills and drips.

 

[Hendo1133]

Continuing with my update, eventually corals went in. I started with a couple of Zoa frags and a yellow fiji leather out of a friends tank and then was able to pick up some corals for a good price on a couple live sales including some acro tester frags. So far all the corals are generally doing well, however I'll give a full update after the bad news.

Not to completely bash a vendor for my incompetency, however, I briefly read live aquaria's diver dens write up, saw quarantine, didn't think much of it and said "eh you're probably good". Eventually, my stock list hit the following fish.

2- Mocha Gladiator Clown Fish
1- Fire Fish
1- Yellow watchman Goby
1- Royal Gramma
1- Yellow Tang
1- Tomini Tang
1- Atlantic Tang

The Tomini Tang and Atlantic tang were the last to get added. They were both significantly bigger than my yellow tang and while they generally beat my yellow tang to hell and that was causing quite a bit of concern they left each other alone and my yellow tang was seeming to generally cope pretty well even though its fins were getting beat up. I was planning to try to catch the Yellow Tang in order to let it recover some in a safe holding cell. Then the disaster struck.

I noticed my smaller clown fish had a cloudy eye and wasn't looking amazing suddenly, and within the next day or two the Blue Atlantic Tang was starting to look ill. Over the course of the next 3-4 days the Blue Atlantic tang quickly went downhill, his coloring was terrible but showed no signs of the typical tang offenders (ich/velvet). To attempt to provide some alleviation I decided to give him a fresh water dip. The problem was instantly apparent as the tub almost instantly FILLED with Flukes. I started treating with Prazipro the following day, sadly by the the Atlantic Tang had passed. Over the following week I lost ALL my fish outside of the two clown fish, fire fish and Yellow tang. Sadly, in the following week the two clowns would also pass. I believe most all these fish more or less died from flukes and the secondary diseases they caused as none showed any signs of velvet or ich. In some ways the most shocking thing as that a beat down, usually sensitive yellow tang survived above all else. This yellow tang is a captive bred specimen and I think that is the only reason he is still swimming in my tank.

So what now, after mopping up my tears (completing a second round of prazi as recommended by sources such as Humblefish), I have been letting the tang and firefish sit for a few weeks to hopefully ensure the problem is indeed cured while monitoring them for any symptoms. Luckily, both are thriving and the yellow tang has never looked better. Moving forward in the future I have already contacted a vendor to buy TRULY quarantined and clean fish to restock my tank. A hard reefing lesson unfortunately I think FAR too many reefers have learned first hand.

 

[Hendo1133]

I'll provide some coral pictures and a full updated coral list of everything in the tank and how that is going, along with some exciting updates I have coming over the next 2-3 days. Hopefully, some of the work I have done in my setup will help other people with ideas and inspiration. More importantly, I HOPE people read this and see the value of quarantining fish. I'll be honest, like most people I simply don't want to quarantine my fish (does anyone), on paper it's a lot of effort, time and work, it's simply something I wouldn't likely enjoy and would be taking away from time I could be spending doing other maintenance and work on my tank. I don't think my mindset is flawed, I'm sure potentially the MAJORITY of reefers potentially feel this way. Buying TRULY disease free and quarantined fish from a trusted distributor is my only option then. Let's be real, on paper, this hurts. Also, it hurts a LOT more when you're looking at paying for that service upcharge on a $30 fish vs a $300.

However, to me it is worth it and I think this is where our flawed mindset comes in. If it's too much cost to pay for the service, then you'll have to justify doing the extra work yourself to quarantine. When it comes to paying for it, it's funny because initially even I had the same mindset of "Ok that white tail tang that's gorgeous isn't that much more (percentage wise) but UGH I'm going to break the bank on some cardinal fish. Then I really got to thinking about it and I think there are a couple of points worth considering.
A. If I don't give my $10 fish the same attention to quarantine as my $500 fish, I'm putting that $500 fish at the same risk

B. The mindset of "I've been good up to this point" when you have a tank FULL of fish and want to add another, IS NOT a good reason to add a potentially dirty fish, if ANYTHING you should be the person who thinks the opposite. Maybe, frame that thought as "I have gotten lucky and somehow haven't killed all my fish", now that I have what? $1,000... $2,000... MORE?!?! worth of fish who I am personally attached to as pets beyond monetary value, ALL those fish I have in my tank are worth me spending a premium on the new fish I want to have.

C. If going through the effort to quarantine a lower cost fish or paying a premium on it simply isn't worth it, then is that really a fish I want in my tank, or am I just adding that fish because it's cheap and feels easy to throw in?

These were some of the discussions I had with myself and ways I had to frame the entirety of the thought process to help me realize potentially the greater value. Hopefully, someone will read this and just one of those will help someone make the choice to put in the little bit of effort and expense to either properly quarantine their fish, or pay the premium to buy such fish with the service already completed.

 

[jeffrey750750]

Looks good so far, good job!

 

[Hendo1133]

Well, since in the most unfortunate way there are currently almost no fish in the tank to show off. Let's talk some corals today, how everything is doing and what I'm doing for coral care.

First off lets hit up the coral list and the vision. As mentioned before we are going for a type of almost color wheel, while this may fail to really highlight some individual corals, the hope for me is that the picture as a whole tank is elevated (time will hopefully tell). The tank will be a mixed reef edging towards acro heavy. Here is a mostly complete list of corals in the tank.

Zoas: (All Zoas have been given their own individual rocks on the sand to create Zoa islands while not taking over my tank)
Armor of God
WWC AOI
WWC Illuminati

Leathers:
Yellow Fiji Leather


LPS:
Toxic Halloween Enchinata (Probably my favorite coral in the tank, this thing really just glows under all lighting)
Space Invaders Pectinia (Also a top coral)
Peach Favias
Red Glitter Acan
Raja Rampage Chalice
Indo Dragon Torch


SPS:
Oregon Blue Tort
Dark Knight
WWC Yellow Tip
RMF Acid Trip
Bonsai
Princess Peach
Arc Fireworks
Hell Flower Milli
Purple Stylo
RRC Pink Cadillac
Red Robin
POTO Mango
POTO Green Lantern (Currently not doing well)
Marvin the Martian
Bubble Gum Digi
Green Birds Nest and a couple other mystery corals!

 

[Hendo1133]

For Reasons unknown, that second Illuminati Zoa picture on the bottom refuses to be deleted... it is a favorite coral of mine, so I will let it slide (but I'm onto you).

The Current struggle is nutrients, they are simply low after the great fish Corona Virus event. I attempt to keep my system very simple and plan to continue to do so until issues arise. For me the less I have going on, the less things I have as possible issues.
Filtration and nutrient control is accomplished with my Theilan Roller Mat and Protein Skimmer (set to skim pretty dry).

I was dosing Triton Other Methods via Neptune DOS in order to maintain my elements, however as of recent due to the tanking fish load and lack of nutrients that has been dialed back to near nothing. I feed LRS a couple of times a day along with dosing Red Sea AB+, with the lower nutrients I have increased the amount of Red Sea I am dosing to try to help keep the corals happy (seems to be working in general so far). Additionally, I will spot feed a couple scoops of reef chili usually the day before a water change, however again due to the now low nutrients I am doing this about every other day.

Outside of this I have been running a CO2 Scrubber. While I would prefer to not do this as it's an added complication and expense, my PH levels are really low without running it and winter coming in Tennessee doesn't allow me to leave a window cracked as often to keep it up. I recently set it up to be re-circulating off of my skimmer cup, which will hopefully help with CO2 media consumption. I was going through about a reactor a week prior to this recent conversion.

 

[Hendo1133]

Finally! I did some recent PAR mapping, this activity was driven by the decision to modify my existing light fixture. After initially testing the par on my Giesemann Aurora Hybrid (T5/LED), I was honestly shocked at how LOW the PAR readings were. I honestly thought I must be doing something wrong. After researching a little and coming across a couple of posting on R2R and other places I found my readings were pretty consistent with others. I really love pretty much everything about this fixture from the look to the ease (once you master linking it) of controllability. I am also a big fan of LED/T5 hybrid fixtures.

With par levels simply too low for my liking, I had two options, bite the bullet and buy a whole new lighting set up OR find a way to enhance or improve my current lighting set up. I chose to go with option B. Following that my research led me down the path of a couple of options with me ultimately going back and forth between the reef brite XHO or the Orphek 130 Bar. Ultimately, while both appear to be great lights, I ended up choosing to go with 2 of the Orphek light bars which I thought would not only balance my fixture but provide fuller coverage. In the next couple of days I will do a write up on the Orphek light bar installation and then a full listing of all the PAR readings I took providing some before and after details.

During the installation since my T5 bulbs were older anyways (maybe contributing to the algae outbreak as it now appears to be going away) they were swapped. Currently, I am burning them in at 100%, after a week or so I plan to slowly start to integrate the Orphek lights. As of now since they are not dimmable I will likely start with one bar going on for an hour a day, increased one hour each week until I reach my desired photo period and then integrate the other light the same.

 

[Hendo1133]

Hopefully, I will have a little bit of time to get to the updated PAR reading write up and mounting procedure for the Orphik Light bars today. However, wanted to take a quick minute to write about an issue I have been having with my Theiling compact Roller Mat. The issue is, that is you read reviews for the roller mat itself they are generally great, and honestly this has been a phenomenal product. With the Roller Mat itself, I have little to no complaints.... BUT WAIT there's more!!

One of the largest drawbacks to a Roller Mat that is for sure a consideration is the re-occurring cost of replacing the roller mat fleece rolls. To me I did the assessment and decided this was absolutely worth it to avoid changing filter socks. However, if you read through reviews somewhere such as BRS on the roller mat replacement rolls, you will find that they have switched suppliers and the replacements are honestly of much lower quality (you can also search on here and find plenty of complaints about this as well). The first roll lasted much longer than my replacements, but honestly I have been going through a moderate ugly phase and feeding more since then so I don't think that's necessarily a completely accurate assessment I can confirm. What I CAN confirm is that the new roller fleece simply lets to much gunk and detritus through. My sump went through the entire first roll and was almost spotless. After two replacement rolls it now has a ton of detritus throughout.

Through my research and the hard work of members of Reef2Reef I have contacted a vendor who seems to show a lot of promise for supplying a high quality replacement roll at a reasonable price. If I had to go back and do it again I would absolutely still convert to a roller mat, however I am not 100% sure I would go with the same brand.

Tank is overall looking well, after having no luck in bumping my nitrates with my current low fish low I have just now started dosing Brightwell nitrogen supplement (at a VERY low level). Additionally, I have a large amount of fish currently being quarantined and preparing for their journey to my tank! These write ups and more to come.

 

[Hendo1133]

Alright, Let's talk about some lighting! As previously mentioned my current Giesemann Aurora, just wasn't cutting it in the PAR category for an SPS dominant tank. I think both the Reef Brite XHO and Orphek are great options for some additional lighting (I have seen the Reef Brite XHO also used a lot on T5 only fixtures to add that LED glow and shimmer). I ended up going with Orphek in large part due to cost if we are being completely honest, and in small part because I simply couldn't find many people who had gone this route. Unfortunately, @Bulk Reef Supply doesn't carry the Orphek light bars yet (not sure why?). One downfall is that the light bars are not dimmable, however since these are in addition to my main fixture this wasn't a complete deal breaker, at this time I think I am going to go with both lights on for 8 hours, with one kicking on 2 hours before the other for a total photo period of 10 hours and 6 hours overlap with both lights running. Now, onto the install!

First things first was taking down my Aurora fixture, which needed to happen anyways to change out the old T5 bulbs. Once down I removed both end plates and replaced the T5 bulbs. Now to Hendo's custom modifications! Having talked to a fellow reefer on here who had made a similar installation I went with the "Big Hammer" approach to modify my brackets. They come in a C shape, however are made of very thin sheet metal and easily were bent to near flat with some moderately gently taps.

Next was attaching the brackets to the Aurora fixture, in order to do this I used the top corner screws as one point to secure them, and then used an extra bolt and nut that came with the Orphek fixture I wouldn't be needing, to go through the venting and secure itself.
NOTE: If you use the bolt/nut that came with the Orphek fixture the bolt is JUST too big to cleanly go through the end plates of the Aurora. No drilling was required and I actually liked the tight fit so I chose to simply use these bolts. The drawback is there will be a slight mark and a little damage to the coating mainly where the bolt goes through. If you wanted to avoid this you could absolutely go to your local hardware store and get slightly smaller bolt/nuts. \

Once the brackets were attached I added the mounting brackets to the Orpheks and then bolted them onto the Aurora. This is maybe the second hassle of this installation. For whatever reason the Orpheks are JUST longer than the Aurora, probably 1/4-1/2 inch, the mounts work but the were be some pressure required to get the bolts through. Overall, this installation was extremely easy and required no drilling or major modifications to my current light fixture. The look of the corals in what I consider my night time "viewing mode" consisting of the front mounted Oprhek and the Aurora blue LED's turned up at 70% is absolutely stunning! Also the PAR jump was very significant from the light bars (currently working on the graphics).

Quick overview in the form of a few pros and cons
PROS:
-Keep existing light fixture
-Increased PAR
-Better LED shimmer and coral look
-Cost (in part due to being able to build off my current fixture)

CONS:
-Not dimmable
-The back light from a seating position does add some increased light in your eyes when viewing the tank
-Not ready made to mount, while the modifications are simple, my understanding is the Reef Brites go on essentially without modification. (I DID ponder 3d printing some purpose built mounts but the modified ones the light came with seem very secure)

UNDETERMINED:
-The one thing I haven't confirmed (and likely wont because of the time it would take with my Neptune PAR meter) is the ideal mounting height for these bars. That said the OTHER Orphek lighting fixtures are meant to be mounted significantly higher than my light is mounted on a tank. I believe this could cause somewhat uneven light distribution. This assessment is solely based off the research BRS did on the two primary Orphek lights.

 

[Hendo1133]

Ok, a little overdue but been busy with the kiddos and all the other distractions of life. Let's start with a little tank update. After having 0 PHOS and 0 NITRATES forever (measured on hanna checkers) and currently with only two fish in the tank after the great Fluke purge I decided to start dosing nitrates via NeoNitro. I maybe went a hair aggressive during the second week of dosing and bumped them from 0 to 7 ppm. Still not out of control, through heavier feeding my Phos is around .03 and so overall not a major issue, and glad to see some nutrient readings. Overall, the tank seems really happy, I've had to increase my Alk dosing and been able to keep that pretty consistent.

Now the bad, potentially due to the quick Nitrate swing and/or lighting change with the addition of the Ophek lights, a couple of my acros have started to STN. It's unfortunate because MOST of my acros are looking better than ever, so it's just not something I am going to chase. Honestly, PART of the issue here may be poor user error. When dosing the nitrates it was all to easy to talk over to the tank and pour them into the powerhead without even thinking much about it. Well the couple of acros currently STN are in that general wave path, is this related?!?!? maybe... maybe not. From here out I will dose into the small powerhead in the sump.

Now let's get onto the PAR map I made throughout the Orphek upgrade to my lighting.

 

[Hendo1133]

So I took measurements from 5 points during my upgrade, I was most concerned with the light higher up in the tank since I knew lighting near the bottom would be sufficient enough for LPS, and honestly the Neptune PAR meter I was borrowing, just isn't made to take a bunch of spot PAR measurements. Here is the mapping of the points the measurements were taken from in the tank.

T5 Lights only
Point 1- 95
Point 2- 86
Point 3- 114
Point 4- 133
Point 5- 51

Aurora LED only (MAX)
Point 1- 137
Point 2- 140
Point 3- 168
Point 4- 191
Point 5- 41

Aurora LED/T5 (MAX)
Point 1- 264
Point 2- 273
Point 3- 318
Point 4- 337
Point 5- 108

Aurora Maxed with both Orphek Lights
Point 1- 413
Point 2- 365
Point 3- 442
Point 4- 496
Point 5- 216

My Current Settings (MAX Blue, 20% White on Aurora LEDS)
Point 1- 334
Point 2- 321
Point 3- 359
Point 4- 365
Point 5- 184

Of note: Point 5 was actually taken closer to the edge of the rock probably than I have thrown that marker. The reason why it's lower is that the 48" light fixture is not centered perfectly over my tank and so that area gets less direct light (this was done somewhat on purpose).

 

[Hendo1133]

Also with the Aurora fixture and why I chose to add supplemental LEDs, since the outcome wasn't drastically above the PAR of running the Aurora on MAX LED/T5. It really came down to spectrum, a huge amount of the PAR on the Aurora LEDs comes from the white spectrum. The tank just didn't look good under it, Also I feel that the Orpheks give me better coverage and spread than the stock Aurora LEDs. The ramp down mode at night when it's just the Aurora blues and front Orphek light bar on simply makes the tank look amazing!

NEXT UP:
What are the current projects and upcoming projects?!? Well as of right now I just want acros to stop dying but a couple casualties is acceptable, and the choice to change multiple things at once truly makes it a self inflicted gunshot wound. The plan is to just try to stay steady and keep the tank happy. Last week while changing my roller mat fleece I also attempted to stop a small drip from the main drain.... I made it worse. I have not replaced the main drain pipe from the Red Sea 450 with a replacement. The original had simply become very brittle and a small piece had cracked. So upcoming projects!

First Project- I plan to replace the return pump. Currently, it's the Jebao return pump that came with it, this thing is a tank and the same pump that came with the tank when I got it. It's got to be 3+ years old now and while it's running great, it's the loudest thing on my tank (not bad still) and I would like to have a backup. I am going to replace it with a COR-15 or 20 pump (not fully decided but I think a 15 will be plenty since I don't run a ton of turnover). During the replacement I also plan to replace the return plumbing line on my Red Sea 450. This will give me more piece of mind with my tank.

Second project- Mixing Station! I have been hauling buckets of RODI and Salt from my good friends house to feed this beast, but the plan all along has been to set up a mixing station of my own. I'll be going with the ever popular brute trash can set up. I plan to use my current return pump as a mixing pump for my station. This way I will always have this return pump still around if an emergency ever happens with the failure of my new pump. I'm not 100% on the RODI system I will use, but the Avast marine one looks awfully nice and tempting..... I will be splurging on a 3rd DOS to have an auto water change system.

Third Project- Cord management and building an actual controller board. I have a 3D printer and will finally get around to printing all the various goodies and taking the time to use velcro zip ties to clean up the cording throughout the tank and tank area. I plan to build a whole new controller board to clean up all the wiring and the appearance of everything.

 

[Hendo1133]

I figured with all the black Friday madness upon us and many people out looking for some good deals, I could do some review on some gear that I have gotten and had online for around 6 months now. I am happy to provide information on anything from my build upon request. Before I dive into that. The other day I was going to look at the tank in the evening and suddenly realized what looked like little specs of algae on the front glass from afar, were not algae at all. Instead somehow I had contracted what looked like Red Planeria (flat worms). I believe I caught this pretty early on and so I immediately picked up some Salifert Flatworm Exit and upon researching from all the great information and fellow refers out there took these steps.

1. Changed out my carbon in my carbon reactor and had it off but totally set up and ready to go

2. Took a piece of airline tubing and started sucking out all the flat worms I could visually see. I spent about 2 hours doing that, it wouldn't be a bad idea (specially if you have a heavy infestation) to do this over the course of a couple days, the siphon on the airline tubing is so slow that I only removed maybe 3 gallons of water during this process

3. Prepped for treatment, I turned off my UV sterilizer, ensured I had 40 gallons of water ready if needed, re-read the instructions about 10 times, double checked the carbon reactor was ready

4. TREAT- Many people say they see almost immediate results of the flatworms dying, maybe because my infestation wasn't too server I did not, perhaps for other reasons. After the first 100 drops or so I saw a couple of flatworms detach. I waited about 10-15 minutes and put in another 50 drops. After all was said and done I used the whole bottle (Oh well, a lot of me being impatient maybe). I attempted to siphon out what I could but there wasn't an overwhelming concentration of flat worms to suck up.

5. After waiting about 45 minutes and seeing many starting to fly off and float as recommended on the instructions I fired up the carbon the help remove any toxins they were secreting. Shortly after dosing my Zoas did close up some, however most of my corals didn't show much reaction and my two fish seemed unbothered.

6. I monitored my tank for a couple of hours, but in the end decided to not do a water change that day, my zoas were back open and I simply decided to let my carbon do the job. I waited until today and did a 15 gallon water change. Everything appears completely happy so far, if this changes I will provide an update.

It for sure did the job and appears to have gotten rid of almost all the flatworms. I will be keeping an eye out over the next week or so to see if I see any still lingering around. Regardless I will be treating with a second dose after a week as recommended (I assume to break the egg cycle). Overall, I'm happy with the product and will use it for round two. I would recommend it to anyone else facing this issue. If your infestation is bad I think it would be highly recommended to siphon out everything you can see and maybe look into adding a natural predator to thin the population as much as possible before you attempt to eradicate with the Flatworm Exit. The PRIMARY reason I did not do this was because I didn't notice a very bad infestation and felt I had caught it early AND because after having flukes and being down to two fish I wanted to do the first treatment before all my new quarantined fish arrived this coming Wednesday!

 

[Hendo1133]

First Item to review. There are a lot of ways I could throw together reviews, but I will try to keep these simple and highlight the key points, then provide more of a write up if someone wants to dive a little deeper.

Theiling Compact Rollermat

Pros:
-Only have to change rolls around once a month
-Does a good job of filtering
-Quiet
-Easy plug and play setup

Cons:
-Replacement rolls are.... not good (found a solution)
-Small added monthly cost for replacement rolls
-Likely requires some form of sump/plumbing modification

I love this thing and the benefits of not having to worry about changing filter socks, and therefore the added consistency of me not running one set of filter socks for 3 weeks when I'm being lazy then changing them out every 3-4 days for the next 2 weeks is gone. The added expense for not having to deal with the changing and washing of filter socks is totally worth it. For me I enjoy projects and doing things, overall, modifying my sump and plumbing was about a half day project, however this would be much more difficult if the system had been up and running. Once the Rollermat is plumbed there isn't really any further set up, you put in the roll and plug it in. It has a float valve that automatically advances the roll as the water level rises and an emergency drain in the event of a jam. It's been fire and forget and I have yet to have any issues with the roll feeding.

The BIGGEST drawback (and can be seen on the BRS reviews for the replacements) is that the replacement rolls for it are a different material. This to me wasn't a big deal, however holding them up they are very inconsistent and even sometimes have small holes and such. Since I began using these my sump has slowly collected detritus in it. Nothing major, however I wanted a better option. Finally, through researching on reef2reef I found a vendor who sells coolant fleece or something. Other hobbyist have already worked with this company and they have the specs and are able to provide replacement rolls cut to the needs of your roller mat without issue. This method is both cheaper and I feel a better product than what is offered elsewhere. If anyone is having this issue I went through the following company

Precision Converting LLC
[email protected]
-Steve

I simply shot an e-mail explaining what I needed, Steve got back to me within the day and provided exactly what I needed. The product I received seems great and I will be putting it in the test in the coming week. Hopefully this information helps others having this same problem, and helps people on the fence about buying a rollermat. Overall I think rollermats are completely worth it. I'm very happy with mine and other than the lackluster replacement fleece have had no major complaints or issues.