Jason's 300 gallons of frustration and fun

samson78945

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The main concern I see with running plumbing under the floor is water than has to flow uphill, and that's always a struggle. Can be done, but you'd need the fuge to be pretty high.

I put my tank in my office specifically so I could run piping through the wall into the garage. The downside is my office isn't very large, especially with the tank in it lol! It's worked out well though.

Good luck with your remodel. I finished off the basement of our last house myself doing everything but the carpet. It's a ton of work.

Regarding equipment, I've been pretty happy with everything I've chosen. The return has been rock solid, as has the skimmer and power heads. I cleaned the gyre for the first time earlier this week and flow did noticeably improve, so I need to do that more frequently. I just haven't had enough coral to test the lighting long term, but it seemed fine before the dino's and vermetid's hit. I'll supplement with T-5's if/when the time comes where I feel I need more kick.

If only I could redesign the entire house and build a fish room!

I will be following yours! Thank you for all the info. I'm sure I will be asking lots more!
 
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Radman73

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I suppose I should finally throw out some cheato.

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Radman73

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Have read that bumble bee snails eat vermetids on several threads now. Encouraging news since I have a bout a bazillion of them. My tuxedo eats them when he passes over but can't get into nooks and crannies. Downside is the bb's will eat other snails eventually. RIP CUC lol!

In all seriousness, I'll throw the bb's in the fuge when they're done in the DT. Actually, sump first as the little bastages are in there too. I have 10 of the bb's on the way plus some ocean floor live sand for the fuge. I'd love to get some gulf live rock for the fuge too, but later. Really want some healthy biodiversity. The sand may even go in the DT if it's easy enough to sift through. Mainly trying to avoid pest crabs, shrimp, or things I don't even know about. Yeah, fuge lol!

Trident has been doing its thing for 5-6 days now. Love it, though I was surprised to see how much the readings changed once I calibrated it. It seems for most people the factory calibration was pretty spot on. Still, so nice to have the big three tested multiple times per day. I checked the Apex to see when the last time was that I checked alk, calc, and mag. August. Yikes. Not like 2 corals consume much anyway, and i have been doing WC's. My hammer has grown from 2 heads to around 15 though, so pretty happy. And my enchinata has been growing and is more puffed up too. I really need more corals. My wife told me to give her till March and then I can have fun lol!

On the bad news front, one of female lyretails has definitely turned, or is about to turn, male. My male has been chasing it into hiding regularly now. Used to be just some chasing. The other male does come out to eat some, so it's getting food, but not sure how long I want to let this go on. Unfortunately, with my 60 cube springing a leak, i don't have a tank to throw it into. Guess there's always the fuge. If it keeps up I'll drop a acclimation box in there and see if it I get lucky.
 
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Radman73

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If you happen to read this thread, just a reminder to check your water change water first. 220gal DT, 40gal sump, 75 gal fuge, so maybe 275-290gal total system volume. A 40 gal water change dropped my alk by .93dKH. Salt is IO. Will get back in the habit of testing at least alk before doing a water change again. Salt had only been mixing for less than 24 hours too.
 
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Radman73

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Well, now have two male Lyretails. There's definitely some chasing going on, but for the majority of the day, they seem to coexist peacefully. I am wondering if more females would make the situation better or worse. May explore that down the road a bit. For now, I'm simply hoping a 3rd female doesn't turn male. If it does, I'll put an acclimation box in and hope one of them swims in to be relocated to the fuge.

Otherwise, Trident is happily humming along. I can say from my short time with the Trident, if Neptune releases a Trident Jr that tests phosphate and nitrate I'd be all in.

I finally have some coral, acans, on the way. Will be the first coral added in 6-9 months due to the battle with dino's. Tank is desperately lacking color, so the sale @The Aquatic Arsenal announced for 5 mystery acan frags seemed to be a good way to jump back in. Cheaper shipping to FL was the deciding factor lol!

The goal is definitely for a mixed reef of LPS and SPS. I like zoa's too though, so may find a spot for them at some point.

Added some bumble bee snails from Salty Bottom Reef in another attempt to combat the vermetid snails. Been reading a lot about the importance, and likely neglect, of biodiversity in our home reefs. So I added 10lbs of gulf floor live sand to the order as well. Not much, but i think the key is introducing biodiversity, even if in small amounts. May actually make that an annual event; just a buy 10-20lbs replace a little of the sand each year.

Many next steps for my reef's journey. I will also add gulf harvested live rock at some point. I added a 75gal fuge to my system design for that very reason. This way, any "bad" hitchhikers like certain crabs, shrimp, or worms are likely to be isolated to that tank or chopped into food on their way to the DT. I will be adding more coral as alluded to earlier. I'll give the new acans a good 2-3 months to make sure my parameters are kept stable before adding sticks, but I can see some monti's in the near future. At some point I'll be adding at least 2, and likely 4, 80w T-5's to my canopy. I love my AP700's, but nearly everything I read highly suggests they be combined with T-5 for best results. May just run with the Aquatics Hybrid fixture. More fish! I only have 15. My goal is to slowly work up to 30 and see how I'm doing. If I can, I'll push it to 40. I prefer many small fish to fewer large fish.

Thanks to anyone taking the time to read through this! And thanks to @The Aquatic Arsenal for the sale!
 
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Radman73

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Acans came in and look great. Very cool colors so very happy with the mystery pack. All are puffed up today sitting low on a frag rack dead center on the front of the tank. It's nice and easy to raise them up to feed. Might even have a tiny baby head on one of them too. I'll give a healthy amount of time before moving them over to a rock. Fingers crossed that my urchin doesn't use them for decoration.

I've had periodic issues with my left DOS head getting air bubbles on the supply side. The only connections is at the head itself as it's solid tubing down into the calc bucket. I replaced that head today as a troubleshooting measure. It's been years, so they're both due.

Fighting small patches of cyano now too. Yay. Giving the system time to see if it corrects on its own. My Nitrates had been 0 with PO4 at .08. I dosed some nitrate and it quickly went from ~5 after the first dose, and back to 0, to ~25 in a hurry after the 2nd dose.

Figured now was a good time to send of the Triton samples and see if they're on par with my readings.
 
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Radman73

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3 weeks in and acans are still all doing well. At least 2 have baby heads on them. Still on a frag rack for now and no hurry to move them since they're apparently doing well.

Interesting tidbit on the PO4 levels. My Hanna was reading .08. A sample taken the same day came back at .06. Not great, but not awful either for LPS. I will admit that I really like the Triton test and may see about doing one quarterly.

I left my filter socks in and that helped raise NO3 up. Just replaced and I'll track how much they go down.

Otherwise, things are pretty good. The Trident has helped me bring much needed stability at long last. It also alerted me to the fact that the alk in my newly mixed salt water was very low, 4.0 actually. So I'll include testing and adjusting that into my normal activities like I always should have.

After a couple of weeks of dosing H2O2 in a vain attempt to fight cyano I nuked it with chemiclean lol! Just so much easier, except for the water changes.

Hope to add some additional corals in the coming months and, after summer vacations, some more fish as well.
 
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Radman73

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Added some additional corals last night. Wow, have things gotten expensive lol!

Not willing to spend anywhere close to $100/frag or more for test items so I raided a LFS' frag bar. I picked up some red monti cap as I've almost always had some, some type of green favia that my wife liked, a green porite type of coral, some type of bird's nest, a stylo, and a bubblegum digi. Very pleased that essentially nothing came off in the dip(visually anyway).

They'll get some time to adjust before getting mounted on smaller rocks to ease movement, placement, and prevent my tuxedo urchin from wearing them.
 
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Radman73

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Loving the Trident. Finally migrated over to Trident controlled dosing.

Corals are all still doing fine. A couple of acans are growing new heads, monti cap is growing, bubblegum digi and bird's nest are growing as well. Still waiting on the rental PAR meter so I can get baselines and start to know where to put everything.

Also, strongly considering a rescape. I really don't have any corals permanently mounted yet, so now would be the time.
 
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Radman73

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Sad day yesterday. Came down to find my 220 leaking. 3.5 months after my 60 cube leaked. Must be the water. Anyway, got the fish out except for 2 female anthias I couldn't find and most likely got brought out with the rock despite my best efforts to inspect them for fish. I ran out and picked up a Waterbox 130 as a replacement. Half the size, but gives me a bunch of room back in my office. Got the old tank broken down and the new one up and running all last night. So sadly this tank is over and done with.

Wish I could say it was more fun than frustration but with the dino's and then the leak, frustration wins lol! It will be nice to be able to reach everything in the tank though for sure.
 

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I've spent the past hour reading through this entire thread. Tons of great information. I'm brand spanking new to salt water aquariums and just started my first tank (a 210g) a few months ago. So much of what you discussed I also endured. I hate that your 220 sprung a leak but am glad to see that it doesn't have you too disheartened. Best of luck moving forward.
 
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Radman73

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I've spent the past hour reading through this entire thread. Tons of great information. I'm brand spanking new to salt water aquariums and just started my first tank (a 210g) a few months ago. So much of what you discussed I also endured. I hate that your 220 sprung a leak but am glad to see that it doesn't have you too disheartened. Best of luck moving forward.
There are always challenges, so knowing that going in helps. Good luck and don't give up!
 

epatrick70

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Hello - just finished this thread.....this was an outstanding piece of work by you. Thanks for sharing!!!
 

Mastering the art of locking and unlocking water pathways: What type of valves do you have on your aquarium plumbing?

  • Ball valves.

    Votes: 44 48.9%
  • Gate valves.

    Votes: 48 53.3%
  • Check valves.

    Votes: 21 23.3%
  • None.

    Votes: 23 25.6%
  • Other.

    Votes: 9 10.0%
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