Johnseye's 260g Reef

[EW_Fish]

Amazing growth.

 

[Johnseye]

One drawback of automating as much as possible and just letting things grow is that it's very easy to slack on cleaning. A lot of times over the years I'd just make water changes from my sump instead of rolling up the sleeves and vacuuming out the sand. The problem with that is detritus builds up. Over time snails also die, depleting the CUC and the detritus builds up. Diatoms grow and that growth will accelerate if somethings' not done. Usually around that time cyano may start forming. Then you've crossed the threshold. It's not easy getting rid of these things. My previous tank had them after a few years. I blacked things out and put in Chemiclean. It worked and nothing died, but I don't like doing it.

I started getting some diatom growth the other month. I've done a lot of sand vacuuming, removing of empty snail shells and other stuff from the sand bed. I still have more to go but the diatom growth has slowed. I've been brushing my rocks with a brush and using a basting tube to blow it out. I want to make sure it doesn't come back and I don't want to use Chemiclean if I don't have to. It will be a last resort. I've added a Reef Cleaners Quick Crew with close to 200 snails. Over 100 of them are tiny things.

I also put a UV sterilizer in line with my manifold. It's a 57w Aqua UV Classic with 2" in/outlets coming off a 1" manifold. I put a Neptune flow meter on the manifold just before the sterilizer. I thought about putting the meter after but I wanted to know the flow before the sterilizer. I get 330gph. That's slow flow. This sterilizer is rated for many times that and recommends I run it at 3x the water volume which if the sump volume is included would be about 1200gph. So the sterilizer is going to kill most of everything that flows through it. The debate is whether flow is fast enough to turn the water over before the growth I do want to kill reproduces. This is my experiment. If the diatoms continue to grow even with continued sand vacuuming, the snails and the UV sterilizer where it is, I'll move the sterilizer to the return plumbing.

Here's the UV sterilizer plumbed in as of last weekend.

 

[Johnseye]

One other change I made recently was also an effort to reduce the diatom algae growth in the tank was to encourage the growth of the chaeto in my fuge. I've been growing the stuff for many years and in fact am using the chaeto from my first tank. I had been using a PAR 38 bulb and had good growth with my last tank. When I had this new sump built I wanted covers for the top to limit evaporation. I added a pair of LED lights that sit on top of the cover. You can see from these pictures all the condensation under the fuge section. The growth of my chaeto has been very slow with this aquarium. I have an MP10 in the fuge so I get good turn over. Before keeping the cover off I thought I'd try a new light so I bought the Kessil H 160 and have it on the grow setting at max intensity.

 

[User1]

I also don't like the OpEx for Trident Reagents. $45 for 2 months, $22.50 per month, $270 per year is too much IMHO.

I believe with any automated testing product you will be paying for either a subscription or reagents. It will come down to what works best with ones ecosystem. Trident suggests per test comparison and is reagent based as you know. Something like Mindstream is subscription based @ 35 a month. The bot you are buying kits, other more reagents, and the other one will be a ion probe I guess. No idea which is the more reasonable but probably similar to you I would first look at the trident because that is what fits my controller ecosystem.

Nice build thread. Like the fish choices. Really nice aquascape. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Johnseye]

I believe with any automated testing product you will be paying for either a subscription or reagents. It will come down to what works best with ones ecosystem. Trident suggests per test comparison and is reagent based as you know. Something like Mindstream is subscription based @ 35 a month. The bot you are buying kits, other more reagents, and the other one will be a ion probe I guess. No idea which is the more reasonable but probably similar to you I would first look at the trident because that is what fits my controller ecosystem.

Nice build thread. Like the fish choices. Really nice aquascape. Thanks for sharing.

Without question there will be an ongoing cost for any solution. My only complaint is that the base automated test frequency is 4x per day. Neptune should allow for automated tests at a frequency of our choosing. Manual mode lets us do that but not without hands on. So we are in effect paying more solely for the automation functionality.

I think it's still very early in the auto test kit market space. It's a blessing that most of us in the hobby have been wishing for forever. I would expect competing products to drive cost down, increasing features and reliability over time. Until then I'll pay what I have to in order to know my parameters are stable.

Thank you for the compliments.

 

[Johnseye]

BC Secale aka acropora secale. Slow growing acro. It spreads its footprint along the rock beneath it as it grows out.

Tyree Pink Lemonade. It has excellent red polyp extension. A tabling acro with one base stalk.

A shot at feeding time with the BC Secale on the left and the Pink Lemonade on the right.

 

[Johnseye]

It is with sad regret that after 5 years I must dismantle this reef.

If anyone lives in the Chicago area and would like to buy anything you see in my thread please let me know. The coral will go first. Then the fish and live rock. Then the hardware. Everything is in perfect health. The coral colonies are growing like weeds.

Please PM me with interest. I will not be shipping any coral or livestock. I will consider shipping hardware once local interest has dried up.

 

[jp_75]

Do you have fish list?