Kade'S JBJ 65 Rimless Build

[KadeSirin]

Well, the acclimation to new light power WAS almost finished, there was just another 5 days to go. However, last Saturday after coming back from a trip, I saw there was a ton of dino in the tank; so this is what I've done:

• Lighting schedule change, from 6 hr photo period to 2 hr photo period and a 1 hr ramp time.
• Started dosing kalk to increase PH from 8.2 to 8.4.
• Dosing more pods during dark period to eat up the dinos.
• Dosing more (20mil/day) phyto to increase nutrient level and feed the pods.
• Dosed appx 10ml of the following bacterial sources increase biodiversity.
  • MicroBacter7​
  • Dr Tims​
  • Seachem Stability​
• Turkey baster blow the dino off rocks, lightly brush the dino off LPS and SPS.
• Change filter pads daily.
• Trimmed the Cheato down and harvested Sea Lettuce (makes a great salad)
• Increase feeding to increase nitrates and phosphates.
• Added 2 large bags of carbon and a bag of Chemipure Blue
• Reduced skimmer time from 24/7 to 12hrs/day.

As of today, the dino is almost all gone. However I know I'm gonna have an algae bloom after this from all the extra nutrients in the water.

EDIT: On that note, I'm looking for a better light for my aquafuge, any suggestions?

 

[tupes]

Nice builb so far. Check out mine when you have a chance and you can see how I made my fuge..

Was there a reason you went with 2 hydra 52s vs 26s. That is a crazy amount of light.

Im about to pull the trigger but on the 26 HDs.

 

[Blitheran]

Thats some serious lighting on the tank! I hope to see some more SPS!

 

[KadeSirin]

Dino is fully gone. Bacterial bloom however, tank is pretty murky. I've added an air pump with bubbler to help with gas exchange and to keep things alive.

I've also returned dosing to more "normal" levels - 7ml of phyto daily, no kalk and weekly filter changes.

Next step - re-acclimation to the light. More lab equipment.

Nice builb so far. Check out mine when you have a chance and you can see how I made my fuge..

Your build was one of the ones I looked at and contemplated doing what you did for a fuge on mine, However, I wanted more volume, so went with the aquafuge instead.

Was there a reason you went with 2 hydra 52s vs 26s. That is a crazy amount of light.

Im about to pull the trigger but on the 26 HDs.

I had the 52s, if I didn't, I'd probably have a single 26 lighting the tank and upgrade to 2 26es when it matures enough for SPS.

 

[KadeSirin]

Update time!

Dino is completely gone. Added some new fish - 1 female dracula goby to go with the male and a hector's goby. Also added some new coral frags - a 4 head short-er tentacle duncan, and a walking dendro.

Also added a Hector's goby (I have a little bit of hair algae in the tank)

And my Orange Spot Filefish is looking pretty plump!

Here's a FTS!

I'm going to have to work on a couple things - my dendro isn't doing too good, it looks like there's some torn flesh. Which is odd, I feed it bi-weekly a small piece of LRS Nano, about the size of its mouth. Parameters are good as well, though I think I'm gonna have to get nitrates back into check - I think I pulled out too much cheato.
As of last night:
Alk - 8.11
Nitrate - 10ppm and climbing, was 5ppm two days ago.
Salinity - 1.025
pH - average daytime 8.1, average night time 7.9
Temp - 78, but hits peaks of 80.3

 

[KadeSirin]

Today I wound up removing all the sea lettuce and leaving just the cheato, it works, but its too much hassle to try to keep both separate.

I also started dosing some iron to assist in the cheato growth.

Photos tonight!

 

[neoGeorge]

So I've been busy and the tank has been on maintenance mode for the last three weeks.

First of all, here's a FTS:

Local area had a fragswap, so I picked up some frags:

Lights just came on, so not everything is extended, but anyways, corals as follows, from bottom to top, left to right,
Octospawn, Hammer, Grape Cristata(SP?), Blastomusa Wellsi Red, Blastomussa Merletti, Fathead Dendro, another Hammer (3 heads!), smaller gold/orange hammer, a zoa (not sure what kind), slightly left, acan (again, not sure type), Trumpet, another acan with a weird split color, and a duncan.

Current tank residents are:
Carpenter wrasse, 2 Banggai Cardinalfish, a yellow clown goby, a purple firefish, and a ton of inverts...

I've got pods growing all over, dozens in the water column, and I'm having a problem with how "clear" the water is in the tank due to the pods floating around. There's also coraline growth... and I did my first harvest of sea lettuce and cheato. We had some seaweed salad (sea lettuce) and gave the cheato away.

Tank parameters:
pH 8.2
Salanity 1.026
Alk: 10.02
Ammonia 0
Nitrates 0
Phosphate 0

I'm a little concerned about the alk being at 10, but I the corals and fish haven't had an issue. My test kit for magnesium and trace elements like iodine are coming soon. I'm also going to start testing calcium.

I use the Red Sea Coral Pro and keep Alk at about 10 - this salt actually mixes to about 11.5 at 1.026

 

[Jamestown]

Update today, my nitrates have finally started rising, my weekly test shows 2 PPM nitrates, probably because I haven't changed the filter sock in two weeks and I haven't changed the filter pad on the other side in roughly 10 days.

Additionally, an acro frag I was given browned out, so I went ahead and checked to see why with my par meter. It turns out at the center of my reef, which is the overlap between the two Hydra 52s, is NOT the brightest spot in the reef. I also found out from checking that my lights were way too high at 12" above water's surface.

So, I've lowered the lights, and according to my chart, the hot spots in the tank (directly under the LEDs) are at just under 600 PAR, near the surface, they're getting about 1500 PAR and near the lights I'm seeing around 3000 PAR. Before, the lowest points were only getting about 100 PAR, now they're at 200 PAR. So hopefully things will be happier and grow faster.

Lights are currently on acclimation mode, 50% brightness across all channels until everything goes back to normal on the 22nd.

I also added another 3 Nero 5s and greatly reduced the power on them, my LPS appear to be much happier.

Wow! Thats a massive amount of light

 

[KadeSirin]

Update 7.28.2020 - Tank updates....
FTS:

So since the last update, I have, in order:
Had a neotherm pop in two, releasing these dark epoxy plasticky smelling bubbles. Skimmer was going crazy. I came home to pretty everything but the wrasses living, even then, of the two one died a couple days later in the hospital tank I setup. I think I spent two or three days finding bodies and fishing them out. Extremely sad, angry, frustrated. I went to buy the best heater (supposedly) and it fails on me. Bleh. At least the Apex killed power to it pretty much right away.

I did a series of 50% water changes, added extra carbon, added some purigen. Ran that for about two months.

Then I started buying coral again, and when the coral started eating up the nutrients in the tank, I started adding more fish.

Stock list to date:
2x Ruby Fairy Wrasse
1x Carpenter's Flasher Wrasse
1x Longnose Hawkfish
1x Lawnmower Blenny
1x Yellow Eye Kole Tang
1x Lubbock's Fairy Wrasse
1x Chalk Basslet

I intend on getting some Anthias, either 5 Threadfin Anthias or 5 Waitei Anthias, probably the Waitei due to the tank space.

In April, the tank had its 1st birthday. No restart yet. Picked up a huge elegance. Then a yellow tipped elegance.

The yellow tipped one grew in an arch-shape, the other bigger one only has one mouth, so they fit together. Fingers crossed that they don't sting eachother.

Since April, I've been slowly adding one or two frags at a time to the tank. So I've got my torches on the frag rack on the left.

A meat coral on the sandbed.

Some frogspaws, and the start of my scoly garden.

I've even started trying my hand at acros; here's a pink lemonade. I have good PE, but no growth. Spot where its sitting gets around 350 PAR.

Here's the lighting...

T5s yet to be installed, trying to decide between all Coral+ or putting one True Actinic or Purple Plus+ in there for pop. ReefLED came with the hybrid, I'm not using it, but I might for moonlight!

Alkatronic soon, pre-ordered the GHL Ion Director. Designing a refrigerated dosing vessel.

Wow! Thats a massive amount of light

Long delayed response... but the massive amount of light is always running at around 10-30%

 

[KadeSirin]

Alkatronic installed, look at that graph! I'm going to have it start dosing soon.

I'm mixing my reagent by weight, works pretty well. I also placed the alkatronic over the tank; had to drill a new shelf into the wall.

Speaking of the wall, the T5s are in!

Went with all coral plus, they're on from 8am until 4pm. Main lights start at 7am, ramp up to full at 9am and run through 4pm before switching from blue to something a little more daylight white. They stay there until around 7pm, when the lights start to ramp down until 9pm. Moonlight on the Red Sea comes on at 10pm until 12am.

I really like the blending; at full power, I'm hitting just about 400 par on the frag rack, around 600 on the top of the rockwork.

Trunk coral, one of two, has long tentacles and looks pretty happy.

A shot down the frag rack allows you to see the acans and the other trunk coral; digi and acros doing pretty well too!

Euyphyllia section of rockwork is doing okay, but some hard turf algae returned a little while ago, its bugging the space invader chalice.

I cleaned it a bit today after partial waterchange, have to be careful and not damage the corals. Also my leopard wrasses are out!

I also added some fans to the tank, connected to the Apex. My temps have been a lot better. Waterchange causes it to dip a lot... speaking of waterchange, I bought a Reefloat automatic water changer.

Runs for about 4 hrs; holds around 23 gal, so appx 30% waterchange once its all hooked up. Pretty interesting design choices. Here's how it works, as far as I can tell. Pump and drain line are inserted into tank, separate locations obviously. When plugged in, the pump in the Reefloat pumps water from the 88L container into the tank. As the Reefloat is sealed, it starts to create some negative pressure, so the intake line starts pulling water from the tank. It runs slowly, the pump goes every other minute. After around 4 hours, the water change is complete.

When that's done, I just wheel the water changer all the way to the backyard and drain it from the drain port. I could also flip the lever to the left of the AWC88 and have the pump run continuously until the thing is empty. Either way, it saves me time, so I'm more likely to do water changes. So far, once a month has worked!

- - - - -

Current parameters:
Alk: 7.64
pH: 8.39
Temp: 78.8 F
SG: 1.027
NO3: 2, Red Sea
PO4: 0.2, Hanna Checker

Not tested recently:
Mag, Ca,

- - - - -

Stocking List as of 8/10/2020
- 8x carberriy anthias
- 2x Ruby fairy wrasse
- 1x multicolor fairy wrasse
- 1x carpenters flasher wrasse
- 1x leopard wrasse (female)
- 3x ornate leopard wrasse (male)
- 1x skunk tilefish
- 1x longnose hawkfish
- 1x yellow eyed kole tang
- 1x chalk bass
- 1x lawnmower blenny

 

[KadeSirin]

Waterchange day as I'm getting less extension from the elegance, the blue-green hammer on the main rock structure isn't really extended either, hasn't been for a bit.

Stats first!
Alk: 8.0
pH: 7.91
Temp: 78.7
SG: 1.025
NO3: 2 ppm
PO4: 0.04 ppm

Just some test results and some new gear. Bought an Avast Kalkstirrer to keep the pH higher; through the Apex, it'll run a Versa dosing about 6ml/min as long as the pH is below 8.3. HOWEVER, I didn't want a really large tube going into the tank, so I did this:

This is the regular union with barb fitting on the K1, remove the union, get one with a 1/2" NPT thread in it.

Here's the new fitting.

Oops, I think I got the wrong thread for the union.

I'm in luck! The original union fits!

Attached. Yay.

Attach the 1/2 NPT to 1/4 John Guest adapter/Pushfit adapter, and test.

I'll be filling it with kalk later today, we'll see how well it works.

Oh and apex code for the kalk dosing Versa:
Fallback OFF
QSC 000:00/0001:00/010:00 Then ON
If pH > 8.3 Then OFF
If pH < 8.3 Then ON

Thats it for today!

 

[Mrfd217]

Waterchange day as I'm getting less extension from the elegance, the blue-green hammer on the main rock structure isn't really extended either, hasn't been for a bit.

Stats first!
Alk: 8.0
pH: 7.91
Temp: 78.7
SG: 1.025
NO3: 2 ppm
PO4: 0.04 ppm

Just some test results and some new gear. Bought an Avast Kalkstirrer to keep the pH higher; through the Apex, it'll run a Versa dosing about 6ml/min as long as the pH is below 8.3. HOWEVER, I didn't want a really large tube going into the tank, so I did this:

This is the regular union with barb fitting on the K1, remove the union, get one with a 1/2" NPT thread in it.

Here's the new fitting.

Oops, I think I got the wrong thread for the union.

I'm in luck! The original union fits!

Attached. Yay.

Attach the 1/2 NPT to 1/4 John Guest adapter/Pushfit adapter, and test.

I'll be filling it with kalk later today, we'll see how well it works.

Oh and apex code for the kalk dosing Versa:
Fallback OFF
QSC 000:00/0001:00/010:00 Then ON
If pH > 8.3 Then OFF
If pH < 8.3 Then ON

Thats it for today!

Beautiful Tank! Any more updates?