Kyle's Reef

dose_vessel_3 by Kyl, on Flickr

I still have to dose KNO3 daily, going to set up one head to dose it along side ESV B-Ionic. I think the build quality and design on this is pretty darn good for $60, and the logo is simply a vinyl label that can be peeled off if you want a completely brandless aesthetic.

In other news, I finally got my ETA for the GHL gear to arrive. Going to change over the frag tank first and take my time learning the ins and outs of ProfiLux on something simple. I might even have a new sump to go along with it

Kyl · Jul 10, 2019

GHL kit is all officially ordered and paid for, and should be in my hands on the 22nd. A bit of a wait, but there's two borders involved and my list wasn't all available to fill right away. In a good place right now, aside from the bubble algae which I'm going to start taking a big manual brush to, or several OXO brushes

. The DT is rocking, all the fish are getting along and my isoceles is starting to gain a reddish hue along it's sides, I'm assuming this is a male maturation coloring. The exquisitus is also gaining a bit more defined colouration, it's the most active fish in the tank. The m. bipartitus seems to perhaps be in the beginning stages of transitoning, it's I would say fully sized now, kind of hope it does stay female as long as possible for the colouration.

Also gearing up for the frag tank clean up, safety wise anyway. I have a good 300 heads of armor of god zoa/palys to remove from the glass on the tank, and I don't want to take any chances. Hoping to see if I can offload most of it locally, else I'll put it on frag tiles to at least get it off the glass. The tomini looks to be fully healed up from the rumbling it was taking at the LFS, and the starry blenny is also doing a number on the algae in the tank.

And I'll say lightning is about to strike twice, our newest local family business guy has tracked down some greenbanded gobies, so I'm getting three more of them brought in

Kyl · Jul 17, 2019

When three become four..

3to4 by Kyl, on Flickr

Blue star leopard has started transitioning to male..

transition_2 by Kyl, on Flickr

Kodock · Jul 18, 2019

Kyl said:
Finally got around to fixing up the proper screen top. Figures after I bought it they brought out the version with black netting, but .. still happy.

D-D Jump Guard.

Best kit on the market I think, that flush fit just cleans things up so nice, and it managed to handle two cords per corner so flush fit all around now.

dd_jumpguard by Kyl, on Flickr

dd_jumpguard2 by Kyl, on Flickr

dd_jumpguard3 by Kyl, on Flickr

Always amazed at some of the details that come out when you can get really close..

zoanthids by Kyl, on Flickr

The white spot anemone shrimp is still hanging around, in it's daytime home the neon toadstool. At night it climbs into one of the anemones..

toadstool_home by Kyl, on Flickr

Home is what you make it. For the clowns, that is apparently about 10" wide of anemone goodness. They have gotten so large, the primary one is as large as the original when it was moved about 15 months ago then proceeded to split. Might have to remove one of them soon, they're getting huge.

anemones_1year by Kyl, on Flickr

One day I shall remove bubble algae from this tank, it is my last battle. Dinos, cyano, they have died but this last foe has made it personal.

I bought a scopas tang and it settled my bubble algae. I really like the test vile holders. Great thread!

Kyl · Jul 18, 2019

Thanks much! Unfortunately the holders are flawed, and can scratch the cuvettes, or at least I'll blame them for a couple of mine that got scratched up (alk). My printer had been down for about a year so I never bothered to revise it.. yet anyway.. I'll probably get around to making one that will fit a radial blower fan so they can air dry on a timer, put my electronics skills to work too.

Unfortunately my tank is too small for most tangs, though I did pick up a tiny juvenile tomini that I plan on housing in the tank for a while at least, once it's healthy / fat enough for QT. I'm going to do the manual removal route with the bubble algae for now, it is coming off very easily.

Kyl · Jul 19, 2019

Soo, the frag tank sump upgrade is finalized. Unfortunately I just couldn't justify the cost of acrylic on the frag system, especially after the revision I did to the glass model to remove the ATO, the price delta became far too much. So this is what's being built:

Timeframe of 4-7 weeks, and I plan on getting some acrylic accessories for holding dual Eheim heaters (most likely from Zenreef) and the ~7 1/4" dosing line bulkheads the tank will be running with (alk / ca / kno3 / ??) AWC in / out & ATO.

GHL day is edging closer and closer, and the transition plan is pretty well laid out now. The frag tank will be the first thing transitioned to ProfiLux via the P4e. AWC, the DT and dosing for both initially will remain Apex while I get the handle of the P4e, but the KHdirector will be running on the frag system at least for the time period till the majority of the SPS frags and mini colonies are transferred to the DT. It fluctuates heavily if not caught so is a great stomping grounds to get things dialed in dKH testing wise. After the frag tank is humming along the AWC for it will be changed over, and if all goes well the DT proper, dosing and final AWC will transition a few weeks after.

Going to be a busy summer.

Kyl · Jul 26, 2019

Frag tank is running on ESV B-Ionic now, took a while but I finally did the swap tonight. I managed to repair the stepper motor in the dos for that tank driving calcium (formerly ALK). There was a bunch of corrosion on one of the motor terminals, and I don't know how that managed as the unit was new in 2017 and has never been within a sump enclosure, nor in spraying distance for the tank (was mounted in an ikea cabinet, above the tank). Have reduced dosage by 48% as ESV is more concentrated, so we'll see if that about matches what the previous daily levels were dosing wise.

GHL day is getting closer, but a bit of a set-back. The P4 / P4e / KHD kits and Maxi dosers are all arriving in Canada tomorrow, but the extra 6E power bars and both 2.1 x 4 slave dosers are backordered by GHLUSA

I'd be lying if I said this has been a smooth, or quick process, and that I've been entirely impressed by the whole thing. That said there are two country borders to jump through the hoops of, and I'm not playing the brokerage game so given they've had to go this model for distribution from lack of LFS support, I can wait. I do hope one day they're able to get the market support to streamline the distribution better.

Now it's just the prep game for everything. Trying to get rid of as much bubble algae as I can manually in the DT, keeping an eye on the QT fish, trying to find homes for two rowdy fairy wrasse, getting a new sump made and toying with the copepod production idea again..

Kyl · Jul 27, 2019

It's fraggin time!

Hope to reclaim some of this armor of god zoa/paly real-estate..

Kyl · Jul 29, 2019

Getting kinda packed in the frag tank..

full_frag by Kyl, on Flickr

feather_dusters by Kyl, on Flickr

glow_stick2 by Kyl, on Flickr

rainbow_montipora by Kyl, on Flickr

pink_mille2 by Kyl, on Flickr

jedi_green_hulk by Kyl, on Flickr

Frag tank cleanup took place on Saturday, it was rather un-eventful. Sold about half of the armor of god zoa/palys that I scraped from the glass, the rest were put on tiles, or if they were already on over-grown small tiles, four of them put on a larger tile. All told I have five 4" tiles to get rid of, plus a small ~10 head bundle on a small piece of rock, plus the ones stuck to the egg crate, another 50 or so heads.. I'd guess there is a good 200 heads worth to get rid of still.

I did bump one of the acros off it's plug and decided to put a couple of the larger ones on tiles too. Eventually I want to get away from the egg crate completely and go with a Zenreef rack along the back. When it comes time, there is a bunch of encrusted red montipora, sunset monty, the armor of god zoas, some acro encrusts and a no-name purple zoa that I'll just advertise for someone to take the whole thing. Really liking how the tiles set up, going to most likely get rid of the critter keeper in favor of something a lot smaller too, the pistol shrimp is still in there since fallow hasn't been happening in.. a long time..

Kyl · Aug 2, 2019

So I'm still waiting for any word on my GHL stuff, not a lot of information being passed along by the vendor up here. I did call late last week, but no reply to that message, so going to press things tomorrow. This was all supposed to have been in, "worst case scenario", this past Monday..

In the mean time, I managed to find my seneye that I bought before my first Apex as it was going to be the 'next big thing'. Yes, in the early days... heck even the later days I've succumbed to marketing in this hobby, but it does still have a use.. PAR time!

I had no idea how much PAR the frag tank was actually running, I haven't been able to find the Seneye in almost two years, so just guessed. I figured each of the blue+ bulbs would be about 25 PAR at the egg crate level in the tank, and the three Blue+ 1 Actinic are measuring about 60 par total in the middle of the rack, middle of the tank which is 7" under water, 16" total under the lighting fixture itself. I'm going to leave that as-is for now, as the next part of this is the AP700. I have been running it at 15% peak as I didn't want to fry things, knowing they're 95w pucks. At 10% they're putting out ~60 PAR at the same marker, and at 15% that number jumps to about 100. So combined with my T5's the peak photo period has been hovering around 160 par total, at the most idea point in the tank. I wouldn't have thought it was that low, but I guess better too little than too much. Going to raise that to 20%, which was showing around 200 PAR combined, and go with that for a couple weeks, then another 5%, and another. I want to get that up to about 300 during peak intensity, then things should be cooking.

The DT is the other issue, but I don't want to contaminate things so going to bleach soak the seneye in a few weeks then dry it out for another week or so before seeing how the DT has been fairing.

Kyl · Aug 2, 2019

WB_success

Kyl · Aug 3, 2019

I think many of us are familiar with the testing BRS has done with ATI bulb life in active cooled fixtures like the ATI Sunpower series, but this topic has now caught my interest due to a bulb change today.

My 54w hybrid set-up has included two ATI Blue+, two True Actinic and judging by this thread they've been running about 15 months total now in this configuration, with an 8 hour duty cycle per day. I've thought about changing one of the actinics out for another blue plus for a while, and had a new one laying around so did change it this evening. Initially I pulled the wrong bulb thinking the very dim one was the actinic, but upon firing up with the new B+ I realized the very dim bulb was in fact the 15 month old blue+, not the actnic.

I haven't run T5's before this and as such haven't experienced a replacement cycle, but I'm now wondering if the very stark visual intensity contrast to blue+ bulbs between ~a year of use and brand new is supposed to be this pronounced? If not, I'm wondering if the fact these bulbs will tend to run warmer than something actively cooled has an impact on their longevity, and I've effectively been running a couple lame bulb for a while now. I'm going to pick up some more blue+ tomorrow and run some out of tank par tests at least to see how dulled that used blue+ actually is. Pictures don't really show the difference, like trying to take a photo of the sun!

Kyl · Aug 7, 2019

Seneye 8" below T5 banks. It's not in the tank but on top of the mesh netting as I don't want it touching the DT water yet, I put a towel over the mesh / tank first. This is about 1" off the water line.

PAR:

Old bulbs:
Rear Bank: 70
B+20
A 50

Front Bank: 35
B+20
B+15

New bulbs:
Rear Bank: 160
B+
A (Guessing this was ~50 as it's still the old actinic, since the new Blue+ are about 105-110 each)

Front Bank: 210
B+ 105
B+ 105

Soo.. 15 months of Blue+ use in this fixture has saw both bulbs pretty much failed. It must have been gradual enough visually that I never noticed for a while, but the visible difference is night and day with new bulbs in there. Kind of feel like this was grossly overlooked, but I'll keep a closer eye on it with monthly surface checks like this going forward now that the Seneye has been found again.

Some extras for fun:

Kessil A160 - 100% blue, 8" directly below center light 340
Kessil A160 - 100% white, 8" directly below center light 320
Kessil A160 - 80% blue, 8" directly below center light 350

Plus T5, 8" below middle A160:
100% Blue 420
100% White 410
80% Blue 440

Again, not touching water, so in no way realistic to what's making into the tank, but I just wanted to see how dead the T5's were right now.

Kyl · Aug 9, 2019

pod_production

pod_production2

Decided to get into the pod production again. Picked up some of these Cambro 18QT polycarbonate NSF food storage containers (the ones they use in kitchens). They'll hold about 4.5 gallons comfortably, have handles, fit in standard 12" size cupboards and are pretty much bulletproof. Going to start with tigger pods again, but feed them with phyto this time. It felt like there was just too much trouble with the spirulina fouling the water the last go round, and coupled with the fact the pods were in glass 5 gallon tanks, made it a real pain to try and clean or change water. With these you can just pick and dump into a sieve or other container.